Back at the 22nd Avenue house, she realized that Bao wasn’t at his place because he was at hers. Kim stood in the middle of the living room and told her family, “I’ll never understand this country. I thought we came because it would make more sense here.” The women were watching TV on one end of the room and the men were drinking beer and roasting cuttlefish on the other.

Her son sat with his uncles. He was fidgeting with the mobile stove on the table and didn’t even look at her. She said, “Careful you don’t burn yourself, love.” Marcel’s eyes didn’t lift. He was probably mad she hadn’t taken him along to the movies. Kim had insisted he go to the park with his uncles. She wanted him to run around and kick a ball. She wanted him to do boy things, all the things she couldn’t provide because his father was locked away in a prison in central Vietnam.

The men laughed so hard tears streamed down their reddened cheeks when she described The Pussycats. She realized then that they were already drunk. She played into it, told them about the naked women crawling around but left out the part about the man. This morsel she would save for the women, in the kitchen, over food. But first, she needed to stew it over so she could interpret her own gasp of disbelief and unwanted arousal. She hadn’t seen a man or more accurately a man’s in years.

Her older sister Huong asked, “How are we supposed to raise our children in a place like this?”

Her sister-in-law Trang asked, “How was a child permitted into this kind of establishment in the first place?”

The women sat in a row, crossed their arms, shook their heads and tssked their disapproval. From the other side of the room, her youngest brother Tri, who had lived in America the longest of them all said, “Don’t blame the business owner. It’s America, capitalism.”

Bao waved a slice of cuttlefish in his hand and said, “You get what you pay for, remember?” As if it were a stage, he joined her in the middle of the living room floor and said, “Pussycat in English is the same as Butterfly in Vietnamese.” He tossed the dried fish in his mouth. “She knew that!” He chomped on his food and bared his teeth to her. All her brothers laughed.

Kim said, “We have the same lesson plan at school and yet somehow he’s an expert on these matters.” At this, the rest of the women roared too.

The only person who didn’t laugh was her oldest brother Lam who sat placid and sipped at his beer. He was the patriarch of the family and Bao was his best friend. Lam stated, “Little sister, Bao’s only offering advice of one who’s like an older brother to you.”

Lam’s wife said, “Ah, it just goes to show the Americans are much smarter than the Viet Cong, see? Here, the evil is masked cunningly.” Trang doubled over on the brown corduroy couch laughing at her own joke. She had to cross her arms to hold her breasts down. As a teen she had been all curves and hazel eyes. It landed her on billboards for Coca-Cola and they paid her with a lifetime’s supply. Lam explained his wife’s weight saying it was all the soda she drank during her modeling days. Nobody dared mention her fat French father and genetics playing a part.