EVERYTHING FORBIDDEN

The healthy take care of the sick. A youth respects his elders. Older siblings take care of younger siblings.. It had rained recently and Golden Gate Park smelled of tamped-on eucalyptus leaves stewing atop damp soil. The pungent acidity of it sliced through her. It put a spring in her step. Her chanting matched her pace while her eyes scanned the park grounds. Huong needed the perfect stick to c o gió her oldest daughter with. She needed to treat the girl before Elle’s condition worsened.

Beside Huong, her nine-year-old was on her hands and knees digging through a mountain of leaves. Michelle was small for her age and in her puffy brown coat with the white stitching looked like a little burrowing squirrel. Huong wondered if Michelle’s size was caused by their internment at the refugee camp. Maybe being surrounded by so much illness and death during her formative years had stunted the girl’s growth. In fact, she shouldn’t have been out at all on a day like today. Huong’s guilt caused her to snap at the girl. “Pull your zipper up. Cover your throat. God knows I can’t afford another sick child.”

Michelle held out a branch. “This one?”

“No, too big, it should be small enough to fit inside here.” Huong pointed to the hole in the middle of the Vietnamese coin. “About the size of your button,” she said and caressed the white plastic sphere on Michelle’s coat pocket.

Michelle offered another stick.

“That’s too small,” Huong said. “It has to be firm enough to pull wind from a sick person’s chest.”

It was December in San Francisco and winter had recently arrived. The wind was blustery and unyielding, raining downa storm of copper leaves over their heads. Huong’s hair blew into her mouth. The foreign taste lay on her tongue like bitter shards of tin.

After four years in this country, Huong still wasn’t accustomed to the cold. Summers in the city were bearable and even temperate once the sun chased out the fog. Unfortunately, those few golden months were over in a blink before winter came charging in, bone-chilling in a way that could crush you like a train. She blamed Elle’s sickness on the dramatic climate change.

Since their arrival, Huong and Viet had been doing their best to get on and get by. They started off with no savings, no English, and only the clothes on their backs. Now, they had stable jobs. Huong joined the movement to make “computers the wave of the future” and worked as an electronics technician assembling circuit boards. Viet was a mailman. His pay wasn’t great but the benefits were good since it was a government job. After four years of scratching by, they had saved enough to move out from the cramped 22nd Ave. house they had shared with her brother and sister and their kids.

Their landlord, the Japanese Baptist Church has said, “Choose God or get out.”

Huong told Viet, “I want to become an American citizen. I believe in democracy. And I choose to be Buddhist.” She was choosing freedom over the collective family unit. That was the moment of truth when she realized how slowly but surely Americanized they’d become.