When they returned to the bedroom, Huong noticed that the sheets had been changed. On the nightstand, the xu, the bottle of Tiger brand menthol oil, and the stick were meticulously laid out on a white towel. She picked up the stick and rolled it between her palms. All the knots had been carved out. Viet said, “See, I don’t spend all my time playing games, Boss.”
She asked, “Did you remember to sterilize the xu in alcohol?”
He said, “I wouldn’t dare forget,” and shut the door behind him.
Elle took off her nightgown and lay on her belly. Huong climbed on the mattress and straddled Elle’s lower back. “Is this okay?” she asked. It was difficult to find a comfortable spot on the girl’s narrow torso.
“Mom, I thought you said a lady always sits with her knees touching.”
“It’s true.”
“Well, you’re not.”
“I only break rules for the health of my children,” she said.
Outside, the city buses were loading and unloading passengers below. Huong dotted drops of the menthol oil on Elle’s back. She scraped with the coin and followed her map of green markings like roadside reflectors in the night. Her strokes were gentle without being so soft that the effects of the medicine wouldn’t absorb. She worked from the spine outward, careful to place the coin at an angle and only along the edge of each rib. The blood rose to the surface and pink dots streaked across the girl’s skin. In the areas where Elle had stored the most wind, it immediately turned the purplish yellow shade of deep bruising.
Her daughter asked, “How much longer will this take? How much longer will I be sick? Do you think I’ll be good enough to play in the soccer game Thursday?”
Huong focused on Elle’s back, concentrating on the topography of the girl’s illness, deciphering from rising bruises the recovery period. After the scraping, she massaged oil into the girl’s throat, behind her ears, and above her chest. Huong finished the treatment by pounding her fists lightly up and down Elle’s back to re-invigorate circulation. When she finished she commanded, “No soccer for at least a week.”
Elle reached for her nightgown but Huong wouldn’t let her put it on. “Were you going to put on that dirty rag you’ve been sweating in all night? There are probably a million germs having babies inside the fabric by now.” She knew it was her daughter’s favorite nightgown and put it aside to be personally hand washed.
For dinner Huong made chicken porridge because the wet rice would be easier going down a sore throat. She paired it with stir-fried cai be xanh because the greens had a medicinal cooling effect. Standing over the stove with her chopsticks in hand Huong wondered if she would ever again possess the finances or the inspiration to make the dishes she once secretly considered her art. She used to make her own pâté, a duck Montmorency no one in Sàigòn had ever tasted the likes of before, and in the summer months, a jackfruit ice cream from scratch. Her dinner parties used to be written up in Tin Sáng’s society pages. How quickly life changes in a year or even a day. Right as Huong finished this thought ambulance sirens shrieked by and then slipped away quick as a ghost. It was a reminder of how the big turns in her life really happened: the click of a grenade, the snap of a suitcase, a child’s last breath.