Outside the store Elle asked her, “Did you hear what she said about you?”
Huong said, “No, what did she say?”
“How could you not hear her Mom?”
Huong said, “Where I come from, servants are seen not heard.”
And then her eldest daughter told her, “Mom, we’re not in Vietnam anymore.”
Huong thought then, as she did now, everything forbidden, can’t do anything, anywhere, anymore.
She was still in bed when her husband and daughters returned from school. Viet asked her, “Did something happen? Why aren’t you at work? Why didn’t you answer when I knocked? Thank goodness I had a key to the bedroom door. Are you okay, dear? Why does the room smell?”
As Huong knew he would, Viet explained the girl’s side. “She tried to stay covered but the teacher made her change.” “She didn’t want to do P.E. because she was obeying your instructions.” “She told them you’d never hurt her.” “Won’t you let her apologize to you?” Viet held Huong while she lay flat on her back, body slack, eyes closed, mute. She heard Elle crying in the other room. She wished she could hold her daughter. She wished she could console her. She loved her children desperately, but now understanding the burden of such a love, no longer wanted it.
When Viet left the room to comfort their daughter, Huong got out of bed to retrieve her xu. She dug in the wastebasket, numbed to the glass shards. Beneath the covers, red blooms stained her white sheets as she rolled the coin between her fingers as if a rosary. Loved by all, she had once said. Huong held strong to her conviction, to a time when she was right in every way.
QUIET AS THEY COME
Viet Tran raised his elbows, spread his wings, and was gliding through the white crane movement when he caught himself holding his breath. He tried his best to concentrate on a slow steady flow but was anxious and had to remember to exhale. He attempted his one-legged rooster posture, lost his balance, and had to brace himself on the couch’s end. A wave of vertigo washed over him accompanied by a static buzzing in his ears. It imitated the roaring lull of the seas. It reminded him of how the dead always seemed to surface along with his dreams. Twenty years ago, Viet had seen himself as Chancellor at a University. Today, he would be content as an accountant, with a desk to sit at, a respectable salary.
Nobody would believe that Viet Tran had ever killed a man. His friends in Vietnam often described him as gentle, kind, a man of letters, fanatical about chess, a good family man. His co-workers from the post office would probably say he was a simple man, a hard worker, a great listener. Viet’s physicality and bodily strength wouldn’t be mentioned. And yet there was a time in history, between continents, when he had taken a man’s life with his bare hands.