Slicing his palms through the air, Viet guided his chi into the golden platter, directing the energy clockwise and allowing the circle to grow with each rotation. His fingertips began to tingle and he’d just entered into a rhythm when he heard the flapping of sheets, the clacking of blinds, and then the patter of his wife’s slippers on the plastic mats covering their floors.

The distraction ticked at him but he told himself, count your blessings. He reminded himself that just a year ago the tai chi was impossible when he, his wife, and their two daughters were all contained inside the four walls of one bedroom.

Huong said, “You should practice interviewing, not tai chi.”

Viet said, “You can’t practice for it.”

“I can dye your hair,” she said.

“You did it last month.”

She combed her fingers though his hair. He lost his posture. “Why are you up so early?” he asked. She didn’t hear him. Huong had moved on to the kitchen and was grinding her coffee beans.

His wife was a sensitive creature. She was a worrier and suffered from insomnia. The lack of sleep curled up in sulky half moons beneath her luminous eyes. Viet wanted to ask her for another thirty minutes for his practice, but he didn’t. He didn’t want her sullen, tucked away in her bedroom with the blinds drawn. Ever since the visit from Child Protective Services this past winter, Huong seemed to have grown even more tentative about the day-to-day activities of their lives. She had changed her work schedule at the electronics firm from nights to days. She claimed that in America, “The devil visits you not at night but in the daytime, when you’re alone and vulnerable.”

Huong remembered the CPS visit as an attack, an insult that she wore like a raw wound. Ever since the incident, without warning, an unforeseen slight could cause her to withdraw inside herself. Sometimes, Huong fortressed off from him and the girls for what could be days at a time.

Viet returned to his postures. He was determined to shut out the busy noise but heard rock music blaring from one room and a blow dryer firing from another. The girls were up now too. Huong tapped him with the TV remote. “Father, can you move over a little? I can’t see.”

In the waiting room at Linkenheimer LLP, Viet saw four other applicants. They were nicely dressed, attractive, well-groomed, and perhaps half his age. They reminded him of his students in the fall, at the start of the term, fresh-faced and eager, when school meant the promise of knowledge and smelled like a new book. Viet patted his hair, hoping to shift the gray into hiding. He shuffled the papers inside his manila folder. The person who had helped him put his resume together said, “You don’t need to bring those diplomas from Vietnam.” Nonetheless, Viet had taken them out from behind the glass frames in which they usually were displayed in his living room. He continued carrying these yellowed fading certificates to the interviews, reminders of who he was and what he’d once achieved.