I’m so hungry I can hear my stomach growl. At my house my parents shove food down your throat the second you walk through the door. If you don’t eat anything, they’ll put a papaya in your backpack or give you some persimmons to take home to your parents.

At Phoebe’s house we eat at odd hours and drink coffee. We sit in the shadows of the living room where it’s dark and musty and smells like old wood and roasted coffee and we listen to Stan’s jazz albums. He makes coffee drinks from his fancy Italian espresso machine while we write down “the vibe” we get from the song. “How’s the piano talking to the sax? What are the sounds saying to you?” Stan encourages us to express ourselves.

Phoebe and Stan live in Noe Valley in a real house where the sun shines and there’s a backyard that smells of jasmine. We live in a box in the fog of the Richmond district squished between other boxes. My father doesn’t like that I’m always staying the night away. “Is there something wrong with our home?” He tells me that in Vietnam, the word “sleepover” doesn’t exist.

I say words like “privacy” and “passion” aren’t in the Vietnamese language either. “Does that mean they don’t exist?”

“You’re getting mouthy,” he says. “See what the sleepovers are doing to your attitude?” I like that “mouthy” is used the same way in English and in Vietnamese. Finding these connections helps me feel better.

I’ve started writing. Mostly it’s nonsense. I use the things littered on Phoebe’s living room floor as paper. I write on grocery bags and pizza boxes, candy wrappers and cigarette packs. I make lists. Stone, beat, dark.

The only present Stan ever gave me was a journal. It had a red leather cover with thick crisp paper inside. “Copy this down for me will ya?” He gave me a pizza box I’d written a poem on. He said he might make it into a song.

I came home and asked my parents, “Why don’t we talk more?”

My father said, “We talk plenty.” He switched back to the TV.

One day I said, “We watch too much TV.”

My father said, “But we watch TV to improve our English. You said you wanted us to talk more.”

My parents understand practical functional English. They have learned the English of ESL, the language of getting from A to B, questions, commands, directions, a job in a new country. They speak in the language of survival. We are boat people, refugees. Sometimes when we talk it’s as if we’re drifting apart at sea.