Duc holed up in the bedroom. Kim dialed immigration services. They transferred her to a counseling hotline. Her hands were still shaking while she sat on hold. The counselor said it was common. Duc was shell shocked, post traumatic stress disorder they called it. She could make an appointment for two weeks time. Until then, said the voice on the other end of the line, “Be patient. Ten years is sure to change a man.”

Kim hung up the receiver. She decided to clean the apartment. She wanted to be more like a traditional wife. She figured that was what he meant when he had said that she was “American,” earlier. Or did he mean that she shouldn’t have questioned him? That she was too independent? Was that what it meant to be American? Or had he been brain washed by the Viet Cong? Did he mean that she now represented the enemy? Is this why he wouldn’t touch her?

She picked up the table, mopped the floors, wiped down the doors, swiped and shined. She avoided the garbage disposal, the vacuum, anything loud. In the bedroom, she gathered her clothes. Laundry was safe. It was downstairs in the building’s basement. Duc was lying down flipping through a magazine. She sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. “I have some old Vietnamese novels if you’d like to read.” She pulled out the bedside drawer. The letters he’d written her were in there too. They were carefully preserved and wrapped in ribbon. “That’s all of them,” she said. “You were quite a romantic from jail.”

“That’s because I was being tortured.”

“Very funny,” she said. She handed him her favorite letter. “In this one, you write about how nervous you were to ask my father for my hand.” Duc began reading it. Kim went about gathering the rest of her whites. She recited by heart, “I nicked myself shaving, stubbed my toe, and forgot my keys in the refrigerator. I’d lost my mind and had already given away my heart.” She heard his laugh for the first time in ten years. It was the happiest she’d been in days.

Inside the closet, Kim saw his military duffle bag. She figured he at least had underwear to wash. She had only unzipped it when he bolted to her side. He screamed, “What the hell you think you’re doing? Huh?” and tore the bag away.

“I just thought I could wash your clothes for you.” She stammered over her words.

“What are you looking for? What do you want? Who told you to do this?”

“I used to wash your clothes for you,” she said.

“I don’t have anything,” he said. “Keep out of my shit.”