Chapter Fourteen: Linh

CHAPTER FOURTEEN LINH

Once outside, the silence is comforting and warm, like a good bowl of wonton soup on a rainy day. I feel Bảo’s heat beside me, my hand a whisper away from his. During the summer, with tourists flooding in, this part of the neighborhood gets packed with squatting old Vietnamese women, dressed in countryside outfits. It’s not as heavy as Bolsa Avenue traffic, especially when the night market’s up, but it’s still a tourist trap. You’re likely to get bullied into buying jackfruit in Styrofoam trays, rambutan or longan, or—if the woman’s a really good seller—durian. Sometimes I wonder if they ever sell all of their items, and when that doesn’t happen, where they go.

The sight of Bảo passing under a lamplight stops me. It’s as if he’s just stepped into a Caravaggio painting. The light throws off shadows, darkening half of his body. The lines of his face seem sharper.

“What?” Bảo brushes his hand through his hair. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Nothing. The lighting. It was just perfect for a second.”

“You notice things like that?”

I shrug, embarrassed that I was caught staring this time.

Bảo hops on a nearby cinder block wall, walking down the length before jumping down, back at my side again. “Remember that bowl of phở? How bad it was? It’s probably from—”

“Phở Bác Hồ. My parents hated that place.”

“Same.” At least our parents seem to agree on one thing—a universal distaste for anything that refers to Hồ Chí Minh in name. Reminds them too much of the war. The owners made some poor excuse when they opened—saying they were referring to an elderly relative. But you have to be so ignorant to open something like that here. It closed not long after me and Bảo met.

“But I never got to see you draw Spider-Man, did I?”

“Because of our parents.”

Something passes in his eyes that makes me shiver. “Did you ever think about what it would have been like if our restaurants weren’t competing against each other?”

It’s a loaded question to wrap up our time together, but I answer as honestly as I can.

“I think I thought about the idea of you, if that makes sense. But this is different. I finally get a chance to know you—and you seem nice.”

“Don’t worry, the nice-guy act disappears once we meet for the fourth time.”

“Great. I was really sensing asshole vibes back there.”

It feels like an hour before we finally get to Ward Street, where our paths diverge. This is what I’ll remember: his bashful wave and the shadows swallowing him up as he heads home.

When I’m inside the house, only Ba is up. Back problems, most likely. I can smell the Bengay emanating from him again. He sits in the dark living room, TV on, but with the cable off. The static from the screen lights up his sleeping face, a hypnotizing pattern.

“Oh, con về rồi?” he asks groggily, stating the obvious. “How was studying?”

“Dạ. It went well.” The lie leaves me a bit too easily, though I feel the weight of it in my stomach. But it has to be done. I take off my shoes, then make my way to my bedroom. “The test will be easy. Now go to sleep.”

“Ah.” I’ll give him two more hours before he drags himself to bed and wakes up early to start his routine again.

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My mom’s knock wakes me up the next morning. My mouth’s parched, and the light almost hurts my eyes. I remember that I didn’t drink any water after drinking boba. Is it possible to be hungover from too much boba?

I hear Mẹ lightly pad across my room. Her shampoo—Head & Shoulders, which she shares with Ba—tickles my nose. The bed sags just a bit when she sits by me, patting my side. This was how she’d wake me and Evie up before heading off to a long day at the restaurant.

“Con, dậy đi. Chín giờ rồi,” she whispers, her voice as smooth as the glide of a brushstroke across a well-primed canvas.

I twist my head to the right and check the actual time: eight o’clock, instead of an hour later like she just said.

“Five more minutes.”

“Mẹ just made bánh patê sô. Just hot out of the oven. It’s only good when it’s eaten hot.”

I breathe in hints of her promise. Buttery puff pastry. Tender, flavorful chicken at the center. And then my ultimate favorite: earthy Vietnamese coffee just waiting to be paired off with sweetened condensed milk.

Okay, I’m up.

Mẹ knows she has me. I hear a smile in her voice. “See you soon.”

---

Once in the kitchen, I see that it’s not just pastry or coffee that she’s made. She must be experimenting with recipes. Several pots are cooking on the stove, and on the outside patio, there are two larger pots, which tells me whatever she’s cooking there might stink up the house. Various herbs are soaking in tubs of water. At last five bottles and jars of gia vị are opened on the kitchen table. Ever-methodical in the restaurant kitchen, she’s the complete opposite in our own kitchen.

Still, I love mornings like this.

The pastry is waiting just for me. I sink my teeth into it, flakes falling into my lap. Mẹ has me taste the coffee and milk level, then pours ice over it. As Mẹ busies herself around the kitchen, I FaceTime Evie, who complains that while other parents have sent their kids care packages, Mẹ and Ba haven’t.

“Care package, what is that?” Mẹ asks—or shouts, as the blender breaks down some spices. Evie quickly explains the concept, to which Mẹ says that Vietnamese food, the good kind, can’t ever be mailed.

Meanwhile my hands are getting tired holding the phone so they can see each other.

“What about bánh tai heo? I’m craving it.” My sister loves eating pig ears. Not real pig ears, but sugary biscuits that are shaped like them.

“Okay, if you want, I will make them.”

“Don’t do it if you’re too busy.” She points out that Mẹ shouldn’t be cooking on her day off. “Weekends are for fun. For people to do a hobby or something.”

“Yeah, like gardening,” I say.

“No way. Every time Mẹ tries to grow something, she kills it.”

“Something is wrong with our soil,” Mẹ protests lightly as she grabs something from the drawer.

Evie and I exchange knowing looks. Makes me feel like she’s not hours away. In our small backyard, there’s a graveyard of plants Mẹ tried to grow: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers. The only thing that has survived are herbs, though it’s only a small selection.

“Sure, Mẹ. Sure.”

Evie says she’s going on a run next and would text later. Once she’s gone, Mẹ asks me worriedly, “Does she sound happy? Does she look thinner to you? Maybe she doesn’t have enough to eat.”

When we moved Evie into the dorms, we had more food than anything else for her. Luckily her roommate is Filipino, so she and her parents merely congratulated my parents on their preparedness. Then Ba told them to stop by our restaurant if they were ever in the area. That was when Evie decided it was time to say goodbye.

“Mẹ, she’s fine. She seems really happy. Don’t worry.”

“Mà Mẹ là Mẹ. Mẹ phải lo.”

I get up from the table, finished with breakfast. I hug my mom from behind. “Yeah, but Evie’s got this. She can take care of herself. You know how she is.” At that, Mẹ only sighs deeply, and my body mimics the movement.

“Do you miss her?” she asks me.

“Sometimes.” And that’s the truth of it. I thought it’d be much weirder to go home to a half-empty bedroom. But over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten used to it. I think of my aunt and the packages she sends Mẹ. I look at her longingly staring out the window over the sink, the light showing that Mẹ seems to have a few more gray hairs than I remember. “Do you miss Dì Vàng?”

“Sometimes,” she says quietly. She doesn’t elaborate, and I’m wondering if she’s going into one of her moods.

I let go and ask if I can help with anything.

“No, there’s too much to do. I should do it myself. Why don’t you do your homework and if you have finished, go to your hobby,” Mẹ says, trying to mimic the way Evie says it, but she ends up sounding nasally.

I bite my tongue, feeling like that’s how my parents will always see painting for me.

It’s just a suggestion, she probably thinks nothing of it, but the easy dismissal of my hobby makes the taste of patê sô linger uncomfortably on my tongue.

“You really should find something else to do, Mẹ. You work too much.”

“And work is good. Work makes money.” As she opens the blender to peer at its contents, she says, “I haven’t had a hobby since I was a teenager. Your age.”

“What did you like to do?”

A wistful look passes through her eyes. “Travel. When I wasn’t at school or helping out around the house, I’d go around Nha Trang to places I’d never been. I would travel to Saigon and Đà Lạt. Oh, Đà Lạt was so beautiful! So romantic!” She laughs. “And when we escaped, my first wish was that we’d land somewhere in Europe.”

“Have you traveled since?”

“No, no. Where was the money? Đời sống đã rất là khó. I had to work in factories, the nail salon, wherever I could get work. School wasn’t a priority since we needed money. Traveling was a foolish idea. An impossible idea.” She shakes her head.

“That is why I’m happy to see Evie find her way. She will live a life that’s not khó. Unlike I had. Unlike your aunt.” Her tone shifts to one of disapproval. “And soon enough you will have a good life too.”

A good life.A good life only comes if you have security—that’s what my mom’s basically saying. Anything beyond that is just a pipe dream.