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Chapter Forty-Two: Linh
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO LINH
Doing as I was told, I skip work and head home, lying in bed, facedown, pillow over my head. I try to drown out my thoughts, my worries, scenes from last night and today pounding inside my mind. I would have tried to take a nap, but my phone rings. Someone’s calling on Viber.
“Oh, Linh,” Dì Vàng says when the visual stabilizes, sounding like I was the one to call. She’s at an airport, sitting in a packed waiting area. Beside her is a nosy grandmother who stares suspiciously at my aunt, then looks away. “Five more hours until I land in Cali!”
I summon all of my energy into a smile and tell her how excited I am to finally see her. I must look like something’s wrong because the next moment she leans in, squinting, and asks, “What’s wrong? Were you crying?”
What a way to welcome my aunt to the States after seven years.
Before I know it, I’m telling her everything that’s happened in the past few months. It pours out of me. Maybe a screen separating us makes it easier for me to speak freely. Or maybe because Dì Vàng looks a bit like my mom now, and I wish I could explain this all to her. I start from the beginning—and for me, the real beginning was when Bảo crossed the street because he saw I needed comfort. I start with him, not mentioning him as the son of my parents’ nemeses or as the nephew of her former fiancé, but the boy who offered to help when he didn’t have to. I tell her about him and his writing and my painting—how our relationship had formed and blossomed along with the art I’m finally making.
I tell my aunt about our meetups, and then our dates. About that happiness that came in revealing my mural—that initial silence, then uproarious applause from strangers who loved what I’d put out there. And then I tell her about the moment things went wrong with my parents, everything that I had hidden from them coming out and me having no real way to explain myself.
I should have known where I would end up. I knew that lying was wrong, but I’d thought it was the only way to do the things that I wanted. Wasn’t it? I finish my story with that question, one that my aunt needs to look away to ponder.
Then she sighs and sips her coffee, which she got from Auntie Anne’s. “This doesn’t sound good, Linh.”
“I know,” I say miserably.
“It’s a lot to take apart, but I think it’s the act of lying that hurt my sister the most. She loves you, Linh. And I don’t think she feels great about being left out of your life.”
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Oh, I know you didn’t,” she says sympathetically.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to unload on you right before you even land here.”
“I can think about it on the plane ride over.” She leans back in her seat. “So this boy,” she says almost wistfully. “I remember being your age—what that was like.” She smiles quickly before it disappears. “From what it sounds like, this boy seems very đàng hoàng.”
I inhale. I’m on the precipice here, and once I say this, once I hear her reaction, I really can’t go back. “That’s something else I need to tell you. You know Bảo, kind of. Because you know his parents, or his mother. And his uncle. The one who died.”
Her lips part, the sun from the far-left window, facing the planes, touches her face, obscuring her expression from me. “Trời ơi.”
She knows. She remembers.
The kiosk attendant starts calling people to board.
“Dì Vàng—” I start to apologize, knowing that this thought will occupy her mind over the plane ride, and there won’t be anything she can do to stop it.
So in shock, she only manages a goodbye before telling me she needs to step in line. “It’s been so long. But I guess we all have to face this, once and for all. I will see you soon.”
The drive is excruciating. A song plays in the background, the kind to lull me and Evie asleep during rare road trips. This was before Mẹ and Ba opened the restaurant, when their work hours were slightly more forgivable. We’d drive within California—to a park or to visit a relative. In intermittent moments, my mom would reach her hand back and my sister or I, giggling, would put our hand in, asking her to guess whose it was.
“Tay của ai vậy?”
Mẹ would pretend to think, squeezing the hand, fingers, guessing whose hand she’s holding. Of course, my mom had the rearview mirror and could easily see who, but I thought it was just a superpower she had because she was a mom.
In the arrivals wing, my parents and I sit with three seats in between us. Every few minutes, Ba gets up to stretch his legs, then stand by the window, hands clasped, to observe the planes taking off. The area is alive with vibrant clothing and languages mingling and flying right over my head. The walls are wide and white, and tired passengers flow from the customs gate, their dull faces turning into laughter, surprise, eagerness as they reunite with their families. Then the most colorful person emerges—a woman with her hair piled atop her head, for convenience, rather than looks. Her neck scarf, blouse, and pants show a bizarre spectrum of shades of green, pink, and yellow, though they all seem to mesh. She’s here.
My aunt shrieks, causing the other off-loading passengers to look back at her, some with shock, some with amusement. Leaving her bag there momentarily—a woven bag that’s seen better days—she and my mom, who’s suddenly come to life, embrace. Her hug is strong and tight. I feel it myself.
“You look so skinny!” my aunt exclaims, squeezing my mom’s cheeks, shoulders, hips, but she bats her hands away.
“What are you wearing?” my mom asks dubiously, in the same way my sister asks when something doesn’t compute with her right away.
“The latest Vietnamese fashion,” she retorts pompously. “I bought you the same scarf.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Fine. I’ll give it to Linh.” She turns to me, opens up her arms. “Look at you, all grown up! You’re so beautiful.” I stay there for a moment and I hear Mẹ tell Ba to pick up the bag Dì Vàng left behind.
I don’t know why, but I start crying. Maybe I was exhausted by this energy in the house, by what I did to get us here, or that I didn’t expect my aunt to hold me for this long. Or that it would make me miss the way Mẹ used to hug me. My aunt’s arms tighten around me.
