Chapter Forty-Three: Bảo

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE BẢO

I’m glad that Việt is not someone to press me. He knows what’s happening with Linh, but he doesn’t force me to explain. Doesn’t tell me to stop moping. Just lets me deal with this my own way. At work, he keeps chattering on about his TV shows, not caring that I’m not listening to half the words. At school, in Forensic Science, he does most of the work, telling me to write this and that down.

But one morning, I think he may have had enough. He’s calling my name as I’m zoning out, and when I don’t answer him right away, he punches me in the shoulder—the pain jerking me awake from my daze.

“Look. Someone screenshotted these Yelp reviews.”

I pull his laptop closer. It turns out Jared, the guy who accused my mom of scamming him, had been making rounds, based on these online Yelp profiles all under different names. He was hitting several businesses with the same message:

Fucking FOBS—if they’re going to open businesses here, they should speak in English, since they can’t even do that, they should go back to where they belong.

I click on my parents’ restaurant. Similar message.

My first thought? Run-on sentence. Then I hear Jared’s self-righteous voice. It may or may not be him, but since he was the most recent person to say things like this, my mind uses him as the person sitting in front of a PC, trolling because he doesn’t have better things to do with his life. I see his wife hovering over his shoulder in their home somewhere, pleading for him not to hit that Post button, then walking away, shaking her head, when he fully ignores her.

Go back where? Where else would Linh’s parents go? My parents? By now, half of their lives have been spent here. The country they remember is not the one that exists today. So why should they go when they so clearly belong here?

This guy doesn’t know shit.

“He’s everywhere,” Việt says. He clicks through other names from our neighborhood shops. Nail salons, bánh mì places. Jared, or whoever it is, has really been hitting up every prominent Vietnamese place nearby.

“Do you think a lot of people have seen this?”

Việt just shrugs. “For this douche’s sake, let’s hope not.”

---

The community did see it. Not through electronic means, but something more reliable for our parents: word of mouth. And who hears it first? Mẹ’s group. Her circle, including Nhi Trưng, convened in their booth, bickering quietly among themselves, printed pages of those reviews spread out across the table. Mẹ examines one of them, her glasses at the bridge of her nose. She doesn’t look happy.

“So you guys saw it too?”

“Bảo?”

“The reviews.”

Mẹ purses her lips, answering my question. “They’re ridiculous. Racists.”

Leaving the group, she strides to the back where Eddie, Trần, and others are goofing around again. I don’t see Ba, until I realize he’s in the restaurant too, with the husbands. They’ve come here about the review as well. In the kitchen, one of the line cooks wordlessly slides down a tin of Café du Monde and Mẹ receives it smoothly, spooning it into a single-cup filter.

“Con muốn cà phê không?”she asks breezily, and starts making one for me before I can answer. I realize that this is the first real one-on-one since our argument a few weeks ago about Linh. We’re exactly where we were before. This time, I round the prep table, try to reason with her.

“Are we going to do anything about the review?”

My mom doesn’t answer me right away. Instead, she busies herself with the filter, fiddling with the dripper, twisting it so that the drips run at the right pace.

“Do what?”

My parents have never been the type to make a fuss. They save their comments for the kitchen after hours or the safety of our home. If their opinions are to be shared, they do it with others like them—Vietnamese who’ve fled home for the same reasons, who read the same newspapers about the home they once knew. I wonder if it’s because of what they’ve gone through; how easily they could have been punished for speaking a word against the communist government. How they saw their friends and families punished for doing exactly that.

It could all be that. But it’s not like they’ll ever tell me.

I try again. “This review is ridiculous.”

“So?”

“It’s basically talking shit about every business in our community! We need to do something.”

“Why do you keep bothering? What can we do? Hm?”

Her anger rises like a quick flame, knocking me off guard. And also because I don’t have an answer. How can we fight someone who’s anonymous? Or the lies that they spread online about us?

“What is it that Americans say? It’s not your battle.”

I shake my head. An antithesis to basically everything she’s said to me my whole life. It’s always about us. Not one person—us. Together. And I’m not going to let her start saying things like that now.

“These words,” I slowly say. “They have consequences. Yeah, sometimes, you don’t think they will do much, especially when they’re said among friends—within the safety of one place.” Her face shifts; she remembers our argument. “But some words, like this, sometimes they win. We can’t let that happen. We can’t let anyone just see these words on our page and not defend ourselves.”

Now my mom just looks tired, decades older than she really is.

“I’m not going to let this person get away with saying things like that. I’m not.”

I’m tired.

Of all of it. Of all this useless gossip that never dies, only comes back in different forms. Causes people to hide certain things, then when it comes out it hurts all of us at once.

Someone needs to finally say something in our defense. Even if it hurts.

---

Later that night, instead of sleeping, I’m up with the lamp on, my computer in front of me. Considering the blinking cursor for a few minutes, I place my fingers on the keyboard, and before I know it, words and sentences fly from my mind to the keys. With each word I type I’m hoping to erase the vile reviews that those shitheads left on our pages. I’m writing this for not just my family, but other restaurants—and I pause—and the Mais’ restaurant. As much as our restaurants have clashed, as much as their weird battle has gone on, we still live in the same place. And hasn’t Linh always encouraged me to write what I feel? What I’m passionate about?

I sit up straight, stretching my back and arms. A look at the clock shows that I’ve been typing for an hour. It’s the first long piece I’ve written that wasn’t an assignment. It’s me on the page, and looking at it, I almost feel lighter.

The first person I want to share it with is Linh, but at the memory of our last talk, seeing her at her breaking point, my energy stills for a moment. That’s not an option, so I go to the next person I can trust.

---

I almost hesitate to show Ali the next day. Who knows what she’s thinking about what happened between me and Linh, whether she’ll take Linh’s side and cold-shoulder me, too, because that’s where her loyalty should be. But when I text her for help on the article during lunch, she sends back a quick “yeah, sure,” telling me to find her now in the newsroom like usual.

I pack my things from the lunch table and Việt sends me a quick nod. He’s been my friend for so long that he knows when to shut up. I haven’t heard SVU recaps from him in what seems like ages and I’ve got to give his cross-country friends credit for following his lead, their conversation a little less boring than usual.

Then, because I can’t help it, I seek Linh out, wondering if she’ll be here or in her art room, cooped up as usual. But she’s here, eating lunch with some friends. I stare harder at her, willing her to turn around, to see me, but she doesn’t notice.

Swallowing hard, I leave.

---

“It’s not bad?”

“Not bad so far.”

“Really?”

“Hey, I said ‘so far.’ Your next sentence is probably going to be shitty.”

We’re quiet as she keeps reading as promised. I scroll through Twitter on the computer. She marks up some words and nods sometimes.

“So Linh told me what happened. Well, kind of. Not the whole story. But she did tell me what happened.”

My hand freezes on the mouse, but I keep quiet.

“She’s been really stressed. I mean, you know she probably didn’t mean any of it?”

Ali sits next to me, looking unusually somber. “See, the thing with Linh is that she was alone for a while. Not physically, but alone inside her head. I’m a journalist and she’s a painter and though they’re both creative things, she never really had someone on that level with her. But you, Bảo, you made her open up a little. Her art has changed. It’s transformed. It’s been freed.” Ali pauses. “I’ve never seen her that happy, and it’s because you walked into her life. I’m grateful for that.”

Words are stuck in my throat. This wasn’t what I expected when I came to Ali for help.

“I’m not just talking about Linh who’s changed. You’ve become the writer you’re meant to be.” She nods, like she’s confirming the fact to herself.

“Despite what’s happening, Linh’s just scared. Because it is scary. Her world—both of your worlds—have been upturned.” Ali shrugs. “Let it settle a little. And don’t doubt what she feels for you. Or what you feel for her.”

After a few beats, Ali stiffens her back, morphing into the journalist I know and am terrified of.

“You won’t ever repeat that to anyone,” she says, in her signature I will cut you voice. Right after, she smiles. A genuine smile that she’d share only with Linh. “This is great. I actually think it’s your best.”

“Really?” I say again, like a broken record.

“So good,” she says, pushing herself off the counter, “that I think you should try for something bigger than just our newspaper. Because it’s not really about the school. It’s about the community. Your community. Your home. And if you need help with that, I have the right contacts.”

Hearing the word “contacts” come from her mouth still sounds ominous, but out of everyone, she’s the best person to help me.

And she does.