The Refugees Read online

  “I won’t,” Liem promised. “You can depend on me.” He heard the driver shouting for passengers to board as his mother ran her hands up and down his arms and patted his chest, as if frisking him, before she squeezed a small wad of bills into his pocket. “Take care of yourself,” she said. Around her mouth, deep wrinkles appeared to be stitches sewing her lips together. “I won’t be able to anymore.” He hadn’t said he loved her, or his father, before he left. He’d been too distracted by his desperation to get on the bus, for without a seat he’d have to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the aisle, or else risk his life riding on the roof all the way to Saigon.

  “How could you know what was going to happen?” Marcus leaned forward. “You’re not a fortune-teller. Anyway, that’s all in the past. You can’t dwell on it. The best way to help them now is to help yourself.”

  “Yeah,” he said, even though this was, to him, a very American way of thinking.

  “The point is, what do you want to be?”

  “To be?”

  “In the future. What do you want to do with yourself?”

  No one had ever asked Liem such a question, and Liem rarely asked it of himself. He was content with his job at the liquor store, especially when he compared his fate with that of his friends back home. The underage ones, like him, had become bar sweeps or houseboys for Americans, while the older, luckier ones dodged army service, becoming thieves or pimps or rich men’s servants. Unlucky ones got drafted, and very unlucky ones did not come home at all, or if they did, returned as beggars who laid their stumps on the side of the road.

  Marcus was watching him expectantly. The idea of saying he wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a policeman was utterly ludicrous, but the desire to appear noble in Marcus’s eyes, and maybe his own, seized him.

  “I want to be good,” he said at last.

  “Well.” Marcus glanced at the bill. “Don’t we all.”

  The next day at the liquor store, Liem counted seconds by sweeps of his broom and rings of the register, his shift threatening never to end when only yesterday he’d hoped the day would run on forever. After he’d grabbed the check from Marcus and paid for the dim sum, they had browsed the curio shops of Chinatown together, then driven to Treasure Island to see the Golden Gate Bridge, winding up by dusk in a Market Street theater, where they sat knee-to-knee watching One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Later, eating sushi at a Japanese restaurant on Sutter in Japantown, neither mentioned the contact—they talked instead about Jack Nicholson, whose films Liem had never seen; and Western Europe, which Liem had never visited; and the varieties of sushi, which Liem had never eaten before. In short, Marcus did most of the talking, and that was fine with Liem.

  Talking with Marcus was easy, because all Liem had to do was ask questions. Marcus, however, rarely asked him anything, and during those moments when Liem ran out of inquiries, silence ensued, and the hum of the car or the chatter of the other diners became uncomfortably noticeable. Neither spoke of Parrish, not even when they returned to the Victorian and Marcus opened one of Parrish’s bottles of red wine, a Napa Valley pinot noir. Never having drunk wine before, Liem woke up the next morning feeling as if the corkscrew had been driven into his forehead. He could barely crawl out of bed and to the bathroom, where, as he brushed his teeth, he vaguely remembered Marcus helping him up the stairs and easing him into bed. Seeing no sign of him before he went to work, he concluded Marcus was sleeping in.

  When he returned to the Victorian in the evening, he found Marcus watching television in the living room, clad in his bathrobe and with his hair mussed. “A letter came for you today,” Marcus said, switching off the television with the remote control. On the coffee table was a battered blue airmail marked by an unmistakable handwriting, the pen marks so forceful they almost cut through the thin envelope. Liem’s father had replied to his first note, the airmail addressed to him at Camp Pendleton and forwarded by the resettlement agency in San Diego.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” Marcus said.

  “No,” he muttered. “I don’t think so.” He rubbed the envelope between his fingers, unable to explain how he’d dreaded the letter’s arrival as much as he’d yearned for it. Once he opened the letter, his life would change again, and perhaps he wanted it to stay the same. Summoning all his will, he laid the airmail on the coffee table again and sat down next to Marcus on the couch, where together they stared at the blue envelope as if it were an anonymous letter slipped under an adulterer’s door.

  “They think we’ve got a Western disease,” Marcus said. “Or so my father says.”

  “We?” Liem said.

  “Don’t think I don’t know.”

  Liem kept his eyes on the letter, certain his father had written no more than what needed to be said: make money and send it home, take care and be good. The message would be underlined once and then once more, leaving him to guess at anything too dangerous to be said in his father’s bare vocabulary. But whereas his father had never sought to find new words, Liem was the opposite. He looked up at Marcus and asked the question he’d wanted to ask since yesterday.

  “What does candid mean?”

  “Candid?” Marcus said. “Yeah, right. Candid. It means being caught by surprise, like in a photograph or a film, when someone takes your picture and you’re not looking. Or it means someone who’s frank. Who’s honest and direct.”

  Liem took a deep breath. “I want to be candid.”

  “I’d like to be candid.”

  “Shut up,” Liem said, putting his hand on Marcus’s knee.

  Afterward, he sensed things might not have gone well. First, none of their clothes came off as smoothly as he expected, because all of a sudden the buttons and zippers were smaller than he knew them to be, and his fingers larger and clumsier. His rhythm seemed to be off, too. Sometimes in his eagerness he moved too fast, and to make up for it, or because he was embarrassed, he then went too slowly, throwing them out of sync and causing him to apologize repeatedly for an elbow here, or a knee there, until Marcus said, “Stop saying you’re sorry and just enjoy yourself, for heaven’s sake.” So he did his best to relax and give himself up to the experience. Later, his arm thrown over Marcus’s body, facing his back, Liem wasn’t surprised to discover how little he remembered. His habit of forgetting was too deeply ingrained, as if he passed his life perpetually walking backward through a desert, sweeping away his footprints, leaving him with only scattered recollections of rough lips pressed against his, and the comfort of a man’s muscular weight.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Marcus did not roll over or look behind him, did not say “I love you” in return, and indeed, said nothing at all. The ticking of Parrish’s antique grandfather clock grew louder and louder with each second, and by the time the patter of rain on the roof was distinct, Liem was fumbling awkwardly with his underwear.

  “Can you just wait a minute?” Marcus said, turning around and hooking one leg over Liem’s body. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

  “No,” Liem said, trying to unpry, without success, Marcus’s leg, honed by countless hours on the treadmill and the squat machine. “I need to go to the bathroom, please.”

  “You just got caught by surprise. Sooner or later you’ll figure out love’s just a reflex action some of us have.” Marcus stroked Liem’s hand. “A week from now you’re not even going to know why you told me that.”

  “Okay,” he said, not sure whether he wanted to believe Marcus or not. “Sure.”

  “You know what else is in your future?”

  “Do not—don’t tell me.”

  “A year from now you’ll be the one hearing other men say they love you,” Marcus said. “They’ll say you’re too pretty to be alone.”

  Marcus pulled him closer, and, as the rain continued to fall, they held each other. Outside a car began honking repeatedly, a sound Liem kne
w by now to mean that someone, double-parked, was blocking the narrow street in front of the house. Then all was quiet but for the clock, and he thought Marcus might have dozed off until he stirred and said, “Aren’t you going to read the letter?”

  He’d forgotten about the airmail, but now that Marcus had mentioned it, he felt it glowing in the darkened living room, bearing on its blue face the oil of his father’s touch, and perhaps his mother’s too, the airmail the only thing he owned that truly mattered.

  “I never read it to you.”

  “I will never read it to you. That’s the future tense.”

  “I’ll never read you the letter.”

  “Now you’re being petty. Don’t read it to me, then.”

  “But I will tell you what I’ll write.”

  “Only if you want to,” Marcus said, yawning.

  Until this moment, Liem hadn’t thought about what he would write to his father and mother once their letter had arrived. So he improvised, beginning with how the tone would be as important as the content. His letter, he said, would be a report from an exotic city, one with a Spanish name, famous for cable cars, Alcatraz Island, and the Golden Gate Bridge. He would include postcards of the tourist sights, and he’d mention how funny it was to live in a city where people who weren’t even Asian knew about the autumn festival. When enormous crowds in Chinatown celebrated the lunar new year, he’d be there, throwing down firecrackers at the feet of a dancing lion, hoping his family was doing the same. The crunch of burned firecrackers under his feet would remind him of his boyhood at home, and the letter he’d write would remind him of times when the family gathered around his father as he read, aloud, the occasional note from a distant relative. At the end, Liem would tell them not to worry about him, because, he’d write, I’m working hard to save money, I’m even making friends. And we live in a mauve house.

  He heard the steady rise and fall of Marcus’s breathing, and, afraid Marcus was fading into sleep, he couldn’t stop himself from asking the other question he’d wanted to ask since the previous day. “Tell me something,” he said. Marcus’s eyes fluttered and opened. “Am I good?”

  A light drizzle tapped against the windows, the sound of Friday night on a rainy day. “Yes,” Marcus said, closing his eyes once more. “You were very good.”

  This much, at least, he could write home about.

  After Marcus fell asleep, Liem slid out of bed and went to the bathroom, where he stood under a spray of hot water for so long he nearly fainted from the heat and steam. He had his pants on and was combing his hair when the phone rang in the living room.

  “I just wanted to see how you two were doing,” Parrish said, loud and cheerful, as if he’d been out drinking.

  “Just fine,” Liem said, eyeing the letter on the coffee table. “Nothing special.” He didn’t like speaking on the phone, where body language was no help in making himself under­stood, and he kept the conversation short. Parrish didn’t seem to mind, and said good night just as boisterously as he’d said hello.

  Liem sat down on the couch and opened the letter carefully. When he unfolded the single sheet of onionskin paper, translucent in the light, he recognized once again his father’s script, awkward and loopy, as hard for him to decipher as it was for his father to write.

  September 20, 1975

  Dear son,

  We got your airmail yesterday. Everyone’s so happy to know you’re alive and well. We’re all fine. This summer, your uncles and cousins were reeducated with the other enlisted puppet soldiers. The Party forgave their crimes. Your uncles were so grateful, they donated their houses to the revolution. Our lives are more joyful now that your uncles, your cousins, and their wives and children are living with us in our house. The cadres tell us that we will erase the past and rebuild our glorious country!

  When you have time, send us the news from America. It must be more sinful even than Saigon, so remember what the cadres say. The revolutionary man must live a civil, healthy, correct life! We all think of you often. Your mother misses you, and sends you her love. So do I.

  Your Father

  After he read the letter a second time, he folded it, slid it back into its envelope, and let it lie inert on the coffee table. Restless, he stood up and walked over to the bay window overlooking the street and the sidewalks, empty this late in the evening. The light in the room had turned the window into a mirror, superimposing his likeness over the landscape outside. When he raised his hand, his reflection raised its hand, and when he touched his face, the reflection did the same, and when he traced the curve of his cheek and the line of his jaw, so, too, did the mirror image. Why, then, did he not recognize himself? And why did he see right through himself to the dark street outside?

  Raindrops on the glass dappled the reflection of his face. He waited at the streaky window for several minutes until he saw a sign of life, two men striding quickly down the street, shoulders occasionally brushing and hands deep in the pockets of their jackets. Their heads, ducked down low against the drizzle, were bent toward each other at a slight angle as each listened to what the other was saying. At one time he would have thought the two men could only be friends. Now he saw they could easily be lovers.

  As they passed under a streetlamp, one of them said something that made the other laugh, his head tilting back so that his unremarkable face was illuminated for a second. The man’s eyes turned to Liem at that instant, and Liem, realizing he was quite visible from the street, wondered what kind of figure he must have cut, bare-chested and arms akimbo, his hair slicked back. Suddenly the man raised his hand, as if to say hello. When his partner looked toward the window as well, Liem waved in return, and for a moment there were only the three of them, sharing a fleeting connection. Then the men passed by, and long after they had vanished into the shadows he was still standing with his hand pressed to the window, wondering if someone, behind blinds and curtains, might be watching.

  efore Mrs. Hoa broke into our lives in the summer of 1983, nothing my mother did surprised me. Her routine was as predictable as the rotation of the earth, beginning with how she rapped on my door every morning, at six, six fifteen, and six thirty, until at last I was awake. When I emerged from my bedroom, she was already dressed, invariably wearing a short-sleeved blouse and skirt of matching pastels. She owned seven such outfits, and if she had on fuchsia, I knew it was Monday. Before we departed, she switched off the lights, checked the burners, tugged on the black iron grills guarding our windows, always in that order, and then, in the car, ordered me to lock my door.

  As my father steered the Oldsmobile and I sat in the back reading a comic book, my mother worked on her makeup. By the time we arrived at St. Patrick ten minutes later, she was finished, the flags of blush on her cheeks blending in with her foundation. Perfume was the last touch, a pump of the spray on either side of her neck. The dizzying scent of gardenias clung to me in Ms. Korman’s summer school classroom, where, for seven hours every day, I spoke only English. I liked school, even summer school. It was like being on vacation from home, and at three o’clock, I was always a little disappointed to walk the four blocks to the grocery store my parents owned, the New Saigon Market, where English was hardly ever spoken and Vietnamese was loud.

  My mother and father rarely left their posts, the cash registers flanking the entrance of the New Saigon. Customers always crowded the market, one of the few places in San Jose where the Vietnamese could buy the staples and spices of home, jasmine rice and star anise, fish sauce and fire-engine-red chilies. People haggled endlessly with my mother over everything, beginning with the rock sugar, which I pretended was yellow kryptonite, and ending with the varieties of meat in the freezer, from pork chops and catfish with a glint of light in their eyes to shoestrings of chewy tripe and packets of chicken hearts, small and tender as button mushrooms.

  “Can’t we just sell TV dinners?” I asked once. It was easy to say TV dinne
rs in Vietnamese since the word for television was ti-vi, but there were no Vietnamese words for other things I wanted. “And what about bologna?”

  “What?” My mother’s brow furrowed. “If I can’t pronounce it, my customers won’t buy it. Now go stamp the prices on those cans.”

  “They’re just going to ask for a lower price.” I was thirteen, beginning to be brave enough to say what I had suspected for a while, that my mother wasn’t always right. “Why do they haggle over everything? Why can’t they just pay the price that’s there?”

  “Are you going to be the kind of person who always pays the asking price?” my mother demanded. “Or the kind who fights to find out what something’s really worth?”

  I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that in the New Saigon, my chore every afternoon was to price the cans and packages. I was on my knees, rummaging for the stamp pad on the shelf behind my mother, when Mrs. Hoa introduced herself. Like my mother, she was in her late forties and dressed in monochrome, a white jacket, white pants, and white shoes, with bug-eyed sunglasses obscuring her face. As my mother bagged her purchases, Mrs. Hoa said, “I’m collecting funds for the fight against the Communists, my dear.” I knew the basics of our history as well as I knew the story of Adam and Eve: the Communists had marched from North Vietnam in 1975 to invade South Vietnam, driving us out, all the way across the Pacific to California. I had no memories of the war, but Mrs. Hoa said others had not forgotten. A guerrilla army of former South Vietnamese soldiers was training in the jungles of Thailand, preparing to launch a counterattack in unified Vietnam. The plan was to stir the unhappy people against their Communist rulers, incite a revolution, and resurrect the Republic of the South.

  “Our men need our support,” Mrs. Hoa said. “And we need good citizens like yourself to contribute.”

  My mother rubbed one ankle against the other, her ­nylons scratching. A seam had opened behind her knee, but my mother would keep wearing the same hose until the run nipped at her heels. “I wish I could help, Mrs. Hoa, but times are hard,” my mother said. “Our customers are cutting back on everything, what with the recession and the gas prices. And our daughter’s in college. Her tuition is like a down payment on a house every year.”