Things We Lost to the Water: A Novel

by Eric Nguyen

  “Yes,” she said. “Once your father comes, we’ll move someplace else.” She nudged him forward and he walked up the steps.

  “Where?”

  “Garden District, maybe, with a fence and a garden.” She smirked when she said that, and he knew everything was going to be fine then. Sure of it.

  * * *

  —

  Versailles was built on the eastern outskirts of New Orleans, across the Industrial Canal, where the tall buildings were replaced by swampland. Gated by a chain-link fence on the front and flush against a bayou in the back, Versailles held ten apartment buildings, each with two homes, one on top of the other. The buildings dotted the sides of an unpaved road that ran through the middle of Versailles until it ended at the water.

  For weeks, they didn’t unpack. Everything stayed in their suitcase. It made Tuấn uneasy. None of this belonged to them; they had to be careful not to break anything, dirty the carpet, mark the walls—it was not theirs. His mother continued sending tapes to their father. They sat on the floor in front of the cassette recorder, talking into it as the spokes spun. She ended each message, “See you soon,” and Tuấn echoed: “See you soon, cha!” She’d tuck them in after, and, though he knew it was impossible, he heard his voice bouncing off the blank white walls: “See you…soon…cha!”

  It wasn’t until summer that his mother started decorating. From the church, they got a used couch and an old dinner table and a painting of a moss-covered tree. One day, Tuấn’s mother thought flowers would be nice. Saying that, she emptied a pickle jar into a bowl and rinsed it out.

  “Something nice,” she said.

  “What if cha came home and there was nothing nice!” Tuấn added.

  She smiled.

  Together, the three of them wandered the banks of the bayou, just outside their apartment since they were the last building in Versailles, searching for flowers. From a distance, as she held on to Baby Bình, Tuấn thought his mother looked younger, brighter, and his brother looked like a perfect toy, more of a doll than a real boy. He bet she picked flowers when she was a little girl, too, and made a note to ask her later. He picked up a fist full of the brightest ones he could find and ran up to her. She giggled and shook her head. She didn’t like the yellow ones. The blues, she liked, and the purples and the whites, too. When they gathered a good bunch (even Bình managed to pluck a baby violet), they walked back inside. She threw the flowers in the jar and started on dinner.

  Just then, someone knocked. They stopped what they were doing and eyed the door. All this time, they had lived alone. And when Tuấn thought about it, no one had ever knocked on their door before; no one visited. Who could it be? His mother cleared her throat and turned off the stove. She wiped her hands on a towel. Tuấn followed after. Maybe someone had seen them plucking flowers and they weren’t supposed to. What if they were in trouble? The idea flashed in his mind. He wasn’t so sure about opening the door. He wanted to tell his mother to stop, but her hand twisted the knob and the door popped open.

  An old woman’s weathered face greeted him when it did. He heard the sticky movement of her lips as she moved them into a smile. Slowly she shuffled in. In one hand, she held a cane and in the other, a box wrapped in shiny red paper. Tuấn watched in amazement. That such an ancient woman could do all of this without a cry for help caught his attention. She reminded him of an elderly water buffalo: her large flaring nostrils, the frowning lips, a lumbering gait.

  “You must be Hương,” the old woman said.

  “Yes,” his mother replied, “I’m Hương.” She, too, seemed mesmerized. She wiped her hands on the towel again, though they were already clean and dry. Her mouth opened to say something but she was interrupted.

  “Bùi Thị Minh Giang,” the old woman said. “Or how they say it here, Giang Bùi, from downstairs,” she added. She handed his mother the box. “Almond cookies,” she said. “If you get the cà phê ready, we can get started on those!”

  Tuấn sat with them while they talked about themselves (she was the wife of a businessman who died during the war) and New Orleans (“The coffee here is good, isn’t it?”) and Versailles (“Can you believe they call this place Versailles?”). At one point he stopped paying attention and she left.

  They never invited her back, but she returned anyway. The next day before dinner and then the next and then the next, until Bà Giang’s visits became so expected, a part of their regular lives, Tuấn couldn’t imagine a day without them or her playful teasing.

  At some point during her time there, she’d poke his arm or his belly and he’d jerk his body back. “You’re getting so big now!” she’d say. “Chubby hands, chubby arms, and that tummy. As fat as an American!”

  At the word American, Tuấn would spring up on his chair.

  “I’m not American!” he would say, reciting from memory what they taught him in school. “I am người Việt Nam. My father teaches the great and honorable literature of our nation. My mother is the daughter of our beautiful countryside.”

  At the end of his speech, they would clap and he would bow.

  “Good boy!” they’d cheer.

  “My boy,” his mother would say.

  He’d blush. His whole body would feel warm and loved. It almost felt like home, or a type of home.

  * * *

  —

  Because of her age, Bà Giang didn’t work, or she couldn’t find work. To make money she took in the children of Versailles, the ones who needed supervision when their parents were out.

  Besides Tuấn and Bình, there were three other kids. Trúc was a girl and nine and the oldest. She didn’t like watching TV—what Bà Giang told them to do most days—because it rotted the brain and made you stupid; she watched anyway. Ngọc was the second oldest, a skinny boy with long legs and a monkey’s laugh. Then there was Đinh-Fredric, a boy of seven—two years older than Tuấn—who was lai, which meant his dad wasn’t người Việt but no one knew what he was, either. It was why he had two names, one Vietnamese, another from somewhere else, or at least this was what Bà Giang told Tuấn’s mother.

  Đinh-Fredric never sat with them for Sesame Street or The Electric Company or Rocky and Bullwinkle. Instead, he stayed in Bà Giang’s room with the door closed. What he did in there no one knew.

  Once, during a commercial break, Trúc told them Đinh-Fredric wasn’t người Việt at all: he was American, one-hundred-and-ten percent.

  “Listen to his name,” she said. “It doesn’t even sound like người Việt. What kind of name is Fredric?” Ngọc nodded; what kind of name was Fredric?

  Trúc continued, “Why does he stay by himself? He’s planning something in there, right now. Against us! My dad says Americans are bad, bad, bad people, and my dad is always right.” Tuấn tried to remember if his dad said anything about Americans or America. Before they left, he had talked about Australia and France. “Australians are friendly,” Tuấn remembered him telling his mother when they thought he was asleep. “The French, at least we know some French.” They never told him they were leaving, but he pieced it all together from their late-night conversations. The only shock was when they actually did, and, after that, the fact that his dad didn’t come along.

  “What makes them so bad?” Ngọc asked.

  Trúc let out an angry puff of air. “What makes them so bad?” She leaned forward. “Remember the boat?”

  Ngọc nodded. Tuấn remembered the boat, too, though it wasn’t the same ones Ngọc or Trúc were on. They were all on different boats. He remembered his dad not being there and the waves and the sick feeling in his stomach like there was too much water in there. He remembered his mother telling him to go to sleep, always telling him to sleep, even if he just woke up. And when he asked where they were going, she just shook her head as if “No” was a place.

  “The Americans made you do that,” T
rúc said. “They took your home. They made you get on that boat. And now your mom cooks their meals, your dad cleans their houses, even if he used to be top boss, and they both come home smelly. The Americans are the reason for everything bad that has ever happened. Do you understand?”

  Ngọc nodded.

  “What about you?” She looked at Tuấn pointedly. “Do you understand?”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled. All this talk confused him. He wanted to be alone and think it all through.

  “What did you say?”

  “Dạ, I said dạ.”

  For lunch, Bà Giang gave them store-bought cupcakes, her favorite. They were made of chocolate and had cream in the middle. Each plastic packet had two. As Trúc and Ngọc returned to the TV, Tuấn paused at the hallway leading to Bà Giang’s room. Who was Đinh-Fredric? Could Trúc be right? Was he bad? Was he an American? It didn’t seem likely. After all, there were no Americans in Versailles. Everyone was người Việt. It was a rule: you had to be người Việt to stay in Versailles.

  Tuấn wrapped the second of his cupcakes in a paper towel and tiptoed down the hall. Outside the room, he tapped on the door. When no one answered, he tried again, whispering into the keyhole, “Đinh. Đinh-Free-rock.”

  To Tuấn, Đinh-Fredric was a ghost. He’d only ever seen glimpses of the boy, a bright shirt running through the halls. He didn’t have any hair or a head or eyes or nose or body. He was just a shirt. At times, Tuấn wasn’t even sure Đinh-Fredric existed. He was an idea, not a boy. “Đinh!” he whispered louder.

  The door opened slightly and a smell like old perfume, stale but flowery, sprang forth. Between the door and its frame, Tuấn saw eyes gazing at him.

  “Bánh!” Tuấn unwrapped the paper towel. The cupcake was falling apart and the white filling oozed out. Tuấn wiped a hand on his shirt. “It’s still good even though it doesn’t look like it. You can have it if you want.”

  The boy stared back. His eyes traveled down to Tuấn’s bare feet then back to his face. The door squeaked nervously as it moved back and forth.

  “What are you doing?” Trúc interrupted. Tuấn hadn’t even heard her coming. Trúc crossed her arms. She looked at Tuấn then at Đinh-Fredric then back at Tuấn and her eyes lit up. “Are you American, too, Tuấn?” she asked, a smirk sprouting on her face.

  “No!” Tuấn exclaimed. “No! I’m người Việt. I’m người Việt! My father…He…” He all of a sudden forgot what to say. The words were in his head, but they were in the wrong order. Trúc’s eyes stared down at him and made him feel like hiding. He dropped the cupcake and ran back to the television, where Ngọc sat, not even hiding his eagerness. The TV volume was on low.

  “Did you see him? Did you see the American?” he asked.

  Tuấn remembered the shadow figure in the dark, its thinness and smallness. He could tell Đinh-Fredric’s skin was dark, darker than his own. His hair was short, and to Tuấn’s surprise, stiff-looking and curly. Đinh-Fredric wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t a monster. He was just a boy.

  The bedroom door opened and closed with a quick yet noticeable squeak and clap. Tuấn stretched his neck to see if Đinh had come out. The hallway was empty and the cupcake was gone. Tuấn imagined Đinh in the room, licking the sweetness from the paper towel happily. It made Tuấn smile. They would be friends. Good friends.

  “Nothing,” Tuấn said to Ngọc. “I saw nothing.”

  * * *

  —

  That night, his mother recorded another tape message. She sat on the floor by the glass sliding doors that looked out onto the bayou. Their apartment was on the second floor, and a metal railing stopped you from walking out and falling. Tuấn wondered why they even bothered putting a door there, but maybe that was the way things were in this country.

  “I am in another country,” he often whispered to himself to feel the heaviness of the words fall out. “Out there, far far away,” he would go on but only in his head, “is a large piece of land called Vietnam with different people, different trees, different houses, and that is where cha is and he cannot just walk out of it. Vietnam is not like a room, it’s like a school and you can’t leave because there are different rules in school and you can’t go until thầy giáo says so, so we are waiting for thầy giáo to say he can go or for cha to sneak out and not let thầy giáo know.”

  As his mother rewound the cassette tape and began addressing the envelope, Tuấn asked, “When is cha coming?”

  “Soon,” she said, sealing the envelope. She pressed her fingers against it to make sure it was tight. She crossed her legs and patted them. Tuấn climbed onto her lap.

  “Would he like it here?” Tuấn asked.

  “Sure he will,” she replied. Her voice was certain. How could he ever doubt her?

  “What do you think he will like the most here?” Outside, the moon shined onto the bayou and reflected there, a mirror image.

  “Us.”

  * * *

  —

  On Tuesday the next week, Bà Giang let them play outside. Ngọc wanted to play hide-and-seek, but Trúc said it was a baby’s game, so Ngọc didn’t want to play it anymore.

  Then Trúc said, “I have an idea! It’s called ‘I’m Not American.’ ”

  “That’s not a game,” Tuấn said.

  “We played it all the time back in Saigon,” Trúc said. “You wouldn’t know. You’re from Mỹ Tho. Your family is all country bumpkins.”

  “Hey!” Tuấn hollered back.

  “How do you play?” Ngọc asked.

  Trúc reached into her pocket and pulled out a red ribbon. She held it up, and the sunlight made it shimmer. “Easy. If you wear this,” she said, “you’re the American.”

  “This is stupid,” Tuấn said. “I’m not playing.”

  “If you’re not playing, you’re just ngu and we don’t like you.”

  “Play, Tuấn!” Ngọc said. “He’ll play! How do we play?”

  “So,” Trúc began, “if you’re the American, you wear this. The only way not to be the American anymore is to tie it on someone else. So you chase us around. When you catch someone, you knock them to the ground and tie it around their wrist.” She pulled Tuấn’s arm and demonstrated. She tied a double knot. “Ta-da!” she said.

  “Then what?” Ngọc asked.

  “Then you run away, dummy.” She gave Tuấn a shove. “You’re It, dummy!”

  Ngọc burst out laughing.

  Trúc began running and yelling, “The Americans are killing our people! The Americans are killing our crops!”

  “Not the Americans!” boomed Ngọc. “Not the Americans!”

  “The Americans are killing our people! The Americans are killing our crops!” Trúc repeated.

  “Not the Americans!” Ngọc boomed again, this time with more fake horror. “The Americans!”

  They did this for several minutes, running around dumbly while Tuấn trailed behind. They’d run around Bà Giang’s apartment when Tuấn saw Đinh at the window. He had been watching all along. Caught, the boy hid behind the curtains, but Tuấn had already seen him and saw him still watching from behind the thin fabric.

  “What you doing, American?” Trúc tapped him on the shoulder. “Do you want to play or kiss your American friend over there?” She made kissing noises and pointed to the window. She stared down at Tuấn, her tall body casting a shadow.

  “Stop calling me American!” He threw out his arms to push her, but Trúc was already ahead of him. In the next instant, he tumbled on the dirt and found himself facing the bayou.

  It was then that he heard Ngọc screaming, “Stop, you guys! Stop it!” His high-pitched squeal pierced the air. “Stop it! Stop! You both ruined it. This isn’t fun!” He stomped toward the apartment. Tuấn and Trúc stayed where they were until they heard the doo
r slam.

  “I’m not playing anymore,” Tuấn said, untying the ribbon. He rubbed his cheek. There was no bruise, just dirt. “You can be the American.” He flicked the ribbon toward her, but it fell slowly to the ground like a feather. He began walking away. His body ached. He felt that there should have been a bruise somewhere. He’d have to check when he got home. “I’m người Việt,” he began muttering. “My father teaches the great, honorable literature of our nation….”

  “Your father’s probably dead,” Trúc yelled. “They probably killed him. He’s probably gone.”

  Without thinking, Tuấn turned back and ran into Trúc. When he got to her, he kept on going until they reached the bayou and they fell into the water.

  “He’s not dead!” he screamed. “He’s coming. He’s coming for us. You don’t know him. He’s coming for us!”

  He tried to slow his heavy breathing as Trúc stared back at him seriously. Whatever had just happened, he didn’t know he had that in him. It made him feel powerful, until he heard Trúc laughing.

  “American lover, American lover,” she sang as if it was the nastiest thing anyone could call someone. “American lover.”

  “You’re not my friend!” Tuấn screamed as he got up.

  “I was never your friend,” she said back, laughing. “Why would you even think that?”

  * * *

  —

  It was the one-year anniversary of Versailles. They—or most of them—had been there for one full year. To celebrate, they had a party.

  “Because we’ve been here one year,” said the mustached man into the microphone. “Because our community is full of love. Because we are, all of us here, survivors.” He stood on a crate in the middle of the road. “Today we celebrate Versailles! Today we celebrate the true Republic of Vietnam!” Everyone cheered. A gun was fired into the air. There was confetti. Tuấn heard it all from their apartment.