Things We Lost to the Water: A Novel

by Eric Nguyen

  “What you doing, Ja-uan?” he asked. “Don’t you know the bell’s gonna ring in a minute? You’ll get in trouble if you’re late, Ja-uan. You can’t be late, Ja-uan.”

  Tuấn looked down the hall behind Donald. Everyone had disappeared. He took a step forward, and the bell rang.

  “There it goes,” Donald said and shoved Tuấn down to the floor. His head hit a locker.

  “Go back to China, Chinaman,” he heard Donald say.

  He wanted to say “I came from Vietnam. I am Vietnamese.” But he didn’t.

  * * *

  —

  As Tuấn approached their apartment, he saw his brother standing outside. Bình swung a plastic bat in one hand and palmed a crumpled-up Coke can with the other. The bat they got from the Dollar General. The Coke can he probably found near the bayou because people were always throwing away stuff out there.

  His brother threw the can up and swung the bat. He missed.

  “You have to keep your eyes on the can-ball,” Tuấn said.

  Bình looked up. “I know.”

  Can-ball, they called this.

  “But I have to blink, don’t I?” his brother asked.

  “Yeah, but you have to follow the can-ball still.”

  “Impossible.”

  Tuấn chuckled and they ran up the stairs and he let them inside.

  He was making their afternoon snack—rice with Maggi sauce and lunch bologna—when Bình came to him with his notebook.

  “They’re giving you homework in second grade nowadays?” Tuấn asked.

  His brother opened it up and showed him two words. On the left, his name, Bình. On the right, Ben.

  “That’s what I want people to call me from now on,” his brother said, pointing to Ben.

  “Why?” He pointed at Bình. He couldn’t imagine his brother being called something else. Everything had a proper name.

  His brother shrugged and gave a disappointed look. “I don’t know. Easier, I guess.” Then he added, “For everyone.”

  “But it’s your name,” Tuấn said.

  “I can choose my own name. No one says I can’t.”

  “Mẹ will be mad.” He imagined their mother throwing up her hands like she did a lot of the time and saying, You boys give me a headache—why can’t you be good? “And Dad…” Tuấn added but couldn’t finish the sentence; he didn’t know where it would go.

  “I don’t care what Mom thinks.” His brother grabbed the notebook back. “And Dad’s dead.” He walked away.

  He didn’t even look like a Ben.

  * * *

  —

  Tuấn couldn’t sleep that night. The dog—out there—was barking again. It was nearly three. Tuấn went to the window and tried to find it. No one in Versailles was allowed to have a pet. He squinted and looked out beyond the fence. It had to be somewhere out there. Something moved, and he took a step back.

  A gecko. Just a gecko. They were always around. Them and palmetto bugs.

  For a brief moment, he had the idea of leaving the gecko on his brother’s bed and imagined him squirming and screaming. Bình (he would never call him Ben) didn’t like any of the things Tuấn liked. Tuấn thought geckos were fascinating. He heard that if a bird grabbed a gecko, the tail would just fall off. In an instant, the gecko would escape, and later the tail would grow back. Bình didn’t like any of that. It reminded Tuấn of their father. He didn’t like him going outside to play and getting dirty. He remembered one time he was playing and it rained and he ran home muddy. His father looked up from his book and nearly screamed. His face screwed up in disgust. Tuấn could imagine Bình doing that; his face would be like their father’s.

  Tuấn reached up and held out his palm. “I’m not gonna hurt you, buddy,” he coaxed. At first, the gecko avoided the hand, but eventually it stepped on. Tuấn cupped it in both hands—“What I tell you?”—and walked out of the room. In the distance, the dog began to howl, a long, whining howl that became almost like a cry.

  “What could it be crying about?” Tuấn asked, looking at the gecko. “Let’s take a look-see.”

  He opened the front door. Not knowing what else to do, Tuấn sat down and listened to the howling mix with the hum of air conditioners and the sound of frogs and crickets somewhere in the thickets of bushes and trees that surrounded the Versailles bayou.

  When he was little, what he loved most was going to the bayou. In his mind, it was the best place to be because no one bothered him there. Being alone, he could do whatever he wanted.

  One time he pretended he was a pirate, and Cô Lam, who lived in the apartment across the dirt road from them, called out from her window: “No respect!”

  “I’m sorry!” he replied. “I’ll be quieter.”

  “And I have to work tonight!” She threw a rolled-up newspaper at him, but it hit the water instead and sank.

  People were always throwing things into the bayou. Heineken cans and cigarette butts littered the water along with whatever else was useless—broken lawn chairs, burned and scratched cookware, cardboard boxes. The trash of Versailles convened in the brackish brown waters of the neighborhood’s back bayou. It convened and stayed and floated until it was too heavy and sank.

  Nothing could survive here. But then there were the frogs and the crickets and that dog. He closed his eyes and listened.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, Tuấn woke up to his mother’s shrieking.

  “What are you holding?” his mother cried.

  He felt something in his hands and remembered the gecko. To his amazement, it had stayed there all night. He felt its little claws. His mother shrieked again and Tuấn held his hand closer to his body. The lizard squirmed.

  “Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Let it go and come inside! Why are you outside? Do you know what time it is?”

  Tuấn looked at the lizard, then at his mom. Hesitantly, he let the gecko go and went inside. At the doorway, his mother swept it down the steps and he swore he heard little pings as its body bounced.

  After his mother pushed him out the door for school, he walked out of Versailles. As he passed Donald’s house, he quickened his pace as the front door slammed shut and Donald came out. A brown-and-black dog with pointed ears was tied up to an old oak tree and began to run after him. It stopped as it reached the end of its rope. Disappointed, it howled the same howl that kept Tuấn awake at night. He knew then it must have been the same dog.

  Donald stopped at the end of the driveway and was surprised to find Tuấn.

  “You always had dog?” he asked.

  “None of your business,” Donald said.

  A woman, the same large and bulbous shape as Donald, lumbered out. The fat woman carried a smoking cigarette in one hand and a bottle in the other.

  Tuấn whistled to the dog and held out his hand.

  “Quit it,” Donald said. “He doesn’t like you.”

  The dog whimpered.

  “He likes,” said Tuấn.

  It didn’t have a tag, it didn’t have a collar. Just a rope around its neck. He looked at the dog’s fur. Patches of it were missing like somebody had pulled them out.

  Out of nowhere, Donald said, “Race you to the bus stop, Ja-uan,” and pushed him aside.

  As Donald disappeared, the woman got to the curb.

  “That boy forgot his drink,” she said and shook her head. She let the cigarette drop and stomped on it with her sandal. Her toenails were painted lime green. “Do you want a soda?” she asked.

  * * *

  —

  That afternoon before lunch, Donald met Tuấn at his locker.

  “See here, Ja-uan,” he started. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.” Tuấn didn’t respond and Donald repeated himself as he wiped his face with the back of a hand. “Sit with
us today.” He reached an arm around and slammed the locker shut. “We’ll start over. You and me and Tommy and Pete. We’ll be friends.”

  Donald led Tuấn to his table, where Tommy and Pete, two other white boys, were already seated. Gripping his shoulder, Donald guided him to the bench.

  “Doesn’t Mrs. Trahan look like a horse?” Donald said as he sat down. “She has to be part horse, am I right?”

  The boys laughed, though they weren’t in Mrs. Trahan’s class. One boy made neighing sounds while the other clapped his hands on the table to make a galloping noise. Donald eyed Tuấn.

  “Maybe?” Tuấn answered.

  “Maybe!” they echoed and took out their lunches.

  “Oh, man!” Donald exclaimed. “Margaret forgot my soda. That’s how stupid Margaret is. My dad’s more stupider for marrying her.” He opened his bag and took a bite of his sandwich. “Hey, Ja-uan. Old friend, old pal,” Donald said, “do me a favor? Here’s two dollars. Get me a Coke, why don’t ya? And get something for yourself, too. Maybe milk, ’cause you’re small stuff.”

  Tuấn looked at the crowded line. He looked back at Donald, who beamed.

  “It’s Tu-hung,” Tuấn said. “My name is Tu-hung.” He said it slowly, enunciating the words the same way Mrs. Trahan did in class.

  “Okay, okay,” Donald said. “I get it. Now, a soda?”

  When Tuấn came back, Donald was whispering to one of the boys. “Thanks, buddy!” he said when he noticed Tuấn. He grabbed the soda can and rubbed off the water.

  Tuấn opened his lunch and stirred the leftover noodles with his chopsticks. His mother was angry that he and Bình hadn’t eaten the leftover noodles she made two nights before for their after-school snack. “I don’t make food to go to waste,” she said. She went on about how money was tight as she threw in slivers of beef and packed it for his lunch. Tuấn lifted his chopsticks to his mouth and Donald screamed: “Bug-eater!”

  In the Tupperware, a black lump moved. By reflex, Tuấn threw the container in the air. Tommy and Pete screamed but then laughed, an uncontrollable hoo-ing and hollering. The noodles landed on the table and in them a cockroach moved. More came out of hiding. Everyone in the cafeteria stood up, not knowing whether to run toward the mess or away from the roaches. Ms. Swanson came over.

  “Who made this mess?” she demanded. “Whoever made this mess has to clean it up. Donald, was it you?”

  “No! I swear! I hate those things! Yuck!” He screwed up his face and made it look like he was about to puke. “Ja-uan brought them in his lunch. I swear.”

  Tuấn stood up and started to gather the bugs into the container. It was not right to treat animals that way. They were living beings. How would Donald feel if he were treated that way?

  “Look, he’s saving them! He wants to eat them!” Donald yelled.

  Tuấn put the container’s top on. The bugs crawled around in their enclosed safety as he walked away. “Mẹ mầy,” he mumbled.

  “Y’all heard that?” Donald asked the cafeteria. “He said he’s going to eat them anyway! He said it in his ching-chong!”

  The kids laughed and their laughter echoed.

  “Both of you! Detention! After school!”

  * * *

  —

  In Ms. Swanson’s room, Tuấn and Donald sat as far away from each other as possible until she told them to sit closer together toward the center of the room.

  “I want to keep an eye on the both of you,” she said.

  Tuấn looked at the clock. They had an hour. Donald smirked as he drew in his notebook. Ms. Swanson came over and ripped it away from his desk.

  “Eyes forward, Donald,” Ms. Swanson said. “Straight ahead.”

  “He’s not looking forward!” said Donald.

  “Lie!” Tuấn said. “Your fault! Everything, your fault!”

  “Settle down, both of you,” said Ms. Swanson. “What both of you need is discipline. Haven’t your parents ever spanked you?”

  “I don’t deserve to be here. It’s all his fault!” Donald reached over and poked Tuấn, but Tuấn grabbed his finger and twisted it around. Donald whined in pain.

  “Enough, you two. Do you want me to call your mothers?”

  “I have no mother!” Donald yelled.

  “You mother fat, too!” Tuấn added.

  “Enough!” Ms. Swanson yelled, slamming her fists on the desk.

  At three thirty, Ms. Swanson allowed the two to call their parents to pick them up.

  The last time he got into a fight (in the first week of school when Donald called him a slant-eye and Tuấn slapped him on the cheek), his mother was brought in for a parent-teacher conference. He remembered her looking small in front of the teacher. “Yes, sir,” she kept on saying. The teacher made her sign something and they left. On the bus ride home, she fumed. She was embarrassed, she said, with how he’d behaved. Tuấn said Donald started it; Donald called him a name and made fun of him.

  “Then you look the other way,” his mother replied. “You make yourself better than him by being a better student. You don’t hit. You don’t hit anybody. Not ever.”

  “That’s stupid,” Tuấn said. “He won’t stop unless I hit him. He’ll just keep on doing it.”

  “Unless you hit him?” his mom repeated, incredulous. “What would your father say? Unless you hit him? Ridiculous!”

  She went on: Did he know it made her look like a bad parent? What would everyone say about their household? That she raised a savage? An ingrate? It didn’t help that she was in this all alone—all alone. Those last words hurt him the most—“You don’t have a father and your mother is in this all alone.” If she was alone, what did that make him? It stung him. And he didn’t know what to do with it; he didn’t want to feel that way ever again.

  Tuấn pretended to dial a phone number and spoke Vietnamese into the receiver. Afterwards, he went outside. He remembered an RTA bus stop near a grocery store. It must have been five or six blocks away. Not too far.

  As he began to walk toward the main road, Donald’s stepmother pulled up.

  “Versailles, right?” she said, then looked over at Donald.

  “Why don’t we drive your friend home, too?” she said to Donald. Donald knitted his eyebrows, and his stepmother reached back to unlock the door. “Jump in,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Tuấn.

  To Tuấn’s surprise, the inside of the car was clean. Donald’s stepmother turned on the radio. The music sounded like plastic bottles hitting each other, the notes rising with a woman’s voice, singing who knew what. With each passing second, the song seemed to go faster. It reminded Tuấn of the car chase scenes on TV.

  Donald’s stepmother looked into her rearview mirror. “It’s Donna Summer!” she said. “I wish I could get this goofball up here to listen to good music, but all he listens to is noise. All of it is noise.”

  Donald let out an angry sigh and rolled down his window. His mother took a right and then a left into Versailles.

  “Donald, why don’t you invite your friend over sometime?” she asked, slowing the car. “I can make tacos or something! He never invites his friends over. He’s always playing with his toys. Two weeks ago, we got him a dog so he’d at least go outside. It’s his only friend.”

  “His name’s Walter!”

  “His father says the problem is he’s too much like his mother—too unfriendly. But look at you two! Golly!”

  “Margaret!” Donald kicked the dashboard. “Will you just shut up? God! So embarrassing.”

  The car eased to a stop. Tuấn jumped out and watched as it pulled away.

  The apartment door opened and his mom called his name. “Why are you home so late? And who was that?” She stood on the landing, her hands on her hips.

  “Nothing, mẹ,” Tuấn said.

>   She grabbed him by the shoulder and bent down to his eye level. “Look your mother in the eyes and tell her that,” she said.

  “Nothing,” he said and ran in to his room. He slammed his door.

  “You don’t make things easy for your mother,” he heard her say.

  * * *

  —

  Walter barked into the night. Tuấn knew where the dog was. He went to the window. Stars dotted the sky. It reminded him of nights in Mỹ Tho. When he couldn’t sleep, his dad told him to count the stars. Một, hai, ba…you could never get to one hundred without falling asleep. He remembered that. He held the memory in his mind like a breath.

  In school, they made him count different numbers. He couldn’t get his lips to say the words. “Won” was fine, “too” was easy, but it got harder. “Tree.” “Far.” “Fire.” Donald would make fun of him and then Tuấn would count as fast as he could in Vietnamese—Một-hai-ba-bốn-năm-sáu-bảy-tám-chín-mười! You can’t count, he’d tell Donald. You know nothing. Donald would call for Mrs. Trahan to tell her Tuấn was cussing at him, and she would believe him. She would make him sit in the corner for the rest of the period like he was in time-out in kindergarten.

  Tuấn looked under the bed. The lunch container from that afternoon was still there. The bugs dotted the plastic, not moving except one on the lid near the hole he had made for them to breathe. Tuấn shook it gently, and the dots began crawling again. He counted all six.

  He left the apartment barefoot and started down the road carrying the Tupperware of roaches. Dirt caked his feet and the rocks bit into his skin. For a second, he wanted to go back and get his shoes, but he was so far already. It was cooler than nights before. A cold front had come through, and the weatherman said it was perfect “sweater weather.”