Things We Lost to the Water: A Novel

by Eric Nguyen

  “We’ll be home around ten,” his mom says. “Maybe nine.”

  “Ten.” Vinh leans in.

  His mom looks around the room. Her face screws up as if she’s thinking about saying something but doesn’t know what.

  Last night, he came home late. He tried to sneak in before his mom stopped him. She had been in the kitchen the entire time; paperwork littered the table.

  Her torrent of questions: Where have you been? Why were you out? Do you know what time it is?

  She had sniffed the air and found the smell of cigarette, the smell of alcohol, the smell of Paradise and the Quarter and New Orleans. She walked up to him and felt his shirt. Dirty.

  “And your father, if he saw you like this,” she went on, “he’d roll over in his grave. Times like this I wonder why we even came here. This wouldn’t happen in Vietnam. We should’ve stayed in Vietnam.”

  Something snapped in him and the next thing he knew, he was yelling, “This is not Vietnam. Fuck Dad and fuck you!” All his life, it felt like she was trying to shape him, to mold him like a piece of clay into the man he’s never met. Didn’t she understand he was his own person? That he had his own flesh and blood and mind? That he was unique, one-of-a-kind? Why couldn’t she see that? He stomped off to his room and slammed the door. Something, somewhere—a picture, a decorative bowl of plastic fruits, a vase—fell down. He heard her sweeping up afterward. He took a breath and bent down to look through the keyhole. It was a picture on the hall table. She was bent over sweeping the bits and pieces into a dustpan. She paused for a second, squatting there on the floor.

  Now her face softens. “Be good,” she says and leaves. As she closes the door, Ben swears he hears her sigh.

  * * *

  —

  Thảo is here somewhere, in the sea of people and the rap music shaking the floor. She said seven o’clock. It’s ten past seven.

  A man grabs him by the shoulder. “ID,” he says.

  Tuấn reaches into his pocket and realizes it’s with Thảo. Thảo needed ten bucks that morning (for something), and he’d told her to just grab his wallet. They share a place together, a duplex in Tremé; what’s ten bucks? Tuấn pretends not to understand the bouncer. He cocks his head to the side. I no undohsten?

  “ID or you’re out, little guy.”

  Little guy? The fuck?

  “He’s with me.”

  “Thảo!”

  “This way.”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  She doesn’t answer, just pulls him and walks. Any other man would have demanded an answer from his woman, but he and Thảo don’t work like that.

  The bouncer goes away, too, and tries to disappear among all the bodies, but he can’t. He’s just too big, too bulky. Who needs that much body, anyway? Not Tuấn!

  Together Thảo and Tuấn move, slick as snakes, to the third floor, to a balcony overlooking the dance floor, and the whole gang’s already there. They’ve been waiting a very long time.

  * * *

  —

  It’s seven o’clock and still very hot. Hương’s dress sticks to her legs, and though she didn’t want to go out (her back is killing her), she humors Vinh. She feels like eggrolls tonight.

  He drives out of Versailles. He passes their usual Chinese restaurant.

  “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “The Quarter,” he says.

  “No, no, no!” She waves her hand to tell him to stop.

  “What? What is it, hun-ey?” He’s never called her “honey” before, but saw it on a TV show, a husband calling his wife “honey.” Now is as good a time as any to start using it, though they’re not married. Yet.

  “I just came from there,” says Hương. “Why would we ever want to go there?”

  He stops at a red light. “But it’s different at night. Parties, music…”

  “Did you know New Orleans is one of the most dangerous places in the country? I read that in the Thành Phố. The store across from me was robbed just last month. And they sold Mardi Gras masks! Mardi Gras masks!” she says. “Nothing is safe! Mardi Gras masks!”

  Then there were the tourists. Loud, drunk, obnoxious tourists. She had plenty of them during the daytime. That morning, for instance, she found a tourist asleep in front of the salon, a puddle of neon vomit around his head. She had to ask one of the city workers for his hose.

  The light turns green. The car accelerates.

  “Turn back,” she says.

  “This is going to be fun.” When Vinh sees he’s over the speed limit, thirty-five miles per hour, he slows.

  “Tell me this: What are we going to do out there, anyway?”

  They drive under a small overpass. A wad of green gum falls down and sticks to the windshield.

  “Stop the car!” Hương yells.

  Vinh brakes. There must have been something in the road, but then he sees Hương stepping out, head turned upward toward the bridge.

  “You kids!” she yells. Her voice can be shrill if she wants it to.

  One kid wears a football jersey—not the Saints (that’s the important part, Vinh notes). Another one drops a Styrofoam cup. Blue ice splashes everywhere. It splatters onto her shirt. The smell is astringent. A hurricane daiquiri, for sure.

  “You go home!” she says. “We don’t want you here!”

  They laugh.

  “You think this funny?” she asks.

  Vinh doesn’t know much English, but he knows she has an accent.

  “You go away,” Hương continues. “Go home. This not your city!”

  “Hương! Hương!” Vinh runs and leads her back into the car. “You’re ruining a good evening, dear.” “Dear” is another word he heard on TV. Since moving to New Orleans, he’s had a lot of time to himself. He takes napkins out of the glove box and presses them on her dress where the slush splattered.

  “Those kids!” says Hương. “They come here and make the city dirty. They don’t belong here.”

  * * *

  —

  Tuấn’s in the backseat of Sáng’s car (stolen, he is sure), speeding down Royal Street, though you shouldn’t speed through the Quarter, not even if a stampede of gators is chasing you. The roads are made for horses, not cars.

  Tuấn bites his lip and Thảo pats him on the knee. “Lighten up,” she says.

  Up front are Quang and Sáng, and Sáng is driving with one hand. He presses down on his horn and a lady standing on a corner yells at them to slow down.

  “Mẹ mày,” he shouts out the window. Then to his friends: “In Vietnam, they used to speed like this in their Citroëns and motorcycles. I mean, have you ever seen pictures of Saigon? We người Việt don’t care about speed limits,” Sáng says.

  Tuấn doubts it. He’s beginning to doubt everything Sáng and Quang and even Thảo say. They all came to America as kids and spent more time in New Orleans than Saigon. How much could they remember? There must have been a limit, a moment of transition when they were more American than Vietnamese, and there was no going back. Maybe they were fighting that, he thought, then he wondered what the point of fighting it was.

  Quang passes a bag of Cheetos to the back. His arm is hairless like a boy’s but has the SBZ tattoo, a bit faded like it’s on an old T-shirt, not as vibrant and attention-grabbing as it used to be.

  “Where you taking us, anyway?” Thảo asks. She laughs. She laughs because the speed is fun or funny.

  “You’ll see!” says Quang.

  “Anh Quang sạo quá!” Thảo exclaims.

  The Cheetos are spicy and taste like cigarette butts.

  * * *

  —

  When Ben hears the car start, he runs to the window to see it back out and drive away. He waits there for a full minute before knowing for sure they’re gone. It’s
seven. If he can get ready quickly, he can leave by seven thirty, get to Paradise by eight thirty at the latest. He told Georges he’d be there by eight to help with some setup. He might run late, but Ben doesn’t think Georges will mind; he wants Ben to experience the gay life, he wants to have a positive influence on the youths. After all, Georges always said, children are the future.

  “Southern Decadence,” Georges had told him, “is like gay Mardi Gras.”

  “What’s more gay than Mardi Gras?” Ben asked.

  “Southern Decadence!” everyone within earshot said. They swung their beers and cocktails in the air as Madonna’s “Vogue” played. All the liquid sloshed around, spilled to the ground. A guy in roller skates passed by as he framed his face. A chubby drag queen chased a muscular woman into the back room. Someone came in and asked if anyone had seen their dog—a purple-hued poodle wearing a leather vest with fake diamond studs who answered to the name Martha. It was only noon.

  * * *

  —

  They sit down on the patio of a restaurant named after a captain. It has a big fish above its name. The fish wears an eye patch. Everything in the Quarter is in bad taste, Hương thinks. Even the salon has a fleur-de-lis sticker on the window. She wanted to take it off, but Miss Linh said it made the salon more authentic, more New Orleans. (“They don’t want a Vietnamese manicure; they want a New Orleans one.”) It almost made Hương laugh—the fleur-de-lis on the window, Miss Linh’s Buddha statue in the corner, the smell of sewage and alcohol that wafted in from outside. What mishmash was this? Who was responsible for this mess gumbo?

  That was what Bình smelled like last night, she remembers. Sure, she was mad that he was coming home late (he’d been doing that for a while, and as long as she knew where he was, she was satisfied), but the smell of the Quarter told her something else. He was heading off the rails (just like his brother!). She imagined him coming under a bad influence that was distinctly New Orleans (which, she’d learned only recently, was also called the City of Sin) and rued the day she came to this city. Where did she go wrong and what could she do?

  As an exercise, she wrote to Công. She never stopped writing to him. Writing was the only way she’d survived the last fifteen years, a way to put down her thoughts, make the world make sense. On loose-leaf paper, she’d put down the date and write the words Dear Công and all her thoughts would flow out, organizing themselves or at the very least making themselves apparent. Dear Công, Another day in New Orleans…and our sons are in danger. She could have used anybody’s name, she convinced herself, but old habits do not die.

  Hương looks over the menu.

  They’ll have dinner and after that they’ll make their way down to the festival, Vinh thinks. The ad said there would be music and performers and drinks. He decides he will not drink here. They’ll find a bar where they can share a daiquiri.

  “Too expensive,” says Hương. “I can cook this at home for a third of the cost and we could feed the entire family, too.” She eyes Vinh.

  How are we paying for this? say her eyes.

  “Don’t worry. You’re worth it, darling!” says Vinh.

  Credit cards, Vinh has learned, are the bricks of the American dream. The trick is to have several cards, so you can pay each off with another. Borrowed money, borrowed time, borrowed country.

  “What do you think Bình is doing right now?” asks Hương out of the blue. Maybe she should be gentler with the boy. She is always angry, she’s beginning to recognize. She uses the menu to fan herself.

  “Do you want to end up like your brother?” she had asked when she learned he had to retake a class (again!).

  “And what’s wrong with Tuấn?” Bình huffed.

  “Everything!” she huffed back. She hadn’t meant to say that. She had meant to point to one or two things. But “everything” just came out, and she couldn’t take it back. She felt flustered. “He just went down the wrong path,” she said. “I want to save you from that.”

  How unrecognizable America had made them, she was thinking, all of them. If Công were here, he would not know any of them, would not even know her. At times like these she missed him the most—how life would have been different if he hadn’t stayed behind. Thinking about it made her mad at Công all over again.

  “I should check on Bình,” Hương says to Vinh, rising from the table. “I’m sure they have a phone I can use. I’ll be right back.”

  * * *

  —

  The outfit comes together better than he’d planned: blue jeans, a white tank top, a sprinkling of glitter on his face, a bright blue feather boa he got at a thrift shop. He looks at himself in the mirror and smiles. They’ll take his picture, he’s thinking, for Out on the Town. But something is missing. Something more. Lipstick, perhaps. Lipstick—of course! The clock says 7:20, so he hurries to his mother’s room.

  He checks her bathroom. Nothing. He checks her drawers: a stick of ChapStick and a compact mirror. Not useful. He goes to the closet. The first box (a tin for butter cookies) he sees is full of sewing supplies: spools of thread, a cushion for needles, loose buttons. He stands up to see where else things might be and sees the top shelf lined with shoeboxes. It is already 7:26. He must hurry up!

  He’s too short, so he stands on tiptoes. When that isn’t enough, he begins jumping with one hand reaching out in the air. He jumps and he jumps and he jumps. He’s almost reaching the shelf, just so close, so he pushes off the floor even harder and reaches out his pointer finger. And then—bang!—they crash to the floor, all four boxes plus a Polaroid camera that flashes when it falls to the floor, a scattered mess. But the task is almost complete. It is 7:28.

  One box spills out important documents, passports, and citizenship papers. Another is completely empty. One of the smaller boxes holds what he needs—unused blush, eye shadows in sealed plastic containers, tubes of eyeliner, a bottle of perfume, and two tubes of red fiery lipstick. He reaches for the lipstick, but it’s the box that fell behind it that catches his attention. A box of letters, a postcard, pictures, cassette tapes.

  It is 7:31. The phone rings.

  * * *

  —

  Sáng slams on the brakes. A parade.

  “Fucking parade,” says Thảo.

  “Fucking queers,” says Sáng.

  “Fucking fags,” says Quang.

  Tuấn peers over the headrests of the front seats but sees nothing but people and flags waving high. One is the Louisiana flag with its pelican, the other has stripes of colors like a rainbow.

  “Where are we going?” asks Thảo.

  “The Lot,” says Sáng.

  “But look at Bourbon,” says Quang. “It’s always Bourbon.”

  “We should just take Canal,” says Thảo.

  “Canal has traffic.”

  “I hate sitting here.” Thảo opens her door. “Park it and walk it, boys,” she says. It amuses Tuấn, a Vietnamese girl with a southern accent. “I said park it and walk it!”

  They park it and they walk it.

  * * *

  —

  “Bình,” says Hương, sitting back down, “isn’t answering.”

  “Boys will be boys,” says Vinh.

  Boys will be boys, she repeats in her head. It’s stuff like this that makes Hương believe Vinh could never be a father. Too unserious. Too immature.

  “Do you know how hard it is to raise children?” she asks him. “Did I tell you about that one time I left the boys home alone and they threw an entire box of bang snaps on top of the Phạm girls, and…”

  “And those girls had sand in their hair for a week and smelled like fire.” Vinh completes her sentence. He likes completing her sentences. It’s what couples do.

  “And the little one had to get her hair shaved off. Trời ơi, it was months before she grew it back.”

  “That
was ages ago. Tonight, relax!”

  “And last night the boy comes home late! What’s a mother supposed to do?”

  “Relax, Hương.”

  “I can’t relax. It’s hot and look at all these people, listen to all this noise. It’s all giving me hives!” She takes a sip of water but stops when she sees something in the distance. “They’re having a parade or something tonight,” she says.

  “Yes,” says Vinh. “Exactly.”

  * * *

  —

  “The Lot is past Bourbon,” says one of the guys.

  “What do you need there?” asks Tuấn.

  “Someone owes me money,” says Sáng. “Three Mexicans.” Sáng is not looking where he’s going because he’s busy eyeing Thảo. Tuấn has an urge to push him or punch him, but the guy bumps into a tall lady with an overwhelmingly pink wig.

  “Dahling! Be careful!” says the woman. “A boy like you, someone will snatch you up!” It’s now that Tuấn notices it’s a guy in a dress.

  “Faggot!” says Sáng, offended or scared or shocked or surprised. The word comes out like a gasp.

  “Hey, keep your voice down,” says Tuấn. He doesn’t want to get into a fight. He always loses fights.

  “What he means,” says Thảo, “is to shut up, Sáng.”

  “Who’s calling who a fag?” someone yells in the crowd.

  A set of beads with a gold medallion on it flies toward them. Tuấn sees it clearly. It sparkles in the light of the streetlamps. Like a shooting star. He sees it coming until it slams down hard on his face.

  “Who’s a faggot?”

  “Where’s a faggot?”

  “There’s a faggot!”

  “We’re all faggots here!”

  * * *

  —

  All the letters are in Vietnamese, the whole stack. Ben can’t read it, but he can tell that much. It’s the squiggly marks on top and below the letters. Each piece of lined paper starts with “Công.” Each ends with a signature that starts with jagged mountains that become rolling hills. There are fewer envelopes than letters. The envelopes are stamped return to sender.