Things We Lost to the Water: A Novel

by Eric Nguyen

  There is one postcard. The picture on it looks like a place in Europe: cobbled streets, old buildings, moody sky; a man in the background strolls with his hands in his pockets. A couple sits outside a restaurant eating pastries and drinking coffee. The postmark, though, is Bangkok and the date says 25-04-1980. The message is in Vietnamese. The signature at the end is a squiggle that looks almost like a snail unraveling itself.

  The photographs are what shake Ben the most.

  There’s one with a man holding a bicycle between two buildings, an empty alley. Laundry lines hang between the buildings. Ben sees in the distance a shirt, a pair of pants. The man in the photo wears neat pants and a button-up shirt and sunglasses that look too big. The corners of his mouth curl up but only slightly, as if he’s not in the mood to get his photo taken. This photo, says his face, is a favor. The man lifts his eyebrows, waiting. Ben imagines him tapping his foot.

  The same man is in the next picture, though he’s maybe a few years older and this time he’s kissing a woman. It’s a wedding. They are wearing áo dàis—is that what they’re called? Very traditional. This must be in Vietnam. It’s an up-close photo. The man holds the woman’s face. The woman holds on to his shoulder. They’re both smiling, even as they kiss. They are the happiest, perhaps the happiest they’ve ever been and will ever be. Ben looks closer and feels like he’s seen this woman before, known her all his life.

  In the last picture the man is a bit older again. He’s standing in what looks like a classroom—a chalkboard in the background, a desk in the center. A briefcase lies on the desk next to a small stack of books. The man holds his hands in front of him, holds them together. His posture is relaxed, and Ben can tell he’s comfortable here in the classroom. His face is serious—he’s not smiling. But his eyes, they light up. Ben swears he’s seen this man before, too, known him all his life.

  * * *

  —

  They walk toward the parade. Hương carries a plastic bag of the food they didn’t eat around her wrist. How does anyone finish a “surf ’n’ turf”? Bình will like it. He’s American and will like this kind of stuff. This, she imagines, is a peace offering.

  “What’s this here?” she asks when they get closer to Bourbon.

  “It’s a parade!” says Vinh. “A celebration of something Southern or other. You know the people here have parades for the smallest reasons.”

  “It’s New Orleans.” Hương shrugs. “It’s what we do,” she says like a true New Orleanian. When someone asks her where she’s from, she tells them New Orleans, and they always say, “No, really.”

  It’s when they reach Bourbon that Vinh realizes he’s made a mistake. He didn’t understand something in the advertisement. A word was missing. This wasn’t what he imagined: the half-naked men holding each other; the drag queens riding floats, waving like they’re Miss America; a woman with short hair and a leather suit whistling at Hương.

  “Not bad,” says Leather Suit.

  “Do you remember where we parked, Hương?”

  “What do you mean? We just got here.”

  Vinh takes her hand and they turn around. He pulls her and walks faster.

  “I don’t understand. You said you want to take me out, so why don’t you take me out?”

  “There was a mistake,” Vinh says. “There’s been a huge mistake.”

  * * *

  —

  “Who’s a faggot? Where’s a faggot? There’s a faggot! We’re all faggots here!”

  * * *

  —

  It’s the face. The man’s face. His tall nose, his eyes, his serious lips. Where has Ben seen it before? He has a suspicion.

  He runs into the bathroom (his mother’s) and gazes into the mirror. His glitter-speckled face stares back seriously. He holds up the picture of the man standing by the desk. His eyes move back and forth—two seconds on his own reflection, two seconds on the man, two seconds here, two seconds there. He runs down the hall to his own bathroom, turning on all the lights on his way there. For a second, he’s sure the other mirror’s lying to him and this one, the one he’s used to, will not.

  He holds up the picture. He looks at his face. Uncanny, he thinks.

  * * *

  —

  In the chaos of high heels and leather boots, Tuấn is on his hands and knees. The bruise on his right eye, where the gold medallion hit him, aches, swells. He closes it and crawls forward with one eye open. He’s trying to find Thảo. His heart pounds. His forehead is soaked with sweat. Someone steps on his finger.

  “Fuck!” he screams, though no one hears him. “Fucker!” He could get trampled on tonight and die and no one would care. He stands up and tries to maneuver through the street. An empty beer bottle falls from above. He trips over a blond girl barfing into a bag. Her friend rubs her on the back. For a minute, he finds reprieve outside of a closed cigar shop. The window is polished and, somehow, still clean, no smudges or oily marks from hands. He sees himself reflected there and doesn’t recognize what he sees—a black eye, unkempt hair, baggy clothes that make the wearer look smaller than he actually is.

  And what was he, exactly? Who is he? He tries to straighten his hair, which is greasy with gel. He licks a finger and cleans the dirt off his cheek. He remembers, years and years ago, his mother dressing him up (for what, he doesn’t remember), wiping his face with a thin cloth and combing his hair. When was that?

  Out of nowhere, Thảo grabs his wrist.

  “There you are!” she says. “What a party! What a parade!” She laughs and slaps his back.

  “Let’s go,” he says and pulls her out of Bourbon toward Dauphine and then Canal. He sees the tall business buildings ahead, the palm trees on neutral ground, the cars stopped at a red light. Someone throws a bottle, and it crashes on the ground in front of them. They step over it and Thảo is still laughing. Laughing with her mouth wide open, air pushing out from the gut. She’s laughing and can’t stop because everything is so wickedly fun, so wildly funny. What a party, a parade! she keeps saying. Tuấn’s mouth, meanwhile, has gone all dry.

  * * *

  —

  Ben lays everything on the kitchen table and gets the boom box out of his room. He plugs it in and pops in the first tape. His mom’s voice, unmistakably her voice, goes:

  A lô, anh Công? Em Hương đây. Em và các con đã tới Mỹ. Đang ở New Orleans. Trước đó, em và các con ở Singapore trong nhiều tháng, ở trại tị nạn chật ních thuyền nhân. Thuyền nhân, boat people, là cái tên họ đặt cho những người có hoàn cảnh như em…Em nhớ anh vô cùng….

  He doesn’t know what’s being said, but he remembers the words, remembers what was happening when she said those words. It’s less an actual memory than an impression of a memory, many memories: shadows moving in soft lighting, a quiet clicking of a spinning tape, the feeling of buttons with their small indentations for fingers, the smell of new plastic.

  * * *

  —

  Tuấn and Thảo wait at the bus stop. Thảo is still laughing.

  “What the hell happened there?” Tuấn asks.

  Thảo keeps on laughing. Every time she tries to answer, she can’t help but laugh some more, louder.

  “Thảo,” he says. He says it several times to get her attention. “Thảo, maybe we should stop—”

  Thảo leaps to his lips. She tastes like Cheetos and cigarettes and alcohol and lipstick. He pushes her away.

  “No,” he says.

  “What do you mean, no?” she asks.

  “This”—he points to himself, his clothes—“it’s not me. None of this”—he points to her tattoo on her arm—“is me.”

  A bus comes, stops, then continues on its way. It is a hot New Orleans night.

  * * *

  —

  The car pulls into Versaille
s and Hương is still giddy.

  After they turned away from Bourbon, they found a jazz bar on Burgundy. Surprisingly, barely anyone was there and they stopped in for a drink. A brass band played music from the seventies and they, nearly alone, danced. The whole evening made Hương feel young again and unleashed a side of her she’d almost forgotten was there.

  Hương and Vinh walk up the stairs to the apartment hand in hand. From outside, Hương sees all the lights are on. She looks at her watch. Eleven o’clock and he’s still here. She unlocks the door, pushes it open.

  Then her voice.

  A lô, Công?

  She looks up, and Bình’s standing over the kitchen table. His dented boom box sits in the center.

  Em Hương đây. Em và các con đã tới Mỹ.

  The boy presses Stop. Her voice clicks off.

  It’s now that she notices the letters scattered across the table, the pictures, the postcard. She runs to grab them, but in the same instant Bình takes them in his hands and throws them out the back window. They flutter down and scatter on the ground.

  “You lied to us,” her son cries. “This…it’s proof,” he says. He reads, “1980.”

  “I can explain,” says Hương, steadying her voice.

  “1981. 1982. 1983. 1984. He wasn’t dead.”

  “I can…”

  “1991, 1992…What is this? He didn’t die.”

  “…explain.”

  “I had a father and you kept him away from us.”

  Things got complicated, she wanted to say. You don’t understand, and she is twenty-five again. It is 1978. And she is on a boat, she is on an island, she is on a plane, she is living with the Minhs and Mr. Minh smashes a lamp and the lamp shatters into hundreds of pieces and they are yelling all night and she is staying up all night then she is living in a motel then she is living in a church then she moves to Versailles then she’s trying to contact him, trying to contact their father….

  “Your father…” she says.

  “You were talking to him. See? See?” He balls up more letters and throws them out the window.

  It is 1978 and she is twenty-five again. She’s writing letters. She’s recording messages. The letters, the packages, they get returned until the day they are not.

  It is 1980 and she is twenty-seven again. Please don’t contact me again, his message reads. It is the best for the both of us. It is 1980 and she is twenty-seven.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  In this new country, by herself, all alone in the world.

  “I was all alone…”

  He ejects the cassette tape and throws it out. He takes the entire box and throws it out, too. The contents splash into the bayou, into the mud, the receding water.

  “…trying to protect you, Bình; the truth…”

  “What kind of life are we living? What else are you keeping from us? What else?”

  “Just let me explain, Bình. Let me explain. Your father aban—”

  “What else?”

  “Us. What else was I…”

  “What else?”

  “…to do? To say.”

  “What else?”

  “L-Let her explain, son,” Vinh stammers.

  “Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that. Don’t call me that!” He pushes Vinh. Vinh stumbles back. It’s true, Vinh thinks, he’s not the boy’s father. It hurts him all the same. He tries not to let it show.

  “Bình,” says Hương.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Bình.”

  “Who are you, even?”

  “Son.”

  “No mother…”

  “Son!”

  “You’re no mother.”

  It’s as if her body is acting on its own then—her hand reaches out and strikes his skin. The smacking sound of flesh on flesh echoes in the air, hangs in her mind.

  “Son?” Hương says.

  She doesn’t know what’s come over her. She sees herself from far away. What has she done? What will she do now? She peers into his eyes and there it is—a burning, hot look, a mean, scolding look. She touches her own impossible hand.

  What has happened? they all think. How did we get to this point? And what will happen now?

  * * *

  —

  Ten miles south, Tuấn sits with his head in his hands. Thảo is thrashing about, knocking stuff down, packing up her belongings, making the most noise possible.

  We should stop seeing each other, he had said. You should leave.

  Fine, she said, but say goodbye to the life you’ve had.

  She knocks over a chair (several chairs) and breaks a lamp.

  SBZ will come after you, she says.

  She flips over a table, kicks away the couch.

  We will ruin your life.

  On the way out, she grabs a bat, takes it through the front window. And then she’s out, slamming the door, and there, on the wall, a family picture falls down, the crash the sound of a cry.

  In the ensuing silence, he thinks of his mother, he thinks of his brother. They are lying on the floor under broken glass. He wants to check in on them now, give them a call. Yes, that’s what he’ll do; he’ll do that and go to sleep. He picks up the phone and dials home. It rings and no one picks up. Yes, this will calm his rapid heart, he is thinking as he waits, he is sure; this will calm him down so he can sleep. It rings and no one picks up.

  Yes, everything will be okay; he just needs to hear their voices, it’s everything he’s ever needed, all this time, why didn’t he think of it before, he’s so stupid….

  * * *

  —

  The phone rings and everyone just lets it ring until it stops ringing.

  Hương steps back, lets out a breath. Her hands shake.

  “We’re not the bad sons,” Ben says. “You’re the bad mother.” He feels a weight lifted off his chest.

  “Mẹ xin lỖi,” she says. Mom is sorry.

  It is calm like before a storm. She remembers her first days in Versailles and a hurricane alarm howling out of nowhere, without warning. How frightened she was, but also how prepared: grab the boys, run, and escape. Escape. It was later that she realized there were no wars in New Orleans: no wars, not here.

  The last war was on a different shore, with different people, in a different country, and there’s no going back, back to that life. She realizes this now, but that doesn’t make it ache any less. In fact, the ache grows. It grows into two boys, and the two boys grow into two sons, and those two sons grow to look like their father, uncannily like their father in their moods, their movements, their voices, so that it’s always like she’s losing him again—to the world, to life, to fate.

  She reaches out a hand, but he turns, walks away, closes his door. She stays frozen where she stands, not trusting her own body, what it would do, what it’s capable of doing.

  And a gentle breeze blows in from the window. And the gentle breeze is cool. And she realizes how strange it is on such a hot day in the middle of August in the middle of the night. Chilled, she wraps her arms around her body and starts for her room. The night is silent.

  IV

  Ben

  1994–1998

  Tuấn rented one-half of a duplex house in Tremé. It sat off Highway 10 and rumbled every time trucks passed by. Ben had visited only once and could not remember where exactly it was, except that it sat off the highway, somewhere on Ursulines. The bus let him off half a mile away. When he got there, he walked up and down the street, trying to remember what it looked like. Start with the color of the place, he told himself—was it a white house or a yellow one? What sat across from it—another house or a gas station?

  By eight, his shirt was sticky with sweat as people left their houses for work. He fanned himself with a magazine
and dragged his suitcase across the sidewalk until he saw his brother kneeling on a front porch, sweeping up bits of shattered glass. It was a blue house, the only blue one on the block.

  “T!” he called out. At first his brother didn’t hear him. He walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned around, it was the bruise on his brother’s eye that Ben noticed first.

  “Is something wrong with mẹ?” was his brother’s first question.

  “No, nothing,” Ben replied. “Why would you ask that? What happened to you?”

  “She didn’t pick up last night. I was calling and no one picked up.”

  Ben pointed at his brother’s eye. “You’re too old to get into fights, aren’t you?”

  “What? This?”

  “Is Thảo here?” Ben realized he had to deal with her now. “Should I go? I can go.” He didn’t want to go; he had nowhere else to go.

  “Thảo left. We broke up.” He held up the broom and pointed at the shattered glass.

  “Oh, God, geez. I’m so sorry, T,” Ben said, though he didn’t mean any of it. “Wow. God. What happened?”

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Why are you here, anyhow? It’s like almost nine. Don’t you sleep in? It’s Saturday. You don’t even get up before ten.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t believe it, but”—Ben walked in and settled his suitcase on the sofa; he sat down and took off his shoes—“Mom went crazy.”

  * * *

  —

  After Tuấn cleaned up the shattered window, he made breakfast (cereal with soy milk from the can) as Ben told him about the cassette tapes with their mother’s voice, the photos of their father (“Undeniably him,” Ben said. “Looks kind of like me, but exactly like you”), and the fact that their mother had been writing to him all this time.