by Joey Bui
Mom stood over by the window. She didn’t know what we were saying. I could still understand Punjabi but hadn’t spoken it since starting high school. Dad’s English was even shakier in his anger, as if he was trying to play some character he had seen on TV. His arms were stiff and jerking, as though ready to strike me. But I knew he wouldn’t. He sat on the other end of the couch, a small man in a green-and-white-striped polo shirt, hunched over, keening on his living room couch.
He had already disowned me when I walked out, even though he came knocking on Sarah’s door, begging me to come back. I told him then that he had lost me long ago, when he let his customers leer at me, saying nothing but ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to them.
But it sounded weak when I said it to his face. I wanted to tell him more: about Uncle Saif stroking circles on my thigh, where my jeans were ripped, as I sat in the back of the Land Rover during the two-hour drive to the family holidays at Lake Erie. About the big weddings, when the men drank too much and I had to pose for photos, feeling hands on my waist where the sari left my skin exposed. About the way my forty-seven-year-old Pakistani tutor, a family friend, called me beautiful, caressing my arms and shoulders encouragingly while he stared at my breasts, then took home Mom’s pakoras after our sessions. About Sachith, Dad’s long-time employee at the takeout shop, who first had sex with me when I was fifteen and he was twenty-eight, and didn’t stop until he got married and invited our whole family to his wedding. But I was afraid it wouldn’t be enough. I wanted Dad to feel my disgust, but I knew I could never convince him of it.
Standing outside Sarah’s house, he curled his upper lip and said, ‘You are so full of hate.’
Sean didn’t say much on the way home from the ball.
I watched his profile as he drove. His collar was so perfectly straight. I thought about the day we went to Barney’s to buy him new shirts, and how nice it felt that he liked everything I picked out for him.
He drew a deep breath as he slid the car into my driveway and turned off the engine. All of a sudden, I was desperately afraid that he was angry. But he turned to me and said:
‘You know you can tell me anything.’
Had he guessed what I had been thinking? Suddenly, it no longer felt fun to indulge whatever fantasies he had about me.
Inside, he ducked as he stepped down from the living room to the kitchen, where the ceiling was low. I glanced at his leather shoes. He hadn’t noticed that we left shoes at the front doorstep.
‘What’s that smell?’ he asked.
I stared at him, my back to the sink.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, sounding frustrated.
‘It’s the wine I’m making,’ I said.
I was on the brink of tears.
I first started making wine three years ago when I was unemployed after graduation, and staying in Aurora, Ohio with Aunt Laksha and her family. They had a small house with dirty white walls, sitting on a bed of weeds. I made wine in the barn, in between sending off resumes. My cousins Noor and Eric, who were five and six, thought it was fantastic. They used to visit me in the barn and I pretended I was a witch concocting potions to turn children into mushrooms. They ran off screaming, ‘Areej is a witch! Areej is a witch!’
One night, Aunt Laksha sat me down at the kitchen table.
‘I worry about you. You are a very lucky girl, you know. You have good family and you are so beautiful. Look, what man would not want this?’ She patted my C-cup breasts. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with me.’
‘You are not normal.’
‘That’s just because I’m drunk, Auntie.’
Her eyes filled with tears.
‘How shall I answer to your father!’ She wrung her gold bracelets. ‘Oh, Allah help me!’ she cried.
I was drinking a lot because there was no one to try my wine and nothing else to do in Aurora. After the talk with Aunt Laksha, I went for a long walk around the neighbourhood. I would later visit many other American cities, but no other where the streets were level with the footpath and there were no curbs. In Aunt Laksha’s neighbourhood, the ground was flat for miles in every direction. Powdery-white streets blended into off-white driveways, cut by polite squares of grass that had been watered a pale green.
I bought a bunch of hibiscus at the florist and took it back to boil in the barn. After dissolving the flower water with sugar and a bit of acid, I let it cool before plunging my hands in the tub to squeeze the flowers for more flavour. It took me hours and my arms were stained hibiscus-red up to my elbows. Noor and Eric came in after dinner.
‘Mommy is mad you didn’t come to dinner,’ said Eric.
‘Tell Auntie I’ve already eaten,’ I said.
‘But she made kofta,’ said Noor.
‘Hey, come here,’ I said.
I dried my hands on my shirt and stuck hibiscus flowers behind their ears. I had saved two of the prettiest ones for them.
‘This is a very strong flower and if you wear it close to your head, it will grow beautiful thoughts inside you,’ I said.
‘You smell like a goddess,’ said Noor.
‘I thought I was a witch.’
The whole barn smelt of flowers and sugar; I hadn’t added the yeast yet. Noor and Eric stayed playing with the wet hibiscus mulch until bedtime. It was the last time I felt beautiful.
Sean’s jaw tensed as though he was going to yell at me. I thought, wildly, that the spell had broken.
‘You make wine?’ said Sean.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well then I have to try some,’ he said, his tone so forced and positive it disgusted me.
I went to the bathroom to fill a jug with the red liquid. Back in the living room, I poured two glasses and swilled them in Sean’s face. I drank mine in one gulp. It was awful. The flowers were bitter, so tart from the yeast that my mouth ached. I poured another glass and it sank hot and sour to my stomach.
I hated the way Sean was looking at me. I hated that he wouldn’t admit how awful the wine was. He drank his glass and didn’t say another word. I started undoing his belt and he gripped my arm, as though in shock. I laughed into his face, my breath full of yeast, until his grip loosened and he let me pull down his pants. I turned around and we had sex against the kitchen sink.
I woke at dawn, my head pounding. Sean was still asleep on the couch. I was horrified to find the bucket half-empty and worried that I had made him sick. I went out into the garden, startled to find the April morning so bright. A pale yellow glow seemed to emanate from the plants, and I lay on the grass to warm my skin. I noticed a bud of orange above my head and plucked off the first tomato of the year, crying for all the things I had made and ruined.
It was on the night of the matchmaking ceremony that Comma received her first threat. She was alone when she found it, on her evening trip to fetch water from the family well. Everyone on this side of the River Ba Rại, a small distributary of the Mekong Delta, knew that Comma was the one who did the Trương family’s final water run of the day. It could not have been more clear that the threat was meant for Comma, and Comma only. The well was out by the family graves; no one else had any business being there after sunset.
Sitting on the rim of the Trươngs’ well, the threat was a careful and monstrous curation of items. It was sitting on the mouth: a fistful of bloody, matted chicken feathers, a handwritten note stained with blood, presumably the chicken’s, and a black lock of human hair, all lying neatly atop a banana leaf. Though Comma did not know what the note said, she had no doubt of the maliciousness of the display. She stifled a scream when she saw it in the waning evening light, not so much because it frightened her, but in this ugly arrangement she could read the mad, jealous passions of Vietnam’s deep south.
Cai Lậy, a rural province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, was right in the centre of the dragon’s belly. Southerners called the Mekong the Nine Dragons River: when it snaked and wriggled down the country’s length, it split into nine
branches before spilling into the sea at each dragon’s mouth. Fat, gaudy durians grew out of skinny trees along the riverbanks, weighing down the branches so that they were closer to the river-dragons wanting a taste. Then there were the soursops, papayas, mangoes, dragonfruits and jackfruits, which grew so quickly that sons and daughters had to cut them down daily, lest the rotting fruits attract flies.
The fruit here was sweeter and more pungent than fruit found anywhere else in Vietnam, and the people who ate it had insatiable appetites. Perhaps the miraculous fertility of the land, the richness of its tastes, its beauty, led them to trust nature and surrender themselves to it. Passions were indulged, because such things were fickle. Children were often lost to nature. Newborns were neither named, spoken of nor seen by anyone who did not live in the home, because nature could reclaim babies as wantonly as it created them. Children were given ugly names, after uninspiring objects, so they could be hidden from powerful spirits that roamed the country for precious things.
The Mekong Delta was an important part of how the southerners saw themselves as different from the rest of Vietnam. Northerners, with their stiff, precise accents and cold mountains bordering China, had the Red River, thick and brown as old blood, carrying down into Vietnam the cold and greed (and, once the civil war had come, communism) of neighbouring China, an ancient enemy of Vietnam. The middle of the country, once the home of Vietnam’s monarchy, had the Perfume River, named for the gentle fragrance of flower orchards that wafted down the water. The romance of the Perfume River, often pictured at a soft-pink sunset, evoked nostalgia for Vietnam’s bygone grandeur and elegance. Southerners will attest to the beauty of the Perfume River (although few would see it in their lifetimes), but the Mekong would always be the most real: fertile, heady and lush. Its people were the most outspoken, the most free, and ate the best food.
Comma, however, was a remarkably cool-headed daughter of the Mekong. After staring at the monstrous items for a moment, she used one foot to gouge a hole in the dirt by the side of the well, into which she tipped the chicken feathers and the hair—long, shiny, and black, unmistakably the hair of a young Vietnamese woman. She covered the hole so that none of her family members would be frightened if they came by the well the next day. The Trươngs liked to keep things neat and clean; it would be unusual to have bloodied chicken feathers lying anywhere on their land. Especially not by the ancestors’ graves, Comma thought. She rinsed the reusable banana leaf and slipped it into the pocket of her pants, along with the handwritten note. In the morning, she would try to find someone to read the note. She then loaded up with water and set off home.
Only at night, in the room she shared with her four sisters, and after she was sure they were asleep, did Comma let herself think about the threat. She had no doubt it concerned Slip. Slip, whom she was still too shy to think about. Slip was the nineteen-year-old eldest son of the Nguyễn family, who lived seven houses down from the Trươngs. Ever since he’d turned sixteen, everybody in Cai Lậy had known that he would be one of their province’s most sought-after bachelors. He had been handsome even then: tall, large eyes, thick black hair and a strong jaw. But, of course, it was not only his looks. The parents in Cai Lậy liked him because he was a responsible, obedient son. He was never a problem for the family; he never drank alcohol or took girls behind bushes (as far as they knew); he was a beloved brother and was said to be very close to his mother, who was often sickly.
But Comma had never spoken with him. Until earlier that day, she had never even looked directly at him. At the matchmaking ceremony, only Slip’s and Comma’s parents had spoken. She and her younger sister Apostrophe had served rambutans and Oolong tea, which the Nguyễns had brought as formal gifts. Usually, this first step of matchmaking was only for the parents to get to know each other, after which the families would make a decision about whether to proceed or not. But this meeting was different. The Nguyễns and the Trươngs had known and respected each other for a long time. Slip’s mother had visited the Trươngs’ home from time to time and seen how well Comma worked at her chores and took care of her seven younger siblings. It would be too rude for either party to withdraw from the match now, after having agreed to this first meeting. Slip was surely going to become Comma’s husband.
All eyes in the room were on Comma and Slip when she approached him for the first time, to serve his tea. Comma did not like the attention, but knew she had to be obliging. After he had accepted the cup, she allowed herself to glance at him. He was staring fixedly at his cup. She noticed the straight line of his lips. Slightly wider lips than usual, she thought, and her cheeks flushed with the outrageous idea that she might kiss those lips one day. Comma bowed her head. The adults in the room, satisfied with the couple’s first encounter, turned back to their conversations with each other.
When Comma first knew her parents were making the match, she was not entirely pleased. Slip was too much of a celebrity for Comma’s taste. She wanted a more modest match. Beyond that, she had not given much thought to her arranged marriage, except that she would be sad to leave her siblings and wanted to live as close to her family as possible. Besides, Comma knew she was no particular beauty, average in most aspects, except for her eyes, which were a strikingly darker brown than one would expect in this part of her country. The most beautiful daughter in the family was Apostrophe, the second daughter, but no respectable family would propose a match with the second daughter while the eldest daughter was still unmarried.
And there she was, already receiving threats about the match. Lying on the bamboo mat, Comma listened anxiously to the sounds outside. The chickens were agitated, scuttling on the packed dirt and sometimes scraping their feet against the house, as though desperate to enter. There was a restless rustling noise. If it was leaves, it meant her little sister Dash had not swept the yard properly, and poor Dash had been told off enough times by their parents for being sloppy with her chores. If it was snakes, there would be so much work to do to rid the property of vermin. The occasional revving of a moped engine or the squeak of a bike came from the main road at the front of their house along the River Ba Rại. Comma worried that it would be the Vũ father coming home after a heavy night of drinking. The fourteen-year-old Vũ boy, Cường, had confided in Comma that sometimes his father hit his mother; Cường and his mother would sleep outside in the hammocks in the yard, too afraid to go back into the house. Sometimes at night, she thought she could hear them crying. How many people in Cai Lậy cried in the night, Comma wondered. That worried her too.
Comma listened, knowing that somewhere out there was a person coming after her, someone trying to wage war on her. For the first time since learning about the match with Slip, Comma felt a fire light up inside her.
Everyone on this side of the River Ba Rại knew that Slip was the only boy who cut grass at the back of the Nguyễn property. He did this infrequently, because no one ever went out the back of the property. But Mr Nguyễn liked things to be tidy, and sometimes he could sell the grass to buffalo owners. Slip liked to cut grass in the evening, after finishing his chores.
On the evening of the first matchmaking ceremony at the Trươngs, he decided to go out to check it. He had neglected it lately, perhaps because of the matchmaking. His mother had fretted so much over what to bring to the Trươngs that day, and yet it hardly seemed to matter. Comma’s parents did not eat the rambutan.
Cutting the grass would give him some time away from his family, especially his mother, who scrutinised every reaction of his to the matchmaking. He had been careful not to show any particular pleasure or displeasure about the match. His parents might read too much into it and think that he was criticising their choice. It was a full-moon night—he didn’t really know what to make of that—and it was a cool night, which made the work easier.
Once he had finished, Slip tied up the cut grass with some rope he had strung round his waist and slung the bundles over his shoulder. The grass was heavy and his footprints along th
e soft dirt road were deeper than usual. He was looking forward to eating more of the bamboo and mushrooms that his mother had made for dinner. He had been getting hungrier and hungrier lately, and his mother now left a bowl of rice and an extra serving of food under a net for him in the kitchen every night. Maybe after eating, he would sit by the river with his little brother Fall, to see if they could catch some fish before bed.
Shortly after Slip had gone home, a young woman came along the narrow path over the pond between the Nguyễns’ and the Lýs’ properties. She waded through the field, breathing in the scent of grass still fresh from the cutting. She found the footprints Slip had left only half an hour ago and lay down on her side next to the outlines of his feet, tenderly pressing her fingers into the dirt that had been tamped by Slip’s steps.
She lay like this for some time, crying softly. She thought about the Nguyễn family not far away, who must be going to sleep now. And she thought about the romance of the full-moon night. The cicadas were telling each other about her and she wanted to explain her great love to them—and to the starry sky and the fresh grass blades. But soon she felt goosebumps on her arms and then she was shivering in the cool night air. Reluctantly, she got up and squatted by the footprints. She took a banana leaf from her pocket and gently scooped the dirt of a footprint onto the leaf. She folded the leaf, tied it up with string like a New Year sticky-rice cake, and made her way home.
The only member of Comma’s family who could read was her little sister, ten-year-old Paragraph. Assuming the note would be malicious, Comma couldn’t ask Paragraph to read it. She knew the Cai Lậy pharmacist could read; Miss Salt was also the Trươngs’ go-to letter-writer. But Miss Salt would tell Comma’s parents about the note and Comma didn’t know if she was ready for that.
Comma decided to ask Apostrophe, the second-eldest sister, for advice. That morning, as Comma and Apostrophe loaded their bikes with the baskets of catfish, guava, water spinach and jars of cured lemon, Comma whispered to her about the note.
