by Joey Bui
Linh Ngô knew two things about herself. One, she liked Goody elastics. Two, she was a waitress. Today the café was empty and Linh lay rocking in a hammock, one brown leg sticking out, as she played with a Goody elastic. She always had one around her wrist and flicked it idly against her skin, smacking her lips like a fish, imitating the sound.
‘What kind of hair elastics do you use?’ she imagined somebody asking. ‘Goody,’ she would reply. She kicked out and the hammock rocked again. Linh turned dumb conversations in her head, round and about, all day. In my weaker moments, I have wanted something more for her. Sometimes, for an enchanting moment in her sleep, she might have had dreams. I’ve seen her finger her bottom lip softly, more tenderly than in her waking world, before snapping awake. I found it almost grotesque, like fat people fucking, or spit in your soup.
Linh had always been a Ngày Mới girl. An hour down the freeway from Sài Gòn, Ngày Mới province started around an open market square that smouldered at night with fried flour cakes and smoked shrimp. Cement roads wound uncertainly from the square and halted suddenly at dirt roads. There the farmlands began, rough patches of potatoes in between squares of sap trees. And then the long, dense sugarcane fields. Save for posters of Hồ Chí Minh around the market square, Ngày Mới was curiously unchanged by the war. Some of its people had died on the battlefield, some in the tunnels in their backyards, but the rest eked out lives as desperate and thirsty as anyone could remember.
Linh had been waitressing for three years, since she was fourteen. She had to give up her mother’s sewing work; it left her dazed. The thread’s end, rolling out and aiming for a needle’s eye, infuriated her to tears. She often lost track of the chalk line down a sheet of cotton and ran the needle askew, sawing madly in and out of the cloth. The café work came more easily to Linh. Soaping plates and wiping stains seemed as natural as the need to eat.
Her mother was really so different. Nga had been running needles down sheets of cotton all her life. She leaned closer to the cloth as the years added on, her eyes straining. Through the course of the day, she moved around the room to follow a streak of light from the window. Her arms grew hard as she rearranged the work table every two hours, the wooden bed twice a day, and stacks of clothes in and out the door every day.
Their prayer house and the family graveyard were at the end of the irrigation stream. On New Year’s Eve, Linh and Nga went to clean the prayer house before joining everybody at temple. Linh was wearing Nga’s blouse, the button-down one that Nga saved for special occasions. It was a present from Sài Gòn before 1975 and Nga still kept it in the clear plastic wrapping.
‘What kind of girl forgets to iron her clothes?’ Nga hissed, tugging the ends of the blouse so that Linh stumbled forward. Nga’s bony hands pressed against her daughter’s hips. If Nga lifted the cloth, she would have seen red marks in the shape of fingers.
‘You’re hurting me,’ Linh said as she twisted out of Nga’s hands.
Nga raised her right arm, baring a line of muscle that ran down to the inside of her elbow, and slapped Linh hard on the face.
‘Remember your manners. Don’t make me look like I’ve raised a bad child,’ Nga said.
Linh kept silent as Nga pulled her hair into a tight ponytail and made her urinate before they left. At the prayer house, they swept the floor and tied marigolds to the ancestors’ portraits. Although the prayer house was made of cement, not marble or stone, this edifice for the dead was the only remnant of modest wealth in the family. It strikes me as a more pathetic scene than to have found Linh and her mother by the kind of dug-up dirt graves they would eventually be buried in. It helps me to pinpoint that quality in my girl: if there was a good memory for her, it has already been used up by somebody else.
Linh rocked as she prayed, touching her forehead to the ground. Ditties filled her head, and she sang to the rhythm of her rocking. Raised-a-bad-child, raised-a-bad-child, raised-a-bad-child. Going-to-temple, going-to-temple, going-to-temple. She looked at Nga, who was praying in a stream of hisses, her dutiful back snapping up and down. A pigeon crept to Nga’s side, towards the bag of moon cakes. Linh twisted her head to the side. Her neck cricked and the pigeon fled. Soon the song was a-pretty-bird-bird, a pretty-bird-bird, a-birdy-bird-bird-bird-bird.
Linh made a friend that year. The staff at Hòa Trân Café was mostly a mix of the owner’s distant relatives, many of them much older than Linh. But the new girl was only twenty. Trang had full breasts and dressed like a Sài Gòn girl: blue jeans and tight T-shirts studded with plastic beads. She kept a mobile phone in her back pocket—when she walked, it gave you the urge to grab her arse to stop the phone from falling out.
‘I curl my hair with wet cloth,’ said Trang. She liked to give advice.
They were sorting through fruit pulp in the kitchen to reuse for juice. Linh rubbed some papaya between her fingers and the juice ran down to her elbow. Like the ants she sometimes found suffocated in sugarcane mulch, she knew that sweetness was for touching, but she also knew that it was not for her.
‘Like this,’ said Trang. She wiped her hands on her jeans and reached up to twist a lock of her hair. ‘You fold the hair over and over, tie it with some cloth, and it’s all done when you wake up.’
Trang bounced the curl. A smear of juice glistened in her hair. It shone against the sweat on her skin, which was dark and bubbling with pimples.
‘It’s really easy when you have thick hair like me. But your hair is thin and limp, I don’t know if it would suit you,’ said Trang.
It did not occur to Linh to respond. She was satisfied with watching Trang. She liked the soft part of Trang’s belly, the slight curve out to the hips that was more evident when she wore fitted shirts. She liked the bright colours Trang wore: in the plastic beads on her shirt, in her lipstick, and in the alligator clips in her hair. Sometimes she wore coloured eyeshadow. When Trang moved, she was a whirl of colour and shine.
‘That’s why Vinh makes you tie your hair up,’ said Trang.
Vinh was the head chef.
‘It’s the type of hair that people find in their soup. It makes them sick.’
It still didn’t occur to Linh to say anything.
But something happened after months of studying Trang. One evening, as Linh was walking home along the freeway, she looked sideways to the Vươngs’ photocopy shop, one of the few shopfronts made of glass, and saw her reflection. She saw the dark-streaked face and the thick, ruddy lips. The hard clusters of pimples had grown so thick that her cheeks seemed like two raised lumpy disks. Her eyes were growing further apart as she got older. She was startled by the ugliness of her image and didn’t know what to do. Up until this moment, she thought of her appearance as a composition of the same elements other girls had: middle-parted hair (Nga said modest girls didn’t wear side-parts), a face that needed to be washed in the morning, forearms grown wide from carrying plates. Now Linh realised that other people would not like to look at her. And there was nothing she could do to fix this.
In the murkiness of the glass, the shadow of her self-hatred lurked behind Linh’s silhouette and she shuddered to shake it off.
I felt as if I could hear the voice inside her head and I dared her to say something. What does a girl say when she first learns to be disgusted by herself? I fantasised an anger that would lash my cheek, that would claw so tightly it would pierce my skin. But her distress coughed and sputtered. It was a long shot anyway. What kind of pain is more common, and more dull, than self-hatred? Linh looked away and hurried home.
Then it was spring and the time for peanuts. Linh had already gone to peanut-pulling nights twice that month. The Lý family were hasty and shelled too early, but the Nguyễns’ peanuts were perfect, large and sweet. On those warm, blue nights, the farmyards were full of squatting women gossiping as they shook peanuts out of the bushes. Sometimes, with a large crop like the Hồs had two springs ago, the women would stay all through the night. Everyone took a share when the harvest
was finished.
It was work that suited Linh. The night came and cooled the sweat of the day. At first, the stalks pricked, then routine set in, peanuts snapping and sliding off under her fingers like the tut-tuts of the women, who approved of so few other women. Tut-tut, bad blood, tut-tut, that devil child, tut-tut, the parents’ fault, tut-tut, that brazen slut. Linh was of little interest to them. What a shame about her face, they said, but she can work, yes? She’s a good girl. She stays home and she works. Linh never spoke and was happy to work for hours.
She liked the walks back home too, in the new hours of the day. The tall grasses talked to each other, rustling, unseen. The mud was cold and the buffaloes rolled gently in their sleep. Pots scraped as mothers opened their houses, trying not to wake the children. For a moment, the air in Ngày Mới, always sweet and dense with the scent of sugarcane, was cut through with the dawn’s chill. But for the ditties she sang in her head, Linh’s mind was empty as she walked.
That night everyone was going to Cậu Tắm’s farm for shelling. Nga had woken at sunrise to start sewing so that she could finish by evening.
‘Cậu Tắm’s boys have already started taking the roots out. A really good batch, they say,’ said Nga.
She had packed their food for the night, two balls of sticky rice and a packet of boiled peanuts with sesame sugar.
‘We start at eight, and we should be finished before dawn,’ continued Nga.
There was no answer from Linh, who sat still on the edge of the bed. Nga came over and smacked Linh’s head with her palm.
‘Are you dumb? Get moving!’ Nga shouted.
‘I’m sick,’ said Linh. Her Ngày Mới accent sounded like like oil boiling. Not the musical bubbling of schoolgirls and marketeers, but bursts from the roiling pot. She was often surprised by her own voice. That is why somebody must speak for her, but it is not easy. It is like prying open an oyster with my nails and eating the live bits inside.
Nga felt her daughter’s forehead.
‘No, my stomach is sick. I have my period,’ said Linh.
‘The devil,’ cursed Nga. ‘What kind of daughter is so lazy.’
Nga narrowed her eyes and scrutinised Linh’s crotch. Nga’s periods were always light, sometimes no more than a few specks of blood.
‘Fine, stay home,’ Nga said finally. ‘But it will bring shame on me. What kind of a daughter will everyone think I have raised?’
She opened the plastic bag and gave Linh a ball of sticky rice and the sesame packet.
‘And don’t sit there like a dumb lump—you can rub the pots and clean out the altar,’ said Nga.
She turned around one last time to smooth the baby hairs off Linh’s forehead, then left the house.
Linh stayed frozen on the edge of the bed. The words of a dutiful response bubbled somewhere at the base of her throat, then petered out. She crept across the room and fiddled with the scraps of Nga’s sewing. She picked out a few extra strips of fabric and went into the backyard to wet them under the tap, looking about as she squatted and held the limp cotton under the water. Back at the edge of the bed, she sat cross-legged and fumbled with her hair, trying to tie the cloth and make curls the way Trang had shown her. But her fingers were stiff and clumsy and her hair tangled.
She threw the wet strips aside, pulled her legs up close and hugged the soles of her feet. She sat like this for a long time, and forgot about the pots and the altar. The ball of sticky rice had rolled and settled in the middle of the sunken mattress. There was nothing in her head, but out of habit she gurgled to a listless rhythm, her expression slack. She was pathetic, mumbling and rocking, her hands clutching her feet. I should have given her a moment alone. But I was curious: what fancies might she have for the night? It was always these tremors of inclination that I found most pitiful.
When she started moving again, Linh surprised herself by taking her jacket and heading out the door. She had never lied to Nga before.
Hòa Trân Café was perched on the edge of the cement freeway, at the border of Ngày Mới. A yellow banner stretched across the entrance of the café, letters spelt out in red serif type. Serifs that were faded but classic, rippling in the wind. Underneath was the forever slogan: ‘Karaoke special this Thursday night only!’ The Sài Gòn girls dismounted from their scooters beneath the banner, slid off their driving gloves and looked around the yard for a table with a view. Near the back was a small pond filled with yellow fish.
Linh had never seen the café at night, bathed like this in blueish light. The yard smelled of dried squid and beer. She felt intimidated. She watched a man sitting in her favourite hammock, one red hand gripping his thigh as he talked to his friends. His other hand clutched a can of beer. His fingers dug into the aluminium, crinkling it, but he seemed oblivious of the tension.
‘Linh?’
She blinked when she saw Trang, whose colours were wilder in the blue light. Trang looked confused.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘You told me to come,’ said Linh.
‘No I didn’t,’ said Trang. ‘I’m not even working tonight.’
Trang was not unkind. She just did not know what to do with Linh, who was still wearing her brown bà ba, the slacks and shirt ensemble that women wore for household chores. Linh was so quê, Trang thought. So country.
‘Well, I guess you should sit down with us,’ said Trang. They walked to the table where the man and his friends were sitting. Trang shrugged. ‘She just showed up.’
Linh brought over a stool and sat as the men resumed their conversation. They were discussing the new female employees at work, the bottle-top factory in the industrial district. Linh didn’t think about speaking, but she repeated their words in her head, lips-like-a-whore, lips-like-a-whore, lips-like, lips-like, lips—
‘What’s wrong with your friend?’
Linh shuddered as a hand grasped her side. It was Quân, the man sitting in her favourite hammock. He squeezed her ribs.
‘Are you shy?’ said Quân. He massaged a rib with his thumb and leaned in to give her his mug. ‘It’s okay, girl. Here, have my drink.’
He said girl, con gái, the same word for daughter. She drank from Quân’s mug. She could think of nothing but his hand. Through his hand she felt the force of an opening to another world, where hands were used for something else. She did not know what it was, but it was not for sewing, cooking, cleaning or shelling peanuts. His thumb continued to grind up and down her rib as he talked to the others. She wondered if he had forgotten that he was holding on to her, as she sat, immobile. The pool of liquid in her stomach grew warmer and warmer, and the hand on her waist burned. Suddenly he turned to her and pushed his face up close. His breath was hot.
‘Are you okay? Let’s go for a walk, huh? Let’s go for a walk, girl.’
In the depths of a grass field, he grabbed her by the shoulders, smiling.
‘You like me, don’t you? I saw you looking at me,’ he said.
He dropped his gaze. Both his thumbs were now grinding her ribs in circles. Linh tried to concentrate, but she felt disconnected from her body. Her head was heavy. He spread his fingers out like a fan on her breasts.
Linh lurched to the side.
‘What’s wrong, girl?’ he snarled. He dug his fingers into her breasts. ‘What’s wrong, huh?’
Linh looked down, bewildered to see the flesh of her breasts bulging in between his fingers.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘What am I doing?’ he shouted. He held her by the throat with one hand and grabbed her crotch with the other. He pushed the cotton of her pants into her vulva.
‘I want to go home,’ she said.
‘Shut up.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘Shut up!’ he yelled, forcing her down and pushing her face into the dirt. ‘And don’t look at me.’
The pain was so bad it felt as if her head was splitting. He was at her side, jerking his groin against her thigh. She lay li
mp. He jerked over and over.
It is too cruel to watch and we shall turn away. At this point, I am sick of myself. I have pried open the oyster with my nails; it was difficult and tedious. I have sweated through all my good clothes and the room is dense with the smell of stale toast. But I have always known that I could not resist my dumb, spit-in-the-soup girl. Linh. The vowel, rounded like monks humming, flicks off the tongue with a gentle l and reaches the forehead where it vibrates, nh. I am very sorry for what happened (and yet I am glad of her existence, so that it would not be me). Forgive me my weaknesses. In another life I will be born with boils for fingers and cataracts in my eyes.
But I must turn back. Here we are still with Linh, far in the south of ravaged Vietnam, in a nameless grass field that this man has chosen for our complicity.
She stayed limp as he took off his clothes, and then hers. They were both smeared with dirt. He picked at the lips of her vagina, the calluses on his thumb so hard she felt as if he would tear her. She lay horrified and curious. He climbed on top of her and pushed his penis inside. She whimpered, drooling into the dirt, and waited for him to stop. His belly smacked frantically against her thighs at first and then he seemed to tire, readjusting his grip from her breasts to her shoulders. He grunted and his thrusts became rougher. When he finally stopped, she watched as he pulled himself up to her face. His expression was loose and savage with exhaustion. He raised his teeth to her mouth and bit down on her bottom lip, where she kept her secret dream. Her lip tore and he collapsed beside her. Soon he was snoring. She kept still, terrified of waking him.
Linh woke up smelling sugar. The air was thick. She stared at the blades of sugarcane engulfing her, as though they had multiplied while she slept. She leaned over Quân’s face, its evil exposed in sleep, and picked up the cigarette lighter lying by his head, fiddling with it as she waited for her vision to focus: in her mind’s eye, the entire field caught fire and melted down to caramel.
