Lucky Ticket

by Joey Bui

  ‘What do you think the rest of us are, apes?’ said Quân.

  ‘Everyone knows Vietnam was partitioned into North and South.’

  ‘Yeah, but I mean it even happened the same year as Korea split. Paris conference in fifty-four,’ said Trịnh.

  ‘Geneva,’ Bình corrected him. His ice coffee had finished filtering, and he was mixing in the condensed milk. He didn’t like drinking it black like the other guys did. He had a sweet tooth. ‘They talked about Vietnam in Geneva, but they only split up Korea. They couldn’t decide on Vietnam.’

  ‘You dumb-ass,’ Quân said to Trịnh.

  ‘Right, right,’ Trịnh snapped. ‘Paris was where the Americans started backing out.’

  ‘Yeah…’ muttered Bình.

  ‘Yeah, well. I bet a South Vietnam soccer team would have a better chance than the Vietnam team,’ said Trịnh.

  ‘Come on. The Vietnam team is basically the North Vietnam team,’ said Quân.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Tuấn. ‘No Asian team can go up against the white guys. Look, look how big that one is.’ He lunged at the screen.

  ‘Size doesn’t matter in soccer.’

  ‘You need power behind the kick, though. And when they pile on top of each other. You think a little Asian man is going to come out alive?’

  ‘I reckon I’d like to be South Korean. You know all the women in Vietnam want to marry a Korean now?’ said Trịnh. ‘One of my sister’s friends just ran off on her fiancé for a South Korean guy she hadn’t even met before.’

  ‘It’s because they’re all watching South Korean shows now,’ said Quân.

  Bình looked at the TV without focusing. He liked the guys, but he wasn’t in the mood for their inane talk. Tuấn was his only real friend.

  ‘Bình, Bình,’ Tuấn said after a while. ‘Are you pissed off about something?’

  Bình looked around self-consciously.

  ‘Ah, nothing. Trouble at work again. My manager, you know.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Quân. ‘My manager is so fucking racist. He makes all the Viet guys do the loading, and all the Chinese guys just fiddle with these machines at the belt.’

  Bình was instantly annoyed that Quân had made the conversation about him.

  ‘He says Viet guys are stronger.’ Trịnh chuckled.

  Trịnh and Quân were both stocky men and avid eaters. They had come to the café straight from the factory floor, wearing dusty navy coveralls, the sleeves rolled up. Their forearms popped with thick veins. Tuấn and Bình, on the other hand, were regarded as too skinny and too feminine respectively, although the guys had long stopped making fun of Bình, after his angry outbursts.

  ‘I think he means dumber,’ said Quân. ‘But seriously, it’s because they won’t fucking work otherwise. The Chinese are cheats. They cheat when a manager’s not looking, so they’ve got to be inside, under the manager’s nose. Only we can do the loading.’

  ‘You think that’s bad,’ Tuấn joined in. ‘I’m paid less than the Chinese guys at the restaurant. I get seven bucks an hour, they get ten.’

  ‘Tuấn, that’s because the Chinese guys at your restaurant are the manager’s family,’ said Quân.

  ‘But fuck that, there’s a fifteen-year-old Chinese kid getting paid more than me.’

  ‘You should’ve been Chinese, huh,’ said Quân.

  ‘I’d take Korean over Chinese any day.’

  ‘Stop shitting on Viet guys. We don’t get it so bad,’ said Tuấn.

  ‘What do we get?’

  ‘We have beautiful women,’ Tuấn offered.

  ‘Okay, where are they? Where’s your beautiful woman?’ Quân challenged.

  The men were all single and worried about not finding a wife. They joked about being alone so Bình assumed they did not feel the same kind of haunted loneliness that he did. But he was convinced that no one could enjoy living alone in these suburbs, with the crippling quiet and the parched lawns.

  ‘Quỳnh!’ Tuấn said to the woman wiping the table across from them. ‘Look, here she is. Here’s my most beautiful woman.’

  Quỳnh, a thirty-something woman with pretty eyes, a fringe and ponytail, and wearing rubber flip-flops, sauntered over and flung a tea towel onto their table.

  ‘Fuck your mother, Tuấn. Are you guys going to order something or just keep stinking up my shop?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Quỳnh? Don’t you see I just want to spend time with you?’ said Tuấn.

  ‘Hey, Quỳnh,’ said Trịnh. ‘Are you into Korean guys?’

  ‘There are no Koreans in Australia.’

  ‘I mean on the screen. You watch the Korean shows?’

  ‘I’m a TVB girl, the Hong Kong actors are much more handsome,’ she said. She shifted onto one hip. There were no other customers in the shop. If they talked to her long enough, she would probably bring out a dish of something that was getting cold.

  ‘Talk about Hong Kong!’ Trịnh exclaimed. ‘That’s the best. Really modern, independent, rich.’

  ‘We shoulda made a Hong Kong kind of deal with China,’ said Quân.

  ‘You mean with North Vietnam,’ said Trịnh.

  Quân laughed dryly. ‘The North Vietnam team basically is the Chinese team.’

  Bình scraped his chair back on the concrete. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him.

  ‘I gotta go, got to pick up some things…for Sunday,’ Bình muttered.

  No one said anything. Bình wondered angrily if Tuấn had discussed Bình’s problems with them.

  ‘Bình! Drinks at mine tonight, you coming?’ Quân called out to him as he was leaving.

  ‘Ah, maybe, yeah, I’ll see,’ Bình said, though he had no intention of turning up.

  ‘Where’s my invite?’ he heard Quỳnh saying as he walked off. It was a joke. Quỳnh wouldn’t go and they wouldn’t want her to. Quân and Trịnh lived in a share house with four other single Vietnamese men. The drinking nights were sloppy affairs, from which the married men came home to angry wives, skipped the next drinking night, then came to the one after, desperate to maintain a veneer of independence.

  Bình went home and spent the rest of the night watching TV. At one point, he picked up a second-hand copy of Black Beauty. He knew it would take him a long time to sleep. The days never seemed to end anymore. He felt as if there was something important to do, but there never was.

  On Sunday morning, he drove Aunt Ba to buy flowers for Chị Hai. Uncle Ba slept in on Sundays. They were a quiet couple, and timid with Bình since they had witnessed his temper. When he first moved in with them, after Chị Hai got married, he spent most of his time watching TV in the living room. Aunt Ba had been unable to find work in Australia, and seemed to be compensating with unnecessary vigour in her housework. Every morning at six, she started scrubbing and then sweeping the tiled floors, before vacuuming the carpet in the living room. After a breakfast break—instant coffee and some sort of sweet bun—she began the daily chore of washing and drying the sheets. Then she wiped the bathroom and kitchen until they were spotless. Once the cleaning was finished, she began the cooking.

  One day, soon after he’d arrived, Aunt Ba asked him to move off the couch.

  ‘Can’t you do the couch later?’ He was watching a Paris by Night comedy sketch.

  ‘It won’t take long.’

  ‘Just vacuum something else first and do the couch later.’

  She looked at him, shocked. ‘No,’ she said, confused. She patted the couch twice.

  ‘Stop pestering me. Just rest until the show is over! What?’ Now she looked frightened.

  ‘Relax! What’s wrong?’ he shouted at her. ‘People are going to think you’ve gone crazy.’

  She left and shut herself in her bedroom. That evening, Uncle Ba came to talk to him—as the brother of Bình’s mother, he was the blood relative. He was a short, quiet man, afraid of conflict. The couple was not close to anyone, but they were careful about fulfilling their spiritual and famil
ial duties: they sent monthly remittances to family members, went to temple once a week and made donations there.

  ‘We welcomed you to our house because you are family.’ Uncle Ba pushed his glasses nervously up his nose. ‘But you have not been kind to us. You upset your aunt very much. The way you spoke to her was disrespectful. You should have been helping her with the housework rather than yelling at her.’

  ‘It was a mistake. I promise it won’t happen again.’

  Uncle Ba shook his head. ‘We know you have problems, Bình. Your aunt is a very gentle woman, she cannot stand violence. You have to change your ways.’

  Bình retreated to his room more and more. Eventually Aunt Ba and Uncle Ba stopped asking him to come in for dinner. Chị Hai sent him food so he knew she must have had a conversation with them about his behaviour—that irritated him too.

  Aunt Ba and Uncle Ba were not close to Chị Hai either, but it was their familial duty to come to the Sunday lunch.

  ‘Do you know what flowers your sister likes?’ Aunt Ba asked as they entered the florist.

  ‘Sunflowers are her favourite.’

  ‘Sunflowers would be inappropriate,’ Aunt Ba muttered.

  ‘She also likes birds of paradise.’

  Bình remembered Chị Hai discovering the strange, elegant flower one day in a real-estate office: a single flower in a skinny white vase, surrounded by thick green leaves. Chị Hai had laughed and ruffled the orange-and-purple crown of the flower. ‘Somebody tried to make the world very perfect,’ she said.

  ‘That’s too expensive,’ said Aunt Ba, as she picked out a bunch of white lilies.

  Back home, she continued making nem, pork skewers, to bring to Chị Hai’s. Uncle Ba was working in the garden, having refused Bình’s help. They were going to drive over to Chị Hai’s at three o’clock. Feeling agitated from the interactions with his aunt and uncle, Bình waited in his room, a Jackie Chan movie on in the background.

  He had to wait until ten to three before picking up Tuấn. He didn’t want to arrive before his aunt and uncle. Tuấn was waiting outside his place, standing at the kerb, holding a bag of mangoes for Chị Hai. They had a cigarette before they drove off.

  ‘Are you still sad?’ Tuấn asked.

  Bình started. ‘What?’

  ‘About your mother’s death.’

  ‘Oh. No, it’s been a long time.’

  ‘You’re lucky, though,’ said Tuấn. ‘You have family with you here.’

  Bình winced. His stomach churned all the way to Chị Hai’s place, a twenty-minute drive to Glen Waverly. It was more of a Chinese neighbourhood, but Chị Hai wanted to be in the Glen Waverly High School catchment zone for Yến. Their new house was smaller, another reason Bình had to move out. The other reason was Long.

  Chị Hai opened the door, her right hand in a pink rubber glove covered in chicken guts. She wore a bright orange shirt and slacks. Her hair was tied in a bun and there was blush on her cheeks. She greeted Aunt Ba and Uncle Ba cheerfully and hugged Tuấn. Tuấn had always admired Chị Hai, and often joked with her about how much he wanted her to marry him instead of Long.

  ‘Any excuse to see you. You look beautiful,’ said Tuấn.

  People usually gravitated toward Chị Hai because she was cheerful, talkative and kind. But today Chị Hai looked as if she was on the verge of tears. Feeling hopeless, Bình just nodded at her and followed the others into the kitchen.

  Yến ran to greet him and he gave her a hug before slinging her over his shoulder. Everyone helped with the anniversary preparations. Aunt Ba went straight to her task, peeling and chopping vegetables at the kitchen bench. Tuấn and Bình ferried food and utensils from the kitchen to the altar table, which had to be set up as though three people were about to eat at it—mother, grandfather and grandmother, whose portraits were on Chi’s altar. The best food went to the altar: the neatest spring rolls, grilled nem decorated with chili, rice noodle strips laid out in a grid pattern and covered with a spoonful of scallion oil, and the best mangoes. Long went to set up the folding table and chairs in the backyard. Yến sat at the kitchen bench wrapping wontons as carefully as she could.

  ‘I’d really like a family,’ said Tuấn, not for the first time. ‘I’d throw great Sunday dinners. I’d cook with my wife. You know, I’m actually very good at cooking, I just never get the chance to.’

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said Bình.

  ‘You could come. Bring your wife, when you find one. We could have more kids running around. Yến must get lonely,’ said Tuấn, looking over at the little girl.

  Suddenly they heard a commotion in the backyard, and the sound of clattering metal. Tuấn and Bình went to look through the glass sliding door. Long had kicked over a chair. Chị Hai stood before him. A plate of rice noodles had fallen onto the concrete, the china in shards among the noodles.

  ‘Please behave, Long,’ Chị Hai begged in a small voice.

  Bình went to the kitchen bench to stand with Yến, who was listening intently.

  ‘What is it with you? I don’t see you working this hard for my family’s events,’ shouted Long. ‘And take that stuff off your face. You look like a fool.’

  Chị Hai’s voice was too low for Bình to hear.

  ‘Enough!’ Long threw another chair out of his way. More clattering. ‘I’m going for a smoke.’

  No one moved until they heard Long’s engine ignite and the car drive away.

  Then Chị Hai laughed nervously.

  ‘He just needs a break,’ she said to Uncle Ba. She scooped up the noodles with her hands and rushed into the house to the rubbish bin. ‘He gets stressed with these events.’

  Yến went over and tugged on her arm.

  ‘Come on, we have work to do. Look, there’s so much wonton filling left,’ said Chị Hai with forced enthusiasm.

  They continued the preparations in silence. Once the altar dishes were ready and a large watermelon was set up in pride of place, flanked by mangoes, everybody took turns to light incense and pray. Bình gazed at the portrait of his mother, tracing Chị’s features in hers. He wanted to reminisce with Chị Hai, but they hadn’t reconciled.

  Chị Hai had made another dish for eating, not as an offering—egg noodles with chicken. Yến’s favourite. They ate quickly, thankful for the distraction of food. Bình wondered when Long would come back. At the end of the meal, their Aunt Ba and Uncle Ba announced that they were leaving.

  ‘We get tired now, getting old, you know.’ Uncle Ba chuckled half-heartedly. ‘And work tomorrow…It was a really wonderful dinner, dear.’

  Chị Hai pressed some noodles and nem onto them before they left. She told Tuấn to put on the new Paris by Night tape he had brought, and left him and Yến in the living room, while Bình did the dishes.

  Bình was uncomfortable seeing his confident sister falter. It wasn’t the first time he had witnessed fighting between her and Long. He felt paralysed. Chị Hai was always wise, did everything well, pleased everybody. Bình needed to believe that her life was good, that she was happy—even when she was yelling at him. She had always been in control, and he’d always been able to talk to her. Until now. He knew he couldn’t bring up Long; they had already had so many fights about him. Bình dropped the dishes back into the sink and went to find her.

  She was in the bathroom, the door open, wiping the makeup off her face.

  ‘Bình,’ she said gently. She splashed water on her face and dried her hands, then laughed.

  ‘Don’t be worried about me,’ she said. ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’

  He was relieved. Her vulnerability had scared him. He followed her into the bedroom, where she knelt in front of the drawers by her bed and took out an envelope. She sat down and patted the carpet in front of her. Bình sat down.

  ‘I’m not going to push you into anything anymore. I just want to say that you still have the option of going back to the university. I collected hụi last week—I
’d been planning it for months—so there’s money if you want to go back,’ she said.

  Chị Hai was a dedicated player of hụi, a rotating credit association with an annual cashout for each contributor.

  ‘You’re not angry at me anymore?’

  ‘Of course I’m angry. Of course I am,’ she said disdainfully. ‘But I realise there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  She brought her hand to her face, as if she was going to wipe away tears, but instead she massaged her right cheek. She had changed out of her good clothes into the cheap cotton pyjamas she wore at home. Bình wasn’t sure what to say.

  ‘No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ she continued. ‘My work is hard, Bình. It doesn’t lead anywhere, it just gets me through day by day, and that’s a hard way to live. You haven’t worked long enough to dread this kind of work.’ She sucked her breath in shallowly. ‘I need something to look forward to, or I don’t know if I can keep doing this. University, and a better job, was never going to happen for me, but you could really study, I know you could. But now I’m scolding you again. Maybe I’m forcing you, just for my own sake, just for something for me to hope for. That’s not fair on you.’

  The talk of dread scared him. It hadn’t been easy for him to leave the university. There was certainly a lot to dread there too. He had imagined that he would be more at peace if he did something safe, contained and free of ambition, like the grocery job. But he had come to fear it in a different way.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve been happy anywhere here. I haven’t been happy since we left home,’ he admitted. ‘Since we left Sài Gòn.’

  Finally he told her everything as best he could. He wanted her to know the feeling of looking out at the lawns and fences and roofs, how he panicked sometimes with the conviction that there was no one else in the world. How sometimes he wanted to wake his aunt or uncle, even though he knew they didn’t care, just to hear a human voice. At night he dreaded the coming of the next day, dreaded waking up in the morning. And Australia in winter was so cold, especially in the mornings, when he was overcome by the realisation that there was nothing he wanted here, nothing at all. Perhaps they should never have left Vietnam. It was a strange migration that he still hadn’t figured out. He seemed to have left the destiny prepared for him, slipped out of it, and now there was nothing waiting for him at all.