32
Vietnamese-Karma
One crisp afternoon in late January 1989, my beat-up Toyota hiccuped back to San Jose. I was taking an unsanctioned religious holiday from UCLA, on my way to pick up Grandma Le for the greatest gathering of the clan since the first Pham set foot in America. We were observing the anniversary of Grandpa Pham’s death. Technically, Grandma Le didn’t have to attend, but she was lonely and wanted to mingle with the other side of the family. Strange how she couldn’t bear to be within sight of “that arrogant mud-footed prince” when he was alive. A dozen years after he exhaled his last opiate breath, she was raring to go to the big party held in his honor and looking forward to gossiping with his widow, Grandma Pham, my father’s stepmother.
I curbed the car and found her doing tai chi on the sidewalk, heronstepping among the fallen leaves. Beneath her best maroon embroidered silk, she had double-packed herself in thermals and sweaters, hands in child-sized mitts, satin-slippered feet in three layers of hunter’s socks. A black beanie swallowed most of her head, including her ears, and a brown wool scarf bandited her face. Her frost-rosy eyes winked at me. It was a marvel the neighbors had stopped staring at this crone doll who suddenly materialized amid their lower-middle-class suburban enclave two years ago, fresh off the plane from Vietnam. One day they woke up and found a four-foot-nine, eighty-five-year-old woman in black peasant pajamas doing Bruce Lee impressions in slow motion in front of their houses.
“Grandma!” I shouted, arms wide, walking right into her Rooster Sunrise stance for a hug.
She pulled down her scarf and grinned broadly, showing a silver front tooth, patting my arm, uncomfortable with the open affection but liking it. She squinted at me and said, “Who are you? You look like An, but I can’t remember what he looks like.”
“Grandma!”
“You haven’t visited me in a month!” she squeaked. “Bad grandson! Aiiya! Aiiya! Aiiya!” And gave me a couple of karate chops to the arm. “Aiiya! Aiiya!” Two soft kicks to the shin.
I laughed and dropped an arm around her shoulder, nodding my chin on the top of her head. She smiled. She didn’t laugh anymore. It took too much lung power.
“My school is four hundred miles away, Grandma. That’s like driving from Phan Thiet to Da Nang.”
“Hmm. Hmm,” she mumbled, meaning I should have picked a college closer to home.
“Aha! Grandma, you’re wearing makeup.”
“Shuss! It’s too cold here. I need some color in my cheeks.” She pretended to push me away.
“It looks good. Maybe we can find you an elderly gentleman.” I pinched her arm.
“Aiee! Don’t be silly, you impudent boy.”
“You’re shy, Grandma.”
“I’m not shy. A girl only needs one husband to lose her shyness. I had three, but I lose them like lizards lose tails.”
Grandma used to be a real looker, with an attitude to boot. Back in Phan Thiet, she was the town’s scandal with her history of three husbands. The first was an academic, her high school sweetheart. The second was a professional soccer star—my mother’s father. The War claimed them both. The third, Auntie Dung’s father, the fishsauce baron, was a polygamist with three wives. He was her true love and she always kept an altar for him. I had asked her why she still lit incense for him and put fruit on his altar year-round. She said he watched over the family. I teased that he couldn’t possibly find her here in America, halfway around the world. She touched her chest: In here, this place is the same.
“Look what I have for you, Grandma.” I flashed five Lotto scratch-off cards.
“Ah, good! Good grandson! Thank you. I neverget enough of these.” She inspected them for luck and slipped them into her silk jacket.
“Why do you like to play the lottery so much?” I asked her.
“I want to leave my grandchildren something,” she answered matter-of-factly. She had given up everything, forfeiting land and business, to come to America and be with her children and grandchildren. I wondered how she felt not having her own place and needing to rely on her daughter, Auntie Dung, to take care of her. She had no idea her children and grandchildren were scattered and too wound up with American life to be with her daily.
“Auntie Dung and Uncle Hung aren’t coming, Grandma?”
“No, they’re afraid things might get difficult. You know, your mother and your father’s brothers don’t adore each other much.”
Grandma still smoldered whenever she talked about how Dad’s side of the family had mistreated her daughter. I didn’t want her to get fired up, especially with today’s festivities. I rubbed my belly and said we ought to get over to the party before they ate everything. I opened the door, ushered her into the passenger seat, and gingerly buckled her in. Grandma was brittle, broke her hip last year. She wanted to know why my car was full of stuff. I waved her off, claiming that I was moving. I didn’t want her to know I was living out of my car because I couldn’t pay the rent this month. It was still early in the term so the checks from my tutoring and grading jobs hadn’t arrived yet. It had been pretty lean stretching a couple of packets of hot dogs an entire week. I had been salivating for days, thinking about this feast. On the backseat was my cooler. There ought to be plenty of leftovers.
That was the one good thing about the Pham women, in-laws included: They knew how to cook. Each had her own specialties. During Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, they cooked up a warehouse of food and traded dishes around so that every household had the same feast though no one cooked more than one or two entrées. For the anniversary of Grandpa’s death, all these treats would be crammed with forty-three hungry mouths into one rickety house in an old section of Cupertino where the neighborhood dated back to the fifties, when Americans had never heard of a place called Vietnam.
Grandma Pham lived with her married daughters and youngest son at the end of an oak-lined cul-de-sac with ruptured asphalt. All four of their cars were parked in the street, a dead pickup on the lawn. Untrimmed shrubs mustached the house. The garage door was holding up three bedrooms tacked together under an open-rafter roof. Stashed on the sides of the structure were curly sheets of discarded plywood, busted bookcases, rusted wheelbarrows, used car tires, and piles of aluminum cans. The balding back lawn was barely visible beneath worktables, sawhorses, mountains of paint cans, Formica sheets, neon machines, and toolboxes. Aunt Hanh’s husband was a sign maker. They stayed in one of the bedrooms with their young daughter. Aunt Hang and her husband, both in their late thirties, were full-time college students, engineering hopefuls. They and their two children shared the master bedroom. Grandma Pham had her own room. Uncle Hau, the anchor of this household, lived in the converted garage space, using his professional-programmer income to supplement everyone else’s. The economical arrangement cramped his bachelor lifestyle, but that was expected of a dutiful son. Besides, he only dated Vietnamese-American girls. They understood.
The party was in full cry when I walked Grandma through the door, last to arrive. The noisy house smelled of cooking food and too many people, definitely an Asian-house odor. My brothers and sister were drinking sodas and hanging out with our cousins. Grandma Pham, a sparrow of a woman, paired off with Grandma Le and, after brief greetings to everyone, they moused into the bedroom to drink tea and watch videos of Vietnamese soap operas. Mom was hovering in the kitchen with my aunts. She was blatantly avoiding Uncle Hun and Uncle Hong. When my father eloped with her, these two had come after him with handcuffs. I went around greeting my elders as was proper. It took the better part of an hour because my father had five brothers and three sisters and, with the exception of Uncle Hau, they were all married with children. I bowed and traded pleasantries with each.
Round-faced Uncle Hong, rosy with a beer in him, clapped me on the shoulder. “How’s school, An?”
“Good. How are you?”
“Well. Strong. Engineering, right?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
“Good, you’ll make lots of money. H
elp your parents when they retire.”
“Oh, yes, sure, of course.”
I didn’t have much in common with most of my uncles. I hated having to bow, grovel, and show them respect the whole nine yards like a ten-year-old schoolboy just because they were my elders. Uncle Hong was a natural entrepreneur, at the moment a real estate speculator. Uncle Hun was a lifelong technician, a classic worker ant. Slumlord Uncle Hoang was the only Pham nearing millionaire status. He used to have me paint his illegal apartments until I decided to charge him minimum hourly wages. His wife, a beauty queen who didn’t get along with the rest of the family too well, didn’t show up for the ceremony, causing fierce whispering among the wives-in-law
After the aunts decorated the food and arranged it on Grandpa Pham’s shrine, covering every square inch of the red silk tablecloth with meat and fruit, beer, tea, and rice wine, piling it on until the thing creaked ominously, Grandma Pham started the ceremony by lighting the first batch of incense on an altar candle. Head bowed deeply, she prayed to the same black-and-white photo of Grandpa that we had at home. The entire clan lined up for the procession to the altar, in descending hierarchy, oldest to youngest, sons to daughters, grandsons to granddaughters. There were so many of us that we dimmed the house with incense. The smoke detector panicked. Uncle Hun pulled its batteries, and the fire hazard continued unabated. Auntie Hang opened windows and turned on the oscillating fan. Grandma Le wasn’t expected to pray to her old nemesis. Mom was, but she boycotted by stirring the soup pot. I did my deed but filched a couple of egg rolls from the altar.
The clan sat around talking, mostly about money and investment, not a word about Grandpa, waiting for the joss sticks to burn down, which was about half an hour—the time it took for spirits to “eat” the offerings. The women fussed in the kitchen, setting the tables, putting on final touches, and readying pots and pans so they could warm up foods the instant the joss sticks died. Little cousins rioted all over the house, screaming in their cribs, playing tag, shooting space aliens on the television, bullying, pulling each other’s hair, yelling, and crying. I couldn’t remember all their names, each had two, one Vietnamese and one American. This country had been good to us Phams, we multiplied like rabbits.
By the time they moved the food from the altar to the tables, beer had been flowing steadily among the men for two hours. Spirits were high. Mom was the only woman who flouted tradition by drinking a whole can of beer. The men, none of whom were heavy drinkers, turned bright red, became more passionate and magnanimous with each toast. Jokes roared around the table. Uncle Hong, who was under strict doctor’s orders to refrain from alcohol and red meat, threw caution to the wind, this his big once-a-year. My father, who never goes out even on weekends, became alive in the company of his brothers, venting his bottlenecked social needs. Uncle Hien, the former heroin addict and gangster, now married and in good grace with his family, bubbled over with raucous stories, slapping his older brothers on the back.
The uncles had saved me a seat at the table since I was an adult now, five months bordering engineer status. I begged off and roamed the buffet table. The spread was the sort I dreamed about. There were Peking duck with pillowy white buns to be eaten with scallion brushes and sweet plum sauce; roasted pig with cracker-crunchy skin to be savored on angel-hair rice noodles glistening with scallion oil; sweet pork spareribs complete with the three layers of good-fortune fat; several whole boiled chickens for dipping with lime, pepper, and salt; a tub of prawn salad tossed with rice vinegar and pickled carrots, great for making canapes with shrimp chips; green papaya salad with sugary chili-fishsauce; egg rolls made with ground pork, potato noodles, cat-ear mushrooms, and real crab meat; salad rolls with their translucent rice-paper skin showing slices of steamed pork, for dipping in hoisin sauce; yam and shrimp fritters; grilled lemongrass beef rolled like cigarettes and served on skewers; a whole sea bass steamed in a scallion soy sauce; hills of red sweet rice with drifts of coconut snow; a big pot of crab-and-asparagus soup thick with chicken and cloud-ear mushrooms; anchovy fried rice; scallops with chive dumplings; ginger stir-fried vegetables with watercress and young bamboo shoots; and vinegared beef served with sweet red onion and rice papers. I loaded up two plates, tucked a bottle of beer under one arm, and went into Uncle Hau’s bedroom to watch football on the tube with my cousins and brothers.
Halfway through the meal, the conversation in the dining room grew loud. I went out for a third helping to see what was happening. Eating had slowed at the long table, no one reaching to refresh his bowl. My father was beet-faced and talking in a restrained manner. Aunt Huong and her husband looked irritated. Everyone else wore a silly, nervous grin, trying to make light of the tension.
It started with a discussion of how the Bay Area had changed so much in the last twelve years. When we first arrived, there were maybe two Vietnamese restaurants and one Vietnamese market, and people were excited when they met other Vietnamese. Now, they all agreed, there were too many Vietnamese in Silicon Valley. My uncles complained about the competition. Father said Vietnamese filled the ranks of the county social services with their friends and relatives, giving them special treatment, corrupting the whole system. It was his roundabout way of criticizing his sister, Huong, whom he felt relied too much on government subsidy. The comment riled his sister, and she wouldn’t let it slide. After all, this wasn’t Vietnam anymore.
My father said, “You shouldn’t abuse the system like that. There are people more needy than you.”
Indignation swelled her eyes. “What do you mean I shouldn’t? Who are you to talk?”
Uncle Hun butted in: “He’s your big brother. You shouldn’t talk to him in that tone.”
She wasn’t listening, her eyes trained on my father. Her next shot came out slowly, drawing a careful bead on the mark. “And did I ever say anything about how you made your money?”
“No,” Grandma Pham repeated, over and over but no one was listening. “Things that went past shouldn’t be called back. Let’s not talk about it.”
“That’s all right, Mom,” Aunt Huong said. “Let him talk. Let’s get it out in the open.”
The eating stopped. Little cousins peeked in from the hallway, wondering what all the angry words were about. Grandma Pham shook her head in shame.
“We didn’t judge you so don’t judge us,” sneered Aunt Huong.
Mom shrieked, “What do you mean judge? And did your father have a problem with borrowing from us?”
“Don’t talk like that!” Uncle Hong growled, glaring at Mom. “It’s bad luck to speak harshly of the dead. Big Brother Thong, teach your wife not to talk like that.”
Mom whirled on Uncle Hong. “Don’t you stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong. My business is my business, my family is my family.”
“Oh, yes. It certainly wasn’t our sort of business.”
“Ah, then why don’t you pay back the money you all owe me. Pay back the money your father owes me.”
Half-veiled accusations were flung back and forth. Somehow I had the feeling that they were holding back because all of us, nephews and nieces, were present. The uncles and aunts seemed to think that our family’s dysfunctionality was karmic payback for whatever my parents did way back in Vietnam. And Chi, our main casualty, was the one person no one mentioned even in the heat of it. Tien looked at me and shrugged, then melted out with Kay, Huy, and Hien, not saying good-bye to the relatives.
“You and I are through!” Mom lay into her in-laws like a curse, slicing the air with the edge of her hand. “Don’t telephone. Don’t bring your face to my door again. Ever!” she spat, the steel coming into her. For a moment, I saw my mother, the same woman who faced down a mutinous fishermen crew who wanted to take us to Thailand. She stormed out the door and drove home by herself.
The clan gathering was now short two wives-in-law, my mother and Aunt Chau, Uncle Hoang’s wife. Uncle Hong started in by drawing a parallel between my mother’s disrespect for Grandpa Pham’s spirit and
Aunt Chau’s attitude toward the family.
“If you don’t teach your wives manners,” said Uncle Hong in general, but directing his comment to his younger brother Hoang, “soon we’ll be doing this whole ceremony by ourselves. Cooking, washing dishes, and all.”
“Maybe,” Uncle Hoang said, “you should do what Sister Anh said and mind your own business.”
“I did and look at what sort of a woman you married.”
“You shut up!” Uncle Hoang barked.
“You dare tell me, your big brother, to shut up?”
“Big Brother, say that about my wife again and I’ll tell you to shut up again.”
“You disrespectful bastard!” Uncle Hong grunted, staggering to his feet.
Uncle Hoang stood. They looked as though they were about to trade blows. My father was still glaring, talking heatedly with his sister. The other aunts, Uncle Hien, and Uncle Hau tried to smooth things out, their placation adding to the din. I stopped listening. Grandma Le and Grandma Pham whispered, holding each other’s forearms, offering apologies and condolences. Grandma Le moved to the door. No one seemed to notice. I put down my plate.
I walked Grandma out and helped her into the car. We could hear the ruckus from three houses away. Things sounded as though they had just accelerated. Uncle Hoang came out the front door and slammed it behind him. His two older brothers, Hong and Hun, tailed him outside, yelling at him, pointing fingers.
Halfway down the driveway, Uncle Hoang whirled around and shook his fist at them. Voice cracking, he yelled, “Leave me alone. You have no right talking bad about my wife. You can’t tell me what to do. Leave me alone!”
“I’m your goddamn older brother. I tell you what I feel like telling you. You shut your mouth and listen, stupid younger brother!”
“Hey!” Uncle Hun shouted. “Where are you going? Don’t you walk away when your older brothers are talking to you!”
Catfish and Mandala Page 27
