The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (40 page)

“You haven't said anything about Lum,” Cherry reminded her. “Where is he?”

It was one of those rare times Cherry would recall her mother ever looking afraid. She couldn't even look at her while she spoke about him. The day after the police closed the investigation, only a week ago, their parents put Lum on a plane for Ho Chi Minh City. Her mother claimed it was temporary, six months at most, enough time for Lum to reevaluate his behavior and, though her mother didn't say it, for gossip to settle around Little Saigon.

“What happened to France?” Cherry asked.

Her mother shook her head. “Grandmère doesn't need another burden. Your daddy talked to his aunt and uncle in Saigon. They remembered Lum from when he was a baby and were willing to help.”

Cherry stared at her mother, determining if she was serious. “You sent him to Vietnam?”

“Vietnam was our home,” her mother said. “Lum can get better there.”

She claimed Lum wanted to go. Their father thought Vietnam could reshape his perspective, remind him of his humble roots, so when he returned to America, to them, he could have a fresh start. It sounded so redemptive and inspiring. They probably shamed him, guilted him into leaving. No one can force you from your home unless they make you believe you didn't deserve to be there.

Cherry lay back on the bed, aware of the stitches in her abdomen, trying her best to turn away, looking out the window into the hospital parking lot.

“Don't be ungrateful,” her mother said. “Daddy was prepared to disown Lum. I had to beg him to compromise. We couldn't lose both our children.”

“I'm still here,” Cherry pointed out.

“I know,” her mother said softly, her face looking even sadder. “You don't think this hurts me? To send my only son away?”

“You didn't have to,” Cherry said, thinking of Grandmother Vo and Dat, wondering where they were, how they'd managed to stay so silent, so innocent. How different this all could have been if she'd awakened earlier.

“This is the only way we can bring him back to us,” her mother said. “Give me six months, and this will be over.”

Her mother turned away, trying to regain her composure, her chest and shoulders heaving with every breath. Cherry watched silently, the words on her lips, but what good were they now? It was done. She'd slept through all of it. Grandpère was dead, her father was gone, and so was her brother. Her mother was all Cherry had. She imagined how easily Tuyet would turn on her when she realized Cherry was partly responsible. Cherry couldn't admit anything now, not yet. It would only enrage her mother, upset the entire family. Grandmother Vo and Dat could easily deny it. Who would they believe? What would her admission do but harm?

Six months. Maybe her mother was right. They could wait six months. She'd be wrong, they'd both be wrong, but that realization wouldn't occur, not fully, until the first six months had come and passed. And another. And another. But for that afternoon, in that moment, Cherry had to believe her mother. She had no other choice.

 

1983

Kim-Ly Vo
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

… I know I have tried to explain to you why I believed I had to marry Sanh instead of Officer Anderson. You don't ever address my excuses in your letters, and I understand you find it hard to believe me. I have no one to blame except myself. I keep trying to talk about it because I am still trying to understand it. How can you explain such a terrible mistake? Perhaps the only thing to do is seek forgiveness.

When you told me Officer Anderson wanted to marry me, all I could see was his liver spots, his white hair, the way he breathed so loudly through his mouth at dinner. I couldn't imagine us together. I still can't. Do you think he is still alive? I doubted very much, at his age, he would ever want to be a father.

Looking at my children now, I can't imagine not being a mother. That afternoon, when you left me at work, I saw my future ahead of me and I became frightened. Despite all the harmless flirting my sisters and I engaged in, we had never really considered a man we wanted to marry. I'd thought about Thao, but you had never approved of him, and rightly so. After we separated, as everyone knows, he went off and married that whore Lanh. I couldn't believe my only other option was Officer Anderson. It was a death sentence. I needed to find a way to save myself.

Sanh was my boss. He was educated, well spoken, and his family was respected. Not the handsomest man, but is that really important? I did not love him, but I knew he loved me already, and having that without even trying for it is an advantage. I did not doubt that he would make a good husband and father.

Of course, now I understand that even making a practical decision can have unimaginable consequences. I didn't feel I had any other choice. Sanh and I may have our problems, but I still must believe he will be a good provider for my children, and for you when you finally join us.…

Tuyet Truong

Westminster, California, USA

 

Chapter Eleven

SANH

P
ARIS
, F
RANCE
, 1997

As the white bandanna slipped from his forehead, Sanh was grateful for the distraction. He bowed his head to adjust the mourning cloth—wiping beads of sweat from his forehead, tucking the fabric behind his ears—as his family dutifully continued the rosary. Sanh hadn't recited the prayer in years, but doubted if anyone noticed. All eyes focused on his father's casket, lavishly adorned in yellow and red roses, while Sanh's returned to his weeping, careless son.

Sanh and Lum should have sat next to each other as the youngest son and grandson of the deceased. But the family had wisely separated father and son, with Sanh between his brothers, and his mother sitting with Lum on the opposite end of the pew. If anyone from the funeral had looked upon them now, they'd assume that Lum was the saddest mourner, the filial grandson; he must have cherished his grandpère so. Sanh knew the truth. His fingers involuntarily curled at the sound of every sob, every word Lum uttered in accordance with the prayers he knew nothing about.

After two long flights, with several delays and a few hurried calls home to check on Cherry's condition, Sanh had arrived on his parents' doorstep. His mother had opened the door to their apartment with a tentative smile, then opened the door further to reveal Lum, sitting in his grandfather's armchair. Stunned, Sanh allowed his mother to pull him inside, past his brothers and sisters-in-law who were naïvely chatting with Lum, into his father's former bedroom, where the air felt thick and heavy with incense.

Sanh had told his mother why he and Tuyet sent Lum to Vietnam. She clearly hadn't shared the news with the others. He'd wanted to save his mother from the horrific details of Cherry's attack, but Sanh now realized that had been a mistake. If she'd been privy to the traumatic specifics, the circumstances her grandson created that nearly killed her granddaughter, she never would have arranged for Lum to leave Vietnam after only a week, and without his parents' permission, to attend Grandpère's funeral.

“He arrived yesterday,” his mother said, sitting on the bed beside him. She looked more tired and frailer than he remembered from his last visit, which admittedly, had been several years ago. “He has been very upset.”

“About what?” Sanh asked.

His mother looked at him disapprovingly. “He needs to say good-bye, too.”

“You could have told me. You could have asked.”

“There was no time. You had enough to worry about.”

He stared at the closed door, imagining his son on the other side, his body unmarred, his mind, for the most part, intact. “Mother,” Sanh said, “he is the reason for all of my worries.”

“Sanh,” his mother said, “your father would have wanted the two of you reunited today.”

“It's too soon,” Sanh said. “I'm not ready, and he isn't, either—”

“It is the perfect time,” his mother said. “I just want my family to be together. For this one day. Please? Let me take care of both you and Lum.”

Sanh sighed. “And who's going to take care of you?”

Hoa reached over to hold his hand, squeezing it. “It has been too long since we were last together. Let us comfort each other.”

After the service, Sanh wanted to rest his head for only a few minutes, but his father's bedroom had become a regular stop on the mourning tour. With a polite knock and whispered apology, friends walked reverently around the small room, touching his father's belongings, pretending they understood what Hung must have suffered. Sanh wished they could finish the formalities, deposit their bereavement gifts of food and flowers on the table, and leave him alone.

Just as Sanh had fallen into a deep nap, another knock. His mother slipped in, closing the door behind her.

“Monsieur and Madame Bourdain are here,” she whispered.

“I thought Yen said they weren't coming,” Sanh said.

“I need a few minutes,” his mother said. “If I go out there too soon, I might say something regrettable.”

“You're the widow,” Sanh reminded her. “You can say anything you want.”

His mother smiled for the first time since he arrived, and Sanh's mood lifted at the sight of her familiar tiny, dark teeth. “Perhaps this is my opportunity? I can finally tell them what a careless son they raised? How we only invited them out of politeness?” She pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. “I wish you could stay longer.”

“I do, too,” he said. “But I need to get back to Tuyet and Cherry.”

“It would be a shame if you left without speaking to him.”

“Mother,” Sanh said with a sigh.

“Lum is suffering—”

“He feels guilty,” Sanh said. “There's nothing I can say to relieve him of that.”

“You sent your son away.”

“You sent Yen away,” Sanh reminded her, though he wished such fortunate options as law school existed for his son.

“That was different. We were afraid he was going to get enlisted.”

“Then it's not different. Lum was in danger, too, if he stayed in America. He needs time away from us. From me.”

“He needs his family,” his mother said.

“I'm sorry,” Sanh said, shaking his head.

“Lum made a terrible mistake. He knows that.”

“I don't think so. Not yet.”

“Sanh,” his mother said, sitting back, her face pinched in reproach. “You are his father. What has happened to you?”

L
ITTLE
S
AIGON
, C
ALIFORNIA
, 1980

Until they moved to America, Sanh never realized how rarely he spent time alone with his son. Someone was always around who wanted to hold or tend to Lum: his mother, one of his sisters-in-law. So on their first flight out of Malaysia, Sanh was surprised when Tuyet plopped the child into his lap and excused herself. Sanh had held Lum before, but usually when the boy was asleep and pliable. On the hot and stuffy airplane, Lum squirmed in Sanh's stiff arms, pulling away and kicking. Lifting his head up, the little boy released a frustrated wail, red-faced, eyes dripping with tears.

Tuyet returned from the lavatory scowling, and scooped the child up from Sanh's feeble grasp. “I could hear him from the back of the plane,” she hissed. “Can't you settle your own son?” And then, as if to prove the point, she rocked him against her chest until Lum fell asleep. “When the second child comes, I'm going to need your help. You can't rely on your family doing everything for you anymore.”

Sanh tried. During their orientation sessions, he and Tuyet took turns watching Lum while they attended English language classes and applied for jobs and housing assistance. But again, Vietnamese refugees surrounded them, only too happy to hold Lum whenever Sanh felt tired.

The refugee services found them a one-bedroom apartment in the small town of Tustin. Sanh was astonished by how empty the place felt, even with the several “Welcome to Your First Home” boxes—blankets, pillows, toilet paper, some mismatched cookware and silverware, bowls and plates—and quiet. While Sanh inflated the air mattress in the bedroom, a volunteer from the Vietnamese Catholic Charities center arrived with two bags of groceries. Sanh paused, lingering by the bedroom door as the woman offered to have the charity truck bring over some donated secondhand furniture.

“No, thank you,” Tuyet said. “I'm not Catholic.” Finally apart from her religious in-laws, she said this with relish, no longer having to pretend as she had when Sanh's parents insisted Lum be baptized.

“You don't need to be Catholic,” the volunteer said.

“We don't intend to convert to Catholicism, so don't expect that, either. Thank you for the food, but you don't need to come again.”

As Sanh walked out to the living room, Tuyet closed the front door.

“She was trying to be nice,” he said.

“I'm tired of handouts,” she said. “It's demeaning.”

Living on their own, without parents, Sanh finally understood how crucial practicality was in a wife and mother. Husbands and fathers were supposed to be the stubborn, unyielding ones. Yet in America, Tuyet revealed herself to be just as obstinate and proud as his father. When Tuyet and Lum fell asleep after a lunch of bologna sandwiches and sweetened rice milk, Sanh found the address for the Catholic charity on a flyer in one of the grocery bags and after consulting a map, made the twenty-minute walk.

The volunteer he spoke with was kind and she arranged to have the charity truck drop off a used sofa and dining room set the next day when Sanh knew Tuyet would be away for a sewing class at the refugee resource center. He would tell her they were from another assistance agency.