Butterfly yellow, p.10
Butterfly Yellow, page 10
Chores done, Hằng waits on the porch for Ông Mó-gần. But he’s probably spying on the boys. In her pocket sits the little notebook heavy with stories, now at 184, of which her brother has heard three. For each telling, she calculates out five sentences. It torments her brain, this squeezing of English.
Every sentence forces her to contemplate subject-predicate agreement, matching tenses (remembering the tense is determined by the first word in a verb phrase), transitive verbs needing a direct object, or intransitive verbs requiring none, or irregular verbs that can’t add -ed for past tense, then the pronoun must match the noun, then ridiculous articles “a, an, the” (if dismissed the meaning would remain unaltered), dangling modifiers, gerunds that can be subjects or objects, then parts of speech that require dizzying costume changes. After all that, she must pronounce the whole scheme and hope her brother can understand.
Fifteen blood-pricking sentences so far. In return her brother has kept silent while staring at his round bread and matching salty round meat. Such brutal throat-scratching food.
From the list she practices a story about bedtime, calculating each grammar rule as if doing mental math. Yet the first attempt always comes out awkward.
“Bà and I talk you night every before sleeps.”
No, should be “talked.” There’s an annoying little word that must tag along with the verb: “of.” They spoke more than one night, so “nights.” She remembers now, in English the adjective is positioned before the noun, thus “every night,” with the adjective determining the singular form. Should “sleep” be plural? No, sleep is an idea, like love, no s.
So many decisions in a single simple sentence. Exhausting, this elaborate dance of words. Her pencil wanders, and she’s surprised to finish with a word tree—a trick her father taught her to tame English, to rip open its core and see every vein.
She arranges four more trees about bedtime. The words fly themselves into the right slots, leaving time to turn toward the question she longs to ask.
In such a tree her desperation becomes affirmative, obliterating the question mark. A perfect sentence, concise and hopeful. If only she could squeeze her brother into a word tree. If not that, then she’ll do what’s possible—she’ll share the trees with him.
Next on the story list is his favorite fruit, trái măng cụt. Instead of a word tree, it would be easier still to feather brush a purple-black circular shell topped with a four-leaf star. She pencil-dusts an image where the upper half of the fruit is sliced off to reveal six bright white segments cuddled inside a brown-pink core. When they were in season, Bà used to exchange vitamin C tablets for baskets of purple-black balls.
A tree thick with leathery leaves and dark bark, used to ease stomach cramps. Slimy black seeds. A white segment between baby teeth. Inside penciled images, she imagines colors glowing raw and deep. A smell floral, ripe, fleeting like the passing of a jasmine peddler at dawn. A taste soft, slightly acidic, smoothly sweet. So real she almost licks the page. A puddle pools in her mouth.
Linh will remember. Memories will return on his tongue.
She pockets the notebook and runs toward her brother, only to realize he’s kilometers away. But never again a horse for her. Perhaps she can drive Red. Ly-Roi will have to forgive her. Near the truck she sees a bicycle, leaning, rusting, against the side of an old barn.
Pushy Uncle
As soon as LeeRoy sees Hằng wobble back to work, he pinches his lips to hush. It’s her business if she aims to man-handle a rusty, creaky bicycle. He might not be the world’s best cowboy, but he knows to pick an old trail horse over a pile of junk that requires muscle work.
All afternoon they keep at the mesquite. The roots ain’t budging. When they run out of water, LeeRoy barely calls out, “Quitting time,” before they all throw down their shovels.
Close to the house, LeeRoy and H stop short seeing a low-riding sports car. Last time her uncle showed up he was pushy with getting her to sign this, agree to that. Only David is innocent enough to keep trotting.
The uncle comes running toward the boy. “Linh, I have great news.”
The horse looks up while the boy keeps his eyes on the stable. The uncle looks hurt. LeeRoy can’t help it. He always has to make everybody feel better. “Hey there, Uncle. David rides past me all the time. Did you happen to snatch up any more of them pastries?”
Ignoring LeeRoy, the man heads straight to his niece and talks fast and low in their language. Hằng looks like she wants to get away.
LeeRoy slips down and tries to distract the uncle. Figuring Hằng will remember the gesture the next time she decides to sass him.
“Settle something for us, will ya? The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, does it go Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah Wah Wah Wah, gunfire, gunfire, or like this.” He points to Hằng.
She jumps right in. “O-Ó-O-Ò Hoa Hoa Hoa.”
LeeRoy insists, “Which is it? I’m right, right?”
The uncle pulls out a smile that is too sly for LeeRoy’s peace of mind. “Here’s the deal, whoever I pick has to do me one tiny favor, got it?” He repeats the instructions in Vietnamese.
Nods all around.
“Everybody hears O-Ó-O-Ò Hoa Hoa Hoa,” the uncle decides, then grips Hằng’s elbow to escort her to his car.
“Y’all cheated,” LeeRoy yells. By then, those two are arguing. Hằng refuses to get in, pushes back a piece of paper he’s pressing on her.
“You show him, H.”
They look up and actually shush him. Walking inside, LeeRoy gets in the last word. “Fine, it’s not like I’m dying for y’all’s company.”
Truth to Tell
Chú Quốc attempts a stern face. “You will sign.”
Hằng feels no threat. “I must read it slowly.”
He softens, as if remembering to act like a parent. He asks if Ly-Roi is really gone before pulling out a bag. “Not paté chaud, but I think you like it better.”
He hands Hằng something wrapped in white paper. She smiles before opening, nostrils flaring. There’s no mistaking the mix of crispy baguette, seasoned pork, pickled carrot along with daikon, and zingy cilantro, the last three ingredients added just before eating to avoid sogging the bread. She has not known she has been longing for bánh mì until the first bite.
“Keep chewing, sign here and here.”
He seems nervous.
Hằng’s cheeks puff out. “I must read it.”
“Skim it, all accurate. You read English?”
She gives him a look that quiets him as she finishes her sandwich. Reading English sinks into her as easily as breathing. Pronouncing such an illogical language, though, prickles her every pore.
She reads:
Two people, a Vietnamese lady and an American man, came to our school and told us to go home and get one sibling, the younger the better. Then on several mini buses they drove us to the airport. There, they separated us by age. I thought we were to perform a song for someone important, or that each student group might receive prizes for being outstanding. Then I realized we were all labeled orphans. I ran to find my brother. An American man was carrying him up a plane ladder. I lunged for my brother, but another American held me back. I screamed. My brother saw me and struggled to get down. He too screamed as he disappeared inside the plane. How he cried for me. The door shut. I was dragged back inside the airport where I watched the airplane shrink in the sky.
Hằng looks confused. “Bà told you?”
“How else would I know?” Chú Quốc tries to smile, to be neutral, but Hằng knows he has embellished here and there to build more pathos for the judge.
“Not accurate, no one came to the school to get us.”
“How did you get to the airport?”
Hằng opens her mouth. No words escape. Her face contorts.
“You don’t have to remember.” Her uncle softens his voice. “The letter does it.”
But she shakes her head and folds the letter, putting it back in its envelope. “I have a truth to tell.”
Chú Quốc wrinkles his brows, calculating something. “Will it help get Linh back?”
“No.”
Her uncle bites his lip. “Tell me something else for now, something happy, something you want everyone to know.”
Skin Peeling Off Bones
“Father never learned about Linh. Bà always said Father was spared a knotted gut, and that at times not knowing is life’s best gift. She wasn’t allowed such blindness. In the days right before the war ended, Bà was either bribing someone to retrieve Father’s body or pleading with someone else to trace Linh’s fate.
“We learned nothing more of Linh, but luck aligned for finding Father. His body was brought to the back door wrapped in two rice sacks. Bà spent the rest of her gold burying him in a cemetery squeezed tight with soldiers. All on the losing side. Three years later the Communists announced the land would be converted to a memorial for their soldiers. Bodies not moved would rest for eternity beneath cement, beneath footsteps.
“Using a minor portion of the money you sent, Bà hired boys to dig up Father’s grave. I went with her on that moon-bright night when his wooden coffin was opened. Rows and rows of bent backs were already there, lifting leathery bodies up to the ground. We knew to bring two buckets of water. We knew to bring a pillowcase to carry him home.
“Everyone lit incense. Everyone murmured something to the dead, a communal lullaby that muffled individual cries.
“A kind grandmother, older than Bà would ever become, taught us how to peel blackened skin from bones and wash them spotless in the other bucket. I was not allowed to attend to Father’s head, eyeholes sunken, no nose, mouth gaping, teeth large and protruding, cheekbones pointy on his taut face. Bà chanted as she washed the head and brought up to the moonlight a clean skull. Father felt cool and wrinkly and smelled of earth. His skin lifted in batches, like peeling off silk gloves. I placed what was left of Father, his skull, his long bones, his short bones, into the pillowcase. Pouring in the wash water, we returned his hair and skin and teeth and lumps to the coffin, which boys covered again with dirt. All mourners were women and girls and boys. No men. Our men were either dead or imprisoned or hiding.
“We brought Father home and Mother rose from her bed and lit incense. We pried up the tiles under the divan. Beneath the tiles, we scooped out earth with spoons and two pans. Deep enough to fit a large tin can that once held rice grains. Mother mumbled good-bye to his skull, to each long bone, to each short bone as she arranged them in the can. Bà scattered dried herbs. She closed the lid and we lowered him to the ground and patted dirt around the can. Then we replaced the tiles, crooked and wobbly, covered by the divan. The extra dirt we took months to scatter outside, a few palms at a time. Nothing to cause suspicion.
“No one talked of Father out loud. Late at night, though, I often heard Bà whisper to him about our plans to reunite with Linh, about you in the west, about Mother crying in her bed, about me devouring his old English studies as if each word was a cooked grain to be savored long and deep. She told him she had planned to burn all his books so the authorities would not target us. Yet how I pleaded to keep one magazine with horses and one grammar book with word trees. We hid the books inside a sack, within a wall, behind the ancestral altar, bringing them alive only in flickering candlelight.”
Hằng looks up to an uncle convulsing in silence. Odd to witness so much snot and tears and shoulder quakes, all circulating without sound. Why is he crying upon hearing her best story, her happy story?
She’s relieved to not have told of her eventual removal from school. Would her uncle have shuddered over that story? What about the Communist quadrant leader who insisted Mother come out and greet him?
The leader happened by every dinnertime, quoting Hồ Chí Minh while smoking in the living room. Bà was the only one to sit with him. She talked as if he was important, as if she owed him her house and life.
A favorite quote of his was “Labor is the glory.” The leader was irritated hearing of Mother’s weepy weakness. Everyone must work, he shouted. Everyone must be useful to Việt Nam. No parasites. If one can’t offer brains, then one can contribute sweat by cleaning streets, unclogging sewers, picking caterpillars from leafy greens. Bà nodded and offered him more wine, telling Hằng in secret she didn’t bother to correct the leader because cruel people like him exist on every side, in every war. His side won so he got to be right. If the South had won, no doubt the same cruelty would find targets in those who sided with the North, or those who sided with no one at all. His words were only that, words, and for his ears alone. Thousands of years had proven that, while nodding, listeners plotted ways to go around such inflated words.
Bà did not tell the man that she alone raised her sons by using her hands to grow herbs and her brains to turn the plants into ornaments like bonsai, starting a craze as lucrative as grafting orchids. Nor did Bà explain Mother had studied Ayurveda beauty secrets in India and, by creating lotions and oils, supported her husband through enough English courses for him to qualify as a translator.
Bà always said, “Chết thì chết, sống thì sống, có nhau.” Die we die. Live we live. With each other. But she died without any family nearby.
Hằng no longer can determine which story is worse than the next. The ugliness on the boat and the island, she knows to keep to herself. But the rest of her many stories, which ones can she tell?
Particularly because of what her uncle’s wife had whispered during the one night Hằng was in their house. “Don’t tell people you came by boat. Better yet, don’t talk about your old life at all,” her aunt advised. “Telling would only bring judgment and pity. Better to smile, lift your head, forget, do everything right. Soon your life will be so perfect you will have no need to remember, much less tell.”
The aunt slipped out of the room before Hằng thought to reply, “You know nothing.”
She smiles at her collapsed uncle, conveying she can tell a better story, a happier story. But he jumps out of the car. She does too, on her side. Perhaps he would like to walk, perhaps she should pat his arm. The way Bà used to calm her.
Just as Hằng closes her door, her uncle climbs back in and speeds away, probably breaking into full-throated sobs.
She blinks away the twirling dust. The unsigned letter still in her hand.
Swells of Saliva
David just wants to cram down eggs and bacon without fuss. But as soon as LeeRoy and the girl sit, they start in on each other. So boring, a whole summer of them fighting. He wants so bad to shout, “Shut up.” With Mama as his mama though, he can’t ever say “shut up” out loud. He misses her. Since getting dragged into the big punishment, he’s been too tired to say more than “Morning” and “Night.”
LeeRoy grumbles while chewing through a whole biscuit, “Red ain’t pulling out that devil stump, she’s been put upon enough.”
The girl bangs down her fork, says something fierce. LeeRoy swears she speaks English, but David makes out only the word “idea.”
LeeRoy stabs his grits. “Talk about being stubborn, you make mules seem downright congenial.”
She comes right back with something or other, all the while chewing. The three of them eat fast, then grab everything halfway edible and stuff it all in cloths. It’s going to be another long, windless, stinking day frying under the sun.
The phone rings. The same man has been calling since screeching out of here yesterday in his burgundy sports car. A sweet ride, but nothing compared to towering over the world on Linh. The phone keeps ringing while they all chew and blink. From his room Mr. Morgan yells, “And?”
LeeRoy picks up and hands it straight to her. She listens a good long while before saying, “No.” The phone goes back on the wall.
“C’mon, just sign whatever your uncle wants so we can make an extra hundred bucks and fix up Red and get outta here.” LeeRoy looks hopeful.
She shakes her head and chomps on a banana like it’s peanut brittle.
A voice of terror hollers from the back, “Git.”
They go.
Outside, the girl runs over and climbs into Red. Now LeeRoy has a turn at head shaking, so hard his mustache might come loose. They go at it as he tries to pull her out of his truck. She talks long and fast.
LeeRoy answers, “You mean it, you’ll sign the damn letter and let me mail it to him?”
She nods and mumbles.
“Tonight then.” LeeRoy actually smiles before getting in Red.
David knows better than to ride with them. Mama’s orders. He follows on Linh. Frankie the donkey comes last, pulling the equipment trailer.
When David catches up at the mesquite stump, they’re at it again.
“If you cain’t manage a knot, then get out of the way.” LeeRoy picks up the girl and sets her aside like a puppy. “I swear to the Almighty, when I get out of this hellhole you will never catch me doing a lick of ranch work ever again.”
The girl stomps back to her spot. She throws one end of a rope around the stump and tries a weird loop, all the while grumbling.
LeeRoy sighs. “You’re about as pleasant as hugging a rosebush but I’ll go drive, cause Miss Know-It-All here says so.”
The truck idea is pretty good thinking, David has to admit. Yesterday they dug and heaved and pulled and yanked, with two horses and a bicycle of all things, but that stump barely budged. It took everything they had to hack away the branches and to saw off the trunk.
LeeRoy loops his end of the rope to a truck trailer hook. He gets in. The engine is loud. Red inches forward. A little more. The rope is strained, a little more, more. Then a snap right in the middle. Two pieces of rope go flying, one end smacking Red’s already wounded side.
“Doggone it, mine is the most punished truck on God’s green earth!” LeeRoy gets out, smooths his palm over a slight dent. He turns toward the girl, his eyes trying to be mean. But he can’t pull it off. There’s no real threat from him no matter what comes out his mouth. “Got any other notion?”
