Butterfly Yellow: Part 1

In his prime at twenty-nine, he sits on an incensed bronco like he’s on a swing.

That same morning, using halting English aided by scratchy illustrations, Hằng persuaded her cousin En-Di (illogically spelled “Angie”) to risk her own father’s fury and drive her to the bus station.

Dad would never let you go. But then he says no to everything. You have to do this alone? He’s going to be livid, and I guess I can say you insisted and cried and were going to drive off and wreck my Mustang.

There are steps that must be done, and once done, another step awaits. The last step, after six years of minute planning by her grandmother, is a bus ride away.

It shocks her that six years ago she was that naive and silly.

Since junior high, he’s been Lee. This morning he bunched Lee to Roy and gave himself some on-the-road gumption.

Hằng hides behind a standing picture of a sugar-glazed cake the size of her torso. The image alone induces a swollen tongue and a stomachache.

The man has an easy, slow, understandable lilt.

Ripened-papaya hair, speckled face, pillow middle, puffy cheeks, and those eyes, those beaming eyes belong to someone who has received a sky size of indulgence.

He does love the sensation of words buzzing inside his throat, especially loves to wrap them around a Texas contour. He spent all last year in the library looking up cowboy slangs.

Hằng leans out the window, real air enthralling despite being whipped and hot.

How the immaculate cowboy talks.

Three concise words, without any fat.

While driving, LeeRoy keeps having to wrangle an unruly map and repeat “Mesquite,” “Street,” “Amarillo,” and “Texas” until his tongue knots into a lariat loop.

But they were spared the ubiquitous snaky sounds of English and so loved this word most.

“A-ma-ri-lo” rang out in a singsong cadence, hinting that their little boy might be finding reasons to sing.

“I got coerced into being a taxicab. The most trying ten dollars I ever did earn. Now if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got an urgency.”

LeeRoy lifts the girl, light as a doll, carries her fire-rescue style to a swing as decrepit as the porch it occupies.

“Don’t play coy with me, I know you’re busting with stories. Might as well be me you tell it all to. Your brother?”

No other sound marred the desert night, and the quiet sang in my ears.

The dimmer the evening turns, the more her face glows ashen.

It was always the poised, tearless patients that worried Mrs. Brown the most.

In their last year, when a new quadrant Communist leader began a forceful courting of Mother, Bà knew to appease him with his favorite glutinous rice and fatty sausages, along with rice wine.

Bà smiled while propped against pillows on the mosquito-netted divan.

Sitting straight, her skeletal hands massaged the blue-purple monstrosity inside her leg.

On each flower, a center cone springs up like a tiny thumb while red petals outlined in yellow point to the ground, as if reminding the ebullient thumb to stay centered.

So relieved the money is accounted for, he almost thanks Mrs. Brown then remembers he has cause to be downright ornery.

Yet how he talked, all the more once they were away from the airport and driving alongside clogs of cars, each vying to go fastest.

She must focus on the new address and on swallowing spit to appease stomach growls.

She hopes the meaning in English carries more vigor, the way Vietnamese boys’ names translate to Bravery, Brightness, Intelligence, Prosperity, Strength.

Dynamites must have exploded inside his nose bridge, releasing a red flood that left his caterpillar mustache matted and forlorn.

I ain’t thanking you for nothing, so don’t go getting on your high horse and yelling ‘You’re welcome’ in my face.

His nose throbs and his entire back is put out from getting trounced at the Lone Star, but at least LeeRoy has gotten to shoot off his mouth for a good long while.

Her words stretch and regroup, bypassing her usual convoluted way of pronouncing things and sending forth clear syllables in a down-right, upbeat rap.

She holds out her arms. He’s not flinging himself into them, not yet. Still she prepares for skin-to-skin, for simultaneous sobs, for his shaved hair to tickle her chin, for his sinewy biceps to squeeze her like metal pipes.

“I’d give anything to start yesterday all over. She’s a bona fide pain in the neck.”

Hằng doesn’t care about their tempers or her own queasiness or how her uncle was able to get Mrs. Brown to divulge this new address.

Hằng admonishes herself for such carelessness.

He’s not just alive, his body pumps rich blood beneath glossy skin and is endowed with enough protein to twist sinews tight.

Everyone but the real cowboy is talking at once. Her uncle the loudest. Hisses, fleeting as fireflies, dot the air.