Listen, Slowly: Chapters 25–32

She whistles and our Honda Ôm buddy appears with the same four contenders from yesterday. They bargain, then yesterday’s driver inches forward, bringing along a boy on a bright red moped.

So weird but when you’re on a moped and slithering between cars, buses, bicycles, and hundreds of other mopeds, it feels strangely safe even while you’re pounded with brake screeches, engine revs, and ubiquitous beep-beeps. No one can go fast in this traffic.

And it makes me convulse with tears. I never knew my nose could produce so much snot or that saliva could pool in my open, twisted mouth.

“Then lie still and rest.”
I expect some biting indignation from Út, but she bargains that if we could have our old clothes back, we’ll go right to sleep.

In the dark, I hear buzzers, maddened I’m sure by the smell of sugar in my every pore. Three cane juices may have been excessive, but how was I to know I’d be gallivanting around during the height of bloodsucking hours?

She makes sure I see her scoop the net into the water then pantomimes reaching into the net and putting whatever she scooped up into a jar.

They announce themselves, though, by screaming joys or sadnesses into the grayness at such a high decibel that all the noises coalesce into a soothing lull.

The air breathes out hot and muggy, as always, but after a while hot is just hot. It’s true, a constant sticky film envelops my skin, but people have lived here for forever and they’ve managed to thrive.

It was hard to listen to her soliloquy while on leech alert.

Anh Minh blabs on and on about the legend of a turtle swimming to the surface with a sword that a Vietnamese king used to beat the Chinese. The turtle is immortalized in a stone statue in the middle of the pond, complete with a sword in its mouth.

We stop for chè ba màu, a dessert that even Montana is addicted to. It’s sold in every corner in Little Saigon. Sugar, fresh coconut milk, tapioca strings, three kinds of beans.

Bà, of course, understands her son’s dilemma, saying, “If he cannot arrive, it’s already more than enough that you are here.” I think speaking in Vietnamese makes her unreasonably diplomatic.

Both times the waiter brought baguettes and triangles of cow cheese.

She never eats dairy, saying it puts bubbles in her stomach. That’s her delicate way of alluding to farts.

He understands exactly what I want but refuses to hand over the cloths because the detective berated him into keeping us in the hotel/jail.

“You must register the importance of remaining within this locale and be prepared to leave the instant I require your presence.”

The guard in spite of my insistence has not divulged the exact nature of your husband’s message.

Outside sits a shiny, glowing cyclo, complete with a red padded seat and yellow fringes around a red canopy already pulled down to block the late afternoon sun.

Ông and I ventured to Chùa Vīnh Nghiêm only once together when your father was a newborn.

The pagoda was just built, the most extravagant in all of Sài Gòn.

He is all sinew, from his neck to his arms to his calves. Dad bikes to and from work and I thought he is in shape, but nothing like this man.

Bà presses another twenty-dollar bill into his callous palm.

The pagoda stands ornate and huge, with two sets of grand stairs leading to the main building, and off to one side sits a tower with layers of curly roofs.

Bà buys ebony chopsticks embedded with iridescent seashells, handing the merchant ten dollars and not wanting change.

“My entire body has weakened, my child, but as long as I can stand, I shall visit this city.”
Is that a cryptic way to say she’s sick?

No doubt the cyclo driver is waiting outside, stretched and ready for more nostalgic fun.

“Such fortune the last few days, the rain softened the earth and sped our goals considerably. I’m honored to report all obstacles have been pacified and we await your arrival.”

I open my mouth to suck in stale, scorching air. Still, it’s precious circulated air, something Ông did not have. I force myself to stop thinking about what Ông thought or did or said to pass the many many hours in the putrid darkness.

“That life is easy and hard, beautiful and ugly.”
“You get philosophical like this when you don’t eat enough.”

The wind and the rain will wear the boulder down to manageable rocks, and those rocks will dwindle to pebbles, which will become sand and will grind yet smaller until it becomes dust and enters the blood.

“Species in the genus Paa go by a variety of common names in English, including paa frogs, spiny frogs, and mountain bullfrogs.”

Út listens enraptured.

Bà too would love to have more time to spend with the tangible objects Ông had touched.

“Identification of all paa frogs remains challenging because the spines are both seasonal and restricted to mature males (though some adult female Yunnan paa frogs also have spines on their fingers). Complicating matters, the current taxonomy...”

“If I...pronounce...every...word...in the entire...book, mày có teach...me to read...in Vietnamese?”
Út knits her brows, no doubt plotting the precise steps for my language acquisition.