Gia

1.

 

When I was five, our house got torn down.

 

          My mom came home early one night and in her haste, she started packing up clothes and putting them in my toy boxes. She would pick up two of those boxes at a time and, in her silk áo dài and heels post office uniform, she ran down the rotten wooden stairs whose steps were as small as a ladder’s. Peering out the balcony, past the thorns of the cactus my mom planted in taped-up styrofoam boxes, I could see her gold attire slowly soaking up the mud from the monsoon the night before. She would throw boxes after boxes on the rusty, slimy, bed of the three-wheeled cabin-less pickup truck. When I turned around, I saw her again, this time, her telling me to help tie our mattress up, then help her carry my steel desk, then the CRT TV, then the seven-foot tall rusty steel wardrobe our grandfather bought us the day before Vietnam entered a decade-long embargo.

 

          The next morning, after waking up on the straw mat placed against the prickly, nails-sticking-out wooden floorboards of my room, I brushed my teeth, snapped off my fourth tooth, put on my uniform, and was driven to school with a cotton ball in my mouth. That afternoon, I went home to see my grandfather talking to a man dressed in the nicest clothing and smelled like the most expensive scent. They shook hands, he left, my grandfather cried and lit three incense for his parents who were sitting on the family pedestal.

 

          That night, the straw mat was not on wooden floors. That night, it laid against a cold tiled floor while the breeze of the night blew through a window, carrying with it a new breath. That night, in the empty, four-storey mansion-turned-kindergarten-turned-new-home, I slept with my eyes open, staring back at those of a black, formless figure standing over me with a smile that reached its ears and a slow, deep chuckle.

 

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2.

 

When I was eight, our house got a lot emptier.

 

          My mom and I traveled to a pagoda in a different province. We were supposed to do stuff there but the power went out the whole day so we all sat together under the scorching sun for hours until the next bus came to take us home or until the power came back.

         

          While I was hopping among the ruins of the pagoda’s demolished west wing, my mom received a call from home about how grandma was acting funny. They said she just came back from a shopping trip at Bà Chiểu market and felt disoriented. My mom told them to give her some lemon and honey tea to loosen her tongue and massage her neck area a little to expel the toxic winds. They called again fifteen minutes later saying that her tongue was sticking out and that she had a lisp. My mom asked them how long she had been out in the sun and they said an hour. An hour on a forty-degree day?! she yelled. Take her to the hospital, she might have had a stroke. 

 

          Fifteen minutes later they called again. They said grandma couldn’t stand on her own anymore. Goddammit, I thought I told you to take her to the hospital, what the fuck were you doing for fifteen minutes? My mom yelled into the phone. Her cursing alerted the nearby monks, but none dared stop her. My mom waved me over after her call was done.

 

          Your grandma had a stroke. She’s being admitted to the hospital right now. I called 115 for her but it might be too late. Your selfish aunt was too busy running her stupid gambling ring to care about her fucking mother even though she could have died.

My mom was furious. I tried to blow the flames out of her, but it only got hotter, and the ashes singed my face so I stopped. She called the bus company, and they said there would be another bus coming around 2 A.M. that night, nearly twelve hours away. Throughout the day, my mom would just wander around the pagoda, but there was nearly nothing. Without power, there was no entertainment. Without the west wing, there was no place to pray since all the buddhas that were supposed to bring good health were all moved to a different pagoda in the middle of buffalo-tipping nowhere. Twelve hours felt like a lifetime. 

 

          It was 1:30 A.M. Mom woke me up from my half-slumber and told me to bow to say thank you to the monks who let us stay for so long. We sat on the highway and waited for the “bus” and in minutes, one pulled up with the attendant pushing us up an overcrowded minivan full of dialects from all the southern and western provinces. Sometime along the trip, I fell asleep on my mom’s shoulder and woke up to her carrying me in her arms. The night was cold and the streets were silent lest for a few speed devils racing highway patrols on the boulevard outside our alley. A hundred meters in was our home, more silent than usual. When the gates opened, we didn’t hear the usual clunking noise of my granddad’s wheeled ottoman that he used to move around. We didn’t hear the clinking of my aunt’s bracelets as she counted money in her room after a gambling session. We didn’t hear the coughing of my uncle when he slept on the third floor. That night, there were only my mom and I, and a foreign set of footsteps walking up and down our staircase as we slept until the next morning.

 

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3.

 

When I was ten, I learned Hán Viêt vocabulary.

 

          I learned that Vietnamese vocabulary comprised of three roots: Thuân Viêt (pure Viet), Hán Viêt (Sino-Vietnamese), and Tù muon (borrowed words). I learned that Hán Viêt is used in formal contexts and works best when combined with other words. I learned that Thuân Viêt is easier to understand, and the meanings are more literal.

 

          For the first time, I learned that the word “house” in English translated to nhà in Thuân Viêt, gia in Hán Viêt. Nhà as in ngôi nhà, nhà cao tâng, nhà bâng. Gia as in… well… just gia. I didn’t really understand why I couldn’t combine it with other words to make new words that mean house.

 

          That night, while my mom drove me home from English school at 9 P.M., I asked my mom if there was a way we could combine it. She said I should just keep my mouth closed to not inhale the smog and save the questions for later when we got home. But I never got my answer. Instead, I got a feud simmering in the kitchen, about to boil over. My granddad, grandma, aunt, and uncle sat, eyes piercing each other through the skull. 

 

          Chiến, here’s your food, darling. Take it and go eat upstairs, okay? Whatever you do, don’t come downstairs. Got that? Just work on your homework, play music, do whatever, alright honey? My mom handed me my bowl of Hainanese chicken rice, and I hurried upstairs as she wished.

 

          Downstairs, in the kitchen, talking became shouting became standoffs became full-on war. I could hear my granddad slamming the glass dining table with the stumps of his leprotic hand. I could hear my paralyzed grandma screeching and crying words that she probably didn’t even understand. I could hear my aunt throwing her stainless steel chair to the ground, and I could hear my disgruntled family moving the fight through the house, up to the living room while my two dogs howled and barked along.

 

          Hey! A scream. Put it down uncle. It doesn’t have to be like this.

 

          I bursted out from my room and slid down the staircase, peeking at the fight. My uncle stood in front of my mother who was shielding my grandfather. My uncle had a meat cleaver.

 

          Let him fucking cut me! He wouldn’t dare! If he was so gangster he wouldn’t have come back here to this house, begging for food outside our door. This crackhead is not my son. He will never be one. 

 

          I immediately ran to my room and rummaged to my mom’s first aid kit, trying to find all the peroxide, gauze, cotton balls, band-aids, tetracycline, povidine, paracetamol I could find. I had to be ready. I had to stop mom’s bleeding if it happened.

 

          A scream from downstairs.

 

          Silence.

 

          There was nothing but the humming of my AC and the ringing of the tinnitus in my ear and the whimpering of the dogs.

                   

          Moments later, my door opened.

 

          Ai dó? Mẹ ha me? Me có sao không? Có chay máu không me?

 

          My mom raised her arm. A large, bulging bruise on her wrist. A cracked bone. Your granddad hit me, she said. He reached for the wooden plank we used to extend the tarp and tried to kill your uncle with it. I stopped him. It’s okay. Stop crying son, it’ll be alright. Your uncle is gone now. He said he’ll never come back.

 

          But he did. 

 

          When I was twelve, he returned, thinner than ever. Heroin rotted him to his bones. He slept outside our house until my mom found him when she went shopping for groceries. This time, my granddad let him stay. The housekeeper cleaned out his old room on the third floor, and he slept there. A mattress, a CRT TV, a wireless bell to call for help, and a crack pipe was all we gave to him. 

He stayed in our house and though he was fed good food by my mom, he still grew thinner. The family doctor took his blood sample and said he had AIDS and pancreatic cancer, that he’d die within a month, that we should spend more time with him, talk to him, give him some company. 

 

          Little did we know, we’d find his body the next morning. He was sitting on the toilet when he died. His hands covered his private parts, his face fraught with distress, as if he never got to say sorry to his father, as if he wanted to take care of his ailing mother but never had the strength to, as if the dried tears on his face was the last thing he left behind.

 

          Three days later we burned him. His shrine joined our ancestors’ outside my room. That night I slept, but I kept dreaming of him. I dreamt of him driving me home from school and buying me game cards for my addiction. I dreamt of him lying alone in his room, wilting away slowly. I dreamt of him sitting against the wall on his mattress trying to watch his favorite comedian on TV and laugh away the ulcer. Sometimes I wondered if those really were dreams, or was I just trying to forget I saw him in his room long after he passed?

 

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4. 

 

When I was fourteen, the real estate website was my homepage.

 

          I would have dozens of bookmarks of houses from all around Saigon ready, while I waited for mom to come home. 

 

          Chien, I thought I told you to study. She scolded me upon returning from work. Let the adults do this okay? You just focus on your study. Studying will get you places. Studying will give you a future. I don’t want you to work in a post office like I do. Hand me the computer.

 

          My mom took my laptop and sat on the floor, browsing through the bookmarks I left her. She’d sit with her worn notebook and nearly empty pen, writing down addresses and phone numbers or scratching away those that don’t work. Oftentimes she’d shake her wrist, revealing the bruise that hadn’t faded in four years.

 

          Maybe in the future, after you graduate, I’ll retire, she told me. I’ve been in this field for twenty-two years with no promotion. I think I’ll open up a food stand. I like cooking, I think I’ll do great. Maybe I can sell sticky rice, or maybe if you reside in America, you can ship clothes back home, and I’ll sell them! People love American stuff here.

 

          Watching her talk with hope and glimmer in her eyes made me happy. It was rare for her to laugh or smile. No, more like it was rare for anyone to catch her laugh or smile. Her shift usually starts at 8 A.M. and ends at 11 P.M. In other words, I had only one hour in the morning and one at night to catch it, and I did that day.

 

          Come on, focus on studying okay? You have to get good scores to study abroad. Imagine, you could be going to Harvard. Full ride scholarships. You could be the pride of the family. Can you imagine how grand that would be? Truong Quoc Chien. The only Truong in the family with a college degree in the best school in the world. Mommy would be so proud of you. Try your best, okay? You have to prove them wrong. You have to prove that you could rise above the adversary, that you’re strong. Prove to them that you’re not worthless, that your mother is not worthless, that all your education would carry you towards the green card.

I liked whenever my mom’s eyes sparkled like that. That was why I couldn’t tell her that I never wanted to go to America. 

 

          Maybe I just wanted to stay in Vietnam, to live with her in a nice and pretty house somewhere close to downtown. Maybe a house somewhere with a large garden, so I can start my little farm and sell the produce at the local market. Maybe a house with a tall ceiling, so I can run my own car wash/repair shop. Maybe a house with good ventilation, so I can make good food with mom and sell them to patrons far and wide. Maybe a house that’s small and quiet, one where us two can stay and be happy without having to hear my paralyzed grandma crying after another one of her teeth was knocked out by my granddad’s stumpy hands after she decided not to eat the food he bought.

 

          I’m gonna go get some milk from downstairs, I told her, and left the room, passing by the shrine room with its incense and candles still burning. I walked downstairs, passed through my grandparents’ room where they slept, then into the kitchen where I poured myself a cold glass of milk. I carried the glass outside and sat in the living room while my dogs followed me through the open door.

 

          Lineage… gia the. Another gia word, but still didn’t mean “house.”

 

          I took a long sip and returned to my room.

 

          What took you so long?

 

          I got two glasses, I lied to her. Do you want me to help you look for houses?

         

          Are you done with schoolwork?

 

          Yeah, all done, I lied again. Come on, Mom, many hands make light work. Here, give me the laptop. I’ll do the searching.

We need a place close by that’s not too expensive. She noted down addresses and phone numbers. We also need a big enough house, big enough for five.

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          Five? There’s only two of us.

 

          My sister, her husband, and her daughter. They needed a place. They ran away from their home. The mother-in-law… she’s unbearable. So yes, we have to find a house for five. Remember, your má nuôi can’t work nor walk because of her leg, so we need a place that’s close to the market if it’s possible.

 

          Shouldn’t we increase the price range, then?

 

          We can’t afford any more than $25,000. Please try your best honey.

 

          As we combed through the web, a word popped up in my mind.

 

          Gia cu… Home.

 

          I smiled inside, thinking how great life would be if we had that.

 

 

5.

When I was fifteen, I was removed from the Truong family tree.

 

          It was around Tet that we got a call from Canada. My aunt who fled the country in the eighties called home for the first time in decades. She asked about our lives and how we lived. Then she asked to talk to me. Though I was sitting right beside my mom playing on my computer, she still told my aunt that I was doing homework, and I couldn’t answer right now.

 

          You’re not rehearsed yet, she told me. You have to remember to say these things to your aunt, okay? Tell her that mommy is working in a shoe factory ten miles away from home and earns $350 a month. Then, if she asked, tell her that your má nuôi and her husband are struggling to make ends meet but they’re living happily with their child. Then, only when pressed, tell her that your father does businesses in Chinatown and that we’re separated but he still comes back every now and then to take me out for dinner. Tell her that mommy is mad at him, so she doesn’t want to see him, okay? A little white lie won’t hurt.

 

          I smiled and nodded obediently. After all, if these lies sounded more realistic than what was happening, why not? No one wanted to hear that postal workers in Vietnam made less than shoe factory workers. No one wanted to hear that $400 a month in a third world country was barely livable for a family. No one wanted to hear that my má nuôi tried to hang herself while her husband was away delivering hundreds of kilos of sugar and condensed milk to cafes around the city on a shitty moped. No one wanted to hear that my father was gone for nearly eight years and how when he was around, he spent most of his time avoiding cops.

         

          No one wanted to hear the truth, because it wasn’t their truth.

 

          After rehearsing my lines, I took over the call. My aunt asked about all the things my mom prepared me for. I answered them without hesitation. Questions after questions, the friendly call quickly turned into an interrogation for legitimacy. Then, a pause.

My aunt talked to her husband in the background for a while before she returned.

 

          Can you pass the phone back to your mom? I have something I wanted to tell her.

 

          My mom took over the call and talked to my aunt while I went back to my video games. A while later, she collapsed in the bathroom and started weeping loudly.

 

          Me! Me có sao không? Sao me khóc?

 

          My mom put the call on speaker, and I could hear my aunt word for word. “I’m giving you $60,000 so that you guys could buy a house for all five of you. Don’t worry about paying it back for now. Get yourself a nice place first.”

 

          My mom and I thanked her so much on the phone that night. We kept saying the word until it lost meaning, and the spelling became foreign to us.

 

          That night, we found a house and contacted the owner the next morning. Within a month of us signing the contract, we moved out of the house, and my name was forever crossed off the family tree. No more inheritance, no more memory, no more Chien.

          On our first night at the new house, I slept peacefully for the first time. That night, the only footsteps I could hear was that of my neighbor’s lost peacock prancing on our roof.

 

 

6.

In Vietnam, there’s a song about family that goes like this:

 

          Father is a yellow candle. Mother is a green candle. I am a pink candle. 

 

          Three shining candle lights. Light up a family.

 

          When I was sixteen, I found the yellow candle in Chí Hòa prison.

 

          It was noon during a P.E. class when my mom came to pick me up from school. Her arrival was unannounced, but upon meeting her, I was given a windbreaker and a facemask.

 

          Grab your stuff from class, put this on and come with me. Hurry, okay?

 

          I came back to her with my backpack, hopped on her scooter, and got driven off to a district I seldomly travel to. She drove through the gate of the place, parked her bike, and we walked towards the check-in desk where my aunt waited. There, we grabbed our paperwork and walked deeper into the old, repurposed French colonial fort and sat on benches, waiting in front of a caged alley that looked no more different than an elevated pig feeding trough.

 

          Do you know why we’re here? my mom asked and held my hand.

 

          No, I don’t have a clue, I lied to her. Of course I knew why we were there. I was visiting the father whose face I only remember from a water-soaked photo that’s stuck to my desk, old rotting family albums, and an envelope hiding in the back of our wardrobe.

You’ll see him soon enough.

 

          A loud buzzer ripped through the air, and sounds of metal gates spontaneously opened. In the feeding troughs, men wearing white- and green-striped clothes walked out. Some were tattooed, some weren’t. Some frail, some titanic. And in the midst of that was a mirror reflection of myself, walking inside a cage amongst men who worshipped him like a saint.

         

          That’s Daddy, she told me. Come on, let’s go say hi to him.

 

          I approached him in front of a segment of the cage that was unpopulated with other family members visiting their husband, son, father, uncle. As our eyes met, I felt an emptiness in my soul. Am I supposed to talk to him? Why? What’s he ever done for me? 

 

          Then I felt rage. As I looked at the tattoos on his arms, I was reminded of the countless times he took me out on rides around the city, only to stop at a hotel, a politician’s, a lawyer’s, a cop’s, the back of a bar, the corner of a park to sell packets of heroin and crack pipes that he used to craft in his free time.

 

          Hi, son. Remember me?

 

          Yeah.

 

          How are you, kiddo? Doing good in school?

         

          Uh-huh.

 

          Chien, respect your father! He hasn’t seen you in almost a decade. Raised you or not, he’s still your father by blood, and you will show him politeness.

 

          Just let me do the talking, honey. I know I made a lot of mistakes in the past. I know I wasn’t there for you or your mother but know in my heart that I love you both. I have your names tattooed on my back to remind me everyday that you’re important. 

 

          How are you? I asked him, pretending I did not hear a word he said.

 

          I’m good. Food here’s not too bad, can’t beat the pork your mom prepares and brings over every month though.

 

          I turned back to look at her, but my eyes couldn’t help but pierce her heart. I wanted to ask her why she would bring food to someone who was so ungrateful, but I couldn’t. I wanted to know why she would take days off work every month to go visit him when she could’ve used those to relax after twelve hours of work every day for fifteen years. 

 

          But she only smiled. Hurt, but still smiling. Your dad liked the caramelized pork. I didn’t want him to eat just prison food. A little something from the outside world helps a lot.

 

          I couldn’t force a single word from my mouth anymore, so I waited for him to ask instead. Questions like how’s your studying, what’s your GPA, what’s your favorite class, do you have a girlfriend aren’t the ones I wanted him to ask. I wanted to hear deeper questions and see if he truly cared. 

 

          Twenty minutes of constant interrogation passed by, and none of the questions stuck.

 

          The other prisoners were getting herded back through the steel gate but my dad still stood. The warden went up to him and tapped on his shoulder.

 

          I know, chief. Just a minute. Chien. One more thing. I miss you a lot, kiddo. Study well, and don’t go doing dumb things, okay? Don’t end up where I ended up. Your mom gave you more than this. Make good use of your education.

 

          As mom and I walked out, she asked me how I felt about meeting him again.

 

          It was fun, I guess, I told her, and  my eyes locked on the bruise on her wrist. Sometimes I wondered how it would have played out if my dad were there that day instead.

 

 

7.

 

When I was nineteen, I was ten thousand miles from home and had twenty dollars in my bank account.

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          That summer, I was fired from a job that would have provided me a place to stay and decent pay so that I could move out to live off campus in a cheap apartment, whose lease I signed in spring. My plan was ruined, because I woke up late to work for the third time.

 

          Sitting alone in a roach-infested, moldy, leaky, and notoriously unsafe apartment complex with only the light from my desktop, I punched into Excel the amount of money I got from under-the-table work that day. The total tallied up and showed that I had just twenty dollars left over after paying the security deposit. I decided that the next morning, I would treat myself to my mom’s caramelized pork. That was the first food item I bought with my own money after months of bumming in a Vietnamese restaurant begging for leftover phở and day-old spring rolls for dinner.

 

          That night, the shadow came into my room and sat on my bed while I slept.

 

          Tough shit, huh?

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          What do you want? I told the shadow. You haunted me for years, disappeared, and now you’re back. What’s the deal?

 

          Look pal, think about what you’re going through. This isn’t the end.

         

          I know it isn’t.

 

          No, you think you know it isn’t. Deep inside you, you still believe that this is the end. You think you’ve made mistakes in your life. You think you’re gonna be your dad. You think that one mistake would tumble onto another and another and snowball into a life in prison.

 

          Maybe I do think that because it looks like that. Look around you. We’re homeless. We’re begging for food in a country that’s not ours. This isn’t Vietnam. I don’t fear ghosts like you anymore. I fear the cops here more than any ghosts.

 

          Both of us were silent as the tropical storm swept by, and the water trickled down the leaky window frame. The fairy lights I bought to cheer myself up sat on the wall, dimly shining against the unused guitar I got for the same reason.

 

          Look, it finally spoke. From the first day you came to this country, I knew my spell stopped working on you. That night when you slept in your dorm. I stood in front of the door, eyes open wide. But you, you stared right back at me, not in fear, but in retaliation.

 

          I know those eyes, pal. Those eyes, they belong to someone who’s seen shit. That’s when I knew I couldn’t scare you anymore. I’m just here to talk to you. I wanted to tell you that you’ve done a great job surviving. Sure, you lost your job, but who cares? You’ll get another soon. You mailed in an application last week, right? You’re strong, kid. You got this. 

 

          Here. The shadow handed me the watch my granddad bought for me. I know you hated him for giving your mother that bruise. But tell me honestly, you do miss him, don’t you?

 

          I do. It’s not been the same since he’s gone. I held the watch in my palms and flipped over to see the scratches. I don’t know whether to hate him or miss him.

 

          Forgive him first. You’ll find your answer then. Give it a shot, I promise you’ll be happier. The shadow stood. I have to go, but before I do, I got a little present for ya.

 

          The shadow muttered a word in Vietnamese, and I woke up in cold sweat. It was 8 A.M., four to six hours earlier than I usually woke that summer. I decided to dress and bike to Publix to grab the ingredients for my treat and made the food upon arriving home.

 

          While the pot simmered, I thought about what the shadow said.

 

          Gia vi… Flavor.

 

          It had nothing to do with the word “house”, but as my thoughts and the smell of the sugary fish sauce weaved into one another, I drew a connection.

 

          Maybe, that which relates to house wasn’t necessarily a physical house. Maybe it just meant home. Nhà as in ngôi nhà, nhà cao tâng, nhà bâng. Gia as in gia dình, gia hô, gia the, gia tài, gia vi. Though they aren’t physical houses, they all bring in an essence of home. Family. Household. Family power. Family fortune.

 

          Flavor… gia vi.

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          With that knowledge, I pulled out my phone and called Mom at 12 A.M. her time. We talked for hours as the pork simmered in the nectar of home, the broth thickened more than that of water, more than that of blood. After years, I learned that home is more than just a house, a family, a jovial time. Home is gia, and gia is many different things.

 

          There, in the kitchen, I wondered to myself. What’s the next gia in my life?

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8.

 

When I turned twenty, I was eating ramen in front of a camera.

         

          I was on call with the love of my life, and I didn’t want to leave for too long to make food; so, on my birthday, while they sang Happy Birthday to me, I was slurping on a bowl of ramen and had that moment immortalized on Instagram.

 

          Though I hadn’t found any new words starting with gia, I found a new gia dình with them. Maybe the shadow was right… Maybe things would get better.

 

          Back at home, my aunt decided to sell my late granddad’s house and take that money for herself. My mom got promoted to district chief with a slight salary increase. My aunt and uncle lived happily at home where my uncle’s impeccable navigation skills made him one of the best Uber drivers in the city, earning him ten times more than when he carried bags of sugar. My young cousin just finished primary school. My dad talked to my mom more often and asked about me. He told me he was very proud that I’ve grown into an adult and, though he couldn’t see me, he could feel me across the world. And me? Eating ramen on camera.

 

          What are you thinking about? my partner asked over the call.

 

          Oh, nothing. I smiled at them. Just the future.

 

          What do you see?

         

          You.