The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction Page 10

  IT HAD BEEN three months since the wedding. Xuan still wasn’t used to her new role as Old Vu’s wife and Nhi and Vi’s mother, and still didn’t feel that she was fulfilling it. She didn’t regret it quite yet, but she was beginning to question her decision to leave her hometown to marry a man nearly fifteen years her senior. She had done it because she was lonely, but here, in the yellow house, she felt more isolated than ever.

  Perhaps this was why Xuan felt strangely reassured when she began hearing voices from the bamboo grove. It meant that she was not alone. Having grown unchecked for years, the grove had become sprawling and almost impenetrable, devouring the land. When Xuan began to hear the sounds, she knew instinctively that they were coming from that darkness at the far end of the lawn. At first it was faint and wordless, whispering to her as she and Old Vu lay in bed at night with their backs to each other. She started leaving the bedroom window open, telling her husband it was because the breeze helped her sleep, when really all she wanted was to listen to the murmurs. Then one afternoon, when she was hanging out the laundry in the yard, it finally became clear; the wind rustled the bamboo and she heard her name, Xuan, Xuan, the soft chanting of a hundred voices, over and over. They were calling for her.

  Another woman might have run back inside the house in fear, but not Xuan. She had no fear. She had read Plato and Aquinas and Descartes. She walked straight into the bamboo. “Who’s there?” she called out, picking her way through the thick forest of stems.

  “Xuan,” the voices replied simply. “Xuan.”

  They became quiet when she was deep in the thicket and everything was in cool green shadow. Xuan waited but they did not speak again. She turned to make her way back out again, but suddenly she tripped over something—an old glass bottle, almost invisible in the shade—and she had to clutch wildly at the stems around her to stay upright. They shook, but she regained her footing. Several small birds, spooked by the commotion, shot out of the bamboo and flapped away noisily. Xuan tilted her head back and watched them become specks against the sky. And then she saw it fluttering down toward her between the branches. Like the birds, it, too, had been shaken loose from its bamboo perch. She caught it in her fingers: a piece of silk, tattered and filthy, now worn down to a square the size of a piece of parchment, but still as red as a fresh knife wound, and fine as a tongue of flame.

  Xuan had been given less than her fair share of loveliness in this lifetime, and so she held on tightly to this delicate cloth that had fallen into her possession. She carried it out of the bamboo and held it up to the light.

  Nhi and Vi lay on their bellies on the edge of the roof, watching. When they saw the red shadow the silk cast across her face, their mouths formed identical hard lines, and they reached for each other’s hand.

  SISTER EMMANUEL’S VOICE trailed off. Without warning, she pulled her hands out of the mixing bowl and pushed it away from her violently. I handed her a dishcloth but as her fingers closed around it she began to shake, and the cloth fell to the kitchen floor. I dropped down to retrieve it for her. But I did not get up immediately; it was only there—kneeling at her feet, squeezing the cloth in my clammy hands that would not keep still, my face averted—that I was brave enough to ask her: “Which one are you?”

  Sister Emmanuel was still shaking. “Not yet,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

  XUAN HEARD THE VOICES even when she was away from the house. They still called out her name from time to time, but now they mostly sang her a song, always the same one. It was a simple song, made up of four notes and a handful of repeated words, but Xuan practiced it relentlessly even when the voices were quiet.

  “Chim, chim, I will find you. Chim, I will find you,” she sang alone in the kitchen. She could see the bamboo through the window but at the moment it was silent. Her left eye was itchy, so she rubbed it with one of the ends of the red cloth that she wore tied loosely around her throat. “Chim, I will find you, and you will be mine. Chim, chim, I will find you—” She stopped and rubbed her eye with the cloth again.

  When the silk wasn’t around her neck she wore it in her hair or had it folded up and tucked secretly in between her breasts. When she lay in bed at night, she would fall asleep twisting it between her fingers while Old Vu snored beside her and had nightmares about his dead wife. She had to be touching it at all times.

  The twins had begun keeping their distance from their stepmother, but they still needed to eat. They would alternate between which one had to sneak into the yellow house to scavenge for leftovers and raid the money jar. One muggy summer afternoon, while they were perched in their usual tree and their stomachs began to growl, it was Nhi’s turn.

  It was so oppressively hot that any sane person should have been napping; Nhi was certain she would not be seen. But just to be safe, when she left Vi in the tree and set off for home she went by the forest instead of by the road. This route concealed her from whatever eyes might have been watching, but it also forced her to walk through the bamboo grove.

  Nhi entered the green thicket. Though she was so thin she could weave through the bamboo stalks without disturbing them, above her the long, tapered leaves began to move. It didn’t occur to Nhi that it couldn’t have been the wind, for there was none that day—the air was heavy and damp and still. The noise of the thousands of leaves brushing against one another was maddeningly loud, and because of it, Nhi did not hear the sound of Xuan singing inside the house. It was the usual tune, but this time the words were slightly different:

  “Chim, chim, I will feed you. Chim, I will feed you, and you will be mine.”

  Nhi didn’t notice it until she had already climbed into the house through the window of her mother’s bedroom. A photograph of Old Vu and Xuan’s wedding was hanging on the wall, conveniently covering an old bloodstain. The twins were not in it. When Nhi heard the singing she cocked her head to listen, but the noise of the bamboo leaves was still muffling everything, subtle but relentless, like the sound of waves, and she could not make out the words. Curious but suspicious, she dropped to all fours and moved silently toward the kitchen.

  The words were still unclear but now Nhi could hear pots and pans being moved around. As she crept into the room she saw that Xuan was preparing something by the gas stove and crooning her strange melody—the words lost in the clanging of cookware—with her back to the doorway. The jar of money was in the corner, and Nhi would have to act fast if she didn’t want her stepmother to catch her. She was considering her next move when Xuan suddenly stopped singing. Outside, the leaves of the bamboo went limp and quiet once more. Without turning around, Xuan spoke sternly. “Nhi, stop behaving like an animal and stand up.”

  Nhi was so startled that she obeyed her stepmother instantly.

  “That’s better,” said Xuan, still keeping her back to the girl. She lit the stove and the flame leapt to life. After a few seconds the kitchen was filled with the scent of oil warming. Nhi knew she should just bolt out the door or the window, for she was frightened, but she was also angry—seething at herself for submitting to an order, and even more furious with her stepmother for giving it. She chose not to run because she wanted to punish the woman.

  Xuan, meanwhile, had dropped something into the hot oil and it was beginning to sizzle. Nhi wasn’t sure what was cooking, but her stomach growled. She made a fist and ground it into her abdomen to make it stop.

  Xuan had heard, though, and she giggled over by the stove. Giggling did not suit her; it was an unnatural sound. “Sit down, child,” she said. “It will be done soon.”

  Nhi took a seat at the table without protest; her attention was now focused on the red silk looped around her stepmother’s neck. It was tied in a simple overhand knot, and Xuan had thrown the ends of it over her shoulders to keep them out of the way. Nhi coolly considered walking over and shoving Xuan’s face into the pot of hot oil, imagined the sound her skin would make as it fried, how the red silk would dangle into the gas flame below the pot and ignite. Then she rejected the idea—
she didn’t want to burn herself. Xuan had finished cooking and was now removing little morsels from the oil and putting them onto a dish. Nhi eyed the ends of the red scarf again. The silk looked strong, as if it could be pulled very tightly and not break, she thought with a sly smile.

  “Naughty child,” said Xuan, as if she could perceive her stepdaughter’s violent thoughts. “Stop that. It’s time to eat.” She picked up the loaded plate and two sets of chopsticks; then she finally turned around.

  Nhi noticed at once that something was wrong with Xuan’s eye. The left one. When she sat down across from her at the table, Nhi could see that it was bloodshot and watery, the veins visible, the pupil strangely dilated. The right one, however, appeared normal. Nhi didn’t want to look at her anymore. She turned her attention instead to the plate that Xuan had set down between them, piled with hot egg rolls. They were perfect cylinders, each the same size and hue. A golden pool of oil was collecting beneath them.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” said Xuan. “My mother taught me the recipe when I was a girl. I learned how to shape them with her hands around mine.” She lifted her scarf up to her eye and began scrubbing at it roughly. Nhi watched the red silk move and her fingers tightened into a fist. Xuan continued speaking while she rubbed, the fabric concealing most of her face. “But I haven’t made them in years; I thought I was better than this.” She gestured toward the rolls with her free hand. The hand that still held the cloth to her eye was moving in quick little circles, like she was trying to wash a stubborn spot clean. “Better than cooking and kitchens. Better than husbands. Better than my own mother. I used to believe that I was too clever for that world.” Her hand stopped moving. “But now I have a daughter of my own, and she will not make my mistakes.” With this, she allowed the red silk to fall away from her face.

  There was now a droplet of blood in the outer corner of the eye. Nhi watched with fascination as it quivered but did not fall.

  “Don’t you see? This is our place. We are the children of tradition. We must learn what we are taught, and then repeat it. Let me teach you, Nhi.” Xuan placed one of the pairs of chopsticks on the table before the girl.

  Nhi unclenched her fist to take them, and saw the crimson edges of Xuan’s eye twitch. The droplet in the corner jiggled. Nhi imagined leaping out of her seat and sinking the chopsticks deep into the socket. In the distance, the leaves of the bamboo began to rustle again. She thought of her sister waiting alone in the tree, and raised her hand slowly.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s it,” said Xuan, pushing the plate toward her. “This is our inheritance; take a bite.” She smiled, and the motion finally squeezed out the tear of blood. It left a thin red trail on her cheek.

  Nhi hesitated for only a moment, then brought the chopsticks plunging down.

  SISTER EMMANUEL WAS SILENT. Our own egg rolls rested, complete, on the table; our mixing bowls were empty. I had been hiding my hands in my lap so she wouldn’t see the way they were still moving. “You can’t stop there!” I cried out. “What did she do?”

  Sister Emmanuel gathered up the dirty dishes and brought them over to the sink, refusing to look at me. But I would not give up. “It can’t end like that! Tell me how it really ends!” I yelled, forgetting the convent walls that surrounded us, the peace I was disturbing. “Tell me! I must know!”

  Sister Emmanuel still said nothing. She simply turned to face me and then lowered her sunglasses.

  BY MORNING SISTER EMMANUEL had disappeared from the convent, without—as investigation later proved—taking anything with her. There was some initial disquiet when word got out, but the affair was mostly hushed up. After a few months she was never even spoken of, as if the very memory of her had vanished from this place. But how could I forget? I, who had lost both my faith and the only person on earth who knew my apostasy.

  Some of the other sisters did worry when my shaking began occurring too regularly to hide, and voiced their concerns to Mother Superior. Eventually the abbess called me into her office and advised me to go see a doctor about the “trouble with my hands.” She was terribly confused when I tried to explain to her that the real problem was not with my hands but my vision.

  “But your eyes are fine, dear girl!” she insisted.

  “My eyes work perfectly, but I cannot see the way I used to,” I replied.

  “You mean that you are going blind?”

  “Precisely the opposite, Mother Superior. I see too much.”

  She sighed, and dismissed me.

  I’ve since learned that the only way I can stop the shaking is to retreat to the kitchen and make egg rolls. My hands remember how. It keeps the parish soup kitchen well stocked, which perhaps is the story’s happy ending. Sometimes I even sing while I work.

  GUESTS

  MIA WORKED IN THE IMMIGRATIONS department of the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, filing visas and dual-citizenship requests for pre-’76 Amerasians and younger mothers claiming that their child had been fathered by an American. It wasn’t the kind of career that Mia’s parents had anticipated for their daughter. She’d had a happy, healthy suburban childhood, she’d been the president of her sorority chapter, she’d even interned on Capitol Hill. She was supposed to go far professionally, not geographically. Mia told her parents that she had taken the job for the adventure, but her father, while not a particularly superstitious man, could never quite rid himself of the belief that because he had escaped Vietnam in 1973 with his life—albeit with a bullet in the left leg and damage to both eardrums—the powers of the universe had lured his only child to that godawful country thirty years later in some sort of karmic trade-off.

  He never told Mia his theory, and Mia never admitted her irrational fear to her father that one day an unexpected, older Vietnamese half sibling would turn up at her office.

  The mothers rarely had verification of the child’s paternity. Mia would ask them, exasperated, for any proof, for anything at all. Just a photograph of the alleged father would be sufficient to get the paperwork and interview process started, but sometimes they didn’t even know his name. They would point out the paleness of the baby’s skin, or the straightness of its nose, and seem surprised that Mia needed to know anything further.

  “I swear, I would have studied genetics instead of poli sci if I’d known the job would be like this,” she said to her boyfriend Charlie one Saturday afternoon. The air-conditioning was broken in the apartment again, so they were both lying on the kitchen tile in their underwear. Charlie was too long to fit all of himself on the kitchen floor, so his legs were actually in the living room. It was too hot to even think about having sex. Mia licked her lips and continued. “Sometimes I feel like one of those Hitler-doctors from the thirties, you know? The eugenics scientists who measured people’s skulls to test whether they were Aryan or whatever? That’s all I can think about when somebody hands their kid to me and says, ‘It’s half American! Just look at it! Look at what color it is!’ Best-case scenario is when the dad’s black—makes it a lot easier to prove.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Charlie, and Mia didn’t know whether he meant that her last statement had been terrible, that she was terrible for comparing herself to a Nazi, or that her situation was terrible. She didn’t pursue clarification. It was too hot for that, too.

  Charlie taught English at the Australian International University even though he was American. If he ever worried about color it was over whether or not he should spell it with a u.

  Mia had only been in Ho Chi Minh City for two months when she met him at a Lunar New Year celebration in the park. Even in the frenetic whorl of firecrackers and screaming children and leaping lion dancers that night, they spotted each other—two freckled, blond beings obviously far from home. Mia fell into Charlie’s circle quickly. His friends were all foreign and therefore transient: They were English teachers and backpackers who had gotten sidetracked and lingered, they worked at embassies and nonprofits, they always left eventually. They had all arrived in Vietnam
telling themselves that it was only temporary yet wanting more than anything to fit in. They thought their old lives were something that could be husked, but when it became apparent that they were not, they sought out the comforts of home together: American fast food and French bakeries and Italian coffee. The group shrank when members left in search of other jobs, to start families, to find somewhere to live that was quieter and had better weather, but fresh expats always came along to fill their places.

  On any given night of the week they could be found drunk in a spectacularly public fashion around the bars of District 1. Mia and the girls tottered down the street in stilettos that were not engineered for crooked Vietnamese pavement, and Charlie and the boys wore their old rugby jerseys and drank as much liquor as they wanted because it was cheap. After the bars closed they bought Saigon Beer from twenty-four-hour convenience stores and drank on the sidewalk like locals, the girls perched on the laps of the boys because they wouldn’t sit on the ground. If men lurking on motorbikes heckled them from the shadows, the boys would throw their empty cans at them until they stopped. At the end of the night they stuffed seven people into one taxi because they had spent all their money on cocktails. It was the only way they knew how to entertain themselves here.