ELEVEN

THEY WERE ON THE STAIRCASE up to the apartments when they smelled the cooking coming from Carla’s place. “Oku!” they both said together. Oku was a great cook and he would often come to their place and cook elaborate meals from their scanty cupboards. They loved those visits, when he would throw together what to them were impossible ingredients and come up with sumptuous meals. They each had an aversion to cooking. Tuyen’s was easy enough to understand. Throughout her childhood she’d spent from four o’clock in the afternoon to midnight in a restaurant, falling asleep on the table to be awakened and taken home half walking, half dragged. She could count the days since her father acquired the restaurant that there had been a meal cooked at home. If they didn’t eat at the Saigon Pearl itself, they ate leftovers from the Saigon Pearl. Tuyen made every effort not to learn cooking and developed a dislike for what was called Vietnamese food.

“Why can’t we eat like normal people?” she used to ask when she was little; when she was sent to school with minty soups and bean curd.

“Don’t you see normal people coming here to eat, Tuyen? They like our food,” her father would point out, but Tuyen was never persuaded. She only felt exposed in the restaurant when European clientele were present, and when the customers were Vietnamese or Korean or African or South Asian, she hated, then, the sense of sameness or ease she was supposed to feel with them.

It took her years to admit to friends that her family owned a restaurant, and she was still not comfortable taking them there. Tuyen’s favourite food was potatoes, cooked any style, but mostly just plain boiled potatoes with butter. They were easy to cook, took no attention whatever, and to her taste they were the most delicious things. She could eat potatoes any time of day or night, huge bowlfuls. Potatoes were perfect, neutral, and glamorous. Meaning not at all like her family. And milk. She loved milk. Despite the fact that her stomach reacted violently to it. But she insisted on drinking it. Or now buying it at least. She thought of this violent response as something to be conquered, like learning a new and necessary language. If nothing else, her tiny fridge could be counted on for storing putrefied sour milk that she had not had the courage to consume.

Both their childhoods, Tuyen’s and Carla’s, had been of navigating different and sometimes opposed worlds. At every turn it had been treacherous. And food was the dead giveaway. On Saturdays Nadine, Carla’s stepmother, would take her to Kensington Market, where laden with bags Carla would wait and wait, her body in an impatient and resigned burning, as Nadine talked to the storekeepers, haggling an extra piece of fish, an extra lime, an extra pepper, mistrustful of the weighing of every item. Her stepmother’s happiness in contrast to her unhappiness and discomfort was most evident at the Saturday market. Carla stood waiting, her nose rejecting the smells, her throat gagging on rotten fish and rotten vegetables, her face turning away from the appalling blood stains on butchers’ aprons at European Meats, her whole being wishing to be elsewhere. Carla hated Nadine’s exotica. She was uneasy among the pawpaws, soursops, plantains, goat, fish, gizadas, and cans of ackees. “Your father likes this,” Nadine would croon. She’d taught herself how to cook Jamaican just for Derek. Carla despised the smell of the stores that carried dried cod and fresh thyme and mangoes. Her ears registered discomfort at the sound of accented voices pausing in self-derision, in boastfulness, or in religious certainty. She hated this language that she made herself unhear, unthink, and undream. She never actually learned it except to understand her father, Nadine, and their friends, and to translate it to her teachers and anyone official. She had been a translator herself, knowing a language the way a translator whose first tongue is another language knows. She did not live in it. She considered her father’s customs foreign, embarrassing oddities that she would try to distance herself from in public. Nadine would take her to the patty store, bestowing on her a patty in cocoa bread and a cola champagne as a treat. Carla stood uneasily eating while Nadine insisted that it tasted good. She found the floury depth of the two breads distasteful. The centre of meat and spices burned her and set her tongue on fire. The cola champagne added heat where she wanted coldness, water. So overwhelming was the whole market that the taste in her mouth was sweet and sickly at the same time. She vowed never to come here when she grew up.

So food was not their specialty, nor cooking. If not for the potatoes, which Tuyen shared freely with Carla and had in abundance, Carla would be bone thin. And so they both fell on Oku, hugging him, when they got to the top of the stairs.

“If I was straight, I would marry you,” Tuyen said.

“You’re a dream, Oku.” Carla hadn’t eaten since the day before. The smell from his cooking made her notice how desperately hungry she was.

“Oh, you don’t want to marry me too? Still noncommittal?” Oku teased her.

“Closest you’ve come.” She moved to the sink compulsively. “You’re a great cook, but you use every pot, pan, dish, and spoon in sight. Everything’s dirty.”

“Oh, Carla, leave that. Let’s eat first.”

“We need dishes to eat on, Tuyen. Girl!”

They were sitting now on the floor in Carla’s apartment, savouring the meal Oku had cooked. He had no culinary antipathy registered in childhood discomfort. He loved his mother’s cooking, he loved his father’s cooking. He learned to cook lovingly what Carla had rejected from her stepmother. The graffiti crew from across the alley was there too, scattered around the floor: Kumaran, Keeran, Abel, and Jericho. They had smelled the cooking across the way and asked Oku if they could come over. He bargained with them for rice and cardamom and cloves and chilies, and now there was a curried chicken dish with the odour of cardamom, cilantro, and burnt cumin. Then there was rice, saffron-coloured, with peas and raisins. Oku hadn’t learned to cook rice this way from his mother but from the graffiti crew—well, not the whole crew, but Kumaran, whose parents were from Tamil Nadu. He had also crushed a papaya and tossed it into a vanilla ice cream for dessert, and he had brought from home one of his father’s precious eighty-eight-proof bottles of Wray and Nephew rum. He had taken his mother’s training and augmented it along the way with all the training of all the mothers of the friends he had. His father would probably not approve, preferring the monoculture of Jamaican food, but Oku’s tastes had expanded from this base to a repertoire that was vast and cosmopolitan. On their lucky days Tuyen and Carla would come home to fried snapper in a mole sauce or cassava frittes with burgers, or chicken’s feet soup. Odd that the same foods they were averse to in their childhoods they now revered in Oku’s hands.

Today he was really hoping that Jackie would return as they had loosely agreed, for Carla’s sake. But so far she hadn’t shown up. He wanted to make some type of amends for that ineffectual, rude remark he had made to her on the corner. He wasn’t sure really what her response had been, but he’d taken it as dismissal; in his long unrequited approach to Jackie he had always been able to balance himself between meaning and not meaning. He was waiting for her to take him seriously, but when she didn’t he prided himself on being able to laugh it off as she seemed to do also. He had watched carefully over her different relationships with men, knowing that if he was snide enough about them, they would disappear. He thought that it was his doing—their disappearances. The German boyfriend, however, was proving difficult, and he was getting slightly panicked.

“Jackie said she was coming, right?”

“Oh, and here we were thinking this was all for us, Carla.”

“Oh, come on, of course it was. I’m just asking. So she should be coming, right?”

“She’ll show up, I guess. You know she’s got the store now.”

“Ab und Zu! What the fuck is that anyway?”

“Here and now, honey. Or is it now and then, Tuyen?”

“Now and then, I think. They’re doing well, Jackie says. Reiner’s living at the back of the store to save money. And the band is practising in the basement.”

“Practising? Bunch of fucking Nazis imitating that Guns N’ Roses shit!” Oku was beside himself. “Can’t she see?”

“Chill out, man.” Kumaran laughed, trying to laugh Oku out of it.

Oku turned to him, slightly embarrassed. He’d forgotten the graffiti crew in the room. “Yeah, what you guys do lately?”

“The subway, end of the line at Sheppard. You can see the pig there when the train slows.” Kumaran licked his fingers. “And see that bank at the corner of Dundas and Spadina? Right at the top? We did that.”

“You guys are nuts, man. How’d you get up there?”

“We hold each other by the legs.”

“Out of your mind, man, y’all are out, frigging crazy!”

“It’s art, man. You should come with us one night. Tuyen does.”

“Now you got to be out of your mind. I’m staying on the ground. On the ground, man. None of that high-wire shit for me.”

The crew laughed, getting up as if by signal. Kumaran’s graffiti crew prided itself on fluency, stealth, and agility. They had made themselves shadowy and present in the city, as in the room. If anyone had looked into the apartment, they would have seen Tuyen, Oku, and Carla right away, and only after searching for something sensed but not seen would they have grasped the leaning, slouching, posed outlines of Kumaran, Keeran, Abel, and Jericho. They were critical presences, unnoticed until they felt like being noticed. They saw their work—writing tags and signatures—as painting radical images against the dying poetics of the anglicized city. The graffiti crew had filled in the details of the city’s outlines. You could see them at night, very late, when the streets seemed wet with darkness, agile and elegant in their movements. The spiritual presences of Tuyen, Oku, and Carla’s generation. Their legs straddling walls and bridge girders and subway caverns, spray-painting their emblems of duality, their dangerous dreams.

“Check you guys later,” one of them said.

Tuyen jumped up, following them to the door, promising to go out with them again soon.

Oku turned to Carla, “So, Yardie, what’s the dillio on Jamal?”

“You got ten thousand dollars or a house I can borrow?” She heard a betraying resentment in her voice. “No, I’m serious—that’s what I need to get him out.”

“Why do you have to do it? Why can’t your father?”

“Pleeease. He washed his hands a long time ago.”

“Isn’t Jamal still a juvenile, Carla? Isn’t your father obliged?”

“Obliged?” She laughed this time. “He’s not obliged to do shit. Jamal is eighteen. He’s not a juvie any more.”

“That’s some dope shit.” It was inconceivable to Oku. His own father would never let him out of his sight. He thought of this with fear and relief.

“You know, Carla, maybe this time he’s just got to figure it out himself.”

“You don’t understand. You have people, Tuyen, right? You, both of you, always had people.”

“He had people too, Carla.”

“Not like you. Anyway, he’s my brother. I’ll deal with it.”

“Carla”—Tuyen’s voice was soft—“we’re not saying … you know, like, abandon him, but he always does this and then you’re the one who has to … you know, clean it up, fix it.”

“Yes, the point is, you always rescue him, see. He expects it. So we’re saying you can’t keep up. He never takes care of you! He’s not a baby! So maybe just let him handle this for himself, like a man, this time.”

“Would you want that for your brother, Tuyen? You don’t have anybody, Oku, so you don’t know. If you did, you think you’d just let them stay in jail?”

“I don’t know. You’re right, okay, but what I’m saying is why doesn’t he ever think of you? Where you going to find ten thousand dollars? That’s just whack!” Oku was incredulous.

“Well, I’m probably back to where I don’t want to be, I guess. Gotta go see Derek. I was on my way there this morning, but …”

“Your father?”

“Yes, the fucking asshole.”

“Well, he should take it on, Carla. Why should you have to alone?”

“Okay, okay, done already. I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

Carla started briskly packing up dishes again. Tuyen made no move to help. She poured another rum from Oku’s stolen bottle.

“What the hell is this made of, Oku?”

“Good stuff.” Oku smiled at her, wandering over to the stereo.

“Hey, Carla, take one, let’s just chill out. Kick back.” Tuyen rose. Going toward Carla at the sink and holding Carla’s head back, she poured a shot into Carla’s mouth. Carla gasped from the bracing fumes, bent over. Laughing now.

“Hey, Carla, where’s my Dizzy?”

“Doesn’t look like she’s coming, Oku.” And they laughed together drunkenly.

Quy

Time. All of them have time. I had waiting. They have their friends and this city. I had shit. I guess you’d say I should have made better of myself. I didn’t have anybody sacrifice a whole life for me. Every one of them had that. A city like this is built on that. I can feel it all around.

After a year and a half at Pulau Bidong I learned a little English. My first step to humanity. My father had hung around the assholes of enough Americans to know the value of English. He came home with words like “cool” and “Charlie.” At Bidong I buzzed around the UNCHR people, hoping one of them would find me interesting or cute and take me with them. I almost did it. There was one lady who looked at me fondly, and whenever she came, I made it my business to be less hungry-looking and more charming. It’s hard to look cute after a year and a half of loneliness. I offered her little objects I made with twine and sticks and bottle caps. I collected plastic debris and gave it to her. And after all that, the bitch didn’t take me. She was French. My father spoke French. The UNCHR people kept looking at us and asking us how we were treated. Us, the children parents had abandoned or lost. We punched each other out for their attention. All they did was count us and write reports.

When I first saw Pulau Bidong, I’ve got to say it was beautiful. The boat I was in was called the Dong Khoi. We had drifted for the last ninety-six hours without water or food. Mercifully, although I don’t believe in mercy, we looked up one dawn to see Bidong. The water between the Dong Khoi and the island was blue-black. The air was cold, even though it was hot. The water—did I say?—was a wonderful misty blue-black, and there out of the mist rose Pulau Bidong. Green and greener where the sun hadn’t touched it yet. If I got to that island, I thought, I would stomp all over it. But this is the future and I’m recasting. I didn’t feel that. I thought instead that my mother and father, my sisters, would be there waiting for me. I thought all boats went to Bidong. The sight of the island lifted my hopes. I’ve never been able to get rid of the feeling I had at the sight of Bidong in the dawn. The sky was a blue-grey mist too, yet all three hues of sea and sky and land, I could see clearly through to the waking sun. It may have been about four or five in the morning. There was a silence. Sometimes I wish that I had stayed right there in that picture in that dawn. I see me leaning off the Dong Khoi with the beautiful island in front of me and that feeling of expectation. Right then, nothing is wrong. Nothing.

I could’ve had a different life if that moment—ah, sure. My father and mother had already dragged me from a certain trajectory. Truly, the war had already dragged us up and ripped up our planned course. People like me don’t have control of life. Anonymity is a useful thing. In some places they think people like me are preparing to bomb buildings and murder children. My mother and father and my sisters went off to join them, and I suppose I would’ve gone right along with them and never had these thoughts if I hadn’t followed those legs onto the Dong Khoi. Perhaps I would’ve had these thoughts anyway. Perhaps they’re having these thoughts but have stuffed them so far down their own gullets they’re inexpressible.

I’m grateful in the end for the Dong Khoi and Pulau Bidong if I’m grateful for anything. But gratitude is not one of the outcomes of this story or my life. My brother got my father and mother at the thick point of their guilt. They don’t see him, they see me. They imagine me in the dense mist in the South China Sea, me on Bidong. They pour all their senses into him, paying and paying out till he’s sick with indulgence. I’ve got no pity. You think I would look at his face and not see the years he’s been fattened instead of me? Brotherliness is another feeling I can’t come up with. Self-interest is what moves the world. People bunch together because they’re scared. I’m a loner. Don’t expect me to tell you about the innocence of youth, that would be another story, not mine.

What happened to the master who made the servant swear never to tell his stories to anyone else? Did I tell you that story? The monk who came to Pulau Bidong once told it to me. I’ll tell it to you in case you think I don’t have a sense of humour.

Once there was a servant who had a young boy for a master. Every night the servant would tell this boy fantastic stories, and the stories were so good the boy didn’t want anyone else to have them, so, the son of a bitch that he was already, he told the servant never to tell anyone else these stories just so he could have them to himself. He made the servant swear never to tell the stories outside his room, and the servant, ass-licking servant that he was, vowed never to do so. The boy grew up and was to be married. He dressed up in his finest clothes and went out of the house to his carriage to leave for his wedding. The servant happened to be passing by the boy’s room when he heard voices from inside. Who could be in his master’s room? he thought, and he leaned his head against the door to listen.

One voice said, “We have to do something about this damned boy today!”

Another voice said, “Yeah, that cac is going off to get married and we’ll be locked up in this room forever.”

“Okay,” said a third voice, “here’s the plan. I’m a story about a poisoned well. When he gets into his carriage and they’re halfway to the wedding, he’ll get thirsty and I’ll appear and he’ll drink from the well and that’ll be the end of the selfish lo dit.”

“Great idea,” said the first voice. “But just in case he doesn’t drink from the well, I’m a story about flaming hot coals. When he reaches his bride’s house, they’ll run out with a footstool. I’ll lay under the cushion and burn him to death.”

“Yeah,” said another voice. “Fantastic. I’m a story about a deadly venomous snake. Let’s say he doesn’t drink from the well, let’s say he doesn’t put his foot on the stool. I’ll lay in his honeymoon bed next to his sweetheart’s face like a beautiful embroidery. When he lays down, I’ll kill the du-ma-may! And we’ll all be free from this room.”

“Yeah,” they all agreed.

Just then the frightened servant, who didn’t know a good thing when he heard it, burst into the room, but there was no one there.

When the master went out in his carriage to his wedding, the servant begged to go with him. On the way the young master said, “Oh, I’m so thirsty, servant, get me some water from that well.”

The servant, risking a blow to the head, said, “Oh no, master, you’ll be late for the bride. They’ve prepared better than water there for you.”

The master said, “Okay, you’re right.”

When they got to the bride’s house, the footmen brought out the footstool for the young master’s feet. The old servant grabbed it quickly, burning his own hands, saying, “Oh, master, the coals are too hot, these idiot footmen. Climb on my back and I’ll take you inside.” The master was astonished but went on his back.

After the wedding, when the bride and groom had retired to the bedroom and the bride was all naked in the matrimonial bed, the servant snuck in and stood behind the curtain. Next to the bride’s lovely face was the most exquisite embroidery of a languorous snake. And as the bridegroom was about to lay his head on it, the servant jumped out and grabbed the deadly venomous snake and smashed it to death, apologizing and explaining the conspiracy of the stories he had overheard in the master’s bedroom.

What makes a guy so slavish? This is a fairy tale, the kind you know. Now who would make up a story like that?