12

Once she was home and waiting for the elevator to groan its way down to pick her up in the ground-floor lobby, she was hit by a half-formed worry lurching into uncomfortable focus. Billy was just like those billboard girls, wasn’t he? Couldn’t she see him up there in some Calvin Klein boxers? He wouldn’t even need photoshopping. He looked unbelievably good in just his bike shorts. Wasn’t he the most conforming version of blond Anglo male beauty she’d ever seen in real life? Had she internalized a paradigm she should be questioning or, better still, outright rejecting? Too late for a political lightbulb moment now. Her imagination had signed on from the moment she first saw him without clearing it with her brain, and since then she’d become just as interested in whatever was brooding away under the surface as she was in the beautiful surface itself.

Unlocking the front door, she stepped right into double-uh-oh land.

Uh-oh number one: no smell of cooking; no sign of food preparation. Uh-oh number two: neat stacks of cut-out garments still sitting in taped plastic bags on the kitchen bench.

She had hoped they’d prevent it this year, but maybe not—maybe they’d hit a speed bump that was too high and rolled backward.

When Dr. Chin had confirmed the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis, he’d gone through the treatment in detail: antidepressants and therapy. But because her mother had stopped feeling well, got careless with the tablet-taking, and had not increased the dose as she’d been instructed to… here they were again.

She could see why the worst time for her mother each year coincided with the anniversary of the boat journey from Vietnam, and how the PTSD had become a monster, ready to burst forth each year, still ravenous. But she also imagined that whatever her mother had witnessed, whatever she’d experienced, was with her every day. Every morning when she woke up. Every evening when she tried to sleep. What did she see? Vân Ước longed to know, and at the same time half hoped never to know. She wondered if the nightmares of her imagination came close to her parents’ experience.

Under the doctor’s direction, and with her father’s agreement, Vân Ước had partly bossed and partly cajoled her mother into agreeing to attend group therapy with other women who’d made the journey. The conversation had gone something like this:

“Ma, Dr. Chin says there’s a group of women who meet and talk to each other about leaving Vietnam.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?”

“It’s run by that social worker—you know Như Mai? Who visits people here? And she brings families to homework club sometimes? You’ve met her. She’s nice.”

“Why is it her business to get everyone to talk about this? And why are you telling me?”

“Because it might help you to go along. Dr. Chin said you should go.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know these people.”

“It could be that some of your friends will be there.”

“My friends and I don’t need to talk. We got out. And we got on with things.”

“You didn’t have any counseling when you arrived, though, did you?”

“Counseling?”

Vân Ước hadn’t used quite the right word in Vietnamese. “You know what I mean—talking through your problems.” She was trying not to sound impatient or disrespectful.

“Sounds like a waste of time. If you survive, your problems are gone.”

So many of her mother’s family members had died, it was hard to argue: if you survived, your problems were gone. The most pressing one, anyway: how to stay alive.

But her mother had been going to group therapy for a couple of months now and was, for her, pretty positive about it.

Vân Ước went quietly into her parents’ room, in case her mother was asleep.

She wasn’t sleeping. She was staring at the ceiling.

Sitting down lightly on the bed, Vân Ước took her mother’s hand. “Mama? Are you okay?”

“Vân Ước, con.”

Con meant “child” but with overtones of something like “little one”; it was an affectionate greeting, in any case, so she took courage. “Mama, you’re not feeling well? I’m bringing in your tablets.”

“Leave them. They don’t work.”

“Dr. Chin told you—you have to keep taking them, and increase the dose to make sure they keep working. Today we’ll start again. I’m making another appointment for you to see him. We’re going to do what he says, and stick with these tablets.”

Her mother rolled her head away. “You treat me like a child.”

“I’m trying to look after you well, like a mother, like you look after me.”

“I don’t need it. I am the mother.”

“But you still need help sometimes.”

During exchanges like this, Vân Ước had to try to forget the frequent, imperious command Do for me! (read something, explain to someone, pay a bill, make a complaint, speak on the phone, give technical advice…), which didn’t fit so well with I am the mother. Her mother never acknowledged these inconsistencies.

The expression on her face was mutinous. She was strong-willed. And that didn’t change when she was unwell.

“What about when I am a doctor?” Vân Ước asked, mentally crossing her fingers for peddling the family dream when she had no intention of making good on it.

Aha. The wedge. Her mother was smiling.

“If you work hard enough. Study hard. We will be so proud of our daughter. You will live in a big house, in Kew.”

“And I will make people well?”

“You will have a waiting room full of people who come to be cured.”

“And I will expect all my patients to take their tablets that I carefully prescribe for them.”

Her mother’s lips were firmly closed again.

“Won’t I? Mama, think about it—you know it’s true.”

“Maybe.”

“So…”

“So you will be better than Dr. Chin. You will only prescribe the tablets that work.”

“These tablets will work, if you just keep taking them. No skipping a day. You won’t feel better straightaway after the dose changes. Remember him explaining that to us?”

“They want our money for tablets that don’t even work.”

“They just work in a different, slower way. And then they make you feel better for a long time. But only if you keep taking them.” Vân Ước got up to leave.

“You and Daddy will do the sewing today.”

Great, that would poke a big hole into homework time. So apparently some time wasting was permissible. Just nothing fun. Hanging out with Jess: no. Slave labor: yes. But her mother looked sad and ashamed; Vân Ước didn’t have the heart to let her annoyance show.

“We can do it. And I’ll call and cancel for the rest of the week. You just rest.”

She went out into the hallway, took a deep breath in order not to scream, went into the bathroom, and saw her own face in the mirrored cabinet. Worried. And pissed off. She’d have to get dinner organized, too. She fished around the narrow shelves and found the right box. Fortunately her mother was too tight with money to chuck stuff out once she’d paid for it. Vân Ước checked the dose, popped two white pills out, filled a glass of water, and closed the cabinet door. She checked her reflection again, removed worried, removed pissed off, put on confident, added a touch of positive, and headed back into the bedroom.