Home after work, she walked in to find her mother in the living room, on the sofa, hands folded, looking grim. Her group therapy session—or friendship circle, as they called it—had finished half an hour ago. Usually at this time, Vân Ước could rely on having the place to herself, knowing that her mother and father and Bác Bảo would be over at the Footscray market getting the week’s food and not back for at least another hour and a half; they went late for the bargains.
“Hey, Mama.” Vân Ước sat down next to her. “Are you okay? How come you’re not with Dad? How was friendship circle?”
“Today we were talking all about when we were children.”
Why couldn’t she just ask her mother about the photo? Ask her why they never saw her aunt? Now, right now, would be a perfect time. Only she felt like such a snoop.
“So, talking about when you were a kid—that made you… how’d that make you feel?” What to do? Did her mother need her hand held?
No, her mother took her hand away and put it back in her lap. It was clear that she was feeling uncomfortable. She was visibly composing herself, folding herself back together, straightening out the raggedy edges, smoothing hair away from her face. “It was hard for me to talk about my mother. Thinking of times in my life I have wanted her and have not had that comfort.”
“Can I make you some tea?”
“Thank you, Vân Ước, con. Tea would be nice.”
Vân Ước put the kettle on and prepared tea. Through all her mother’s past struggles with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, she had never spoken of how she was feeling, never given voice to her vulnerability. Her more typical mode was simply to disappear into the bedroom. So was this a good or a bad thing? She imagined that some freeing up of feelings following group therapy was perfectly normal.
“Can you tell me some of the things you talked about?”
“Her cooking. We had a small area to prepare food, but it was always so fresh and delicious.”
“Like when you cooked at the hostel?”
“Yes. And we all got into such trouble, but I could still make a good meal over the little radiator if I had to.”
Her parents had told her of their time living in the hostel in Moreland. The food there sounded like bulk-order, cheap cafeteria fare, not at all suited to their tastes or diet or digestive systems. When new people arrived at the hostel, they went eagerly to the canteen for free food, but numbers dropped off sharply after each new wave tried the food there.
So people bought pots and small bar radiators at the local secondhand store and cooked in their bedrooms, using the radiators lying on their backs as hot plates. A pan, some noodles or rice, a few vegetables, some fish, some chili, lemongrass. One family would cook rice, another family vegetables, and they would share the meal. They constantly got into trouble with the hostel management, who claimed they were creating hygiene and fire hazards and confiscated all the cooking implements. They were easy to repurchase. In this haven—a bed, a door that locked, a toilet that flushed, clean water flowing from the taps—it had seemed so strange to her parents that someone should be angry with them simply because they wanted to cook dinner.
The kitchen in their home now was more than adequate for all the cooking they did as a family, and Vân Ước smiled to think what her parents would make of a kitchen like the one in Billy’s house.
Her mother stood up. “I will wash my face and make some lunch.”
“I’ll help.”
Her mother hesitated. “It wasn’t only me, but many of us in the friendship circle, who didn’t see our parents again after we left. It was like having to choose between our parents and our children.” Vân Ước felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, as light as a little bird. “Even the ones we didn’t have yet.”
Her mother had never shared anything like this with her before. Never expressed such emotion. The understanding that she wasn’t alone in her sadness and disappointments must be soothing. The permission—encouragement—to open up and share after all these years must be like finding a new room in a house you thought you knew.
“You know you can talk to me any time you want?” Vân Ước willed herself to mention the photo, but failed once again.
“Enough talking.” Her mother stood up. The conversation was over.
Vân Ước snipped some coriander from the pots on the kitchen windowsill, turned on the tap to fill the sink with cold water, and went to the fridge to get out some vegetables. It was Saturday: they’d be making a use-the-leftover-vegetables soup or omelet before her father and Bác Bảo returned from the market with fresh supplies.