A house settles over time. Soil shifts, then shifts again, and the wood must learn the place on which it rests.
That’s what Ba told me when I asked about the creaking floorboards and the soft thumping somewhere in the attic. One of the first villas the French built here. 1920. It’s old. The Little Paris of Vietnam, the city of eternal spring, is how this place is advertised. The longer I stay, the more convinced I am it should be renamed the Land of Noisy Houses.
I spent all yesterday and this morning drafting more house descriptions for the website before sharing the document with Florence. Her reply comes fast: ok chi.
Chị is an honorific for older sister and sometimes used as an endearment, like em or anh. I’ve never even heard how my parents regarded each other, or I don’t remember. Brendan and Lily don’t call me chị, but that’s because we use English at home, even though it drives Mom up the wall. Vietnamese has so many ways to hint at closeness that I’m still learning. This is not the case here.
Florence is mocking me. We don’t text in Vietnamese because I’m bad at it, somehow worse than when my mouth tries it. I shouldn’t take the bait. She knows I’m not here to make friends. Even if we end up in the same city later, she’s too close. Her family knows mine, and I’m not ready for further complication. The screen blinks to black.
I take the fucking bait.
Graced overnight by more underboob sweat (ugh), I rise from bed for the desk by the unfixed window. Lip balm’s smudged on—because my lips are chapped, no other reason—before I take a photo, angled collarbone up for white space and to avoid particular attention on my soaked grungy T-shirt. In it, I’m holding my middle finger up, which obscures half my face. Light sears the other half, where shadows of petals stuck on the window track down my cheek like artful teardrops. I caption the selfie “Regards” before sending.
She, in a mutually shameless attachment to her phone, hearts it a minute later.
My skin prickles under the sensation of being watched. The house breathes heat down my neck, even though no breeze can be found within these closed-off rooms. Trespasser. I’m ridiculous, obviously, and getting laughably worked up over regular old texting.
“Time to call Mom,” I say out loud, desperate for cool air. Putting off conversations with her would make it more suspicious. I don’t want her coming to Đà Lạt. In the safe place of my mind, I file away Florence and the house’s general creepiness and step into the hallway. Four days in, the soles of my feet have already memorized every rasping spot in the floorboards, so I walk closer to the banister where it’s harder to hear me. Somehow, it’s more claustrophobic when it’s only me in the house.
Outside, the wind teases my hair into a riotous fluff. Anxiety boils within my stomach, then simmers slowly. The phone’s lock screen flashes with a photo of me and Halle working on a ridiculous chemistry experiment in twin goggles. We were smiling. She was wearing her new hijab, the cheetah-printed one Mom got her for Christmas. Halle loved it. I used to call her before talking to anyone I needed to feign happiness around or sweet-talk, because it was easy to smile with her, to be known by someone so well.
We haven’t spoken since graduation. I should change the picture already, but I like seeing it. I just never know whether the memory will warm me up or break me in two.
Her dark brown skin shone with sweat under the afternoon sun, and her nose was slightly runny from allergies. Halle hated being outside when yellow pollen covered everything, but we liked hanging out somewhere that wasn’t our houses. The sports field was as good as any place, wide enough that no one bothered us.
It was several weeks before the end of the school year, and Halle said to me and not for the first time: “You love checking out lacrosse players.”
“I appreciate their sportsmanship, athletic abilities, and”—number five Warner intercepted the ball from Alisa, number twenty-two—“aggressive legs, yes.” I glanced over at her.
“Then why do you look like you sold your soul and I’m the one living her best life?” Halle wore her judgmental face, which she didn’t know was exactly as scary as her mom’s.
“I’m not selling my soul though, just my presence.” I showed her the itinerary the airline had emailed me. “Final now. Nonrefundable tickets. One week with my mom in Saigon, then five with dear daddy in Đà Lạt.” I kept saying the names like they were places I have been, so they couldn’t scare me back to pronouncing it the American way.
“He really set you up,” she said. “It’s crap you’re going away for our last summer. We can’t even finish our Before We Get Old list together.” She waved the to-do list with checkboxes underneath our names for things such as binge-watch She-Ra, confess to our crushes, and road-trip to a non–New Jerseyan beach.
The word last had me stuck. She was due for Berkeley in the fall, but that shouldn’t mean forever. Her mom would never let that happen. She doesn’t mean it like that, anyway.
“You sure this is what you want?” Halle asked, this being the lie. All my lies and secrets, knotted together like toys in a box once made for shoes.
“I don’t have time to not know what I want.” I wasn’t going to fuss over shit in life and go in undeclared for college, racking up useless credits. I wasn’t going to reassess my dating life, or lack thereof. I wasn’t going to keep wondering what spaces were open to me. There was no time for more self-discovery.
“That doesn’t mean you actually know, Jade.” Her face softened along with her voice. She was kind, which I liked most of all. “You decided, that’s all. And you can change your mind.”
Smiling, I leaned into my best friend’s shoulder. She always smelled like vanilla and blackberries. Even in a city, far away. I answered, “I might diversify to volleyball players.”
Branches break underfoot, bringing me back to Vietnam. I’m already in the woods, walking without really thinking about it. On the line, Brendan’s face appears too close to the camera, yelling for Mom from the other room. It’s 2:00 p.m., but the karaoke machine blasts a heartfelt ballad. He had escaped to the bedroom with the AC unit. Smart kid.
“Bored yet?”
Bren shakes his head and waves around his game. His brows stick together in concentration. A second later, Mom settles beside him. Her cheeks are pink from laughing, her skin radiant. Amazing what not working twelve-hour days under a nail technician’s light does for her health. The first thing she says is, “Jade, you eating okay?”
I’ve walked farther than I meant to. The house is a sliver among the towering pines. Their white barks line up like packed cigarettes. Gooseflesh pricks my legs.
I tell her I’m fine, Lily’s fine. Lily spends all her time in the garden or on whatever task Ba needs labor for (because at thirteen, she’s still an awful judge of character), but I see him mostly at the 6:00 p.m. dinners he insists on. I withhold that it’s always hit or miss, with wholesome Vietnamese cuisine or dry cereal because the milk’s gone bad again.
“Good.” A smile crosses her face. “We go on temple tour next week. Con muốn đi không?”
“No, I’m staying here,” I say before tacking on a lie. “It’s easier to work on the website with Florence—Ông Sáu’s niece—in person.” She doesn’t push the issue since she thinks I’m helping Ba out of kindness. Money aside, spending several days in a van and hotel to see temples that are basically carbon copies sounds incredibly boring.
Her smile lingers too long. “How’s your dad?” Four years absent, and the question is still gentle. I remember the way she said his name on the phone, when we made plans to come here. Cường, like she’d never get to say it again. Cường. She probably doesn’t even remember that time we came home to Lily building castles out of his empty beer cans while tiny Bren sat beside her.
He doesn’t deserve any of them. Sometimes, I don’t feel I do either.
Does your mom ever say she loves you is—apparently—my favorite question to ask when I’m drunk and sappy. I always need to relive the ways my family is different. Why it’s harder for me to ask or tell what would be normal updates in other households. It is a justification when someone, usually Halle, says yes.
Something had changed when I got older. Not the favorite for anyone, just the oldest. I’m too big for kisses, or hugs, and Mom doesn’t say the three words. I’m supposed to feel them. And I do, she works very hard, often seven days a week. Her hours off should be for relaxing, so I don’t ask for more or worry her about my baby crushes and bigger mistakes.
“Dad’s busy with his own stuff, as usual.” I shrug, going deeper into the trees. For now, a lie has to be enough. “I have to ask you something.” I pace in a circle. Ba has suspected from the beginning that I’ll run if he gives tuition money before the whole five weeks pass. It’s exhausting to plan around, even if he’s not exactly wrong. “My scholarship doesn’t get released until the semester starts, but the first payment is due in two days. Is it okay if I use your credit card? I’ll pay it right back next month when the scholarship kicks in.”
Barely a moment passes before she waves her hand. “Yeah, that’s okay.”
The tension doesn’t immediately fade from my shoulders. Leaves fall in blustery wind, willing me to take a leap.
There’s still a chance to tell Mom everything, instead of leaving home and not letting her know the real me. How I part my hair in the middle because I can’t stand asymmetry, how I like the color of leaves best when they’re golden just beyond the cusp of fall, or how secure I feel the tighter my clothes are. But what does it mean when I sometimes don’t know the real me? When I don’t know what I want her to say to me in return? Is there a word in Vietnamese for someone like me? Stubborn overachiever. A stereotype. There’s one in English, but it catches on my tongue. Bisexual. Needy. Neither of us has the language or time to figure it out yet, and there’s a power in never being known because no one can use you against you.
What I do know: I’m good at lying, even when I hate it.
“Thanks, Mom.” Ahead, an ant colony looms from a hollow and fallen log, so large that the bark appears to shift and knit together. “Let me talk to Bren.” I flip the camera around so he can see. Brown ants scurry along the screen in a blur of movement. Tiny holes become tunnels that run through the whole colony. Bren talks excitedly into the phone, his voice scattering the birds above. His hobby’s mildly more interesting than the rocks I collected at his age.
The air is thick with damp moss, tangy and earthy. Moving closer gives us a better view, but what I thought were clusters of mushrooms nearby are actually dead ants. Their round heads are all wrong.
Quickly, I change the camera angle so Brendan can only see me and the colony’s edge.
“It’s huge! Those are carpenter ants,” he says, face smashed against the camera for a closer look. “There’s probably two, maybe even three, queens in it. Whoa.”
My eyes dart from the still-living ants to their unmoving mates. My gut screams at me to look away, but I don’t. Long, yellow stems erupt from their heads, the tops capped like the enoki mushrooms Ba steeped in yesterday’s hot pot. The stems pin them tight onto the branches above the colony. The unnatural appendages vary in length, so they must’ve died at different times from the same disease. Maybe they wanted to be close to home, accidentally damning their entire colony with infected dust or microbes—whatever ants become after dying. In a squat, I lean closer. Some ants have multiple stems, and I can’t tell whether the sickness lurched up from within or erupted on the outside.
“Jade?” Bren’s tone is hesitating but enough to make me fall on my ass.
I blink. A hair closer and a stem could’ve reached inside my nostril. The woods snap into focus. Paranoia tickles the back of my neck. I look over my shoulder for Ba, Lily, a bird, or a worker on their smoke break, but it’s only pine. Always pine, leading back to the house where hydrangeas sneak color onto its muted palette.
Nothing is there. No one but me and the ants I feel crawling on my skin.
Morbid curiosity has made a complete pussy out of me. Shaking my head, I stand and brush dirt from my shorts. “All right, so tell me more about these queens,” I say to my brother. This time, I don’t turn my back in the house’s direction. My body is tilted, so I can always see Nhà Hoa through the leaves and ants on my other side, marching, marching, with only the little ones wearing their skulls like question marks.