When night comes at Nhà Hoa, it’s as though dark walls have dropped around the house, closing us in. I’ve abandoned blankets and other comforts that make a bed less lonely to deal with the heat. The ants are fresh on my mind again, so it takes a while to drift away. Even when I’m asleep, it’s as though a part of me remains in my body, ready to yawn awake.
I am in the forest, and so is my father. Glittery shoes shine from my feet, the same ones he gave me when I was six. Pine needles rest on his shoulders, thick as armor. I know this is a dream because I am not afraid of my father.
In his hands, the ax catches sun. The pines topple with each swing. They’re not so big fallen. Pine needles land on my shoulders and grow into my hair. Petals as delicate as fingerprints blow in the wind, loosened from wild hydrangeas. I can scream and wake up and remember how they make the air sharp and sweet, but I don’t because I am here with you.
Other words for you: Cha, Dad, Ba. The needles root into my scalp.
Something crawls at the back of my throat: Is it flowers?
My eyes jolt open, seeing black before blue settles into the crevices of the molding. In the night, it resembles an impossibly long vertebrae or the back of an unending dragon.
I can’t move.
My hands, my feet, my body, they’re all there, where the mattress and soft sheets press against me. I want to move but I cannot move. Nothing but my heart does, thumping with the attic noise. This has never happened before.
I am conscious but drowning in my own body.
Eyes bulge, testing the limits of their sockets. They’re dry and they hurt.
The bedroom door is open, though I always sleep with it closed. A draft rocks it on the hinges, but Ba didn’t fix the windows. They are still shut, and yet the door moves where the light doesn’t touch.
But I can’t worry about what is at the door when there’s something between my teeth.
A thing moves and squirms in the tight space of my anxious mouth. I’m used to the grinding of enamel, my teeth put to useless work, but this is something else. It could be my tongue, but there’s no pain. Saliva pools at the back of my throat.
I dreamed before this: flowers and the shine of new shoes. Ba’s hand before he lets go. I try to move my fingers next, but they remain limp and stubborn.
I imagine the hydrangea blooms under a bright moon, passing the house’s eyes and spying on me. Mistaking my silent mouth as a pot to fill, reaching in and planting another friend.
Flowers grow. Little by little.
I wonder if I’m growing when kept still.
I make no sense at all.
Move.
The door shifts again, maybe an inch. My eyes are so dry. My mind muddles through a haze. I was sleeping, and now I’m meant to be awake. I am awake, and I’m meant to be getting up, complaining about the heat, but everything is a betrayal.
Move.
There’s something foreign in me, an animal at high stress. I’m beating against my rib cage to be let out.
The pressure releases suddenly, and I bolt forward, hair sticky on my temples and neck. I spit into the blue-black. I scramble from the bed, thud thud thud on creaking wood, and into the bathroom. The faucet sloshes water in my mouth, and I retch. Sometimes I bleed from a slip of my cheek between teeth, but the sink is clear of blood.
I grip the cold porcelain, knuckles white, and heave close. Clear water, except for a single insect leg in the basin. Bent, with spurs.
The birds seem to squawk along the wallpaper, green with envy.
What did I just eat?
I don’t sleep again. By 11:00 a.m., I’m still curled up near the headboard with my phone stuck on a thousand tabs about sleep paralysis and the average number of spiders the typical human swallows in their lifetime. (Eight. Eight.)
The astringent smell of Listerine cool mint and original wafts from my mouth, still dry and feeling full of splinters or legs of unknown origin. I’ve already gone through two travel-sized bottles of mouthwash, so retching again isn’t going to help.
Sleep paralysis, my brain repeats, groggy, as if that is a better worry. It can be caused by any number of reasons, such as a poor sleep schedule, not actually sleeping, stress, and sleeping on your back.
I am a high-achieving teenager whose ex–best friend is the only person who knows she’s bisexual and dealing with the return of family shit; a recent high school graduate hustling for money so she doesn’t have to burden her hard-working refugee mother; and someone who has reliably slept on her back since infancy.
“Thank you, internet. Very helpful.” I aggressively clear the browser history.
I require sustenance, even if my mouth doesn’t want it. If I did swallow a bug, it must be dead. Not waiting in my gut to be nourished. There are insect carcasses on the sill again, but my focus turns to Marie Antoinette’s dresser, where I’d tucked the insect leg between two pieces of paper like a pressed flower. I should’ve washed it away, but I didn’t. I have to know what it came from.
Food first though.
Nhà Hoa has been awake for some time with hammering and sawing and digging. No neighbors live close enough to complain about noise, and the reno workers need every minute to stay on Ba’s relentless schedule. Opening my bedroom door, I smell it—fingernail dust, that particular scent from nail salons.
One summer I told Mom I wanted to become a nail technician, so she made me tag along to work. She cleaned people’s hands and feet, scrubbing away their calluses, and got shit tips half the time. The air was always full of polish and fine dust from sharpened nails. You don’t want to do this, Mom said after, exhausted, when all I had wanted was to be like her. Soft. Likable.
It’s the type of disappointment that clogs your lungs, and it’s here.
I sniff the air again. My attention shoots immediately to the master bedroom, where there’s a shuffling. I step into the shaft of light by its door and sneak a glance inside.
“Dad?”
There is only the furniture and a crowbar on the ground, half the soggy floorboards pulled up. Bits of tan-colored dust pile along the seams. That must be the smell.
Trespasser. My shoulders tighten. Another rude intrusive thought, as usual.
Turning away, I pass Lily’s room and go downstairs. On the right, two statuesque figures flank the fireplace in the sitting room, boxed in by newly delivered chaise lounges and armchairs. The white woman holds the largest photograph of us from the mantelpiece.
She glances up, a bright greeting ready. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty!”
What the shit.
“You must be Jade,” says her partner, a smiling man with sunglasses pushed into broom-colored hair. “Your dad said that both his girls are visiting for the summer.”
The term his girls would make me vomit, if not for the fact that there is an ongoing intrusion happening in front of me. The potted hydrangeas seem to suck up all the sunlight in this house, leaving these rooms dim.
“This is my husband, Thomas, and you can call me Alma.” She places the frame back on the mantel while Thomas keeps smiling. “We’re staying down the road.”
The other investors, right. Ba had mentioned them during one of those hazy dinners. I switch to a Very Pleasant veneer in response. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
In quick steps, Alma crosses the room and grasps my hands. Cigarette smoke wafts from her clothes in a noxious cloud. “Likewise.” Her eyes are a murky hazel, paint water that can’t decide between brown or green or blue. They stare at me too closely. “Your eyes are a gorgeous shape,” she adds. “Like your dad’s, but thicker lashes.”
Your hands are exquisitely cold and knobby, I’m tempted to say. I’m laid bare otherwise, in my ratty tank top and shorts sticky with sweat. Instead a laugh escapes my smiling mouth. “And where is he?”
Weird, as Ba never leaves anything related to the house unfinished and he never lets anyone other than us inside alone.
“He had to step out,” Alma says, letting go. “Will you join us?” She settles in a tufted armchair, the center seat, across from the fireplace.
I lift my chin. “No, I’m good here.” Near the exit, thanks.
Walking as if he can’t keep still, Thomas regards me. “How are you liking it here?”
Having practiced this song and dance with teachers and guidance counselors in high school, I know to go for the blandest, most neutral answers. “It’s very beautiful. And the food is great.”
Thomas beams. “The weather is fantastic up here. It’s no wonder why the French made this their resort home. It’s a dream, like Europe.” Thomas says something about them vacationing here often.
My smile tightens. My teeth might actually break. They don’t hear themselves at all. Or maybe it’s my opinion that they don’t care about.
“Are you comfortable here?” the woman asks. “We haven’t been able to tour the whole place!”
“Very,” is my riveting reply. It’s none of her business how I feel here.
Ba comes from the kitchen, wringing a towel in his hands. His attention darts from me to his guests. “Sorry about that.”
“Everything okay?” Alma asks as she hops back on her Birkenstock sandals.
“Yes.” He pauses. She looks expectantly. “The contractors found more roots leading up to the house, closer to the water pipes this time, so we have to dig them up before pouring concrete in the patio. It’ll be fine.”
“Ah good, you caught it,” Thomas says. “Less likely to break the concrete. Nice, thorough work.”
Footsteps bounce down the stairs as Lily makes an appearance. “I’ve got the invites! Well, the test ones.” She strides by to give Alma and Thomas a copy. Lily didn’t tell me about this. I’m putting together a website as part of a deal for college money. She’s doing it for free. I give our dad the stink eye.
Alma fusses with the paper. “Are you really keeping the name? It’s so hard to say. The French is more romantic. Maison Fleurie or even Maison de l’Hortensia.”
“We are in Vietnam,” I say happily. “Everyone would call it Hor House if we named it that.” I say the explosive word slowly and with a smile.
My sister’s Authentically Pleasant face wavers. Ba might actually murder me.
“Well,” Alma says stiffly. “There’ll be time to discuss. If we want it to be a house of importance, that’s memorable, and fitting, it should have a name that appeals and reflects its storied history.”
“Oh boy,” Thomas says. “Don’t get my wife started, or we’ll be answering to Dr. Alma!” His blue eyes are set adoringly on his wife.
“Don’t be silly, honey,” she says. “I much prefer Alma.” A singular glance is placed on me. “I did my dissertation on the founding of French Indochina. This was the first home of a very high-ranking officer, Roger Dumont. I was charmed by the letters his wife, Marion, sent to her sister about Đà Lạt and especially this house.” Her expression softens. “So beautiful, it belongs in one of Papa’s snow globes.” She sighs. “Madame Dumont became a bit of an agoraphobe, so many important meetings happened right here. Of course, I want to honor it in the right way.”
This woman has her PhD in colonization, and I’m supposed to mindlessly defer to her?
Thomas claps his hands together. “We’ll figure out something that makes us all happy, I’m sure! Alma, we should get going for our date.”
Ba clears his throat. “Well, I also need to get back outside. Will you two still join us for dinner next weekend?”
“Yes, we’ll be back from Bangkok then.” Thomas inclines his head at Ba while leading his wife toward the door. I shuffle aside. “Jade should be awake by dinner, I hope.” He winks.
I want to die where I stand.
“We’ll be up and ready, say six thirty?” Ba’s hand touches my shoulder, which is the first time in two years we’ve interacted this close at all. In fact, two-years-ago us stares from the mantel: Ba with his arms spread around us while Brendan blows out the number six candle on his ice cream cake. Ironically, Mom’s the one who isn’t in the picture because she’s busy behind the camera capturing this memory of Ba passing through our life the one weekend until now. His hold traps me still, as it did then.
“Perfect. We’ll be absolutely starved,” Alma replies, stepping onto the porch where her hair is thick linen white rather than the sad gray from the sitting room.
“See you then, Cường,” her husband says, pronouncing Ba’s name as Kong. Waving, they head toward the parked SUV.
“They’re tourists,” Ba says after they’re gone, as if expecting questions. I have none. I don’t care. His hands have smudged dirt on my shoulder. I don’t care. “They bring a lot of money in.”
My sister frowns. “Is that why you’re friends?”
“It’s business. Alma, Thomas, and their friends spend all their money on vacation, so why not here?” Ba shrugs, finally releasing me. “We’re the same to locals. Việt Kiều.” He says the last two words lightly, as if they don’t hurt him. Việt Kiều are Vietnamese people who live overseas. They send money to family, they bring gifts, they visit, and they go on tours around Vietnam. They don’t belong in the same way. Even Ba who was born here is seen as different by those who stayed.
“But we’re not,” Lily says before I can. I don’t look at Đà Lạt, at Vietnam, and think Europe. What I see is a version of the place Mom and Ba left behind, and also where I could’ve grown up, with a language that I would know fluently, paternal family to possibly love me, and a history that would finally be known. All these things were taken from me, before I was even born. “Anyway, she has bad taste.” My sister lifts a half-empty drink labeled HAPPY TEA SERVE from the coffee table. “She said grass jelly feels like worms.”
Dusty footprints layer the floor, tracking toward the potted hydrangeas, around the edges of the room, and the fireplace. I’m not dealing with their mess on top of the horrible night I had.
“Jade,” Ba says, stopping me before I can get away. Weary lines gather underneath his eyes. “On Saturday, we go out.”
“I don’t need anything,” I reply. The last time we went shopping, I definitely overpaid a grocer speaking in a Northern accent to get the interaction over with. I truly would sell my soul to ascend, or descend, at this precise moment.
Ba shakes his head. “Fishing. That’s what I mean. All three of us.”
We used to do this every other weekend.
The nostalgia is desperate to entrap me with hope. Maybe this is the strategy he’s going for: pretend as though he never left us in the first place and that this is a special summer for father and daughters to bond. “Fine.”
My steps finally slow halfway through the dining room, where I can hear the workers’ muffled conversation and the roar of a saw from outside. Like the upstairs bathroom, the dining room has wallpaper on the top half featuring a painted view of the pines. It’s too much for me, but it makes sense that a lady who was scared of going out in the world would invite more trees in from the mountains.
The branches are flat and lifeless under my touch. Not comforting at all. Déjà vu sneaks up on me, and I let go, shoving all thoughts of forests away—real, imagined. Instead, I think of everything I’ve seen in Vietnam so far: square houses with dark mushroom caps out in the country, narrow colorful buildings in the city, and miles and miles of terraced rice paddies. History has left its mark among these sights, and erased others.
There are streets here named in French; there are universities built by Vietnamese people by the French who commanded them. They’re named in someone else’s honor. Of course, Alma’s drawn here, where the past seems rosy and romantic.
But who am I to say? I wasn’t colonized. I’m not Vietnamese enough to have an opinion on anything other than what makes a good bánh mì (the baguette) or phở broth (how long it’s been simmering and which bones used). I close my eyes, the hunger gone.
Here I’m cut too sharp. Here I’m a wound.