The old woman under the tree is propositioning any male passersby who appear to be foreign or Viet-Kieu and in the company of local women. All morning I have observed these exchanges from the café across the street. A local girl cannot walk down the street alongside a Viet-Kieu cousin or brother without the old woman beckoning to them — it will be assumed that the girl is a prostitute, walking alone with a nonlocal man. In fact, a local girl walking alone with any man is ill regarded. I fall into that harder-to-ascertain category of being Viet-Kieu (though often enough I’m mistaken for just another foreigner, Japanese or Mexican or Italian even, go figure) and female besides. Being a female of Asian appearance in itself makes me dubious, in their eyes, and places me in an incongruous position: I may not be expected to uphold traditional virtues, but I am not exempt—asa white female would be—from judgment, either.
A Swede or a Hollander, a big man anyway, with a mustache and something gallant and soft to his appearance beneath his big muscles, approaches my table and invites me on a boat ride. He has already rented the boat, just happens to be traveling alone, thought he would ask, would I like to join him?
I decline.
Would we get past the old woman? No. Besides, I have my reasons.
The old woman is ancient and crooked, like a crone in a mythology, with one corner of her mouth perpetually grinning, one staring pallid blue eye. The deformed here, they are deformed as only they could be in a story. She is stooped, in black peasant rags, standing barefoot in the dirt beneath her tree. It is not even a large tree; I don’t know what kind it is. Maybe it bears fruit; there’re some buds and long, weepy-thin branches. She is indicating the shade of her tree to the current passing couple. They stop, a little taken aback. What is she offering them? Relief from the heat? An old woman’s concerned advice? If she is selling something they don’t understand right away, for there is no blanket or basket of goods laid out. “Five dollar,” she’s saying, “five dollar.” (I know this because I’ve heard it, have already passed by close enough to hear it.) And she is looking only at the man, an obvious visitor, the one who must be the spender here. “Five dollar,” she says, “more cheap than hotel. Very private. No police, no police.”
It’s true it’s the only tree in sight. It’s true it’s sheltered by a building and set around the corner off the street, a very strategic location. It’s true its shade, though patchy, is tempting, inviting in this blasted heat. And did the old woman plant it there herself, years ago, I wonder, with such foresight as this when once she was still beautiful enough to earn a decent living in this manner, under trees?
The local girl is shaking her head vigorously, covering her face, innocently horrified, while her Viet-Kieu companion speaks a harsh string of Vietnamese words at the old woman — he’s not so Americanized as I am, can retaliate competently in the mother tongue. He puts his hand protectively on the local girl’s shoulder, to draw her away, and the old woman spits at their feet.
“No, you are wrong,” I imagine the young man will tell his parents and elder relatives when he returns to America (for they are probably all former dissidents too afraid to revisit the motherland themselves). “It’s not a Communist economy over there anymore. No, actually, it is quite capitalist now.”