Isaac married Tâm and adopted Louis on the soil of Guam. Together, they formed a family that made passersby frown, or smile.
On the fifth anniversary of the formation of their family, Isaac took Tâm and Louis to California, to trace the progress of those Vietnamese whom he’d seen pass through Guam. To his great surprise, he found that most of the refugees who’d become immigrants had settled well into their new lives, and that a good number of them owned their own businesses—a little restaurant, a commercial house-cleaning company, a specialized food store, or an insurance agency. But nail salons were the most common of all.
During her visit to a camp in 1975, Tippi Hedren, the actress in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, received compliments from the Vietnamese refugees for her impeccable fingernails, which gave her the idea of orga-nizing a manicure class for twenty or so women. Her first students, new Californians, passed their knowledge on to sixty more, who themselves trained other manicurists, and so they multiplied, becoming three hundred and sixty, three thousand and sixty, and more. In only a few years, they had opened nail salons all over the United States, in Europe, and throughout the world.
Tâm opened her first salon in Montreal after receiving advice from Thuân, who had never made any comments in Guam about Tâm’s mixed blood or that of Louis.
Thuân was the first Vietnamese to join forces with Olivett, owner of an Afro-American hairdressing salon in the Los Angeles neighbourhood of South Bay. Low er ing her prices by sixty to seventy-five percent, she offered her services to the Olivett clientele. Their partnership gave rise to new needs, a new culture, and a new business, which today is worth eight billion American dollars—or the price of 48,484 used Huey helicopters; or six return trips between the sun and Earth in kilometres; or the mass of 5,525 Boeing 747-400s in kilograms; or eight times the billion iPhones sold. If Vietnamese women’s own tastes were close to those of bourgeois white women, who prefer shapes and colours that are classic and conservative, the Vietnamese manicurists quickly adapted to the expressive, striking, extravagant tastes of their Black clients, whose exuberant creativity finds expression right to the tips of their nails.
Isaac helped Tâm out at the opening of her salon, while Louis gave her a hand after school and on weekends, studying during bus rides and at night to keep up with his friends and catch up on the ten first years of his life when he’d been deprived of theories, schedules, rules.
Tâm did not have set opening or closing hours. She followed the rhythm of her clients: an appointment at dawn for those getting married, and at night for those with amorous rendezvous; and any time in between for those who came with a prescription from their psychologist or sex therapist, or who were preparing for a trip to the seaside.
As soon as Tâm was able to do so, she offered financial help to those of her employees who wanted to open their own salons. Louis helped those new owners to rent spaces, fix them up, expand and renew their inventory and their clientele. From year to year, he got more involved in the various aspects of a business whose growth was being spurred on by new discoveries and creations shared through pictures, through videos, and in conversations in the salons. He aided and abetted the dizzying growth of the Vietnamese community by criss-crossing the planet, both on the beaten track and along secondary roads.