Move as a Fish Swimming
Standing in the entrance of my Hanoi apartment, the students handed me a spray of flowers as wide as the doorway and as long at their bodies. “For you, professor Quinn,” said the one who always wore a different pair of fluorescent glasses, pronouncing my last name as “Queen.” He called himself Friendly, and today his glasses were bright blue. The arrangement looked like the sprays they drape over American caskets.
“From the entire class,” said Harry. So that I could remember them better, my students gave themselves American names. “Everyone want to help. We are so sorry for your sickness. We research flowers, and find these to be most beautiful.”
I cradled the spray and hugged the three. They were excited to be in a visiting professor’s home, and, as they wiped the sweat from their foreheads and necks, in air conditioning.
“Who live in this building?” Friendly asked.
“He mean: do other professors live here?” said Quynh, whose long hair shone like black lacquer. She had come to me after the first test, a test that she received a 99.5% on, concerned that I hadn’t given her full credit for a question on derivatives. She had given herself the name Butterfly, and drawn one next to her name on her answer sheet.
Not having the patience to look in all the apartment’s cabinets for a vase, I walked into the kitchen and shoved the bouquet into the refrigerator, hearing my mother’s voice warn how bouquets in a home turn it into a funeral parlor, foretelling a death. After a few anniversaries, I tried convincing my husband that I was done with my mother’s superstitions, and he bought me a dozen yellow roses – which I claimed to love. But then I fed them to the garbage disposal and broke it. This was the first bouquet I had received since I destroyed that disposal. And my ex-husband, my daughter tells me, brings his new wife flowers almost every week.
I carried some tea and cookies to the students who sat on my couch discussing something in Vietnamese. As I lowered the tray to the students, my body heat rose, a phenomenal hot flash that felt as if I had walked directly into the sun. As I lowered myself into a chair, my abdomen warned of an uncontrollable flatulence onslaught. The last two days of class had been a circus of me having to leave at regular intervals to use the bathroom. Yesterday it had accelerated to every 15 minutes. Lecturing on how companies use futures contracts to hedge against risk, my bowels moved as snakes, in vigorous spasms. The Vietnamese food did not agree with me.
Friendly slumped into the couch, pushing his glasses up his nose. He wore white Nike basketball shoes, shoes that looked clownish on his thin legs, and tight-fitting black jeans. His green t-shirt said Boy Scouts of America. “Miss Quinn. Did anyone in your family fight in Vietnam War?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
I paused, not wanting to talk to these students about my father. I preferred not talking to anyone about my father. “My father.”
“Did he die in War?”
“No.” The three sat staring at me as if we were discussing asset valuation.
“He died about ten years later, in 1981, when I was in high school.”
Friendly’s voice lowered three octaves. “I am sorry.” The other two nodded in unison.
“What about your relatives? Did any fight in the War?”
“Yes,” Butterfly responded, her long black lashes flapping. “My great uncle, he fought in War.”
“My grandfather die in War, Miss Quinn,” Friendly interrupted. “He gave us all great honor. But he never return from War. His body never found. In Vietnam we call this mat tich, meaning missing. Not receiving a proper burial, we say their souls wander, lost, without a home. After many years, my mother and her sisters search for him, but he not found. So we take dirt from a field of battle, maybe where he die, and put it in large pot.” His hands made the shape of an urn. “We bury the pot.”
Even though it felt as if a balloon were about to pop out of my ass, Friendly’s story glued my butt to the seat. “So that’s what they are doing each night down the street, on the corner of Tran Phu?” I pointed in the direction of the street corner where every night older women feed objects made out of paper – houses, dishes, and clothes – into the small flames of candles. On the way to the university in the mornings, I would peer through the taxi window at the scarred remains of the previous night’s offerings.
“Yes, everything they need in this life, they need in afterlife. Many years before when we have electric streetcars, two young girls – they have very long hair.” Butterfly pulled at her long hair, her chin moving up toward the ceiling. “They get hair caught in tracks on this corner. Because they die young, it bring good luck to those in this life.”
The use of the words dying and luck in the same sentence made me excuse myself, also feeling a huge, thunderous fart about to escape. Sitting on the toilet, I again fought the spasms I had been fighting all week. Nothing of substance emerged, just a few, popcorn-looking clumps of crap. I sat for a few minutes longer, wondering why in the hell I had decided to take a teaching position in Vietnam. When the department chair first offered me the opportunity, I balked. But then I convinced myself that I had succeeded years ago in putting my father’s strange life and death into perspective. At times, after he died, I would turn a certain way while watching television, crossing my feet, or reaching for a drink, and I actually felt myself as him, making his motions, being inside his skin. I had to force him out of both my mind and body. Which I did. And now, this trip would be a big fuck you to my husband, my ex, who had always squawked about my inability to take risks.
When I finally made my way back into the living room, I found the students cleaning up the tea and cookies.
“Do you know this word, psychic?” Friendly tried picking up the conversation. “Every year a black butterfly come to our house on same day. My mother ask psychic why this butterfly come on this day. We are afraid of black butterfly. Psychic tell her it’s the date of my grandfather’s death in war; that it’s my grandfather’s spirit. We used to make this butterfly leave; now we let it stay.”
“Really Friendly? I have never heard of a black butterfly.” I walked back over to him, my arms crossed, standing as if addressing a student’s inane, unprepared questions.
“Yes.”
“And it’s totally black? And you only see it once a year?”
Butterfly spoke. “Yes, black butterfly auspicious. I am black butterfly.” The three laughed, speaking rapidly in Vietnamese as Butterfly grabbed Friendly’s arm, turning him and the always-smiling Harry toward the door.
