<\/p>\n
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. \u201cFor you, professor Quinn,\u201d said the one who always wore a different pair of fluorescent glasses, pronouncing my last name as \u201cQueen.\u201d He called himself Friendly, and today his glasses were bright blue. The arrangement looked like the sprays they drape over American caskets.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the entire class,\u201d said Harry. So that I could remember them better, my students gave themselves American names. \u201cEveryone want to help. We are so sorry for your sickness. We research flowers, and find these to be most beautiful.\u201d<\/p>\n
I cradled the spray and hugged the three. They were excited to be in a visiting professor\u2019s home, and, as they wiped the sweat from their foreheads and necks, in air conditioning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho live in this building?\u201d Friendly asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe mean: do other professors live here?\u201d 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Not having the patience to look in all the apartment\u2019s cabinets for a vase, I walked into the kitchen and shoved the bouquet into the refrigerator, hearing my mother\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cMiss Quinn. Did anyone in your family fight in Vietnam War?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201d<\/p>\n
I paused, not wanting to talk to these students about my father. I preferred not talking to anyone about my father. \u201cMy father.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid he die in War?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d The three sat staring at me as if we were discussing asset valuation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe died about ten years later, in 1981, when I was in high school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friendly\u2019s voice lowered three octaves. \u201cI am sorry.\u201d The other two nodded in unison.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about your relatives? Did any fight in the War?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d Butterfly responded, her long black lashes flapping. \u201cMy great uncle, he fought in War.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy grandfather die in War, Miss Quinn,\u201d Friendly interrupted. \u201cHe 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.\u201d His hands made the shape of an urn. \u201cWe bury the pot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though it felt as if a balloon were about to pop out of my ass, Friendly\u2019s story glued my butt to the seat. \u201cSo that\u2019s what they are doing each night down the street, on the corner of Tran Phu?\u201d 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\u2019s offerings.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, 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.\u201d Butterfly pulled at her long hair, her chin moving up toward the ceiling. \u201cThey get hair caught in tracks on this corner. Because they die young, it bring good luck to those in this life.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
When I finally made my way back into the living room, I found the students cleaning up the tea and cookies.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know this word, psychic?\u201d Friendly tried picking up the conversation. \u201cEvery 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\u2019s the date of my grandfather\u2019s death in war; that it\u2019s my grandfather\u2019s spirit. We used to make this butterfly leave; now we let it stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReally Friendly? I have never heard of a black butterfly.\u201d I walked back over to him, my arms crossed, standing as if addressing a student\u2019s inane, unprepared questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s totally black? And you only see it once a year?\u201d<\/p>\n
Butterfly spoke. \u201cYes, black butterfly auspicious. I am black butterfly.\u201d The three laughed, speaking rapidly in Vietnamese as Butterfly grabbed Friendly\u2019s arm, turning him and the always-smiling Harry toward the door.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
###<\/p>\n
When I woke the next day, I had a momentary wave of relief, my mind and body remembering how it felt to be healthy and strong. I Googled butterflies and discovered there were black varieties. I called my mom in Chicago. I had lied to her, telling her that I was teaching in Hong Kong for the summer. I made my daughter Laurel promise me she wouldn\u2019t tell her grandmother where I was.<\/p>\n
She asked about the shopping, whether I had found a designer purse for her yet and at what price, and what kind of food I was eating. I stumbled over the food, finally telling her that the Asian cuisine wasn\u2019t agreeing with me. Her questions became more urgent and worried. I decided to fess up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re where?\u201d I pictured her in her condominium, sitting at her kitchen table wearing flannel pajamas \u2013 in July – because the air conditioning was set too high, her eyes beneath glasses that weren\u2019t a whole lot different from Friendly\u2019s – always fashion conscious even in her eighties. \u201cWhy in God\u2019s name?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe business school has a new program with a Hanoi university. We are teaching capitalism. I\u2019m teaching a course on risk management.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s communist.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more socialist, mom. They are modernizing like China. It\u2019s okay. It\u2019s safe here now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut your father.\u201d This was where I didn\u2019t want the conversation to go. I had stopped talking to her about my father a long time ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know. That was War. He came here for the War. People don\u2019t avoid Germany because of World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut he killed himself over that God-forsaken War.\u201d It was no use. She had sucked me in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know that he killed himself. He was on a lot of meds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the War. He came home wrecked. He came home a noodle and never enjoyed another day of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, I thought, giving us a better life for it. He had gone to Vietnam in his 30s, later than most GIs who had been drafted, telling friends and family that it was his duty, and the duty of more Americans his age, to take the pressure off those who didn\u2019t have a choice. It was also a way to supplement his income as a security guard at Chicago\u2019s notorious Cook County Jail, a job that was, in its own way, another terrible war. Before enlisting, he had bought an expensive life insurance policy, which he told no one about, and to pay its expensive monthly premiums, he took a night job driving a CTA bus.<\/p>\n
After he died, and my mother was told about the insurance money, she said it was like winning Satan\u2019s lottery. Yet we moved from the South Side into an expensive condominium on Lake Shore Drive, and began a worry-free life, a life with doormen, trips to Europe, college, and graduate school, beauty salons and carry out food – none of which would have been possible without his death, his service in the War, and his secret insurance policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this time I thought you were in Hong Kong. Does Laurel know where you\u2019re at?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course she knows. She\u2019s with her father this summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if something happens to you over there? In that hellhole? How could you leave your daughter?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry I lied. I\u2019m okay. Laurel\u2019s okay; she\u2019s 16 for God\u2019s sake. It\u2019s just diarrhea. I\u2019ll see you in a few weeks. Don\u2019t worry. I\u2019ll be okay.\u201d
\n###<\/p>\n
Hanging up the phone, I decided that I would make myself be okay. I decided to go to the international grocery store, and possibly stop at a few shops along the way. As I stood in the apartment lobby, sweat spread on my face like a disease. The entire lobby smelled putrid.<\/p>\n
Mai at the front desk called me a taxi. \u201cHow do you feel Miss Louise?\u201d<\/p>\n
A rancid sourness inched up my esophagus. \u201cI think better.\u201d The bouquet of flowers from my students lay across the counter behind Mai. I had brought them down earlier, telling Mai to keep them.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sure to do this Miss Louise? To go shopping?\u201d Mai always talked in a whisper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure.\u201d I whispered back. I wasn\u2019t sure. Mai slid the business card of an international health clinic across the counter, as if to say, just in case.<\/p>\n
I decided not to wait for the taxi, but to walk. Unimaginable heat radiated from both the sky and the pavement, and the sun\u2019s brightness made it hard for me to focus. Horrific smells from the outdoor cafes hawking fried hanging pigs and simmering pots of Pho caused me to place a silk scarf across my nose and mouth. Men, nearly naked in boxers, their thin skin slick with sweat, squatted at the knees, their feet flat on the sidewalk. Smoke from their cigarettes made it feel as if I were walking through steam. Children played inches from the streets.<\/p>\n
I stood at the curb before a wide, circular street at the center of Hanoi\u2019s famous tourist section, vibrating with traffic, all moving in a crisscross, unpredictable path. A funeral van passed with a picture of an older woman plastered to its front window, the rest of the van covered in wreaths. Cyclos, motorbikes, and SUVs followed.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t push my toes off the curb, standing with my eyes shut as I felt the oncoming rush of intestinal liquid start to squirt out of my body. I tried deep breathing, but I couldn\u2019t find my breath. Sweat poured like melting ice off my face. The feeling of damp underwear getting heavier finally forced me off the curb, and I moved through a haze of exhaust and honking horns.
\n
\nI stopped as if emulsified in the middle of the street. A motorbike swerved, brushing my leg, and another came so close that I could hear the driver screaming at me as she swerved – her leg hitting the taxi driving next to her. I felt something at my back, grabbing my elbow, and looking down, saw a miniature woman at my side. She was dressed in a bright yellow outfit that resembled cotton pajamas. She yelled at me, pointing to the other side of the street, her words sounding like an irritated mother\u2019s even though she was probably half my age. When we got to the other curb, she was still yelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cMove as a fish swimming,\u201d she was saying, her arms outstretched and palms together, moving back and forth to demonstrate how a fish moves through its ocean of hazards. She said it again, louder, nodding this time, moving her hands with determination. She was looking straight up at me, imploring me, searching my face with her dark eyes. My forehead burned as if it had been scrubbed with steel wool. For a second, all the street\u2019s sounds were silenced. Then she hit my arm, and pointed to her eyes, and moved herself back across the street, through the traffic, in the same way her hands had moved, sliding into a shop\u2019s entryway, turning once again to look at me. My hand went up and my fingers moved stiffly.<\/p>\n
Pain in my abdomen returned me to the noise of the street, and I turned around and saw the long wooden green shack with the word toilet outlined in red – the street\u2019s public bathroom. It contained a few stalls with holes dug into the earth, the perimeters surrounded by dried feces and hungry bugs. I had been there before.<\/p>\n
The stall\u2019s walls moved but the air stayed still. I squatted, forcing my butt over the hole, pushing my shorts away from my body to prevent soiling them any further. The heat was overwhelming, as if I had perched my ass over a stove\u2019s burner. I tried urinating but couldn\u2019t. I had to breathe, and when I did, the smell, like two hands on my throat, wouldn\u2019t let me. I knew, at that point, that I could die here – death by defecation.<\/p>\n
Unable to stay squatting another second, I prayed that the shit would stop coming, and lurched forward, throwing open its unlatched door, scaring an Asian woman who stood with her small son, exposing my bare white, bloated stomach and stained underwear, my shorts at my ankles. My hands gripped the pavement as I threw up, mostly dry heaves, but a few chunks of saltines from my morning breakfast came out in shreds. The woman grabbed her son\u2019s hand and ran, and those passing along the street backed away, making wide circles around me. I imagined a million eyes on me, but when I finally pulled up my shorts, no one seemed to notice or care; my vomit pooled, cooking in the heat.<\/p>\n
I had left the scarf in the stall but I wasn\u2019t about to retrieve it, so I tore off two long pieces of tissue and stuck a piece in each nostril. It took me a long time to flag down a taxi, standing on the street corner with tissue sticking out of my nostrils, smelling like a pile of human shit. My skin pulled tighter and tighter around my torso; loneliness buzzed among the hundreds – thousands – of people who looked nothing like me. .I tried locking eyes with someone, anyone, but no one met my gaze.
\n
\n###<\/p>\n
That evening, I tried watching television from the couch, but I couldn\u2019t stand the smell of the fabric. I took one of the antibiotic pills I had gotten from the international clinic that afternoon, taking Mai\u2019s advice after all. The doctor told me that dehydration, affecting my kidneys, was heightening my sense of smell.<\/p>\n
The water that I poured into myself poured out of me in streams, and after one horribly painful round, I stood at the mirror in the bathroom, tracing the bones of my skull with my fingertips. I imagined my naked skull, a skull that would look the same as my father\u2019s, or all the others lying dead in fancy coffins in overcrowded American cemeteries \u2013 or buried in fields laced with Agent Orange and old B-52 bombs.<\/p>\n
I lay down on the bathroom\u2019s tile, and watched tiny gold ants marching across the lines of the tile to a fortress behind the sink cabinet. I couldn\u2019t move like a fish, but my thoughts did. I imagined the ants crawling onto my body, a sauna of rising heat, and bursting into tiny little infernos. I saw my father vaguely before the war, more solidly in his wheelchair after, yelling at me to bring him the remote control, or a glass of water, or even one of his pornographic magazines. Why would anyone leave their wife and daughter to fight in a War that so many despised, that so many felt was wrong, that killed him, that killed him years before his heart stopped beating, that killed Friendly\u2019s grandfather. Tears poured from my eyes. I hadn\u2019t cried for years, and yet it felt as if I had been crying, in some alternative way, my whole life.<\/p>\n
I poked at an ant, turning it over on its side. He lived without fear until he couldn\u2019t live any longer. As if fear was the opposite of life, not death.<\/p>\n
I pushed the ant across the floor with my index finder and held it pinned it to the wall. After a time, the other ants started crawling over my hand and finger, as if trying to make me release one of their own. As I released the half dead ant, its tiny feet scratching weakly at the air, I thought about my aging mother, and wondered, if I were to worship her after she died, what she would need in her afterlife. Probably a designer purse and funky blue glasses. Smiling, I rolled over on my back, feeling the cool linoleum chill my my hot, perspiring back.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
###<\/p>\n
I heard distant pounding as light from the sun cast pointed rays through the drape\u2019s opening on to the living room floor where I slept curled in a ball; I realized it was morning. I had crawled into the living room, and slept on the floor.<\/p>\n
When I opened the door, Friendly\u2019s bright orange glasses glowed in the hallway\u2019s dim lighting. \u201cI have come to check on you,\u201d he said, trying to cover his shock from my appearance. \u201cI know you need help professor.\u201d<\/p>\n
We sat together at the kitchen table sipping tea. Finally Friendly spoke. \u201cProfessor, can I ask a question? Do young people in U.S. know Ho Chi Minh? Who Uncle Ho is?\u201d<\/p>\n
I wanted to say yes, but Friendly was too intelligent. \u201cPerhaps some do, but not all – probably not the majority. Those of my generation might remember his name from the war, from hearing it on the news and reading it in the newspaper. But my daughter Laurel, who is 16, she wouldn\u2019t know him even though she knows of the War.\u201d He didn\u2019t say anything. Then he asked what kind of music Laurel liked, and if she liked to dance.<\/p>\n
I sat for several seconds staring at my tea. \u201cMy father talked of Ho Chi Minh, Friendly. That\u2019s how I know who he is. He didn\u2019t like him very much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friendly nodded. He looked down at his tea, then looked up at me, asking if there was something I needed. I told him that I needed a few things from the small international market, and asked if he would walk there with me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWalk?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know most people don\u2019t walk here Friendly, but I need to walk today. I need to move my legs and get my blood flowing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I will go. I will put groceries in my backpack. My motorbike much faster. Much easier on Hanoi streets. You still not well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t had to use the bathroom today Friendly. That\u2019s a good start. A great start.\u201d<\/p>\n
As we opened the apartment building\u2019s doors, heat engulfed us. I almost changed my mind, and I could see by the look on Friendly\u2019s face, that walking to the store was not what he wanted to do in the middle of Vietnam\u2019s summer. \u201cI take my motorbike, Miss Quinn. You stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, let\u2019s do this together Friendly.\u201d Mai watched us from behind her desk.<\/p>\n
The tiny sidewalk made it impossible to walk side by side. I stayed on one side of the street, worming my way around children, dogs, and people eating on their tiny plastic caf\u00e9 chairs. A large group of Vietnamese passed us dressed in traditional silk clothing, and when we got to the international market, Friendly told me that because it was Saturday, they were probably on their way to visit Ho Chi Minh\u2019s huge mausoleum, the enormous monument to him that takes up several city blocks. In its center his tiny, preserved corpse lays in state.<\/p>\n
In the grocery mart, I pointed to my ear, and asked Friendly about the flowers I saw behind some of the women\u2019s ears, flowers I had seen around Hanoi.<\/p>\n
\u201cLotus flower symbol of Vietnamese people – very important to Vietnamese people. It mean whenever we are in darkest situation, we still keep pure. This because Lotus plant grows in mud, yet still smell very good. It live in bad dirt, but still is very good.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smiled. \u201cYou mean it grows in shit.\u201d He paused, then threw back his head laughing. \u201cYes, this is true.\u201d<\/p>\n
On our way back to the apartment, I didn\u2019t look at my feet, but navigated through, moving, deftly, as that tiny Vietnamese woman demonstrated, as a fish swimming.<\/p>\n
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