###
That evening, I tried watching television from the couch, but I couldn’t stand the smell of the fabric. I took one of the antibiotic pills I had gotten from the international clinic that afternoon, taking Mai’s advice after all. The doctor told me that dehydration, affecting my kidneys, was heightening my sense of smell.
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’s, or all the others lying dead in fancy coffins in overcrowded American cemeteries – or buried in fields laced with Agent Orange and old B-52 bombs.
I lay down on the bathroom’s tile, and watched tiny gold ants marching across the lines of the tile to a fortress behind the sink cabinet. I couldn’t 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’s grandfather. Tears poured from my eyes. I hadn’t cried for years, and yet it felt as if I had been crying, in some alternative way, my whole life.
I poked at an ant, turning it over on its side. He lived without fear until he couldn’t live any longer. As if fear was the opposite of life, not death.
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.
###
I heard distant pounding as light from the sun cast pointed rays through the drape’s 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.
When I opened the door, Friendly’s bright orange glasses glowed in the hallway’s dim lighting. “I have come to check on you,” he said, trying to cover his shock from my appearance. “I know you need help professor.”
We sat together at the kitchen table sipping tea. Finally Friendly spoke. “Professor, can I ask a question? Do young people in U.S. know Ho Chi Minh? Who Uncle Ho is?”
I wanted to say yes, but Friendly was too intelligent. “Perhaps 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’t know him even though she knows of the War.” He didn’t say anything. Then he asked what kind of music Laurel liked, and if she liked to dance.
I sat for several seconds staring at my tea. “My father talked of Ho Chi Minh, Friendly. That’s how I know who he is. He didn’t like him very much.”
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.
“Walk?”
“I know most people don’t walk here Friendly, but I need to walk today. I need to move my legs and get my blood flowing.”
“But I will go. I will put groceries in my backpack. My motorbike much faster. Much easier on Hanoi streets. You still not well.”
“I haven’t had to use the bathroom today Friendly. That’s a good start. A great start.”
As we opened the apartment building’s doors, heat engulfed us. I almost changed my mind, and I could see by the look on Friendly’s face, that walking to the store was not what he wanted to do in the middle of Vietnam’s summer. “I take my motorbike, Miss Quinn. You stay here.”
“No, let’s do this together Friendly.” Mai watched us from behind her desk.
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 café 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’s huge mausoleum, the enormous monument to him that takes up several city blocks. In its center his tiny, preserved corpse lays in state.
In the grocery mart, I pointed to my ear, and asked Friendly about the flowers I saw behind some of the women’s ears, flowers I had seen around Hanoi.
“Lotus 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.”
I smiled. “You mean it grows in shit.” He paused, then threw back his head laughing. “Yes, this is true.”
On our way back to the apartment, I didn’t look at my feet, but navigated through, moving, deftly, as that tiny Vietnamese woman demonstrated, as a fish swimming.
