Grandma was always growing something on her balcony. At first it was a couple of chilies, then some cilantro here and there, then lavender in a tin bucket, then a whole spread of peppermint, lemongrass, laksa leaves, perilla and Thai basil. Soon she migrated the plants, now overgrown and hungry for land, to the plot behind our house, and there gourd vines had started climbing over her bamboo trellis; coconut trees grew taller than our house; wildflowers dotted every bush and shrub. And in the middle of it all stood a papaya tree: majestic, solemn, always heavy with offspring, under which her mother and her mother before her had been buried.
Grandma was one of fifteen children. Her first brother fought in the War, the second became a diplomat, the third wrote novels and essays. All twelve sisters bore children. The women gave and gave until their bodies were wrung dry, their skins shriveled and dotted brown like overripe bananas.
When the enemy asked where her husband was she said she wouldn’t tell them even if she knew. They hung her by her feet and burned her breasts with their cigarettes. Grandma’s only regret was that she couldn’t breastfeed Mother with her charred nipples.
***
Mother loved shopping at street markets, where pig legs hung from metal hooks, live fish thrashed in water buckets, and chickens cuckooed in their cages awaiting slaughter. Upon request the butcher chopped the meat into small chunks, sliced through skin and bones that splattered the side of her neck, and stuffed it all into slimy plastic bags. No way this is 80,000 dong, Mother said. How about 40,000? The seller didn’t concede so Mother shook her head and walked away until she called out, Okay, okay, special price just for you.
Mother’s greeting to other Vietnamese women was always hello cutie, which made them beam and blush and give her what she wanted. She wore her hair in pretty waves and tailor-made blouses and black stilettos. She loved objects—things you can touch, hold, own. Her existence brimmed with heaps of sparkly ornaments, perfume bottles, patterned scarves and fabric masks with imprints of her lipstick and her fingerprints in powder.
In America, Mother could not speak. In department stores where the light was too bright and the floor was sterile, where people spoke down to her as if she was a child, she held her breath and was mute.
In America, Mother got scared of phone calls—disembodied voices summoning her by the wrong name and shoving foreign words down her throat.
In America, Mother refused to feed her child ready-to-eat, vacuum-sealed meat and fileted fish. How come Americans shoot each other like dogs but can’t bear to see what the animal they eat really looks like?
***
When I was little, Grandma told me stories that changed every time. Happy endings turned tragic and heroes had changes of heart and lovers murdered each other for reasons bordering the arbitrary. One time I got mad and demanded she tell the stories correctly, but grandma said she couldn’t remember what really happened anymore.
When you’re old your memories slip from you like sand.
Every year for my birthday, Grandma made me chiffon blouses with pearl buttons. She knit scarves for Father and embroidered flowers on Mother’s bags. Her embroideries hung all over our walls, from pictures of dahlias to phoenixes and star constellations.
Because the people you love will forget you.
In our house we had a worship table with pictures of dead ancestors three generations back. In her picture, grandma was wearing her hair down the way she did in maidenhood. This was before the war, before she broke her hipbones giving birth to my mother, before they burned the only means she had to feed her child, before her children turned her body to ashes in one last act of violence.
Grandma, do you want to hear a story?
***
The first time I got my period, blood dripped down my legs like the red waters of the Mekong. When Mother saw me bleeding she got on her knees and wiped and wiped until her fingers tainted red, and I was crying because I was scared and she said I’m sorry. And soon the towels were all drenched, and on the side of my thigh was Mother’s handprint in blood before she wiped it away.
At thirty Mother started her own company. At thirty-five she was beaten by her husband. At forty she outlived her mother. At forty-five she learned English. At sixty her daughter lectured her about feminism. I’ll tell you what, she said:
Don’t you dare teach me how to be a woman.
The people you love will hurt you.
Get your white-washed ass out of my kitchen.
***
Our family always used fish sauce instead of salt. To marinade, Mother would have gripped the bottle by the neck, brown liquid dripping onto raw meat, fingers steeped in blood juice pressing and rubbing in a loving caress. To deepen the flavor she would have sprinkled in a handful of black pepper, fresh chilies and chicken powder. This is why I can’t quit meat. When I cook without fish sauce or chicken powder everything tastes bland. When Mother cooked the plates were wiped clean and the bones licked bare, everything broken apart and devoured to nothingness. And even then the aftertaste lingered, a remnant of something good, indeed something extraordinary, moments of intensity you once felt and cannot bear to forget, as if embodied, as if a wound bleeding internally, as if a humming sound from the chasm of infinite loss.
I am making dinner for myself in a country that is not mine
and the people here colonized my people and the men
hurt me the way they hurt my mother.
The noodles have not yet boiled. I take the chicken out of the fridge and try to treat it the way my mother would.
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