Love Like Hate, page 14
One day, Cun saw a strange girl squatting on the sidewalk in front of Paris by Night. A fishmonger, Phuong had just arrived from Chau Doc. Southwest of Saigon, Chau Doc was right next to Cambodia. Even with its lucrative border traffic in contraband, it was still an unusually poor town. Half the houses were thatch huts. (And we’re talking leaning, decrepit thatch huts, with their one item of luxury a constantly glowing black-and-white TV.) Back home, Phuong’s mother would just stir-fry some rice with MSG and call it dinner. That’s why Phuong had to come to Saigon. Too homely to work in a hostess bar, she didn’t want to deal with the nonsense of being a domestic servant either. That’s why she sold fish.
Phuong hardly ever talked or smiled. No one had ever seen her laugh. Maybe she had crooked teeth, or no teeth at all, and was afraid to open her thin, bloodless lips. From six in the morning, you’d find her squatting behind a tin basin hopping with climbing perches. Climbing perches are small, bony fish that can live out of water briefly and travel short distances overland. They are delicious marinated with fish sauce, sugar and black peppers, then stewed. Some people prefer them in a soup. A sadistic climbing perch monger, Phuong would take a fish and snip, with scissors, its tail, anal fin, dorsal fin, pelvic fin, ventral fin, pectoral fin, then, finally, head. If she had only reversed this order, the climbing perch would not have thrashed about during the process. Sitting in the café, Cun could observe Phuong methodically mutilating her wiggly, pinkie-sized fish. Her casual cruelty horrified and soothed him. Identifying with both fish and scissors, he found them equally arousing. Touching himself each night, his eyes shut tight, his mouth wide open, he’d conjure up Phuong’s nimble fingers glistening with fish blood and slime as she snuffed out yet another climbing perch’s life.
At first Phuong pretended not to notice the ugly boy who was always staring at her. Having never been stared at before for any reason whatsoever, she naturally assumed that this was love. Soon she couldn’t help but smile a little, maybe just once a day, without looking at Cun, of course, without even lifting up her head.
To Kim Lan, the fishmonger was no more than a fly magnet and a visual blight in front of her establishment. There were so many more flies nowadays, all bigger and bluer than ever, all because of the fishmonger and her stupid face. Standing inside Paris by Night, Kim Lan tried to browbeat the fishmonger away, but Phuong always showed up each morning at exactly the same spot.
A few steps from Phuong there was an old man who sat behind an old scale. You came to him to learn your weight. The chubbiest people in the neighborhood felt a compulsive need to step on his scale several times a day. They kept him high on the hog because he charged by the pound. Though he had no knowledge of medicine, everyone called him “doctor.” The day was long and sometimes he fell asleep. As soon as he started snoring, thieves and beggars would step on his scale for free. In his dreams, he often saw these lowlifes gleefully weighing themselves, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Waking up, he would console himself by looking over at Phuong and thinking, At least my fingers aren’t slimy and I don’t smell like fish.
28 PRIMATES
It took two weeks for Cun to approach Phuong. He broke the ice by buying half a kilo of climbing perches. Haggling, he bantered, “You’re a tough one, aren’t you?” which made both of them blush, his face turning nearly black. Then he said, “What is your name?”
“Yes?”
“I said, what is your name?”
“Just call me ‘fishmonger.’ ”
“You’re a funny one, aren’t you?”
“My name is Phuong.”
“I’m Cun.”
Back home, Cun gave the newly bought fish to the servant. She had never seen him buy food before. Perplexed, she glanced at his face and saw that it had changed radically. It was peaceful now, radiating with a Khmer smile and a nimbus. For the first time, he didn’t look half ugly. Is he in love with me? she wondered. She could see herself as Kim Lan’s new daughter-in-law. It’s about time I get to boss a domestic servant around. Lost in reverie, distracted, she brought a meat cleaver down on her thumb, nearly slicing it off. Cun heard her scream and saw blood on the chopping board. “What the hell did you do?!” he cried out, scowling. “You’re always so damn clumsy!”
Cun forced himself to wait a day before buying more climbing perches. Phuong also waited. When she saw him coming at last, she almost smiled.
“Half a kilo,” he said.
“Half a kilo,” she said.
As she wrapped the fish, he took a deep breath and asked, “Phuong, have you ever been to the zoo?”
“No.”
“Would you like to go to the zoo?”
“Where is it?”
“I’ll take you there.”
“OK.”
“How about tomorrow at three o’clock?”
“OK.”
Phuong spent hours preparing for her first date ever. She applied makeup for the first time and even dyed her hair a muddy blonde. Then she put on her best blouse, a white polyester number with large red, yellow and blue dots, an idea she got from an imported loaf of bread. With her floral pajama pants and new clogs, she was ready to go.
They looked like any other couple on their Dream motorbike. Sitting behind him, she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, her breasts pressed against his back. Thrilled by the sensation, he did not know that the softness he felt was the spongy lining to her stuffed bra and not flesh. Aroused and distracted, he nearly ran over a legless beggar trying to cross the street lying prone on a dolly, like a swimmer on a body board. “There ought to be a damn law!” he cursed.
The Saigon Zoo, built by the French, was once world famous. The French were fantastic at building zoos, railroads, villas, post offices and churches, often right on top of razed pagodas. Hanoi and Saigon both boast cathedrals erected over pulverized pagodas. You can’t beat their locations, though. But by 1990, after several wars and a revolution, the Saigon Zoo was very run-down. Most of the big cats were gone. The giraffes were gone. The hippopotamuses were gone. Cun and Phuong strolled past cage after cage with nothing in them but a damp, earthy smell. Gone in body but held in smell. How was it possible that a foul smell could linger so long without an animal? Look at that gazelle. Look at how miserable it is. Its bones are showing and there are fecal stains on its hind legs. Look at this Kodiak bear the size of a hedgehog. And this alligator looks like a burned cactus. These animals would be better off dead—wouldn’t you say?
Phuong had never been to a zoo before and had seen few photos of animals. Pointing to a panther, she asked, “Is that a bear?” Pointing to a bear, she asked, “Is that a gorilla?” All animals are variations of either a dog or a cat, she concluded. Some have horns on them, some don’t. Phuong thought the tiger’s stripes were either painted on or computer generated. She suspected the entire zoo was computer generated. They paused in front of a rusty cage housing two aging orangutans. On the wet cement floor was a black-and-white plastic soccer ball. A dead elm poked through the wire roof. The orangutans sat at the front of the cage, looking out. The male had a seasoned, well-traveled and philosophical face. Eating what appeared to be five pounds of lettuce, he kept spitting out the chewed food onto his enormous hand, contemplating it for a few seconds, then stuffing it back into his spittoonlike mouth, grinding crookedly, leisurely, his lips turned inside out. The female observed all this with concern and interest. Her round eyes were rimmed pink, making her very feminine and universally attractive. She kissed the male several times and was rewarded each time with a wad of bolus, passed directly from his mouth to hers. Phuong saw a parable of mature love in the orangutans. Far removed from their swinging days in the Borneo jungle, reduced to squalor and poverty, and living in Vietnam no less, they still had each other. She also noticed with envy and irritation that their living space was three times larger than her own.
They moved to a cage filled with mangy chimpanzees. These monkeys were so skinny that some of them slipped out between the bars. Not finding much to eat outside either, most slipped right back in. You might know this already, but a chimpanzee will go berserk at any sign of affection between a man and a woman. Inter-species jealously. As the chimpanzees watched what Cun and Phuong did just outside their cage, they shrieked and howled until they nearly went mad.
Phuong had never been groped before. No one had ever kissed her on the lips. That night she allowed Cun to make love to her in the little tin shack she called home. Rent was sixteen bucks a month for this converted tool shed. There were a mattress and a kerosene stove on the cement floor, and an oval mirror hung on a wall. Her clothes were stuffed into two plastic bags. She couldn’t hang them up because they would stink of kerosene. Her hair already stank of kerosene. It rained hard that night, clattering on the tin roof, so no one could hear her hiss with pleasure. Urging him on, she clawed his narrow back and scrawny behind, leaving bloody scratches all over. They did not sleep at all until morning. Two weeks later, she missed her period.
29 TRUE LOVE AND CROSS-DRESSING
When Cun told Kim Lan he wanted to marry the fishmonger girl, she thought he had gone mad. “What?! That ridiculous girl outside my door?! I’ll find you a decent wife. What’s the hurry? You’re only eighteen! Wait a couple years and I’ll find you a nice girl from a decent family. If you marry that stupid hick girl, the neighbors will all laugh in my face. We have standards in this family. I don’t get it. I hate that girl! Of all the girls out there, you go out and pick a stupid fishmonger!”
“But I love her.”
“Love?! What the hell are you talking about?! You’re eighteen! What do you know about love?! You can’t just go out and fall in love with a fishmonger. You must fall in love with the right person!”
“But she’s pregnant with my child.”
Startled by this fact, Kim Lan paused for a few seconds before saying, “You mean you already slept with her?”
“Yes, many times.”
“And she’s pregnant with your child?”
“She’s three months pregnant with my child.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I just found out myself.”
Three months was a little late for an abortion, but it could be done. Kim Lan knew the right doctor. “Tell the girl she can get an abortion, and I’ll pay for it.”
“But she doesn’t want an abortion. And neither do I.”
Kim Lan sighed and shook her head in disgust. “She’s taking advantage of you, don’t you understand?! How stupid can you be? She got herself pregnant deliberately so you’ll have to marry her. She doesn’t love you, she loves my money. She’s using that unborn baby to blackmail our family, don’t you understand?!”
“But it’s my child too,” Cun said in a cowed voice, nearly a whisper. Knowing he had neither the mental nor vocal energy to compete with his mom in any argument, Cun stopped talking after that point. For several hours she repeated herself, trailing off, then restarting with renewed vigor, usually after a glass of water or a cup of hot tea, until she finally shut up from sheer exhaustion. Although Cun was deeply ambivalent about becoming a father, he knew Phuong would never consent to an abortion. Made giddy by the prospects of her incipient offspring, she even told Cun she hoped the baby would turn out just like him. Each morning, she showed up with her bulging belly to squat behind her tin basin of climbing perches, often with Cun right beside her, their relationship out in the open for everyone to see. The sight of them squatting outside Paris by Night constituted a kind of protest against Kim Lan. The entire neighborhood laughed at this spectacle. Some were whispering their condemnations of the evil old witch for refusing to become a grandmother and a mother-in-law. Others praised Kim Lan for being firm, for not giving in to blackmail.
In one important respect, at least, Kim Lan felt relieved. At least Cun was not one of those. There were four in the neighborhood. One was Binh, a thirty-year-old geography teacher, slight of build, who was often addressed as “girl,” as in “Girl, how’re you doing?” “Very fine! Thank you!” A kleptomaniac, Binh was almost never allowed to enter anyone’s home. He only stole trivial things—an orange, a paper fan, a cigarette lighter—nothing too valuable. If it was small enough, he’d just shove it into his baggy pants. He was best friends with Trinh, the biggest gossip in the neighborhood. Once, Trinh yanked Binh’s pants down, or so she claimed, and saw the tiniest penis in her life—“It was all skin and no flesh, like a used condom!” Binh’s mother once asked a doctor if drugs or hormones could be injected into her son’s body. He told her nothing could be done. Binh’s brother used to beat him up for putting on makeup, but now wouldn’t even chase his flaming friends away. Binh idolized Michael Jackson and could do the moonwalk like you wouldn’t believe.
Then there was Dzung, forty-five years old, stocky and balding. Dzung shared a room in his parents’ house with his lover, Tuan, a twenty-three-year-old Adonis so handsome all the girls were in love with him. Dzung owned a video rental business and was obsessed with the Goddess of Mercy. He had several large statues of her in his room.
And then there was Trieu, twenty-four years old, who had come out about a month earlier. Trieu’s mother, Mrs. Dzau, sold duck coleslaw and rice gruel from a cart. Trieu’s father was a truck driver. Trieu had worked in a candy factory, but now stayed home to help out his mother. He had been in jail once for shooting up heroin. There were at least six junkies in Kim Lan’s neighborhood. Mrs. Dzau had confided to Kim Lan, “My son told me three weeks ago he wanted to wear women’s clothes.”
Eating a plate of coleslaw, Kim Lan glanced over at Trieu. Squatting behind a tub of dirty dishes, he wore a pastel yellow blouse with a Peter Pan collar, but his shorts were light blue and still masculine. For a cross-dresser, Trieu was still half-assed. Reading Kim Lan’s mind, Mrs. Dzau said, “He’s working right now, so he’s not dressed up yet. You should see him at night!”
“How does he dress at night?”
“Well, he puts perfume and makeup on and he wears my panties!”
“Your panties?!”
“My panties!”
“Why don’t you buy him his own panties?”
“I did, but he won’t wear them. He wants to wear my panties. I think my son became gay from using dirty needles. You know, other people’s blood got into his blood.”
“You mean he’s HIV positive?!”
“No, just gay.”
Kim Lan finished her coleslaw in silence and did not ask any more questions.
One morning, there was no fishmonger squatting in front of Paris by Night. Kim Lan had softened to the point of allowing Phuong inside the house. Her son wasn’t such a great catch either, she finally realized. Any girl I might find for him would only marry him for money. At least this one knows how to work. The fishmonger is stubborn all right, but at least she doesn’t have a smart mouth. Her lips rarely move, she barely seems capable of speech. I can deal with a dumb daughter-in-law. You don’t want them too smart or they’ll challenge all your decisions.
30 COMING HOME
Good tidings come in pairs, they say. The same week that Kim Lan welcomed Phuong into her household, someone else showed up and demanded to be let in. It happened on a Wednesday evening, at about nine o’clock. It was September 12, 1990. The café was crowded and Sen was playing chess as usual. Busy giving change to a customer, Kim Lan did not see Hoang Long until he stood right next to her with a huge smile on his face. “I’m home!” he shouted so everyone could hear. Then he gave Kim Lan the tightest squeeze of a hug ever. He pecked her cheek then buried his face in her hair. He ran his hands up and down her back. With her head turned sideways, she could feel his hot breath and wet lips in her ear. Since most customers knew Sen as Kim Lan’s husband, they were astounded by this display. They looked in Sen’s direction and saw him standing up, his face fierce, announcing to everyone, “Please finish your drinks. We’re closing in five minutes.”
“Who is that?” Hoang Long asked Kim Lan, though he already knew.
She answered flatly, “He’s my new husband.”
After everyone had left, the three of them sat at a table, their chairs equidistant from each other, to try to unravel their situation. No one else was allowed in the room. Sneering, Hoang Long leaned back in his chair while his adversary, all grim concentration, hunched forward. “You must understand, I married Kim Lan in good faith. We all thought you were dead.”
A Chinese accent, Hoang Long detected, grinning, sensing an advantage already. If his rival had come from Hanoi, he would have had to start calling him sir. “But I’m far from dead. I thank you for raising my son and keeping my wife company all these years, but now that I’m back, I’d like to live with my family again.”
“I had no choice but to marry Sen,” Kim Lan said in a consoling voice. “You must think back to 1975. If I didn’t claim him as my husband, they would have taken the house. I had to say you had died.”
“I’m not trying to blame anyone, but this is still my house, and you are still my wife. Sen, you’re welcome to stay here until you can find new arrangements.”
“But I’ve lived with Sen for fifteen years now and we have a daughter. If he leaves, then I’m leaving with him.”
Hoang Long really hadn’t expected his wife to say this. “You’re telling me you’re staying with this Chinaman instead of returning to your rightful husband?!”
Sen immediately stood up, knocking his chair backward. He was ready to kick Hoang Long in the face. The just-released prisoner looked terribly fragile. Spraying spittle, Sen raised his voice. “Listen, asshole. This house is under my name now. If you don’t believe me, just ask Kim Lan to show you the papers. I understand all the shit you’ve gone through and I’m not going to be unreasonable. You’re welcome to stay here until you can find new arrangements.”
