Inside Out & Back Again

by Thanhhà Lại

They’re heading to Vũng Tàu he says, where the rich go to flee Vietnam on cruise ships. I’m glad we’ve become poor so we can stay.

Mother says if the price of eggs were not the price of rice, and the price of rice were not the price of gasoline, and the price of gasoline were not the price of gold, then of course Brother Khôi could continue hatching eggs. She’s sorry.

But when we keep talking about how close the Communists have gotten to Saigon, how much prices have gone up since American soldiers left, how many distant bombs were heard the previous night, Miss Xinh finally says no more. From now on Fridays will be for happy news. No one has anything to say.

I don’t know any more about Father than the small things Mother lets slip. He loved stewed eels, paté chaud pastries, and of course his children, so much that he grew teary watching us sleep.

I’m starved for stewed eel, tuyt sút, tuyt sút. Sometimes I whisper tuyt sút to myself to pretend I know him.

Brother Quang says, One cannot justify war unless each side flaunts its own blind conviction.

Change meant land was taken away, houses now belonged to the state, servants gained power as fighters. The country divided in half.

At this point, Mother closes her eyes, eyes that resemble no one else’s, sunken and deep like Westerners’ yet almond-shaped like ours. I always wish for her eyes, but Mother says no. Eyes like hers can’t help but carry sadness; even as a child her parents were alarmed by the weight in her eyes.

Mother smells of lavender and warmth; she’s so beautiful even if her cheeks are too hollow, her mouth too dark with worries. Despite warnings, I still want her sunken eyes.

We know you have suffered. I thank you, your country thanks you. Then he cries actual tears, unwiped, facing the cameras. Mother clicks her tongue: Tears of an ugly fish. I know that to mean fake tears of a crocodile.

Black seeds spill like clusters of eyes, wet and crying.

Everyone knows the ship could sink, unable to hold the piles of bodies that keep crawling on like raging ants from a disrupted nest. But no one is heartless enough to say stop because what if they had been stopped before their turn?

Every night she points upward. At least the moon remains unchanged.

Your father could be looking at the same round moon. He may already understand we will wait for him across the world. I feel guilty, having not once thought of Father. I can’t wish for him to appear until I know where we’ll be.

He boards the other ship, salutes and shakes hands with a man whose hair grows on his face not on his head in the color of flames. I had not known such hair was possible.

Mother says, People share when they know they have escaped hunger. Shouldn’t people share because there is hunger?

If it’s a young cowboy like Clint Eastwood, everyone cheers. If it’s an old cowboy, like John Wayne, most of us boo and go swimming.

Then by chance Mother learns sponsors prefer those whose applications say “Christians.” Just like that Mother amends our faith, saying all beliefs are pretty much the same.

Our sponsor looks just like an American should. Tall and pig-bellied, black cowboy hat, tan cowboy boots, cigar smoking, teeth shining, red in face, golden in hair. I love him immediately and imagine him to be good-hearted and loud and the owner of a horse.

Whoever invented English must have loved snakes.

Our cowboy scrunches his brows, surely thinking, why are his refugees so picky?

we are used to fresh-killed chicken that roamed the yard snacking on grains and worms. Such meat grows tight in texture, smelling of meadows and tasting sweet.

I bite down on a thigh; might as well bite down on bread soaked in water. Still, I force yum-yum sounds. I hope to ride the horse our cowboy surely has.

Add an s to verbs acted by one person in the present tense, even if there’s already an s sound nearby.

Mother is even more amazed by the generosity of the American government until Brother Quang says it’s to ease the guilt of losing the war.

People living on others’ goodwill cannot afford political opinions.

Even at our poorest we always had beautiful furniture and matching dishes. Mother says be grateful. I’m trying.

Why no s for two deer, but an s for two monkeys? Brother Quang says no one knows. So much for rules! Whoever invented English should be bitten by a snake.

I step back, hating pity, having learned from Mother that the pity giver feels better, never the pity receiver.

Fire hair on skin dotted with spots. Fuzzy dark hair on skin shiny as lacquer. Hair the color of root on milky skin. Lots of braids on milk chocolate. White hair on a pink boy. Honey hair with orange ribbons on see-through skin. Hair with barrettes in all colors on bronze bread. I’m the only straight black hair on olive skin.

On one side of the bright, noisy room, light skin. Other side, dark skin. Both laughing, chewing, as if it never occurred to them someone medium would show up.

I’m furious, unable to explain I already learned fractions and how to purify river water.

I wish our cowboy could be persuaded to buy a horse, that I could be invisible until I can talk back, that English could be learned without so many rules. I wish Father would appear in my class speaking beautiful English as he does French and Chinese and hold out his hand for mine. Mostly I wish I were still smart.

every language has annoyances and illogical rules, as well as sensible beauty. She has an answer for everything, just like Mother.

She thinks I am asleep. More sniffles, so gentle I would miss them by inhaling too deeply. Come home, come home and see how our children have grown. All my life I’ve wondered what it’s like to know someone for forever then poof he’s gone.

I thought so, despite her own rule Mother can’t help yearning for Father any more than I can help tasting ripe papaya in my sleep.

Whoever invented English should have learned to spell.

He says, Steven. I hear SSsì-Ti-Vân.

MiSSS SScott shows the class photographs of a burned, naked girl running, crying down a dirt road of people climbing, screaming, desperate to get on the last helicopter out of Saigon of skeletal refugees, crammed aboard a sinking fishing boat, reaching up to the heavens for help of mounds of combat boots abandoned by soldiers of the losing side. She’s telling the class where I’m from. She should have shown something about papayas and Tt.

No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.

Chant, my child, Breathe in, peaceful mind. Breathe out, peaceful smile. She strokes my back. Chant, my daughter; your whispers will bloom and shelter you from words you need not hear.

I had not known of her son Tom or of his death as a twenty-year-old soldier in the very place where I was born. I never thought the name of my country could sound so sad.

Tom had sent home these photographs of a hot, green country that he loved and hated just the same.

I almost scream because the doll with long black hair is so beautiful. But I whisper, Thank you. My high emotions are squished beneath the embarrassment of not having a gift for her.

Father’s portrait stares back. This is as old as we’ll ever know him.

I also hope after you finish this book that you sit close to someone you love and implore that person to tell and tell and tell their story.