Testimony

I packed myself up and ran away because I thought I was meant to. Books and movies make it seem romantic, a childhood rite of passage, to shoulder a long stick, knotted handkerchief swaying with bread and cheese. Another thing the movies taught me: children who get punished are supposed to find their own stick. But I never did. My father swung the same wooden yardstick, and I have a vague image of my grandmother trying to step in. Me holding onto her arm. I don’t know if this is real, but memory is all I have of anyone. 

Once when we were shopping at Ross Dress for Less, a woman pushed her crying child the whole way around the store. He was still crying at the register and finally she slapped him, striking the sound out of that place. Even after she walked out. That silence hurt. And I didn’t walk very far. I turned around and sat at the end of the cul-de-sac. There I counted the minutes until it felt like I’d given it my best shot. Everything remained the same and no one asked where I’d been. That silence lives inside me still. 

When I ask a lover if he ever dreamed of running away, he doesn’t hesitate before saying, “No, I loved coming home. I love my parents.” 

I think I do, too. That’s the difference between us. “Oh,” I say neutrally from my end of the phone where I stand hundreds of miles away. “Oh,” I say again, the question of love rising to the top, expelled from my mouth. 

I fly to Los Angeles, and we drive to a museum and touch each other behind black curtains. It’s after hours. But this isn’t about the soon-to-be ex-lover. We file into the amphitheater and watch an 88-minute documentary about the Viet diaspora’s new wave scene. It was the ’80s. My parents hadn’t made it to the states yet, but they were across the world trying. Shellacked mohawks! A helmet of hairspray! Teens smoking and dancing and partying. I realize I’m crying because I’ve never seen Viet youth rebelling and having so much fun. The first time I visited Vietnam in middle school, I didn’t expect to see people with hair dyed pink or tattoos slithering up their sleeves. Now on Instagram I see them clubbing. I had only ever pictured the grief. Painted the whole country with it.

I try to keep my crying quiet, but I hear muted sniffles all around. The director looks straight into the camera when she talks about her nonexistent relationship with her mother, who was always working. She interviews her aunt, who raised her. She calls her mother on the phone. The director has a small daughter now and she wants the two to meet. The resentment is still there, so the call gets heated. The director’s mother says, “You can just tell her I died,” and the whole theater gasps. Afterward, the director is joined on stage by the Vietnamese Madonna. In the ’80s she was always performing. Even now. Despite being in the film, it’s clear she didn’t know what it was about until she sat in the audience that night. Onscreen she was harried, constantly thinking of the next thing, the next great hustle. I leave the museum in this city that I do not live in, on the opposite coast from my mother, and I wish she was here.

The lover and I talk about the parts we found sad. This is only our first date, but he feels grounded and secure. He must have had a good childhood. I don’t want to be skeptical, but I am. How to explain it? The film was about music—loud, thrashing, euphoric—and the notes in between. The oceanic silence in each of those homes that surged through the years, the fear of what gets pulled to shore. 

“You might understand me better now,” I say. 

We drive to CVS to buy a toothbrush. I packed three pairs of shoes in my one backpack, ready for all possibilities. But I always forget something. It’s like this: if you’ve never worked in the service industry or if you’ve never been ugly, what could we possibly have to say to each other. Outside, the Los Angeles air is cold. I cover myself up like a bruise.

Lynda Trang Đài, the Vietnamese Madonna, performed in over 50 episodes of Paris by Night. Family gatherings used to end with PBN for the adults. That was our cue, for my cousins and I, to run to the foyer and pluck each other’s eyebrows. The basement was where we played pool and Guitar Hero, smacking our hands on dusty couches. The straight-to-VHS variety show was created for our parents. When the adults sang, my mother was the best. I miss those years when it felt like I knew everyone. Some of the major pop stars wore old-timey clothes to perform traditional folk songs. But Vietnamese Madonna was a provocateur. I never thought the skits were funny, but what did I understand? Since COVID, my mother’s singing group has moved to YouTube. They spend hours rehearsing and filming living room concerts. One night my father and I drive the dark, windy parkway at 1 a.m., doze in the car for two hours while my mother records. Halfway through a song, I recognize that the voice coming from the stereo is hers. 

I’ve never seen photos of my parents dancing and partying. Skipping stones. Skipping home. Children are children everywhere. But when I gift my parents a jigsaw puzzle made from a family photo, I learn my mother has never assembled one. This makes me heave. I spend hours sorting photos and ordering them carefully in albums. What if a line had not been drawn across their country, their body’s grammar split in half? I’ve seen photos of my mother as a child several times. Never of my father. I can’t picture him as a baby or a teen. The youngest version of him that exists is in a military uniform. My father was two, my mother not yet alive, the first time they turned into refugees. Now my mother touches a puzzle piece uncertainly. I instruct her to look for a straight border. If you transform into the same thing twice, do you revert back to yourself or cease to exist? A double negative? Where do you go? 

Selfish. Self-involved. Short-tempered. I know I am a bad daughter. After leaving an eight-year relationship, I am exhausted. My therapist says, “Of course she wants answers, she’s your mother. Give her something.” But I don’t or I can’t. My ex- and I are on a break and then we are broken up. We still live together on shiny hardwood floors. Our pothos climbs the walls. All our books. The grey desert fox sits on our fence and scales the roof, dropping headless birds. One fall we buried rotting pumpkins, which the fox diligently dug up before leaving them for dead. It was so beautiful for a while. I fly home and my mother and I walk to a magnolia tree. The flowers are more pristine than our bowls. 

My whole life I’ve committed to obstinance, hardheadedness. I was never good. That’s one thing I’ve committed to my whole life. Obstinate, hardheaded. My father dreamed of me going to the University of Virginia, so I declined their offer. I quit piano for no real reason. So many photos of me frowning. Death glare at the lens. Even in grade school my goodness was selfish. I wanted 20 more dollars for the St. Judes Math-a-thon because of the t-shirt. My parents said no. I went into my father’s wallet anyway. Watched as they, confused, looked for an explanation. 

In heartbreak I am irritable. For some reason this means my mother speaks to me in Vietnamese and I respond only in English. I am not emotionally available. I don’t breathe a word of this to lovers. I used to be better. Sent postcards from mountains and lava fields. Texted with a Vietnamese keyboard and Google Translate. My swerving vocabulary. Headlights grasping the cliff’s edge. Once I drove through a wildfire in Oregon and watched smoke roll over Crater Lake. I wanted to sink into the water, but never even saw the blue. Hundreds of orange butterflies fluttered around our stopped cars, dozens glued to the bumper. A mass migration occurs every five to six years. Beauty and death: two sides of my hand. But I couldn’t say any of this. 

Time fades the magnolias. My mother wants to know what happened. We’ve never talked about feelings in our house, and I’m surprised she expects emotional intimacy without the foundation. At the end of this trip, my father will ask my mother if she was happy to have seen me. Sometimes she cries on the way to the airport. “She doesn’t even talk,” she’ll say. The petals fold in on themselves and fall in mounds. The rain makes them slimy and smell of rot. Someone will have to sweep them away. Is that mercy? Some trees flower twice. I’ve made guilt into a precious thing, pressed inside me. 

After our trip to Germany, my ex- downloads Duolingo for Vietnamese. I’d learned German for a month, but was too embarrassed to say any of it out loud. Words evacuated south with my family. In middle school French class, Madame Torrelle made us write each line 5x on looseleaf. “How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you?” My ex’s vocab is unfamiliar, the dialect Northern and formal, mine a mishmash. “Mồm,” he says, and points to his mouth. “Miệng,” I say, pointing to mine. 

The second time I visit Vietnam is the first time I go alone. My uncle gives a speech and when he gets to the part about my parents, he asks the room, “Does she say bố mẹ or ba má?” Father, mother. Together my parents and I buy phone cards to dial international. The place is run by twin sisters and their brother. They speak Chinese and Vietnamese. I stay outside to watch who is coming and going, coming and going. Learn the language of leaving. A parent hands me the receiver, and I feel the same mortification every kid does. Not because I don’t know who is on the line, though this is true—I don’t know my diacritics. They hang in the static with the fertilized duck eggs, Yeo’s soy milk, the scary seafood tanks in the back. This is someone’s bounty. We live a cigarette’s throw away for a time. I say what my father, mother said to their father, mother. This is true, too.

Duolingo sends threatening reminders the longer I go without speaking. 

Lesson 1: Xin chào. Hello. Tôi. I. Là. To be. 

Lesson 2: Mỹ. America. Người. People. Nước. Country.

Lesson 3: Vâng. Yes. Hộ chiếu. Passport. Xin lỗi. Excuse me / sorry.

My first time in Vietnam, I wear the same jeans on repeat. No one wears shorts and that’s all I’ve packed. The neighbor’s teen watches me from his motorbike each morning when we leave, and I avoid eye contact. I’m supposed to bring my cousin dirt from Sài Gòn but I’m too embarrassed of being seen. Her Vietnamese is even worse than mine and I wonder whether she feels complete. Whether she thinks about being whole. I open my mouth of braces, and strangers come up to ask about the wires running across my teeth. They peer into a new part of me. They ask about my America. “Your America,” they say. I look for my parents. “Xin lỗi,” they say and point to my mouth. “Sorry,” I say, and point to mine.