Notes

good for the wil drains the heart of blood and leaves profound hollowoes in the center of our vein Sitting neste er mother's hospital bed, I was r

rubbing making a creamy Aion called Rene Milk on her swollen ankles, thought about my grandfather's warning I was a rangements no leave the family village, it seemed, and a part of me hoped that my ancestors' souls all goodness that had preceded me, would cross the Virginia border as well. How strange would i be to feel the spirit of thy dead grandmother unfasten, watch its extinguishing from the heart, and ac knowledge is absence in the hollowness of my veins? No les strange, perhaps, than to feel the absence of one's father halfway across the world, far from the untended ancestral grounds ar

My mother let out a heavy sigh. "In Vietnam, the a saying used to be 'Parents point, children sit. In this country, it become "Children point, parents sit. It's about time I get used to the American way, no?" she mumbled with feigned exhaustion. Although the laceration on her head was still purple bulge of flesh and she was still attached to an anarchy of tubes, my mother was feeling better. I could tell because she was returning to her usual stoic whispers, her resigned, seemingly indifferent comments that meant the opposite of what they seemed. And I in turn cleared my throat and cast my eyes downward, away from hers. We were engaged in a shadow play that had acquired a life of its own-a reluctant elegance-her stoicism and my guilt.

"The great brand-new," mother sneered, regurgitating my back to me my first impression of America, which she had memorized. "Why should it matter now, this old, century- old, way of life, here in the great brand-new?" My mother, like other bona fide Vietnamese, still thought and saw life in

ms of centuries, millennia. I watched her expel each wond from her mouth, the syllables hanging like carwheels of breath crowding the dry hospital air Again she sighed and reached our with her good right

arm and embraced me. Not to reassure me-quite the con It was to reassure herself that her fingers crept, cautious as a spider, around my neck. She was looking for the ivory trary Buddha. My mother had bought it at a village market from an old Cambodian monk whose chants had infused it with a protective spell. It was a potent charm, and its powers, he had warned, had to be fastidiously guarded. I was to hide in my mouth, under my tongue, every time I came into contact with something filthy, like a garbage dump, a toilet. or even a crowded Saigon bus. My mother claimed to live in this new country with me and me alone, but her real alle- giance, I believed, was to a world of her own, untuned to my way of thinking but perfectly logical to hers.

"You never know how life turns out. People change, fam- ilies split up. You'll be eighteen next year," she said grudg ingly. "They're adults when they turn eighteen in this country." She smiled her crooked smile at Mrs. Bay

"Different way of thinking, that's all," she said, bracing herself against the pillows. "Good way, better way of think- ing," she conceded, then took it back with an upward roll of her eyes. This was her new strategy for our battles in America, deftly turning our differences into a war of East and West. It was a tactic as smooth and sleek as hot was on tender skin.

And so, with this mixed blessing, I left Bobbie by my mother's hospital bedside and headed to the train station with Mrs. Bay. I was going for my interview with the "holy school," as my mother referred to Mount Holyoke College.