Culture Shock.
vickdawg
Posts: 29
Her name was Thuy. A name, perfect like the twitters of birds or a small child’s giggle, but mangled by thick Western tongues. It was obvious to those with eyes slanted, deep and thoughtful--separate the “t” & the “h” to create a sweet, lilting sound to match this tiny, creamy woman. “Th-Huee”. To those who requested her personally for their fingertips, loud & empty with cell phones & sweat suits, it became “Tweeee”. From a flutter of hummingbird wings to a crow’s screech or a hungry wail from a red-faced toddler. A command. Still, everyday, she smiled a shyly crooked-toothed smile, led those brisk, towering, pale or leather-weathered women to her small workbench, & in her broken English helped them select a nail color. Sometimes those women wanted Far East Fuchsia or Fiji Weejee Fawn, but usually it was Big Apple Red, Chicago Champagne Toast or Nantucket Mist.
Thuy was from Vietnam. Outside her in America it was March, cold & raining, slush on the ground dirty from loud cars & construction-worker feet passing the salon to the deli next door. Thuy was working on a plump & kind-eyed woman, but did not lift her own dark eyes. She slipped herself into her seat & fit the mask around her mouth, looking down & at this woman’s hands. She had stories of home, Vietnam, warm and heavy, hot summer rain & noises from crying, hungry babies, rickety-rickshaw carts jolting down unpaved streets. Sometimes she would hear that familiar cobble & had to steady herself from the jolt it evoked in her hips, but as she sat here in the nail salon she realized with time that it was just the cash register’s jammed receipt-printer, thudding along to spit out fees. In Vietnam there was not the scent of acetate aggravation & buffed fingernails, but of open air & blood. Home was her kin, their eyes blind from the sun & their small stomachs bloated with an empty rice paddy hunger. Home was falling in love with a boy who shared ideas of money, food, & sleeping on clouds while cleaning out the chicken coop. Home was sitting on burnt earth, where she dreamt of skyscraper concrete dreams.
Thuy was always attentive. Never like the much older tiny women who squawked on and on to each other in high, angry Vietnamese, making the customer shift uncomfortable & embarrassed in her chair because she thought the harsh voice & brittle laughter was directed at her. Amidst the acrid, peach-poison tinged salon, Thuy politely answered polite questions, stumbled a bit in her words, but screwed up her smooth face thoughtfully until the right ones came. She would tell her story, if her clients would listen.
“I live in a house, my own house. It is right across this Route Nine. We cross it to go to work and to come home at night. I live with my husband & my children, my sister, & my sister’s husband & their little boy, my... sister’s boy, my… nephew. My husband has a job at night, when he is done working on computers. Sometimes it is hard for us to have enough money, but that is why I like to work.
“My husband & me want our children to have fun, & go to a good school, & be smart, & someday have their very own house. My children go to school during the day when we are at work, & after their school is over they go to a friend’s house to play. We pay the mother of the friend until we get home from work. The youngest boy, my sister’s son, does not go to school. He stays here at Volpe Nails until it is time to go home. He is sleeping in the shampoo room.”
I’m coming with Thuy’s tiny children to a house split-level, brown-paint peeling, in a neighborhood of like-minded poorly-kept lawns. The grass is brown like the vinyl siding, & the earth is pitted with deep puddles of dirty slush. These kids, quiet in their Caucasian classrooms but wriggling balls of cappuccino-skinned energy at the bus stop, pull me through the entryway, too-big neon backpacks banging against the backs of their knees. The little girl has pigtails, low, that tail down her back, & she tugs on them nervously as she shows me around the clutter of puzzles on the living room floor and coffee table. The tiny boy shrugs out of his coat, much too short & thin in the wet chill, & drops it to the floor.
The television is already blaring & I’m confused; there’s the smell of thick spices on the air when there should be no one home. The little boy is skittering into the yellowed kitchen, & standing there over the stove is a small big man. He towers over the little boy with his jeans cuffed, but I could just raise my hand hesitantly, like in class, & touch the top of his dark head.
His English is broken, like the heart of his mother when he left Vietnam to write books about computers, & with a girl from another village. “Hello. You stay,” he says to me. “I’m Thuy’s husband, & right now I’m cook. Take these kids downstairs; you play with them until Thuy is at home. It is nice to meet you.” He leans down to speak to the boy in a language I can’t begin to understand. It has a rhythm unlike the roads of English, the green light thoughts expressed in a flat hum, with yellow light comma, pause questioning-inflection at a
Thuy was from Vietnam. Outside her in America it was March, cold & raining, slush on the ground dirty from loud cars & construction-worker feet passing the salon to the deli next door. Thuy was working on a plump & kind-eyed woman, but did not lift her own dark eyes. She slipped herself into her seat & fit the mask around her mouth, looking down & at this woman’s hands. She had stories of home, Vietnam, warm and heavy, hot summer rain & noises from crying, hungry babies, rickety-rickshaw carts jolting down unpaved streets. Sometimes she would hear that familiar cobble & had to steady herself from the jolt it evoked in her hips, but as she sat here in the nail salon she realized with time that it was just the cash register’s jammed receipt-printer, thudding along to spit out fees. In Vietnam there was not the scent of acetate aggravation & buffed fingernails, but of open air & blood. Home was her kin, their eyes blind from the sun & their small stomachs bloated with an empty rice paddy hunger. Home was falling in love with a boy who shared ideas of money, food, & sleeping on clouds while cleaning out the chicken coop. Home was sitting on burnt earth, where she dreamt of skyscraper concrete dreams.
Thuy was always attentive. Never like the much older tiny women who squawked on and on to each other in high, angry Vietnamese, making the customer shift uncomfortable & embarrassed in her chair because she thought the harsh voice & brittle laughter was directed at her. Amidst the acrid, peach-poison tinged salon, Thuy politely answered polite questions, stumbled a bit in her words, but screwed up her smooth face thoughtfully until the right ones came. She would tell her story, if her clients would listen.
“I live in a house, my own house. It is right across this Route Nine. We cross it to go to work and to come home at night. I live with my husband & my children, my sister, & my sister’s husband & their little boy, my... sister’s boy, my… nephew. My husband has a job at night, when he is done working on computers. Sometimes it is hard for us to have enough money, but that is why I like to work.
“My husband & me want our children to have fun, & go to a good school, & be smart, & someday have their very own house. My children go to school during the day when we are at work, & after their school is over they go to a friend’s house to play. We pay the mother of the friend until we get home from work. The youngest boy, my sister’s son, does not go to school. He stays here at Volpe Nails until it is time to go home. He is sleeping in the shampoo room.”
I’m coming with Thuy’s tiny children to a house split-level, brown-paint peeling, in a neighborhood of like-minded poorly-kept lawns. The grass is brown like the vinyl siding, & the earth is pitted with deep puddles of dirty slush. These kids, quiet in their Caucasian classrooms but wriggling balls of cappuccino-skinned energy at the bus stop, pull me through the entryway, too-big neon backpacks banging against the backs of their knees. The little girl has pigtails, low, that tail down her back, & she tugs on them nervously as she shows me around the clutter of puzzles on the living room floor and coffee table. The tiny boy shrugs out of his coat, much too short & thin in the wet chill, & drops it to the floor.
The television is already blaring & I’m confused; there’s the smell of thick spices on the air when there should be no one home. The little boy is skittering into the yellowed kitchen, & standing there over the stove is a small big man. He towers over the little boy with his jeans cuffed, but I could just raise my hand hesitantly, like in class, & touch the top of his dark head.
His English is broken, like the heart of his mother when he left Vietnam to write books about computers, & with a girl from another village. “Hello. You stay,” he says to me. “I’m Thuy’s husband, & right now I’m cook. Take these kids downstairs; you play with them until Thuy is at home. It is nice to meet you.” He leans down to speak to the boy in a language I can’t begin to understand. It has a rhythm unlike the roads of English, the green light thoughts expressed in a flat hum, with yellow light comma, pause questioning-inflection at a
i'll wait for angels, but i won't hold my breath. imagine they're busy; think i'm doing okay.
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i enjoyed the attention to detail and the almost loving way that the narrator describes thuy and her story. i hope you'll decide to post more.
The little boy nods, and takes off back into the messy living room. I smile and follow, my throat closing and opening, my mouth watering with nickel-y tasting spit from the voice-smelling notes in the air. I’ve never smelled such a strong soup before, and it stings my delicate nostrils used to thick, dense stews or clam chowder. There are fish heads on the countertop, on top of newspaper and a thick wooden cutting board. The television blares news at four o’clock, poverty is at an all-time high across the sea, and Lucent Technologies, my mother’s company, is laying off fifteen thousand faces.
We play hide and seek in their bare basement. I can hide behind the ratted couch, scratching my cheek against its threadbare back, or in the entryway to the sopping wet outdoors, in an empty refrigerator box, or in the bathroom. In the tiny window above the showerhead I can see the outline of the State Mental Hospital, past the fence of their backyard, and slowly I start to panic.
Standing in the porcelain tub in the setting dark, I wonder just what I’m doing here--I can’t even pronounce their last name. Here I am standing in their bathtub, while a strange man cooks strange dishes upstairs, and I know the children’s mother and their aunt will come home smelling of lacquer and sweat, exhausted but in love with their kids, asking questions and smiling down at these new Americans. They’ll turn down the television, learn about each other’s days and compare notes. All thoughts of bullies or lackluster tips, of hurrying across busy intersections or growling tummies will be forgotten as they throw off their coats and hug. They’ll have no time for strangers. While they reconnect, I just know I’ll stand awkwardly to the side in a close-mouthed smile, because I hate my teeth, feeling out of place like I was at a school dance. I don’t understand my mother’s open-heart and how I should become the tip from a nail appointment.
I stand there for generations before little pit-pat tap-dance shimmies its way into the bathroom, sliding back the curtain with a flourish and a “found yoooooou!”
I don’t talk much. Mainly I just listen. After we find the little boy, wedged where pink-cotton-candy insulation peels away from the wall, the kids and I snack on salty microwave popcorn in the basement, away from the smell upstairs. They tell me about going to live in California, and that I should come, too. They tell me about learning to tell time and the little girl and her pigtails recaps the drama of Barbie looking for her Ken but only finding GI Joes. They get quiet and their movements slow when the little boy tells me that another boy in his class was mean but not in taking his brand-new blue Power Ranger eraser, but making fun of his clothes and his worn boots. My eyes well up, heart perched up in my throat along some sort of trachea fault line, and it’s cracking like fine china. I swallow the shame the well-dressed American classmate should be feeling, and I ask the little boy his favorite movie. His own eyes dissolve their sheen and he’s off again, acting out scenes and cart-wheeling across the dirty rug.
“My daughter Vikky is thirteen,” she said, “and very responsible. After school she and my younger daughter are home alone until I get home from work, and I know that Vikky is fine taking care of herself and her sister. Would you like a babysitter for your children and your nephew? Vikky can stay with them from when they get home from school to when you get home from work. You wouldn’t have to pay her much.”
Out of the paint-splattered décor and photographs of smiling, exotic women along the salon walls, my mother thought of her own Monday –through-Fridays. Her thoughts were filled with dreams of a good school for her children, smiling and wide-eyed, laughing and cart-wheeling in the yard perilously close to the street. They were also filled with toning phones, paperwork and bleary-eyed burn of networking, store-brand cereals, tears gritted out in Sunday-morning conferences, bills spread out on the kitchen table. Day in and day out, angrily control-alt-deleting her keyboard, forgetting to pick up milk, migraines, skipped child support. But always, always, dropping her purse and workout bag to hug her kids in the threshold.