The American Guest

The Hanoi dusk faded into a soupy gloom. Tran remained crouched on the mat in a fetal position, her arms crossed over her knees. She stared straight ahead through the flat’s tiny windows. Beside her, her daughter, Fan, slept peacefully. Deng would be at least an hour returning from the factory.

      She caressed the smooth plastic surface of her handphone. Occasionally it responded, its keypad glowing a pale green and accenting the smooth underside of her neck and her high wide cheekbones. Then, pouting over her inattention, it retreated to its inert dark plastic form.

      Tran rocked gently forward and back on the balls of her feet as if she were still soothing the baby. She had showered, after cooking, while the water was still warm from the day, and had put on a flimsy peignoir. The shift was old and frayed. In her hunched position, it threatened to split at the hips.

      For tomorrow, though, she had already selected the top to wear: a pure white golf shirt. She had ironed it carefully. Her boss hadn’t said he would show but she didn’t want to chance it. Now, in the murky light, it hung on the wire that connected the single overhead light to its switch. Her jeans, also ironed, hung dark against the wood veneer of their armoire.

      Hiding beneath the jeans, away from Deng’s eyes, she had hung the set of undergarments she would wear tomorrow. Ironing the shirt and choosing the jeans had been degrading enough, but Tran’s cheeks had burned with shame as she reached to the top drawer of the armoire to pull down the Tết Nguyên Đán box. From the items set aside for the next new year she had picked a matching pair of bright pink brassiere and panties.

      Pursing her full lips until they almost disappeared, Tran pressed the phone once more, so firmly now that it chirped. She flipped through the names on the phone until her sister’s and pressed it. As the phone purred, she rose gracefully to her feet and slipped into her flip-flops.

      “Second Sis! Come for lunch with me tomorrow.”

      “No! No time! I have to study.”

      “Study another day. The boss asked me to do something special for him. I have lunch vouchers. A good place. Chinese food.”

      “They let you bring someone?”

      “Yes,” Tran lied.

      “What ‘something special’?” Her sister was suddenly wary.

      Tran breathed once before answering: “Company guest. From America. I have to- show him the city.”

      “Wah! America! My English is no good!”

      “You don’t have to say anything. Just look pretty.”

      “He would mock me.”

      “No, he would not. He’s not like normal Americans. Come. Pass the phone to Mother. I need her to look after Fan.”

*

      Her sister Anh arrived the next morning just before sunrise while the sun’s rays, refracted by the haze, was still yellow on the streets. Her mother rode pillion. Tran’s mother needed no encouragement. The word ‘American’ had sufficient magic.

      Her mother had made Anh put on a polyester top with rainbow-colored petal frills and a pair of new, seam-still-crisp slacks. Even her slippers, with gold laminated straps, probably came from the family’s Tết Nguyên Đán box.

      “Thank you, Mother,” Tran said. She handed over Fan, asleep again after her morning feed.

      “Is that how you button your shirt at the office?”

      Tran pursed her lips. She sauntered past her mother to hop on the warm back seat of Ahn’s scooter. “Go,” she hissed.

*

      They whisked through the side streets in the growing sunlight, air still but not yet hot and sticky. Tran perched sidesaddle. She gripped her hand firmly around her sister’s waist. From the narrow, treeless streets of Tran’s neighborhood they rode toward the broader lanes in the center of the city.

      Tran’s company had not put up their guest in any of the large international hotels in the center of Hanoi, but instead in a boutique hotel at the edge of the tourist district, something more Vietnamese in style. It did not look any different from its neighbors: yellow-washed walls and stucco in the old colonial style. The American waited for them on the front steps. Tran was relieved to see he, at least, had chosen appropriate clothes—a loose, printed shirt and chino slacks. He could be a Hongkongese businessman, dressed like that.

      “That’s him?” Ahn whispered, as she jerked the scooter back onto its kickstand. “He’s Chinese! You said he was American!”

      “He is. He was raised in America. He doesn’t speak any Chinese.”

      The American’s face broke into a broad grin the moment he saw Tran. His eyes slid down her body, to her sandaled feet, then back up to waver just below her chin. Tran breathed once, deeply, to keep the shame from coloring her cheeks. The V of her golf shirt, which had felt just right in glare of her mother’s disdain, now appeared to expose too much collarbone.

      “Mister Wang, this is my sister, Ahn. She’ll come with us today.”

      “Awesome. Wow! Two beauties!” The American spoke diffidently, with a childish wonder, yet still in that offensively over-emotional style of Americans. The accent broke any illusion of him being Asian. “Please. Call me Brian. Great to meet you, Ann.”

      “G-great to meet you,” Ahn gurgled. She smiled a broad smile, with lowered eyes, and for a moment the two of them seemed to be having a contest of who could beam more effusively.

      “My sister is studying business in college right now,” Tran said. Her voice was harder than she had intended. “She doesn’t speak much English.”

      “I don’t speak any Vietnamese. Or Chinese. Sorry, Ann. People always think I do. I don’t know why.” Brian laughed at his own joke, but it came out closer to a nervous giggle than to a laugh. Ahn also giggled.

      “I thought you would like to see our Presidential Palace,” Tran said. “Even though it was built by French oppressors, we still consider it important to our homeland. Tourists always ask to see it.”

      “This is such a lovely place your boss picked,” Brian said. “It’s very Vietnamese. The dark wood on the staircase is magnificent. Probably mahogany, but I don’t know if you have mahogany in your country. I would really like to take some pictures of you here.”

      Tran prickled at the way he said “take some pictures of you”. At the office, his eyes had followed her all around the conference room as she distributed the morning coffee. He had been far too obvious. Her boss couldn’t help but notice.

      “Pictures!” Ahn squealed, in Vietnamese, the moment she saw the camera.

      Brian smiled at her reaction, shyly, a boy’s smile. He had a wide, gentle face, button nose and, in those casual clothes, he looked more innocent and child-like than he had in the office. Tran unclenched her fists and joined in her sister’s smile with a tentative one of her own.

      Brian’s camera set was top-of-the-line. It had no problem picking out their faces in the dark shadows of the lobby’s varnished teak. While he fiddled with its dials and pressed the shutter button, he chatted amiably and endearingly. Ahn treated the photo shoot as if it were the prelude to a beauty pageant. Her poses were stiff and artificial. Brian, though, seemed to think Tran was the one who was unnatural. He kept encouraging her to relax.

      “You’re both so slender and tall!” he said at one point. “Well, compared to me, anyway. I thought all Vietnamese were short like the girl at reception.”

      The receptionist, standing behind Brian, did not look up from her paperwork. Tran was sure, though, that she had heard.

      “Some ethnic groups are taller than others,” she said, unable to keep the terseness from her voice. “Come. We should go. I believe the Palace closes at noon.”

      Brian was crestfallen, and Tran had a sudden terror she had overstepped her line. Her boss was sure to hear about this. She, and maybe Deng, would be fired.

      But before she could apologize, Brian said: “No, Tran, you’re right. We should get going.” He began dismantling his camera and retuning it to his hip pack.

      As they left the hotel, Ahn slipped her arm into her sister’s and whispered: “He likes me.”

*

      They walked the dozen or so blocks from the hotel to Ba Dinh Square. Unfortunately, Tran’s sense of geography was so weak, and Hanoi’s streets were so twisted, that they ended up at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum instead of at the Presidential Palace.

      Brian continued to make his boyishly inappropriate comments—for example on the way the Vietnamese women let their hair flutter behind them as they zipped by on scooters—but the further they walked from the hotel the more innocuous these comments became.

      Perhaps it was only that Tran was more used to them, or more relaxed. She walked arm-in-arm with her sister, and didn’t bristle when he commented on its quaintness. She smiled more freely for the camera. She began to pick out a dim reflection of her smile in Brian’s face.

      The mausoleum closed at eleven, so, with the lineup, they were among the last to be allowed to enter. Brian gazed with hushed awe at the mummified body and confessed he had never seen a dead person before. Ahn had always been better at school, so Tran relied heavily on her to explain what they would see, or what they had seen. She noticed with a competitive—but guilty—glee that, when she translated, Brian’s eyes came to rest on her, not on her sister.

      They had just walked the short stretch to the presidential palace, with its ochre whitewash, and Tran had translated Ahn’s official description of its history, when Brian suddenly announced he was hungry.

      “Why don’t we stop somewhere for a bite to eat? I would be happy to treat you two lovely ladies. You’ve been such amazing hostesses.”

      “No! We need to treat you! Mister Banh has selected a good place. You really must try it.”

      “Well, if you like it, I’ll like it too.” He turned to Ahn. “Please don’t stop telling me about your country’s history. It’s all so interesting. All we ever hear about in the US is Rambo and, you know, I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”

      Ahn giggled, without embarrassment. She clearly hadn’t understood.

*

      It was during lunch, close to the end, that Tran let slip about Fan.

      “What’s that?” Brian had asked, pointing with his spoon at a bowl of white dumplings.

      “We call it Chè trôi nước, that’s, that’s bean paste with sticky rice in a soup.”

      “Really?” Brian asked, dubiously. “It looks sort of like prairie oysters.”

      “It is really tasty. My baby daughter adores this dish.”

      “Baby daughter?” Brian’s face fell visibly, ending in the kind of expression Fan put on moments before she began wailing. “You have a daughter?”

      “Yes, I do,” Tran said. The words were hard to force out, and the crestfallen look in Brian’s face made her feel both sad and terrified. But, for the first time that day, she didn’t feel sordid. “She is nine months from birth. My husband works in the factory that you visited Friday. We both used to work in the factory, that was where we became in love. Only later they asked me to work at the office.”

      “That’s very sweet,” Brian said. He swirled his spoon absently in the broth.

      “Please try your sticky rice. I hope you will like it a lot.”

      “Is your... your sister.... Is she, you know, does she also have a child?”

      “My sister is too young to get married,” Tran said, with a sideways glance at her sister who, sensing the conversation was about her, was trying to smile coquettishly. “She has to finish college. Then find a good employer.”

*

      After the lunch, where the staff did not seem to notice that Tran had only two vouchers, the three of them walked aimlessly around the narrower avenues of the city center. The plan had been to take bus out to the old fort, but Tran had lost her initiative.

      She found she could not stop talking about herself. She told Brian about her baby, her marriage, her years growing up and even more about her transfer from the factory to the office than she should be sharing with a company client. Brian nodded and smiled, and occasionally asked her questions—fewer and fewer inappropriate ones, Tran noticed. Mostly, he just seemed to be curious as to who she was.

      Tran found it odd, but safe, to be describing her life in a language not her own. She felt as if she were an actress portraying an appealing and faintly exotic foreigner. Encouraged by his smile, and by the way he fiddled with the lens cap of his camera, she was willing even to share some of her and Deng’s dreams for the future.

      Ahn didn’t participate in the monologue much, but smiled and nodded at various points. Her comprehension skills were growing quickly, just as Tran’s had on being transferred to the main office. Tran hoped they weren’t growing too quickly: she liked the fiction that the life she was describing wasn’t really hers, only the life the American imagined hers would be.

      “What do you think of this top?” Ahn asked suddenly, throwing her shoulders back and splaying a rather gauzy yellow blouse across them.

      They had somehow ended up in one of those semi-tourist markets in behind the main roads. Brian had picked up a few souvenirs for “nephews and nieces”, and then they had drifted over to a stall that sold women’s clothes. Perhaps Ahn had directed them there. Tran was too involved in her story to notice.

      “That’s very pretty,” Brian said, and the way he said “pretty” was the same clingy way he had said “take some pictures” back at the hotel. “Yeah. Very colorful. Why don’t you try it on, Ahn?”

      “Oh, there’s no need,” Tran said, taking the hangar from her sister’s hands and sliding it back onto the rack. “We both have many clothes already.”

      Anh pouted seriously, but Brian didn’t see it. He had already turned to finger his way through a rack.

      “This one looks nice,” he said, after a bit. He pulled out a polyester red top with see-through shoulders and small yellow sequins. “I wonder what it would look like on you.”

      If there had been a big red button there that stopped every machine, like the one in the factory, Tran would have pressed it. She had to get Brian out of the market without offending him, and to deal with her sister’s petulance without him noticing it. And, even as she was turning towards him to say “How about we...”, her sister had gone back to picking out clothes and laying them on the top of the rack, and Brian, still holding the vulgar blouse in one hand, had returned to flipping timorously through the tops.

      All around them were the clicks and squeaks of people buying things. The lights of the market were far overhead, in the tin roof, but their glare felt uncommonly hot. Small beads of sweat had gathered on Brian’s neck. Far in the background, Tran could hear the whirr of children’s toys. The camera swung ponderously from Brian’s neck, threatening to entangle itself within the sleeves of the yellows, blues and pinks of the clothes.

      The day before, her boss had cornered her by the filing cabinets, on the pretense of handing her the vouchers for today’s lunch. “I don’t think you’re the youngest or the prettiest one here anymore,” he leered, “but it’s not my taste, it’s the client’s. Don’t you forget he represents a very important contract for the company, and you do not want him to be disappointed. Anything he asks, you do. Anything.”

      Until now, she had been just pretending to do, and avoiding the thought of what ‘anything he asks’ really meant. And she had brought her sister.

      Tran gently lifted the hangar from Brian’s boyish fingers. As she did that, he turned, both expectant and hesitant. Tran remembered a fragment of a thought, an observation that someone had made, that westerners don’t recognize the emotions in Asian facial features, leading to that cliché “the inscrutable Chinese”. Tran hoped that Brian would have the same blindness.

      She brought the hangar toward her, deliberately, but not closely, so it hung between her and Brian. She let him. She had to.

      And, finally, the Brian she had come to trust from lunch looked up from the blouse to her face.

      Tran smiled as sweetly as she could, and said: “It’s not my kind of dress.”

      “No,” said Brian. He did not lower his eyes.

      Tran slid the hangar back onto the rack, keeping that same deliberate motion. She slid her arm around the crook of her sister’s, the way she had done on the way from the hotel, and said: “Let’s go. You haven’t seen the Long Biên Bridge yet. It’s a very historic bridge.”

*

      She continued to walk arm-in-arm with Ahn as she directed them towards where she hoped the bridge would be. Brian walked ahead of them, fiddling distractedly with the lens cap of his camera. Anh was incensed, but polite enough not to hiss.

      “He could have bought us both a whole set of outfits! Why did you not let him?”

      “They’re not your style of clothes,” Tran said. “They’re what foreigners think Vietnamese wear.”

      “But they’d be free! Now what am I supposed to wear? What am I supposed to wear when I go to America?”

      “You? When are you going to America?”

      “To marry him! You and Ma arranged everything and now this is for me to meet him.”

      “Don’t be silly,” Tran waved her hand. “Why would we let you marry an American? You have to finish your college. And if you go to America, no one will be left to take care of Mother.”

      The afternoon was suddenly chilly, as if a thunderstorm were building up somewhere over the city. Tran looked at Brian sauntering in front of her. His print shirt, mostly yellow and orange, seemed to shimmer in the afternoon light, as if he were the product of a double exposure. No, there were three of him: two that Tran had been trying to manage, and a third one, the one that her sister had been imagining all this while.

      Tran wished she and her sister were like the country people with their own dialects they could use for secret, important conversations. Brian wouldn’t understand what she needed to say, but people around would.

      But, while she threw words back and forth at each other in her mind, words that would be obscure enough to shield them, but understandable enough for her little sister, Ahn grew cold and stiff beside her, and the rusted iron cantilevers of the Long Biên Bridge began to appear over the rooftops.

      “Wow! This is amazingly old!” Brian said, but his voice sounded tired.

      “I’m sorry I made Mother believe this was a marriage meeting,” Tran whispered to her sister, as Brian lined them up for a shot, “but I needed you along, because, because, well, you see he’s a nice man.”

      “They made you-”

      “No need to be so sore,” Brian said. “Tran. Tell you sister not to be so sore. I can always go back and buy her those clothes. If I can ever find out how to get back there.”

      “Thank you, Brian,” Tran said. “She is not angry. She is just tired from our walking.” And to her sister, she said: “You must smile. He thinks you are pouting. Why would he even think to marry you when you look so stony.”

      Her sister managed a wan smile that Tran could see, from Brian’s reaction, was very touching.

*

      After cajoling her sister to offer up some history of the bridge, Tran proposed a walk across it, at least far enough out over the Pearl River they could see the city skyline. But Brian declined. “I’ve been here four days and I’m still not over the jet lag,” he said. “And besides, your sister is looking pretty sopped.”

      They threaded their way through the now busy streets towards the hotel. The sidewalks in this area were wide enough that the three of them could walk together, and Brian walked beside Ahn. Ahn was now confident enough to try some of her English on Brian—whom she named “Biên” after the bridge, and he responded gentlemanly. Tran was the one now reluctant to talk.

      “This is your hotel,” she announced, finally.

      “Oh! I completely missed it. We must have been coming from the other direction. Hey, girls, why don’t you drop in for a tea or coffee or something. I never got to treat you for lunch.”

      “You must be very tired,” Tran said. “We will let you sleep.” She wished she hadn’t said the word “sleep”, because in response to it, his smile seemed to regress to that oily quiver.

      “We would like to see your room,” Ahn said, suddenly, in sharp, clear English. “Can we come up and see your room?”

      The effect on Brian was instant. The quiver vanished from his lips, leaving the original, overly boyish—but now somewhat terrified—face. “Oh!” He stared directly at Ahn’s wide eyes. “I think, well, anyway. Thanks for showing me everything. Both of you were so good to me.”

      “Are you sure you don’t want us to come in?” Tran demanded. She was surprised she had asked that, surprised at the feeling of power it awakened in her.

      “No. You ladies were so kind and you went out of your way. I think you need your rest.” Brian yawned, somewhat theatrically. “And I really am suffering from jet lag.”

*

      The next morning, even while her husband lay flat out on their bamboo mat, and Fan lay curled underneath the crook of his arm, Tran had escaped the house. Morning light had not yet begun to bathe the sky, and the glow from her handphone could still make the underside of Tran’s chin green, as she strapped on her helmet.

      “Ahn,” she breathed into the phone. “Mister Brian’s plane leaves at eleven. We have time to take him to the airport. I’m coming over now. Don’t wake up Ma, okay?”

      She had cheated the boss out of one coupon, Tran reasoned. She gunned the scooter down the empty roadway. A trip for two to the airport and back wouldn’t be too hard on him. And, besides, she had given her off day to his American guest.