"Here. I don't like sushi."
"Thanks."
The sound of chewing almost drowned out the chatter of untroubled families idly passing their time on a random weekend. Not like this one though. How can she sit there eating like she wasn't trying to convince me I was wrong about myself? Or even the obvious unpleasantries gushing out of her mouth? Vinh bitterly thought. Hien's face is peaceful, chewing with her mouth open, eyes fixated on Facebook crochet videos scrolling past her phone screen.
"Do you want to go in more shops? Or you want to go home?" Hien spits in between bites of cheap Japanese food.
"Let's go after we finish." Vinh mumbles. Which would've been earlier if she hadn't insisted on taste-testing the entire food court.
"Okay."
Vinh's clothes decide they would rather spend their stay pressed against her sticky, sweaty skin. Sweat from hours of walking was made clear by the bags of expensive clothes and dozens of cheap trinkets settled on the floor underneath the sticky, neon table. Sticky, sticky, sticky! Her discomfort was even more fueled by Hien insisting on speaking English the entire trip. Why did she usher a greasy and filthy Vinh into the car after being holed up in her room for hours?
"Let's go." Vinh suddenly stands.
"Go home?" Hien looks up.
"Let's…sit outside to let our stomachs settle first."
"All right, I carry the bags."
"Mom, I can do it."
"No." Hien says defiantly.
Her 4 '11 frame shrinks while shouldering the disposable, yet expensively filled bags. Vinh easily towers over her, much like the day Hien dropped Vinh off at her school under the setting sun in her heels and sparkly one piece with her best friend bobbing particularly close at her side.
'Look at you two, so pretty! I'm so happy you went with my daughter, she didn't have a date, hah!'. Vinh flinches at the memory. I did. You were looking straight at her.
Hien plops down on the sign on the fountain reading, "PLEASE DO NOT STAND OR SIT!"
"Wow…so full!" Hien rubs her belly like an uncle at a family reunion who had too much to drink.
Vinh sits right next to her. What is she supposed to say to Hien now?
In the empty noise, Vinh's mind traveled back to open house at her elementary school. Hien had insisted on talking to her teacher in her broken English, leading to Vinh needing to intercept and translate halfway through.
"I very happy to see, to see- uh, Vinh's thầy giáo! Very exciting," she struggled to breath out.
My teacher's uneasy eyes shifted to mine.
"She's very excited to meet you," I quickly added while trying to gently push her in the other direction.
"So, what are you dạy right now?" her voice raised in volume, approaching the level she spoke at home.
Eyes. Eyes on her. On them now. Of course they wouldn't dare say anything out loud. Stares in place of words to shield themselves from the social consequence. A transparent shield.
Vinh tries to snap out of the flashback. At the time, it was Vinh's worst nightmare come true. Her classmate's pale white faces and their parents' bared holes that left scars on her back. Their faces never felt the burning from when the person who was supposed to protect them failed in the face of shame. Not the type of shame that they could experience. Not with their blonde hair and light-colored eyes. Never them. Her mind wanders to the frantic and shameful apologizing she had to do while her mom stood proud at her honorable attempt.
"Mẹ- Mom?" Vinh blurts after a minute.
"What?" Hien yawns. "Also, call me Hien! That what other kid call their mom, right?"
"It's just… really weird speaking English to each other. Can we go back to Vietnamese, please?"
Hien pauses and shifts her gaze onto the concrete, probably to process what Vinh said into Vietnamese.
"I speak English now so I can talk to you, speak to you, you understand me." Hien mutters.
"Mẹ,"
"Sometimes there is a wall between us. A wall I can not break. I try to break it now."
Silence.
"When you tell me," Hien breaks the empty noise. "That you are…different. I was so shocked. I did not think of your feeling. I did not know how it feel to keep so much… hide. I don't know how much it hurt you."
More tense silence. Hien breaks it again.
"I'm sorry you feel you can not tell me these things," The second part is even quieter than the first. "But I will be right here. For you."
I will be here for you. Words. Words that have never left her mouth since the day Vinh was "popped out of her asshole", as her mom would say. Words that weren't considered being spoken when Vinh was hiding broken shards of glass underneath the fridge ten years ago. Words that couldn't be formed on the day that she caught Vinh in a frenzy, bottomless and scrubbing her jeans in the bathroom sink or passed out after school on the bathroom floor in ninth grade. Words that were stifled behind her teeth when Vinh's phone was left unlocked and hundreds of texts to "gluten free" were spun into knots in her mom's stomach. Words.
"Oh, con." her mom mumbles.
Her mom couldn't help but copy the look on Vinh's face. Warmth. She pulls Vinh closer, arms protecting her back and covering her neck.
"Không sao con," she whispers, the salt now flowing past her lips. "Không sao đâu."
___________________________
"thầy giáo" - Teacher
"dạy" - Teach
"Không sao con" - It's okay baby.
"Không sao đâu." - It's okay.
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