By Cindy Tran
i.
2007. St. Joseph Elementary School is a small building with quaint classrooms, strict Catholic teachers, and a single silver swing set that serves as the height of recess excitement in spring. It sits behind a church that tolls its bell thrice a day—once at 9, then at 12, and finally at 3. Its parking lot, plopped conveniently between the two buildings so that patrons of the church as well as the parents of the young and uniformed students can best utilize the space, is where you step out of our beat-up silver Camry. You take my hand and we walk, silky black hair swaying, past a sign that reads “Faith and Family First.”
Inside the lobby, my eyes are wide with nervous anticipation. The walls are covered with pictures of uniformed students holding their folded hands in front of them like perfect little disciples. Occasionally, a cross or some sort of prayer is scribbled on the backing board. A priest appears once or twice as well, his eyes crinkled in the corners like the smile lines of my ông ngoại.
Suddenly, however, my view becomes the smiling face of a woman who looks like she’s never had a bad day. Your sweating palm is tight around my fingers.
“Are you excited to start school?”
I don’t understand any of the English spewing out of the woman’s mouth, but I do understand school, also known as the s-word, also known as the place where kids go and where their moms don’t.
I shout no, the universal word in every language, thrust my face into your thigh, and burst into tears.
You click your tongue and guide us to a makeshift sitting area outside of the office. It consists, meagerly, of three foldable chairs and one creaky table. You sign away thousands of dollars in private school tuition, hoping these Catholic people can give me a better life than your parents gave you.
When the form asks what my first language is, you look at me, hiccuping in my own illiterate sadness, and write English.
ii.
“What do you mean you can’t find it?”
I look down at the paper.
We’re working on a revision exercise today. Mrs. P has written a long passage on the whiteboard and theoretically, there are 20 (purposeful) mistakes in her writing that we’re supposed to find. I have diligently rewritten the passage in my wide-ruled lined notebook. And I have found a few errors—though the rest have escaped me.
“I’ve even told you what’s missing. A comma, two periods, and an uncapitalized letter.” She lists everything again as if I haven’t spent the last 45 minutes playing “Where’s Waldo” with this exercise.
My neat handwriting blurs before me. A dark circle appears on the paper, after the word “lion,” and I realize after a delayed pause that it’s a tear from my eye. that my cheeks are dripping wet.
“Now you’re crying.” Mrs. P throws her hands up. “You’re staying in from recess until you find the mistakes.”
So I stay in from recess.
I hear the other students from my class outside, their gleeful laughter, the stomp of the girls’ ballet flats as they chase after the boys in a rigorous game of tag. But my head does not stray from its position over my worksheet.
Recess passes and I still don’t find the errors.
Mrs. P stomps her feet, a bit like the girls playing tag but slower and angrier, and it’s not an indication of fun. “You’re staying back from computer class until you find the errors.”
So I stay in from computer class.
And I also stay back from library time, religion class, and when everyone packs up their stuff to leave for the day, I’m still sitting there.
Mrs. P, who has ignored me for the past three hours, finally graces me with her presence. She crosses her arms. Her feet tap impatiently. “You still really haven’t found them?”
I shake my head.
She takes the paper, stares at it, smudged writing and tears and all, and crumples it. Before I can blink, my day’s work is sinking into the garbage of our third-grade classroom.
All day she has asked where the mistake is, and I can’t help but feel like she’s talking about me. I’m here, I want to shout.
I blink back tears and avert my gaze from her piercing blue eyes. Outside, the sun shines weakly behind the trees and the older kids rock on the swings gossiping about one another.
How lovely it is, to be eight and deathly afraid of my own teacher.
iii.
“Mozzarella.”
“Mozella.”
“No, you’re not listening.” I place my hands on the dash. “Maat. Su. Reh. Luh.”
Your hands tighten on the wheel as we approach the drive-thru speaker. “Morella?”
I close the book I’ve been reading and plop it on my lap. “You know what… just open the window and I’ll order.”
So that’s what we do.
You drive up to the speaker. Behind it stands a light-up menu with all the different meal combos and a copious amount of hamburger photos.
“How can I help you?” comes the grainy voice of a tired Burger King worker.
I clear my throat and lean over the center console. “Can we get some mozzarella sticks?” I say the m-word extra loud, just in case my pronunciation isn’t clear enough.
You burst into a fit of laughter under your blue mask. I smack your arm lightly.
There’s some typing on the other end while our shoulders shake, then a muffled, “Will that be all?”
“Yes,” I say and we speed up to the pickup window where I steal your red Bank of America card and force the li xi money I got from ông bà ngoại last month into your hands. Too surprised by the robbery, you numbly hand over the cash. I grab the to-go bag, and we munch on the cheesy goodness with marinara sauce and laughter staining our lips.
iv,
I’m in the middle of studying for my high school entrance exam when suddenly a knock comes at my door. Before I even get a chance to say come in, you’re already stepping into the room and closing the door behind you.
I open my mouth, some sort of quip about the blatant lack of privacy in this household on the brink of my lips, when you angle a small purple device towards me.
It’s my phone, and there’s a message lighting up the screen.
Grandpa
Ong ba Ngoai nho tui con. Khi nao ranh goi cho ong ba Ngoai !!! :>
I mouth the words in Vietnamese, trying to parse out their meaning without their accents.
Grandpa and Grandma miss you. When you have time, give us a call! 🙂
“You should call them,” you say.
I avoid answering by spinning in my chair and casting my eyes upward at the ceiling.
You don’t move from your spot standing by the door.
We freeze, as if at an impasse where two enemy soldiers suddenly find themselves face-to-face on the battlefield, both too afraid to speak the unspoken.
(If God is listening to my silent pleas, it seems that he’s ignored them.)
Ông bà ngoại moved to Florida earlier this year to live with your brother and my uncle, Cậu Khoa. (Cậu Khoa is my favorite uncle because he doesn’t tease me about my bathroom stall poetry and when we play UNO I think he pretends to lose just so I can feel better about myself.)
It’s not that I don’t call them because I don’t miss them. I miss the way at family gatherings when bà ngoại would scoop huge helpings and push the paper plate towards me, even when I’ve already groaned thrice that I’ve had enough and that my stomach will explode (literally) if I eat even one more spoonful. I miss the way my ông ngoại always gets me the same aloe moisture socks because, according to him, ever since I passed the age of six, I’m too complicated to shop for. (As in, my wishlist is full of books and he doesn’t know how to read the words, never mind find them at his favorite store Costco.)
I don’t call because I’m afraid of the dial tone. I don’t call because I’m afraid that when they pick up and say their whole string of poetic Vietnamese, lamenting how much they miss me and can’t wait to see me during the summer, I’ll clam up and forget how to articulate how much that I too, miss them, and that I too, look forward to the day we can spend our mornings munching on our favorite French Crullers from Dunkin and talk about how Federer is a much better tennis player than his rival Nadal is.
“I need to study,” I say, turning back to my homework, though my eyes are glued to your slumped shoulders.
“Okay, bé Thử.” You only use my Vietnamese name when you’re mad at me. I don’t know if it’s a subconscious thing or not. I shrink lower in my seat and stare at the 50 or so handwritten vocabulary flashcards I have made. The word “deficient” stares up at me. How fitting. I almost laugh at the irony of it all, but the look of disappointment in your eyes as you turn away hits me somewhere beneath the ribs.
Behind the closed door, I hear you greeting your mother and your father. They must ask something about why I haven’t called, because I hear you say something about leaving me alone because I’m studying, I don’t need distractions when exam season is around the corner….
But that’s a lie. I do want them to call. I just wish I had the right words to tell them that.
v.
As it turns out, going to high school requires filling out a lot of paperwork. It’s mostly easy stuff—like my name, where I live, who my mom is, who the school needs to call in case I have an “emergency” (as in, the nurses can’t just give me an ice pack and wish it all better with Saltine crackers and a Dixie cup full of bubbler water).
It’s all smooth sailing until I get to one section:
First Language (please check the one which applies):
- English
- Other: ______________________
In all technical facts of the matter, my first language is Vietnamese. Sure, my fluency is sort of gone. But it’s still my mother tongue, first language—and sort of like a first love, it can never quite be forgotten.
I’ve written the “v” and the “i” (minus the dot on top) when suddenly you snatch the form from me. I barely save the pen from slipping and creating a blue streak across the text.
“What?” I ask.
You squint at the form for a few moments before shaking your head. “Put English.” You push the form back at me.
I gape at you, because you have never, ever condoned lying. Especially on official documents. “But—”
“You don’t want them to treat you like your English is not fluent.”
“But my English is fluent. And the question is about my first language, not the languages I’m fluent in.”
You plop a piece of xôi gấc into your mouth and keep talking like your mouth’s not full. “They don’t care. You don’t know how they treat people like us.”
I hesitate for a moment longer, but your serious expression—dulled only slightly by the red sticky rice plumping your cheeks like a chipmunk and his precious acorns in winter—has me reaching for my blue BIC Wite-Out.
I print “English” neatly onto the line. Only the “g” lifts up some of the correction tape—after that, any trace of the existence of my mother tongue, my first language, my Vietnamese, is gone.
That day, I learn that lying isn’t always an omission or even a modification of the truth. Sometimes, it’s a way of surviving.
vi.
Chloe Gong. Three syllables. Just a name.
(But she’s not just anything. She’s a University of Pennsylvania graduate, landed her book deal with Simon and Schuster during college, and finished school as a New York Times bestselling author.)
vii.
2021. I am not so little anymore.
I send Cậu Khoa a link to the website I’ve built. It’s mauve and purple and contains a collage that I made on PicsArt and also all the work I’ve done as a writer—everything from my first publication to my latest.
He doesn’t respond in 10 minutes, nor 20, nor 30, nor 40. Eventually, I fall asleep, though my eyelids twitch with dreams of HTML and CSS and the occasional WordPress bug my fingers itch to fix.
When I wake in the morning, I see in my messages a photo of my ông bà ngoại leaning over their computer screen, reading my website. I see their abundant number of vitamins bottles and the water they stocked prior because of the COVID crisis. I will see my ông ngoại clutching the back of his neck the way I do as well, because our backs are twins in chronic pain.
But what makes rain on my cheeks is seeing how carefully they peruse my words—the words that are not in my stilted poetic English, but rather the Vietnamese that tumbles like soft dominos when my mother speaks it.
viii.
Cindy Tran. Three syllables. Just a name.
(We’re waiting to see what happens with this one.)
