Chapter 39
CHAPTER 39
Jude and Georgia
The heat hit them immediately. Jane’s glasses fogged up the moment she stepped off the tarmac, her vision blurred yet her regret clear. Jude’s gold chains felt heavy on his neck, as if the gold had suddenly spun into brick stones held loosely with wire. Paulina’s heavy designer knitwear and leather heels suddenly shrank a thousand times in size. Bingo began heavily panting, shedding layer after layer, bemoaning the weather and how hot it was. Meanwhile, Georgia took everything in, her eyes enchanted, enthralled by the prospect of finally seeing the motherland, the country that was embedded deep in her DNA—a history that flowed through her veins, a living, invisible organism that she knew nothing about, but somehow it was the reason why she was standing there now.
Evelyn and Duc had always talked about how the weather along the Gulf Coast was similar to Vietnam, but they could never really prove that it was the same until this very moment.
From the moment they stepped outside the airport, all five Tr?ns realized they were in Vietnam. It was an inception of realizations, as it was also their first sibling vacation in two decades. Duc had taken a couple of kids back and forth, but he didn’t have the capacity and mental energy to take all five at once. Though he had kept dangling it over their heads for years, the promise of one day showing them their roots.
One day, we’ll all go to Vietnam together and you’ll see why I miss it so much .
Georgia could hardly contain her excitement. She tried to rein it in, but she quickly unfurled a spiral notebook in front of them, full of places to eat, direct translations, and a cheat sheet for money conversions. Her hopefulness lined up like a grocery list.
“Okay, I have a whole list of places for us to hit up,” she started prattling on, taking the lead. “Hà N?i, Sa Pa, H? Long Bay… does anyone know how to ride a scooter? The Hà Giang Loop? It doesn’t seem that hard to ride a scooter here—”
“Georgia,” Jane’s voice, tired and jet-lagged, warned her.
“—and what about Central Vietnam? Will we have time to go to Hu?, H?i An, and—”
“Georgia!” Paulina and Bingo began shouting from the middle seat of the van.
“—but I really want to go to Da Nang? Is this too much for the first time? Should we cut back on—”
“GEORGIA!!!” Jude, Jane, Paulina, and Bingo shouted all at once. Even the taxi driver was startled, swerving the van, almost hitting scooters to the left of him. Angry curse words were thrown in all directions, including from the driver himself. Georgia didn’t speak any Vietnamese, but road rage was universal and didn’t need any translation. Embarrassment took hold, and Georgia’s face turned red, going all the way down to her collarbone.
“Georgia, please, just stop,” Jude growled. “We’re not here for some happy family vacation, okay? If we wanted that, we wouldn’t be on our way to confront our fake father, who has been hiding away in some damn temple, wasting our time all year.”
Georgia shrank into her seat, quietly folded her notebook up, and tucked it away in her backpack. She didn’t say a word for the rest of the drive to Hà N?i, and instead, just turned her head to look at the road and scenery passing her by. No one else said a word, either. Despite how noisy traffic was all around them—a sensory overload of Vietnamese, cars backfiring, mass hordes of scooter drivers zipping through the cars—and how unbearably hot and stuffy the taxi was, none of the siblings spoke again for the rest of the trip into the city. Each sibling was lost in their own thoughts, their minds fixated on how it all went so wrong.
Not just for them, but for everyone.
Including Duc and Evelyn.
By the time they got into the center of the old capital city, it was a mix of exhaustion, delirium, and fluctuating anger toward both Duc and themselves. (Though, more toward Duc.) Jane’s impeccable Vietnamese went on autopilot, and she began to negotiate a deal with the cab driver. Her Vietnamese was pristine, with just a hint of a Texas accent. All those years of having to step into the role of becoming a second mother forced Jane to become more fluent than her siblings. From being able to negotiate pickup times and day care for each of her younger sisters with older aunties, to being able to ward off nosy neighbors inquiring Má con ?ang ? ?au? Where is your mother? Flying to Vietnam to confront Duc over his deception fell into the same long laundry list of Jane’s responsibilities to protect her sisters, even Jude. Maybe.
She only wished she had someone to protect her.
As they each received their hotel key card, one by one, Jane, Bingo, and Paulina silently retreated. Only Jude and Georgia were left standing in the lobby, stomachs rumbling so loudly even the receptionist could hear it. An awkward lull lingered between the oldest and the youngest Tr?n as they realized they had no choice but to pretend to be a working family unit. Beyond the years between them, the emotional distance was tangible, thicker than the humidity itself. Who was Jude to Georgia, and who was Georgia to Jude? They didn’t know much about each other beyond the fact that they shared the same blood.
“So, you want to go get some food or something?” Jude asked awkwardly, rubbing the sweat off the back of his neck, though his attempts were futile, as his sweat continued to expand to all parts of his body.
Georgia, trying her best to contain her excitement, nodded her head casually. “I’m starving. I was stuck in economy, so the food wasn’t that great down there.”
Jude didn’t say anything about the fact he had fresh seared tuna and caviar bumps up in first class. “So, what are you in the mood for—?”
Before Jude could even finish his thought, Georgia had already whipped out her notebook again, to a hand-drawn map of the Old Quarter with areas marked where she wanted to go. “STREET FOOD,” she nearly shouted, her excitement spilling out. “Let’s go find some late-night barbecue! There’s a couple of places I researched that have whole streets closed off.”
Jude didn’t protest this time or quiet her excitement. He didn’t want to admit how out of touch he was with Vietnam. It’d been almost a decade since his last visit, and too much had changed for him to pretend he knew what he was talking about. So he followed behind Georgia like a puppy with his tail between his legs, unwilling to admit he was grateful for her research.
As the two walked out together into the Old Quarter, they were as comfortable as two acquaintances could be traveling in a foreign country. Strangers who had quickly turned into companions, who just happened to be older brother and younger sister.
Despite how late the night was, the city was still very much alive. Busy tourists wearing bucket hats brushed past them, laughing and drunk with wonder. Travel agencies were still trying to sell last-minute day trips or trying to convince people to do money exchanges with them instead of at the bank. The churn of the city was a never-ending hamster wheel. The sound of street food vendors clashed with one another—some began packing up for the day, while others began to set up for the night. Mothers yelled at their children to get ready for bed, while the tuk tuk tuk of scooters racing home—with their handlebars full of plastic bags carrying takeout and groceries—drowned out the children’s cries and pleas to stay up a bit longer.
“Found it!” Georgia yelled, her voice full of delight. She scrambled toward a bustling food stall, crowded with a mix of tourists and locals, sitting on red stools with metal tables covered between them, entire tables with overflowing plates of barbecue, chicken feet, chicken thighs, pork skewers, and pressed honeyed baguettes drizzled with cinnamon. The smell was intoxicating—a mix of charcoal smoke braided with remnants of branded Hero cigarette smoke. Despite it being so late, many people were still drinking coffee. Georgia’s excitement was contagious, and soon Jude had caught some of it. He mimed for two bottles of Bia Saigon.
The vendor nodded and gestured toward them to grab any two empty stools. As they sat, he automatically brought them plates and placed them down. Georgia mimed with her hands, attempting to say she hadn’t ordered yet, her face growing redder with embarrassment as her grasp on Vietnamese was worse than a fetus’s understanding of the world.
“Oh, Georgia.” Jude began laughing, watching his youngest sister fail so badly. “Your Vietnamese really is atrocious. You’re basically speaking an alien language.”
He looked up at the vendor and began speaking on her behalf, confirming that they hadn’t ordered the food placed in front of them. “Anh ch?a g?i món.” The vendor shrugged him off, and explained how there was no order system; he just brought out the specials of the day, and that was that. Jude thanked him on their behalf, grabbed more plates from the vendor, and began chugging his beer.
“Well?” Georgia asked helplessly. “What did he say?”
“He said for you to go back to America, American scum.”
She punched him hard on the shoulder—so hard he yelped.
“Since when did you know how to throw punches? I swear you’ve been in diapers the entire time I’ve known you.” He groaned, rubbing his shoulder.
“What did he really say?”
Jude explained how the stall worked and for her not to worry. “What are you getting so worked up over anyway? We’re just eating, it’s not a life-or-death situation.”
“You don’t get it, Jude,” Georgia said, emotions bubbling up, despite her mouth full of food. “It’s embarrassing, okay? I never got the chance to learn Vietnamese. Mom left before I realized I even had a mom, and Dad was never around to speak to me in Vietnamese. I feel like I’ve lost something, even though I’ve never had it. Out of all of you, I’ve lost the most in all of this. I have no memories with anyone, and I know the least about being Vietnamese. None of you taught me. I don’t even feel comfortable calling them Ba and Má. It feels like I’m not allowed to call them that.”
Jude chewed quietly, eyes lowered onto his plate, pretending he was focusing all his energy and concentration into eating. But all he could taste was Georgia’s pain. It was the first time he’d heard Georgia’s distress about their parents, about her inability to speak Vietnamese.
“You know, for the longest time, I only knew how to say negative things in Vietnamese,” he said finally. “It took me a long time to learn the actual language and not just the bad things.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Duc and Evelyn fought so much, I only ever knew how to insult someone,” he said quietly. “I only knew how to say things like I hate you, You’re crazy, You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. So in a lot of ways, you should be grateful that you didn’t pick up Vietnamese from our parents.”
Georgia fell quiet, picking at her food. “You said ‘our parents,’?” she said finally, sticking a skewer in his face, and moving her brows up and down.
“Sorry, I mean—”
“You can say ‘our parents.’ I still think of them as Mom and Dad. Even if no one else does.”
Jude didn’t correct her. “Also, it’s not a competition, you know. You don’t get some diaspora trophy for being able to speak Vietnamese the best out of all of us or whatever.”
“Not a competition, huh?” Georgia nearly choked on her beer. “Sure seemed like we were in one, fighting one for the past year. Seems like all we did was try to beat everyone else to the finish line. And for what? Money that might not even be ours at the end of the day?”
While laughter filled the air around them, Georgia and Jude withdrew from each other, and finished the rest of their meal in silence as they people-watched. In front of them, they saw a family of seven, finishing up their meal. Two parents with their five bubbly, raucous children. The incomprehensible part to Georgia and Jude was how happy and comfortable they felt, sharing a meal together. Neither of them could remember the last time everyone—Duc and Evelyn included—had sat down for a full meal together.
They lost so much time. Had they known the truth, perhaps they could have sat down for a family meal, with all the fathers or father figures, or parental figures, who had raised them throughout the years. They could have just simply acknowledged each other as family, instead of avoiding it.
As the nightlife around them continued, Jude and Georgia were the only two still stuck in the past.