Chapter 44
CHAPTER 44
Diep
The cicadas had come back to Houston.
Their droning was harmonious, and as more cicadas joined in, it became a nightly concert for the whole city to enjoy. I pretended I was the maestro each night, throwing my hand high up in the air with each crescendo, and throwing it down with the decrescendo. I looked forward to dusk every night, just so I could hear them again. Their humming made me less lonely, or at least, it acted as a Band-Aid. Loneliness, I was afraid, was still something I hadn’t gotten used to in my old age. Perhaps it was one of those things no one ever really adjusted to, like getting over your first love. I had forgotten how boisterous the cicadas could be, reminding me of what life had been like as a young mother, with five children under the same roof.
Now life was so quiet, so unnerving. The cicadas also marked the first time my eldest daughter, Jane, had heard them in Houston since moving back a year ago. It was the first thing she had commented on during her visit. There weren’t any cicadas in Los Angeles.
We relied heavily on the topic of cicadas for a long time; it was our way to communicate as we started to relearn each other. Like how strangers use the weather to talk to each other, we used the cicadas. Everything else was a learning curve between us. I had told Jane once, over coffee, that the cicadas often signified the beginning of another oppressive Houston summer, guaranteed to make anyone burn for longer than three minutes out in the sun. She had nodded awkwardly as she tried to find a way to keep the conversation going. But we were trying. We were learning. It was a second chance, and I was grateful. Grateful that we could meet in the middle and learn to start over again. It was rare to get second chances, so I held on to the hope, for as long as I could.
I had found a small, quaint apartment near Jane and Jude, and we made it a point to see each other every day. As for the rest of my children, I caught up over phone calls, text messages, and video calls; they were easy to connect with, despite the distance between us. It was Jude and Jane, my two oldest, who were the hardest to understand. They carried the most pain; having memories became their burden. But I tried, I kept trying every day, for a full year. I owed it to them to prove that I wasn’t going anywhere this time.
Bingo had moved back to Philadelphia, to try to win a woman’s heart again. She said she had to go; she was drawn to this woman and couldn’t sleep or think about anyone else. I told her to go, and to not look back. Paulina left for San Francisco, in search of a different type of family. I told her to hold on tight to them, to try to love them in the way that I couldn’t. And Georgia, my youngest, had decided to stay in Vietnam and explore the country more. She wanted to see how far she could go before she missed home. Perhaps that was just a marker of youth, to go as far as possible. I told her to go to the edge of the universe, and to do a big U-turn back to me one day.
But the three of them promised me they’d visit several times a year, and I knew they meant it.
One warm summer day Jane called me. I picked up immediately, as I often do now, unafraid to hide myself from them. “Má, are you free now?”
“I’m not allowed to go anywhere without telling one of you, so yes, I am free. But you probably already knew that.”
“Can you come by the store now? Duc’s?”
I paused. “Con, you know I don’t want to be there. It’s cursed. You know it haunts me. I can’t be inside that store.”
Jane paused. I could hear her breathing. “Please, Má? Just stop by for a little bit. Please.”
I couldn’t say no. Too many missed opportunities had passed us by where I was dumbfounded to see how grown she had gotten. Jane had even started having baby gray hairs appear, and it shocked me to realize that Time was also coming for my children. It broke my heart, when I saw how much time Jane had lost for herself, because of how long I’d been gone. While I was trying to heal, Jane didn’t know how to heal without me. “Okay, con, I’ll come.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. But when we hung up, I suppressed my anxieties as best I could. About seeing the place again that had robbed me of my identity, and of Tu?n’s memory. I had promised myself that I would never set foot in any one of those stores. That old-fashioned serif font, the pale yellow menu, and my recipes splayed out there for strangers to gawk at and point to. That store hadn’t been my vision at all, nor had it been Tu?n’s. We had always talked about a different type of store. Tu?n had wanted something cozier, more homey, to remind him of the street food he had grown up eating in Vietnam.
But I swallowed my pride, pinned my hair neatly back into a bob, and learned to breathe. I grabbed my helmet and headed to my Vespa. Before I took off, I glanced around the small garden I had tended to all year, which grew tall bushes of Thai chili peppers and perilla leaves. Jane had suggested that I learn a new hobby, that perhaps it could help me in moments when I couldn’t get out of my own head or whenever I felt extreme bouts of loneliness. She was afraid that I would take it as an insult, but I had simply told her that my own mother had a green thumb, too, and that she was often found in the garden. I said it was a compliment, that I wouldn’t be a real Vietnamese woman without knowing my way around a garden.
I started the Vespa up and began to head to Duc’s to confront my past.
By the time I pulled into the familiar Dakao Plaza, there was a sizable crowd. The usual green signage had been covered up with a crooked gray tarp. No one had noticed my arrival, as there seemed to be some infighting among them.
I spotted my five children immediately. But why were they all here?
They lined up in the order I had always known them: Jude, Jane, Bingo, Paulina, and Georgia. Behind them stood Duc, alone, without Connie, a recent “divorcée” (the paperwork was still never properly filed). Last I heard, Connie had taken whatever money was left and moved back home to New Orleans, to be with her mother. And there was Huey, always watching, observing, also always alone, but in a different way. But it wasn’t just them I noticed. It was everyone I had turned my back on twenty years ago. The same faces, still clinging on, the old guard of Dakao Plaza. The plaza had stood the test of time and looked exactly the same as the day I left: the red clay tiles on the roofs, the pylon sign, the cracks in the cement in the parking lot, which looked ready to swallow the plaza whole any minute. It was as if the plaza had been frozen in a time capsule, waiting for my return.
Bác Cai was the only one who noticed my arrival, and she gave me a small smile. I could glean the whole world from that smile. She was welcoming me back so that she could finally rest.
I recognized the neighboring business owners, who were out in full force. Th?y from the nail salon supply store, Duy from the travel agency, Xuan from the sketchy CPA’s office, and Linh from the refillable, filtered water store.
I recognized Henry, standing there awkwardly, next to Jane. I remembered him from when he was young, always coming to our house. Jane didn’t think I noticed them holding hands back then or sneaking kisses, but I did.
“What is going on?” I asked. Everyone jumped at my voice. I turned to my children. “What are you all doing back here?”
Jane and Jude locked eyes, and then they approached me, each grabbing a hand. They pulled me forward, then spun me around until I faced the store.
“We have something we want to show you,” Jane said softly. She glanced at the group behind us. Everyone was biting back smiles.
“You’re not about to surprise me with a puppy, right?” I asked suspiciously. “I’m almost sixty, I’m not about to take care of another living thing.”
Jane motioned for the sign to be released. Huey and Duc fumbled for a bit with the cord before they yanked it down with all their might on each side. I gasped as the tarp came tumbling down, revealing a new sign, and I covered my mouth. Staring back down at me, in a new font and branding, was the sign Diep’s Sandwiches.
“Wait… who’s Diep?” Georgia whispered to Paulina. “I think we got the sign wrong. It’s supposed to say Evelyn.”
“That’s our mother’s Vietnamese name,” Paulina whispered back.
“I thought her name was Evelyn?” Georgia began to panic.
“That’s her American name. Her real name is Diep,” Bingo whispered back. “You think the woman was born in Vietnam and was named Evelyn ?!”
Tangled emotions rushed through me. I barely recognized the name my mother had given me. Shock and anger—that was what I felt as I stepped closer to the store. I hadn’t thought about my mother in so long. I used to think about her often, but as the cycle of motherhood hit me, it was my turn to resent my own mother, for all she wasn’t able to do, while she battled her own demons. Diep was my mother’s name, and that name had been passed down to me. I had forgotten who Diep had been, before Evelyn took over. Who was Diep before it all? Before my children, before Huey, before Duc, and even before Tu?n.
“Oh god,” Jane whispered to Jude. “Did we mess up?”
“Tr?i oi,” Duc said to Huey. “This is your fault.”
“But she mentioned this was always her dream. I thought…” Huey trailed off.
“I recognize that look in her eyes,” Paulina whispered to Georgia. “That looks like a woman who is ready to run again, and this time, she might not come back.”
Th?y whispered to Linh as she paused mid-clap. “Typical ungrateful children. Their mother is gone for over two decades, and they give her more work when she comes back. Let the woman rest!”
Only Georgia was willing to be brave and step forward until she was side by side with me. “Má?” Georgia said quietly, her accent having improved since she had moved to Vietnam. “Is everything okay?”
I broke off from staring at the sign and turned to look my youngest daughter in the eye. Georgia, who knew me the best out of all of them, very quickly realized that I wasn’t angry at all; instead, she saw how much time had come between us, and how much it had pained me.
“Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” I whispered to her, a smile cracked on my lips.
Georgia began laughing and crying as well, as she took my hand. “ Star Wars , right?”
“You’re finally learning.” I laughed as well, and turned to face the rest of my family head on. All seven of them. Huey, Duc, Jude, Jane, Bingo, Paulina, and Georgia.
“We all are,” Georgia whispered back, as everyone welcomed Diep Lê home. I began to cry, finally accepting the long-overdue acknowledgment of being the real breadwinner of the family, as someone who had learned how to survive for them, and had started it all.
Leaving a trail of May rose, jasmine, and a hint of bourbon vanilla behind me, I finally stepped forward.