Suck it up and play

Chapter 11: Sex at Seventeen

2005-07-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

Mimi was busy putting the finishing touches on Kara’s 17th birthday gift. Until Colossus Verde came into her mind, Mimi had been working on Kara’s woman for three months. Her name was Sex at Seventeen. Mimi had already made the clear plastic mold of the voluptuous 5’9’’ figurine. The hair consisted of non-lubricated black condoms sewn together. Three large coin slots in the mouth opened up to different sections of the body. One slot was meant for condoms, another for lubricant packets and the last for dental dams. On the front, direct underside and back of the crotch area, Mimi had crafted dispensers for the separate sections. The idea was to create a giant piggy bank that would represent Kara’s sexual savings account. The hope was that Kara would withdraw from it.

Minh was right. Mimi did like to talk to her characters. In her garage, she turned to “Colossus Verde,” asking for advice:

“What do you think? I’m trying to go for a little humor here. Will she get it? She’s got a little Scared of Sex syndrome and maybe this will loosen her up. Has she really not kissed a boy yet? Or is she just lying? No no, she would never lie to me. Maybe her father but not me. But she’s so sickitatingly gorgeous and she’s got to be horny by now. I mean, when I was her age, I was playing musical beds with boys in my class. What in the universe is wrong with her? I don’t want the condoms to scare her. Oh no, Minh’s right. This will totally freak Hai out when he lives here. Oh well, good to shock him. Shock sticks. Shock resonates. Shock makes ya think. They’ll always learn in the end.”

Opening the last box of glow-in-the-dark condoms, Mimi thought about how she should’ve made the wig out of them instead. “Shitters, the best ideas always come too late.” She dropped the plastic-wrapped condoms into the mouth, successfully filling Sex at Seventeen up to the neck with goodies.

***
When Kara and Charles were both 8 years old, Mimi had taken them to go see Apocalpyse Now at the Laemmle Fairfax in Hollywood. If her husband and sister-in-law weren't going to make an effort to educate their children about their Vietnamese heritage, Mimi felt obliged to make an attempt. She thought the movie would help them better understand what their people had to go through.

It was the very first time both Kara and Charles had ever seen Asian faces on a big screen. The children looked like each of them, and the adults resembled Minh and Vinh than any other movie characters. After watching the $1/day Filipino extras get murdered and tortured, the two 3rd graders walked out of the theater sobbing.

Mimi continued to play the role of the brutal, uncensoring exposer. Charles loved going to the Museum of Contemporary Art with her because she asked him a lot of questions but also interpreted every piece for him. Getting the analytical answers was better than having to search for them by himself. The first time they went to the MOCA, there was an exhibit of a fake forest, where all the materials were constructed from recycled paper mache. A man dressed in a typical business suit had his pants down. He was mechanically sticking his penis in and out of a tree, and holding onto the tree as if it were a person's hips. Charles always remembers Mimi bending down to him and saying, "See Charles. This is called fucking the trees. That's what these corporate assholes do to the environment."

These lasting images of Vietnamese people getting killed and tree-fucking corporate assholes made Charles understand things in the way textbooks at school couldn't. He hated war. He hated corporate assholes. And he adored Mimi.

It wasn’t weird to him that they still kept in close contact with Mimi. After the divorce, they continued to visit Mimi at her house in Garberville.

Mimi opened the door and tried to kiss her ex-sister-in-law Hue style. But she always inhaled too much, too fast. Minh simply hugged her, and handed her two green candles embedded with poinsettia leaves and little gold beads. They were a Christmas gift from one of Benedict’s students.

Charles looked all around the dining room and out to the living room. While Vinh's house consisted of East Asian pottery and sculptures, African masks and classical Vietnamese calligraphy, Auntie Mimi's displayed a much wider spectrum of mediums. Video art constantly played on her television. Music frequencies dictated the size and speed of bubbles rising in the fake fish tank located in the dining room. Metal slinky dinks were suspended from the ceiling and looked like hanging hair. On one of the living room walls, there was a large painting with strips of various food scents to smell. Charles still couldn’t believe that this woman was a part of his family.

To Charles, both Auntie Mimi and Uncle Vinh never seemed to age. As long as he had known Mimi, she had never changed her haircut. Like a Lego doll, Mimi wore perfect straight bangs and short hair to her chin. Sometimes her hair sat like a wig. She always wore black with tons of accessories. Today, it was a long-sleeved cotton shirt and wide-legged linen pants. Red Indian bangles lined up on her arm while a giant amber stone hung around her neck.

***

The 5 gathered in Mimi’s backyard, where candles sat on the main table and Sex at Seventeen stood unveiled. While it was an extremely beautiful garden, Mimi always preferred people visit it at night. If you looked closely, it looked like a hole puncher had attacked all of the roses, irises, strawberry bushes and rainbow chard. A sign hanging by the bird feeder indicated why: “NO PESTICIDES ALLOWED.”

But the garden simply glowed at night. Once, Charles told Mimi that her garden was more colorful than Disneyland’s electric parade. She grew eggplant, tomatoes, kumquats, beets and yams. While Charles was full from dinner, he was still craving Mimi’s special chicken. The lemon tree dangled its citrus scent over the table, while the rows of garlic and bushes of rosemary tempted him from behind his chair.

…To be continued

Chapter 10: Hai's Arrival

2005-06-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

Sweaty palms slided one over the other on the unpadded steering wheel of Kara’s Volvo. It had taken her an hour to pick out her outfit. She wasn’t fully satisfied with her final selection. Even though they were flat and flexible, her tan ballet flats felt very foreign against the gas and brake pedals. Her freshly shaven calves, exposed below the hem of her honey cocktail skirt, were uncomfortably naked. The fibers of the wooly black cardigan were like little fleas biting away at her skin, that was accustomed to only feeling spandex and cotton. The headpiece of her car seat was very unwelcoming to her hair, which was twisted in a neat bun, and forced her to drive with her head tilted forward.

As she followed signs to the Los Angeles International airport, she kept checking out her eye makeup in the rearview mirror. After parking, she rushed to the nearest bathroom, to make one last adjustment. She took out her wet hair, and let it’s fresh waves drape, and blend into the black of her cardigan. With one deep breath and a cool splash of water on her cheeks, she was ready to wait at the arrival gate.

In a white collared button up dress shirt and grey slacks, Hai Thi Tran cautiously stepped down the airplane, leading with his right foot. His flip-flops repeatedly slapped his heels, creating somewhat of a theme beat to his long awaited arrival. As he came closer, Kara’s eyes raced in circles around his facial features and up and down his 5’10” body. Built like a professional soccer player, who spent everyday outdoors, Hai was lean, tone and even more brown-skinned than Kara. Above his black Audrey Hepburn eyebrows, Hai held his right hand up in a salute to block his face from the Los Angeles sun. His left hand clutched a guitar case. In each of his ears, he wore two thin, dime-sized gold hoops.

Nothing about her original expectations were correct. He had luggage but there were no flies buzzing around his face. But she was right about his teeth never experiencing orthodontic care. They were all crooked and he even had sharper fang teeth than the average person. But they were nice teeth, the kind that gave someone character and intrigued you like a surreal painting.

Besides his incredible height, his big, healthy lips were his next more noticeable feature. They looked like two slices of unpeeled orange stuck together. Above them, he maintained a well-groomed mustache and below, he trimmed a neat goat-t. An inch of coarse, black hair grew evenly all around his head and naturally spiked upwards. Hai had a very long face that accentuated his high cheekbones and deepened his dimples.

He was gorgeous.

“So this is him,” she thought. This was the vegetarian who couldn’t even eat fish sauce. This was the engineer major who had to sell soymilk for a living. This was the son of the adopted Auntie from the countryside. This was the Michael Jackson fan. This was the naughty monk who ran away from the monastery when he was 5. This was the boy who grew up speaking French, English and Vietnamese fluently. This was the cousin who grew up so much more poor than she had. This was the child of the political activist who had mysteriously disappeared. This was the person with no more family left in Vietnam. This was the bridge who promised to bring Kara and her father closer together. Apparently, this was a guitar player.

The “Hai Thi Tran” sign Kara had made was unnecessary. For the first time, Kara understood the phrase “animal instincts.” Among other feelings, she just knew that this was him. Another instinct told her to rush towards him. But then, she slowed her pace in order to not seem too excited. Her hand reached out to his fatless arm and squeezed it.

“I’m Kara,” she said. Like a boy in the midst of puberty, Kara’s voice squeaked when she spoke the syllable “Kar.” Never, in her life, had she physically looked up to an Asian male.

Hai put down his guitar. Through his nose, he inhaled the scent around Kara’s cheek. Flowers bloomed all over her body. She had never experienced such a sensation before. In perfect English, Hai replied, “I know. Thank you for picking me up.”

Chapter 9

2005-05-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

After saying goodbye to Auntie Minh and Charles, Kara waited all day long for her father to come home and explain this one. At 8:10pm, Vinh entered the doorway and shouted, “Let me go to the bathroom first!” Five minutes later, he entered the kitchen, where Kara waited by the wipeboard.

“I don’t get it Papa,” Kara said, trying to not sound accusing. With a more inquisitive tone, she asked, “Who is she? Who are they? Auntie Minh wouldn’t tell me.”

After taking a deep breath, Vinh loosened his tie. He sat on a stool and dived in, “Ngoc arrived to our home when I was about 4 years old. But for as long as I can remember, she was in our house. Grandpa Thi knew her family in the countryside, and invited her to live with us. He paid them a large sum of money, and that was the last she saw of them.”

“You guys purchased her?” Kara interrupted.

“Sure, it was very common to do that.” Vinh erased the wipeboard. “She came from this taro farmer family that had 10 kids already. They couldn’t afford to feed and house her. We could. We needed someone to help out with the cooking and cleaning. Grandpa Thi was practically doing them a favor.”

Kara opened the refrigerator and microwaved some of Auntie Minh’s leftovers for her father. “Did you pay her?”

“We housed her and fed her.”

“So she was a slave.”

“It wasn’t like that. Not like how you normally think of slave. Let me finish the story Kara. Please, I’m very tired and I don’t want to be interrupted.” He pushed away the heated bowl of barbequed pork over rice.

The clock read 8:20pm, and Kara knew that her father would rush off to bed soon. Time with him was precious, and she was lucky that he allotted this much to her already. “Sorry,” she said as she started to put the dishes away.

“Let’s see now, where was I? Oh yes, your grandfather literally carried her away in a truck with three chickens and a dozen eggs that he also bought from her family. We had the same birthday, you know. Minh always called her ‘eggs’ and of course, Ngoc hated that. She just wanted to remind her that she wasn’t an original member of the family. Well Ngoc cooked, and cleaned, did all the grocery shopping. But she was really intelligent. I mean, she learned French just by hearing my father speak it to some of the magistrates visiting the house. She learned how to read and write Vietnamese all on her own. Grandpa Thi practically fell in love with her. Minh hated it, you know. She thought Ngoc was a witch. Minh did very bad in school. And here was this girl, this dirty dark little girl, who came to our house along with some eggs, learning French and winning our father’s heart. He began to treat her as if she was his real child. No more cooking for her. No more having to clean. Just helping him translate and talk about French literature and politics. And Minh was so jealous. Once time, grandfather made an ao dai for her, and Minh literally cut it up to pieces. He loved her so much that anytime Minh would mention that she wasn’t our real sister, he would slap her across the face. She was more than a sister to me. She was like a mother in fact. That’s why we don’t talk about where she really came from. It’s not important anyway. So please, don’t even discuss it with Charles, okay? And definitely not with Hai. I’m not sure if he even knows. Now, oh look. It’s 8:30pm. I’m really tired Kara-Moose. Time for Dad to go to bed.”

He stuck a folded paper underneath the Mickey Mouse magnet on the fridge. “Hai’s arrival information. Don’t be late for him,” he instructed.

Chapter 8: Office Space

2005-05-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

When Vinh returned, it seemed like everyone in the house was asleep. He went straight to his office, to file away all of the convention materials. There, Vinh swam in a recycling bin of papers. When he felt overwhelmed, he would just stare at mess of formatted words on paper, and wonder how it meant so much when they were just words. Words that weren’t even spoken, or even written, but typed. At 9pm, Vinh was sitting in his comfortable chair lost in one of these reflective moments. He was thinking about how the signature still held some value. A name. A signed name, written by the person in ink, who possessed that name. Personal presence still meant something in this society.

In Vietnam, people brushed shoulders and squeezed each other’s wrists on a daily basis. You had to interact with people because everything, all business took place outside. How was Hai going to adjust to all of this?

The door swung open and Minh’s march interrupted Vinh’s train of thought. With her nostrils flared, she sat on the pile of papers and asked,

“When are you planning on telling her?”

“I don’t have time,” Vinh said. He started organizing all of his papers and acting busy.

“Fine,” Minh said, “then I’ll tell her.”

“No!” Vinh stood up. “Not yet.”

As Minh pushed herself off the desk, Vinh sealed his hand around her wrist. In one strong swoop, Minh unlocked herself, hurting Vinh’s fingers, and threatened, “I’m serious Vinh. You or me. He’s coming in two days Lord Jesus sakes and she needs to know the truth.”

“Fine” Vinh gave in, “I’ll do it. But I don’t want you there.”

“Well I was also coming in here to tell you that Charles and I have to take off tomorrow afternoon anyway. Dookie’s eczema is really acting up and the dingbat husband keeps calling. Doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know what lotion to buy for her. What cream. What percentage.” It was clear that Minh got tired, just talking about her lazy husband and chronically dry-skinned daughter.

“I’m calling you tomorrow night,” Minh warned. “You better have told her by then, or you know who is gonna.” Minh broke out of her older-sister ultimatum character and returned to affection. With Vinh’s face in her hands, Minh kissed her brother, Hue-style goodbye. “You wake up too early for me. Send Hai up with Kara when he comes. And send yourself up if you want to meet some nice Vietnamese women.”

Vinh waved goodbye to his sister, the only woman who could tell him what to do. Afraid of how much he would have to unravel about their family history, Vinh started to calculate exactly what he was going to say. He scripted out all the information on his computer. When he finished printing the page out, he recited everything he had written. In front of his 10-foot long glass desk, he paced, doing his best to memorize the bulleted notes. When he looked away from his paper to test himself, he glanced all around, at his cabinets, next to more cabinets of files files files. Each time, he made an attempt to sound more natural by adding “I mean” and “you know.”

Then, he looked at his reflection in the sink mirror. Because Vinh spent so much time in the office, he installed an open bathroom to save him the seconds of having to walk to the one in the hallway. To himself, he instructed out loud, “No lies,” and thought, “Just restricted facts.”

He predicted questions Kara would ask and prepared answers. If she raised an unexpected issue, he would simply say that he was tired and had to go to sleep.

The shredder in his office softly hummed, as it ate Vinh’s monologue. Satisfied with his solution to this problem of discussing the truth, he walked to the kitchen.

On the wipeboard, Vinh wrote: “AUNTIE NGOC, IS NOT REALLY OUR SISTER. BUT YOU WILL TREAT HAI AS IF HE WERE A REAL COUSIN.”

Chapter 7

2005-05-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

While Vinh was attending a Real Estate convention in Texas, Kara, Minh and Charles spent the week playing immediate family. Minh absolutely loved cooking in her brother’s luxurious kitchen. They just had so much counter space in addition to that wonderful island. What a concept! She acted like a little child, playing with all of the kitchen gadgets. Push empty glass cup. Here comes that instant crushed ice. Move glass to the left. Out pours instant filtered water. Cutco knife comes off magnetic strip. Cutco knife attaches nicely back onto magnetic strip. Press remote control button. Microwave on. Microwave off. Steam sucker rise. Steam sucker go back into 8 burner stove. “I’m Judy Jetson, Obe One Kanobe. The force is with me,” she giggled to herself.

The day before she and Charles were to leave, she dragged in the garbage bag of “things for Hai.” In the living room, it sat heavy and misshapen. One by one, Kara pulled out each item. She gave all of them a brow furrow that seemed like unfair judgment to Minh. In front of the bag, Minh stood to justify each item’s value.

Charles’ old rugby shirt that was too small for him.

“We don’t know what size he is. People in Vietnam are malnourished right now. The economy is bad.”

5 of Benedict’s old faded pink polos that had turned lobster.

“On the other hand, he could be really big.”

Charles’ Transformers, Legos and G.I. Joes.

“There’s no more space in the condo for those. Charles needs to let the hell go. He’s not a baby. But Hai has never even seen these. They don’t have toys like these in Vietnam.”

A Gumby t-shirt with a corduroy patch covering a huge hole in the left armpit. Before the Buckwheat O-Tay t-shirt, Kara remembers this one reigning supreme for 3 years straight.

“Charles needs to let go of that too. He liked it so much, I figured Hai would.”

A UC Berkeley GO BEARS! plastic mug with a matching keychain inside.

“Those are nice souvenirs. Berkeley is famous so he’ll like them.”

A pair of Minh’s old, black Reeboks that Kara only saw on her school nurse.

“Oh, those are for you if you’re interested. Aren’t we the same size?”

English language instructional tapes.

“Those helped me a lot when I first came here.”

Mexican worry dolls.

“He needs to learn about other cultures. In Vietnam, there’s only Vietnamese people. There are tons of Mexicans in Los Angeles.”

A half-consumed Costco box of Baby Ruth candy bars. The expiration date read OCT 1994.

“The date is misleading. They’re still good.”

An assortment of Charles and Benedict’s old white Hanes that had been accidentally dyed pink.

“Those are brand new!” She pointed to Charles. “I just washed them once with that ungrateful child’s red hat by mistake. Nobody has even worn them.”

“Kara probably thinks I’m awful for even offering these to Hai,” Minh thought to herself as she looked at the pink Hanes sprawled on the brown suede sofa. As she took another look around the grand living room. The flat screen TV, aquarium and framed Picasso original weren’t going to intimidate her. She reminded herself that Kara didn’t know a thing about what it was like to come from Vietnam.

Reviewing all of these items reminded Minh of her distance from her native country. Of course, she would have appreciated all of these things when she arrived. But that was in 1960. This was more than 40 years later, and had she been wrong, to assume that Vietnam was in a stand-still?

The pictures, that captured different combinations of herself, Kara, Charles, Dookie, Benedict and Vinh, all marked points on a timeline. A timeline that started after Vietnam. A newer, revisionist timeline that excluded Mimi. Not a single image of Vinh’s ex-wife was left on display through the entire house. Even though Vinh had only made this transition recently, the frames were all still very dusty. They showed age. “How much dust had Vietnam collected?” Minh wondered. She picked up a duster and once again, took charge as the self-proclaimed woman of the house. As Minh whipped the feathers along the stair rails, Kara followed her and said, “I wish he would just come already.”

“Well then maybe you should’ve just married him” Minh half-joked. “That would’ve made things go a lot faster.” In fact, this was how most Vietnamese immigrants were arriving to the States nowadays.

Kara’s face shriveled. “Yuck.” That’s how Minh felt about the dirt and dust all over the picture frames in the hallway.

“If I were the woman of this grand house,” she thought to herself, “I wouldn’t entrust it to some Chinese housekeeper. I’d bathe it everyday, my own self.”

“What do you mean, yuck?” Minh asked as she accidentally dusted towards Kara’s face.

After letting out a big sneeze, Kara sniffled, “I mean, yuck as in gross, he’s my cousin.”

“Not cousin cousin my dear.” The picture of Kara and Charles sitting on the backyard swing set was crooked. As Minh adjusted it, she smiled at how back then, Charles was actually taller than Kara.

“Well yeah, I’ve never met him before. But if we had kids, they’d still be retarded.”

The feather duster dropped to the floor. Minh halted. Was it really possible that Vinh hadn’t told Kara yet? “Oh Lord Jesus” Minh sighed.

Kara turned around and walked back down the stairs. “Sorry, mentally challenged. I didn’t know you were Aunt P.C. all of a sudden.”

Chapter 6: Dear Hai

2005-05-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

In her bedroom, Kara began a letter to Hai.

Dear Hai,

I will do my best to write in simple English. My father says you must speak it very well.

I am very sorry to hear about your mother. Do you have any idea where she could be?

My father tells me that you sell soymilk. I drink that a lot because I cannot digest cow milk well. It gives me gas. Are there cows in Vietnam?

Do you have any hobbies? Do you like watching American movies like “Grease” or “Singin’ in the Rain”? Those are my favorite.

Do you play sports? I “wrestle,” which means that I try to hold one other player down on the ground for a long time.

What kind of music do you like? Have you ever heard of RAP or Michael Jackson? He is my favorite singer.

You do not need to bring anything. We have everything.

Charles and I really look forward to meeting you. My father does too. Maybe your mother told you this already, but my parents are divorced. I know they do not have “divorce” in Vietnam. It is when two married people do not want to be married anymore. They live in different houses and then they are free to marry other people.

Can you send me a picture of yourself?

See you in less than a month!

Your cousin,

Kara

Chapter 5

2005-05-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

In Kara’s bathroom, the two cousins brushed their teeth side-by-side and talked to each other’s reflections in the mirror. They looked like a split screen scene out of a romantic comedy, like “When Harry Met Sally.”

"Are you excited?” Kara asked. She let down her long, coffee-black hair with her free hand, and Charles almost choked.

"About what?” Pieces of meat always got stuck in Charles’ braces. It was annoying ot always pinch them out. His spit his toothpaste foam into the sink and continued, “College?”

“No, about Hai dipshit.” Out of the drawer, Kara grabbed her tweezers as she kicked Charles. “How much do you think Hai weighs? Do you think he’s as dark as me?”

He shoved her back. “How can he be darker than you? You know, my Mom says that you’re like our whole family shaded together, on top of each other?”

“So,” Kara yanked one of his braids, “at least I don’t pretend I’m the fucking Indian from the Cupboard.”

“Well I am excited about college. Don’t know which one stupid enough to let me in, but I don’t care if I have to live in Colorado, or any other boonieville. Just as long as my Mom isn’t sleeping in the next room.”

“You know he speaks three languages? Ouch!” This was the first time in 7 months Kara had plucked her eyebrows. “I bet he’s pretty smart.”

Charles opened up a bottle of stringent and poured a little onto a cotton ball. Wiping it over his greasy face, he wondered why his cousin was grooming herself. “Only smart by Vietnamese standards, which probably just means that he knows how to fucking read.”

"I bet he’ll think we’re spoiled” Kara paused, analyzing the angles of her own face and brushing her hair.

"He'll get lost in this house, that's for sure.” It was strange to see Kara acting so self-conscious in the name of vanity. “Mom says he currently lives in a closet with a stove and hole to piss."

With her wooden hairbrush, Kara struck Charles’ arm. "That's mean."

"Well it's true.” Charles stated as he stole her brush, and unweaved his braids.

While there were 4 extra bedrooms in the house, Charles always slept on the top bunk of Kara's bed. He walked into his dream childhood bedroom and saw that nothing had changed. Marvel Comic book characters like Batman still punched and flew all over her wall, while Kareem Abdul Jabar extended his long, lanky leg at Bruce Lee on her ceiling. Great old school taste. 9 record cover albums, including "Thriller" and "Purple Rain" hung in a 3 by 3 arrangement above her desk and a row of vintage McDonald’s Happy Meals toys stood in a glass case. These images reminded Charles of Kara’s equality in age. Lost in her beauty and maturity, he often forgot how she still laughed at farts and believed in superheroes.

She was by far,

the coolest girl he knew.

When Charles visited Los Angeles for New Year’s, he mentally copied and saved the image of her putting on a bra, as if his mind were a computer hard drive. Unconsciously, he would pull it out from the file of masturbation material stored in his brain. It disturbed him greatly, and he knew the temptation to copy and save more nakedness wasn't good for his soul.

As soon as Charles suggested that he sleep in the guest room, Kara asked, "Why, so you can whack off?"

Absolutely.

But of course, Charles snapped back:

"I don't appreciate you and Mom making fun of me for that shit. And you know you do it too."

In reality, Charles didn’t really know if Kara had any sort of sex-drive. To his knowledge, she had never shown interest in anyone or had even kissed a boy. Uncle Benedict was the only person in the family who didn't think Kara was

A. A lesbian

or

B. Asexual

Everyone in the family had very good reason to believe Kara wasn't interested in men. But men sure liked her. What more could an adolescent boy ask for? She burped, played video games and was stunning. Her male teammates called her a dyke in order to save their own egos. If they dismissed her rejections and superior wrestling skills as lesbianism, it didn’t seem like Kara really cared. When Charles asked why she didn’t socialize with them more, Kara responded, “They’re fucking meat heads.”

"Fine, sleep in the downstairs guest room.” Kara said as she entered her room. “Hai's room is going to be that one" Kara pointed across the hallway.

“Good.” From the hallway, Charles looked inside, at the red wooden ladder on the side of the bunk bed. He continued, “Because he can’t sleep in my bed.” The idea of any other male even sitting on it clenched Charles’ chest.

“He might want to one night.” Kara began shutting her door, covered in yellow caution tape.

In the closing door opening, Charles yelled, “He’ll roll off the top! He won’t know how to sleep on it. They don’t have those in Vietnam!”

“Fine, whatever. Goodnight.”

“’Night.”

Chapter 4: Auntie Minh and Charles

2005-05-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

The news was gelling and cogitating in Kara’s mind. A “Newcleus” record played and while Kara did push ups. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi…until she reached 50. Then the whole insomnia routine began: the studying, then the comic books and attempting to fall asleep to music. Finally at 5AM, she fell asleep right when Vinh left the house for his 7-mile morning run.

In the afternoon, she took a long nap. A car was beeping loudly outside. There was only one person who chose to disturb her in such a fashion: Auntie Minh.

When Kara opened the door, Auntie Minh charged her head first, letting out a deep Viking roar.

"Some wrestler you are!" Minh laughed. She rolled in her 4-foot tall tan hard-case and placed her turquoise hatbox of jewelry by the terra cotta soldier. Her foot pushed off the other’s black Easy Spirit pump when Kara stopped her:

"It's okay, you don't have to take off your shoes."

"Huh?" Minh flashed her centimeter-wide gap in between her two front teeth.

"Dad said we don't have to anymore now that Daisy comes to clean twice a week."

“Who?” Minh asked, wrinkling her tall forehead, and pushing her head into her neck like a turtle.

“The house cleaner.”

"What an idiot. Oh, don't close the door! Charles is here too."

Auntie Minh was wearing a sleeveless eggplant blouse. Her black leggings with stirrups were so tight that Kara could see the little mountains of cottage cheese cellulite peaking all over her back thighs. The only items that didn't have the remaining sales tags attached were the Jade Buddha on a gold chain around her neck, and her elastic banded visor. The oversized see-through plastic brim cast a red-tinted shadow on her face. Her son, Charles, had won it at Chucky Cheese's, where he celebrated his 12th birthday.

Charles' t-shirt of the Little Rascal's Buckwheat saying "O-Tay!" had been his favorite for 2 years in a row. A red pair of Adidas shorts exposed his untanned upper thighs and yellow tube socks concealed his patchy haired flamingo legs. Every since he was little, Charles insisted on maintaining his hair length precisely where the ends met his armpit crease. People often mistaked him for Kara from the back. He always wore his hair in two braids, today with a yellow headband that matched his socks.

Even though they were both 16 years old, Kara towered a good 7 inches above her cousin. Charles complained that Kara owed her height advantage to all that organic food Auntie Mimi fed her. Why couldn't his mother bake her own flax-seed carrot bread, peel his lunch meat from a freshly roasted free range turkey and pack him sliced tomatoes from her own garden? Whenever he asked his mother that very question, Minh responded by rolling up the San Francisco Chronicle and smacking him over the head. She did it enough times that he stopped complaining. According to Minh, Kara was so tall because Uncle Vinh "married Whitey." Her husband, Benedict said that Charles just had to be patient. Girls went through puberty faster than boys, and Benedict had some tall Chinese Uncles.

More than her height, Kara's exponentially increasing attractiveness disturbed Charles. He looked at her from the ankles that turned into her endless legs, up to her deep belly button winking at him from underneath her Batman t-shirt. His eyes halted at her budding chest and Charles immediately placed his red duffel bag in front of him, to conceal his erection.

Kara tackled him to the green-tiled entrance floor, which didn't help much.

"Hey dragon breath," she whispered in the deep Barry White voice she only performed with her dear cousin.

"Shouldn't talk booger eyes."

Kara dug out her crusted eye mucus and wiped it on her cousin's face. Her right side bolted down his collarbone while her hands stapled his wrists. A large snore sound vibrated from the back of her throat, to let Charles know that she was producing a large wad of spit. The long spittle dangled from her mouth, threatening to touch Charles' face. He didn't care. Her boob was pressing against his neck. Charles squirmed whimpering underneath her and announced,

"I gotta take a shit."

Immediately, Minh pinched the back of his neck and snapped,

"Hey!"

Charles corrected himself wiggling his fingers, "I have to make bowel movement," and walked off to the bathroom.

"I thought you guys were coming next week."

"Well oil prices are expected to rocket next week so we figured that we'd save gas money and come early. I need to talk to your Dad about Hai coming. And your Mom told me that the Beverly Hills Amateur Art showcase is this weekend." Minh slapped her turquoise hat box. While she considered her jewelry-making a real profession, Benedict still liked to dismiss it as a "silly craft hobby."

Minh continued, "Besides, Charles finished school yesterday and he was really eager to see you."

"When are Uncle Benedict and Dookie arriving?"

It was fair to assume Uncle Benedict and her little cousin Debra, who everyone called Dookie, would show up separately. Uncle Benedict and Auntie Minh never traveled long distances together, for fear that the both of them might die, leaving the children with no parents.

"Uncle Benedict is too busy right now. He's teaching 3 classes this semester! And you know how Dookie's skin turns crispy in L.A. sunshine."

It was true that Los Angeles smog wasn't the best thing for Dookie's extreme eczema. But Auntie Minh was lying about Uncle Benedict. Yes, he was busy developing the UC Berkeley Department of "Religious Cult Studies," but that wasn't the main reason he didn't come. He hated going to Vinh's Beverly Hills 6-bedroom home. A Chinese superioriest, Benedict thought all Vietnamese-Americans, including his wife and her brother, were just uneducated refugees itching to climb the corporate ladder without any intellectual stimulation.

Minh, on the other hand, loved playing house in Benedict’s home. Whenever she visited, she acted like she was the woman in the house.

Minh headed straight to kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There was hardly any fresh produce. "Shoes in the house and take out food. What the hell is wrong with your father?"

"He doesn't have time for anything."

Minh closed the refrigerator door. "I DON'T KNOW DING-DONG. SHE DISAPPEARED. PLEASE PREPARE THE GUEST ROOM FOR HAI?"

"He's talking about Auntie Ngoc and Hai."

"I know, I'm no ding-dong. That nutty War-Fugee. How can she be so selfish!"

Kara suddenly felt very defensive of Auntie Ngoc, "Nobody knows where she went. She could've been kidnapped!"

Minh laughed at Kara's naivete. Her little niece had no idea how much she didn't know.

Minh unloaded her suitcase. She pulled out a box of Christmas wrapped See's Candies and handed them to Kara.

"Thanks Auntie Minh." Kara knew exactly where these came from: the received gifts-to-be-recycled closet in her Auntie Minh's garage. The Lee family hardly ever purchased presents. For Kara's birthday, Auntie Minh and Uncle Benedict always gave party favors they received at weddings. The plastic swans and magnets went straight to the garbage. But Kara liked the candles tied with ribbons, imprinted with the date and names of the couples, who she had never even heard of. It was like a little wedding-yard. They lit up her bathroom when she chose to take long baths.

Standing in the kitchen doorway, Vinh announced, "You're early. A week early."

"Now is that the kind of greeting I get from a younger brother?" Minh held his face and quickly inhaled the scent of his cheek through her nose. This is the way Hue people greeted each other. It was more than a handshake, less than a kiss and closer than a hug.

"Where's the rest of the gang?"

"Benedict's busy and Dookie is traumatized by the skin reaction from New Year's. And Charles..." Minh put her hand on her hips. "...where is that little asshole?"

Minh marched to the entrance bathroom and banged on the door.

"Hey! Hey you in there! Mister masturbator! Your Uncle is home. Come say hello!"

When Charles was 12, he started chronically masturbating like most preteen boys when they discover the majestic power to make themselves come. Minh had caught him numerous times, in the bathroom, in his bedroom, in the hotel pools on vacation, in their garden and at Benedict's mother's house. Since that phase (that hadn't quite ended), Minh constantly teased him about his raging hormones.

Charles aggressively opened the door. "I was constipated."

Uncle Vinh took a quick sniff of his nephew's cheek. “You’re in great shape,” Charles told his Uncle.

"Well thank you Charles, looks like you've grown a few inches."

Minh pulled Vinh by his upper arm, leading him towards the kitchen. Charles and Kara listened as their parents' English gradually faded to sing-song tones and mono-syllables that sounded like single-drops of water. Neither of them could understand nor speak Vietnamese.

Kara then grabbed Charles' arm and the two skipped off to her room upstairs.

Chapter 3: Vinh

2005-05-10T00:15:00.000-07:00

Vinh pulled his champagne Mercedes into the driveway and scooped the last 3 almonds out of the cupholder into his hand. Mechanically inserting each one into his mouth like coins into a slot machine, he looked at his eyes in the rearview mirror and hoped he had made the right emotional calculations. Since he left both of the notes, the chain reaction of Kara's feelings was predictable.

When Kara first started wrestling, she complained to Ben Goldberg, the wrestling Coach a lot about being the only female on the team. The locker room issues, uniform and teases were so discouraging that she almost quit. Both Vinh and Mimi were extremely upset when he dismissed her discomfort, telling her to "Suck it up and play." While Mimi still hated this rule to live by, Vinh had come to fully embrace it as his own. Since Kara joined the West Beverly wrestling team her Freshman year, her maturity always shined through within a matter of hours. It was like clockwork. She'd battle with her selfish instincts, remember the larger picture, tell herself to "Suck it up and play." Suddenly...it was no big deal.

From the front door, Kara came out and shouted down to the driveway:

"Does he speak English?"

Vinh got out of the driver's seat and fished for the mess of papers in the back. He bumped his head on the roof, whispered "Merde," and looked over at Kara.

"I assume so."

He locked his car and carried the various contracts and forms in his arms. Kara shut the door behind him.

"Where's the phone?"

Kara ran upstairs and down the hallway to the linen closet to retrieve it. She handed the phone to her father who sat on one of the kitchen stools and dumped all of his papers on the island.

"What do you want to eat?"

"I destroyed the leftovers."

"Naughty lady.”

“It’s fine Dad. I’m in the 110-120 range still. If you’d come to one of my matches, you’d see the little shits I wrestle. They’re pre-pubescent peons. Like sperm. Half my height.”

“Are you the only one on the team who doesn’t have to worry about starving themselves?”

“Pretty much. But I still don’t drink water before weigh-ins.”

While Vinh ordered his standard wine beef and mushroom snow peas sautéed in black bean sauce, Kara shuffled through her mental Rolodex of questions. She selected this one:

"How did you find out?"

"I heard from Long."

"What?"

"Long. He's the photojournalist from Daddy's hometown."

"I know the name of your hometown."

"Yes, well he just got back doing some shoot of the pagodas in Hue. That place is small Kara. It's no Los Angeles. People gossip across town about you going to the bathroom five minutes ago. It's impossible to have an affair. Your great Uncle tried once and failed without having even gotten to first base. Hue people notice and talk when you disappear. Long told me that Ngoc was nowhere to be seen for three months."

Vinh started separating the tax forms from the bank loan forms, and the xeroxes of the W-4 forms from the xeroxes of signed housing ownership agreements.

"So then what?"

"He said that Hai had to drop out of school and sell soy milk in order to live. So I thought, I have lots of rooms in this house. Why shouldn't he live with me? Ngoc always wanted him back in the States anyways."

The doorbell rang and Vinh pulled out a $20 bill from his suit pocket. He greeted Andrew, who had become very familiar with Mister Nguyen's predictable 8:00pm delivery orders. Vinh dumped the rice, beef and vegetables into one bowl and started shoveling all of it into his mouth.

Kara knew how snappy her father could get when he ate dinner so voraciously. It was easy to forget hunger. When he finally had a mouth-watering sensation, everything that interrupted his intake infuriated him. To kill nervous time, Kara would often untangle the ribbons of her father's 196 marathon medals, hanging around their life-sized terra cotta warrior guarding the entrance.

She returned to the kitchen, where Vinh was now stacking up the organized piles of papers.

"I called Hai and told him that he could come live with us."

"In English?"

"No, in Vietnamese."

"Then how do you know he speaks English?"

"Because your Auntie Ngoc wouldn't allow him to speak a single non-English or non-French word in their apartment."

"French?"

"She wanted him to be well-educated, well prepared for when he moved to the States. She had big plans."

"How do you know? Mom told me that when you guys went to visit her, she wouldn't even look at you! Something about her hiding, being mad that you married a white lady or something."

Vinh paused. Shamefully, he looked down at his reflection in the marble surface of the island.

"It was stupid for us to go seek her out like that."

Kara grazed her father's leftovers with her fingers and refocused the inquiries on her even more mysterious cousin.

"Do you know a lot about him Daddy?"

"Only what Ngoc told me in her letters."

"Letters?"

"There's a whole shoebox of them."

Vinh guzzled down a cup of hot peppermint tea and sighed. "Alright little woman, Daddy's pretty tired now."

"It's only 8:30."

Vinh followed a strict regiment of saying goodnight at 9PM and waking up at 5AM, no matter where he was or who he was with. He was trying to make bedtime a half-hour earlier. The flossing, brushing, rinsing and reading eat up 20 minutes give or take. So he didn't really get to bed until 9:30.

"Don't you have some homework to do, finals to study for?"

"It's Friday."

"That means nothing when you're in real estate."

"I know."

"Are you seeing Mom this weekend?"

"She's busy with a new project. You know how it gets when she's 'just perspiring with inspiration'."

At this point, Vinh felt like he had reached his quota of looking at his daughter's resembling face. He turned around quickly with his papers and with his back facing Kara in the doorway, walked off saying "Goodnight Kare Bear."

"'Night."

Chapter 2: Mimi

2005-05-09T15:55:00.000-07:00

When Kara returned from wrestling practice she rushed to the refrigerator door.

"I DON'T KNOW DING-DONG. SHE DISAPPEARED. PLEASE PREPARE THE GUEST ROOM FOR HAI."

Kara convinced herself that it wouldn't be a big change:

“This house has 6 bedrooms you spoiled asshole. Suck it up and play. You can always go to Mom’s house too.”

Kara speed dialed her Mom, stuck the cordless phone in her neck and walked into the linen closet to pick out new towels and sheets for Hai's room. "Mama, guess what?"

**

A week ago, Mimi had a dream about a woman made out of green bricks saving her from a fire that started while she was on the toilet. Since then, she was obsessed with constructing her heroine. When Kara called, Mimi was spray-painting her 50th brick in the garage. She wouldn't have picked it up, but she didn't have an answering machine and her old rotary phone was loudly ringing for at least 3 minutes. Only her daughter would wait that long. She bit off the dishwashing gloves, pulled down the bandana covering her face and stepped out of her sneakers. The old, beat-up pair of Saucony’s Vinh bought her after running their first marathon together. Marching annoyed up the stairs, she hoped Kara's interruption wasn't an emergency.

While Kara summarized the morning and afternoon's wipeboard messages, Mimi kept on repeating "Hey-sus Christo". For the first time since the dream, Mimi was not thinking about her surreal savior, who she had already named "Colossus Verdes." Mimi ignored her daughter's questions about whether Hai was too old for Snoopy sheets, and instead interrogated her about Auntie Ngoc:

"Where on earth could she have gone?" Mimi asked as she went through her mail.

"I don't know ding-dong." Kara replied as she walked to Hai’s guest room.

"Hey now Missy..." Mimi paused with one hand on her hip.

"Well that's what Dad wrote on the board." Kara flattened the sheet on the bed.

"Throw that fucking thing away!" Mimi angrily dumped all of the junk mail into her recycling.

"She disappeared. When people say he/she disappeared, they don't know where to. Otherwise they would say xyz went to the supermarket, the library or Tibet."

"Maybe she did escape to Tibet." Mimi sat down in her living room and spinning her globe.

"I really don't know Mama." Kara wondered

"Your Auntie Ngoc is, was, IS a very controversial figure." Mimi looked at all of the places Ngoc could have gone.

"Oh?"

"Sure, you remember that time I told you about, the year before we had you. The '69 trip, when your father and I traveled to Vietnam."

"No. I thought you two went to Europe in ’69.”

“No, no. That was in ’68. We went to Vietnam the year before I had you.”

“Oh.”

"Ngoc was hiding in a Buddhist monastery in the countryside. I can't believe your father recognized her. She looked nothing like that Vietnamese Jackie O goes picnicking woman on the fridge. Is that picture still there?" Mimi started to prepared some tea for himself.

"Yeah."

"Anyways, she had shaved her head, wore circular-framed tortoise-shelled glasses. Had on an orange monk's robe."

"Like a disguise?"

"Now who's the ding-dong?....Yes! It was a disguise! We drove for 18 hours on an unpaved road just to see her. God, I still remember that ride. It was so fucking bumpy I wasn't sure I could have children afterwards."

"Ah but then you had wonderful me."

"Yes, my uterus wasn't punctured afterall. But hell, it felt like it!"

"What was she like?"

"You don't remember this story? She wouldn't say a word to us! She didn't even look at us, at your father!"

"Was she upset that he married a white woman?"

"No, well maybe. But she was hiding, I don't know from who or what. For whatever reason, she wanted no kind of association with us."

"Do you know anything about her son?"

"You mean your cousin?"

"Yeah, him. Hai."

"No Dad, no other Uncles besides your father, and no other Aunties except for Minh...and I."

"You?"

"I'm a Nguyen, aren't I?"

“I guess.”

“How are you feeling about all of this?”

“Sucking it up and playing.”

“I don’t like this S.I.U and P syndrome you’ve developed. I’m not asking you what you’re going to do. God, don’t turn into your father. I’m asking you how you’re feeling.”

“I guess it could be kinda cool. Like having a brother, but it doesn’t really feel like it.”

“Well you’ve always wanted a brother.”

“No, I’ve always wanted to live near Charles again. Hai isn’t going to be Charles.”

“Well I’ll take Hai out a lot, show him around so don’t think you have to be tour guide all the time.”

“It’s not going to be a tour Mama. He’s coming to live with Dad, with us.”

“So how do you feel?”

“I’m trying to warm up to it more.”

“Oh for goodness sake Kara, are you angry? Sad? Scared? Worried?”

“I feel spoiled. I feel lucky in a bad way. That’s what I feel like.”

“Oh good. An emotion. Proud of you.”

"Mama, I gotta go. Dad's home."

Kara hung up the phone.

Chapter 1: The Announcement

2005-05-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 1: The Announcement
Kara woke up hungry for last night's take out leftovers from India Sweets and Spices. She rushed downstairs to the kitchen and found a new note on the refrigerator wipeboard: "AUNTIE NGOC HAS DISAPPEARED. YOUR COUSIN HAI IS COMING TO LIVE WITH ME. HE'S ARRIVING IN EXACTLY ONE MONTH."

The note had to be read over once, twice, five times. “Auntie Ngoc” and “Cousin Hai” were two relatives completely foreign to Kara. She had never met them. They lived in Vietnam and it was extremely rare that Kara’s father, Vinh would speak of the two. In complete shock, Kara immediately thought to herself: “What does Dad mean by YOUR COUSIN HAI IS COMING TO LIVE WITH "ME"? If Hai is going to sleep and eat in Dad’s house, he is going to live with US. Doesn’t Dad care what I think? He didn’t even ask for my approval…of this adoption…of some full-grown Vietnam refugee I’ve never even met.

It’s the summer before my senior year and the last thing I want is some non-English speaking third-world cousin to babysit. Dad is never going to be around. I know I’ll get stuck with taking care of him. I’ll probably have to pick Hai up from the airport all by myself. God, I can already see it now. Hai is gonna walk cluelessly off the plane barefoot with no luggage. He’s going to have fucked up teeth and be ten times skinner than me. If I try to hug him, he’ll probably freak out.”

Kara toured her the house and imagined her cousin invading all of the spaces. “He’s going to be like a little kid,” she predicted, “running around everywhere, touching everything. He’ll fuck up all my board games, put the Monopoly money in the Clue box, confuse the Sorry pieces with the Trivia Pursuit triangles.” But Kara realized there were places in the house that she hadn’t even stepped foot in for the past year. The last time she was in the garden was when she was 12 years old. She and her cousin Charles were playing “H.O.R.S.E.” with the new basketball hoop Vinh had purchased. The sport quickly bored them and so they moved onto to Vinh’s other new effort to create more social-interactive spaces in the house: the pool table room. The triangle, sticks, colored balls, pockets and hunching over lost charm after an hour.

Then, in the dusty pool table room, Kara looked at the case of her wrestling trophies. All of the pairs of gold male figures, with Anglo features tackling each other atop each trophy, reminded her of how so often, people made her feel like she didn’t belong in the sport. Whenever she complained to Coach Goldberg about the locker room changing issues and racial taunts, he delivered his favorite rule to live by:

"Suck it up and play."

All of a sudden, she felt very selfish and thought to herself: “Jesus, stop being such an asshole Kara. Your poor cousin’s Mom has disappeared for fuck’s sake. Sure, Hai is 20, 22, Jesus I forget. He’s some age where he can probably take care of himself. But still, nobody knows where his Mom is. And Jesus, what’s Mama gonna think of all this? Dad isn’t going to tell her. I’ll tell her later. She’ll probably want some involvement in Hai’s new USA life. In fact, she’ll probably love to curate Hai's experience.”

That was true. It would be a project and an affirmation of Mimi's self-proclaimed connection to Asian culture. When she married Vinh, she permanently asserted that she was no ordinary White lady. The fusion of "Mimi" and "Nguyen" reminded her of Vietnamese pate with cilantro on a French baguette. Hearing, writing and introducing herself as "Mimi Nguyen" felt so fresh and rewarding, that she kept Vinh's name after the divorce.

Ever since Mimi left Vinh 5 years ago, Kara's father Vinh had gotten into the habit of announcing "heavy matters of the heart" in erasable ink on the wipeboard. When Kara was 11, he wrote his first message to Kara:
"I MISS YOUR MOTHER."

When Kara was 13, he wrote his second: "I'M SEEING SOMEBODY."

Two days later, he wrote his third: "I'M NOT SEEING HER ANYMORE. I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANYONE ELSE ANYMORE."

These messages weren't intended for Kara. She delivered them dutifully to her mother Mimi, who regretted that she couldn't return them to sender. According to Mimi,
Vinh's one to three sentence scribblings was just another indicator of his E.F.S.: "Emotional Fear Syndrome." She divorced him because he stopped making the time to confront Mimi on argument-potential issues. When Kara was 5, Vinh became obsessed with scouting houses, buying them, replacing their roofs, redesigning their kitchens, inflating the prices tenfold and reselling them. The real estate market and contracting business gave him a rush. He felt like a sports agent investing in an athlete, a manager making over your girl-next door into a singer superstar. All of a sudden, there was no time for anything. Mimi's slow-paced lunch preparations got irritating.

"Mimi, why don't we just get her a lunch card?" Vinh began writing out a check to the school.

"I'm not letting Kara grow up on Rib-E-Qs and microwave bean burritos." Mimi continued peeling off meat from a chicken drumstick, onto a slice of home-made bread.

"Well then can't you just buy her some sliced bread?” Vinh closed up his checkbook and moved on to packing up papers into his briefcase. “It would save a lot of time."

"Those loaves are all saturated with partially hydrogenated oils."

"Par-who?"

"They're the devil incarnate. They clog your arteries. It’s why I’ve gotten this natural peanut butter too” Out of her cloth grocery bag, Mimi pulled it out with a smile.

For Vinh, an unrecognizable label which he had never seen on a billboard, in a magzine or on TV was no legitimate business. The glass jar felt so heavy in his hand, as he looked at the sliding separated layer of oil sitting on top. “I don’t have time to stir peanut butter oil!”

Another jar of peanut butter in the cabinet went into the garbage as Mimi smiled, “No more Skippy in this house. Moms who choose Jif are idiots.”

"Well then what about some sliced meat?"

"I like roasting my own chickens."

And the arguments expanded beyond food, to biking versus driving, writing thank you letters versus making thank you calls, and cleaning versus hiring a maid. When Mimi decided to desert her steady pharmaceutical career to pursue sculpture, the screaming matches lasted until 3AM.

For every syllable yelled, Vinh would slap the kitchen island surface. "Now is not the time!"

With a sagged expression on her tiny round face, Mimi would always respond, "Don't pretend like I'm the one being selfish." The thin, milky hoop of her arms scooped up crouching Kara. Mimi would then tuck her toddler into her Snoopy sheets and explain why her and Vinh were fighting so much. To Vinh, it was more important to carry on with life without all of these explanations. If they talked about the problem, then it became real. On with the standard Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes and Aesop fables.

After reading Kara “The Tortoise and the Hare,” Vinh was inspired to not fight back anymore. He thought to himself, “I’ll let her just go off until she runs out of fuel.” This new silent tactic infuriated Mimi. To provoke her husband, she threw away all the “time shavers.” Vinh’s electric razor. Calculators. The microwave. When that didn’t get much of a reaction, she started to sleep in one of the guest rooms.

After Vinh wrote "I'M NOT HAPPY ANYMORE" on the wipeboard, Mimi drove to the Mediterranean mansion he was currently selling in Beverly Hills. He was on the lawn, explaining the antique value of the fountain to a young Iranian couple when Mimi screamed out of the car window, "Neither am I!"

She filed for divorced on June 30, 2000.

Since that day, Vinh drowned himself in real estate tycoonism. He loved Kara, but she reminded him too much of Mimi. While Kara's brown hand always confused every stranger witnessing it holding onto Mimi's translucent white forearm, Kara still had Mimi's Snuffaluffagus eyelashes and upper lip rim that formed a sharp V. Everytime Kara blinked, Vinh saw Mimi's iridescent auburn bangs and hair angling her tiny face. When Kara plucked a grain of rice from her lip, Vinh remembered Mimi's mole he mistook for a chocolate chip on their first date.

***

While the previous messages on the wipeboard dealt with Vinh's attachment to and detachment from Mimi, today's message concerned two of Kara’s relatives that she considered strangers: her Auntie Ngoc, and her cousin, Hai.

In the kitchen, Kara’s hazel eyes shifted towards the bottom of the freezer door, where there was a square matte photo of Auntie Ngoc. Only 5 years after arriving to the U.S. Vinh took this picture of his sister in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. A closed-mouthed smile wore pink shimmery lipstick and eyes hid behind Jackie O sunglasses, while a grass green dress with mustard-yellow flowers and pumpkin orange polka dots hugged her 100-pound body. Aqua-Net sealed all of her coarse black hair strands into a waxy beehive. In her right hand, she held a picnic basket and with her left, clutched a brown folded blanket against her body. She looked like a paper cut-out doll silhouetted on a green lawn, with faint clusters of broccoli-like trees in the background. This beautiful image never matched the one Kara's father and his sister, Auntie Minh constructed.

Auntie Ngoc was a myth, a crazy revolutionary and now somewhat of a ghost. Instead of fleeing the war, Ngoc flocked to it. According to Vinh and Minh, she was the only Vietnamese immigrant dedicated enough to give up her future in the United States like that. Auntie Minh said that Ngoc was the only "War-Fugee" she ever knew of.

Kara placed the picture back on the refrigerator and stretched out her long, lean body. With her hand, she erased the board and then uncapped the pen with her teeth. For the first time, she responded to her father: "WHERE DID SHE GO?"