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By Root 293 0

was during our last—that I should change my name the moment we reached French shores. He said that it was the perfect opportunity to adopt something new, something heroic, perhaps. He boasted that he had had at least seven, one for every time that he left Vietnam for the waters of the South China Sea. What kept you coming back? I wanted to know and never did ask. Bão's answers, I thought, would only make me sad, make me endure an enumerated list of all the things that I do not have. Ignorance, I have always felt, is best for a man like me. Well, not "always." I am afraid that I am beginning to remember myself in a sea of absolutes, "always, nothing, never, forever." That makes me think of the Old Man, and that makes me cringe in front of his mirrored image. I forget that I have not always felt this way. I forget that I have had to amass these words, like slivers of glass in the palm of a hand, caked blood underneath my nails. It is difficult to remain objective when I am alone in my memory. I place undue trust in my recollections of the past because there is no one here who cares to contradict me, to say in defiance, No, that is not true. The truth for me has become a mixture of declarations, conjectures, and allegations, which are all met by a stunning lack of opposition. (Except for the Old Man, but, believe me, he is a liar.) In this void, I flatter myself, the truth lies. To contradict oneself is an uncomfortable posture to assume, but in this instance I am willing to retract and say, I did not always feel this way. In fact, I can still remember the day, the exact moment in time, when ignorance stepped forward and recommended itself to me:

My mother and I were taking the long way home. When I first began going to the marketplace with her, we would sometimes take a roundabout route back to the Old Man's house, especially when business was good and all the rice packets sold early in the day. "Shall we take The-Long-Way-Home?" she would ask, renaming the two streets that we would then add to our walk. These streets were lined with little shops, and my mother would walk by all of them with her head held high. I thought that she was proud that her money belt was filled and heavy with change, that she could walk through any doorway and buy what she wanted. So I too pulled my shoulders back and pushed my chin forward, exhibiting, mimicking, what I thought was pride. Cloth-draped tables crowded the front of each entryway, colorful come-ons for the pleasures within. I rarely wanted any of the things set out before us. I, after all, already believed that all of it could be ours, if only my mother would so please. Nothing was worth stopping for, I concluded. Otherwise why would my mother and I continue to walk on by?

It was bound to happen. I was a child and far from a saint. One day as we passed by a display of brightly painted wooden statuettes, temptation nailed me to the ground, refused to let me go, and insisted that this was worth stopping for. "Look, Má! Hoàng, Tùng, and me," I shouted, pointing to the figures of three small monkeys, lined up in a row, and joined together at the base. I liked the expressions carved into their faces and, particularly, into the corners of their eyes. Anh Minh, my oldest brother was, of course, exempt from the assembly of Monkeys, or for that matter Idiots, Stupids, and Fools, all names that the Old Man saved for us, the three who followed. "I am the one with his hands over his mouth. Hoàng has his over his ears, and Tùng ... Tùng is the one covering his eyes." I doubled over with laughter, impressed even then by my own winsome wit. "Which one are you, Má?" My mother let go of my hand and placed hers over her heart. I looked up and saw sorrow scarring her face, cratering her eyes, slashing at the grooves around her mouth, sparing nothing from the forehead that I kissed at night, not even her earlobes.

My mother had worn jade earrings when she first came to his house, but that was long ago. She remembered the gold needle heated over an open flame, the thrust, the burn, the coolness of blood