The Lotus and the Storm (8 page)

His persistence takes me by surprise. “You too,” he says to me. The “you” he uses to address me is a respectful “you.” I take the pen he gives me and sign a petition addressed to our congressman. Mai smiles and speaks in a breezy, conversational tone. “Yes, Uncle,” she says. “I am sorry. I was rushing to a shop before the owner leaves for lunch.” She signs the petition too.

A voice booms from the loudspeaker. There will be a demonstration at a neighborhood high school to protest plans to fly the current Vietnamese flag in the school's hallway on International Day. The demonstrators will insist that the flag of the now-defunct Republic of Vietnam be flown instead. “We did not flee the Communists in search of freedom only to be confronted with the Communist flag here,” the voice continues. The Vietnamese in Virginia have become unapologetically political. I do not know when this happened. It was not so when we first arrived in 1975; we had worried more about how our children fared in school or whether we should relocate to warmer locales in California or Texas. The younger generation's interest in the political embattlements of Vietnam surprises me and sometimes fills me with renewed hope.

Mai has locked my wheelchair to keep it from rolling off. Nearby, she talks in a soft voice to the man with the loudspeaker. After a certain amount of back-and-forth, she says with finality, “It's a good idea but I won't be able to join you, unfortunately.” Her face flushes pink. She fixes her scarf methodically and tightens the knot. She is eating a doughnut and sucking frosting from her thumb and finger. In the light her face reflects a startling childlike quality that endears. Still, I am watchful. My child has had her share of suffering and I can sense the fury and spit of darkness that still cling to her. I always understand more than she thinks.

“All right, we can go now,” she says to me.

“How about we stop at the
banh mi
store?”

She looks at her watch, and then nods. “Okay, but we need to leave time for Aunt An's errand.”

Banh mi
is a Vietnamese sandwich that is a favorite of mine. We head toward a nearby bakery. There is the whole French baguette, perfectly crunchy, and the usual colorful spread of vegetable slaw—daikon radish and shredded carrot marinated in salt and vinegar. There is a variety of fillings to choose from—fatty roast pork, pâté, grilled chicken, meatballs, red pork, marinated tofu, and fried eggs. I opt for pâté and a profligate slather of aioli, topped with jalapeño peppers and cilantro sprigs. The bakery has a buy-four-get-one-free policy, which has attracted an ardent following. Sometimes the line is out the door, Mai tells me.

I chew slowly, savoring the sweetness of earthly comforts. Mai reaches over and dabs my mouth with a corner of the napkin. She does not eat lunch and so she waits patiently for me on a counter stool, her hands calmly folded across her lap. I offer her a bite of the sandwich but she recoils and utters a fastidious “No.”

“Your sister would love this pickled daikon,” I say to myself, though in a voice meant to be heard. A moment passes. I persist. “Has she visited you lately?” Mai briefly looks up, her face flushed. She opts instead to read a Vietnamese paper, occasionally pausing to relate a story to me.

She shows me a front-page picture of a demonstration in Little Saigon in Orange County, California. A video store owner had put up a poster of Ho Chi Minh on the store's window and refused to take it down despite widespread protest and condemnation. The gaunt, goat-bearded, tubercular face of the Communist leader has sparked scuffles outside the store. To compound matters, plastered next to his picture is an oversized Communist flag of the current regime. A higher-court judge will soon rule on whether the store owner is provoking the more than 300,000 Vietnamese Americans in the area with “fighting words,” which would not qualify as constitutionally protected speech.

“Free speech,” Mai says. A lower court had issued a restraining order for the poster's removal.

Whose? I want to ask. The insane Ho Chi Minh sympathizer who owns the store or the equally insane, easily goaded protestors whose intemperate display of political passion provoked sneers from Americans admonishing Little Saigon to get over it?

“Free speech,” Mai repeats. I cannot tell if her voice lilts upward, like a question mark, or if it is flat, like a declaration. “Of course,” I say, though I am hardly convinced. Still, I can see the relevant legal point, but less well than Mai. She has a law degree. She is trained to see both sides of everything. I suspect she is not wholly devoted to either side. Her back is straight, her demeanor proper. Outwardly she can always retain her poise. You have to, to function in this country.

She grows increasingly animated as she reads the story aloud to me. One hundred fifty police in riot gear. Fifteen thousand protestors spawning sympathy and solidarity protests some four hundred miles away in San Jose. Effigies of Ho Chi Minh hung from lampposts. Some slept outside the video store in homemade replicas of the cages used to house political prisoners in Vietnam. Two mock coffins, representing American and Vietnamese war dead, were paraded along the frothing perimeter of the parking lot. It did not help that Hanoi, through its Los Angeles consulate, called for the protection of the store owner's First Amendment rights. The crowd outside the video store surged with this news. Insults were screamed, vengeful chants lobbed. Punches were thrown, demonstrators hustled into custody. The police swung their black baton sticks. This is America? Little Saigon in Westminster, California, is on the verge of conflagration. I wince when she tells me about violence and arrests.

Mai glances at her watch. “All set?” she asks. I know we still have the important errand to do for Mrs. An.

About ten stores away is a shop that sells curios and Vietnamese CDs and DVDs. I have always liked its collection of pre-1975 music, the sort that follows the bent of one's soul and its deepest longings. The door releases a loud chime, announcing our entry. There is a familiar tune, plucked from a guitar. The proprietor stands up and greets me cheerfully. Her jaw drops in a feigned look of surprise. “How nice to see you out and about at last,” she exclaims. I cannot recall her name but I know she is a friend of Mrs. An. “How are you?” the woman says, presumably to me, but Mai answers.

“Fine, fine,” she says. And after a momentary pause, “Busy.”

“Who isn't.”

Mai nods. And then without any further preliminaries, she comes to the point. “Mrs. An wants to send money home to a relative.”

“Oh, sure,” she says comfortably. “How much?”

“Two thousand,” Mai says.

After a long pause, the woman declares curtly, “We are all up next month for the
hui
. That includes Mrs. An.”

Hui.
Money club, I say to myself.

“Yes. I am sure she is aware of that,” Mai replies. There is a quiet attentiveness in her demeanor, a defense of what she takes to be an implicit questioning of Mrs. An's reliability and her commitment to the
hui
. She turns toward me and fixes her scarf.

“Well, she will still be responsible for the usual one thousand,” the woman insists. “If she sends two thousand home now, will she be able to make her one-thousand-dollar contribution?”

Mai nods. “Of course.” The shop is sparse and the surrounding white walls make things stand out. Awkward moments can't be hidden or tucked away here.

The woman walks toward the cash register and flashes me a questioning look. I quickly nod, as if to back up Mai's assertion. Her eyes catch mine and soften. “I don't mean to offend. You understand that I'm the organizer of the
hui,
so if anything happens or someone defaults, I'm responsible,” she says, defensively.

I am familiar enough with the
hui
to know that it is an informal rotating credit association. This one has ten members, including Mai, Mrs. An, and the shop owner. For years, Mai had made monthly deposits of the requisite amount, to be mutually determined by the members. How much the pot is worth depends on the members' collective decision. The
hui
meets monthly, like a book club or Weight Watchers. Each member deposits her dues once a month, which for some might be half of their monthly earnings. And everyone has a chance to draw from the
hui
pot once until the rotation is complete and a new
hui
rotation begins. The current pot is worth ten thousand dollars. It is supposed to rotate ten times, giving each member a chance to collect.

Mrs. An has apparently collected her ten thousand already. The defining feature of any
hui
is the commitment even of those who have drawn the entire amount from the pot to continue contributing until every member has had a chance to draw. Once the
hui
has rotated among all the members, a new cycle begins.

In this tightly knit community of Little Saigon, has anyone collected and then failed to contribute? No, even suggesting such a thing is ludicrous. So why is the woman concerned that Mrs. An will not make her payment?

The
hui
is a venerable arrangement of ingenuity and trust. When we first came in 1975, it was clear none of us would qualify for a bank loan. This is our way of saving and lending to one another. With the
hui
's help, we became fluent navigators of the American landscape. Over the years, withdrawals from the
hui
have been used for so many purposes—college education, home renovation, weddings, funerals. It is the
hui
that allows people with no collateral or credit history to nurture their largest dreams and tenderest hopes, by leveraging the circuitry of friendship and social connections for financial purposes.

“With that no-good son of hers saddling her with his debt, of course sometimes we have to worry,” the woman explains, squinting to gauge my reaction. “Even if she's been with the
hui
so many years.”

This is all news to me. I am not aware of these details of Mrs. An's life.

“Of course I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. She's practically a member of your family. You must be so worried,” the woman says, masquerading flagrant gossip as care and concern.

I keep my face neutral, showing no reaction. “There's no contract, nothing. Just trust and honor,” she continues, half musing, half lecturing. “Don't you think that as organizer I am supposed to be vigilant?” she prompts, looking to me for affirmation.

The organizer is not reluctant to wield communal power to ensure compliance with
hui
rules. I sympathize with her but my allegiance is to Mrs. An. “You're right. Completely. But I'm sure Mrs. An is honorable,” I say as casually as I can. Still, I am stupefied.

“Oh, sure, honor.” The woman shrugs. “The
hui
is supposed to make you save, not spend.” She purses her lip up, baring teeth. A gold crown flashes. “But too bad she's cursed with having a leech of a son. Her husband works two shifts and is never home. Mrs. An herself works nonstop. But no, not the boy. The boy drinks and lives a jolly life. Gambles. Wears fancy clothes. Hangs out with hustlers. There's only so much money she has to spread around. And she doesn't have the guts to cut him off. Everyone here knows it.”

“Well,
I
don't know anything about it,” Mai says.

“I
do
know something about it. Her business is my business. I am liable if she defaults.” The woman shakes her head disapprovingly. Still, she accepts the envelope that Mai hands her. She counts out loud, one hundred, two hundred, until she gets to two thousand. I watch from the corner of my eye. I am relieved. I know it is important to Mrs. An that this transaction goes through. Wiring money through the bank or some other official channel leaves a record, and Mrs. An's relative does not want the authorities in Saigon to know she receives regular transfusions of cash from America.

“Just to be sure, let me write the address down again,” Mai says. “When will the money arrive?”

The woman gives Mai a quick, penetrating look. “Tomorrow. Is that fast enough?”

Mai nods. “That is splendid,” she says. “Thank you.”

We call this flying money, an ancient remittance method resurrected to evade Hanoi's repression. This is how it works: Mai gives the woman cash, in dollars, plus commission. The woman calls up her counterpart in Vietnam. The counterpart delivers the equivalent amount of money in dong, using a more favorable exchange rate than the official rate, to the designated recipient, in this case, Mrs. An's sister, who is entitled to claim the money if she provides the correct password. There is no actual physical transfer of money. The woman and her counterpart will settle up later. Both are part of a subterranean import-export network. This proprietor in Virginia will sell goods to her counterpart in Saigon but under-invoice them by two thousand dollars to pay off the debt.

Given its need to control, Hanoi can't be too keen about flying money. But the American government would not appreciate such transactions either, I imagine, given their strict banking regulations, especially after September 11. The flying-money business is not shared with outsiders.

Mai buys a CD and hands it to me. “Here, Ba. It has those singers you like.” It is a collection by an eclectic group of pre-1975-era singers, Thanh Thuy, Thanh Tuyen, Khanh Ly, and Thai Thanh. I am not particularly fond of the new crop of singers who mouth meaningless lyrics in mediocre voices camouflaged by a surfeit of synthesized drums, electric keyboards, guitars.

I smile broadly on my way out and wave my hand over my head to the proprietor, who returns my smile.

“Overbearing,” Mai mutters.

“She's probably worried.”

“So she gets to spread nasty rumors about people?”

It is true that what she said was unkind. “Is it only rumors?” I ask.

“People talk. You know that. What else is there to do in a tiny little community like this?”