Quiet As They Come. Angie Chau
security of her entire extended family sharing a house with her, he was living in a rented room at the Y. Her rationale gave her the strength to hold on long enough to hear the receptionist say, “Sorry he’s out.”
Because of the delay, mother and daughter ran the last two blocks to the theater. Kim was disappointed by the look of the place when she arrived out of breath. She checked the newspaper clipping in her purse. She blinked and reread the address a second time. Kim had somehow imagined an American theater to be flashier, with gilt and bright lights, and glossy posters behind shiny glass. Before her was a nondescript brown box of a building. Behind a scratchy plastic panel, a frizzy-haired young man sat reading a paperback.
Kim approached, knocked, and made her hand like a peace sign. He nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose, squinted and nodded, pushed out the money tray, and returned to his reading.
Inside the darkened theater, her daughter squeezed her hand and said, “I can’t see!” It made more peculiar the silence. As they made their way up the aisle she noticed that most moviegoers were sitting alone and at wide intervals. Something simply felt odd. The room smelled sanitized as if it had been doused with a large bucket of bleach. And when she finally took a seat, it was so scratchy it felt as if she were sitting on a pineapple, This final assault reminded Kim of all the ways big and small she kept on blundering in this country. Her once keen judgment seemed constantly off-track. She was about to usher her daughter out when the projector lights flickered on. It illuminated Sophia’s black Mary-Janes which had been polished for this very occasion and shined against the glow of the screen. Sophia pointed and said as if already seduced, “Mama . . . it’s starting, look.”
On screen, half a dozen nurses all slim, young, and pretty, lined up in a row. They wore starched white dresses and little white caps. Their hair was pinned into buns. Their legs were in tan nylons. Each woman would twirl when a man passed by jotting notes. Their dainty feet were all in white round-toed heels. The man in the scene was middle aged and ordinary. He wore a pressed shirt that strained across his midsection. When he reached the end of the line, the girls gathered around the chart, put their hands to their mouths, and erupted into a tide of giggles. Kim fidgeted in her seat. She had always preferred Italian films. Her children were evidence. When counseled to give her children Western names to make their assimilation easier, Kim had renamed Sophia after Sophia Loren and Marcel for Marcello Mastroianni.
Despite her efforts to forge ahead with life, an act as benign as going to the movies made her miss her husband even more. Back in Sàigòn, Kim and Duc used to go to the movies every Friday night. They would get durian shakes and boiled peanuts and as soon as the lights went out, she’d rest her head on his shoulder, inhale his cinnamon smell, and give herself over to the fantasy of the film.
Her favorite American movie was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She remembered Elizabeth Taylor stunningly hissing for affection. Her favorite scene was when Elizabeth Taylor’s character said, “I’m not living with you! We occupy the same cage that’s all.” In that moment, Kim was so transfixed that she forgot all about the M&M’s in her hand. She smashed every single one of the candied shells. Her husband teased her endlessly. She thought that was bad enough but then it got even worse.
Something about Liz Taylor’s performance was so thrilling that after seeing the movie, Kim wanted to cut her waist-length hair. She clipped a photo of the violet-eyed actress out of Ciné Monde. Over Duc’s favorite meal of clay pot catfish and seafood sweet and sour soup, she slid the picture beside his bowl. He eyed it flatly and continued slurping.
Finally, he said, “Uh-huh, the girl from that Tin House movie.”
“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, silly. But how about her hair? I want to get mine cut like that.” Kim rolled up her folds of blue-black hair and held it at the nape of her neck.
“I love you the way I married you,” he said. He took her hands and flattened his palms against hers, causing her hair to unroll down her back.
“But Duc . . .” she pulled her hair up again and smiled.
“No,” he said and excused himself from the table, fish unfinished.
Kim cleared the table, washed the dishes, broke a bowl.
The following week, she was shopping on Sàigòn’s fashionable Boulevard Bonard, when she found herself in front of the beauty salon. She stood at the window watching the scissors swim and glide through a lady’s hair. A man waved her in and said, “Don’t just stand there.” Once in the salon seat, the hairdresser gathered her hair as she had done for Duc and nudged her chin toward the mirror. He said, “Quelle jolie,” and whispered in her ear, “This cut will accentuate your already elongated neck. You’ll be a swan among mortals.”
Kim said, “But my husband will hate it.”
He said, “Then your husband’s a fool, darling.”
She sat vigilant, watching her tresses falling to the floor. With each snip, she felt the stiffness in her shoulders loosening, the burden of heavy hair no longer straining her neck. She had worn it long since her school days. She could still feel the thick thumping of the braid against her back, skipping rope. She remembered how it would get in her way, scratch her eyes, cause her to trip up. She hated how the boys yanked at it. Later, she used the long layers as a shield, hid behind it when the boys grew into men and stared. On the red leather chair, Kim slowly began to admire the new cut. She liked the way it revealed the shape of her skull, its ability to capture her expressions with clarity, and most of all, how it forced her to be brave.
That evening, Kim felt shaky preparing dinner. She had the maid clean the house over and over. She put on Duc’s favorite traditional dress. When the brass doorknob rattled, she reached for the back of her bared neck. She greeted Duc at the door. He wore his ARVN officer’s uniform. She leaned in to hug him. He took a step back, hands to his side, and stared at her. She lunged to kiss him, but he turned, giving her only his strained jaw to look at. Under his breath he said, “You look like a whore,” and then tramped inside tracking red dirt on her polished floors.
“What’s wrong with you?” she screamed after him. “I’ve asked you to take your boots off in the house.”
From the bedroom he screamed back, “I guess neither of us listens.” He didn’t speak to her for two weeks. And for two weeks Kim forbade the maid from scrubbing those muddy footprints.
Inside the theater, Kim reached between her feet for the M&Ms inside her purse. She squeezed Sophia’s knee once she found the candy and held them out to her daughter. Sophia didn’t respond. Kim whispered, “Chocolate.” Sophia’s eyes stared straight ahead. Kim tapped her daughter’s hand. The little hands resisted, clutching the armrests.
Puzzled, Kim turned to the screen and in larger than life techno-color got her response. Ample breasts and bare butts jiggled in her face. The nurses were completely nude, slithering about on the floor. They had wild manes and smoky eyes. Their rhinestone collars glittered around their necks like leashes. They were crawling around, licking each other, cat-like. Kim slapped her hands over her daughter’s eyes. The candy flew.
“Stop it, I can’t see. Let go.” Sophia tried to pry her mother’s hands loose. The camera panned up. Before her, the man stood naked, his penis fully erect. Kim gasped.
When they began to do what they did Kim was unable to look away, unable to move. When they began making noises, she was shaken from her paralysis. She didn’t have enough hands to cover the child’s ears too. She gathered their jackets and rushed her daughter out. Sophia cried, digging her heels into the bald carpet of the cinema floor. A bearded man in an aisle seat cringed at them. Outside, beneath sunlight, the girl’s neck was still craned toward the movie screen, fighting each step home. She didn’t want to leave her first ever outing to a movie. As they crossed the street, Kim heard a cat-call followed by a slow steady whistle. She thanked God, Buddha, and every Bodhisattva she could recall, that Bao hadn’t come too.
Back at the 22nd Avenue house, she realized that Bao wasn’t at his place because he was at hers. Kim stood in the middle of the living room and told