Aperture on the East (11 page)

McKenzie extended a hand to Zoe and
said, “I am McKenzie. I have seen your band in Rocking Waves. You
guys are pretty cool.”

“
Thanks,” said Zoe. She
did not shake McKenzie’s hand, and he withdrew it.

“
Your mother and I were
just talking about taking a bus trip to Dalat to get away from the
heat a bit,” said McKenzie, rubbing his hands together. “We can
stay at a lakeside hotel and go mountain-biking. I’d love to sample
the coffee of the Central Highlands. It’s hard to believe that
Vietnam is the second largest coffee-exporting country in the
world.”

Zoe gave a nod and said, “Sounds good.
Have fun.” She went to her room, closing the door behind
her.

“
I’m so sorry,” said Ana.
“I haven’t been very good in helping Zoe with her
manners.”

“
She’s great. She
acknowledged me at least. That’s rare for a teenager these days,”
said McKenzie. “So, what do you think? You want to come to Dalat
with me?”

“
I don’t think so. I can’t
leave Ivan here.”

“
I want him to come, too,
and Zoe,” said McKenzie.

“
I can’t get time off from
work, either.”

“
You should at least
try.”

“
I’ll think about it,”
said Ana. “I have to talk to Zoe. Do you mind if we call it a
day?”

“
Sure. Thanks for agreeing
to take me on as a student and teach me Russian. Poka.”

Ana smiled and said, “Poka.” She saw
McKenzie out of the apartment, and then she went to Zoe’s room, and
knocked on the door.

“
Open the door,
Zoe.”

The door remained closed. Ana tried to
open it but it was locked from the inside. Ana kept knocking and
yelling for Zoe to open the door. A few minutes later, Zoe opened
the door and came out with her backpack over her shoulder. The
backpack was bulging at the seams, apparently overstuffed with
Zoe’s belongings.

“
Can I have my passport?”
said Zoe.

“
Why do you need it?” said
Ana.

Zoe rolled her eyes, shook her head,
and started walking toward the door of the apartment.

“
Where are you going?” Ana
grabbed Zoe’s arm as she moved through the living room.

Zoe tried to shake her mother’s hand
off but the grip was too strong. She said, “I am done living with
you. Let me go.”

“
Zoe, I thought we were
doing okay. Can we talk, please? I don’t want you to
go.”

“
You are doing okay, and I
am doing okay. But the two of us together under one roof? Not
okay,” said Zoe.

“
Zoe, tell me what I’m
doing wrong. I’ve been trying really hard since Eduard left us.
I’ve been keeping a regular job. If fact I have two jobs. I’m
almost always home when I’m not working at the restaurant or
running errands. I’m always here for you now. I mean, we’ve had a
couple of arguments since we got here, but nothing had gone majorly
wrong. Right?”

Zoe didn’t answer.

“
Why can’t you stay here?
Why can’t you stay with me?”

“
You know, a few months of
niceness does not undo a decade of poor mothering. I gave up on you
a long time ago. You can try as hard as you want, but I am not
about to forgive you any time soon.”

Ana let go of Zoe’s arm, and took a
few steps back in disbelief of Zoe’s candidness. Her tears were
welling up in her eyes, and she said with a trembling voice, “I
thought we were going to start over, clean slates and
all.”

“
Unfortunately,” said Zoe,
“my slates are too scratched up to ever be clean again.”

“
But where are you
staying? How do you support yourself?”

“
Don’t worry about that.”
Zoe began to move toward the door.

“
Wait, Zoe,” said Ana, “I
know I haven’t been a good mother. I am trying to be. Can’t you
give me another chance?”

“
I’ve given you many
chances before and you screwed up all of them. Anyway, it’s true I
can’t stand living with you, but right now I’m leaving because I
want to be on my own. I’m old enough to want that and I’m old
enough to be able to do it. I’m just doing what you used to do,
making a living playing guitar in a band, and enjoying
life.”

“
And you like how I end
up, too?”

“
You said it yourself. You
are doing okay. So I guess I’ll be all right, too.”

“
Zoe, I love you. You are
destroying me. You are my child. I need you. I want you with me,”
said Ana. She couldn’t stop her tears anymore.

“
You didn’t want me when
you handed me over to Prababushka after Papa died. You just kicked
me aside so you could go and party with strangers.”

“
No, Zoe, that’s not how
it was. I was sad, and heartbroken. I was not partying. I couldn’t
handle your papa’s death alone. I had to be with people. I was
grieving. You have no idea.”

“
No, I have no idea how
you grieved by going out with random men and getting yourself
knocked up in the process,” said Zoe. “You don’t even know who
Ivan’s papa was. Why do you lie to him and make him think my papa
was his papa, too? I would’ve told him the truth if I didn’t worry
about his feelings. Unlike you, I actually do care about Ivan a
great deal.”

Ana felt that if her hand had its own
mind it would have slapped Zoe in the face already, but she knew
that Zoe was right. Ana was too ashamed to come up with anything to
defend herself.

Zoe continued to say, “Anyway, Ivan’s
still a kid. Maybe you still have a chance with him. Just channel
all this ‘love’ you have for me to him. Where is Ivan anyway? It’s
almost eight o’clock.” Zoe looked around, and then she said, “Well,
I must get going. Don’t think of it as me running away. Think of it
as me growing up and moving out. You’ll feel better that way.” Zoe
turned around and left the apartment. Ana didn’t have the courage
or the strength to stop her again.

Ana wiped her tears with her hands.
She started walking toward the kitchen. She needed to make some tea
to calm her nerves. She noticed that the door to Ivan’s room was
ajar, and she decided to go in. She hadn’t seen Ivan since she came
home. She had been out on her Monday errands all day, and then came
home and gave Russian lessons to three students, including
McKenzie. She remembered that Ivan told her about attending a
summer camp; maybe he was still there.

Zoe was right, thought Ana. She hadn’t
been paying much attention to Ivan. For one thing, she could hardly
deal with her own demons, and Zoe’s problems took an additional
toll. Thankfully, Ivan never was a troublemaker, and always a
superior student at school. She was neglectful, but he seemed to be
doing fine on his own. Even the bullying had stopped since Ivan
started school in Nha Trang, or at least she hadn’t heard any
report in that regard.

It was dark, so Ana instinctively
turned on the light. Right next to the light switch was Ivan’s
desk, and on it there was a double photo frame. In one picture, Leo
was showing off his prison tattoo on his right arm, and in the
other picture, Eduard had his arm around Ivan, who was holding a
skateboard. When Ivan was three years old and started watching
television, he learned that little children and often had “papas”
in their families. He began to pester his mother to tell him who
his papa was, and bedtime was frustrating for Ana because Ivan
would refuse to sleep. Eventually Ana showed him that picture of
Leo, and told him that was his papa. Ivan was satisfied, and he had
believed it ever since. Ana told him that his papa was not around
because he got very ill and died.

Ana looked at the picture of Eduard
and Ivan, and she sighed. She knew that Ivan had really bonded with
Eduard, and looked up to Eduard as a father. She blamed herself for
breaking up the father-and-son relationship that Ivan had yearned
for all his life.

Ana’s hair stood up when she heard a
sound behind her. She turned around, and saw Ivan curled up in
fetal position in his bed, sobbing. His body was
quivering.

“
Ivan,” Ana called out
softly.

Ivan sat up and Ana could see that his
face was wet with tears. He gave her a biting stare, and cried out
harshly. He said, “Is that why you don’t love me? Because I am just
a product of your one night stand, which you completely forgot
about? Go away. Leave.” Ivan threw himself back down and covered
his head with the pillow.

“
Ivan.”

“
Go, away.”

Ana didn’t protest any further. Her
chance with Ivan had just been once again smeared by her own
carelessness. She turned off the light and left the
room. 

“
No problem. Leave it
here,” said the owner of a small musical instrument store in Nha
Trang.

Zoe had come into this store to get
new strings for her guitar. She was also looking for a drummer for
her band. They couldn’t exactly play gothic metal without a
drummer.  She hadn’t had much luck so far. She set a stack of
fliers down at the counter next to the cash register and said,
“Thanks so much.”

“
Don’t hurry to go,” said
the owner. “Look around. We have good guitars, if you want
something more modern.” He was looking at Zoe’s vintage Vox Mark
VI, which she quickly replaced in its case.

Zoe didn’t have anything else to do at
the moment, so she happily complied. She began by browsing the
guitars, but she soon discovered the more intriguing traditional
Vietnamese instruments. She picked up a mallet and tapped on a few
bars of the bamboo xylophone, constructed like a ladder with the
shortest cylinder on top. Then she came to admire the flute, and
pictured in her mind a farmer playing a cheery tune after a hard
day’s work in the rice paddies of the countryside. Next she stopped
to ponder the possibility of creating a melody on the two-stringed
“moon lute” that was shaped like a banjo. She was plucking the
strings out of curiosity when she heard a distinct mournful melody
coming from the far corner of the store.

She saw a man sitting in front of an
instrument that had only one string, stretched horizontally over a
wooden box. The string was tied to a vertical rod at one end of the
instrument. The song was simple, and yet it evoked a profound
emotion. It seemed to be an instrument from an ancient time, and
Zoe could almost hear the convoluted epic of the Vietnamese people
and their land since history began. There were moments of joy and
periods of sadness, united by a pervasive peaceful spirituality
that was at the heart of the nation of Vietnam. Even though she had
still felt like a visitor after almost four months in Nha Trang, at
that moment she felt like she was home. For the first time in many
years, she was anchored.

The music suddenly stopped, and the
man looked up at Zoe.

“
It’s the guitar player,”
said the man, who was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts
with sandals.

It took Zoe a minute, but she
recognized him to be the policeman she had run into twice before.
She was a little embarrassed, and she turned around. She wanted to
leave before she got into any more trouble.

The policeman stood up and said, “Hey,
you don’t have to run. I’m not on duty. Besides, you’re not doing
anything obviously criminal here.”

Zoe stopped and turned. “Obviously
criminal?” She was a little offended.

“
I’m sorry,” said the
policeman. “I hope that you are not scared of me. I’m not always
out just to catch law breakers.”

“
That’s supposed to make
me feel better?”

“
It is true that most of
the time when we policemen interact with people, it’s because some
laws have been broken. But people forget that we help them when
they are in need, too, and we like to know the people we serve. So,
my name is Tuan Le. What’s your name?”

Zoe didn’t think that she could be
served or helped by any member of the Vietnamese police force. She
said, “I don’t know if I should tell you. You might start an
investigation on me.”

Tuan chuckled and said, “I swear I
won’t.”

“
I heard the police is
very corrupt here, so I don’t trust you.”

“
Did you just say that I
am corrupt to my face?” Tuan raised an eyebrow, as if accusing Zoe
of defamation.

“
Point exactly. I’m
getting out of here.” Zoe turned toward the door again.

Tuan walked in front of Zoe and said,
“I apologize for making you so uncomfortable. You can trust me. I
am not corrupt.”

“
I still don’t see the
need to tell you my name.”

“
I’d like us to be
friends,” said Tuan. “We have met three times. This is some kind of
fate.”

Zoe could feel her face turn a little
warm, and she resisted smiling at Tuan. She said, “I have friends.
I am not sure I want to be friends with you.”

“
Okay,” said Tuan, “we
don’t have to be friends. I will go back to playing the
đàn bầu.
I was going to
show you how it worked, since you play the guitar and seem
interested in our one-stringed instrument.” Tuan went back to the
corner of the store.