Aperture on the East (5 page)

“
Zoe, we need to talk,”
said Ana, feeling frustrated.

She heard a movement, and turned to
see Ivan heading toward the apartment door with his
skateboard.

“
Wait a minute. Where are
you going with that thing? You can’t take it to school,” said
Ana.

“
It’s Sunday, Ma. I’ll be
home for lunch.” Ivan shut the metal door behind him.

Ana felt a little uneasy. The streets
were always so busy with cars and motorcycles. Sidewalks were not
always present. Skateboarding was dangerous even under the best
circumstances. Why did Eduard have to give Ivan that skateboard?
Ivan never did anything risky before he delved into the sport.
Thankfully, Ivan was a sensible and self-reliant boy. Ana would
just have to trust him to take care of himself.

She beat on Zoe’s door again. “Come on
out, Zoe.”

She almost hit Zoe in the face when
Zoe finally opened the door. Zoe went back to her bed and lay down
on it, and put her pillow over her head.

Ana walked to Zoe’s bed and said,
“Where have you been? I know you haven’t been to school. Why can’t
you stay out of trouble?”

Zoe didn’t respond.

Ana sat down on Zoe’s bed and removed
Zoe’s pillow.

“
Are you going to grow up
or are you going to be a big baby?” said Ana.

“
You are the big baby,”
said Zoe. “You are always having nightmares and crying in your
sleep. Leave me alone.”

Ana could feel her face turn hot.
Surely Zoe would get a spanking now if she were Mai’s daughter. Ana
resisted the urge to strike Zoe. She had never physically punished
either of her children, although she really felt like doing it
sometimes, especially when Zoe was acting out.

“
If you weren’t only
sixteen,” said Ana, “I’d tell you to leave. All you ever do is
break my heart. Why can’t you be a normal teenager?”

“
Why can’t you be a normal
mother?”

“
I am trying, can’t you
see? Why won’t you try to be normal, too?”

“
What’s normal?” Zoe sat
up and stared at Ana. “Is it not normal to follow one’s passion,
and pursue one’s dreams? School is not for me. I’ve had enough
school.”

“
What are you talking
about? What passion? What dreams?”

“
I’m talking about the
music,” said Zoe. “I can support myself now. I play at a nightclub,
and I make good money.”

“
What? How long have you
been doing this? What nightclub?” Ana couldn’t believe her
ears.

“
If you really want to
know, I’ll show you later. Right now, can I go back to sleep? I
have a big gig tonight.”

“
You are going to tell me
right now the name and address of this nightclub and who your boss
is. I can’t believe they let a sixteen-year-old girl work in a
nightclub.”

“
Will you please not ruin
it like you did everything else that mattered to me? I finally got
a good thing going and you want to go and destroy it. What’s wrong
with you?”

“
I am trying to protect
you,” said Ana. “This is not our country. You don’t know the
language. You don’t know the laws. You don’t know the people. What
if you get hurt?”

“
Please, since when do you
care if I get hurt? You are just trying to save yourself from
embarrassment because, what would people say after you dragged your
daughter all the way to Vietnam and she got raped, or worse,
killed.”

Ana was very angry by now. She stood
up, her body shaking, not sure what she was supposed to do. She
thought of her grandmother, Zoe’s great grandmother. “Zoe,” said
Ana, “remember what you promised your prababushka before she died?
She wanted you to listen to me and be a good daughter. She’d turn
in her grave if she could see you now.”

“
Don’t bring Prababushka
into this. She was the only mother I ever had.”

Ana stopped herself from slapping Zoe
in the face. She walked toward the door, thinking that there was no
use talking to Zoe anymore. Then she remembered that she had also
promised her grandmother to take care of Zoe, no matter what. She
turned around.

“
Zoe,” said Ana, softening
her voice, “it’s all right if you don’t want to go to school, but I
need to know that you are safe. Could you at least give me
that?”

Zoe sighed and said, “It was the
Rocking Waves on Tran Phu Boulevard. The boss is a guy named
Boris.”

“
Boris? He’s
Russian?”

“
Yes, he’s Russian. Why
are you so surprised? There are Russians everywhere in Nha Trang.
Isn’t that why you brought us here in the first place? Anyway,
Boris and his people take good care of me and my band. You don’t
have to worry about a thing.”

“
You’ve got a
band?”

“
Yes. We are ‘the
Cardinal’s Choir,’” said Zoe.

“
What kind of name is
that?”

“
Whatever.” Zoe plunked
back down to her bed.

“
So, is it okay if I come
and watch you play?” said Ana.

“
Sure, we are there from
nine to one every night. Come after work.”

“
That is pretty late for
your age. Don’t they have an earlier shift or
something?”

“
This is a nightclub. They
don’t start early.”

“
All right, all right,”
said Ana. “And all you do is play music, nothing else.” She raised
her eyebrow.

“
I am not a
prostitute.”

“
Then why do you come home
at five o’clock in the morning if you finish at one? And what are
you doing during the day besides sleeping?”

“
I think I’ve said
enough.” Zoe yawned. “Could we continue this on another day? I’m
really tired. Could I have my pillow back?”

Ana threw the pillow at Zoe, who
caught it and put it over her head, turning away from Ana. Ana was
not sure if this was a satisfactory resolution of their present
crisis, but she felt much better than when she started the
confrontation. She sighed, and left Zoe’s room.

Ivan was cruising down the beach
promenade on his skateboard when he heard his name called out from
behind him. He stopped and turned around. A familiar figure, also
on a skateboard, was closing in on him. It was Misha, his desk mate
from school.

“
Nice board,” said Misha,
stopping in front of Ivan to look at his skateboard.

“
Thanks,” said
Ivan.

“
I am meeting some friends
to do some flips. Join us?”

Ivan hesitated for a moment. He and
Misha weren’t exactly friends. He wanted to go with Misha, but was
not sure whether Misha’s friends would welcome him. Besides, the
last time someone had invited him to do something, it turned out to
be a trick to get him into a dark corner so that a bunch of kids
could throw raw eggs and vegetables at him and kicked him in the
stomach.

“
Well?” said
Misha.

Maybe kids down here would be
friendlier. Ivan decided to take a risk. “Why not?” said
Ivan.

They got back on their skateboards.
Ivan followed Misha down the busy promenade, and avoided hitting
the pedestrians. A few people, both locals and foreigners, objected
with frowns.

They soon came upon a group of
helmetless skateboarders who were showing off their tricks. A few
local children were watching them. Ivan recognized one of the
skateboarders as another student from his class. Misha called out
to them. “Hey, we got a new pal.”

All the skateboarders stopped to greet
Misha and Ivan. Misha introduced everyone to Ivan. The other
classmate’s name was Viktor; he quickly went off to impress Ivan
with an aerial stunt.

Brian and Josh were American, George
was British, Laurent was French, Koji was Japanese, and Duong was
Vietnamese. Misha did a special introduction on Duong, who did not
speak much English or attend an international school like the rest
of the gang. He saw the skateboarders one day, went to the junk
yard to salvage a used skateboard despite his mother’s protest, and
made his way into the skateboarders’ circle simply by showing up
and saying “hello, hello” repeatedly until he got his wish. He
could slide down the street, and do an ollie when he put his mind
to it.

“
Awesome,” said Ivan,
moved by Duong’s determination.

Ivan couldn’t help but feel happy. So
far no one had called him names or tried to make him trip. Everyone
was laughing and joking around. Ivan was excited about being
included in a group, possibly for the very first time in his
life.

“
We all go to different
schools, but we found one another here at the beach,” said
Misha.

“
Hey, are we going to
skateboard or not?” said Koji.

With that, everyone took turns to
demonstrate his best trick. Ivan did a perfect 360 pop shove-it,
and everyone else shouted and clapped. A scrawny boy, wearing an
oversized T-shirt and baggy shorts, came up to Ivan and made a
gesture, pointing to his skateboard.

“
I think he wants to
borrow your board to try,” said Brian.

Ivan got off his skateboard and toed
it to the boy, who promptly put two feet on the board and just as
quickly fell backward and landed on his bottom. All the other local
kids broke out in laughter.

Ivan helped the boy get up and said,
“Are you okay?”

“
Okay, okay. Try again?”
said the boy.

“
You can try again, but
you need to do it this way,” said Ivan.

Ivan put his skateboard on a patch of
grass nearby, and showed the boy how to position his body and feet
so he could stay atop the skateboard. He got off and let the boy
try. The boy got on the skateboard gingerly, and to everyone’s
amazement, balanced himself without falling again.

“
Nice job, Ivan,” said
Misha. “We’ve been showing these kids how to skateboard, and you
are a natural teacher. How come you didn’t tell me you could
skateboard? We sit together at school every day.”

“
Well,” said Ivan, “I
didn’t really ever have a chance to talk to you. We can’t talk
during class, and you always leave so quickly when the bell
rings.”

“
Oops. I guess it is my
fault,” said Misha. “It takes all the patience in me to sit through
those fifty-minute classes, and I only get a few minutes to play
ball with my friends before the bell rings again.” Misha took a
deep breath in and said, “Well, starting tomorrow, I will grab you
for recess.”

“
But you don’t come out at
all,” said Viktor. “I never see you outside.”

Ivan remembered being bullied on the
playground, and felt too embarrassed to explain why he preferred
the safety of the classroom where a teacher was usually present the
majority of the time.

“
That’s because he didn’t
have anyone to play with, and now he has us,” said Misha. “You will
come and play ball with us, won’t you?”

“
Of course,” said Ivan. He
was glad that he had made some friends. His mother was right this
time. He couldn’t wait to tell her all about it.

“
Hey, look who’s here?”
Laurent pointed at a girl walking along the edge of the
sea.

Ivan turned his head, and saw a
red-haired girl in a flowing white dress strolling barefoot on the
sand with the aquamarine sea behind her. She seemed to be
collecting seashells.

“
It’s the know-it-all
class president of ours, Sofia,” said Misha.

“
We know her, too,” said
Josh. “There was an English speaking contest and each international
school had to present two students to compete. She won the gold
medal. I got silver, and English was my native
language.”

“
No joke. And I speak the
King’s English,” said George. “I got bronze.”

Everyone giggled. Viktor made fun of
Sofia by imitating the way she talked and acted, and everyone
except Ivan bent over holding his midsection in even more explosive
laughter.

“
She was the only one who
talked to me on my first day of school though,” said Ivan in
Sofia’s defense.

“
It’s her job,” said
Misha. “She is the class president, appointed by Ms. Mimi. She is
teacher’s pet number one.”

“
Because she got the best
grades,” said Viktor. “But you seem to be getting the top scores on
quizzes, too, Ivan. Sofia has competition now.”

“
Well, I am new, so I am
not going to have the best grades,” said Ivan.

“
You never know,” said
Misha. “Anyway, she is a pretty nice person. She brings the best
snacks and candies to share with all of us. Her father is very
rich, I can tell. He came to school one day in an Armani suit, just
to see Ms. Mimi in a five-minute conference. His chauffer takes
Sofia to and from school every day in a Rolls-Royce.”

“
The only Rolls-Royce in
town,” said Koji.

So it seemed that Sofia indeed was a
local celebrity, at least among the international students, thought
Ivan.

“
It’s been fun, guys, but
we have to go,” said Brian. “We’ve got a biology project to do,
about the humpback dolphins of the South China Sea.” He and Josh
rode away on their skateboards.