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cotton affairs that Phuong’s mother bought for “Can I tell you a secret?” Vivien said. 5
her in packages of a dozen. “You already told me.” 70
“I can’t wear these!” Phuong said, laughing “What?”
as she held up the nearly nonexistent panties. “A secret.” When Phuong turned her head,
“They’re scandalous!” she could see into Vivien’s ear, the canal small Viet Thanh Nguyen
“Of course you can wear them,” Vivien said, 60 and dark. “At Cu Chi.”
still kneeling by her suitcase. “Go on, try them on. I “I guess I did.” Vivien scratched a bite on her
can’t imagine you in those granny things you have.” neck. “I thought I would come here and I would
For a moment, Phuong hesitated. But Vivien love my father.”
was her sister and a doctor, and there was no “You don’t love him?” Phuong propped her
need to be shy. She quickly stripped off her head on her hand. “Or you didn’t love him?”
rayon pajamas and her cotton underwear, and “It’s easy for you to love him.” Vivien 75
just as quickly slipped on the brassiere and sighed. “It’s easy for him to love me. That’s the
panties. Vivien nodded approvingly and said, way it should be. He remembers me. I don’t
“Now you look sexy. Some boy’s going to be very remember him. Can you love someone you
lucky to see you in those.” don’t remember? Can you love someone you
“My mother and father would never let me don’t know?”
wear these.” Phuong inspected herself from head “I’m not sure.” A burst of cackling and
to toe with the hand mirror her mother kept laughter came from the alley outside, the
hanging from a nail in the wall. “Only naughty neighborhood’s old ladies sitting on their
girls would wear this.” thresholds, gossiping before bedtime. “But I
“It’s time for you to be bad,” Vivien said, know he’s not easy to love.”
yawning. “My God, you’re twenty-three! You “A woman can’t fall in love with a man for
don’t even want to know what I was doing when whom she feels sorry. Can she?”
I was twenty-three.” “I’ve never fallen in love with anyone, so I
The touch of lace against her skin, and don’t know.” The screech of the metal gate that
the glimpses of her nearly nude body draped was the living room’s front door announced
so provocatively, made Phuong inordinately their father’s return. “But you’re saying it wrong.
happy. She hummed as they tidied up, Vivien You’re not falling in love, you just want to love
putting away the suitcase and Phuong donning him.”
her pajamas and drawing the curtain separating “You know what my mother told me when
her side of the room from her parents’. Then she I said I was going to Viet Nam?” Vivien paused.
slipped into bed after Vivien, and lying there, “ ‘Your father’s only going to break your heart
her arm linked with Vivien’s arm, she could feel too.’ ”
her sister’s gift endowing their relationship with Then Vivien rolled over on her side to face 80
even more intimacy and trust. the wall, where a green gecko clung patiently
“What’s the first thing you’ll do in Chicago? 65 to the plaster. The stairs creaked as Mr. and
Call your mother?” Mrs. Ly ascended, the discordant notes
“Take a long drive by myself. I miss my car.” together constituting a coda to Phuong’s day
“I don’t even know anyone who owns a car.” so familiar that only Vivien’s arrival had made
Vivien stared at the ceiling fan stirring the her aware of it. Her sister’s restless presence in
hot air of a typically humid night. The open Phuong’s bed and the caress of the lace on her
window allowed in the merest of breezes. skin rendered the usual unusual, sharpening

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Copyright © 2021 by Bedford, Freeman & Worth High School Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample chapter.
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