Page 17 of A Banh Mi for Two
“That’s not the point. Will you please help me photoshop myself in front of Singapore’s Merlion instead of psychoanalyzing me?”
“Oh yeah. We still need to do that. Go stand over there.” She positions me flat against the white dorm wall and gets into her “photographer” pose—something she lovingly named after seeing the way my dad takes photos: squatting as close to the ground as possible, butt back and the phone aligning to the perfect height. “Scoot closer to the window. We need the sun in your face or else it’ll be too obvious.”
I follow her direction. Chin up. Chin down. Turn to the side. Smile. Smile with teeth. No smiling too much. Pretend to point. “How many photos are you going to take?”
“Okay, the other wall next.”
“Seriously?”
She shrugs. “You can’t rush art.”
We finally settle on two “good enough” photos out of the five hundred we took. This whole scheme is going to use up all my phone storage. Cindy carefully cuts out my silhouette and places it just at the right angle beside the Merlion, turning up the exposure and saturation for a warm tone. “There,” she says, proud of herself. “You look like a tourist. Mission accomplished.”
My mouth falls agape at the photo. She even photoshopped flyaway hair to my face so it looks like we’re actually outside. “You can start a business out of this.”
“You can help me with the taxes.”
I roll my eyes. “Just because I’ve been helping my immigrant parents with their taxes since birth doesn’t mean I’m obligated to do yours.”
“You’re forgetting that I’ve also been doing my immigrant parents’ taxes since I was in the womb. Surprised the IRS hasn’t come after us yet. Speaking of immigrant parents, your mom’s calling.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit. It’s a FaceTime! What the fuck do I do?”
“Quick! Get in bed.” She pushes me toward the bed before helping me position the sheets over half of my face. “And make sure only your face is in the frame. Facebook mom–style.”
The FaceTime connects. “Vivi!” Mom’s voice comes through, and instantly I see her face with the way she looks whenever she’s concerned and about to flip mountains. Both eyebrows raised and lips thinned. “You took long.”
“Yeah, sorry, Mom, was asleep.” I fake a yawn. “Jet lag, you know?”
“Okay, con… What did you do on your first day? Tell Mommy.” Since Mom immigrated at a young age, she often speaks to me in a mix of Vietnamese and English. She often trades a word in one language for a word in the other when she can’t remember the right vocabulary. She refers to herself as Mommy. I could call her M?, but the Vietnamese word basically means the same thing, anyway. Vietnamese is strange like that—there’s no universal pronoun for I. Even I call myself con, which directly translates to “child.” I was taught to always use con when talking to someone older than me. “Is that a pimple? Tch, Mommy bi?t Asia can be so stressful on you. Your face is red like trái tomato.”
“What? No, it’s a mosquito bite—”
“Mosquitoes! What kind of place have con mu?i? Where are you staying?”
“A good and expensive place!” Mom strangely only approves of anything that has a hefty price tag to it. The more expensive it was, the more she’d trust it. “And my first day was good. I had ?c xào—”
Cindy taps her foot and furiously shakes her head at me. “Vivi! What did we talk about? No mentioning anything related to, you know, your homeland?” she whisper-yells.
Mom’s brows deepen. “?c xào?”
I let out a loud laugh. Too loud. “Why did I say that! Um, I had some lo mein!” Is lo mein popular in Singapore? “I said ?c xào because I missed your ?c xào so much, Mommy.”
She cracks a smile. “Come home soon, con. Mommy can make it for you.” Feeling unexpectedly brave after seeing her happy, I brace myself. “Mom…”
“What?” The crinkled brows are back.
“How would you feel if I… say, take a flight from Singapore to Vi?t Nam? I mean, it’s so close, and this can be a chance for me to…”
Cindy stares at me like I just lost my mind. I also can’t believe I just asked Mom this.
“No.” The smile isn’t there anymore.
“But Cindy can come with me!”
“No. Absolutely not. Who is going to take care of you? You can get killed.”
Twenty-four hours here and I’m still very much alive.
