Page 38 of A Banh Mi for Two
My jaw drops at the perfectly packaged áo dài I just tried on. “The purple dress? You’re kidding. I can’t take this.”
Lan only rolls her eyes and presses the bundle into my arms again. “It’s not your choice. If you return the áo dài, you’ll offend her.” Seeing my shocked face, she bursts out laughing. “I’m kidding. But don’t return it. Or else she’ll think that you find it ugly.”
“I would never! After what she’s just done for me—”
My phone vibrates, and of course, it’s a call from Mom. I can’t ignore it, or else she’d freak and call me twenty more times before trying the fake number of my Singapore study abroad program and finding out… I’ve been lying.
“Hey, Mom! How are you?”
“Vivi? What are you doing right now?”
Beside me, Lan lingers, eyes looking past me. My stomach recoils. Today was supposed to be just me and her, and I was looking forward to it all this time. Why do I feel like every time I think of Mom, I summon her?
“I’m—um—having lunch. It’s really loud. Can I call you back?” I manage to say back.
“What are you eating?”
A woman screams to my right, causing Lan to whip her head around. “Ch?t Cha!”
“What was that?”
“Nothing! Cindy just loves watching Vietnamese dramas. She’s doing it again!” I mentally apologize to Cindy and thank her for being the only person I can throw under the bus for almost anything.
The lines on Lan’s forehead deepen. She must think I’m going off the rails. I’ve already told Lan about why I’m not letting Mom know, but it still doesn’t help the fact that I look… ungrateful, and just straight up stupid for lying to my mom on the phone with Lan next to me.
“Well, Mommy just wants to check in on you. Con eating okay? Sleeping okay? Are you sick?” Mom calls me every day and asks the same questions, even though she knows I can fend for myself.
“No, no.” I try covering the phone and speak louder to drown out the Vietnamese being thrown in every direction. “I’m fine. Promise.”
“Mommy miss you.”
My chest tightens. Most of the time, I brush her off when she says she misses me. But this time, I wish I could tell her I do miss her, that I’ve been thinking of Mom ever since arriving in Sài Gòn, and that all I can do is imagine her life here and everything she hasn’t told me.
But I can’t, so instead I say, “Con nh? m?. I miss watching K-dramas with you and reading next to you. Or just going grocery shopping. But I miss your food the most.”
“Come home soon, con. Mommy thuong con.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
Mom never says “love” in English. Instead, she says thuong—the first Vietnamese word I ever learned. Thuong doesn’t just mean love, it’s a special kind of love, and the meaning floats between “sacrificial love” and “unconditional love.”
I wonder if Mom will ever say thuong to me again if she finds out about this trip.
A soft hand lands on my shoulder. “That went well. Your mom didn’t find out.”
I snort. “Well, someone screaming ‘motherfucker!’ in Vietnamese almost tipped her off.”
She laughs. “That’s just how it is here. Chaos everywhere.”
“Do you find it hard to talk about family sometimes?” I blurt out, still reeling from the phone call. “Or find it so hard to know what to say to them?”
Lan nods. “I… never know what to talk about with my mom. All I know how to do is work hard, be there for her, and hope that’s enough.”
My heart feels heavy for Lan. I don’t know how that feels: to have to take care of someone you love, to work yourself to the bone for your family. “Sometimes, I wish I was brave enough to tell my mom what I want—to not back down when I sense that she’s angry with me. To make her understand how I feel, too. You always know what to do, Lan. You always know how to be a good daughter. I don’t.”
Lan stays quiet, her gaze avoiding mine.
“Today was the first time I’ve been back since my dad… passed.” She speaks again, her eyes misty. “It’s been years, and yet I couldn’t step foot into this market again until now. I guess in my head, I thought that if I didn’t come back, then maybe the memories of him would still be alive—that the last thing I’d remember about this place would be that I shared it with him.” She heaves the last part out with a sigh. As if it was a secret that she kept to herself.
