Page 50 of A Banh Mi for Two
All this time, I’ve been retracing her life in Vi?t Nam, matching her footsteps to mine without even knowing. The closer I examine the photos, the more I see my own face looking right back at me. It’s weird, thinking about Mom around my own age living in this city, just like I’m doing now. Our lives intertwining a generation later.
“Hey!” Lan hovers in front of our plastic table outside the dormitory, two sugarcane pouches in her hand. “Ready to go?” she says breathlessly, sweat on her neck. She looks radiant.
“Yeah.” I lace my hand through hers. It’s so natural now. This, us.
“You’re looking at those photos again?”
“I keep hoping… that I can find something to lead us closer to where my family is from these pictures. What about this cathedral?”
Lan chews on her lips, and I know from the way her brows scrunch that she doesn’t know, either. “I’m sorry, Vivi.”
“But,” she continues, “Bà Ngân said Bác Tu?n from the restaurant knows your family. Let’s see what he has to say. If he doesn’t know, then I promise you, Vivi, I’ll do anything to find them for you.”
My heart lurches at her declaration, and all the sadness wilts, replaced by a soaring kind of feeling that’s more than like, and I know that Lan means more than just a crush. More than a girl I trade kisses with.
We drive under the towering hoa phu?ng trees, their bright red blossoms littering the sidewalk. We pass by a high school, students mingling at the gate. Some are wearing white áo dàis while others are in white button-ups and navy pants. My mind imagines a life where Lan and I are classmates, riding our bikes to school together, pressing hoa phu?ng petals into pages together.
Petals dance around us, and I extend my hand to grab a fluttering hoa phu?ng and tuck the blossom behind Lan’s ear.
“What’s this for?”
I peck her cheek, immediately seeing how flushed she is. “It’s a thank-you.”
We hop off the motorbike and walk by the bustling street food vendors just outside the high school’s gates. Motorbikes are speeding through the street, some carrying tons of mangoes, flowers, and rice sacks on the back seats. We cross the street to a tall building divided into concrete grids, where each square has its own personality: warm fairy lights strung through the windows, blue and neon coffee signs, plants growing over the weather-stained gray slabs between units. Each square looks like a portal to another world.
“Come on!” Lan grabs my hand this time, my heart and legs racing to catch up with her.
Excitement buzzes through me as I gape at the building and at how Lan expertly guides us through the crowd, but as we approach the com t?m restaurant, the same anxiety from Ch? B?n Thành creeps up my spine.
What if this uncle doesn’t know? What if this is our dead-end road?
Or, what if he does, and it turns out my family is in this city, and I can actually meet them? What then? How do I go from there? Where do Mom and I go from there? What will become of our relationship?
“Are you okay?” Lan snaps me from my thoughts, the same worried face she showed at Ch? B?n Thành. It strikes me how observant she is, and how well she knows me.
I inhale deeply, willing the anxiety to subside. “I’m as good as I can be. You said the com t?m here is the best, right?”
“The best you can get in Sài Gòn.”
I nod. “At least good food will comfort me.”
Com T?m Thiên Th?o is tightly packed with guests, and more students our age trickle in, colorful backpacks with matching key chains on their shoulders as they trade laughs and food without a care in the world. There’s something so intimate about a group of friends eating together that I can’t take my eyes off them, and I find myself wishing for the same life: to live in a city where I have deep roots, to have street food so abundant I’ll never run out of options, and to do everything that’s Vietnamese. How would my life have turned out if Mom or Dad had never left this country? How would I have grown up?
Would I still have met Lan?
“So.” Lan returns from the front counter, placing matching com t?m plates on our table. The broken rice is plated neatly next to sides of a pork chop, a sunny-side-up egg, a steamed omelet next to tomatoes, cucumbers, and garnished with pickled radish and carrots. “Bác Tu?n will be out soon. His daughter told us to eat first.”
I stare at the plates, my mouth watering. “This place is family owned?”
She nods. “A lot of restaurants and street food businesses are family owned and family operated. They usually employ relatives’ siblings, cousins, or kids.”
“That’s cool. It’s like a tradition.”
Lan visibly squirms at my comment. “I guess so.”
Did I say something wrong? Is it not cool to have a family business, something so special to you and your family?
“How did Bánh Mì 98 start?”
