after all these years, I guess I’m ready for something new.
At a few minutes before seven A . M ., I pull my van in right by my door. The rain is coming down in dense sheets of water, so even the dash from the van leaves me drenched. Inside, I shake off my wet raincoat, switch on the lights, then the fan. On a day like today, it’s all I can do to keep the mildew from racing up the walls. My watch says 6:54. The clock over the noodle aisle says 6:59. Other than my van outside, there’s only a single green car parked on the far side of the lot. Maybe she won’t show after
all, which would come as a relief. I don’t know if we have anything else to talk about. Those few conversations may have been flukes, actually. I haven’t really talked with anyone since I came to this country. Even when I lived with Khoi in San Francisco, we didn’t talk much, or we tried to talk and found ourselves going in circles, then finally gave up on it. Here in Wilmington, I don’t talk, either. I interact, of course, with Marcy, Gladys, my customers, and delivery drivers, but that’s just exchanging information, entirely different from what I used to do in Hanoi with my sister, Lan, my parents, my friends. On winter evenings, Lan and I would lie together under the blankets, feeling too cold to sit up and read but too awake to go to sleep. We would talk then, earnestly, but heedlessly, too, sometimes listening and sometimes not. The topics didn’t matter; lying there whispering in the dark gave comforts that I didn’t even know I needed. In fact, it wasn’t until years later, observing Gladys and Marcy on their good days, that I realized how much I missed that kind of aimless conversation.
A tapping at the glass makes me turn around. Shelley, in a yellow rain jacket, stands outside, peering through the door. With all that hair hidden beneath the folds of her hood, her face looks scared and lonely. She gives a sad little wave.
“Where you park?” I ask as I let her in. I can only see my van and that one green car on the far side of the lot.
She pulls off her jacket, freeing her hair amid a shower of raindrops. “That’s my Honda,” she says, gesturing toward the green car. She pushes a few wet curls off her face, then holds the dripping jacket in her hand, unsure of what to do with it.
I take the jacket and hang it on the hook next to my own wet raincoat. “Why you park so far away?”
She smooths down her shirt. “I was just watching the sky,” she says.
Outside the window, the sky is gray. Like the sidewalk. Gray. She looks like she might cry. “You sure you want to do this today?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says.
In the kitchen, I fill the electric kettle and plug it in while Shelley wanders around, looking at everything. There’s not much to see. The room is
an attachment to the original building, a shed with a metal roof. Before heading home every night, I spend nearly an hour scouring dried food off the pots and pans, wiping grease from the counters, sweeping bits of raw broccoli and onion skin off the floor. The health department gave me a 99.5 percent rating. I should have gotten 100, but the overhead light is too far from the stove and the landlord won’t move it. Here’s another thing the landlord won’t do: replace the roof. On days like today, the rain comes down like rocks crashing over your head. I almost have to yell. “I only got Vietnamese coffee,” I tell her, pulling from a drawer two metal coffee filters that fit over the tops of glasses. “I don’t got no Mr. Coffee coffee or anything like that.”
“That’s fine.” Shelley rubs her hands together as if she’s cold.
It’s 7:06. We wash our hands and put on plastic caps. Shelley’s hair fills her cap like the foam in a cushion. I open the door of the refrigerator and pull out a steamed pork sausage. It’s big as a loaf of bread, made in Westminster, California, but produced in the Vietnamese style, with a thin layer of banana
At a few minutes before seven A . M ., I pull my van in right by my door. The rain is coming down in dense sheets of water, so even the dash from the van leaves me drenched. Inside, I shake off my wet raincoat, switch on the lights, then the fan. On a day like today, it’s all I can do to keep the mildew from racing up the walls. My watch says 6:54. The clock over the noodle aisle says 6:59. Other than my van outside, there’s only a single green car parked on the far side of the lot. Maybe she won’t show after
all, which would come as a relief. I don’t know if we have anything else to talk about. Those few conversations may have been flukes, actually. I haven’t really talked with anyone since I came to this country. Even when I lived with Khoi in San Francisco, we didn’t talk much, or we tried to talk and found ourselves going in circles, then finally gave up on it. Here in Wilmington, I don’t talk, either. I interact, of course, with Marcy, Gladys, my customers, and delivery drivers, but that’s just exchanging information, entirely different from what I used to do in Hanoi with my sister, Lan, my parents, my friends. On winter evenings, Lan and I would lie together under the blankets, feeling too cold to sit up and read but too awake to go to sleep. We would talk then, earnestly, but heedlessly, too, sometimes listening and sometimes not. The topics didn’t matter; lying there whispering in the dark gave comforts that I didn’t even know I needed. In fact, it wasn’t until years later, observing Gladys and Marcy on their good days, that I realized how much I missed that kind of aimless conversation.
A tapping at the glass makes me turn around. Shelley, in a yellow rain jacket, stands outside, peering through the door. With all that hair hidden beneath the folds of her hood, her face looks scared and lonely. She gives a sad little wave.
“Where you park?” I ask as I let her in. I can only see my van and that one green car on the far side of the lot.
She pulls off her jacket, freeing her hair amid a shower of raindrops. “That’s my Honda,” she says, gesturing toward the green car. She pushes a few wet curls off her face, then holds the dripping jacket in her hand, unsure of what to do with it.
I take the jacket and hang it on the hook next to my own wet raincoat. “Why you park so far away?”
She smooths down her shirt. “I was just watching the sky,” she says.
Outside the window, the sky is gray. Like the sidewalk. Gray. She looks like she might cry. “You sure you want to do this today?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says.
In the kitchen, I fill the electric kettle and plug it in while Shelley wanders around, looking at everything. There’s not much to see. The room is
an attachment to the original building, a shed with a metal roof. Before heading home every night, I spend nearly an hour scouring dried food off the pots and pans, wiping grease from the counters, sweeping bits of raw broccoli and onion skin off the floor. The health department gave me a 99.5 percent rating. I should have gotten 100, but the overhead light is too far from the stove and the landlord won’t move it. Here’s another thing the landlord won’t do: replace the roof. On days like today, the rain comes down like rocks crashing over your head. I almost have to yell. “I only got Vietnamese coffee,” I tell her, pulling from a drawer two metal coffee filters that fit over the tops of glasses. “I don’t got no Mr. Coffee coffee or anything like that.”
“That’s fine.” Shelley rubs her hands together as if she’s cold.
It’s 7:06. We wash our hands and put on plastic caps. Shelley’s hair fills her cap like the foam in a cushion. I open the door of the refrigerator and pull out a steamed pork sausage. It’s big as a loaf of bread, made in Westminster, California, but produced in the Vietnamese style, with a thin layer of banana
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