I knew the cough well. But I took Mr. Green to the veterinarian and he told me what I expected, that the cough was not the bird’s. This was a sound he was imitating. “Did someone in your household recently have a cold or the flu?” the doctor said.
“It is my grandfather,” I said.
On the last visit to my grandfather’s room he began to cough. My mother went to him and he waved her away. She backed off and I came forward, wanting to help him. He was sitting up now and hunched over and the cough rattled deep inside his chest and then there was a sudden silence and I drew nearer, thinking that my step forward had actually helped, but my grandfather lifted his face and his eyes were very sad, and I knew he was disappointed. My brothers were not yet born and I held my breath so that this silence would go on, but the sound raked up from his chest and filled the room again.
This morning I went to the back porch and Mr. Green was pulling out a feather and he did not acknowledge me, even to taunt me by calling me “sir.” He dropped the feather and began to pluck another from beneath his left wing. His chest was naked now and the skin looked as slack as my grandfather’s throat. I stood before him and I offered my arm for him to come and sit on my shoulder. Yesterday he had said, “Not possible,” but today he said nothing. He dropped a feather and leaned over and bit me hard on my arm. I bled. But I did not move my arm and he looked at me. His eyes were steady in their sadness, fully dilated, as if he was considering all of this. I pushed my arm to him again and he knew that he had no choice, so he climbed on, but he did not go to my shoulder.
I held my arm aloft and carried Mr. Green outside. The sun had still not burned the fog off the bayou and I went straight into the garden. My feet were bare, like a child’s, and the earth was soft and wet and I crouched there and I quickly reached to Mr. Green and grasped him at his chest, lifted him and caught him with my other hand before he could struggle. His wings were pinned and he was bigger in my hands than I had ever imagined. But a Vietnamese woman is experienced in these things and Mr. Green did not have a chance even to make a sound as I laid him on his side, pinned him with my knee, slid my hands up and wrung his neck.
I pray for the soul of my grandfather. I do not bear him any anger. Sometimes I go to Mass during the week. Versailles has a Catholic church just for the Vietnamese and the Mass is celebrated in our language. I sit near the back and I look at the section where all the old women go. They take the Eucharist every day of their lives and they sit together wearing their traditional dresses and with their hair in scarves rolled up on their heads and I wonder if that is where I will finally end up, in the old women’s section at Mass each day. No one in my church will likely live as long as a parrot. But our savior lived only thirty-three years, so maybe it’s not important. There were women around Jesus when He died, the two Marys. They couldn’t do anything for Him. But neither could the men, who had all run away.
THE TRIP BACK
I am just a businessman, not a poet. It is the poet who is supposed to see things so clearly and to remember. Perhaps it is only the poets who can die well. Not the rest of us. I drove from my home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to the airport in Houston, Texas, to pick up my wife’s grandfather. And what is it that I experienced on that trip? What is it that struck me as I got off the interstate highway in Beaumont, knowing the quick route to the airport as I do? I was driving through real towns in Texas. One was named China, another Nome. One was Liberty. If I was a man who believed in symbols and omens, I would have smiled at this. I was passing through Liberty to pick up my wife’s grandfather, whose own liberty my wife and I and the man’s nephew in San Francisco had finally won, after many years of trying. He was arriving this very day from the West Coast after living thirteen years under communist rule in our home country of Vietnam. Perhaps a poet would think of those things — about Liberty, Texas, and my wife’s grandfather — and write a memorable poem. Though maybe not. I am ignorant of these matters. Maybe it is only the bird taking flight or the frog jumping into the pond that the poet is interested in.
All I know is that for me I drove the two-lane highway across Texas and I just noticed the businesses. The little ones that seemed so Vietnamese to me in how the people always looked for some new angle, some empty comer in the marketplace. I noticed the signs for stump grinding and for house leveling and for mud pumping. The different stands along the way — fireworks, fruit and vegetables, hubcaps and antiques. The Paradise Club had a miniskirt contest and The Bait Bam had a nightcrawler special and Texas Winners had a baseball trophy sale. There was a Donut Delight and a Future Star Twirling Academy and a handpainted sign on a post saying that the finest porch swings were a mile down this dusty road. The Mattress Man said on his sign, right underneath his business name, JESUS IS LORD.
I am a Catholic and I must say that this made me smile. The Lord of the universe, the Man of Sorrows, turned into the Lord of the Mattress, the Mattress Man. But even so, I understood what this owner was trying to do, appealing specially to those of his own kind. This is good business practice, when you know your sales area. I have done very well for myself in Lake Charles in the laundry and dry-cleaning business. It is very simple. People sweat a lot in the climate of southern Louisiana, and there was a place for a very good laundry and dry cleaner. I have two locations in Lake Charles and I will soon open one in Sulphur. So it was this that interested me as I drove through Texas, as it always does. I am a businessman. It is my way.
And if I was a man who believed in symbols and omens, I would have been very interested toward the end of my journey when I came to a low highway bridge that took me across the wide converging of two rivers, for as I entered the bridge, the sign said, LOST AND OLD RIVERS. These two rivers were full of little islands and submerged trees and it was hard to see how the two ran together, for they looked more like one sprawling thing, like perhaps a large lake, something that was bound in and not moving, not flowing. Lost and old.
I had not given much serious thought to Mr. Chinh, my wife’s grandfather. I knew this: My wife loved him very much. We are all like that in Vietnam. We honor our families. My four children honor me very much and I honor them. My wife is devoted to me and I am devoted to her. I love her. We were very lucky in that our parents allowed us to marry for love. That is to say, my mother and father and my wife’s mother allowed it. Her father was dead. We still have a little shrine in our house and pray for him, which is the way of all Vietnamese, even if they are Catholic. As Catholics we understand this as the communion of saints. But my wife has no clear memory of her father. He died when she was very young. He drowned swimming in the South China Sea. And after that, Mr. Chinh became like a father for my wife.
She wept the night before my trip to the airport. She was very happy to have her grandfather again and very sorry that she’d missed all those years with him. I heard her muffling the sound of her crying in the pillow and I touched her on the shoulder and felt her shaking, and then I switched on the light by the bed. She turned her face sharply away from me, as if I would reproach her for her tears, as if there was some shame in it. I said to her, “Mai, it is all right. I understand your feeling.”