Human emotions are too fragile.
Vinh also acted differently after what happened. His personality started to change. He became quiet and sullen and refused to look me straight in the eyes. When he slept, he turned away so his back was toward me, which made me feel uneasy. Although I was lying right next to him, I still felt like I missed him tremendously.
Vinh had originally joined my family when his mother remarried. My father had sat him down next to me and said, “This is your brother.” Vinh smiled, then rubbed his snot on my face as a greeting. Vinh was short and skinny, but he always won when we competed in snuggling up against Grandma’s breasts. When we were older and shared our own bed, he would jab me with his elbow every night before falling asleep. He’d always been a naughty kid. His bad behavior went beyond what my family could have anticipated. Some of his antics included throwing his piss-soaked pants into a pot of duck porridge that was cooking on the stove in the kitchen, forcing a cat to suck a rat’s nipple, and peeing into the fridge because he liked the feeling of the cold air on his penis.
Still, everyone in the family loved Vinh—they even pampered him, which made me sometimes want to cry with jealousy. To Grandma and Father, Vinh was just like Uncle Ut Hon, who had also been somewhat wild. When he was a kid, Uncle Ut used to scare the adults by chasing them with a piece of burning wood. And one time he poured hot water that had been used to boil a chicken into Grandma’s teapot. When he got older, he dropped out of school and got married. One night, he left his new wife out in the swamp all by herself just to prove a point that people can survive without basic necessities and still be cheerful.
Vinh was just like his father, unpredictable and impulsive. I knew that my mother didn’t love him, though. I had only seen her hug Vinh tightly one time, and I’d noticed that he had a kind of confused, lost look on his face, as if he could sense that the tight hug wasn’t really for him.
For my father, raising Vinh had been an interesting challenge, but of course he would never complain. He had always been Grandma’s obedient, passive son. He would sit wherever he was told to sit without asking why, and he’d always been very clean and neat, like a girl.
Whenever we played together, Vinh was always the leader, and he usually won all our games and competitions. I would be hurt but try to smile anyway. I knew that I still loved Vinh. I felt this most strongly when we honored the anniversary of Uncle Ut Hon’s death every year. Holding a bundle of incense, Vinh would turn around to ask my father, “Uncle Hai, what should I say in my prayer?”
“I’ve told you before,” my father would respond. “Say something like this: Today is the fifteenth of July of the lunar calendar. We respectfully invite you to come eat the food we’re offering you here.”
But Vinh stumbled over the words in his prayer. As he planted the incense in the cup of dry rice, his face looked sad and disappointed, and I knew exactly why. Every year he said his father’s name, but there was no reply.
On the day of Uncle Ut Hon’s death anniversary, Vinh’s mother would usually come for a visit. Sometimes Vinh made the mistake of calling her Auntie Ut, which is what I called her. Vinh would run around playing, and then when it was time for his mother to leave he’d just stand there with his hands on his hips watching her walk away. I could tell that he was standing like that to stop himself from collapsing with sadness.
I loved Vinh, and this pleased my father. My father and Uncle Ut Hon had lived together for twenty-three years, but their brotherhood had been characterized by emptiness and regret. Vinh and I were the next generation. We could continue that brotherhood and hopefully make it into something more positive. We could fill in the old painting with new colors. I was the slow, gullible one, while Vinh was smart and wild. As my father watched us playing, though, I noticed that his eyes usually looked sad.
My father was strict; I had to behave to keep him happy. I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes, even small ones. I had the sense that my father was trying to teach me something—something beyond school lessons, or how to act at home. But what was it exactly? I thought about this question a lot, even at a young age. When he started taking me with him to the weekly community meetings, I wasn’t sure why he wanted me to go. He rushed me through breakfast as if we were going to get there late, even though we were always the first ones to arrive and would end up just sitting there waiting patiently for everyone else. Father seemed serious during the meeting; he listened attentively while other people yelled and cursed and complained. We were always the last people to leave the meeting room, after we’d helped put away the chairs. On Independence Day and other national holidays, my father heeded the call from the community to hang the
