When she decided to live on College Street, Tuyen’s parents were angry. After all, that was where they had lived when they first arrived from Vietnam with their two daughters. In a rooming house on Ulster Street before Tuyen was born, and before her brother Binh was born, their small terrified family had occupied one room on the top floor, sharing the kitchen and bathroom with students from the university. By the time Tuyen came along, the Vus had moved to Alexandra Park. Then they moved out of the housing development to a damp house near the market. The rooms were never warm in the winter, and they were sweltering in the summers. Now they lived beyond all that drama of material poverty, in Richmond Hill.
Tuyen disliked the house in Richmond Hill. It was artificial. The whole development seemed highly contrived, as if it were made all of cardboard and set down quickly and precariously. Someone’s idea of luxury, which was really antiseptic, and for all its cars and spaciousness, it was nevertheless rootless and desolate.
Each time she came home for a visit, her father would ask, “What you want to go live there for? I’m finished with you this time. Why you want to spend good money on a cesspool like that?” By “this time,” he meant unlike the last time, when she dropped out of draftsmanship and started sculpting. He had forgiven her that time because he remained convinced that he could persuade her to go back.
“It’s my shit hole, Bo.” She knew that he would not abandon her. She was his possession, like his whole family was.
“You bring these children here and this is what happens to them. They disobey.”
“You didn’t bring me here, Bo, I was born here. Wellesley Hospital. Remember?”
“And on top of everything they talk back to you. They have no respect. Why do I buy this big house for you to go live where we started out?”
“I’m not moving out of the city, Bo. You’ll see me.”
It had been four years since she’d left, and this was their exchange each time she returned. The same words, the same answers. It had become a kind of play with them. On her visits she raided the refrigerator and borrowed money from her mother and rifled through her sisters’ clothing. Tuyen spent nothing on clothes, and even if her sisters’ tastes were miserable, she managed to look good in their seconds. She was the youngest, which is why she got away with things her siblings didn’t. Her father had been much stricter with them. Ai and Lam and Binh would never have dreamed of breaking the rules as she had. Their father, Tuan, had them on a tight rein. But Tuyen had been able to somehow circumvent or disarm her father. Perhaps he was growing weaker with age, or perhaps he was baffled by her strong resolve in everything. Tuyen never gave in to him when he said that she should do this or that. He found himself having to reason with her, rather than order her. He didn’t mind it at all except in important matters.
After she’d spent the morning trying unsuccessfully to convince Jackie and Oku that there was something wrong with Carla, Tuyen shambled her way to Richmond Hill, intending to borrow some money from her mother. The money from her last installation party—money, that is, from the booze and the donations—was just about done. In the daytime she could count on her mother to be home alone. But more importantly she wanted to find out if her mother knew what Binh was up to. She knew that she had to ask this in a delicate way; she didn’t want to open up any grief in her mother or cause her any pain. She had hoped to avoid her father and another argument about where she lived.
Her mother was home, still in her room, but so too, uncharacteristically, was her father. She had expected him to be downtown by now, preparing for the lunch crowd. He was in the kitchen, still in his pyjamas. He looked vulnerable, his hair receding and thinning, the skin sagging a bit on his stillfit body. The small scar near his mouth made the lines on his left cheek even deeper. He seemed tired. He smiled faintly at her, a delight passing briefly over his face, and then he launched into his usual.
“Why do I spend money on a big-time education for you to go live without your family? How you think a family works? Same house, same money, same life.”
Tuyen knew this was her father’s way of welcoming her and saying that he loved her. Love for him meant a kind of gruff duty and care.
“Makes sense for you, Bo, but I didn’t leave the family. Am I not here, right here, now? I just have to be on my own.”
“That is not sense. On your own for what? What is out there?”
“I don’t know, Bo. That’s just it, right? I don’t know. You don’t know.”
“Stupid girl. I know. You go. You see.”
“Bo, why don’t you come visit me, then? But call first,” she added too quickly.
“Don’t you worry. I won’t come there. You stay there with your dirty friends. Let me tell you, friends will take you but
