“Okay, fine, never mind. Chao chi!”
Binh got into his car, and rolling up the window, he revved the engine and sped up the alleyway.
“Chao anh to you too!” Tuyen yelled at the car speeding away.
Tuyen received these visits from Binh every time her parents hadn’t heard from her for a while. Her mother, Cam, would send food and her father, Tuan, would send a brown envelope with money. They never came themselves. Cam would have liked to visit her daughter, but Tuyen’s father had forbidden it, thinking that they had to maintain a solid front in their objections to Tuyen moving out. The front always wavered though, as their anxiety made them send Binh to give Tuyen money. Binh refused to go up to the studio apartment because he said the staircase was filthy, so he would always lean on his car horn or scream her name up the alleyway until she came down. She was younger than Binh by eighteen months, but she felt she was much more mature, since he seemed to need their parents’ approval far more than she. Here he was going on another fruitless search trying to get their attention again, she thought, as she made her way up the staircase.
Tuyen’s studio apartment was a mess of wood rails and tree stumps, twigs and rope, debris, really, which she had picked up walking along the beaches, and lumber she’d bought, all of which she was making into a great figure, a lubaio, which, when she was finished, she said, would fill the entire studio apartment from ceiling to floor. She’d enlisted her friends, Carla, who lived across the hall, Oku, and Jackie, to help her stand one of two railway ties up on its end while she tied it to iron hooks she’d hammered in at the four quadrants of the room. For months the railway ties had lain diagonally across the floor. Every now and again she bumped her toes trying to get by, until she decided that she would make a signpost.
Stolen is what they were, the railway ties, but “come by” is what she and Oku laughingly called it, recalling their nighttime raid on the railway yards. Tuyen had happened on the idea of the lubaio when she was cutting across the railway yards on one of her searches. She hadn’t counted on the weight of the railway ties and the difficulty of moving them around at will. But Oku had used his father’s old gas guzzler, a windowless sea scow of a Buick Plaza, and they’d harnessed the ties to the top of the car and driven home slowly and stealthily through alleyways. First the ties sat up the staircase for months, then, when they finally arrived in Tuyen’s studio at the top, she got her friends to help her raise one to standing.
“Christ, this thing is fucking heavy,” Jackie had screeched. “You must be out of your mind. If I get one single scratch, my fucking career is over.”
“What ‘fucking career,’ Jackie? Hold your fucking end up.”
“Don’t make me drop this on you, Oku.”
“Drop it on me, girl. Just like you drop it on that German guy.”
“Don’t go there, man. Don’t front. You couldn’t handle it.”
“Well, test me, girl, test me!”
“Stop, stop.” Both Tuyen and Carla said this at the same time, laughing, the railway tie tilting precariously.
“Why the fuck do I bother with you guys?” Jackie said dismissively.
“Because we love you, sweetie.” Tuyen finished tying off the pole.
“It’s your Jones for me, baby.” Oku wrapped his arm across Jackie’s waist.
“Anyways—” Jackie gave Oku a freezing look, at which he dropped his arm limply, then turning to Tuyen—“And what the fuck are you making now? Is this some ancient Vietnamese shit or something?”
“I’m making a fucking lubaio …”
“Okay, honey, say no fucking more.” Jackie examined her nails and her long legs. Jackie could use the word “fuck” as every part of speech, in every grammatical construction.
“… because I am not interested in the idea of life, death, fertility, hope, or anything, and because Dali’s Reclining Woman Wearing a Chemise looks like a dead slaughtered doll, and I can see preying eagles, broken arrows, and jazz musicians in Jackson Pollock, and because I believe that Man Ray and Duchamp were lovers.”
“Word!” Oku.
“And because there’s some ancient Chinese-Vietnamese shit that’s my shit and I’m taking it. Okay?”
“Oh Christ, turn her off.” Carla. “But I thought you were Vietnamese?”
“How long have you known me?” The words sounded dangerous in Tuyen’s throat. Carla had ventured into a sensitive place.
“Whatever,” Jackie said, noticing the sudden disruption. “Maybe you’re a fucking genius, but you’re nuts is all I know, girl. This place is a fucking mess!”
“Okay, let me explain. You know those fake carved posts they’ve put in the middle of the road down on Spadina? In Chinatown? Well, they’re kitsch down there, but they’re supposed to be signposts. Like long ago people would pin messages against the government and shit like that on them. So my installation is to reclaim … Of course, regular electric posts already have notices on them like flyers and stuff … Well, I still have to think it all through, but …”
Breaking off, she explained the plan to make a pulley with a seat so that she could move up and down the lubaio, engraving and encrusting figures and signs. At the planned installation, which was to be her most ambitious, she would have the audience post messages on the lubaio. Messages to the city.
Jackie began to make snoring sounds. “Anyways, very interesting honey, but …” she said, pausing pointedly, “catch you all later. Much. I got business.”
Tuyen was devoted, as devoted as she could be to anyone, to Carla. That is, Carla reminded her of a painting she loved by Remedios Varo. Madness of the Cat. If you saw Remedios Varo’s painting, you would see Carla—without the cats but with the electricity, all kinetic electricity, all the supernatural otherworldly energy. That was how Tuyen saw her, and indeed there was a striking resemblance to
