Birds of Paradise Lost

Yacht People

129 Yacht People How are you doing tonight? Hot? Yeah, sure is hot. We’re having a tropical heat wave, folks. So hot, it reminds me of coconut trees and thatched-roof huts. It makes me think of myself as this impossibly handsome little boy playing with his dog, or, as so many of you are fond of putting it, playing with his food. Yeah, as I was saying, I was playing with Next Week’s Menu getting him to roll over in fish sauce and lemongrass, jump in the wok, and play dead, when suddenly Mamma, right, she showed up with this bag and said, “Kids, we got to blow this joint!” Well, actually Mamma didn’t say that, exactly. She said—now, listen, ’cuz this is from Vietnamese to English. OK? Like with a bamboo flute going off in the background, so hear me out: “O filial first son. From the sacred land in which our umbilical cords are buried we must take leave due to communist cruelty. They put your honorable father in the re-education camp. If we stay they’ll send us to the New Economic Zone. We have no choice but to commit this forbidden sin. Please go bow to your ancestors, light 130 Birds of Paradise Lost incense and beg for forgiveness before we leave. And filial first son, don’t forget your toothbrush.” I was seven years old. I was like, “What? What’d I do now?” I’m telling you, it’s just like Vietnamese mothers to make everything YOUR OWN GODDAMN FAULT! Think about it: the commies gonna fuck you up and send you to the New Economic Zone so you have to escape out to this big, bad ocean, and somehow it’syouwhohastobegforforgiveness?AndfromDEADPEOPLE? Grandpa, great-grandma, oh ancestors of eight generations back to the Chink dynasty, please forgive us. We can’t clean your graves no more. Clean them your lazy-ass selves. We got to go to America before the VC fuck us up the ass or put us in graves next to you all. So, OK. Goodbye. We loaded up this fishing boat, right, and move the MekongDeltoids to Beverly Hills. Entire clan that is. Vietnamese. Boat People. All climbing in this rickety fishing boat, and when the next village saw us, half of them came along, too. Hell, it’s twenty-one by six feet, so why not? When Americans say maximum capacity is forty-five, Vietnamese automatically add a zero to it. You know how it is: tell us it’s a boat and we’ll find a way to fit. What? Who said that? What did we do with the dog? I see you. You so fat, you’re feeding me lines now? Well . . . thank you. The dog? Hell, we tied a recipe with some lemongrass around his neck and sent him to our neighbor as a parting gift, you know, kinda like a Vietnamese version of meals on wheels. That’s right, don’t boo. You heard me. Seriously though, I really miss my Next Week’s Menu. Anyway . . . we live on top of each other, we sit on each other’s lap, we shower together to save water, we sleep five to a bed—so no, there’s no personal space ’cuz hell, if there’s space, there’s a PERSON taking it, all right? Crowded to a Vietnamese is not a family living in one room, that’s just normal middle class. Hell, we didn’t have Better Homes and Gardens magazine back in Nam. Na-ah, we had Shanty, Thatch & Hut Newsletter. Andrew Lam 131 Crowded on that boat is, like it takes you from Saturday to Monday to get to the toilet, and until Wednesday to get back. Crowded is, if you bend down looking for your plastic slippers, you’d lose your cherry. Crowded is, when you have the hiccups and that fat lady a few people down from you gets multiple orgasms. When my siblings and me, all three of us, came to America and we saw the two white kids next door playing that game Twister, we thought, “Phssaw, you call that a game?” “It’s Twister,” said Suzie and her gayish brother, Leon. We didn’t know Twister, but we knew about living in tight spaces. “Nah-ah, it’s Life-On-The-Boat,” my little brother and sister immediately corrected her. All...