Birds of Paradise Lost

Sister

112 Sister She’s in the middle of doing her taxes when her brother calls. “Sister, guess what I’ve just done?” “Little Demon,” she says, “how can I guess? If you have something to say, say it so it’s told.” “No, no, not that easy,” he says in the little boy’s voice he uses when he’s very excited. “Sister, you have to guess.” She tries not to give in to laughter the way she used to when they were kids. She writes down the six-digit number on line 13, where it says, “Business income (or loss),” and he says, “C’mon, guess!” So she guesses—wrong. She hears her brother groan on the other end and has to suppress a laugh. It’s as far-fetched a guess as can be. Her brother, cute but shy, and strangely immature, has yet to find a girlfriend, let alone do what she just guessed. “Such a dirty mind for an older sister,” he says. “No one’s pregnant . No birth, no marriage, no sex-crazed guesses, puh-leaze.” She writes down the capital gain not reported on line 14 and recalculates the estimated interest of her income on her calculator, her practiced fingers darting over the numbers in a blur. “Listen,” Andrew Lam 113 she says finally in English, “no more playing games. I got to do my taxes.” “OK, OK,” he says, sounding a little deflated. “I’ll give you a clue.” He starts to sing, his voice warm and without even a trace of a Vietnamese accent. She feels as if she were listening to a nativeborn American, not her brother, crooning on the other end. “Reach out, reach out and touch someone. Reach out, reach out and just say . . .” “Stop, please,” she says. “What is this game you play?” She grows a little frightened and does not know why. She closes her tax folder. “Little Demon,” she says, “if you have something to say, say it quickly . I need to get back to business.” “All right,” he sighs. “You win.” But he pauses instead and a little silence ensues. She notes the swaying white curtains on the sliding door to her deck and, beyond them, sunshine among the lilies and tulips in her garden, and, even farther out, in a dreamlike distance, San Francisco’s high-rises shimmering reassuringly across the goldfreckled surface of the bay. “It’s really incredible,” her brother whispers breathlessly. “Promise you won’t get mad?” “No, no more promises. Spit it out, you.” “Fine. You won’t believe this but I just called home.” “Home? Aren’t you calling home now? I’m your only home in the world.” “No, no,” he says. Then he sighs again, “I mean, yes, of course, you’re right. I meant home-home. Home as in over there—cross the Pacific, yonder and long ago, home once-upon-a-time home.” Her mouth goes dry. She clears her throat. “You know,” her brother continues, “tamarind trees, guavas, kite festivals, moon cakes, lanterns, sweet rice with coconut, monsoon rain. Home-home.” “Stop it, Jaden,” she hisses as she absent-mindedly grips the calculator ; meaningless numbers appear on the panel in red, flashing, ruining her calculation. But her brother doesn’t stop. “You might not have heard it, but AT&T performs miracles. It connected the 114 Birds of Paradise Lost U.S. to Vietnam a few months ago—I saw it on CNN—so I did what I always wanted to do: I called home. Same number.” “Home?” she says, still incredulous. Then, despite herself, she hears her own voice reciting a number. “Nam muoi bon sau tam?” “50-468?” Her brother gives a little laugh. “That’s right,” he says, encouraging her, “that’s right, you remember it, too. Nam muoi bon sau tam. . . . Sounds like a Buddhist sutra, doesn’t it. Except, now you have to call the international code, 32, then add an 8 for the city code in front of it. Can you believe it, still the same number after all these years?” But she does not listen anymore. With her eyes closed, she tries to remember the calculation for line 14. She tries to remember the number of houses she sold last year. “Sister, there was an old lady. She had a Hanoi accent, and she answered. ‘Ano, Ano,’ she said. Isn’t that funny?” “Listen,” she says abruptly...