Birds of Paradise Lost

Grandma’s Tales

72 Grandma’s Tales The day after Mama and Papa took off to Las Vegas, Grandma died. Lea and me, we didn’t know what to do. Vietnamese traditional funerals with incense sticks and chanting Buddhist monks were not our thing. “We have a big freezer,” Lea said. “Why don’t we freeze Grandma ? Really, why bother Mama and Papa—what’s another day or two for Grandma now anyway?” Since Lea’s older than me and since I didn’t have any better idea, we iced Grandma. Grandma was ninety-four years, eight months, and six days old when she died. She had seen lots of things and lived through three wars and two famines. She lived a full hard life, if you ask me. America, besides, was not all that good for her. She had been confined to the second floor of our big Victorian home as her health was failing, and she did not speak English and only a little French. French like “Oui, monsieur, c’est evidemment un petit monstre.” And “Non, Madame, vous n’ êtes pas du tout enceinte, je vous assure.” She was a head nurse in the maternity ward of the Hanoi hospital dur- Andrew Lam 73 ing the French colonial time. I used to love her stories about delivering all these strange two-headed babies and the Siamese triplets connected at the hip whom she named Happy, Liberation, and Day. Grandma died a quiet death really. She was eating spring rolls with me and Lea. Lea was wearing this real nice black miniskirt and her lips were painted red and Grandma said, “You look like a high-class whore.” And Lea made a face and said she was preparing to go to one of her famous San Francisco artsy-fartsy cocktail parties where waiters are better dressed than most Vietnamese men of high-class status back home and the foods are served on silver trays and there is baby corn, duck paté, salmon mousse, and ice sculptures with wings, and live musicians playing Vivaldi music. “So eat, Grandma, and get off my case, because I’m no whore.” “It was a compliment,” Grandma said, winking at me, “but I guess it’s wasted on you, child.” Then Grandma laughed, her breath hoarse and thinning, her deep wrinkled face a blur. Still she managed to say this much as Lea prepared to leave: “Child, do the chacha -cha for me. I didn’t get to do much when I was young, with my clubbed foot and the wars and everything else.” “Sure, Grandma,” Lea said and rolled her pretty eyes toward the chandelier. Then Grandma just dropped her chopsticks on the hardwood floor—clack, clack, clatter, clack, clack—leaned back, closed her eyes, and stopped breathing. Just like that. So we iced her. She was small enough that she fit right above the TV dinner trays and the frozen yogurt bars we were going to have for dessert. We wrapped all of grandma’s five-foot-three, ninety -eight-pound lithe body in Saran wrap and kept her there and hoped Mama and Papa would get the Mama-Papa-come-homequick -Grandma’s-dead letter that we sent to Circus Circus, where they were staying, celebrating their thirty-third wedding anniversary . In the meanwhile, Lea’s got a party to go to and I’ve got to meet Kayden for a movie. It was a bad movie, too, if you want to know the truth. But Kayden is cool. Kayden has always been cool. Kayden’s got eyes so green they make you want to become an environmentalist. Kayden’s got this laugh that makes you warm all over. And Kayden 74 Birds of Paradise Lost is really beautiful and a year older than me, a senior. The movie is called Dragon, starring this Hawaiian guy who played Bruce Lee. He moaned and groaned and fought a lot in the movie, but it just wasn’t the same. Bruce Lee is dead. Bruce Lee could not be revived even if the guy who played him had all these muscles to crack walnuts and lay bricks with. Now Grandma was dead, too. So Kayden and I got home and necked on the couch. Kayden liked Grandma. Grandma liked Kayden. Though they hardly ever spoke to one another because neither one knew the other’s language , there was this thing between them, you...