they’d find each other if he died overseas. As for my sister, she had rejected a prestigious scholarship to study in Moscow. Why would she leave the country in a leaky boat? Khoi didn’t argue with them, or with me, but he didn’t cancel my place on the boat, either. Just in case. Still, expecting that I wouldn’t change my mind, he promised that in five or ten years, after he made thousands of dollars, he would entice my entire family away, and when we got to America, he would marry me. I smiled as if I believed him, but we were only nineteen. Five or ten years seemed impossibly long, and I’d heard about the girls in America.
I dressed while My Hoa gulped down the liquid in her cup. I filled it again, and she finished it again, laughing. She was small for her age, and looked exactly like her father, Tan, a slight and clever man who had made it home from war only to die of his wounds a few years later. None of us ever discussed the resemblance, but I always remembered it when, late at night, I saw my sister staring down at her sleeping daughter. I had never lost a man I loved and so I came to imagine that this ability to see him and not see him simultaneously would constitute both the best and the worst of it.
With My Hoa’s eyes following me around the room, I put on my only good shirt, a white cotton button-down on which I’d embroidered lavender flowers. Standing in front of the mirror, I pulled my hair back with a
Bulgarian barrette, then let it down, then pulled it back again, considering how this skinny face and skeleton body would be the last thing that Khoi would see of me. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be beautiful. I wanted the delicate features of my friend Thuy, the rounded breasts of my neighbor Hang. I wanted hair like my sister’s, which was full of body and always shone. I went to Lan’s drawer and fished a tiny secret bottle of perfume from underneath her clothes. Not knowing what else to do with it, I rubbed some on my cheeks. My Hoa, wide-eyed and serious, stuck her hand in her teacup and splashed n U:a c g  o rang all over her face.
“Auntie!” she called. “More tea.” I looked at the clock. We would be late to meet Khoi, but I couldn’t turn her down. In our household, the task of getting nutrients into My Hoa had become an obsession. The three of us—Lan, Bo, and I—had developed a dozen tricks to get her to eat and drink. Late at night, while she lay sleeping in Lan’s bed, we would recount our successes like pickpockets after a day of thieving. Lan could get her to take a few bites of porridge by distracting her with stories. Bo slipped pieces of bread into her mouth while getting her dressed. I plied her with cups of n U:a c g  o rang, making her feel grown up by calling it “tea.” Surreptitious feeding. It was both our entertainment and our central task in life. Now My Hoa had asked for more. I put a few spoonfuls of grilled rice into the glass, poured more hot water over it, then blew on it. As the liquid cooled, My Hoa walked over and squatted down beside me, peering into the glass. “Pretty tea,” she murmured.
While My Hoa waited to drink the n U:a c g  o rang, I picked up Bo’s metal toolbox and sorted through the family’s food ration coupons. In anticipation of my mother’s death anniversary, we had been saving our meat ration coupons all month so that we could eat beef tonight for dinner. The government called religion reactionary, but my mother had always insisted that the family commemorate its death anniversaries by making offerings and lighting incense before an altar to the ancestors. After my mother died, we lost our momentum. Incense was hard to come by in a city of professed atheists, and so, as each anniversary approached, we simply saved up our coupons to have a big meal. Being the cook in
the family, I would ride my bike to the market, stand in line for hours, and buy what we needed. Tonight, as Khoi was boarding a boat to
I dressed while My Hoa gulped down the liquid in her cup. I filled it again, and she finished it again, laughing. She was small for her age, and looked exactly like her father, Tan, a slight and clever man who had made it home from war only to die of his wounds a few years later. None of us ever discussed the resemblance, but I always remembered it when, late at night, I saw my sister staring down at her sleeping daughter. I had never lost a man I loved and so I came to imagine that this ability to see him and not see him simultaneously would constitute both the best and the worst of it.
With My Hoa’s eyes following me around the room, I put on my only good shirt, a white cotton button-down on which I’d embroidered lavender flowers. Standing in front of the mirror, I pulled my hair back with a
Bulgarian barrette, then let it down, then pulled it back again, considering how this skinny face and skeleton body would be the last thing that Khoi would see of me. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be beautiful. I wanted the delicate features of my friend Thuy, the rounded breasts of my neighbor Hang. I wanted hair like my sister’s, which was full of body and always shone. I went to Lan’s drawer and fished a tiny secret bottle of perfume from underneath her clothes. Not knowing what else to do with it, I rubbed some on my cheeks. My Hoa, wide-eyed and serious, stuck her hand in her teacup and splashed n U:a c g  o rang all over her face.
“Auntie!” she called. “More tea.” I looked at the clock. We would be late to meet Khoi, but I couldn’t turn her down. In our household, the task of getting nutrients into My Hoa had become an obsession. The three of us—Lan, Bo, and I—had developed a dozen tricks to get her to eat and drink. Late at night, while she lay sleeping in Lan’s bed, we would recount our successes like pickpockets after a day of thieving. Lan could get her to take a few bites of porridge by distracting her with stories. Bo slipped pieces of bread into her mouth while getting her dressed. I plied her with cups of n U:a c g  o rang, making her feel grown up by calling it “tea.” Surreptitious feeding. It was both our entertainment and our central task in life. Now My Hoa had asked for more. I put a few spoonfuls of grilled rice into the glass, poured more hot water over it, then blew on it. As the liquid cooled, My Hoa walked over and squatted down beside me, peering into the glass. “Pretty tea,” she murmured.
While My Hoa waited to drink the n U:a c g  o rang, I picked up Bo’s metal toolbox and sorted through the family’s food ration coupons. In anticipation of my mother’s death anniversary, we had been saving our meat ration coupons all month so that we could eat beef tonight for dinner. The government called religion reactionary, but my mother had always insisted that the family commemorate its death anniversaries by making offerings and lighting incense before an altar to the ancestors. After my mother died, we lost our momentum. Incense was hard to come by in a city of professed atheists, and so, as each anniversary approached, we simply saved up our coupons to have a big meal. Being the cook in
the family, I would ride my bike to the market, stand in line for hours, and buy what we needed. Tonight, as Khoi was boarding a boat to
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