The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao Page B

moment’s time. Under her ministrations, an ill-fated enterprise can be turned around with a modest infusion of cash.
    Our mother is a businesswoman, our father often says with pride. She has her Peugeot driven all over the city to the houses of Chinese merchants. They also come to our house. Ours is one of a few Vietnamese families in this Chinese-dominated city of Cholon. While feasting on elaborate meals prepared by our cook, our mother and her Chinese friends contemplate new ventures. Their success is based on astute commercial calculation, but also intuition. Among them are many years of experience. Buying and selling rice. Building and renting houses. Putting money in this and taking money out of that.
    There is in our Cholon villa an almost daily chaos of visitors. My sister and I can barely keep everybody straight. We do not call them by their names, first or last. It is impolite to call adults by their names. In order to create an atmosphere of familiarity, it is customary to address family friends as Younger Uncle Number Three or Younger Aunt Number Four, Older Uncle Number Six, and so forth. What each person is called depends on whether he is older or younger than our father or mother and his birth order in his own family. To be accorded a number is to be included in an intimate ritual—to be inside an orbit of enumerated family members and special friends, first, or second, and so forth, among a brood of just so many. A number conveys a relationship within a particular order. By contrast, a name is impersonal and commonplace, available to strangers, proffered to the world at large. And so we children do not use names when we refer to those embraced within the circle.
    Khanh and I refer to one visitor as Younger Aunt Number Three the Rice Seller, a pasty-faced, plump woman who smiles compulsively, and another as Older Aunt Number Three the Pharmacist, a tall, slender woman who presses coins into our palms and asks our mother for Coca-Cola, not tea, so that my sister and I might partake of the forbidden drink. When Older Aunt Number Three the Pharmacist comes to our house, she bears gifts for my sister and me, plastic swords and daggers and mentholated oils. Sometimes we dump out the oils but keep their tiny glass bottles with the long necks and curved bodies.
    Today we come home from school to find the usual congregation of Chinese aunties impeccably dressed—black slacks, colorful silk blouses, shiny black sandals. I take my cue from my sister, who hovers near them. She has made eye contact with our mother, who then offers us an unopened bottle of Coca-Cola. The women are sitting expectantly around the table in a seating area near our family room, waiting for our mother to preside as host. “Our capital account is large enough to move forward with the deal,” our mother declares. The aunties all nod approvingly. Our mother smiles. “We talked about this last week, but here are the papers I’ve prepared for you to examine,” she says. “This is actually your idea,” she adds, turning graciously to Older Aunt Number Three the Pharmacist.
    Aunt Number Three the Pharmacist sits up straight and nods proudly. She owns a business that makes tiger balm, a concoction of eucalyptus ointment that cures everything from headaches and stomachaches to nausea and the common cold. “Taiwan is a good market for us,” she explains. “A Taiwanese businessman I’ve known for years needs an infusion of cash to grow his herbal medicine business. He’s had to divert his attention to deal with family problems and the business has struggled a bit. This is an opportunity to help his business grow for him and for us.”
    â€œLook at the charts I prepared and you’ll see why this is a good idea,” our mother chimes in. Columns of colorful numbers and arrows crisscross the pages.
    The Chinese really know how to make money, our mother has often noted admiringly. A small