alt="Image"/>c Bích. You, me, we teach English each other, okay?”
“Okay,” replied Hng, looking down at the van floor.
“You cold?” asked Ngc Bích.
Hng shook her head.
“Very cold in America. I think you cold now,” said Ngc Bích, while changing positions and sitting beside Hng. “You be okay,” said Ngc Bích. “Okay to be afraid,” she added, while putting her arm around Hng’s shoulders.
“I’m not afraid,” said Hng, glancing up defiantly at the other women in the van.
Ngc Bích caught Hng’s expression and said, “That okay. They no speak English. They no understand what me say with you. I see you cry. I am sorry with you.”
Hng paused for a moment, and said, “I’m not afraid. I only miss my family.”
“My family live in Nha Trang,” said Ngc Bích, pulling Hng closer. “My father dies two years before. I cries. The day last, my mother say goodbye to me in Nha Trang. I am oldest five kids. Two brothers. Two sisters,” she said, holding up two fingers on each hand. “It is good I send money from America—but yesterday I cry the same as you. You father and mother many kids?”
“One sister. No mother,” replied Hng.
Ngc Bích paused briefly and said, “It okay to cry.”
Hng solemnly studied Ngc Bích’s face but did not respond.
“I cry for my brothers and sisters today. You want, you ... me ... be sister now,” added Ngc Bích.
Hng reflected upon this briefly, before nodding. They each smiled and hugged each other.
Eventually the van came to a stop and everyone got out. The driver warned them to be quiet and to follow him. Hng slung her bag of belongings over her shoulder and, along with everyone else, obediently followed. They entered an apartment building, trudged up four flights of stairs, were led to a room halfway down the hall, and ushered inside.
Hng and Ngc Bích quietly sat on the apartment floor with a dozen others. The driver left but two other Vietnamese men remained in the room. The men told everyone to sit quietly and not to speak.
Later, there were more soft knocks on the apartment door as several more groups of young women arrived. Hng counted thirty-five women but lost count when the room became too crowded.
An hour passed, and the silence in the room made Hng more conscious of the humidity and the sticky feeling from the heat generated by their cramped quarters. Eventually there was another knock at the door.
Another Vietnamese man entered the room, followed by two other men who were both foreigners and appeared to be about fifty years old. One foreigner was lean and tall, with a thin, grey moustache that matched the colour of his brush cut. His face was pointed with sharp cheek bones and large dark eyes peered out from a nose that reminded Hng of a beak on a bird. Like a long-billed vulture ... She heard the Vietnamese man call him Petya.
The other foreigner took off his jacket and Hng saw that he was wearing a golf shirt and slacks. His head was shaved bald and he had a large pot belly ... but it was his arms that caught Hng’s attention. She had never seen arms covered in so much thick, black hair. More black hair unleashed itself from the open neck on his golf shirt. It made Hng think of a bald ape and she quickly looked away so as not to be seen as being rude.
The two foreigners spoke to each other in a language that Hng did not understand. After, the bald ape turned to the Vietnamese man.
“Tell them all to stand,” said the bald ape, speaking English.
“Yes, Styopa,” replied the Vietnamese man. He then gave the command in Vietnamese and everyone got to their feet.
For Hng, the names Petya and Styopa were too foreign to pronounce. She would just think of them as the vulture and the bald ape.
The vulture and the bald ape approached each woman and pointed for them to stand on one side of the room or the other. As this happened, the Vietnamese man wrote everyone’s names down on two lists.
It is the Vietnamese custom not to look into a person’s face. To do so could imply a lack of respect. In this case, Hng sensed it was an uncomfortable shame the women felt as they stared down at the floor, wondering what the selection was all about. When the men reached Hng, the bald ape lifted her chin to face him, but she continued to avert her eyes.
“You are the young one,” he said. “You speak English?” he asked.
alt="Image"/>c Bích. You, me, we teach English each other, okay?”
