The English Language Barrier

“A minority bachelor is worth less than a native-English speaker who graduated from high school." Anhthao Bui


The English language barrier
Burns my confidence
Into inferior ash
Brutally pushes my pride
Into the underneath hell

Farewell

I lay on the cool marble floor of the empty house; my heart was empty too. I did not want to leave my house and Vietnam at all. I wanted to mourn loudly like Mimi, my cat, or showed my emotion like Mimi’s act, but I could not. I scrolled my body around the family room to the bedrooms. I kissed the walls and used the fingernails to write big notes, “This is Bui family’s house forever. Those who live in this house will get bad luck.” On another wall, I wrote, “There is a dead body—gosh, in this house.” I drew a young girl face with long hair and big tongue to the chin. I laughed loudly because I revenged the people who would live in my house by the curse when I left. I tiptoed to the bathroom, turned on the fountain and left it. I turned on all of the lights. I wanted to waste electricity and water to revenge the government to take my house. I crawled like a baby to the kitchen. I looked at the empty stoves and felt hungry. I came to Miss Sương’s kitchen to beg for a hot rice bowl with fish sauce. Since my mother left, Ms. Sương cooked for me. I ran fast to Miss Sương’s house, flashed into her kitchen, and cried, “Miss Sương, I am hungry!”
Miss Sương was surprised, “I thought you already ate at your husband’s house. They made your favorite dishes to celebrate you to go to America.”
I flirted her, “They do not have delicious dishes like yours. I only want to eat your food.”
She asked me, “What do you want to eat now? I am not ready yet because today you might eat at your husband’s house or somewhere else.”
“Please give me a hot rice bowl with fish sauce.”
She was astonished, “Fish sauce again?”
I asked her, “Why not?”
She shook her head, “Vy Vy, you are so strange and different. At special holidays and your important events, you only want to eat rice with fish sauce.”
I laughed, “I was born in poverty, so I like fish sauce.”
Miss Sương sobbed, “Vy Vy, you win my heart. I miss you, baby.”
Tears blocked my throat. I mumbled, “Miss Sương, you are my dear sister. I do not know I can get along with my family or not. We are apart for a long time.”
Miss Sương lifted the lid of the clay casserole. Thin, hot, appetizing smoke of rice soaked up. I was mouth-watering. I swallowed my saliva. Miss Sương took rice in a small thick Japanese bowl and handed it to me. I held the bowl and watched it as if I had never seen rice before. Tiny sticky grains of rice like white pearls. Each pearl was a drop sweat of labor. Miss Sương kept the Vietnamese traditional cook style. She cooked rice in a clay casserole on a charcoal stove. She ordered special rice from Long An, a small town, where was located near Saigon. Thus, the rice was tender and sticky like sweet rice. Also, Miss Sương used the special fish sauce that my aunty made with her secret recipe. I absorbed the rice fish sauce flavor into my lungs. I slowly sipped and nibbled small bites because the following day, I would never eat such rice with fish sauce.

I strolled along Thanh Đa Riverside. The tide was low and still: garbage, dead plants, nylon bags, and light recycle lazily flew over the surface. Two skinny children—a boy and a girl with a dark skin jumped from the bamboo raft into the river. They splashed water and laughed loudly like Ti, Ni, and I often swam in hot summers when we were children. I greedily captured all the images and the sounds and stored them in my memory when I passed by: the blocking apartment, the old elementary school, the middle school and the high school, the trees, the bushes, and the market. I murmured, “Oh, Saigon, I lose you from now! My charming Saigon is alive in my heart forever.”

The engine roared and the plane was shaking; my soul screamed and quaked in terror. I was isolated from my motherland from now on. I was numb and senseless.