Ding woke with a stiff neck. The rain had stopped. He opened the window. The fire escape was slick and cold, but the house oppressed him. And his dreams had been full of music. Returning to the living room, he opened the small wicker chest that served as a coffee table and also held his clothing and the few other belongings he had. He pawed through these until he reached the bottom, and pulled out the bamboo flute. He hadn't been able to use it in this country, of course. School bands wanted you to have real instruments, and his parents had scraped together enough to rent a metal and plastic flute for him.
He hadn't been allowed to play "Louie Louie" for one of his performance pieces either, though his recital of the song had amused his teachers.
Back then, he thought America was wonderful. The church group that had brought his family here helped them find a home among other Vietnamese. Later, the neighborhood expanded to include Laotians and Cambodians. The apartment was simple by American standards, but a palace compared to the camp.
And though Ding was happily enrolled in school, his father could not get a license to practice medicine in America, as he had hoped, and his English was not good enough for him to attend American medical schools or pass the required tests. He had to take odd jobs sweeping out shops, and later, when he had learned a bit more English, driving a taxi. Mother, whose English was better, did not work due to weakness from hunger and babies she had borne and lost while they were in the camps. For a couple of years after they first came to Seattle, however, she would wander around the house saying, "How I wish I had the beaded curtain that we used to have in the house in Da Nang," or "How I wish I still had the chest that my grandmother gave me. It would look well against that wall."
Ding used to think when he got here that when he became a famous musician he'd buy his mother replacements for the treasures she had lost . . .all but the little brothers and sisters who never made it to America.
Now she was plenty strong enough to go to work again and cleaned houses for American women.
He tried the bamboo flute, blowing the first few notes of a Vietnamese song. Back when he still played the flute often, his father always asked for Vietnamese songs.
He heard a knock on the kitchen window and saw Le's face and hands framed in the pane.
"Hey, man, everything okay?"
Ding remembered in time that his mother was supposed to be sick instead of bitching him out, and he said, "Yeah, she's just been kind of low. I think she's doing her missing Vietnam thing."
Le snorted. "That's nuts! It's a third-world country, man. My folks are like that too. Back in the camps they practiced English and here I can hardly get them to talk anything but Vietnamese. They think spending money on clothes is wasteful, and I'd dress out of the Goodwill bin all the time if it was up to them."
"Like the shoes, man," Ding said, nodding down at his friend's green velvet Doc Martens, now soaked and splattered with mud.
"I got those from my take of the car stereo money," he said, preening.
Ding thought the plain black DMs would have stood his buddy in better stead, but he said nothing. Being able to dress right was important—they'd all found that out in high school when they'd still accepted their parents' ideas about how they ought to dress. The hell of it was, up until then Ding had always loved school. He was quick and had a good memory and a talent for figuring things out. But the high school was a big one, mixed Asian, black, and white. And though he did well in class and earned praise from his teachers, the other kids, especially the non-Asian kids, made fun of him for being a show-off and a grind and dressing funny.
"Y'know," he told Le, "I feel like jumpin' somebody."
"Yeah," Le said. "Some Guerilla fighting! We ought to do it. Man, I'll never forget the first time I saw you lick that gang from school. There they are like with knives and knucks and all of 'em bigger than you. They thought they were going to whip your butt, man, till they found out the hard way you make Bruce Lee look like a sissy!"
"No sweat," he said. "It was just the stuff we all learned in the camps."
Two more of the guys climbed up the fire-escape stairs and sat on the landing by Le. By now Ding was leaning out the window, twiddling the flute in his fingers as he and Le talked.
"I remember that too, man!" Minh said. Like Ding, he wore his hair Apache style, with a kerchief headband. "Man, you were blood from one end to the other! What did your folks say?"
"Oh, that!" Ding laughed. "I never told you guys all of that story, did I? Well, the folks were about how you'd expect. Dad demanded to know what had happened, as if he'd ever be able to bic it, and Mom hissed at me and started attacking me with a washcloth and Bactine. So they go, 'What happened?' and I go, 'Some kids jumped me,' and I shrug, y'know? Well, once they figured out I wasn't gonna die or anything, they left me alone. It's not like they never saw me get beat up before, but back in the camps, that was okay. Things like that aren't s'posed to happen in America. But then, later, did I tell you what happened?"
He was sure he had, a dozen times at least, but they all acted as if he never had. He was a pretty good storyteller and mimic, and usually could crack them up."Well, later somebody called the house and I answered, because, you know, the folks were at work . . ."
The others nodded.
"So I go, 'Hi,' and this bitchy voice at the other end goes, without even finding out if it's the right number, 'Listen you, this is Mrs. Gloria fucking Maken and your savage son put my darling Teddy in the hospital with a broken nose, a broken jaw, a broken arm and a ruptured spleen. He's in intensive care right now and I intend to sue you for everything you have.'
"So I go, pretending to be Dad, y'know, 'Wow, I knew our boy did good but I didn't know he did that good! And you can sue all you like, lady. We don't have anything you'd want! So fuck you!' And I hang up."
"Yeah, go on, tell the rest," urged Hai, who was called Hal outside the gang. He had just climbed up the 'scape with three of the other guys.
"Okay, so later on, here I am doing my homework like a good little kid and there's this banging on the door. Well, my mom's home by then but she sees the uniforms outside the window and makes a beeline for the kitchen."
"My folks are the same way," Le agreed. "Since they were in that reeducation camp in Ho Chi Minh City, they don't want no part of uniforms."
"So like, I say, 'I'm not scared,' and I go to the door.
"'You Nu-jin Ding Ho Ha?' one of the cops goes.
"So I go, 'Not me, man. Nguyen Ding Hoa lives in the next building.'"
"That's when they put you in the cage, right, Ding? Figured you was one dangeroso dude."
Ding grinned and nodded, but didn't say anything. What had actually happened was that the cops had then forced their way in, saying, "Not according to the school address, kid. You better come with us. You're being charged with assault with intent to kill. Your folks home?"
Ding was scared shitless but he shook his head and didn't tell them about his mother hiding in the kitchen. When they put the cuffs on him, though, she came running out, pounding on them and crying.
Later the church group intervened for him, sent a social worker to explain to the courts about the refugee camp and how his parents, who had come from Hanoi to the south to be free from communism, had fought and almost died after the fall of Saigon, escaped by boat to Hong Kong, and now came to the States to be shamed by their oldest surviving son. The court was lenient. He was put on probation and sent back to school, where he earned good grades once more until he half-killed another classmate in another brawl. That time he went to jail.
"Ding didn't care about that!" Le said. "The joint was nothing compared to the camps, was it, Ding?"
That was partially true. It was a lot like school and a lot like the camps. There wasn't anything there he hadn't been through before.
"I tell you, man, the joint was great compared to this dump." He jerked his thumb at the window to his parents' apartment. The "joint" wasn't an adult prison, but juvenile detention, and he was sixteen years old when he got out. He had completed his high school equivalency by then. His parents brought him the bamboo flute and sent him letters every day. He was sure they burned incense on his behalf.
They should have saved it for when he got out.
"I learned all kinds of good shit, man," he said, grinning.
"Yeah, we know," Hai said. "Like lock picking, hot wiring, how to take out car stereos, pocket picking . . ."
"My older brother knew all of that in Vietnam!" Le said proudly.
Ding was still grinning at his gang but inside he simmered with anger that the illegal things he had learned were all that was to be of practical use to him. When he got out, he sent applications for college. His grades were great, as usual, but he got three replies from the schools he applied to, and all of those were negative.
"What do they mean, they're full?" he asked his probation officer. "They take people all the time."
"They mean they're full of Asians, probably," said the officer, who was a sharp but weary-looking Laotian woman. She had told him about the informal quotas they had on Asian students then, and how afraid a lot of so-called smart Americans were that Asian kids would raise the grade curve "unfairly" or take all the positions in the best colleges. "Of course, you're trying out-of-state schools so far. You can probably get into Evergreen or even UW," she suggested. "They're more liberal."
So, sixteen years old with no place to go, too young to get hired for jobs, high school finished, too Asian and too bad for most colleges, he sat out on this fire escape and played the bamboo flute. And the gang, most of whom he'd known from a distance throughout school, began to gather around him.
Like him, they had no jobs; like him, they were outsiders everywhere, no matter how much they wanted to fit in or how hard they tried. And like him, they had grown up with their parents' wartime tales of bravery and treachery that they were not a part of. None of their folks thought their kids could have hacked it in the wars, none of them thought the kids could have been as brave or as strong as they had been. Ding and the gang were too Asian for the Americans and too American for their own folks. You couldn't win.
But he didn't need any of those other people now. He had the gang. They thought he was cool and tough, even tougher than them, and he knew that even the girls in the neighborhood were starting to notice him. Partly it was the idea that a guy who could kick ass so hard was also smart, could play music, sing and tell stories in a funny way. But mostly it was because, even if he didn't know what he was doing or where he was going any more than they did, he knew that he was damn sure going to do something and go somewhere and make somebody—preferably the whole effing city—pay for getting in his way. He and the gang would make sure of that.
"Come on," he told them, climbing out to join them. "Let's jump somebody."
* * *
"So, you guys were all in Vietnam together?" Sno asked, as she, Doc and Trip-Wire sat on a tarp spread over the snow and fished in the rushing icy river.
"Yeah. We weren't in the same outfit, though."
"I wondered. You all seem to know each other pretty well," she ventured. "Like you've been through a lot together."
Doc gave her a long look through glasses half frosted over. His beard and mustache had little icicles in them where his breath moistened the hair. "We have. But not in Nam. We've been in therapy groups together in one combination or the other for years. Or, I guess you could say, we're the ones who survived them."
"Yeah? Forgive me, but that sounds a little, you know, wimpy."
"Not when you consider that twice as many Nam vets have killed themselves since the war as died in battle," Doc said. "Including other members of groups we've been in."
"Sometimes," Trip-Wire said. "Sometimes having an enemy outside yourself is the easy part. It's all the enemies you've got crawling around inside that will do you . . ."
Trip-Wire wasn't scary at all now. He looked sort of like an aging biker with his long graying black hair and beard.
"You only say that because all of your outside enemies are gone now," Sno told him. "And you're an adult."
"Gee, thanks," Trip-Wire said.
"No, I mean, you can do what you want to. You guys don't know what it's like living with somebody who hates you no matter what you do to please her."
"Wanta bet?" Doc asked.
"Yeah, let me tell you about my ex-wife," Trip-Wire said.
"No, I mean really."
"Believe it or not, Sno, we were kids once too," Doc said. "My old man drank like a fish and, besides that, had religion. When he drank, his sense of direction was screwed up. He knew somebody'd been sinnin' because he felt so damn bad but he couldn't tell who it was so he beat the hell out of me on general principle."
"Makes me glad I didn't have an old man," Trip-Wire said. "My mother was nothing to write home about either."
Sno thought that over for a minute. For some reason, it never seemed like older people actually had parents even though she knew Grandma Hilda was her mother's mom.
"So you guys never really had families and you're kind of like family to each other, is that it?" she asked.
"Yeah, right. We're family. Maurice is the mommy."
"You," Doc said to Sno, ignoring Trip-Wire, "have been watching too many mini-series."
"Maybe," she said. "But they have to get their material from someplace, don't they? I thought all you macho types were supposed to hate gays." She herself, of course, growing up in the entertainment industry, had a much more cosmopolitan view of such things. But these guys were living in their military past, for pity's sake.
"Aw, don't believe that limp-wrist act Doper puts on," Trip-Wire said. "He ain't like that really. He's a good man. Ex-tunnel rat, so his nerves are real bad, but he helped save the hospital at Cu Chi. Silver Star, Purple Heart and the frag scars to show it. He's just like any of us except he's got a bitch of an ex-boyfriend instead of a bitch of an ex-wife. He's lucky he didn't marry the guy."
"Wow," Sno said. After a moment she asked, "Did it bother you guys, that they used to call you baby-killers?"
"Yeah," Doc said. "But you know what, it used to bother me when I was a kid that the others called me blanket-ass and stripe too, because I was a half-breed. You never really get over it, but you get used to it, and you grow beyond it. Why do they call you Sno? You look half Indian yourself."
"Not half. About a sixteenth, I guess. But I'm black Irish on my mom's side, except that Grandma Hilda was half German."
"And the Sno?"
"Oh, that was Dad's idea. He wanted me to have a celebrity kid name. He got his big chance on Borderlands."
"Yeah, I love that show," Trip-Wire said. "Especially the lady Mountie. Va va voom. She can come and get this man anytime."
"You're a fuckin' chauvinist pig, T.W., you know that?" Doc said, a little embarrassed in front of Sno, she thought.
"Huh? Whaddid I say?"
"Never mind," Sno said. "I'm used to it. Anyway, they make Borderlands over in Snohomish, so Raydir named me after the town."
Doc grunted.
"Actually, my stepmother is the only one who really bothers me now. She's all sweetness and light whenever anyone is around, but she hates me. I used to try to get her to tell me things about dressing and makeup because she's so beautiful and everything. I mean, when Dad first married her, after Mom was killed and I moved back in with him, I thought she was great. I wanted to be just like her. But the harder I tried, the more she hated me."
"Jealous," Doc said.
"Of me? I'm just a kid."
"So was Brooke Shields.""Who?"
"Sorry. I'm showing my age again."
"She really got pissed off when her agent tried to get me to do some promo shots."
"She been working much lately?"
"I wish she was," Sno said. "I think it's the bimbos."
"What?"
"The babes chasing Raydir. They're getting to her. They got to Mom too, but we just left. Gerardine takes it out on me. Especially since I got busted. She acts like she's being so motherly but really she's glad. She calls me slut and junkie and stuff and honest, since I got busted and went to rehab, I haven't touched the stuff. Grandma Hilda would just die if she knew I'd been on drugs after all she and Mom did to try to protect me from it. I know that now. But I was so bummed after Mama died and one of Gerardine's ex-boyfriends—yeah, she's got her bimbos too, but those don't count, I guess—he got me to try a little. Said it would mellow me out. And I was not trying to turn tricks when I was down in the market. I just wanted to get some money for another line or two to tide me over. My allowance was gone and Gerardine wouldn't give me any more. The staff is all new since I was here before, so there was nobody I could hit up. I was just asking for change and that cop . . ."
Doc shot her a wise sideways look. "You didn't offer him a blow job too? Where'd you pick that up?"
Sno blushed. "No. I only said that so you'd know I was really desperate. People just say stuff like that back at Raydir's place. I don't even have a boyfriend."
"Keep talkin' like that and you will real quick, babe," T.W. advised.
"Look," Doc said. "It sounds to me like you got a lot to work through. We're doing a sweat tomorrow and it's guys only, but you could go in alone before or after if you want to. I'd recommend before. It may be a little smelly afterwards."
"Gee, thanks," she said dubiously.
"No problem. In the morning before, we'll be off in the woods, doing a rap session and that needs to be private too, and afterwards, we'll be here at the river, washing off, then separate vision quests and meditations."
"You'll be busy then," she said.
"Yeah, but afterwards we'll build a campfire in the snow and we can all come and talk about anything the day brought up for us. Okay? We'll work on our stuff, you work on yours, then we'll all do it together. How's that?"
"Fine," she said, but she wished she was older, and a guy.