What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (phonics story books txt) 📕

Dear Editor, Bernama, Malaysia,

I’m looking for a small boy by the name of Vu Quy. He knows his name and his parents’ name. If you find this boy, please hold him. There is a reward of money for his return.

Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

May 5, 1997

Dear Editor, Lienhe Zaobao, Singapore,

Why do you not print my letter any more? Have you no heart? Have you no mother or children? …

June 29, 1999

Dear Mr. Chiu, astrologer,

I am sending you $350 today as agreed. The day is indeed auspicious as you promised. I slept somewhat last night for the first time since arriving in this country and I know that must mean that my son is safe.

Respectfully and sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

Yet Tuyen found her father slightly elated on the drive to the city. He seemed to have forgiven her for her reference to the family secret.

“Where you off to, Tuyen?”

“Home, Bo.”

“Oh, home is not where your family is? Home is that nasty place?” She sensed slightly less conviction in him. As if he were joking with her a little.

“Oh, Bo, don’t start again.”

“Okay, okay. You know, soon maybe we will have some news …” He broke off as if he’d said too much. She prompted him.

“What good news, Bo? Did you buy another restaurant?”

“Oh, never mind. New restaurant? No, well. You see.”

It was the most confidential the father had ever been with her except when he indulged her in drawing with him. But on serious matters he was a virtual tomb. The rest of the ride to Toronto was mostly silent. Tuyen felt slightly uncomfortable. She wanted to apologize for insulting him, but her usual forthrightness deserted her. She changed the subject to Binh.

“How’s Binh? Where was he today?” Did her father know about Binh’s plans? she wondered. Was that the news he was referring to?

“Binh? Good boy. You should come home if you want to see him.” All conversation led to this point with her father. “And why don’t you help him when he asks you? You have a duty …”

“Oh, Bo, you know I don’t like selling. It would be very bad if I helped him. No one would buy anything.”

Her father laughed. “It’s true. What? What are you good at?”

“Bo, I’m sorry for hurting your feelings.”

“Don’t be sorry. You come home and everything will be fine.”

He either deliberately misunderstood her or hadn’t taken what she’d said in the same way as she thought. She kept quiet for the rest of the ride; he took it as an acknowledgment of his rightness and seemed prepared to leave it at that this time. He did not launch once again into his usual harangue about friends and family, about duty and obligation and honour.

When the car neared the Saigon Pearl, Tuyen asked her father to drop her off. She was always afraid of Tuan dropping by the apartment, even though she often told him to come see for himself that she was fine. He didn’t put up the usual fight this time, just said, “Binh is a good boy, you respect him. You call.” Tuyen hugged him and hopped out of the car. “You come home,” he called after her.

She felt there was something odd about her father’s behaviour. Not his behaviour, more like his demeanour. She sensed a lightness about him. Something she’d never sensed before. She wouldn’t say that her father was a gloomy man, but he cherished correctness, propriety, and in this he appeared dour. Now she perceived a slight change in him that was startling to her. He was usually so purposefully serious that the hint of any lightness, and it was only the merest hint, seemed extravagant. She would have to call Binh after all. Perhaps agree to help him out at the store again. That twinge of embarrassment she had felt when Carla said the word “mine” about her own brother returned.

Though Tuyen and Binh were not far apart in age—he was eighteen months older—they were in sensibility. They’d never been particularly close. Mostly they had fought each other for their parents’ attention. Binh considered Tuyen a usurper in his quest for their affections—he was the only boy and the favourite, it seemed, until Tuyen came along. Then no amount of cherishing was sufficient for him. Tuyen seemed to get attention simply by being the newcomer. It would be easy to say that this sibling animosity followed them to adulthood, but it didn’t: their roles were simply different. Binh was the cherished boy, Tuyen the baby.

Yet they could not get along even though they were collaborators of a kind as regards translating the city’s culture to their parents and even to their older sisters, they were both responsible for transmitting the essence of life in Toronto to the household. It was a job Binh took tremendously seriously and Tuyen took, as far as he was concerned, with too much whimsy. Binh would translate instructions from teachers or a mailman or the hydro man. He would invariably slant these to his own interests, as when a bill arrived, he added arrears to the amount, pocketing the extra, or when notices from the parent-teacher meetings were sent home, he would suggest that teachers wanted to discuss the fact of his father making him work too much in the restaurant. Tuyen, on the other hand, always threw those notices away, and when the hydro had to be cut off for fixing a main, she would tell the household there was an emergency in the city and that she would not be allowed to go to school for the day. With the exception of when they were quite small, they never fought outright since an all-out war would not be beneficial.

The uneasy collaboration made them wary of each other and therefore mistrustful. So when her father said Binh was a good son with that minutely discernible sense of elation, Tuyen was immediately suspicious—this lightness she ferreted out of her father had something to do with Binh and that dangerous idea he had