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

“So they need to know.”

“And if he’s not dead, then he has a life.”

“So they need to know. You don’t see them.”

Compassion wasn’t a feeling she thought her brother experienced.

“But suppose it only brings them trouble.”

“How?”

She couldn’t answer well. “I don’t know. Maybe if he’s alive, he’s a shit, you know.”

“You were never afraid of anything. How come you’re afraid of this?”

Her brother’s assessment took her aback, both in terms of how he saw her and how he appraised her feelings now.

“I’m not afraid for me,” she said, feeling dishonest.

The truth was, she didn’t want to be drawn into a family drama. Binh, she thought, always wanted some kind of touching, even if it was painful. He always sought out the rawness of human contact, the veins exposed. She wanted to leave well enough alone. She was content to witness at a distance, to go over the bones dispassionately. She looked at Binh now, thinking that in some ways her brother was more sensitive and she more ready, more needy, and all the calculation that she had ascribed to him was probably not so hard core after all.

He was saying, “I’m not going to let them get fucked over, you know. First of all, I’m not telling them about it, in case it doesn’t work out.”

Selflessness was another attribute she knew her brother definitely didn’t have. He must have told Bo already, otherwise why had Bo hinted something of it to her? She decided not to reveal this to Binh, let him think she didn’t know.

“Well, you gonna do it anyway, so …”

“Yes.”

“Do not bring trouble, Binh. The danger of the sky is that we cannot climb up into it.”

Tuyen heard herself saying what her father said to them when they were growing up. Binh laughed at her.

“I didn’t know you were so old-fashioned. Speaking of which, you can take a coat off the rack in the back if you want.”

“I like my coat fine. Your girlfriend looks like she’s freezing. Too small for me, if you ask.”

“I didn’t ask, and don’t try to fuck around with her.”

“Scared?”

“Anyways!”

Hue had finished her cigarette and was looking at them through the window.

“Not my type,” Tuyen joked. Binh beckoned to Hue to come in.

“So, Hue, see you next week, will I? Here’s my number. How long is this for anyway, Binh?”

“Ten days, maybe.”

“Okay, we’ll hold it down, right, Hue? So, later.”

She left, feeling a mix of pleasure and discomfort. She had at least paid a debt, owned her brother as “mine” to a greater extent than she thought she could. She had at least left without biting at him. But she was apprehensive about what this journey to find their brother would open up in their lives, her life.

She wrapped her too-big coat around her, walking slowly in the damp late-spring wind. The sun had been in and out all day. She could use a cigarette, quite frankly, she thought. Pleased as she was with herself, it had been a stretch of good behaviour. It was just like Binh to get everything in knots once she thought she was well away from her family. She passed two black men near a parking meter, one of them gesturing to the other.

“A janela já foi consertada, ele só queria dinheiro. Eu não vou …”

“Bom, ele nâo me disse isso. Eu tenho os canos de metal prontos …”

Their voices spoke in another language—Spanish, she thought, no, it was Portuguese. An older woman, white, went by, looking at the men. Tuyen caught her dismay at their language. She said, “Spanish or Portuguese?” to the woman, catching her off guard again.

“Portuguese!” the woman replied, the thickness of that accent underlying her own English. “You never know when you’re talking, other people could be listening.” The woman put her fingers to her lips, and Tuyen grinned.

Yes, that was the beauty of this city, it’s polyphonic, murmuring. This is what always filled Tuyen with hope, this is what she thought her art was about—the representation of that gathering of voices and longings that summed themselves up into a kind of language, yet indescribable. Her art—she had pursued it to stave off her family—to turn what was misfortune into something else. She had devoted all the time to it, and here they were—her family—returning again and again.

“Africa, I suppose?” The woman still engaged her.

“Or Brazil.”

“You never know, you have to be careful when you speak.”

“ ‘Careful’? About what?” Tuyen asked, but the woman had already gone into a fruit store. “Hmm,” Tuyen sniffed. So much for unities.

In the closing door of the fruit store she saw her own image. “I like this coat,” she said to herself. Her face was as unfamiliar as it always was to her when she caught herself in a mirror. Yet all her installations were filled with self-portraits, like Varo’s. Curious faces staring, in her case openly, even rudely. Varo’s face was mysterious, hers was inquisitive, candid. She would go along with Binh’s little project. She had no choice. “It is not in your hands,” she told her image in the glass door.

That was mid-May, and Tuyen had every intention of following through with her promise to Binh. She went to the store to relieve Hue by 2 P.M. for the first few days. Hue was perfectly capable and more knowledgeable than she about Binh’s affairs. Tuyen realized that when Binh wasn’t there Hue’s voice was efficient and even bossy. She corrected Tuyen when Tuyen did something wrong, like pile gadgets on the counter, and she ran to serve customers before Tuyen discouraged them with her intrusive stares or probing questions. Left to Tuyen, the store would have made few sales.

Her lubiao project was foremost in her mind, and she asked each customer, “What do you long for?” as they came into the store. The idea was to write these longings down and post them on the lubiao. Hue interrupted her each time, pushing the person toward the expensive electronics that Binh sold. Some customers