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

were actually struck by the question. “Reading, a whole year to read,” one said. “To feel safer,” another said, “safe, like when I was a child.” A Somali man, who was a taxi driver, and who came in for a new radio, told Tuyen, “Enough money to go home and marry four wives.” Tuyen broke into laughter and so did the man.

“You’re kidding me.”

“No, no, my uncle has five. He has a schedule. One night with one, the other night with another, and so on. He has a paper with all of it written down.”

“And that’s what you long for?”

“Yes, I would be very happy.”

“And tired!”

“No, no,” the man laughed, “never tired.”

After the Somali taxi driver left, Hue scolded her.

“You can’t carry on conversations like that. Then people don’t buy anything. You’re chatting too much about irrelevant things.”

“Oh, chill out, Hue. What do you long for?”

“Not me. I don’t long for anything.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I have work to do. I can’t. That’s foolishness.”

“You long for my brother.”

“I’m not answering. You—you’re too chatty!”

“All right, sell, sell, sell.” But she didn’t, she scribbled the taxi driver’s story in her notebook, sketching an image of him beside it, giggling to herself.

This book she called her book of longings. She had happened on the idea of collecting these stories when she found the signed photograph, “Recuerdo de nuestra noche, 1968” at the ATM machine. The city was full of longings and she wanted to make them public.

A Bengali woman had asked her, “Why long for anything? Longing is suffering. We have to stop desire. Desire nothing.” Tuyen accosted people on the street as well as in the store, and the Bengali woman was waiting for her daughter outside an ice cream parlour. They watched the Bengali woman’s daughter buy an ice cream and lick it deliciously.

“Now she’ll be sick with that. Lactose intolerant. See what desire is?” the woman said. “I would like better knees,” she confided, pointing to her heavily wrapped knees under her sari. “But what to do, eh? To desire is to suffer.”

What did she herself desire? What did she long for? A bigger studio, Carla, another family: yes, all along she had wished that her family was different.

Tuyen came to the store on the third or fourth day to find Elliott and the other man talking with Hue. Conversation stopped when she entered.

“Well, don’t mind me,” she said.

“They were going.”

“Elliott, what’re you up to?”

“Oh, nothing much. Some stock for Binh, in the back.”

The other guy looked impatient and said something to Hue in Vietnamese to which Hue agreed. He ignored Tuyen and spoke to Elliott—“Let’s go, I’m busy.” Elliott seemed no longer interested in Tuyen, and they both left.

“What was that about?”

“Just business.”

“Business? Shouldn’t I know what the business is?”

Hue looked bored and headed into an explanation of how many electronic cards of RAM memory were ordered and how many computer cables, an explanation so deliberately tedious that Tuyen raised her hand, begging off. Let them have their complications, she thought, what do I care? She got her book of longings out and waited for the next customer to come in. Opening the book while Hue hovered busily, she saw Carla’s longing. “Sleep. A deep, dreamless sleep. Totally knocked out. The kind of sleep that feels like food and when you get up you feel new.” Tuyen had written below, “Mine: to be seduced, utterly seduced. By you.” It was so strange, she thought, how people see qualities in other people—things that probably aren’t there at all. She, for example, saw something deeply seductive in Carla, something Carla didn’t see—it always baffled Tuyen. Jackie would tease her, “The girl is not home, honey.”

Lost in her book of longings, Tuyen only looked up when Hue said loudly, “I’m leaving now.”

Tuyen took her head out of the book to see Hue pacing indecisively.

“Okay, see you tomorrow.”

“I don’t like that one,” Hue blurted out.

“Who—Elliott? He’s harmless.”

“No, the other guy. If he comes back, don’t talk to him.”

“Why would he come back? For what?”

“Whatever, don’t talk to him.”

“Well, I’ve nothing to say to him anyway.”

Hue still seemed reluctant to leave. “He runs girls. He calls it a spa.”

This was more than Tuyen had got out of Hue on any subject, and she hadn’t even asked.

“Really?” The curiosity in her voice seemed to propel Hue to the door. As if she had said too much.

“See you tomorrow, then.”

Tuyen followed her to the door. “Is Binh in on that too?”

“Of course not! I just don’t like that guy, that’s all.” And she escaped out the door.

Okay, Tuyen thought, something else I don’t want to know about. Binh probably had his finger in it somewhere, but thank heavens her brother had a very healthy sense of self-preservation. At the back of the store was evidence of that. While XS sold mainly computer parts and other electronics, there were boxes of men’s clothing, office supplies, shoes, lamps, clocks, and anything Binh could get cheaply just to diversify his investment in the store. Oddly, Tuyen had thought that once she was alone in the store she would have rifled through Binh’s affairs to see what he was up to generally—but she hadn’t felt the urge to do it. And even now, with Hue’s unsolicited declaration about Binh’s shady friend, she was still completely uninterested. Besides, she thought, Binh was not stupid, he wouldn’t leave any damaging evidence around.

Her intrigues with her brother were lodged in their childhood and so too her suspicions. They were both grown up and probably quite different people, just people unable to let go of a childhood game. What did Binh long for? That was obvious. To be the only boy. No, again that was the only trajectory of thought that their relationship led her to. He probably longed for something quite different. She promised herself to ask him. Maybe it was she who longed to be the only daughter.

Enough psychoanalysis, she told herself, and enough of this scene. She suddenly decided to close the store