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Authors: Andrew X. Pham

BOOK: Catfish and Mandala
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Tien wants to come with me, but he can't tear himself from his filial obligations. Besides, I tell him, it is something I have to do by myself. Deep down, I believe he knows why I am leaving, the reasons I need to find before I can mend the mess that is my life. As the third son, Tien carries his parents' failed hopes for the family's first son, me. He is the only one in the family with whom I can talk about my sister Chi. Her death left a silent, dark hole in our family like an extinguished hearth no one could relight. We talk around her history, unknowingly lacing her secret and our shameful failures deeper into ourselves.
Tien parks us in the tourist lot at the San Francisco end of the Golden Gate Bridge. He snaps a few pictures of me leaning on my old bike and my brand-new, untested gear, the bridge looming in the
backdrop. Then he hands me a bag of PowerBars, the very stuff I avoid religiously.
“Good luck,” he says, and shakes my hand.
I mount my bike and pedal shakily across the bridge. It is the first time I've ridden the bike fully loaded.
Thin strokes of clouds score a sky as blue as a blessing. A brisk wind washes across the bridge. I wobble through the throngs of pedestrians and cyclists with a ready grin for everyone I pass. A light-headedness buoys me as if ambrosia courses in my veins. I am intoxicated with a feeling of rightness, a psychological snapping together of mating parts, a lucid moment of geometrical perfection. A liberating bliss.
“Yes!” I shout over and over as I race away from San Francisco.
The euphoria lasts until I crank up the cliffs of Highway 1. I'm not a cyclist. The bike is heavy. My precious enthusiasm dissipates with every incline. My map shows an inland road meandering some way from the coast rejoining Highway 1 at Stinson Beach. Confident that it will spare me grueling coastal hills, I huff up the grade, too exhausted to venture a guess why this stretch of blacktop was named Panoramic Road. It steadily gets steeper without a sign of leveling out. I inch up the mountain, pulling over to breathe at every half mile.
At one turn, I look up and the peak of Mount Tam rears over me.
Good God, I have been climbing the road to the highest peak in the area on my first day! Stupid! Stupid!
That evening, I squeak into Pan Toll State Campground drenched in sweat, shaking with fatigue. My knee bleeds from a fall I'd taken a couple of miles back, when the road was too steep and I couldn't uncleat my feet from the pedals fast enough. My odometer reaches 18.7 miles. That leaves, oh, about 4,000 miles to go … Whoopee … Great … Somewhere out there ahead of me are Portland, Seattle, Tokyo, Fuji, Kyoto, Saigon, and Hanoi.
Fallen – Leaves
Anh's aunt took pity on her and gave her two wedding presents, both heirloom secrets, mere words in the ear.
Anh put the first gift to work in her kitchen. With pennies for market scraps, she cooked small but tasty meals for her husband, who worked very hard. He was taking on a double teaching load at the high school and doing extra academic jobs on the side, working the elbows of his shirt and the knees of his pants as thin as rice paper. Despite Anh's savory food, he grew thin, and his gauntness and fierce determination made his students fear him, the rigid academic. Every day he woke to a breakfast of the previous night's leftovers. For lunch he ate cold rice balls Anh wrapped in leaves with shreds of dried meat. Although each morsel she served him was exquisitely flavored and he adored every dish she cooked, there simply wasn't enough rice to put meat on his bones, not with the way he was working.
She put the second gift to work in her washtubs, taking in her landlord's wash to reduce the rent. Then she took in her neighbors' laundry to bring in a little more money for groceries. She was young so she was strong. Many times each day, she carried water, ten gallons a haul, from the village well to her house, where she perched on a block of wood to do the wash. Using her aunt's homemaker secret, she scrubbed, stomped, pounded, wrung each piece of clothing until her fingers ached and her palms were raw. She hung the laundry in
her patch of alley-sun and kept a close watch for thieves. Then she pressed shirts and pants with a coal iron, folded and delivered them to their owners.
Anh worked through spring, summer, fall, and winter. One more year passed, and she gave birth to another baby girl. And she continued to work, six days a week, year after year. People heard about her, the woman who could remove difficult stains from any shirt and iron such hard creases that they were as good as sewn into the pants. They sought her out and gave her the grime they could not banish and the pleats they could not set straight.
Coming home after each long day of work, Thong felt a squeezing tremble of love in his chest when he saw his wife hunched over great tubs of wash. He told her she was working too hard. She must think of the baby. Look at the way her great belly was practically dragging on the floor. No, no, she told him. The child was strong. Look at the way he clung so high in her ribs, surely this must be a boy, their first son.
They had buried two coffee cans full of money beneath their bed. Soon there would be another. And the country was changing with the War. Opportunity was in the air. Thong said the Nationalists had drafted him, but he stood a fair chance of rising in the bureaucratic ranks because of his education. Thong and Anh were happy. They talked of buying that little tavern way out in the countryside near the American army base.
Headwind – Tailspin
I remember Tien asking me if I thought someday I could take my own life as Chi had done. Could you do it, Andrew, if everyone you loved had forsaken you—no hope left, nothing to live for? Maybe, I told him, I don't know but I always think I have one last ticket, one last hand to gamble. What would you do then before you die? I'd walk out the door to destinations unknown, spending the sum of my breaths in one extravagant gesture.
Since the day Chi ran away, I have wondered how utterly alone she felt. I have wanted to run away the way she did. In the years it took me to become an American, I haven't been able to answer the one question that remained framed in my mind from the day she left: How did America treat Chi, one vulnerable yellow in a sea of white faces? At my age “running away” requires a measure of innocence I've lost. Riding out my front door with a pocketful of twenties is the best I can do.
Touring solo on a bicycle, I discover, is an act of stupidity or an act of divine belief. It is intense stretches of isolation punctuated with flashes of pure terror and indelible moments of friendship. Mostly, it is dirty work particularly suitable for the stubborn masochist. I was suckered into the adventure, the elegant simplicity of its execution, and, yes, even the glory of its agony.
Along the Pacific Coast, I meet cyclists who lick their chops at the challenge of a six-percent grade or an eighty-mile ride. I am a distracted rider, the sort that thrives on flat roads without wind. I haven't encountered a mountain I like—from the front side. The only mountains I like are the ones I've summited. And there are no mountains finer than the ones I'm coasting down. On the road, I find myself vacillating between elation and abject misery, my senses narrowed to the hundred yards immediately before me. Beyond this, I am solely concerned with my next meal and my next campsite.
I learn it all the hard way. From San Francisco, I curse my way up the California coast. Every fiber in my body balks against the strain of propelling two hundred pounds uphill mile after mile. The second day out, I keel over again, this time halfway up another mountain. My loaded bike topples like a wildebeest felled by one well-aimed bullet. I crawl out from under the bike and try to stand, but my legs give out. I roll onto my belly, my legs locked rigid—a pair of two-by-fours jackknifed by a stampede of charley horses. I bite my knuckles, tears welling in my eyes. High school kids in a red Jeep roar by, laughing. I begin to suspect the authors I'd read weren't entirely forthcoming about the physical ordeals of bicycle adventures. The next three days, I learn that saddle sore is a euphemism for self-inflicted torture. My crotch is raw. Hitting a pothole feels like jabbing hot coals into the seat of my pants. Every muscle groans and complains with each movement. My back aches. I am so stiff I can barely tie my shoelaces. What am I thinking? My Baja trip could hardly be called cycling: I had dragged that bike through the desert like a crucifix.
A woman I meet at a convenience store says the California wine country is beautiful, so I ride over the mountain to Sonoma Valley. I spend my second night camping illegally at a PG&E power plant. The third night I am at an abandoned train station, the fourth in one of Buena Vista's vineyards, the fifth at the Carmelite Monastery in Oakville. The grounds-keeping monk tells me that the monastery was originally a haunted estate: the owner had hung himself. Sleep on the road is fitful at best. I sleep with a knife under my pillow of dirty laundry and wake repeatedly at the sounds of broken twigs. One night when my tent collapses, I fight my way out, roaring, a drawn
knife in hand, stalking my would-be attackers in my briefs. It is the wind tittering.
I work my way back out to the coast again, up through Mendocino, Fort Bragg, Leggett, the Avenue of Giants, Eureka, Crescent City, and right into Oregon, heading ever northward against head wind and prevailing wisdom. The mornings are chilly, the afternoons blistering hot, the evenings swamped with mosquitoes. The days seem filled with new friends and engaging meals with strangers. Thousands of bicyclists tour the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Francisco every summer, so it isn't difficult for a soloist heading in the wrong direction to find a cheerful campfire nightly. The day my odometer registers 500 miles, just before coming into Eureka, I feel invincible. I've fixed plenty of flat tires, warped rims, loose brakes, and broken spokes. Somehow through the torment, I have developed a taste for bicycle touring. Every time I top a big mountain, I dismount and dance a little victory jig around the bike, not caring who might see me. The coast is gorgeous. I cannot swallow, breathe, soak it in fast enough. At least once a day, there is a moment of absolute perfection when my muscles sing with power, full of vigor, raw and very alive—the air sweet with grass and pine, the whirling chain and the humming tires but extensions of me.
I find myself on the outskirts of Corvallis, Oregon. I am on my way to Portland to visit Patty, a free-spirited traveler whom I'd met in Mexico. A few days earlier, I phoned Patty and she suggested I spend the night with Ronnie, a friend of hers in the area. Ronnie sees me coming from the window of her second-story apartment and starts braying, Hey! You! You're Patty's friend, aren't you? It's dark. I jump at the fusillade of words and look up at the gesticulating scarecrow haloed in the light spilling from her window.
As soon as I cross the threshold, Ronnie slams the door, barring it with her back and turning the full wattage of her green eyes on me. Glaring from beneath a blond Einstein-fuzz, she leans close and growls, “Patty told you, didn't she?”
“Uh, told me what?”
“About me.”
“You're her friend.”
“AAAAAAhahahahahahahahahaha!” Her shrill laugh ices my spine. I grin, hoping to get in on the punch line.
“What's so funny?”
“You know, I was in
there
.”
“There where?”
“
There
,” she hisses, as though I am woefully dense. “Institutionalized! They put me in
there
for three years.”
“Oh.”
“Don't worry. I'm okay now.”
I want to ask her how long ago that was, and how “okay” she is, but I've learned my lesson: Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. It might bite. I wish I had camped out on the sod farms. Hoping to provide her some positive reinforcement, I say, “I'm not worried. You look fine to me.”
Ronnie radiates an angel's goodwill as she tours me through her home. After my shower I join Ronnie, who is making dinner in the six-by-six-foot kitchen. I try to help, but there isn't enough room for two people around the stove of her suburban hovel. She stirs me a cup of instant tea with tap water and sits me at the kitchen table, which at one time might have been a schoolroom desk.
Crazy Ronnie is into astrology, karma, chakras, energy lodes of the universe, and the wheel of time. She is “a minor goddess” sent to earth to even out the balance between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. I, on the other hand, she confirms, am “a technician—like a worker ant.” I ask her if she is sure. She is. Not even a minor deputy god? Nope, she assures me, no such luck.
“You've been working very hard the last millennium,” she explains patiently, “ever since you were put on earth, so on this cycle, you are done with work. You're out exploring the world, having a good time.”
I agree that I am having a good time on my bike tour. Crazy Ronnie takes that as evidence of my grubby worker-ant status. Despite our celestial disparity, I think her vastly interesting. She gets very excited talking about the true nature of the universe, the Wyrm of the World, voids, angels, and other dimensions. She shrieks, she
shouts. She bounces off walls, her arms pinwheeling, a chopping knife in hand.
She stops mid-rambling, turns, and points the blade at me. “Are you a vegetarian?”
Oh, dear. My mind zips to infinity and back. Duh. Truth? Lie? Can this minor goddess tell the difference? I blurt, “Yes! Yes, I am. But I'm not a very good one … I … I have my weak moments.”
“Hmm.” Her green orbs roam my face for duplicity. “Well,” she grunts, “we all make mistakes now and then. But we gotta be strong. You gotta try harder.”
“I will. I really will.”
We chomp on a dinner of veggie-burgers and garden salad. I rabbit into the burnt faux-burger patty, banishing all thoughts of juicy red steaks. It would have been a decent night if she hadn't told me about the devil rascaling in her apartment. She found
him
endearing. As I wash the dishes, she roots violently around the apartment, banging drawers and kicking furniture out of her way until she finds a small wooden box. She opens it and pulls out a mishmash ball of twine, thread, and yarn, multicolored, a little psychedelic.
“He
did this!” She puts the furry thing under my nose, expecting me to smell traces of the devil. “I save the threads and look what he did to them.”
I don't sleep much that night. When I do, my dreams are variations of murder. Goddess Ronnie wielding a sword and coming after me, the lowly worker ant. Crazy Ronnie sacrificing me to her devil, tying me up in her ball of psychedelic twine. Vegetarian Ronnie slathering me with mustard and making a sandwich. In the morning, my mind is tangled with a hundred things Crazy Ronnie said. Some outright ludicrous, others oddly insightful. I know she probably told me something important but I don't know what. I am just jolly to leave her den in one piece.
The next day, a logging truck slows and pulls alongside me. “Hey, Jap!” a man in the passenger seat shouts. Still chugging onward, I look and fluid gushes out the cab's window and gets me full in the
face. I have a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. Urine? Soda? A paper cup follows the water. They laugh when it bounces off my helmet. The passenger sticks his head out the window and pushes up the corners of his eyes, making “Chinese eyes” at me. They roar off, hooting their horn, laughing, whooping: “Yeah! Right on the head!”
I stand on the side of the road, drenched. The water is no big deal. I've had plenty of trash and pennies thrown at me from cars. I usually console myself that it is just one downside of bicycle touring, and that some people throw trash because I am a bicyclist and not because of the slant of my eyes.
Ten miles down the road, I catch up to my antagonists at a truck stop. The empty rig is parked outside the bar. I stand in the parking lot, fuming for ten minutes. Part of me wants to go inside and confront the truckers. Part of me wants to slash their tires. I want to feel my fists smacking into their fleshy red faces. Giving them the full force of my righteous fury. Realizing how badly I want to hurt them, I am glad I don't have the gun my brother Huy and his boyfriend had offered to loan me.
Before I left, Huy and his Vietnamese-American lover, Sean, took me to Sean's San Francisco flat to give me safety advice. Even in gay-friendly San Francisco, they never ventured out without a canister of pepper spray, clipping it on their belts like a pager. Sean laid out his arsenal on the coffee table and told me I could have my pick: a stun gun, a semiautomatic 9mm, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, or a .45 Dirty Harry. I said I already had a canister of pepper spray, similar to the ones that mailmen carry. In Mexico, I'd given more than one rabid dog sneezing fits.
“You're crazy, man,” Sean said, shaking his head. “Forget about it. You know how many rednecks there are between here and Seattle? You're Asian and who knows what sort of bigots you're going to come across. They might give you a beating for fun.”
He truly believed it. For him, a gay Asian male, his America was outlined by the boundaries of San Francisco and Berkeley. He grew up in San Francisco and having Asian faces around him had become an integral part of life. Like most Vietnamese who have settled in the
Bay Area or in Orange County, California, he couldn't imagine living in the Midwest or the South, anywhere impoverished of Asian faces. No, to a minority, any white face could be a face of violence—a quiet fear we live with.
Once, when my brother Tien and I were driving through Arizona, a pickup drew alongside us. The scene played out as it had countless times before, the driver and his passenger gave us the one-finger salute: “Go home!”
This time, Tien replied, “To California?”
The day after the trucker incident, I roll into Portland to see Patty. My visit coincides with the birthday of one of her friends. Patty and I cross town to pick up the birthday girl, Pocahontas, a spunky eighty-three-year-old wit-hollering, wine-guzzling, cigar-smoking, poetry-spewing artist. She lives in one of those nasty slum apartments they dole out to seniors a couple of breaths shy of croaking. Except Pocahontas isn't a geezer by a long shot. As soon as we pull up curbside, Pocahontas descends from her seventh-floor digs in as many seconds.
A dozen souls of the fringe congregate in the flat Patty shares with five women. We are all dirt poor. The three things we have, we have in plenty: wine, bread, and vegan spaghetti. I bring a jug of cheap wine from Oregon's Willamette Valley. A Merlot of some bad year. Several others show up with wines as well. All reds, and fairly nasty. By some psychic agreement it seems. We have Merlot, Cabernet, Chianti, and Sangiovese. It is a loud meal. Pocahontas starts a noodle-slurping contest and by the time it is over, everyone is splattered with marinara sauce.

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