SAME SAME BUT DIFFERENT

Everyday after school, I would watch Minh kick out the lamp above Old Lady Xuong's.

Saigon was divided into twelve districts and we lived in Cho Lon District, on the edge of Chinatown, where plaster and gray concrete ran together and homes and flats were packed wall to wall. Uncountable little alleys and walkways cut into this solidity. Living on my block was like living in a rat's maze. There was no plan to the tangle. Old Lady Xuong lived in a shanty the size of a minibus, buttressed against the end of our narrow row of buildings. Her walls were faded plywood boards patched together in a crazy quilt. The fourth wall was the concrete of the house her little shack leaned against. Her roof was a single ruffled piece of rusted metal, her door nothing more than a yellow length of draped cloth. Above it hung an old battered aluminum cone without a bulb, barely higher than our heads.

In his elementary school uniform of white dress shirt and blue kerchief, Minh would strike a fierce pose as we turned the corner into our alley. My sister and I and the rest of our small group would giggle and run ahead of him. Staring down the dusty lane, we'd be the lookout for concerned adults or Old Lady Xuong herself. Minh would crouch and form tiger, snake, or monkey, sweeping the air with open palms, adding his own swishing sound effects. He'd scrunch his flat nose, flaring his nostrils wide. The jet-black bangs of his tidy haircut danced on his forehead.

"Monkey boy," we cried. "Look at monkey boy go!" He mustered his energies with a yelp and ran toward the light. A meter before the doorway, he would leap, his right leg extending until perpendicular to the ground, his knee in his face, his foot above his head. The light would clatter loudly, another pockmark in its battered surface, and all of us would scream and laugh. As soon as he hit the ground, he was off and down the alley before Old Lady Xuong could respond. Her hearing was failing, and many times she didn't even notice. We still ran, better to be safe. There was always the chance she might remember a face.

Mother told me Old Lady Xuong's son had died before I was born. Nestled in the middle of the block, our place was barely bigger than hers but was a real house. We had two rooms and our walls were brick and plaster, our roof ceramic tile. Mother always greeted Ba Xuong loudly and with a large smile when we passed her sitting in her doorstep. Mother would make my sister and I clasp our arms across our chests and politely recite, "Hello ma'am," as we bowed in respect. Ba Xuong always graciously returned mother's smile. We kids got wrinkled nods in return. Years ago, Mother reminded us, before I was even an idea, the poor lady didn't have a proper roof over her head. It was nothing but cans salvaged out of the garbage and gutters, pounded flat and joined together into sheets of brightly colored shingles, the red of sardine tins and Coca Cola.

She and her husband were Northerners who had migrated south after Ho Chi Minh took Hanoi. They shuffled between Hue and Da Nang before deciding on Saigon like millions of others. Her husband built their little shelter and promptly died, leaving her with a young boy. In Hanoi, her husband had been a well-known tailor, and cottons of all colors, rolls of expensive silks, traditional ao dais, and racks of western clothes had filled their shop. He died in the South of a broken heart, mother said. She assured us this was a common thing back in those days. Many people didn't have more than a single living in them.

Ba Xuong raised her boy alone. She wasn't a great tailor like her husband, but the neighbors pitied her and brought her easy stitching they could have done at home. Her son was the same age as my mother, and they'd been friends growing up. He was a good boy, handsome and smart, and especially tall for a Vietnamese man, my mother would say.

He quit school at fifteen because they could no longer afford the tuition and worked for three years cutting steel and glass in a window frame factory. He gave every piaster to his mother and with these savings he bought a steel roof and his mother a real bed, with an ebony frame and double mattress. Right after that he was drafted. Not having the money to buy an easy conscription, he was sent straight to the front and was killed somewhere near Hue. Mother would recite this part of the story with a frozen face, no matter how descriptive and expressive she was before. Her lips would barely move, and her countenance would soften as if she were touching something with her eyes. But then she'd catch a different wind, and sharpen back into a dictatorial stance, and put us to work or send us out to play.

It was a sad story I found hard to connect to the Old Lady Xuong I knew. The way she would squat in the alleyway giving critical looks to everyone who passed, her beady eyes dulled with film. How she would violently shuffle out of her shack after Minh and scowl toothlessly, berating us little devils in her dusty voice as we streaked around the corner laughing. I couldn't imagine her as a mother mixing equal amounts of firmness and flexibility. My mother would explain that people from the central regions of Vietnam possessed cheap and selfish characters and Northerners were rigid and cold. I saw Ba Xuong as the epitome of the Northerner, a gaunt skeleton covered in rags. How do you give birth through bones, or hold a baby with frozen fingers? Mother also complained that Southerners, especially Saigonese, were spendthrifts, the reason they were always broke. I didn't know if it was better to covet and be rich, or poor yet always able to play with your friends.

Mother had a lunch stand near An Dong market, so she ran into all types. She would be up at dawn and already to the butcher's and back before I woke. I'd open my eyes to the smell of broiling pork chops marinated in lemon grass and ginger, and steamed egg cake pungent with bits of dried fish and vermicelli. My baby sister and I would eat a pork chop, egg, and broken rice, the crispy rice at the bottom of the steamer, for breakfast every morning.

My father had left when mother was pregnant with my sister, Thuy, and I was only two. Mom said he knew she was carrying another girl, and he couldn't live with the shame of having delinquent sperm. "Was it so terrible being a girl?" I thought. "Would he have stayed if I were a boy?" Mother would laugh bitterly and explain he was just a bastard son of a bitch, a wife beater, and an alcoholic. We were better off without him. That made me feel better, and I would trudge off to school hand in hand with my little sister, singing French nursery rhymes.

Mother would lift her large pot of steaming rice with the broiled chops and egg cake kept warm under the lid, and haul herself to her corner several blocks away.

***

Tet, the Lunar New Year, teases from three days away. Mother squats on the floor in the little room. Light from the doorway fills the space, and though the walls are tainted with splotches of gray-green where the paint has peeled or been discolored by humidity, everything is clean. I know. I sweep and mop every inch of our house daily. The tile is saffron stone, and the edges of the room are uneven where the floor and the walls disagree on where to meet. She sits on her haunches beside a large metal pot nestled over a ceramic brazier. She fans the coals with a magazine, and they pulsate orange and red with every sweep of her hand. Steam streams out in alternating jets from under the lid.

I like watching mother cook. On spread-out sheets of newspaper are full plates of sliced pork with the belly fat and skin still sticking, brown beans with little black eyes in their creases mixed with special spices, and diced onions. She takes a square metal pan and crisscrosses two lengths of canvas string snipped off a hairy ball. She molds two large leaves into the corners over the twine and takes a large scoop of glutinous rice and fills the green lined pan. In the middle go strips of side pork, beans, and onions. She folds the leaves over like the top of a box, ties it up tight, and lifts the green bound package out of the pan. She sets it aside to be steamed later, and starts on another.

Minh's father walks into the room. He is short, shirtless, and barefoot. His hair is floppy black, with a greasy shine reflecting his dark caramel body. He has a broad, flat nose like his son, which doesn't fit well on his skinny face. Mother says he is stick skinny because he smokes and drinks so much he forgets to eat. He is jovial and smoking a cigarette, of course.

"Hey, sister," he says, "how about some of them rice cakes? Four . . . no, make that five. More for prosperity." He has lived on this block all his life, just like my mother.

She doesn't stop working or look up. "You have money?" she asks.

Minh's father looks at her in disbelief. "I'll pay for your cakes, sister. Don't worry, I don't need any new debts this New Year, especially over cakes." He laughs, and mother forces a smile. She tells me to take them from the counter where a stack stands cooling. I lift three square-bound parcels, and they are dense and heavy. I cannot pick up the other two.

"Here niece, let uncle take those." He takes all five and pretends to grab three more from the counter, glancing at mother sideways. She looks up out of the corner of her eye and glares. He laughs. "Just playing." He is thin but strong. He holds the cakes under one arm while his other hand reaches into the pocket of his brown slacks and hands me some piasters. I count them and give them to mother, who slides them into a pocket in her pajamas.

"Thank you, brother," she says.

"Hey, these are so good, I might be back for more. Almost as good as your mother made them." He winks and walks out.

Mother tells me, "He's always been like that. Even after five children, he's still like a child himself. No responsibility, and he doesn't care about anything. Remember, people who laugh easy growl easy as well."

I wonder what it would be like to have a father who growls like a dog. Would he bark too?

"Take two rice cakes and give them to Old Lady Xuong," mother says.

"Who?"

"You heard me. Go, and hurry back and help me with this batch. It's almost done cooking."

I don't argue but I wait.

Old Lady Xuong's hands are no longer nimble enough to sew. The neighborhood sparingly supports her; a bowl of rice here, a fish there. Soup on some days. She eats well actually, if variety makes up for abundance. I've taken bowls and plates of food to her many times, but it's not my favorite errand. Maybe if I stand around long enough mother will forget.

"Did you hear me?" she asks, growing impatient in the heat of the kitchen.

I take two cakes, in silence, and trudge out into the alley. The neighbor girl plays with a new puppy. I stop and ask with my eyes if I can touch, but she picks her plaything up and spanks it for sniffing a lump of turd on the ground, and walks away. I hear a young boy yelling soldier commands somewhere, mouthed gunfire, and then laughter. In a doorway, two middle-aged women sit on the step in loose pajamas, complaining about a foolish daughter who writes love letters to a boy she has seen yet never talked to.

When I get to her doorway I announce myself through the thin yellow cloth. "Ba Xuong, come eat." Maybe she's not home and I can just set it in the doorway. But then, I hear her rasp.

"Come in, come in." She usually comes out, so I don't know what to do. It's almost the New Year, and I must be on my best behavior. I push the drape aside with my full hands, and enter with hesitation.

The door flutters down over the opening. I watch it fall. All but a crack underneath is covered, and I can see the alley, rough and gray through the finger's width. I turn and almost bump into the bed.

The black frame engulfs half the room. One side is pressed against a wall, and the length barely squeezes between the other two. A thin band of ebony wood runs three quarters of the way around a square mattress dressed in pink and orange sheets. The head of the bed is a black cupboard with sliding glass panels, and several old books with cracked spines and faded covers wait behind the glass. Two fluffed-up pillows in the same bright dress lie waiting for guests. There is a single window covered in greasy newspaper, allowing only a lifeless yellow light into the room. A single red candle burns, and the bedding is so brilliant the mattress appears to be floating in the shadows.

She startles me, her breath on my neck. She peers into my face. I hope she doesn't recognize me as a kung-fu fanatic. Right beside me, she is taller than I realize. Inside her own space she stands straight without the bent-back humility of a pauper surviving on charity. The muscles in her face are motionless. Moles prop up sagging brown skin.

"Come, child. Hand me the cakes." Their weight drops her hands, but she recovers and turns to the altar, a plain stand made of three grainy boards. A clear drinking glass filled with uncooked rice is planted with bunched red stalks of burnt incense sticks. Behind that is a framed picture of the Virgin Mary holding Baby Jesus with a photo of a young man on either side.

One must be her son. I know this because the photo is glossy as if taken yesterday, the lines of his face still crisp and clear. Barely older than me, he is cute, almost girly, with a shifty smile on his lips. The other is her husband. He is looking straight ahead with severe eyes. His nose dominates his face and makes him look hawkish and calculating. Rather than the sharp black and white of her son's picture, her husband's photo is in faded browns and yellows. Frozen in time, he is not much older than his boy. She places the cakes carefully on a plate in front of the incense, one green package on top of the other, a cube of two layers.

"Here you go, something for you to eat. A nice present from a friend. Delicious too. I know because I've eaten them every Tet for many years."

I don't know if she speaks to her dead husband, her son, or God. Her head is bent over the plate and she pats the cakes as if to console them. A fan wheezes from the corner, barely clicking its blades. A white extension cord runs out through a small hole punched in a corner of the paper window. On shelves sit cans of sardines. Painted silver fish twist on compact red cylinders. Nothing but dusty rows of sardines in tomato sauce.

"What's your name?" she asks.

At first I don't realize she is talking to me. I cannot see her lips, she is still fussing with the altar. So she asks again, "What's your name?"

"My name is Mai, ma'am," I answer politely. My palms and feet sweat uncontrollably.

"Mai? What a beautiful name. Mai is flower, do you know that?"

I shake my head yes, though she cannot see. My neck is frozen and barely responds.

"And you are a flower. Yes you are. A very pretty flower too," she says merrily.

Who is this woman? Is she a ghost? The shadow of Old Lady Xuong? Is she attempting to enchant me in her witch's hut? The air is heavy with the smell of incense and burning wax.

"I remember when your mother was a little girl," she says, still facing away. "She used to play right here with my son Minh." Was her son's name Minh? I know three other Minhs at school besides my neighbor. But the familiarity shocks me. She bends and gazes closely at the picture of her son. Then she turns around.

"Oh Trang," she says lightheartedly. My mother's name is Trang, though I have never once said the name myself. "Don't be sad, Minh will be back soon. You'll soon have someone to play with again." She stares at me and I'm startled her eyes are so clear. There is no shade of haze covering her pupils, and their twinkle is like the reflection of moonlight off the surface of water. She is within a memory tempered by something real. She frightens me because she believes she is actually looking at the moon.

I whisper, "No ma'am. I'm not my mother. I'm Mai."

She reaches over and touches my face with her hand. Though it is dry and I can feel the lines in her palm across my flushed cheek, her hand is warm, even hot, not at all like I imagined her touch would be.

"I am glad you and my Minh are friends. When the war is over, your mother and I will talk, don't worry." And she smiles, an unbridled smile, and she laughs. A normal laugh, like that of any of the old women who sit on their doorsteps in the alley, sputters from deep in her chest. She has teeth only in the back of her mouth, and her gums are pink and red, spotted with white.

"Thank you for the cakes. Tell your mother thank you. You better go home now. It's almost the New Year. There is a lot of cleaning and housekeeping you still need to do."

I don't know where she thinks she is or who she thinks she is talking to, but I take this as my liberty and run out the door.

My sons are very different. Same same, but different. There's no mistaking that they are brothers, but one is big and the other small. One loud and funny, the other quiet and careful.

Michael's voice breaks when he talks. He just turned thirteen, and I know it's natural for boys going through adolescence. Mr. Walker, his swim coach, says Michael is naturally suited to the breaststroke because he has bowed legs. Most Asians do, he says. My son has frog legs. Maybe that's why he croaks when he speaks. John's voice never cracked. At sixteen, he's tall for his age, and I worry that he doesn't talk enough. Unlike Mike, who's easily excited. When stirred up, he hops in place, chattering a mile a minute, and flaps his arms from his elbows like a hummingbird.

My oldest is a reader. He spends hours with his books while the rest of us watch television, or his brother obsesses over his video games. At his age I read too. Anything I could get my hands on. My favorites were ghost stories, romances, and kung-fu fables. I lost myself in other worlds, longing to be that listless princess surrounded by servants, nibbling on fruit presented on golden trays, or a goddess disguised as a prostitute dispensing justice to lecherous officials with a silver sword, and mother would have to fetch me back with the slap of chopsticks or the handle of the feather duster. I understood. She needed my help. Though I would never do what my mother did and take away John's books. Here it is good for him to read. He is a smart boy and getting smarter. He is quiet because he thinks a lot.

Love changes. My sons grow older and don't need me as much. I used to cool hot porridge in my mouth, absorbing the bite of steam before feeding them from the same spoon. They used to clamor for their mother's spit. Now even a kiss or a hug must be coerced, and the guilt I never thought I would use as my own mother did with me has become one of my few remaining tools of influence. I put them on the spot, ask them, "Do you love your mother?" They shuffle their feet and look away, and tell me, "Of course,"or "You know I do." Anything but yes. At one time they were a part of me. My blood made their blood. Their weight in my belly was an anchor reminding me of my husband's love. After my sons were born, he wasn't so important anymore. The suffering I endured to give them birth indebted them to me for a lifetime. Or so I thought.

Their father lives in Olympia now, not too far away. His new wife is from Hue and divorced as well. Her kids are still in Vietnam. The boys see him every other weekend, and though they love him and their father is an even-tempered man, they are always happy to see me Sunday nights, and that gives me a satisfying feeling.

It is a minute past midnight and the Year of the Monkey has arrived. Our bellies full of food, I take my sister's hand and run into the alley amid the starting guns of firecrackers. Around the corner we go, passing open doorways where other families sit and eat on floors scrubbed clean to appease the household god. We follow the whiffs and crackling of gunpowder to a minor square where four alleyways meet. Other children and adults are here as well.

At each corner, from the eaves of four rooftops, the families have hung long strings of red fireworks. Two are lit and mini-storms of bangs and flying paper snap their way up the lines. The noise is deafening. My sister and I stand with open mouths, eyes, and ears. The air moves, shifting the growing layers of smoke as ghosts and demons flee from the vibrations. Minh is here running in a circle, kicking the fluff of spent fireworks. My sister stands in place with hands over her little ears, cautiously smiling and looking up at me for reassurance.

The popping slows as the two strings spend themselves, but a teenager lights one of the remaining strings and the level rises again. As he walks to light the fourth string, the newly lit one falls to the ground, the knot undone. It coils on the ground like a jerking, biting snake, coughing fiery puffs. Kids scream and step away laughing, but Minh runs up and bravely grabs it by the tail and swings it around his head. He is a warrior, whipping the air with his three-sectioned staff, cracking imaginary adversaries with loud and painful smacks. As the string burns, firecrackers fly all around, exploding in midair as they strike the ground, or roll and blow up under dancing feet. One lands under Minh's little brother and the bang scares him and he cries and runs off. Everyone gives Minh room and he is lost in his exhibition. A whirling, snapping dragon in the clouds. He tosses the remaining foot or so into a corner to finish itself off. The silence rings in my ears. One strip still hangs, unlit. The boy with the lighter is backed against the wall to avoid the flying firecrackers. Minh's father storms into the opening followed by his wet-faced brother.

"Mother fuck! What do you think you're doing?" His father asks. He is shirtless and his face is glowing red. He grabs Minh by the arm and jerks him so hard the boy falls to his knees. "Stand up!"

"Crazy kid," an adult says. "Could have hurt someone."

Minh is scared and about to cry. His brother has stopped crying and stands with his mouth open. Streaks of soot have condensed on his wet cheeks.

Minh's father jerks his son's arm hard, and I'm surprised it isn't ripped off his body.

"Mother fuck, mother fuck," he keeps saying over and over again. "What are you? A VC now? Some kind of terrorist? You wanna run around and blow shit up?" He smacks Minh in the back of the head with his free hand. "You a fighter? Like in those stupid movies you waste your time watching? Is kung-fu going to pay the bills? Mother fuck. Here's some kung fu for you." He smacks him again and Minh is crying silently. His jaw is set but tears line his face.

"That's enough," a lady says. In response to this, he slaps his son again.

"That's enough," the same lady repeats. "Don't hit the boy so much. It's the New Year. He's learned his lesson."

Minh's father tells the woman to mind her own business, and in defiance strikes Minh hard against the ear. Minh's nose is bleeding. My sister grips my hand hard and leans against my leg. I can barely breathe with all the smoke. For the first time in my life, I am glad I don't have a daddy.

"He's ruining his whole year," someone says.

"Go home, man. You're drunk. Go have another."

"You shouldn't punish your children on New Year's Day."

"Yeah, wait a few days and then spank them," a drunken male voice titters.

"You can only teach a child through love." This last voice quiets the crowd, and freezes Minh's father in mid-strike. Old Lady Xuong stands in front of him, straight backed, and shaking a finger in disapproval. "I never once had to hit my son, and he grew up to be a fine person."

"What do you know, you crazy old bitch?" Minh's father asks.

The crowd gasps and I am in shock to hear an elder spoken to like this. He has frozen her in mid-speech, her finger still in the air, and just as he is about to open his mouth again, my mother steps out of the crowd and between them. She is taller than both. Her usually bunned-up hair is loose and flows black down her back.

"Take your son home, younger brother. Go home." I've heard that tone many times, and it leaves no room for argument. He looks as if he is going to open his mouth again. "Now, younger brother." The structure of age and respect has been reestablished.

"Come on, boy," he says, turning and jerking Minh home. The little brother follows hesitantly.

Mother puts an arm around a stooped Old Lady Xuong and guides her down the alley toward home. Minh's brother returns to the square, a forgetful smile on his ashed face. The show is over, and the teenager lights the last string and the thunder starts again.

Before mother passed away, she sent me many letters from Vietnam. Old Lady Xuong died right after the war, still waiting for her boy to return. She was found lying in her magnificent bed perfectly straight and still, hands crossed on her chest, not a wrinkle in the covers. People in the neighborhood pooled their money to have a proper funeral, and being as she lived a very long life, hired a band and acrobats to celebrate. She had no relatives, so mother and neighbor ladies played the roles of honored family members in the ceremony. Mother sent photos of the funeral. Four men dressed in shoddy, ill-fitting blue military uniforms play brass horns. In another picture, one of the band members is balancing a table atop his chin. Faces are solemn, not happy but not particularly grieved either. There are only two photos with any discernible emotions in them. In one, my mother cries as she bows in obeisance before the altar. She looks much older than I remember her. The other is of the dinner party, and several men I don't recognize are beet-faced and laughing.

My sister lives in San Jose, married to a computer engineer. They have three children, all girls. She told me recently that they have been talking about trying one more time, for a boy. I have two boys of my own, and I kid her that they're not worth the trouble. We both agree that we spoil our kids, but what can we do? We have so much more to give than our mother did. My sister tells me about her problems. She is content, if not always happy. It is a peaceful yet challenging existence, the kind of life worth living.

Half a world and years away from what is always on my mind, I can close my eyes and still see Old Lady Xuong standing in her doorway, the yellow cloth draped over her shoulder like the raiment of a monk. Her aged eyes search. I see a little girl standing alone across the alley dressed in a white blouse, clean lapels like white pistils under a blue kerchief petal, formless royal blue slacks. She hasn't fled with the rest of the children and is standing her ground. The patter of small sandals ricochets against gray walls and fades away.

From then to now, I realize, I have been in a foreign place. Old Lady Xuong takes her hand and touches her heart, and then shows me her open palm. She smiles her toothless grin, nodding her head, and I see, even as a little girl, I have the same secret smile on my face.