The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thuy

Author:Le Thi Diem Thuy [Thuy, Le Thi Diem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Coming of Age, Cultural, Fiction, Heritage, historical, literary
ISBN: 9780307792259
Google: 4KpUt3yl4W8C
Amazon: B004JHYS2G
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2011-04-12T23:00:00+00:00

My first memory of my father’s face is framed by the coiling barbed wire of a military camp in South Vietnam. My mother’s voice crosses through the wire. She is whispering his name and with this utterance, caressing him. Over and over, she calls him to her, “Anh Minh, Anh Minh.” His name becomes a tree she presses her body against. The calling blows around them like a warm breeze and when she utters her own name, it is the second half of a verse that begins with his. She drops her name like a pebble into a well. She wants to be engulfed by him, “Anh Minh, em My. Anh Minh, em My.”

The barbed wire gates open and she crosses through to him. She arrives warm, the slightest film of sweat on her bare arms. To his disbelieving eyes she says, “It’s me, it’s me.” Shy and formal and breathless, my parents are always meeting for the first time, savoring the sound of a name, marveling at the bones of the face cupped by the bones of the hand.

I trail behind them, the tip of their dragon’s tail. I am drawn along, like a silken banner on the body of a kite.

• • •

For a handful of pebbles and my father’s sharp profile, my mother left home and never truly returned. Picture a handful of pebbles. Imagine the casual way he tossed them at her as she was walking home from school with her girlfriends. He did this because he liked her. Boys are dumb that way, my mother told me. A handful of pebbles, to be thrown in anger, in desperation, in joy. My father threw them in love. Ma says they touched her like warm kisses, these pebbles he had been holding in the sun. Warm kisses on the curve of her back, sliding down the crook of her arm, grazing her ankles and landing around her feet in the hot sand.

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