Pay It Forward

Photo by Catt Liu on Unsplash

Today is Tuesday, and like Monday and Thursday, Mai comes home right after school to help her mother out. Thiên, the mother, has a job babysitting Darren, Mrs. Morrissey’s one-year-old son, while also looking after Mai’s fifteen-month-old brother. Ever since Mai’s father landed a full-time job at the nearby auto plant, her mom has been home all by herself during the day, saddled with childcare duties and many other chores that must be done before her father comes home.

Thiên depends on Mai for everything. The family has only been in Rosemont for nine months since leaving Camp Pendleton in June 1975, and while Mai’s English is not much better than her mother’s, being the eldest, she is expected to be Thiên’s translator and problem-solver during most days.

Thiên has been feeding Darren when Mai arrives home. A classic Gerber baby with milky skin and apple cheeks, today Darren wears a sailor outfit and, as usual, his high-top training shoes. Kelly Morrissey, who sports a trench coat and works for a local travel agency, pays Thiên two dollars an hour, 25 hours a week, to take care of Darren. She tells Thiên that under no circumstances should Thiên remove Darren’s shoes, even when he’s bathed or put down for a nap. Minh, Mai’s father, is mystified by Mrs. Morrissey’s directive. Americans are such a strange breed! He says Darren must be a changeling with demon feet, but Thiên cuts him off, saying she respects Kelly’s request and it’s not good for Minh to joke like that. Minh was a well-known writer in Vietnam, and Thiên often complains she doesn’t know when her husband is serious and when he’s fibbing.

Mai wants to be a writer like her father. The library at school is her sanctuary, and she resents the days that she must rush home after school to help her mother. She has just discovered a shelf labeled “Vietnam/Southeast Asia” at the library, stocked with titles like The Quiet American, The Ugly American, Advise and Consent, Where is Vietnam: American Poets Respond to the War, and Fire in the Lake. There is so much to learn: the reasons for her family’s arrival in the U.S., and the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. At thirteen, Mai wants to squeeze the past, present, and future into a shimmering ball of infinite knowledge. But there’s still so much in the here and now—a sludge-filled impasse—that she must learn to overcome.

Thiên tells Mai their kitchen sink doesn’t drain, and since dinner must be prepared soon and the dishes must be washed later, Mai needs to call a thợ ống nước ASAP. Barely home and Mai is already stressed out. She consults her well-worn, violet-cover Vietnamese-English dictionary—a 1968 edition by Nguyễn văn Khôn that she had tucked into her backpack moments before her family taxied to Tân Sơn Nhứt Airport back in April of last year. Thợ ống nước is plumber in English. Mai opens the yellow pages, locates J.R. Plumbers and dials. But when a female voice answers on the other end, Mai panics. She doesn’t have enough words to explain the problem, “Erm … a plumber please, kitchen sink don’t work.” A stream of rapid words assaults her from the other end: something something busy something something tomorrow morning. Mai enunciates, “No, no, today, today must come.” But before she can explain further, the woman hangs up.

Thiên looks up from the dining table, hopeful. Darren has finished eating, but now his face, ears, and hair are streaked bright orange and mucus green with Gerber’s Harvest Peas and Turkey Dinner. Mrs. Morrissey says it’s totally fine for Darren to look like a savage during mealtime. Thiên would always bathe Darren with Johnson’s strawberry baby wash, still with his shoes on, after every meal. Meanwhile, Mai’s brother Toàn, who doesn’t talk yet but eats normal food like the rest of the family, would look on, his thumb in his mouth. Mai senses that Toàn is jealous of Darren and doesn’t understand why the giant white baby is taking up most of his mother’s attention. Sucking hard on his red, callused thumb is Toàn’s only sign of stress.

Mai doesn’t know what to tell Thiên about her phone call to J.R. Plumbers. Their new life in this Virginia suburbs reminds her of conger eels—squirmy and slippery moments that are hard to grasp. From what she has seen on nightly TV shows, American-style disasters always seem so emphatic, with things exploding or people yelling at each other, but here, in this house, she experiences the daily unknowable in restive silence. Each member of her family is walled off in mutual protection, as if the rice-scented, fish-sauce-infused walls of their home are cloistering each from the others as well as the rest of the world.

There’s a knock on the door. Thiên claps her hands saying it must be the plumber. Mai hesitates. She comes to the door and opens just a crack. An older man in a fedora and three-piece wool suit stands on the front stoop, a large metal suitcase in his right hand. He smiles and says hello. With plump Darren on her hip, Thiên marches to the door, pulling it wide open, saying in Vietnamese she’s so grateful the plumber came so soon. The man seems confused but keeps smiling as he steps inside. He sets his hat on the plastic-covered sofa, his suitcase down by the shag carpet, and looks from Thiên to Mai.

After a moment he extends his hand toward Thiên, “My name is Paul. Very nice to meet you.”

Thiên shakes Paul’s hand but looks over to Mai. The daughter feels she has no choice but to go along with the script, “The sink, can you fix? Water no drain.”

Paul grins blankly, but very quickly he responds, “Of course. The sink. Let’s take a look.” He follows Mai briskly into the kitchen. Thiên wonders aloud why the man doesn’t bring his suitcase with him to fix the sink but Mai ignores her. There’s so much going on she can barely breathe.

Paul checks the sink, tells Mai to boil some water in a kettle, then points to the pantry and asks if she has any vinegar and baking soda. He quickly dissolves the baking soda in the vinegar and pours the mixture down the drain, following this procedure with boiling water. After a short while, he turns on the sink faucet. The gurgling sound of water flowing unobstructed down the P-trap confirms that Paul has fixed the problem. He strides into the living room, picks up his hat and suitcase, and takes leave by tipping his hat lightly to mother and daughter. Thiên tries to offer Paul payment but he gives her a quick wave, saying as he exits, “Pay it forward!” Neither mother nor daughter understands what he means.

Afterward Mai confesses to Thiên her failed phone call to J.R. Plumbers and her suspicion that Paul is a traveling salesman who happens to show up at the very moment when they need a plumber. Mai has no idea what Paul sells in his suitcase.

Three years later when Mai has to read Death of a Salesman for junior English class, she conflates Paul with Willy Loman, thinking if Willy Loman ever meets a refugee family during his lonely travels along the East Coast, then the ending of the play may be quite different.


Thuy Dinh is a bilingual critic, literary translator, coeditor of the Vietnamese webzine Da Màu, and editor-at-large for the Vietnamese Diaspora at Asymptote Journal. Her essays and poetry translations have appeared in AsymptoteManoaMichigan Quarterly ReviewNBC ThinkNPR BooksPrairie Schooner, Rain Taxi Review of BooksAmerasia, among others. Green Rice, her co-translation of the selected poetry of Lâm Thị Mỹ Dạ, was published by Curbstone Press in 2005, and nominated for the Kiriyama Prize in 2006.

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