Chapter 4
When Hà and her daughter arrived at home, the little girl was already fast asleep on mommy’s shoulders. The young mother freshed her baby girl’s face with a wet towel, then tucked her in for a quick nap. Her peers were made to spend the afternoon on campus, but the little girl never had any patience for classes and teachers. She loathed school and was fiercely independent to the point of outcast. The current awkward arrangement was the best compromise Hà could come up with. It had been two months since Hà began to take time off from work to go pick her daughter up and fix their lunches herself. Government jobs did come with a certain sense of lax punctuality, mainly on account of the lack of effective supervision. Hà didn’t worry too much, as she knew she was carrying most of her team’s work anyways. When she would leave home this afternoon, her daughter would go and stay over at the neighbor’s for the night. Her husband would be home by evening, but Hà figured it was best not to make him feel that the responsibility was on him. Otherwise, she would have to hear about it for days. In the tiny hole in the wall that passed for the family’s kitchen, Hà was stewing the rest of last night’s pork ribs along with some celery and ginger. The propane heat lapped at the young mother when she bent in and smelled the soup.
Hà looked over her wardrobe and went immediately for her sharpest item, a deep red satin blazer. It was an expensive gift from a friend’s travel. She tried it with a blouse, another blouse, a cotton shirt, a woolen sweater, a pair of jeans, a pair of work trousers, this scarf, that scarf. In the end, all variations shared a common problem: the shiny jacket was far too big. Its shoulders were slumping on where her stringy upper arm were. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a barely grown person that could pass for a mere intern. She scoffed, holding up the blazer and desperately measuring it against different items. No avail. For some murky reason that Hà intentionally avoided delving into, she felt like a velvety red seemed only too appropriate for this particular night. The soup kettle rattled and gurgled thick foams, echoing from way down the hallway. Hà threw the red blazer into a corner of the cabinet, grunting. She opted for her all-time staple, which was wool sweater and jeans combo, wrapped in the most oversized and ridiculous windbreaker in incendiary pink and blue.
The young girl told herself that she didn’t care what the red American girl thought of her.
