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against the patio's ledge, catching her breath. Her eyes shut to slits and the lids
waver as she struggles to keep them open. An old man stands before us. His
clothes are wrinkled like the flesh around his neck.
He stands doubled over from old age. His hair is as white as the dress
shirt he wears. The sleeves are long; the cuffs cover his knuckles. Slowly, he
straightens up like a flower at dawn. His eyes are closed. He stretches the ten­
dons in his neck, and his balled fists slowly open. I can see the outline of his
ribs against his shirt. They stick out at places: poorly mended bones that
stretch the skin around the area.
He lifts his head and I see that his eyes are shut tight. Slowly, he pries
them open against the sun's brightness. He blinks repeatedly before he is able
to keep them open. The muscles beneath his eyes twitch as he squints at the tall
skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles. The freeways are knotted up by traffic
and the tops of buildings choke from the brown smog. The man's shoulders
slacken.
ther, Ba Nguyen."
"Long-Vanh." Mother calls from the patio floor. "This is your grandfa­
..
Because it has been years since he last slept in a bed, I have to share
mine with Ba Nguyen. We lie facing the window. Moonlight comes through
and casts the geckos' shadows against the walls. The geckos are out in large
numbers, and we watch as they wait and catch insects. Ba Nguyen places both
hands behind his head and lets out a sigh.
"They remind me of my mistresses,'' he says. "They wait and take."
I tum my head to look at him. I can barely make out his words. They
come out warbled, come from a mouth filled with crudely healed cuts and the
broken jaw that never realigned right. When he speaks, a comer of his mouth
stretches downward to hold the weight of syllables.
"That plump one there," he brings one hand from behind his head and
points at a gecko in the middle of the window screen. "That is Thanh. She was
always greedy. It was hard to keep her because she wanted everything: jewel­
ry, gambling money, jade, opium. I don't know why I kept her for as long as I
did. She was not that good a mistress. Always stealing from Ba Nguyen."
The bed slightly moves when he shakes his head. Thanh, the plump
gecko, scrambles for the mosquitoes; she is always moving. At times, she
crawls over another gecko to get at a mosquito.
"But that one there," he points at the lower comer of the screen. "You
see her? The little one?"
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