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low because the water is too high. Cars are still on the
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·� exposed backs of freeways, stuck and waiting, useless and
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�IS) ridiculous. The man rows the boat between the twin towers of
� the Atlantic Richfield Company. Men in undone three piece suits
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and women in lace-colla·red dresses bang on the tinted window as
lf we pass by. The rower gets us past the skyscrapers and out into the
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E2 open where the air i heavi.er. I have to take off my shirt and twist it,
-s
-; but when f look up I catch Ba Nguyen staring at my chest and ribs.
l' J-ie sees how thin I am, how the skin stretches tight over my ribs and
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�
·�
� back on.
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how each one is spaced equally apart from one another. [ put my shirt
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The rower ties his junk to the pillar of a wooden pier. Ba Nguyen gets
out first and he helps me up. We walk hand in hand toward the other fisher­
men carrying baskets of catfish and buckets of eels from the boats to the backs
of awaiting trucks. The ground is wet and muddy and littered with fish guts.
Gulls and blackbirds waddle around eating off the ground.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"Home," Ba Nguyen says.
As we walk away from the river, away from the stench of fish and salt,
I tum to look behind me. The skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles stand in
water, and the houses and apartments have long drowned and died and are
now homes for eels and fishes and stray octopuses, squids, and sharks who
mistook the salt of the Mekong for the ocean. The air is brown over there,
brown and thick, and Dad is entangled in sleep.
We ride in the back of a motorized rick­
shaw. The driver winds through a shaded road lined
with tall Mai trees in full bloom. Their pedals catch the light of
the sun, and as we speed by the trees are ablaze. Mother is smiling
the whole time. I don't know when she appeared. The wind
loosens her hair she keeps in a bun. Thin strands wrap about her
face and neck, and across her lips and teeth, but Mother doesn't
clear her mouth of them.
We leave the tree-lined road and pull out into the open where
stretched on either side are rice paddies. The stalks are tall and each blade is
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