I'm dragged into a hole, darker than the night around it, by two women. Only when one of the screams do I know who I am. I see their heads, black hair matted from the floor they sleep on. The air sharp with a chemical delirium as they jostle in the blur of the car's interior. Eyes still thick with sleep, I make the shapes: a headrest, a felt monkey the size of a thumb swinging from the rearview, a piece of metal, shining, then gone. The car peels out of the driveway, and I can tell, from the smell of acetone and nail polish, that it's your tan-and-rust Toyota. You and Lan are in the front, clamoring for something that won't show itself. The street-lights fling by, hitting your faces with the force of blows."He's gonna kill her, Ma. He's gonna do it this time," you say, breathless.
"We riding. We riding the helicopter fast." Lan is in her own mind, red and dense with obsession. "We riding where?" She clutches the flip-down mirror with both hands. I can tell by her voice that she is smiling, or at least gritting her teeth.
"He's gonna kill my sister, Mama." You sound like you're flailing down a river. "I know Carl. It's for real this time. You here me? Ma!"
Lan rocks side to side from the mirror, making whooshing sounds. "We getting out of here, huh? We gotta go far, Little Dog!" Outside the night surges by like sideways gravity. The green numbers on the dash read 3:04. Who put my hands in my face? The tires squeal at each turn. The streets are empty and it feels like a universe in here, an everything hurling through the cosmic dark while, in the front seat, the women who raised me are losing their minds. Through my fingers, the night is black construction paper. Only the frazzled heads of these two before me are clear, swaying.
"Don't worry, Mai." You're speaking to yourself now. Your face so close to the windshield the glass fogs a ring that spreads in equal measure to your words. "I'm coming. We're coming."
After a while we swerve down a street lined with Continentals. The car crawls, then stops in front of a grey clapboard town house. "Mai," you say, pulling the emergency brake. "He's gonna kill Mai."
Lan, who all this time had been shaking her head from side to side, stops, as if the words have finally touched a little button inside her. "What? Who kill who? Who die this time?"
"Both of you stay in the car!" You unbuckle your belt, leap out, and shuffle toward the house, the door left open behind you.
There's a story Lan would tell, of Lady Triệu, the mythical woman warrior who led an army of men and repelled the Chinese invasion of ancient Vietnam. I think of her, seeing you. How, as legend goes, armed with two swords, she'd fling her yard-long breasts over her shoulders and cut down the invaders by the dozens. How it was a woman who saved us.
"Who die now?" Lan swings around, her face, made stark by the overhead light, ripples with this new knowledge. "Who gonna die, Little Dog?" She flips her hand back and forth, as if opening a locked door, to indicate emptiness. "Somebody kill you? For what?"
But I'm not listening. I'm rolling down the window, arms burning with each turn on the handle. Cool November air slips in. My stomach grabs as I watch you mount the front steps, the nine-inch machete glinting in your hand. You knock on the door, shouting. "Come out, Carl," you say in Vietnamese. "Come out, you fucker! I'm taking her home for good. You can have the car, just give me my sister." At the word sister your voice cracks into a short, busted sob, before regaining control. You bash the door with the Machete's wooden butt.
The porch lights turn on, your pink nightgown suddenly pink under the fluorescent. The door opens.
You step back.
A man appears. He half lunges from the doorway as you back-pedal down the steps. The blade locked at your side, as if pinned in place.
"He has a gun," Lan whisper-shouts from the car, now lucid. "Rose! It's a shotgun. It shoots two eaters at once. They eat your lungs inside out. Little Dog, tell her."
Your hands float over your head, the metal clanks on the driveway. The man, huge, his shoulders sloped under a grey Yankees sweatshirt, steps up to you, says a few words through his teeth, then kicks the machete to the side. It disappears in the grass with a flash. You mumble something, make yourself small, cup your hands under your chin, the posture you take after receiving a tip at the salon. The man lowers his gun as you back away, shaking, towards the car.
"It's not worth it, Rose," Lan says, cupping her mouth with both hands. "You can't beat a gun. You just can't. Come Back, come back in the helicopter."
"Ma," I hear myself say, my voice cracking. "Ma, come on."
You edge slowly into the driver's seat, turn to me with a nauseated stare. There's a long silence. I think you're about to laugh, but then your eyes fill. So I turn away, to the man carefully eyeing us, hand on his hip, the gun clamped between his armpit, pointed at the ground, protecting his family.
When you start to talk, your voice is scraped out. I catch only parts of it. It's not Mai's house, you explain, fumbling with your keys. Or rather, Mai is no longer there. The boyfriend, Carl, who used to slam her head against the wall is no longer there. This is somebody else, white man with a shotgun and a bald head. It was a mistake, you're saying to Lan. An Accident.
"But Mai has not lived here for five years," Lan says with sudden tenderness. "Rose…" Although I don't see it, I can tell she's brushing your hair behind your ear. "Mai moved to Florida, remember? To open her own salon." Lan is poised, her shoulders relaxed, someone else has stepped inside her and started moving her limbs, her lips. "We go home. You need sleep, Rose".
The engine starts, the car lurches into a U-turn. As we pull away, from the porch, a boy, no older than I am, points a toy pistol at us. The gun jumps and his mouth making blasting noises. His father turns to yell at him. He shoots once, two more times. From the window of my helicopter, I look at him. I look him dead in the eyes and do what you do. I refuse to die.