ACT 2, SCENE 11

There were multiple constants Jackie associated with small, family-owned Vietnamese businesses: red signs with short phrases in gold characters, giant fridge in the back room with canned drinks, and the single restroom that simultaneously functioned as a storage closet. 

Bonus points if it was a phở restaurant with the food in the name followed by series of numbers. Phở 75. A reference to the year—1975–Saigon fell. Phở 888. Eight, the lucky number. Some were distinguished by the street number or owner's year of birth. 

Jackie slid into the chair across from her mother and opened through the menu, eyes skimming through the list of dishes. It was distinctly absent of the typical accent marks. Her eyes fell upon 'pho rare steak and brisket.' The menus typically noted the Vietnamese names with a list of ingredients in English. The phrase tasted wrong on her tongue.   

Má's mouth twisted downward in distaste while Jackie giggled. "Bet they did this to appeal to all the white people."

Being caught up with play rehearsals and surviving school, it was rare she spent one-on-one time with her mother. On a rare free day, she'd asked to check out the new restaurant in town. So far, it was somewhat of a let-down but Jackie was interested in tasting the food before making a final judgement. 

She flipped toward the end of the menu. She rarely ever ordered phở, the popular vermicelli noodle soup, finding other dishes more interesting. Phở was overrated. The most basic of Vietnamese dishes. Jackie preferred bún bò Huế, a spicy beef soup with the same vermicelli noodles and pig blood curds. 

"What's wrong?" Her mother's voice sliced through the cheerful chatter of gathered families and clinking chopsticks.

Jackie's head snapped up. Her fingers tightened on the plastic-covered menu pages. "What do you mean?"

She picked at a hangnail, tugging at the loose white sliver of skin. It stung every time she touched it, but still she did in a desperate mission to rip it off. If she dug it out, cleaved it from here, maybe it would stop. Her nails pierced her skin and her finger stung. A tiny tricker of blood ran down her hand. The persistent hangnail remained. 

"Something's wrong, isn't it?" Má's tone was gentle. Jackie swallowed the rising lump in her throat. She'd plastered on a bright smile for days. Putting on a show that nothing was wrong. Fake it till you make it. 

In a way, she was fulfilling her actress dreams. 

Her mother's dark eyes, creased with the brushstrokes of age, steadily bore into her. Not like Aarav's with a fiery intensity, but they saw through her all the same. Jackie chewed her lip and looked away. 

"I don't know how to fix it." 

Liam had used her. He'd left her. Thrown her away and forgotten about her.

Just like Ba. 

Would Liam immerse himself with another prettier and more interesting girl? The same way her father found a new family? But Jackie refused to bring him up in front of her mother. 

Hands reached out to clasp hers. Hands weathered with age and labor with chipped red nails. Matching jade bracelets circled their left wrists. Old superstition claimed them as magical, protecting the wearers from evil and illness and bringing good fortune. They were traditionally passed down from mother to daughter and meant to never be taken off.

Jackie had never met her maternal grandmother but the deep green bangles linked them together all the same. She closed her eyes while Má ran a thumb over her knuckles, soothing the tension from her body. 

Her mother never said I love you. Love was demonstrated through acts of service whether it was Má cutting up fruit or trying to help with homework. And Jackie knew then that this was another act. The way Má pressed her hand to hers, trying to absorb the pain, a wayward attempt to fix it. 

. . .

Aside from a couple mishaps in rehearsals that set her on edge, the first month back at school passed rather uneventfully. Seeing Liam everyday after school became more tolerable. Jackie wasn't fond of it, but what more could she do? The month passed by uneventfully with her consistently avoiding Madison after what she said. Soon enough, January turned into February and it soon came time for lunar new year.

The first day of Tết, the lunar new year, Jackie was given a warning that how she acted would foretell the rest of the year. Her aunt was the superstitious type. Má believed in better "safe than sorry." It was no surprise where she'd gotten her superstitious nature from. When the doorbell rang, she opened the door a couple inches and peered through the crack. 

"Who is it? Remember, we can't let just anyone in," said Má.

"Just Aarav."

"Your rich friend from school with the silver Lexus?"

"That's him."

"Oh, then he'll be a perfect first visitor. He's a year older than you so his zodiac is the horse, isn't it? It complements your stepfather's tiger." 

"He's over for math tutoring."

"God, you're still struggling with geometry?" Madison snarked from the stairs. 

"I'm getting better," Jackie snapped.

"Whatever." Madison rolled her eyes. 

Jackie opened the door to me Aarav in. "Sorry about that. There's a superstition that the first visitor of the new year determines the household's fortune for the rest of the new year. You're rich, so you're now a sign of prosperity. And your zodiac works with my stepdad's."

"I'm like a lucky charm now?" Aarav adjusted his glasses. 

"Hope you don't mind."

"Well, better good fortune than bad."  He slipped off his shoes and set them neatly outside the door before heading in. "Seeing as I'm helping you with math, maybe I'll also bring academic success."

"I'll need as much as that as I can get."

Jackie headed to the living room where her mother was hanging up red paper lanterns and yellow flowers. Carefully, she leaned a nón lá—a traditional hat—against the wall then delicately picked up an ornament made of red firecrackers attached to a crimson string. The vibrant color contrasted against the neutral tones of the conical hat woven of bamboo and palm leaves.

"Aren't those dangerous?" Aarav raised his eyebrows at the firecrackers.

"They're just for show so they won't go off," Jackie explained. Grasping the end of his sleeve, she tugged him to her room. "Let's just get this math chapter out the way."

"Shouldn't you be helping?"

"It'd be better if I stayed out the way. I have a habit of breaking things which isn't exactly good luck."

"So this celebration is…?"

"Lunar New Year. Mainly called Chinese New Year, but that's technically wrong since multiple countries celebrate it. It's called Tết in Vietnamese."

"Intriguing. Is it a religious holiday?"

"Not necessarily, though I'm sure different religions have different customs."

"What exactly do you do?" 

"Mainly eat food and hang out with family."

"Do Vietnamese have red envelopes too?" Aarav asked.

"Lì xì. Yeah, that's also a tradition." Jackie sat cross-legged on her bed and opened the geometry textbook. "We're on this chapter, right?" 

"Circles, yes. Do you want to go over the lesson first or go straight to the practice problems?"

"It'd help if you explain it first. I'm too dumb to understand math."

"You're not dumb. You're just irresponsible and have a short attention span."

She nudged him with her foot. "Hey, that's not completely true. I've been getting better at paying attention in class. In fact, I've been on my phone less." 

"So you went from zoning out on 90% of class to 50%."

"Stop being a buzzkill!" She grabbed a panda pillowpet and tossed it at his face, which he promptly dodged. She reached for another to throw at him, but Aarav grabbed her wrist and tugged it away. 

"Okay, time to focus. You just proved my point about the attention span." Despite his serious tone, there was a glimmer of amusement in his dark eyes. 

Thirty minutes in and the concepts were slowly starting to make sense. Thanks to Aarav's explanations, Jackie's math homework no longer looked like a mess of unintelligible symbols. 

"You're making progress," he said encouragingly.

She sighed and tapped the eraser end of the pencil against her chin while leaning over the spread of notebooks and formula sheets. "I wish I could just understand this easily. I wish I didn't have to try to be good at it."

"Everything takes practice."

"But you're naturally good at this stuff."

"That's just how my brain is wired but even I have a limit. One day, I'll run into a subject I can't grasp immediately."

"I've never been a natural." Jackie sighed again. Her grades in other classes were fine, passable, just not stellar. For the most part, she was an average student. It was math that became her Achilles' heel. 

"Well, why don't we take a break before you get too discouraged? Let's help out your mom."

"You want to help?" She raised her eyebrows at him, and the pencil fell from her limp hand before rolling onto the textbook. Even at her old school, which had a higher Asian population than Westminster, she never shared much about her heritage with others. 

"Sure. Why not?" Aarav shrugged.

"Because…" She paused, realizing she had no good reason. "I just never talked much about it."

"Why not?"

"I guess I never felt that connected to it? I was never Asian Asian. Does this even make sense?"

"I get it. Sometimes I feel that way with my own culture."

Jackie laughed tentatively. "Do your own relatives judge your speaking skills? Do they also think you're too Americanized?" 

He nodded in confirmation. "I can only speak basic Telugu. My family thinks it's disappointing."

"Right? It's like it's our fault we attended English-speaking schools for our entire lives. You know I don't even like phở? Everyone thinks it's the weirdest thing ever."

"That's the only Vietnamese food I've heard of."

"It's so overrated." Jackie made a face. "There's so many dishes that people don't even know of that taste way better." 

"Like what?" 

"Like bánh tét, which my mom's probably making right now."

"You guys actually cook your own meals?"

"Aside from the occasional pizza order, yes." Jackie bounced into the kitchen where Má was busy at work. Preparations had started about a week earlier, but due to time constraints, they still weren't finished. 

"Can we help?" 

Her mother didn't look up from rinsing the mung bean. "Aarav, how much experience do you have with cooking?"

"None? Mostly the housekeeper does it." He adjusted his glasses.

"No worries. I will take care of the more difficult tasks. You two wash up." 

Jackie turned to him while she rinsed her hands in the sink. "Do your housekeeper do everything?" 

"Pretty much." 

"Fancy. It's like you're some sort of prince."

"Hardly." He laughed. A couple droplets of water splashed on his lenses so he reached to wipe them off. 

Jackie started rolling together the sticky rice and pork and mashed mung bean. The pork had been seasoned with pepper and fish sauce. The end result vaguely resembled a log but with a savory inside. 

"You better not think about eating that," Má warned. 

"What makes you think that?" 

She huffed and laid out of sheets of banana leaves. She spread out the rice and set the rolled pork and mung bean on top. Delicately, Jackie wrapped the cake into a cylinder and tied knots down the length of it with string. Then she handed it to her mom, who was steaming the food in a large pot of water.

"That looks complicated," Aarav commented. 

"I'm used to it. It's like a tradition to cook together."

"My family's never done anything like this."

"You don't eat Indian food?"

"We do. We just don't cook it." 

Jackie pouted. "Aw, but that's part of the fun."

"I wouldn't know."

"Okay, I'll show you." 

Once again, she rolled and tied together another cake, this time stopping every few times to explain the process. Aarav followed along, his hands lacking the ease and familiarity that came with practice.

His brow furrowed. "It's harder than you make it look."

"I guess this is the limit you mentioned earlier."

A smile tugged at his lips. "I guess it is." 

When the cakes were done, the two helped rinse them in cold water and set them to dry. Her aunt set out a couple finished ones from earlier that had been stored in a refrigerator and began cutting them into slices. 

"There's this old legend," Jackie said between bites of the savory-sweet food and sips of tea. "There's this similar cake, bánh chưng, from North Vietnam made by a prince."

"How did it go?" Aarav took a tentative bite, eyes widening slightly. "This is actually really good."

"Actually good?" she teased.

He straightened his glasses. "I'm just used to professionally-cooked food."

"There's charm to homemade stuff. So about the story." Jackie released a long, dramatic breath and straightened up, her eyes gleaming.

"The emperor declared whichever son found the best dish would be made heir. So this prince was the youngest son and his mother was a lower class concubine. He wasn't given the funds to travel and bring back exotic foods like all his brothers. So basically, the king sent his sons out to find the most delicious meal. They all brought back fancy and elaborate creations except for the youngest. He made round and square cakes that represented the sky and earth."

"What happened next?"

"He won and was chosen to be the next Emperor."

"So he won the throne through a cooking competition?" Aarav raised an eyebrow.

"You can put it that way. I think there's some competitions held in Vietnam to see who makes the best one." 

"It sounds strange."

"Aren't all legends?"

"I guess you're right."

"They're kind of like fantastical fanfictions of history," said Jackie.

He laughed. "I guess that's one way to put it." 

She twirled the ends of her hair ribbon around a finger, munching on a bite of bánh tét. Aarav looked different from school. More relaxed and open rather than the tensed and stressed director she was familiar with from rehearsals. It was strange to think about how different the same people could be in a variety of situations. When she first met him, she never would've guessed the same person would be hanging out in her dining room enjoying himself after cooking. 

Had that hidden side been there all along? Or maybe he'd changed. Jackie knew she had, at least a little.