Sunday.05.16.04
underside mirages [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 3:41am
the little girls stay in step with the tall foreigners, foreigners with light skin stretched luxury-taut over crew cuts and slick shavings, upon flowered shirts and cargo shorts.
“you buy you buy? you buy you buy?”
it’s nearly 2am in the morning and there are children with candy, lighters, odd bits and ends, ready to sell little shoddy convenient goods that make no difference whether they exist in your hands or not. one girl with short cropped hair down to her chin catches me watching her and comes over. her little hands offer something which my mind forgets, because i’m too busy swirling in her young baby face. can’t be more than 9. 10, maybe. i shake my head no and point to old-awkward uncle.
“ask this man, he’s a returning vietnamese, he’s filthy rich.”
the girl turns to old-awkward for a moment and meets his laugh. she swings immediately back to me, arm still reaching out. i point to my uncle and she turns back to him. finally i ask her,
“why are you selling so late?”
“because we need money for the rent,” the girl replies matter-of-factly.
“wow, you kids living by yourselves, paying the bills and stuff huh?” i joke. out of nowhere i find myself saying, “you know what you have to do? you have to make it look like you’re hurt, pretend to cry.”
i make boo-hooing sounds and she giggles. another girl with long hair tied in a simple ponytail, holding a plastic bin of goods, stops pestering one of the foreigners and looks over.
“and you have to pretend like you’re sick, real sick. like this..” and i bend my right foot at the ankle, dragging it across the ground. a quick drag, limp, stop, another quick drag. the girl laughs and her selling face vaporizes.
“like this? like this?” she asks, dragging her foot across the ground. the sound of flip flops on the concrete echo the sounds of sweeping i hear sometimes outside my window at night. her friend bursts out in laughter and also mimicks having a hurt foot. i smile, and continue,
“wait! wait! you have to stick out your hand too, you can’t just drag your feet. man, this is your profession and you don’t know anything.” i then stick out my hand, dragging my feet on the ground. one of the dance-bar prostitutes walks past me, smiling at us goofing around, a sincere smile breaking a face normally stone cold with determination to make the buck. the foreigner, who had previously ignored the little girl out of habit, is now looking amusingly at the small spectacle of a gawky vietnamese kid teaching street kids lame tricks. another small girl is behind the two girls. soon the three are all laughing and joking, copying my technique.
“and finally, you have to stick out your tongue. like you’re really sick” i add. i stick out my tongue, drag my feet across the concrete sidewalk, and make grumbling noises. the foreigner continues to watch me, a bemused expression on his face. the girl with the cropped hair breaks out into laughter and grabs my arm. i flinch for a second, touching my pocket lightly to make sure everything is there. when you live in this place for this long, you learn a few things… and one of the most important things is never trust street kids with stuff in your pocket. but as quick as my fingers brush my pockets i release and we are back to the game. a moment of shame for suspecting a little girl for pickpocketing me but this is society, this is reality, like the reality of these girls. they continue to drag their feet, sticking out their tongues and laughing.
“like this? like this?” they ask me. their questions sound like cries for attention, like the ones i used to hear from fat kids at the town swimming pool, yelling at their parents to watch them dive into cholorinated summer water. a moment of normalcy, in a continual blast of grimey “you buy”s under the cover of a vacant Saigon night.
their cries die down and i have given myself away. short-hair girl puts out her hand.
“how about 20,000, for the three of us?” i laugh and give them everything in my pockets, something like $3. they go back to their work, “you buy you buy” ringing down the nearly empty streets save for the late-night partying foreigners. they then move back to the front of the dance-bar, away from the men pushing out motorbikes from a parking garage and away from the pack of foreigners. i look at a grimey toddler squatting against the wall near a cement pot, an older woman with clean pajamas squatting next to him. i hear high-pitched laugher and follow the sounds back to the three girls, far off. the are dragging their feet and giggling.
on the motorbike me and hipster go, following short-stout and old-awkward. the fire of living three lives and being two cultures flames outward into my hands gripping the accelerator and i twist the handlebar, slam the gears, fly past short-stout and old-awkward. a taxi with drunken asian couples on the left, the driver looking at the road ahead. i speed up next to them and out of my lungs comes loud shouts of pure emotion, “WHOOO!!!! WHOOOO!!!” we fly beside them, roving back and forth.
i laugh from the bottom of my heart and laugh and laugh and laugh until there is nothing left to laugh about. the needle on the odometer shakes past 60 km/hr and the taxi disappears behind us, like the thoughts of rationality i once had.