Written while reading Robin DiAngelo's book White Fragility.
"You like the girls? Vietnamese girls pretty."
The man stared into his plate of spring rolls. He didn't like to encourage her. The food in the restaurant was ok, not great but ok, and it was cheap and it wasn't pizza. He and his wife liked to eat there once a month or so, but you had to put up with the owner, a sixtyish woman who liked to talk.
"Where you stay in Vietnam?"
He thought of the jungle and the base and the GI bars and the whore houses.
"Saigon," he said, still not making eye contact. She had that high-pitched whiny voice he remembered and she always called him by name.
"You like Saigon, Frank?"
"It was ok. I was just a kid. Never been away from home. Can we order now?"
"Sure. You want rice noodles with shrimp, Frank?"
He and his wife pretended to be in deep conversation when the Dragon Lady came back with the food. He didn't call her that to her face, of course, but that was how the guys in the barracks had referred to Asian women back then and it rolled off his tongue. He watched her out of the corner of his eye in between mouthfuls. She was a worker, that was for sure. Never sat down, not once. On her feet all day, keeping up that patter with the customers coming and going, bringing the orders into the kitchen, bringing the food out, ringing up the checks. Her husband was back there steaming the rice, making the pancake. Every now and then, she would say something he couldn't understand to her grandchildren, always underfoot, glued to their video games. The restaurant was open seven days a week.
It was weird how this white bread New England town had two concentrations of Vietnamese, one in the restaurant and one in the nail salon around the corner. He'd never been inside the salon, but his wife went a few times a year when she had to look good for some special occasion. She told him she didn't like how it felt, lounging on the recliner with an Asian teenage girl sitting on the floor fondling her feet. At least in the restaurant, the Dragon Lady was the owner. Frank knew something about being a small business owner. The stress, the hours, the endless headaches with suppliers and employees. Thinking about it made his stomach tighten up around the rice noodles. He had at one time been the proprietor of a shoe store where he spent his fair share of time sitting below the demanding customer, easing a pampered foot into a boot, hoping for a good fit, a sale. He could relate to how hard she had to work, but he still wished she would shut up every so often so he could eat his dinner in peace.
"You want duck now, Frank?"
The small restaurant remained a fixture in the town for quite a few years. He watched the owner trudge back and forth to the kitchen, work the credit card machine, wipe her hands on her apron. It seemed to him she was on the old side when he first went in there, but she didn't seem to get any older. She was just out on the floor day after day and because the place was always open and she never took a day off, you could always count on her and her whiny voice to be there.
In time, the restaurant went out of business. No more spring rolls, no more rice noodles. He didn't think about it very much. The shoe store had lasted seven years. It didn't close because the business went bad. It closed because he was tired of bullshitting the customers and caressing their feet. Maybe the woman who never stopped talking went back to Vietnam. He imagined her in retirement, surrounded by sisters and cousins. He could see her going home with a fat wad of dollars to live out her remaining years in comfort.
But then one day, he had to pay a visit to a friend in the hospital. She was a little crazy, his friend, but he wanted to do the right thing. While he was sitting at the bedside, the Dragon Lady shuffled in wearing scrubs and plastic gloves. She stripped the second bed of its urine-soaked sheets and threw them in a bin. She emptied the trash and wiped down the night table and swept the floor. He watched her and held his breath, unsure of what to say.
When she had finished cleaning that room and was ready to go on to the next and then the next, she moved toward the door, turned and said to him like an old friend he'd lost touch with.
"How you doing, Frank? I always like you."
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