Free Behind the Moon by Hsu-Ming Teo Page A

the next six months. Linh did a lot of overtime at the hospital, and Tien resented her mother for telling her she had to stay at home when there was nobody else around. She dreaded going to sleep in the silent, empty flat. She hated being alone.
    Then Linh woke her early one Saturday morning. ‘Come. I have a surprise for you,’ said her mother excitedly. She grabbed Tien’s hand, dragged her out of bed and pulled her into the living room. The carpet was strewn with plastic, packing tape, ripped cardboard and moulded polystyrene frames. Out of this wreckage rose a huge Korean-made television mounted on a grey glass cabinet. ‘There. What do you think?’
    ‘It’s big,’ Tien admitted. It was of such mammoth proportions that the rest of the furniture in the small living room had to be crammed together to make room for it. She stubbed her toe as she clambered over the coffee table to get to it.
    ‘The driver came and delivered it half an hour ago. I read the instructions and connected it myself,’ Linh said proudly. ‘It works. Look.’
    ‘Yeah, great.’ Tien picked up the remote control and flicked on the television. She yawned. ‘Nothing but cartoons and Video Hits . I’m going back to bed.’
    Linh stared at the closed bedroom door and her lips thinned into a hard, angry line. Where was the gratitude, she wondered. Couldn’t her daughter see how hard she was working so that they could enjoy the luxuries that other people—the Cheongs—enjoyed? She tried again. She did more overtime and bought a video machine but Tien still kept going over to the Cheongs’. Finally, Linh couldn’t stop herself from telling Tien, ‘I don’t want you going over so often. If you want to watch TV, you can do it here. You shouldn’t watch so much of it anyway. You must have homework to do.’
    ‘I don’t watch telly all the time. There’s nothing to watch these days. I just hang out with Annabelle. She’s teaching me how to cook.’
    ‘Oh, cooking. I did not know you wanted to cook. I can teach you,’ Linh offered. Then, too late, she realised that this was another one of those verbal traps her daughter delighted in setting.
    ‘Thanks, but I won’t put you to the trouble. You don’t have time anyway, and I only like to eat the stuff Annabelle cooks.’
    ‘You are not allowed to go there on school days,’ Linh said. ‘I forbid you.’
    Tien simply said, ‘How? You won’t be around to do anything about it.’
    They looked at each other and realised that their unacknowledged war had escalated. Tien had been rude before, but she usually apologised. She had never challenged her mother’s authority outright. Her declaration of rebellion exhilarated her, yet she could not escape a quick surge of guilt because it sometimes seemed as though hieu thao was tattooed on her DNA. She could not excise it without destroying some part of herself.
    ‘You will not get away with this,’ Linh said finally. She resented her daughter for putting her in a position where she had to be stern and forbid and mete out punishments. She was afraid that she had brought it on herself because of her past actions. My name is marked in the Book of the Damned . We both reap what we sowed in our past lives .
    Linh took a week off work. She waited for Tien outside the school gate and walked her home. She ignored Tien’s complaint that at her age she looked ridiculous being walked home by her mother. But Linh had to return to work the following week and when she rang home at five, Tien was not there to pick up the phone.
    ‘What are you going to do?’ Tien said, and her smile was insolent. ‘You going to ground me? Well, you can’t enforce it. You going to stop my pocket money? I don’t need it. I work at Uncle Duc’s. You tell him not to employ me, I can just go to the restaurant next door. You going to throw me out of home? Great. I’ll move back in with Uncle Duong. The shame will be on you as well. Auntie Ai-Van will know what kind of a