Free The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan Page B

Lum’s grades got better.
    It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When their mother announced her transfer to the recently opened nail salon in Tranquillity Buddha Plaza, Cherry and Lum celebrated. It was the newest plaza in Little Saigon, across from the Lucky Tortoise mini-mall. The new salon had large photographs of Hawaiian and Caribbean beaches on the orange walls, fancy purple pedicure stations, and a large waiting area full of year-old Cosmopolitan and People magazines.
    The plaza was even better, with floor-to-ceiling windows, a two-fountain courtyard where little kids could play, and an elevator when they felt too tired from the six-block walk from school to climb the stairs. The first floor had an arcade, a Sanrio stationery store, and a bakery that sold Chinese doughnuts and pâté baguettes. The second floor offered less fun: jewelry shops, insurance companies, the nail salon. Most of the merchants’ kids played together in the employee parking lot behind the building.
    Cleverly enough, their mother even ruined Tranquillity. Cherry hardly ever finished her homework in time to get in any decent playing.
    The store’s telephone rang and her mother left to answer it. Cherry watched her mother’s back carefully. Auntie Hien fanned her wet nails and flashed her teeth.
    â€œDuyen is late,” Cherry said, holding up the plastic waterproof watch Lum had won for her at last year’s Tet Festival. “The ballet school is only a ten-minute drive away and her lesson ended at four-thirty. Should we call the police?”
    â€œI think she’s all right,” Auntie Hien said. “Uncle Viet is picking her up. He said he also needed to pick up his friend. They’ll be here soon.”
    â€œHow far away is his friend?” Cherry liked to approximate the driving distance of any location from Little Saigon.
    â€œI don’t know where Khanh is.”
    â€œKhanh?” Cherry repeated, recalling the woman’s spiral-permed hair and lime-green plastic earrings. “Are she and Uncle Viet getting married?”
    Auntie Hien laughed. “No, they’re just friends.”
    â€œIs it because Khanh is already married?”
    That made her aunt laugh harder, which Cherry couldn’t understand. It didn’t seem funny to her. When her mother returned, Auntie Hien repeated the question, much to Cherry’s dismay.
    Her mom replaced the polish bottles on the display shelf before bending over at her waist, her nose nearly touching Cherry’s. A level-four warning. Smelling the dried plum candies on her warm breath, Cherry instinctively tucked in her chin. “Where did you hear that?” her mother asked.
    â€œI don’t remember.” Duyen had told her. She had overheard Uncle Viet and Uncle Chinh talking after the family dinner the week before.
    â€œTell Mommy the truth. Were you being nosy?”
    â€œNo,” she said, wiggling out of her mother’s intense gaze.
    Her mother pulled back, eyes narrow and lethal. “You can’t eavesdrop on people like that. It can get you into trouble.”
    â€œBut I never—”
    â€œAdults can say silly things. Don’t mind them.”
    Cherry pretended to return to her reading, but when her mom and Auntie Hien walked to the back room, her gaze drifted out the window again. Some of the other merchants were closing up early, typical on slow Wednesdays. It took several minutes for them to lock their front doors and affix the security gates. The floor vibrated as the merchants walked down the circular stairwell. Only six months old, the plaza had already begun to look shabby. After its grand opening, Cherry used to walk around and count the oil stains in the parking spaces and the cigarette butts and gum splotches on the sidewalks, recording them in a graph-paper notebook for future analysis. But her mother quickly squashed that project. She didn’t like Cherry touching all those germs.
    Uncle