What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (most important books to read txt) 📗

to her immediately. A token, a memory of our night, 1968. Whoever they were, they would be in their fifties now, they were in the heat of a love affair then, and they were in love with themselves; they were stylish, young. She wondered what they were like now and which one of them had lost the photograph thirty-four years later. That’s what made Tuyen decide to leave it where she’d found it. In case that woman, or that man, came back in a terrible panic at having lost a moment in 1968. She put the photograph down gently, feeling its afterimage in her hand.

Reluctantly she appeared at Binh’s store. He looked up as she entered. There was an unusually grateful smile on his face.

“Don’t be too happy yet …” She stopped, noticing that there were other people in the store. Someone small and cute who must be Binh’s current girlfriend, and two of Binh’s friends—Elliott, who Tuyen had never liked and who had been Binh’s friend since grade nine, and another guy Tuyen didn’t know but didn’t like immediately. She was predisposed not to like anyone around Binh. And they all looked at her warily.

“Everybody, this is my sister Tuyen,” Binh said, his voice proprietary.

The two guys got up to leave, the girlfriend stayed seated, trying to make even less of herself. Elliott threw Tuyen an appraising look before going out the door behind the other man. Tuyen noticed the other man bite his fingernails and spit them on the sidewalk, then examine his hand and put it in his pocket. Elliott said something to him, and they parted. The girl made a movement, and Binh introduced her.

“This is Ashley.”

“Ashley?” Tuyen asked with an impolite curiosity. “Where’d you get a name like that? What’s your real name?”

“Hue,” the girl said defensively.

“Well, nice to meet you, Hue.” She looked at her brother, rolling her eyes.

He said, “I see you changed your mind about helping me? Or you just snooping?”

“I figure, how hard could it be?”

“Yeah, right.”

“And I could use the money.”

“Ah,” Binh said, a small triumphant look on his face. “I only need you to help Ashley out.”

“Ashley? You mean Hue.”

“Yes, Hue. For Christ’s sake, since when are you so politically correct. She wants to be called Ashley, all right?” He sounded peevish.

“She does?” Tuyen asked looking over at the girl, who made no comment. “Well, whatever. So Hue’s gonna be here. Fine. So what do you want me to do, then?”

“Ashley,” he said firmly, “will open up in the mornings. I know you don’t like to get up early. And do you have to wear that tatty old coat?”

“What are you? Donatella?”

“Fine, so you can close the store at nights?”

“Why? Trying to hide me from the customers?”

“Can you do mornings?” Tuyen looked disgusted. “No, I didn’t think so.”

“Okay, okay. Hue can do mornings, I’ll close up. Every day?”

Binh was getting frustrated, and Tuyen sensed it. She wanted to be different with him. That was why she had come. That sound of the word “mine” from Carla had kept tugging at her. After all, he was making an attempt to find their brother, or so he said. And though she was suspicious of his motives, it wasn’t a bad thing that he was trying to do. So why couldn’t she summon up a warmth about him? Perhaps they had spent too much of their lives, all of it, sparring with each other. Perhaps Binh wasn’t likable. Perhaps she was unlikable.

“Look,” he said, pulling her aside, his arm around her shoulders, “I just need you to keep it together here for me while I go. Just check on Ashley … Hue,” he conceded. “She’ll do all the work.”

Tuyen felt his arm around her shoulder more than she heard what he said. How come he held her with so much familiarity?

“Fine, fine,” she said, drawing away from Binh. “I’ll help Hue.” She directed a deep smile at the girl, who responded tentatively. “And what about Elliott and that guy?”

“They got other things to do.”

“Oh!” She had a fair idea of what “other things” meant. The guy spitting his fingernails into the street looked like a piece of work to her, and Elliott, she’d never liked, not the least because he had tried to show her his penis once when he was sixteen and had sworn her to secrecy, begged her not to tell Binh. Which she hadn’t up to this day. “They’re not gonna do them here, are they?”

“Jeez, Tuyen, Jesus. Are you here to help or not? No, all right, no.”

“Don’t get so upset. I’m just asking. Just want to know, that’s all.”

A silence ensued. She felt petty. She had brought all the hostility into the conversation when, in fact, she had intended to be nice, or at least vaguely agreeable. Instead she had found herself instinctively nasty.

“So, Hue, we’ll work it out, right?” she said apologetically.

“Sure. I do this all the time. No problem.”

Of course, Tuyen thought, realizing that apart from their floating animosity she really did not know her brother well. She had created an archetype of him, and there it stood.

“Great. So, my brother treats you okay, does he?” Tuyen tried joking, but it sounded lame even to herself.

“Yes.” Hue giggled.

“Hue, can I talk to Binh in private for a second?”

“Sure.” The girl took her purse and went outside. Tuyen watched her rummage for a cigarette, light it, and lean on the window, smoking.

“She seems nice.”

Binh didn’t answer. He arranged the receipts in the cash drawer, then said, “You know how to work this, right?”

They both knew how to work a cash register. For a moment they were back in the restaurant as children, self-important and studious. For a moment she felt a comfort with him, accompanied.

“Yeah, I know. But listen, what are you going to do exactly?”

“Well, Ma’s been ripped off for years. Both of them. So I’m going to track him down one way the other.”

“But why? He’s probably dead and probably died a long time ago. He