Monkey Bridge Excerpt
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
I discovered soon after my arrival in Virginia that everything, even the simple business of shopping, the american way unsettled. My mother's nerves from the outside the A. And P. Market had been an ordinary building that held no promises or threats. But inside I remember the sharp chilled air against my face, the way the hydraulic door made a sucking sound as it closed behind us. Inside A. And P. Brimmed with unexpected abundance. Metal stands overflowed with giant oranges and meticulously arranged grapefruits, columns of canned vegetables and fruits stood among multiple shelves as people while rehearsed in the demands of modern shopping meandered through fluorescent aisles. My mother did not appreciate the exacting orderliness of the A. And P. Market. She could not give in to the precision of previously weighed and packaged food, the bloodless nous of beef slabs and translucent rappers, the absence of carcasses and pig's heads. When we lived in Saigon, there were only outdoor markets. Sky markets, they were called vast, prosperous expanses. In the middle of the city we're barrels of live crabs and yellow carps and booths of ducks and geese would be stacked side by side with cardboard stands of expensive silk fabric. It was always noisy. There a voluptuous mix of animal and human sounds, a sharp acrid smell of gutters choked by the monsoon rain, the odor of horses, partially camouflaged by the scent of guavas and bananas. In Saigon sky markets, my mother knew the vendors and the shoppers by name and would take me from stall to stall to expose me to her skills. Everyone there was addicted to one another's oddities. My mother would feign indifference and the vendors would inevitably call out to her. She would heed their call and they would immediately retreat into sudden apathy. They knew my mother's slick bargaining skills and she in turn, knew how to navigate with grace through their extravagant prices and rehearse stuffiness. There's had been a mating dance, a mash of wells. Every morning at the Sky Market we were drift from vendor to vendor tables full of shampoo and toothpaste were pocketed among vegetable stands one day, and jars of herbs the next. Since the market was randomly organized, only the mighty and experienced, like my mother could navigate its pattern lys paths, but with a sense of neither drama nor calamity, my mother's ability to navigate and decipher simply became undone in our new life, though she now lived in America, she still preferred the improvisation of haggling to the conventional certainty of discount coupons. She also preferred the primordial messiness and the fishmonger stink in the open air Saigon markets to the aroma free order of individually wrapped fillets in the A and P. Now a mere 3.5 years or so after her last call to the Sky market, The dreadful truth was simply this, we were going through life in reverse, and I was the one who would help my mother through the hard scrutiny of ordinary suburban life, I would have to forget the luxury of adolescent experiments and temper tantrums so that I could scoop my mother out of harm's way and give her sanctuary. Now when we stepped into the exterior world, I was the one who told my mother what was acceptable or unacceptable behavior all Children of immigrant parents have experienced to these moments when they first occur, a parent acts out the behavior of a child. This is a defining moment. Of course, all Children eventually washed their aging parents astonishing return took the vulnerability of childhood. But for us, the immigrant young. The process began much earlier than expected. We don't have to pay the moment. We decide to buy the pork. I would say to her, We can put as much as we want into the cart and pay only once at the checkout counter. These words would be received by a few moments hesitation, until my mother succumbs to the peculiarity of my explanation. I can take you in this aisle a store clerk would offer, as she unlocked a new register to accommodate a long line of customers. She would gesture to us to come over here with an upturned index finger, a disdainful hook. We Vietnamese used to summon dogs. My mother did not understand the ambiguity of american hand gestures in Vietnam. We said, Come here to humans differently With the palm up and all four fingers waved in Unison. The way people in the U. S. Wave goodbye. Even the store clerks look down on us! My mother grumbled. This was the truth. I was only beginning to realize my mother's response to the A and P was not an enormous or momentous event, but the gradual suggestion of irrevocable and protracted change that threw us off balance and made us know in no uncertain terms that we would not be returning to the familiarity of our former lives.