Hi, my name is Monique Truong, and I consider myself a Southern girl, twice over. I was born in Saigon, South Vietnam, but I grew up in Boiling Springs, NC. Most people don%u2019t know the latter fact about me, but if you ever meet my mother, you would hear her southern accent, acquired in North Carolina, clear as a bell, accompanied of course by the twang of her southern Vietnamese accent. The combination of the two, I assure you is special indeed. In the summer of 1975, my family arrived in Boiling Sprigs and for the next 3 years, we would call this small town our home %u2013 our first after coming to the US as refugees from the Vietnam war. For my second novel, %u201CBitter in the Mouth,%u201D I%u2019ve essentially returned to Boiling Springs for inspiration, and for the locale.
I fell in love with my great Uncle Harper because he taught me how to dance. He said that rhythm was allowing yourself to feel your blood coursing through you. He told me to close my eyes and forget the rest of my body. I did and we bobbed our non existent selves up and down and side to side. He liked me because I was a quiet child. He showed me photographs of himself as a boy. He referred to himself in the third person. %u201CThis here is Harper Evan Birch,%u201D he would say. The boy in those photographs was also a quiet child. I could tell by the way his arms were always flat by his side, never akimbo, or raised high to the North Carolina sky.
We were both compact, always folding ourselves into smaller pieces. We both liked music because it was a river where we stripped down, jumped in and flailed our arms around. It was 1975 then and the water everywhere around us was glittering with disco lights. My great Uncle Harper and I though, danced to Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino. We twisted, mashed potatoed and winked at each other whenever we opened our eyes. My great Uncle Harper was my first love. I was 7 years old, in his company, I laughed out loud. I%u2019m not ashamed to admit I have tried to find him in the male bodies that I lie next to, and that I see him now only when I turn off the lights.
His bowtie undone, hanging around his shirt collar. Modest isosceles triangles considering the fashion of the time. His pants cuffed and creased, his graying hair cut the same as when he was a boy, a wedge of it hanging over one eye, the other one, a blue lake dappled by the sun. My great Uncle Harper wasn%u2019t where I thought I would begin, but a family narrative should begin with love. Because he was my first love, I was spared the saddest experience in most people%u2019s lives. My first love and my first heartbreak were dealt by different pairs of hands.
I was lucky. My memories of the two sensations, one of my heart filling and one of my heart emptying were divided and lodged in separate bodies. I can still recall the feeling that came over me when my great Uncle Harper first placed the record needle onto a spinning 45. It happened right away. I felt that everything deep within my body was rising to the surface, that my skin was growing thin, that I would come apart. If this sounds painful, it wasn%u2019t. It was what love did to my body, which was to transform it. I would come apart like a fireworks display.
A burst of light that would grow larger and glow and make the person below me say, %u201Caahh.%u201D I remember saying my great uncle%u2019s name aloud. This memory of my first love was then safe from all that was to come. I%u2019ll tell you the easy things first. I%u2019ll use simple sentences, so factual and flat these statements would land in between us like playing cards on a table. My name is Linda Hammerick. I grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. My parents were Thomas and Diane. My best friend was named Kelly. I was my father%u2019s tomboy.
I was my mother%u2019s baton twirler. I was my high school%u2019s valedictorian. I went far away for college and law school. I live now in New York City. I miss my great Uncle Harper. But once these cards have been thrown down, there are bound to be distorting overlaps. The head of the Queen of Spades on the body of the King of Clubs. The Joker%u2019s bowed legs beneath a field of hearts. I grew up in. Thomas and Kelly. My parents were valedictorian and baton twirler. My best friend was named Harper. I was my father%u2019s New York City.
I was my mother%u2019s college and law school. I was my high school%u2019s tomboy. I went far away for Thomas and Diane. I live now in Boiling Springs. I miss Linda Hammerick. The only way to sort out of the truth is to pick up the cards again, slowly examining each one.
