Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai Read Free Book Online Page A

you ask Út if that’s a frog or a toad?”
    He asks. Then the longest answer in Vietnamese: “Only a know-nothing can’t tell a frog from a toad! As misdirected as not knowing a horse from a mule. Tell her frogs belong to the family Ra-ni-dae and live in water; they lay eggs there in clusters, the tadpoles hatch, then turn into frogs with webbed feet. Toads belong to the family Bu-fo-ni-dae and live on land. They’re bumpy, cracked, scary. I found mine when he was just an egg that somehow broke from a cluster in Cô Hạnh’s pond. I’ve raised him myself.”
    Translation: “Út thanks you for your inquiry and would like to inform you that she has a frog.”
    What a pain that Út is! But I make myself smile and nod as if I didn’t understand every word the little snot said. We’re even in my eyes. I’m done being sorry. For now, I’ll keep my listening skills to myself.
    I walk toward them and, with the biggest smile, accept the baskets of food.
    I have to say Anh before Minh to show respect that he’s older. The Vietnamese are all about respect. Anh Minh, it turns out, matches Mom as a superplanner. Is this also a Vietnamese thing? All I did was show him the dead phone and he whipped into must-do mode. He says we can’t charge it at a more modern house because it’s rude to visit relatives during nap time. His group had meant to leave the baskets on the porch, but I was awake so they stayed. We can’t charge at his or the girls’ homes because if they go there, they might have to nap. Not to worry, he has other plans for my cell.
    “Why aren’t you napping?” I ask.
    “Between the ages of fifteen and fifty, some of us are too burdened with studyin’ or workin’ to be nappin’.”
    I love that Texas accent rolling off his tongue. Come to think of it, all those between fifteen and fifty at mine and Bà’s welcoming party were girls and women. Anh Minh is the first boy I’ve seen.
    “Where are all the boys and men?” I ask.
    “At our shrimp camp.”
    I’m imagining a summer sleepaway, where boys become men while hatching shrimps and learning the ecosystem of ocean life and mastering the fine points of canoeing and swimming and bonding.
    “Whatever you are thinkin’, miss, I am afraid you are mistaken. Walk and I shall explain.”
    I make my face blank, pretending I’ve been imagining an empty gray box.
    Anh Minh leads, gallantly leaning his umbrella over my head and forsaking shade for himself. I tell him I’m protected by SPF on steroids, but he won’t listen. Hatless Út follows, with no one offering to shade her maxed-out bronze complexion. She doesn’t seem to care. The two older girls go last, giggling and whispering under their umbrellas.
    “Our village has joined together to buy a shrimp hatchin’ facility by the sea,” Anh Minh says. “The men who do not want or cannot get jobs in the city or in the government live and work there, and boys who do not pass the rigorous test into a city high school train there. That way no male finds idle time.”
    “What if someone doesn’t like shrimp work?”
    Anh Minh looks at me like I’ve asked the most illogical question ever. I could defend myself, but why annoy the one person who can make village life easier? I lean into his umbrella and look up and smile at his serious, sincere face.
    We’re walking in this maze where one-story rectangular houses are built close together, separated by waist-high cement walls. Once in a while, a many-story rectangular house pops up, separated by head-high walls. People really like cement here, pouring it in front and back to create yards. It does make sense to not coax grass out of the ground, then mow and fertilize and obsess about it. Mom’s big thing is no lawns. Each house we have bought has a smaller patch of grass, the current one the size of a crib. An automatic sprinkler is forever drowning the yellowing patch. Maybe soon all of us in desert-dry Southern Cal will be graduating to all-cement