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It was bedlam back there. Xiao Dee was shouting at the television. Sao, the other Japanese twin, was throwing up in the big sink--the one the dishwasher scrubbed the pots and pans in.
Ed, the dishwasher, stood aside; a recovering alcoholic, he was a World War II vet with several faded tattoos. The Cheng brothers had given Ed a job at a time when no one else would, and Ed felt loyal to them, though the small Coralville kitchen made him feel claustrophobic at times, and the political talk at Mao's was a foreign country to him. Ed had no use for foreign countries; that we were getting out of Vietnam was good enough for him. He'd been in the navy, in the Pacific. Now one of the Japanese twins was vomiting in his sink and the other one was in tears. (Ed might have been thinking that he had killed their relatives; if so, he was not sorry about it.)
"How's it going, Ed?" Danny said to the dishwasher.
"It's not going too good right now," Ed told him.
"Kissinger is a war criminal!" Xiao Dee was screaming. (Henry Kissinger had appeared, albeit briefly, on the television.) Ah Gou, who was chopping scallions, brandished his cleaver at the mere mention of the hated Kissinger, but now the TV returned to that image of enemy tanks rolling through the streets of Saigon; the tanks were closing in on the U.S. Embassy there, or so some nameless voice said. It was almost the end of April--these were the last airlifts, the day before Saigon surrendered. About seventy American helicopters had been shuttling between the walled-off courtyard of the embassy and the U.S. warships off the coast; as many as sixty-two hundred people were rescued that day. The last two helicopters to leave Saigon carried away the U.S. ambassador and the embassy's marine guards. Hours later, South Vietnam surrendered.
But that wasn't what was hard to watch on the l
ittle TV in the kitchen at Mao's. There were more people who wanted to leave Saigon than there were helicopters. Hundreds would be left behind in the embassy's courtyard. Dozens of Vietnamese clung to the skids of the last two helicopters to leave; they fell to their deaths as the choppers lifted away. The television just kept showing it. "Those poor people," the cook had said, seconds before Sao threw up in Ed's sink.
"They're not people, not to most Americans--they're gooks!" Xiao Dee was shouting.
Ah Gou was watching the TV instead of the scallions; he chopped the first digit off the index finger of his left hand. Kaori, still in tears, fainted; the cook dragged her away from the stove. Danny took a dish towel and began to twist it, tightly, around Ah Gou's upper arm. The tip of Big Brother's finger lay in a pool of blood with the chopped scallions.
"Go get Yi-Yiing," the cook said to Sao. Ed took a wet towel and wiped the girl's face. Sao was as insubstantial-looking as her fainted twin, but she had stopped throwing up, and, like a ghost, she drifted away to the dining room.
When the swinging door to the dining room opened, Danny heard one of the businessmen say, "What kind of crazy, fucked-up place is this, anyway?"
"Ah Gou cut off his finger," he heard Sao say to Yi-Yiing.
Then the door swung closed and Danny didn't hear how Sao or Tzu-Min or Yi-Yiing answered the businessman, or if any of the women had tried. (Mao's was a crazy, fucked-up place that night when Saigon was falling.)
The door to the dining room swung open again, and they all came into the kitchen--Yi-Yiing with young Joe, Tzu-Min and Sao. Danny was mildly surprised that the three businessmen types and the two couples weren't with them, though there was no room for anyone else in the chaotic kitchen.
"Thank God they all ordered the guinea hen," the cook was saying.
Kaori had sat up on the floor. "The two couples are having the guinea hen," she said. "The business guys ordered the ravioli."
"I just meant the couples," Tony Angel said. "I'm feeding them first."
"The business guys are ready to walk out--I'm warning you," Tzu-Min told them.
Yi-Yiing found the tip of Ah Gou's finger in the scallions. Xiao Dee wrapped his arms around Ah Gou while the cook poured vodka on the stump of his left index finger. Big Brother was still screaming when Yi-Yiing held out the fingertip, and Tony Angel poured more vodka on it; then she put the fingertip back where it belonged. "Just hold it on," she told Big Brother, "and stop screaming."
Danny was sorry that Joe was watching the television; the ten-year-old seemed transfixed by that image of the people clinging to the helicopters' skids, and then falling off. "What's happening to them?" the boy asked his dad.
"They're dying," Danny said. "There's no room for them on the helicopters."
Ed was coughing; he went out the kitchen door. There was an alley back there--it was used for deliveries, and for picking up the trash--and they all thought that Ed was just stepping out for a cigarette. But the dishwasher never came back.
Yi-Yiing took Ah Gou out the swinging door and through the dining room; he held his severed fingertip in place, but now that Danny was no longer tightening the towel around his upper arm, Big Brother was bleeding profusely. Tzu-Min went with them. "I guess I'm going to give everyone in the emergency room my cold, after all," Yi-Yiing was saying.
"What the fuck is going on?" one of the businessmen shouted. "Is there anyone working here, or what?"
"Racists! War criminals! Fascist pigs!" Ah Gou yelled at them, still bleeding.
In the kitchen, the cook said to his son and grandson, "You're my sous chefs now--we better get started."
"There are only two tables to deal with, Pop--I think we can manage this," Danny told him.
"If we just ignore the business guys, I think they'll leave," Kaori said.
"Nobody leaves!" Xiao Dee shouted. "I'll show them what kind of crazy, fucked-up place this is--and they better like it!"
He went out into the dining room through the swinging door--his ponytail in that absurd pink ribbon possibly belonging to Spicy--and even after the door swung shut, they could still hear Little Brother from the kitchen. "You want to eat the best food you ever had, or do you want to die?" Xiao Dee was yelling. "Asians are dying, but you can eat well!" he screamed at the businessmen.
