Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano

The 80s were our HEY!day.
Pool and hot tub and basketball hoop and
all the exercise equipment in the
basement, where Dad’s mullet and Mom’s poodle-perm
would be soaked with sweat
especially when the woodstove was blazing in the height of winter,
the exercise room becoming a sauna between
the red-painted cement blocks and the fake wood panelling.

The exercise, the Sunday afternoon movie outings,
the recreational trips to the saddest mall in the world were my parents’ attempts to salvage their marriage,
to get high off the fumes of a honeymoon period long expired.
Everything was bought new, and we were all so happy when we got
the Beta tape player, the Texas Instrument computer, and the maroon Chevy Celebrity that would someday die on its way to me in Los Angeles.

That’s also when Lee and Lien purchased their new bedroom set: a tall chest of drawers, the vanity dresser, and the poster bed, solidly built and glossy dark brown finish—
the fanciest furniture we’d ever had. The dresser was a vault of treasures from which
I knew I’d always have to wipe my fingerprints away with Pledge and Bounty
before anybody could find out that I’d been there.

They were running errands.
I was on one of my many archaeological digs.
I never had much time.

Crouched on the deep red carpet, I wrapped my fingers around the brass handle
and pulled open the door to the secret drawers. The hinges were so well oiled
that the pull was as smooth as cutting through softened butter,
that’s how satisfying, pleasurable it was.

I only really went to the bottom drawer, where all the real goods were.
Two old purses from Vietnam, one black and square, the other a maroon and white beaded clutch,
still smelling strongly of some sweet perfume from 1960s Saigon,
delicate handkerchiefs in each,
and heavy ancient Vietnamese coins that to me were worth more than gold.
Silk-thin letters in a language I didn’t know.
Black-and-white photographs of Lien and her friends on a beach,
their hair blowing in the wind the way celebrities’ hair blows in movie posters.

That mixture of smells: sandalwood incense, perfume, old metal, frailty and ink—
it was the only place I could experience Vietnam in the whole house. When my parents were gone,
those were the only times I could go to Vietnam, there on that red carpet.

The 80s were when my parents bought new things to hide the old.
That’s why it was the best time in our lives,
those in-between days.