Read Online The House on Dream Street by Dana Sachs - Free Book Online Page B

of the crowd. Huong dragged him out by his shirt. The three of us stood at the edge of the mass of people trying to figure out if anyone had gotten hurt.
    In the middle of the crowd, an angry cyclo driver was arguing with a tall, muscular teenager who, judging by his rubber boots, was one of our street’s motorbike washers. The teenager pointed at a woman standing next to them. She had on a smart pea green business suit and high heels. She was leaning over her Dream, investigating a broken headlight. The teenager’s voice rose, and he began to stomp his foot for emphasis.
    I felt as though I were watching a foreign film without the subtitles. “What’s going on?” I finally asked Huong.
    “The cyclo driver hit that woman’s motorbike, and the teenager’s mad because the cyclo driver won’t say he’s sorry.” Though I couldn’t get all her Vietnamese, Huong’s hand motions and facial expression told the story perfectly well.
    The shouting escalated. The cyclo driver jumped off his seat, then the teenager moved toward him. Drawing his fist back in the air, the teenager looked like a cartoon character going through the stylized motions of a fight. He was fast and his fist went flying.
    Before the blow hit its mark, two other men grabbed the teenager and pulled him back. One of the men let go of him, then walked over to the cyclo driver. He was smaller and less intimidating than either the burly teenager or the tough-looking driver, but, with a few words, he managed to appease them both. I realized that this peacemaker was someone I recognized.
    I nudged Huong. “That’s Tung’s friend.”
    She nodded. “Phai. He’s a motorbike mechanic.”
    The crowd was silent, everybody straining to hear Phai, whose voice was as quiet and steady as the swish of the street sweepers’ brooms I heard when I lay in bed at night. The cyclo driver’s eyes were focused on his fingernail, but he, too, was listening. Finally, he looked up and said something to the owner of the Dream. She shrugged, then got on her motorbike and kicked it into gear.
    “Doesn’t he have to buy her a new one of those things?” I asked. I didn’t know the word for headlight.
    Huong shook her head as if the logic of the situation should have been clear to me already. “He’s a cyclo driver. He doesn’t have any money.” She pointed to the woman in the pea green suit, who was already puttering away. “She’s got money. She can pay for it. They just wanted him to apologize. He wasn’t polite.”
    I may have been witnessing the birth of a capitalist society, but that didn’t mean that Vietnam was developing into the same kind of capitalist society as the United States. Communism had had its effect on this country, as had the ancient traditions that dated back over a thousand years. For most Vietnamese, poverty wasn’t a predicament so much as a state of being. It was permanent and unalterable, like the geography of the land. Although Vietnamese had hope for their improving economy, few people harbored illusions that the poor would ever be anything but poor.
    The cyclo driver pulled himself back up on his seat and slowly pedaled off. He hadn’t gotten far when the teenager started after him again, but Tung’s friend Phai grabbed the teenager’s arm and pulled him back toward one of the mechanic shops.
    “Let’s go back inside,” Huong said. She let go of Viet and he sprang away from us like a rubber band, disappearing into thealley behind our house. Huong walked back inside, turning away from the crowd as if the attention she’d paid the event were one more task completed. I took one last look at Phai and the teenager conferring in front of the mechanic’s shop and followed her inside.
    Huong had forgotten the commotion instantly, but I was still trying to figure it out. In America, people slow down to glimpse the carnage of accidents, hence our term “rubbernecker.” Still, I couldn’t imagine a fender bender in America causing the