How to Pronounce Knife - Souvankham Thammavongsa Page 0,24
June? You must come to the wedding. You must! We couldn’t have done this without you.” The both of them grinning wide with their blindingly bright, even teeth.
IT WAS WHILE the bride and groom were having their first dance as husband and wife that Mr. Vong made his bold prediction.
“Just you mark my words,” Mr. Vong continued. “The marriage will last less than a year. “
“Ai, why are you saying this for?” Mrs. Vong said. “Keep your voice down!” she urged, slapping him on his arm and glancing around at the people seated at their table to see if they had heard. But everyone was paying attention to the bride and groom, some reaching for their spouse’s hand, musing over their own first dance in front of family and friends, or eating the food on their plates so they could go and get seconds. The guests had just been served a nice meal of papaya salad, spring rolls, sticky rice, minced chicken with fresh herbs and spices, and sweets wrapped in banana leaves.
“Less than a year. That’s my prediction. And you know I’m always right about these things. You know,” he said, pointing to his twenty-seven-year-old daughter. She nodded her head in agreement, and he went on. “If I paid for a whole lobster, I’m going to get it.” He was referring to how whenever they ordered a lobster dinner—the most expensive thing on the menu—Mr. Vong just had to make sure that he got what he paid for. The lobster shells might have been cracked open or chewed to a pulp, but he told everyone to put the shells back onto the main plate so he could rearrange the broken bits, unfold the bones to their original shape, and reassemble the lobster’s body back together to see if there was something missing. Once, there was one claw, half a tail, and some legs missing. Mr. Vong knew it! He called the waiter over, made a big show out of being cheated, and made sure the whole restaurant knew he was not one to tolerate such a cheat.
“I know. I know these things,” he said. Then he returned to his meal, gathering up the minced chicken with a flattened ball of sticky rice.
True enough, in less than a year the bride and groom were divorced.
LATER THAT YEAR, Mr. Vong made another one of his predictions. This time he made it the minute he opened the wedding invitation. He said, “Ah, not even going to happen.”
“Dad, what is it? How can you know it’s not going to happen?”
“Look at it. The invitation was printed at some fancy downtown place.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, they don’t do Lao lettering at that place. Look at that,” he said, pointing to the text of the invitation, “it’s all in English.”
“Maybe the bride and groom don’t read Lao.”
“It doesn’t matter! The language should be there whether you can read it or not. It’s where you come from. Why leave it out?”
His daughter came over to look at the invitation. There was no Lao lettering to be found anywhere on this particular invitation. It was fancy—thick paper and raised print she could feel when she ran a hand across the lettering, the little silver-glinted bumps forming the names, addresses, dates. And yes, Mr. Vong’s prediction was correct. The would-be groom broke off the engagement to marry someone else named Sue. Phone calls were made. The wedding was cancelled. Called off.
“Dad, seriously, how did you know?”
“Look, I know these things. You just can’t have a Lao wedding without Lao letters on the invitation. And you have to have your real given name on there. Yeah, it’s a long name—but that’s your name. Why would you want to be Sue when your name is really Savongnavathakad? Because, you know, the real Sue will end up marrying the guy if it says so right there on the invitation.”
WHEN IT WAS TIME for Mr. Vong’s daughter to get married, he spared no expense. He ordered sparkled paint from Laos made out of the crushed wings of a rare local insect. The gold specks were real and not artificial—real shine and shimmer for a real marriage. He printed the invitations by hand and left each one out to dry on a metal rack. Ten on each rack for a total of two hundred invitations, an even number, always divisible by two—an important number in a marriage. Mr. Vong didn’t use a fan to dry the paint because he wanted them to dry on their