Radiant - By Christina Daley Page 0,30

wouldn't be able to have strong children." She looked at her expanded waistline and laughed. "That was a long time ago!"

"But you still found each other," Carter said.

Ba nodded. "My parents had a store in the front of our house. We sold all kinds of food. I worked there sometimes, when I wasn't at my part time job as a receptionist for the college. One day when I was watching the store, this Frenchman came and asked me which were the good cakes to buy. We sold these cakes that the American soldiers and other foreigners really liked. So I told him which ones, and he asked me to wrap them up and he paid for them. But then he handed the cakes back to me and said, 'These are for you.' I still remember. I was wearing my pink silk áo dài because I was supposed to be going out with a friend later that day. You know the one, Mary. I gave it to you last year when you turned sixteen."

It was buried deep in the bowels of Mary's closet. "I still have it, Ba," she said.

"An áo dài?" Carter asked. "That means 'long dress,' doesn't it?"

"You see that dress shop over there?" Ba asked. "Those long tunics with the flowing trousers. Those make up the áo dài." She looked at Mary. "You only wore it once to your cousin's wedding. I wish you would wear it again."

Another cousin needed to get married then, Mary thought. Mary didn't do dresses. Or pink.

"Anyway, Jean-Marc was wonderful," Ba continued. "He courted me for a while and then came and asked my father if he could marry me. My parents didn't agree at first. He wasn't Vietnamese, and he was a little strange. He was very passionate about many things, and he loved art. He painted as a hobby and taught me how. But my parents finally gave us their blessing. A foreign and odd husband was better than no husband at all. And they saw that we loved each other very much. But a couple months later, things started to get really bad. It was 1975, and the Americans were leaving. Jean-Marc's company pulled all its workers, and I went to France with him. When we got there, we tried to find out if my family made it out, but I never heard from them again."

Mary remembered the first time Ba told her this story. She was about six or seven years old, and Mom had scolded her for something stupid. Mary screamed that she hated her mother and ran up to the roof to cry. Ba came up shortly after to put her arm around her, and she told her this story. She told her how important family was, and that Mary should never say she hated anyone, especially her mother. You never know if something will happen and you never see that person again.

Ba continued. "When we got to Paris, I was so looking forward to meeting his family. I was hoping that they would love me like my family had loved him. But when they saw me, they were furious! Jean-Marc hadn't told them that he had gotten married, let alone married a Vietnamese girl. His mother actually told him to 'return' me, like I was something he had bought at a store. I felt awful. He was already the odd duck of the family, and I felt like I just made everything worse for him. I had a little money before I had left Saigon. Just enough for one plane ticket to America. I had never been before, and I didn't know which city I was going to nor what I would do once I got there. I knew some English, but not very much. I just didn't want to be the cause of so much trouble for him. So, I left."

Carter leaned forward in his chair. "What happened?"

She chuckled. "Jean-Marc followed me. He was angry. Not with me, but with his family. He said he was done trying to please them. 'America should be far enough to get away from them' he said. So we lived here. And you know what else he did? Instead of having me change my last name to his, he changed his to mine! Isn't that funny? Imagine that. A tall, dark, and very French man answering to 'Mr. Phan.' He was so silly."

Carter smiled. "And you were happy together?"

"Oh yes." She sighed. "But then the lung cancer came. He