Linh bent over the customer's hand, filing the acrylic nail into a perfect oval. The woman was talking about her daughter's wedding. Something about centerpieces. Orchids or roses. Linh nodded and made small sounds of agreement, but she was thinking about her mother.
This morning, Ba Noi had tried to leave the house wearing her ao dai, the one she'd brought from Vietnam forty years ago. Silk the color of persimmons. She'd stood at the door with her purse, saying she needed to go to the market for lemongrass.
"There's lemongrass in the refrigerator, Ma," Linh had said in Vietnamese.
"Not the real kind. Not like home."
Home. Always home. But home was here now, this house in Phoenix with its beige walls and central air conditioning. Not the narrow house in Saigon where Ba Noi still traveled in her mind.
"What do you think?" the customer asked, holding up a photo on her phone.
"Very pretty," Linh said. She couldn't see the photo clearly without her reading glasses, but it didn't matter. Everything was always very pretty.
The bell above the door chimed. Another customer. But it was Maya, still in her school uniform. Linh's chest tightened. Maya never came to the salon.
"Mom." Maya's face was flushed. "Ba Noi's gone."
Linh dropped the nail file. It clattered on the floor.
"What do you mean gone?"
"I came home and the door was open. I looked everywhere."
The customer pulled her hand back. "Should I—"
"I'm sorry," Linh said, already untying her apron. "Family emergency. No charge today."
Outside, the October heat hit them like a wall. Maya had driven Linh's Honda, the one with the cracked windshield they kept meaning to fix.
"How long?" Linh asked.
"I don't know. An hour? Maybe two?"
They drove through the neighborhood slowly. Past the identical houses with their gravel lawns. Past the Circle K where Ba Noi sometimes walked to buy lottery tickets, convinced she'd win enough to go back to Vietnam.
"We should call the police," Maya said.
"Not yet."
"Mom, she's sick. She could be anywhere."
"I know where she might go."
But Linh didn't really know. Ba Noi's mind was like a map where someone had switched all the streets. What was here became there. What was now became then.
They checked the Vietnamese grocery on Dobson Road. Mr. Pham hadn't seen her. They tried the Buddhist temple on University Drive. The monks shook their heads.
"This is stupid," Maya said. "We're wasting time."
"You don't have to help."
"I didn't say that."
They sat in the car with the air conditioning blasting. Maya was texting someone. Her friends, probably. The ones who'd never been to their house, who didn't know Maya's middle name was Thanh, who thought her grandmother was dead.
"Try the pho place," Linh said. "The one on McDowell."
"She doesn't even like pho anymore."
"She liked it yesterday."
"Yesterday she thought I was someone named Huong."
Huong was Linh's sister. She'd died in a refugee camp in Malaysia in 1979. Ba Noi had been forgetting she was dead.
The pho restaurant was nearly empty at three in the afternoon. Just the owner watching a Vietnamese variety show on a mounted TV and an old man reading a newspaper. But there was Ba Noi, at a table by the window, her persimmon ao dai bright against the red vinyl booth.
She was talking to a young couple with a baby. Talking fast in Vietnamese, her hands moving like birds.
"Ba Noi," Maya called out.
Ba Noi looked up, confused. Then her face cleared.
"Huong," she said. "I was just telling them about the boat."
Maya started to correct her, but Linh touched her arm.
"Let's go home, Ma," Linh said in Vietnamese.
"But I haven't eaten."
The owner came over. "She's been here an hour," he said quietly in English. "I didn't want to call anyone. She wasn't bothering anybody."
Linh pulled out her wallet, but he waved it away.
"She told us about the war," the young woman said in accented English. She was maybe twenty-five, probably born here like Maya. "My grandparents never talk about it."
Ba Noi was still speaking, but to no one now, or to everyone, about the sound the rockets made, like paper tearing, and how she'd hidden her daughters in a wardrobe while the city fell.
"Come on, Ba Noi," Maya said, and this time she used Vietnamese. Her tones were wrong, but the words were there.
Ba Noi let Maya help her up. "You're a good girl, Huong."
In the car, Ba Noi fell asleep, her head against the window. Maya drove while Linh sat in the back with her mother.
"I didn't know about the boat," Maya said.
"You never asked."
"You never told me."
That was true. Linh had wanted Maya to be American, fully American, without the weight of everything that came before. But the weight was there anyway, in Ba Noi's confused mind, in Linh's tired hands, in Maya's Vietnamese face that she saw in the mirror every morning.
"Two weeks on the boat," Linh said. "No food the last three days. Just rainwater."
"Jesus."
"Your aunt got sick. Ba Noi held her while she died."
Maya was quiet. They passed a Starbucks, a Walgreens, a Chase bank. America.
"What was she like? Aunt Huong?"
"Funny. She made everyone laugh. Even on the boat, until she couldn't anymore."
At home, they helped Ba Noi to her room. She was docile now, tired. Maya helped her out of the ao dai while Linh found a nightgown.
"I need to go to the market," Ba Noi said.
"Tomorrow, Ma."
"The lemongrass here isn't the same."
"I know."
After Ba Noi was in bed, Linh and Maya stood in the hallway.
"We need to do something," Maya said. "She can't keep wandering off."
"I know."
"Maybe one of those places. With nurses."
"Maybe."
But they both knew Linh would never do it. Would never put her mother with strangers who didn't speak Vietnamese, who wouldn't know that she liked her tea with condensed milk, who wouldn't understand when she talked about the rockets that sounded like paper tearing.
"I'll come home earlier tomorrow," Maya said. "After school. To watch her."
"You have debate club tomorrow."
"I'll skip it."
Linh wanted to say no, wanted Maya to have her American life with its debate clubs and college applications and friends named Ashley and Brandon. But she needed help.
"Thank you," she said in Vietnamese.
"You're welcome," Maya replied in English, but then added, also in Vietnamese, "Mom."
The next morning, Linh woke early to make breakfast. Ba Noi was already in the kitchen, fully dressed in regular clothes. Her mind seemed clear.
"I had the strangest dream," Ba Noi said. "I was at a restaurant, talking to strangers."
"Just a dream, Ma."
Maya came in, dressed for school.
"Good morning, Ba Noi," she said in Vietnamese.
Ba Noi smiled. "Your pronunciation is getting better."
It wasn't, but Maya smiled back.
After Maya left for school, Linh called in sick to work. She couldn't afford to miss the day, but she couldn't leave Ba Noi alone either.
They spent the morning in the garden, what there was of it. Just some herbs in pots that Ba Noi had insisted on planting. Basil, cilantro, mint. Not like the garden in Saigon, but something.
"The lemongrass is dying," Ba Noi said.
"It's the heat."
"Everything dies in this heat."
That afternoon, while Ba Noi napped, Linh looked up memory care facilities on her phone. The prices made her stomach hurt. Even the cheapest was more than she made in a month.
Maya came home at three, as promised.
"How is she?"
"Good today. Clear."
"That's good."
But they both knew the clear days were becoming fewer.
"I've been thinking," Maya said. "What if I got a job? To help?"
"You need to focus on school."
"I can do both."
"Maya—"
"Mom, stop. We're family. This is what family does."
Linh wanted to cry. This American daughter who was becoming something else, something in between.
That evening, they ate dinner together, the three of them. Linh had made bun bo hue, the spicy soup that was Ba Noi's favorite. Ba Noi ate slowly, savoring each bite.
"This tastes like home," she said.
"This is home, Ba Noi," Maya said gently.
Ba Noi looked at her granddaughter for a long moment.
"Yes," she said. "I suppose it is."
Later, Linh found Maya in her room, working on college essays.
"What are you writing about?"
Maya hesitated. "Immigration. Family. That stuff."
"Can I read it?"
Maya handed her the laptop. The essay was about names, about how Maya had gone by May through elementary school, how she'd dropped the Thanh from her middle name, how she'd been embarrassed when her mother spoke Vietnamese in public. But also about today, about searching for Ba Noi, about understanding that a name could be both a burden and a gift.
"It's good," Linh said.
"You think?"
"Very good."
"Mom, what if she gets worse?"
"She will get worse."
"I mean, what if she doesn't know us anymore?"
Linh had been thinking about this. In the facilities she'd researched, there were locks on the doors, alarms on the beds. Places where forgetting was managed, contained.
"We'll figure it out," she said.
"Together?"
"Together."
That night, Linh couldn't sleep. She stood in Ba Noi's doorway, watching her mother breathe. In her sleep, Ba Noi looked younger, like the woman who'd taught mathematics in Saigon, who'd read French poetry, who'd once won a beauty contest at Tet.
The next day was Saturday. Maya didn't have school. They took Ba Noi to the Vietnamese grocery, let her choose the vegetables, the right kind of fish sauce, the good rice paper for spring rolls. She seemed happy, present.
But at the checkout, she pulled out money they didn't recognize. Old Vietnamese dong she'd hidden somewhere, worthless now.
"Ma, use this," Linh said, handing her American bills.
Ba Noi looked at the money, confused. "This isn't right."
"It's right, Ba Noi," Maya said. "It's what we use here."
"Here?"
"In Phoenix. In America."
Ba Noi took the bills, but her hands shook.
Outside, in the parking lot, she stopped.
"I want to go home," she said.
"We are going home," Linh said.
"No. Home. The real home."
Maya took her grandmother's arm. "Tell me about it. The real home."
As they drove, Ba Noi talked about the house in Saigon, the tile floors that stayed cool even in summer, the vendors who came by singing out their wares, the smell of bread from the French bakery on the corner.
"It sounds beautiful," Maya said.
"It was."
"Maybe we could visit someday."
Ba Noi was quiet. Then: "It's not there anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"That Saigon. It's gone. Even if the house is still standing."
Linh met Maya's eyes in the rearview mirror. This was the cruelest part of the disease—these moments of clarity, when Ba Noi understood exactly what she'd lost.
At home, they made spring rolls together. Ba Noi's hands remembered the motions even when her mind didn't remember teaching them to Linh, and Linh to Maya. Three generations of women around a kitchen table, rolling rice paper around shrimp and herbs and memories.
"Perfect," Ba Noi said, examining Maya's roll. "You learned well."
"I had good teachers," Maya said.
That evening, a storm rolled in. Rare for Phoenix in October. They sat on the covered patio, watching the rain turn the dusty streets into rivers.
"In Saigon, the rain was warm," Ba Noi said.
"Tell me more," Maya said.
So Ba Noi talked. About monsoons and flooded streets, about lotus flowers in Reunification Park, about the coffee so strong it could wake the dead. Sometimes she confused the decades, put people in the wrong places, but Maya didn't correct her anymore.
Linh's phone buzzed. The nail salon, asking if she'd be in tomorrow. She texted back yes. The bills wouldn't stop coming.
"Mom," Maya said later, when Ba Noi had gone to bed. "I've been looking into programs. There's funding sometimes, for families like ours. For home care."
"Maybe."
"Not maybe. I'll apply. My counselor will help."
Linh wanted to protest, to say they didn't need charity. But that was pride talking, and pride wouldn't keep Ba Noi safe.
"Okay," she said.
The next weeks fell into a rhythm. Maya came home early most days. She learned to redirect Ba Noi when she got confused, to go along with the harmless confusions. She started learning more Vietnamese, properly this time, with an app on her phone.
Some days were hard. Ba Noi would rage, accuse them of stealing, of keeping her prisoner. Once, she threw a plate at the wall, then cried like a child at the mess.
But there were good days too. Days when she taught Maya to cook canh chua, the sour soup that was Linh's favorite. Days when she told stories about her own grandmother, who'd lived to ninety-seven and attributed it to betel nut and spite.
One afternoon, Linh came home to find them looking through photo albums.
"Who's this?" Ba Noi asked, pointing to a picture of herself at Maya's age.
"That's you, Ba Noi," Maya said gently.
"No. I'm old. This girl is young."
"You were young once."
Ba Noi studied the photo. "She's pretty."
"Yes. Very pretty."
"She looks like you."
Maya smiled. "People say that."
Linh watched them from the doorway. Her daughter and her mother, finding each other across the confusion.
The home care aide started the next month. Her name was Rosario, and she spoke enough Vietnamese to make Ba Noi comfortable. The funding Maya had found covered three days a week. It wasn't enough, but it was something.
"Your daughter is smart," Rosario said to Linh. "The paperwork she did—very complete."
"She's applying to colleges."
"Good. Education is everything."
That's what Ba Noi used to say, back when she said things that made sense. Education is everything. That's why she'd taught until the day they fled, why she'd made Linh study English in the refugee camp, why she'd saved every penny to buy Maya books.
Winter came, what passed for winter in Phoenix. The temperatures dropped to the seventies. Ba Noi seemed more settled in the cooler weather, less likely to wander.
One evening, Maya was practicing a presentation for her Vietnamese Culture Club. She'd started it herself, recruited five other students.
"It's about Tet," she told Ba Noi.
"Tet," Ba Noi repeated. "Yes."
Maya showed photos on her laptop. Dragon dances, bánh chưng, children in ao dai.
"We did this," Ba Noi said suddenly. "All of this."
"In Saigon?"
"No. Here. With you." She pointed at Maya. "You were small. You cried because the dragon scared you."
It was true. Maya had been three, terrified of the dragon dance at the cultural center.
"You remember," Maya said.
"I remember everything," Ba Noi said. Then, softer: "Sometimes."
That night, after Ba Noi was asleep, Maya showed Linh her college essay. The final version.
It was different now. Still about names and identity, but also about memory. About how cultures survive in fragments—a recipe, a word, a story told over and over until it becomes myth. About her grandmother, who carried Vietnam in her mind even as that mind betrayed her.
"You'll make me cry," Linh said.
"Too much?"
"No. Perfect."
The acceptance letter came in March. Berkeley, with enough financial aid to make it possible.
"I don't have to go," Maya said.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"But Ba Noi—"
"Would never forgive you for not going."
They told Ba Noi at dinner. She smiled, nodded, then asked where Berkeley was.
"California," Maya said. "Not far."
"Good. Education is everything."
But later, Ba Noi pulled Linh aside.
"She's leaving?"
"For college, Ma."
"Like Huong?"
"No, Ma. Not like Huong."
Ba Noi looked confused, then sad. "Huong left on a boat."
"That was a long time ago."
"Was it?"
"Yes."
"Time is strange now."
"I know."
That spring, they established new routines. Maya created a schedule for Ba Noi, with pictures. Breakfast, garden, lunch, nap, dinner. It helped on the confused days.
They started recording videos. Maya interviewing Ba Noi on the good days, asking about recipes, stories, songs. Building an archive of memory before it all disappeared.
"Why are you filming me?" Ba Noi asked one day.
"So we remember," Maya said.
"Remember what?"
"Everything."
"Everything is too much. Remember the important things."
"What's important?"
Ba Noi thought. "The sound of your mother's voice. The taste of good pho. The way the light looks in the morning."
"What else?"
"That we survived. All of us. Different boats, but we survived."
In May, they went to Maya's graduation. Ba Noi wore her persimmon ao dai. She didn't understand what was happening, but she clapped when everyone else did.
"That girl looks familiar," she said when Maya walked across the stage.
"That's your granddaughter," Linh said.
"I have a granddaughter?"
"Yes."
"Is she smart?"
"Very smart."
"Good. Education is everything."
The summer passed quickly. They took Ba Noi to the beach in San Diego. She stood at the edge of the water, letting the waves wash over her feet.
"The ocean remembers everything," she said.
"What does it remember?" Maya asked.
"Every boat. Every journey. Every person who crossed."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I crossed an ocean once."
"I know, Ba Noi."
"Do you?"
"You told me."
"I forget what I've told."
"That's okay. Tell me again."
So Ba Noi told the story again, different this time, details shifted, but the heart of it the same. Water and fear and hope and loss.
When it was time for Maya to leave for Berkeley, Ba Noi helped pack, folding clothes with careful precision.
"Are you going somewhere?" she asked Maya.
"School."
"Good. Study hard."
"I will."
"Make us proud."
"I'll try."
Ba Noi took Maya's face in her hands. For a moment, her eyes were completely clear.
"You already have," she said.
The drive to Berkeley took ten hours. Linh and Maya took turns driving, Ba Noi sleeping in the back seat. They'd decided to make it a trip, to help Maya move in properly.
The dorm room was small, concrete block walls, a narrow window overlooking a parking lot.
"It's perfect," Maya said.
They helped her unpack, hang posters, make the bed with the sheets Linh had bought on sale.
Ba Noi sat on the desk chair, watching.
"This is nice," she said. "Like my room at the teachers' college."
"You went to teachers' college?" Maya asked.
"Of course. How else would I become a teacher?"
It was something they'd never known, this detail from before.
That evening, they ate at a Vietnamese restaurant near campus. The pho was too sweet, the spring rolls too greasy, but Ba Noi cleaned her plate.
"Not bad," she said. "For America."
They laughed. It was what she always said now, about everything. Not bad, for America. As if America was a condition to be endured, accommodated, but never quite accepted.
The goodbye was hard. Maya cried. Linh cried. Ba Noi seemed confused by the tears.
"Why is everyone sad?" she asked.
"We'll miss Maya," Linh said.
"Who's Maya?"
Maya hugged her grandmother. "I'm Maya."
"Oh. You're nice."
"So are you."
On the drive home, Ba Noi was quiet for a long time. Then, near Bakersfield, she said, "The girl. She's going to be okay."
"Yes," Linh said. "She is."
"She reminds me of someone."
"Who?"
"I don't know. Someone strong."
Back in Phoenix, the house felt empty. Linh and Ba Noi developed new rhythms, quieter ones. The home care aide came four days a week now—Linh had taken extra shifts at the salon to afford it.
Maya called every Sunday. Sometimes Ba Noi recognized her voice, sometimes not. But she always listened, always smiled at the stories of classes and roommates and the boy from her chemistry lab who'd asked her to coffee.
"Is she happy?" Ba Noi would ask after the calls.
"Yes, Ma. She's happy."
"Good. That's all we want for our children."
Fall came again. The persimmon ao dai hung in the closet, unworn now. Ba Noi had stopped wanting to go out, content to sit in the garden with her dying herbs.
One morning, Linh found her mother trying to water the plants with coffee.
"Ma, that's coffee."
"The plants like coffee."
"Not that much coffee."
Ba Noi looked at the mug in her hand, surprised. "How did this get here?"
"You made it."
"I don't drink coffee."
She did, every morning for sixty years, but Linh didn't argue.
"Let's make tea instead," she said.
They sat in the kitchen, drinking tea with condensed milk, the way Ba Noi had taught her.
"You're a good daughter," Ba Noi said suddenly.
Linh's throat tightened. "Thank you, Ma."
"I had two daughters, you know."
"I know."
"One died."
"Yes."
"On a boat."
"Yes."
"But one lived."
"Yes."
"That's something."
"Yes, Ma. That's something."
Maya came home for Thanksgiving. She seemed older, more confident. She spoke Vietnamese with the home care aide, helped cook the meal, told stories about her professors.
Ba Noi watched her with curiosity.
"You're the student," she said.
"I am."
"Education is everything."
"You taught me that."
"Did I? I was a teacher once."
"You were a wonderful teacher."
Ba Noi smiled. "I tried to be."
That night, after Ba Noi was in bed, Maya and Linh sat on the patio.
"She's getting worse," Maya said.
"Yes."
"Are you okay?"
"I don't know."
"Mom—"
"She's disappearing, Maya. Piece by piece. And I can't stop it."
"But she's still here."
"Is she?"
Maya was quiet. Then: "The parts that matter. The parts that loved us, that survived everything, that made us who we are. Those parts are still here."
"You sound like her. When she was herself."
"Maybe that's the point. Maybe we carry them forward, all the pieces of them, even when they can't carry them anymore."
December brought rare rain. Ba Noi sat by the window, watching it fall.
"In Saigon," she started, then stopped.
"What about Saigon?" Linh asked.
"I don't remember."
"That's okay."
"Is it?"
"Yes, Ma."
Ba Noi turned back to the rain. "It's pretty, though. The rain."
"Yes. It's pretty."
"That's enough, isn't it? For it to be pretty?"
"Yes, Ma. That's enough."
That became the new normal. Not remembering but finding beauty anyway. The color of birds in the garden. The taste of mango, even when she couldn't name it. The sound of Maya's voice on the phone, even when she didn't know who was calling.
Some days were harder. Days when Ba Noi was frightened, angry, lost in time. Days when she called for her own mother, dead now for forty years. Days when she didn't recognize Linh at all.
But there were still moments. Sitting together in the evening, not talking, just being. Ba Noi would take Linh's hand, hold it tight.
"We're okay," she'd say. Not a question.
"We're okay, Ma."
"Good. Good."
And in those moments, they were. Not perfect, not whole, but okay. A daughter and a mother, holding on to each other, to what remained. In a house in Phoenix, far from where they started, but home now, in all the ways that mattered.
The forgetting continued, deeper now, taking more. But also leaving space for something else. For Maya's visits, where Ba Noi saw her fresh each time, delighted by this smart young woman who spoke Vietnamese. For quiet mornings in the garden, the herbs growing despite the heat. For the taste of pho from the restaurant down the street, always a surprise, always perfect.
"This is good," Ba Noi would say, about the soup, the sunshine, the sound of Linh's voice reading the Vietnamese newspaper aloud.
"Yes, Ma. This is good."
And it was. Not the life they'd planned, but the life they had. Three generations of women, connected by blood and bone and the stories they told, even when the words got confused, even when the memories scattered like birds.
At night, Linh would help her mother to bed, tuck her in like a child.
"Thank you," Ba Noi would say.
"For what, Ma?"
"I don't know. Everything."
"You're welcome."
"Are you my daughter?"
"Yes, Ma. I'm your daughter."
"I have a daughter."
"You do."
"That's nice."
"Yes, Ma. It's nice."
And Ba Noi would sleep, peaceful, forgetting and remembering and forgetting again, while Linh sat beside her, keeping watch, holding the memories for both of them now, all the pieces of their lives, the ones that hurt and the ones that healed, the boat and the water and the long journey to this moment, this room, this breath, this love that persisted despite everything, because of everything.
In the morning, they would start again.