The next day, Hân asked Trang and Quỳnh to get ready for work early. She wanted to introduce them to the other bar girls. “Talk to them before you put on makeup. Let them think you aren’t as pretty as them,” Hân said. “And don’t forget to tell them you know the rules and that you won’t steal their boyfriends.”

  On their walk to the bar, Hân said competition among bar girls was normal, and that each of them had to fight for her own survival. Most women working at the Hollywood came from the countryside. Some had brothers or fathers who’d been killed in the war. Some were simply poor.

  Tina wasn’t there when they arrived and Trang felt the tightness in her shoulders ease. While Quỳnh joined a group of women sitting around a table in the center of the bar, Trang made her way to another table. She bowed to three women who sat there: two girls around her age and a woman in her forties who were putting on their makeup. The older woman pointed at an empty chair and gestured for her to sit down.

  One of the girls introduced herself as Lan, her friend as Trịnh, and the older woman as Oanh. “So yesterday was your first day, huh?” Lan said, applying powder to her face. “What a scene you made . . . with the American who wanted to go to the back room with you . . .”

  Trang looked down at the table covered in water stains. She was afraid she would always be tainted by men who touched her in this bar.

  “You look ashamed.” Oanh painted a deep red color on her lips. “Are you ashamed to be here?”

  Trang wanted to say yes, but didn’t want to offend the women. She asked instead, “Sisters, may I ask how it is for you to work here?”

  “I heard you come from a small village like me? Yes? So let me tell you something,” Lan said while applying her mascara onto her thick lashes. “I think it’s liberating to be here. You have fun, you earn money, and you don’t have to labor like a buffalo under the hot sun all day long.”

  “Before this, I had to cook three times a day.” Trịnh pinned a plumeria flower into her long, black hair. “My parents and younger brothers bossed me around like I was their servant. They considered me dirt, calling me stupid and useless. But you know what, with the money I bring home these days, they look at me with different eyes. They don’t even let me carry my own plate to the kitchen after a meal when I come home for a visit.” She laughed.

  “Ah, I’m different from these young chicks. I was born and grew up in this city,” said Oanh, pushing her bra up so that her breasts would pop out more. “Also, I was no virgin when I started this job. I thought I was too old but it turned out some men liked women with experience.” She sprayed some perfume on her right wrist, then rubbed it against her left. “I already have three children with my Vietnamese husband, you see? I wish he could take care of my kids, but he’s a drunk, addicted to gambling. The money I earn here feeds, clothes, and sends the children to school. Does my husband have a problem with it? Of course he does, but until he can bring home enough money to give our kids a comfortable life, he’ll have to keep his mouth shut.”

  Trang was astonished at the forthrightness of these women. She wished she could spend the whole afternoon talking to them, but the tall American soldier came back for her. He wanted only her. She spread out a deck of cards and offered to play but he shook his head. By nine o’clock, she counted the amount of tea her customers had bought her: three glasses.

  In the back room, she didn’t let the tall man take off her clothes, but she touched him down there until he shuddered and moaned. She tried to imagine the act to be liberating and empowering, just like she’d been told earlier, but only bile rose to her throat.

  She went to bed with ten American dollars clutched against her chest. The man had given her five dollars tonight, the same amount she would have earned from many days of hard labor.

  When she arrived at the bar the next day, the changing room was bustling. At one end, some of the girls were getting dressed, but at the other end a girl was lying on a table, her legs spread wide, her lower body completely naked. An older woman was standing between the girl’s thighs, shining a light onto her private parts.

  Trang pulled Quỳnh aside. “You sure you’re okay with this?”

  “Why not?” Quỳnh asked. “Remember dì Vinh from our village? I’d wanted to become a midwife like her, so I used to go past her place. Once I snuck a look behind her curtain and saw her checking a patient, just like that.”

  “It’s not just about this, em. The work here . . .”

  “So what do you expect me to do, huh? Run home to Ba and Má and cry?” Quỳnh rolled her eyes.

  There was a white cloth covering the table, and when it was her turned to be checked, Trang lowered her naked bottom onto it and shivered.

  “Lie down flat on your back,” the nurse ordered.

  “I haven’t been with a man, Auntie.” Trang cocked her upper body on her elbows. “Please . . . be careful.”

  The nurse turned to her metal tray.

  Tears burned the back of Trang’s eyes; she was a fish on a chopping board waiting to be split open.

  “There’s no way around it. It won’t take a minute. I’ll be gentle,” said the nurse, her hand halfway into a glove.

  Trang shrunk back when the woman reached for her groin. She bit into her shirt collar as the woman held her thigh with one hand, the other reaching inside of her.

  The pain lingered as she sat at the bar, flirted with men, laughed along with them. She laughed even though she didn’t understand what they were saying. The evening dragged on endlessly.

  The next afternoon, the police visited the bar. Tina had been found in her rented room, her throat slit open, her body decomposing in the heat. “Vietnamese gangsters,” Hân said. “Play with fire and you’ll get roasted.”

  “I think somebody robbed her,” another bar girl offered. “She got too many American dollars. It’s her fault for showing that she has money.”

  “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” Oanh glared at them. “Tina deserves our respect.”

  “Ha, respect for a bully?” Quỳnh flicked her hair and applied another layer of lipstick.

  “Tina was illiterate, you know that?” Oanh shook her head. “Her parents believed that if a girl knew how to read and write, she’d bring trouble upon herself by writing romantic letters to boys. So instead of sending Tina to school, you know where they sent her? To a rich family; she had to work as their house maid. When she was fourteen, Tina was raped by her master. At fifteen, she ran away to Sài Gòn.”

  “That’s why she was fierce. It was her way of defending herself.” Trang brought her palm to her chest.

  That evening, Trang burned incense for Tina, regretting the fights they’d had. If Tina were alive, she’d have liked to make friends with her. She felt grateful to her parents for ignoring their neighbors’ ridicule and sending her to school. There’d been times when the men in her village had told her father that an educated girl would have difficulties finding a husband, that no man would want a woman who was richer in knowledge than him.

  Trang became more determined than ever to earn money fast so she could pay her parents’ debts and gain her freedom. She agreed to go to the back room with men she knew, men who accepted that she wouldn’t let them enter her. She’d touch them until they came. Whenever they asked her for a long time, though, she shook her head. Each dollar would go a long way, but her virginity was her pride.

  Trang didn’t talk to Quỳnh about the back room but watched out for her little sister. Thankfully, Quỳnh didn’t leave the bar to go anywhere; she did well in attracting customers and charming them into buying drinks. Her English was certainly better than Trang’s.

  After two weeks, they could pay back Hân the money they’d borrowed. After a month, they started sending money home. Trang calculated in her head that it would take over a year to clear their parents’ debts.

  Trang studied and practiced new English words each day with Quỳnh and her customers. She watched other bar girls and learned tricks to charm the Americans. She winked at them, swayed her body, and let them touch her if they bought enough liquor. She would walk away from a man if he didn’t buy enough drinks. She started earning more money from tips.

  Each evening, after coming home from work, Trang would scrub herself with a scented soap bar to remove all the filth. Then she would curl up on the floor, next to Quỳnh, with a book. She reread the ones she’d brought from home and devoured new titles that she’d purchased. The stories transported her into another world, purified her. As she traveled into women’s tales from ancient times until now, into the lives of the Trưng warrior sisters, the Empress Nam Phương, and the poet Hồ Xuân Hương, she absorbed their strength. And she learned from Quỳnh, who considered their time at the bar as pretense, a performance, and snored like a farmer after a day of hard labor as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  After a month and a half, she moved with Quỳnh into a small room they rented with three other girls. They put most of their money aside for their parents but spent some on things they needed for their job: clothes, makeup, shoes, and jewelry. And as an investment for their work, they hired an English teacher.

  They studied in the mornings and worked at the bar in the afternoons and evenings. They told each other to imitate the most popular bar girls, and gradually they became popular themselves. More soldiers came in asking for “the sisters.” And once Trang was able to command more and more Sài Gòn Tea, the tiger madam stopped bullying her.

  Trang smiled when she helped Quỳnh put together money to send home. She wrote a long letter to her parents describing how much Quỳnh and she were enjoying their office job. “Our American boss is very nice to us. She never shouts and she’s teaching us English,” she wrote. “Please, don’t forget to buy good food. We’ll send some more in a few weeks to help settle the debts.”

  When Trang reread the letter, she wondered how she’d become such a good liar. She should have felt bad but strangely her body was as light as a butterfly’s wings. Her parents had sacrificed their lives for her and she was proud to return their love. That night, she slept like a rice seedling and woke with new determination sprouting inside her.

  After nine weeks away from home, a letter arrived. Trang kissed her mother’s writing, her tears falling. Her father’s most recent surgery was successful. “He’ll be learning how to walk again soon. Can you believe it? It’s all thanks to you girls. But we miss you. When will you be able to come back for a visit?”

  She hadn’t dared give her mother her real address, using Hân’s uncle’s instead. He lived far away from the bar but had a motorbike. They’d agreed that whenever a letter arrived, he’d deliver it in exchange for one thousand đồng. His job as laborer for a construction project didn’t pay much. He’d fought with the ARVN and been injured, some shrapnel still buried inside his lungs.

  Trang reread her mother’s letter each night before falling asleep. She wanted to catch the bus and go home, yet she feared her parents might be able to sniff the smell of American men on her skin.

  She had hoped her mother would mention Hiếu, but nothing. Once, she dreamt that he came to Sài Gòn looking for her. How ridiculous. For sure he’d found another girl. He was his parents’ only son and they’d want him to marry soon and produce a boy to keep their family blood running. His name, Hiếu, meant “loyal to parents,” after all. From now on, she had to forget about him.

  She kept looking out for the mustached man, her first customer. She wanted to know if he was okay because he’d been so sad. Unlike the other soldiers, he didn’t force himself on her. The look on his face and the way he talked to himself haunted her.

  Around the middle of her third month at work, Trang saw a white man step into the Hollywood Bar, his T-shirt and jeans tight against his youthful body. Through the mist of cigarette smoke, she saw his face and her heart jumped: he was the one who’d accompanied the mustached man.

  “I back soon,” Trang told her customer, a big-bellied man who was smoking and chatting to another man sitting next to him. The big-bellied man nodded, pinching her bottom as she walked away.

  Trang hurried toward the young man, nearly tripping on her high heels. “Your friend, where?” she panted. Standing close to him now, she could see that his eyes were tired; they were moving, looking around the bar, as if searching for someone. Finally, the eyes fell onto hers.

  “Your friend, where?” she repeated.

  “Huh?”

  “Your friend.”

  “Friend, who?”

  “Thì cái ông có râu đó.” Frustrated, she uttered in Vietnamese.

  He shook his head.

  “Your friend, where?” She used her fingers to suggest the existence of a mustache on her face.

  “Mustached?” The young man squinted his eyes.

  “Yes. Mu-ta. Your friend, mu-ta.”

  “You mean Jimmy?”

  “I know no name. He, mu-ta. He, me.” She made a drinking gesture.

  “Yeah, I remember. Jimmy talked to you.”

  “Where Jimmy?”

  Before the young man could answer, someone snatched Trang’s arm, pulling her backward. She crashed into the fat-bellied man. He gripped her shoulders, turning her around, shouting at her. Words she couldn’t understand, except for one: “bitch.” Chó cái.

  The young man said something and the fat-bellied man screamed at him.

  The tiger madam appeared by Trang’s side, her face red with anger. “What did I tell you, Kim? Never flirt with two men at the same time. Never!”

  “Oh, no, madam . . . I didn’t flirt. I was just asking about his friend, that’s all.” She freed herself from the fat-bellied man, gesturing toward the younger man. “His friend was here during my first night. He had a mustache and—”

  “Did he fuck you and stuff you with dollars instead of his sperm?”

  Trang stared at the tiger madam, too shocked to utter a single word. But the woman was no longer looking at her. “No fight. Here no fight,” she told the two Americans, who paid her no attention. They were busy shouting and pushing against each other.

  “Madam.” Trang pulled the bar owner’s arm. “Please tell them I didn’t try to flirt. I only wanted to ask about the mustached man. I was rude to him and I just wanted to apologize.”

  “Apologize my ass.” The woman shook her head but squeezed herself between the two men. She spoke rapidly to them.

  It took a while for things to calm down, and a while longer for Trang to comprehend that the mustached man was dead. Shot in the head. Fell face down in a rice paddy and lifted away by a dustoff—the word the young American soldier used for a medical helicopter. The soldier was standing beside her on the pavement outside the bar, smoking a cigarette, talking too quickly for Hân to translate.

  “Got it? Jimmy is gone. He’s never coming back. So don’t ask me about him again.” He flung the cigarette onto the ground, snuffing it with the heel of his boot. He stared at Trang, his eyes blood-red. Before she could answer, he turned and left.

  The news about the mustached man’s death staggered Trang. Before that, she’d thought about American soldiers as men who carried guns, who drank and smoked, who killed and tortured, and who were hungry for sex.

  Now, whenever Trang was out on the street, she watched how awkwardly those soldiers moved through Sài Gòn’s tropical heat, how they sweated through their thick uniforms, and how they stood out due to the whiteness or blackness of their skin and the bulkiness of their bodies. From her chair at the bar, she saw the distant look in the eyes of experienced soldiers and smelled the fear from brand-new ones. She understood that while these men had come to Việt Nam without their families, they were somehow carrying their parents, friends, and siblings on their backs—just like she was carrying hers.

  The more Trang tried to understand the Americans, the more she realized each man was different. Some were kind and gentle, some abusive and violent. And those who’d gone through battles were certainly unpredictable. More than a few times she’d seen fistfights. Once, two men drew their handguns and pointed them at each other. From under a table, she gripped Quỳnh tight as the men’s shouts intensified. Her mouth dropped as she saw the tiger madam, in her high heels and miniskirt, step into the narrow space between the two guns, her hands pushing the muzzles toward the ground.

  A few days after Trang learned about Jimmy’s death, she was practicing new English words with a customer when Quỳnh pulled her shoulder. “Sister, once you’re done with work go home first. I’ll be there soon,” she said quickly, then linked arms with an older soldier, heading for the entrance.

  Trang ran after her. “Quỳnh . . . don’t.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Quỳnh looked up at the man, who bent, kissing her on the lips.

  “Sister, it’s not safe . . . You don’t need to do this.”

  “Is there a problem?” a voice rose behind Trang’s back. The tiger madam.

  “I was just saying goodbye to my sister, Madam,” Quỳnh said, and the man led her away.

  “No!” Trang reached forward.

  The tiger madam held her back. “We have rules in this bar. If you have any problems, leave.”

  “But she’s too young, Madam.” Trang watched Quỳnh get into a taxi.

  “Well, anyone who steps inside the Hollywood is a full adult—”

  Trang broke free, running to the car. “Quỳnh, please . . . You don’t have to.”

  “I know what I’m doing, chị Hai. Don’t worry.” With those words, she shut the door. The taxi sped away from Trang.

  At her apartment, as Trang waited for her sister’s return, the sounds of occasional gunshots, of airplanes taking off and landing, made her more restless. Sài Gòn was becoming more unsafe. Rumors of new uprisings had filled the bar. The Communists had failed in the Tết Offensive but many people believed another big attack was imminent.

  Trang suspected that Quỳnh had gone out for a long time tonight because of the news from home. Their parents hadn’t mentioned it in their letters, but Hân’s mother had told her the court had ordered Trang and Quỳnh’s parents to pay a high monthly interest on what they still owed. Trang had expected this, but the news still devastated her. Her family was racing against time.