FRESH YARN presents: Sparkly Things ... by Lan Tran

FRESH YARN presents:

Sparkly Things
By Lan Tran

After my first year away at college, my parents decided my lifestyle was demographically deficient: I did not have "enough" Vietnamese friends. So after my 19th birthday, when I came home to visit for the summer, they took action and told me, "We've entered you in a Vietnamese beauty pageant." What!? Me?! A beauty pageant? Yes. Specifically, the 13th Annual Little Saigon Hoa Hau Ao Dai, or Pageant of the Ao Dai, the Vietnamese traditional dress. One moment they were stressing the importance of cultural kinship, the next they were handing me a flier for the pageant that someone had stuck on their car at 99 Ranch Market.

Every week, my parents drive 25 minutes out of their way from their home in Carson to Orange County's Little Saigon in order to buy groceries at Sieu Thi Ai Hoa 99 Ranch Market, the kind of place where, with every purchase over $75, you also get a free box of Kleenex. It's their way of connecting with community... the community they live very, very far away from.

The chief pageant advocate was my father, an intellectual who didn't like when I got voted Homecoming Princess. He thought the rigors of high school royalty would mess with my schooling. This was the man now trying to sell a beauty contest. "You like that frou-frou stuff, don't you? Well you can be frou-frou, learn about your culture, and make Vietnamese friends." It was a combo deal, surely I could appreciate the economics of that. He laid out his points, like a math theorem.

"Given: You, Lan, like wearing sparkly things. Well if A: you enter the beauty pageant; then B: you will get to wear sparkly things."

Hmm, sparkly things...

So, off I went to the first rehearsal for the 13th Annual Little Saigon Hoa Hau Ao Dai!

There were 17 of us contestants, in one small room. And as we stole careful sideway glances at each other -- 16 of them in colorful outfits, me in friendly denim overalls -- I was sure they were all wondering the same thing I was. Gee, who's gonna be my new Vietnamese buddy?

I was five minutes late but it didn't seem like I had missed much. A young guy wearing glasses was at the front explaining the pageant history, its celebration of the ao dai. As he yammered on, I noticed the girl to my left. She had spiky, cropped hair, a short black skirt, and peeking out from her high heeled sandals were Hello Kitty characters, painted on her toes.

"Oh, what cute toenails," I said. She didn't look up but to my right, another girl with pouty red lips and an armful of bracelets turned towards us, shushed me, which made all her bracelets tinkle, and turned back. Trying to be quieter, I gently tapped my neighbor to the left and made silent, discombobulated gestures to relay my enthusiasm for her fashion forward feet. In response to the animated miming she gave me a strained smile, which cracked a visible line in her makeup, then uncrossed her crossed legs, and swung them to the other side.

Next we were given forms to fill out. A sea of pens click-clicked around me as the girls all dutifully finished their paperwork. I hadn't thought to bring a pen so, given Shushy Girl and Hello Kitty Toes on either side, I turned to the girl in front of me -- she had long permed hair and convex bangs grouped into five distinct sections on her forehead. "Excuse me, do you have an extra pen?"

She took her time looking me over, dug into her fake Gucci handbag and handed me a ballpoint saying, "Give it back when you're done." I tried to be extra nice and chummy when I did return it with a cheery tilt of the head saying, "Thank you SO much. Who knew you'd need a pen?" But she clinically removed the pen from my hand like a claw arm going for a plush toy, and said, "The first day is always form day. Always." Then she glanced at my denim overalls saying, "You were the one who came in late. Weren't you?"

Uh, yeah.

And so it went. Me, friendly as a Smurf! The other girls treating me like a suspicious foreign antibody. It was like high school all over again except in high school, I actually had friends.

Next we learned our runway walk with Mr. Vy, a professional pageant coach. "Okay girls," he called to us, "Mr. Vy here to make you all gorgeous and walk like a movie star! You follow Mr. Vy and do like this." Creating his own runway with a dramatic flourish of the arms, Mr. Vy demonstrated a slinky walk with lots of hip action, a dramatic halt and pose, shift to another pose, then a third pose with a flamenco-like turn, and sauntered back. "Walk in V-formation, okay girls? Mr. Vy say 'V for Very easy!'" Right, very easy. Except I've never been a particularly coordinated person. I tried to do what the girl in front of me had done but when I finished, Mr. Vy was eating his fist.

When I got home that night, my mom pounced. Di co vui khong? Mai dua kia sao? Con co gap ai khong? How did it go? Did you have fun? Did you meet anyone nice? My father cut to the chase. "So, when are your new friends coming over?"

"Dad, we don't have anything in common," I wailed "they're all pageant veterans except me."

My father, bless him, decided to attack this problem the only way he knew how: like a research project. If learning pageant culture was going to get his kid Vietnamese friends, then by golly we would have that information. So he got in his car, drove 25 minutes out of his way back to 99 Ranch Market, where he bought a videotape of last year's pageant, the 12th Annual Little Saigon Hoa Hau Ao Dai. He handed it to me saying, "Last year's winner was from Texas."

See, I was born in Texas and as every Dallas debutante knows, there have been more Miss Americas from Texas than any other state. "So there," my father joked, "if not by your intelligence, talent and good looks, then surely by your birthright as a Texan do you also have a shot at the tiara."

This is what passes for humor in an academic family.

I watched the videotape, silently cheering for my fellow Texan. There were also all these behind the scenes interviews with the other girls. There was Minh, who had entered on a dare by her friends; Tam, studying to be a dental assistant; and Bich Ngoc, an aspiring actress who had Americanized her name to Mary Lou, after the gymnast. I was engrossed in the personal drama behind the quest for the crown. Knowing that Thuy, the entrant from Phoenix, had twisted her ankle jogging just weeks before, made watching her dance number to Madonna so much more impressive. Go Thuy!

I felt such a kinship with these females, all girl glorious and bonded with women I had never even met. I wanted to be in their world, the better world of the 12th Annual Little Saigon Hoa Hau Ao Dai, where the girls talked about how no matter who won, they were so thankful for this opportunity to have made lifelong friends. I was convinced that if only my parents had panicked about my lack of cultural pals just a year earlier, I too could have held hands on stage with Minh, Tam, Bich Ngoc (aka Mary Lou) and Thuy. But no, my colleagues were Hello Kitty Toes, Convex Five Bang, and Shushy Girl.

And then, more than halfway through the torturous month-long process, I actually made a friend. Her name was Kim and she was a late entrant to the pageant, coming to just the last three of our rehearsals. On the day of the contest, when they called the names of all the semi-finalists and I was one of them, Kim gave me a huge smile and clapped so heartily I think it was the first time I didn't feel alone onstage.

I didn't make the final round and neither did she. But we did make plans to go out a couple of weeks later and had a grand old time partying together, getting liquored up and doing karaoke.

When we stumbled home to my parents' house at five in the morning, a couple of giggling drunks, my father was waiting up for us. He threw open the door and nearly knocked Kim over as he profusely thanked her for being such a good influence on me and agreeing to be my friend, as if we had stayed up discussing classical literature instead of licking beer bottles all night. "You stay for pancakes," he told her. "My specialty."

Homemade pancakes for coming home at five! Oh my God, if I had known it'd be like this I would have gotten a Vietnamese friend MUCH sooner. Kim was better than a Get Out Of Jail Free Card. For the rest of that summer at home, I invited her to everything. If she couldn't make it, I'd just say I was with her and garner praise for spending so much time exploring my cultural heritage. I had never had so much parentally sanctioned fun.

Ironically, in the decade since that pageant, I have become a writer and now get invited to events with other Vietnamese writers. My father is so pleased. I get to share a stage with people he reads and admires. It is his best illustration of the transitive property. If A: other contemporary Vietnamese-American authors know B: yours truly, and B knows C: my dad, then A knows C. I am his Kevin Bacon connection to the new Vietnamese literati. And whenever I come back from these events and bring him an autographed book by one of his favorite authors, that is his sparkly thing. And I know he is certainly a lot prouder than he would have been had I won the 13th Annual Little Saigon Hoa Hau Ao Dai.