Reveal

She starts with a question. I answer. She continues. Her mother lives in Vietnam. It's better there for old people, she says. In her country there's no need for mother to cook. Mother goes outside every day, walks to the market, and buys prepared food. Old people here live in a prison. But there women live worse. Even after three children her father betrays her mother. She does not claim father because she knows not whether he's living or dead after 1975. She leaves her country in the 1980s for freedom not money. Mother, brother, and sister stay behind. Husband goes first. She waits and then escapes with their two children. It was scary. Husband, wife, and children reunite in the Philippines in a refugee camp. They pass health examinations and fly north. She is lucky, she says, to have good children. She sends money to mother. She ends with a question. I answer.