CATINAT WE LEFT VIETNAM with a close friend of my mother, Hà, and her parents. Hà is much younger than my mother. At the beginning of the 1970s in Saigon, she was the perfect modern woman in the American style, with her very short dresses that showed off the slanted, heart-shaped birthmark high up on her left thigh. I remember her irresistible platform shoes in the hallway of our house, which struck me as decadent, or at least gave me a new perspective on the world when I slipped them on. Her false eyelashes thick with mascara transformed her eyes into two spiky-haired rambutans. She was our Twiggy, with her apple-green and turquoise eyeshadow, two colours that clashed with her coppery skin. She was unlike most of the young girls, who avoided the sun in order to set themselves apart from the peasants in the rice fields, who had to roll their pants up to their knees and endure the violent bright light. Hà bared her skin at the swimming pool of the very exclusive Cercle Sportif, where she gave me swimming lessons.

She preferred American freedom to the elegance of French culture, which gave her the courage to participate in the first Miss Vietnam competition, even though she was an English teacher. My mother did not approve of her choices, which went contrary to her status as a well-educated young woman from a good family. But she supported her by buying her the long dress and bathing suit that Hà would wear on stage. She had her practise walking in a straight line along the tiled floor, balancing a dictionaryon her head, as she'd seen women do in films. My mother treated her as if she were her big sister,and shielded her from gossip. She allowed Hà to takeme with her to the chic boutiques on rue Catinat, andto drink a lime soda with her foreign friends. Hàmarched along this street with its grand hotels like aproud conqueror. The city belonged to her.

I wonderedwhether my mother envied her this ease thatcame from the compliments raining down on herfrom her teachers and her American colleagues. Thelatter celebrated her beauty with gifts of chocolate bars,hair curlers, and Louis Armstrong records, whereasthe Vietnamese looked on her dark complexion as"savage." More than once, my grandparents asked mymother to halt my swimming lessons with Hà. I suspectthat my mother disobeyed them and kept Hàclose to us because she hoped I'd learn to be beautiful. Unfortunately, that time with Hà in Vietnam was tooshort--or my apprenticeship, too slow.