Rose Smith

The Word For House

We’d finally left behind Arizona and my father, and we were living with John in Salt Lake City, in the house that he owned. A beautiful place that I loved from the first moment I saw it. In that house I had my own bed. I liked to keep my eyes closed so that I could listen to the morning. It was the sound of water splashing: my mother washing her face, John brushing his teeth beside her. It was the deep and rhythmic breathing of my brothers, sleeping. And for the last few months it had been the rise and fall of voices, coming through the door to the living room, which we kept closed at night so that the refugee family that lived in there had privacy. Vietnamese sounded like singing to me: faint, sad singing. Ha’s wife murmured ceaselessly, her lips moved around closed teeth and breathy sounds streamed out all day.