La Mia Vietnamita

So begins, I venture to say, not one single Neapolitan canzona, nor Roman stornello. But let me take a minute to sing the singular praises of my roommate.

Let's get one thing clear: after four years of living solo, having a roommate is hell. Gone are the days when I could come home, shut the door, strip down to my underwear, talk to myself, and pick my nose. (I mean, not that I would ever do such unladylike things...) Although it can be solitary to live by yourself, you can't beat the privacy, independence, and sense of your own little world. Even if you rent, every bit of your space is your own to be used how you'd like. If the place is a mess at least it's your mess. To keep it clean, you've got to stay on top of no one but yourself.

But in going back to school, I was able to swallow the idea of sharing my space with another rent-paying life form. My first living situation, which I've chronicled elsewhere in these pages, involved having two roomates, inadequate space, and paying about $200 more than I should have. I moved in on a Sunday evening, by Tuesday morning, I was looking for a new place in earnest.

The miracle of Craig's List brought me to beautiful Brighton, which exists exclusively to provide stacks of sort-of affordable housing to students and immigrants. (Beautiful is meant sarcastically, in case you didn't notice.) I'm close to the intersection of Harvard Avenue (whose aesthetics couldn't be farther from Harvard University) and Commonwealth Ave, the epicenter of the so-called student ghetto between BU and BC. This crossing is in dire need of some feng shui: the establishments on the corners include McDonald's, Pizzeria Uno, Marty's Liquors, and Dunkin' Donuts. What more could a student need! Cabbies hang out in front of McDonald's, alnog with numerous weirdos and lots of trash.

But I haven't even mentioned my roommate! The arrangement is what's known as a split; the apartment is actually a one-bedroom and one of us is sleeping in what would have been the living room. She found this place by herself in September, and drove a hard bargain by making me move in the middle of the month instead of October 1. She has the bigger of the two rooms, which came largely furnished, and she uses the hall closet as her own; I have no closet in my room, no room for a TV (as usual), and barely enough room for my stuff. We split the rent down the middle. When you're the one looking for a place to live, you're not in a position to negotiate.

It was a royal pain and simply traumatic to move up from New York and then to move again, but it somehow made me grateful to have just a little patch of space to call my own. If I stay here over the two years of my studies, I'll save about $5,000 in rent and utilities costs. I'll be slightly cramped and compromise my privacy for that.

Before I moved in, and for many days afterwards, I spent quite few sunlight hours cleaning and repainting the place. (Repainting??! Management would not do it for me, though they would lend me the paints; I chose their bland colors to avoid having to change it back when I leave, otherwise, I'd be sleeping in a rainbow room.) My roommate appears to have not cleaned anything at all when she arrived. The previous tenants appeared to have had cats. And roaches. Lacking a vacuum to clean up all the hair, I took a scrub brush to window sills and doorways simply encrusted in black. The kitchen range top was opaque and damaged with brown grease, and it took two rounds of oven cleaner inside and out to make it look back to normal. A tiny fry pan of grease sat on the stove the first week I was here. Vietnamese cuisine involves a good deal of frying, I would soon learn.

I didn't get to clean the kitchen before mom arrived to help me move in, and I was embarrassed when she was wiping down the cabinets and sweeping the muck off the shelves. My roommate did not make any room for me in the tiny refrigerator, and the limited counter space was (and still is) crowded with Vietnamese vinegar, fish sauce, a vat of oil, a tub of sugar, etc. etc.

But again, I've yet to tell you about her. Ngan is sweet and shrewd. She's 20, and here on her own to do a one-year accounting masters at BC. She's shorter than the refrigerator. I like Vietnamese food, and I've been getting a bit of a sense of how to make it just by seeing what she buys and how she cooks. There's always an enormous sack of white rice under the sink (roach rice, mom and I christened it) and mysterious Asian greens in the fridge. She also appears to be partial to Klondike bars and Campbell's cream of chicken soup, of all things. (She uses the empty cans to scoop rice and store leftover frying oil.) The frying is the one bit that gets out of hand, and sometimes gets me running full-speed out of the house. If there's a disturbing noise you can use ear plugs, a bothersome sight you can look away, but a noxious smell? I often come home to the aroma of garlic, if I'm lucky, or the nostril-burning pungence of fish sauce, if I'm not.

She cooked for me once, a vermicelli dish with beef, scallions, roasted peanuts, mint, hot sauce, and fish sauce and vinegar. I surveyed the half dozen pots and bowels needed to prepare the stuff, and understood why I don't cook Asian more often. I returned the favor later with a roast chicken with rosemary. I showed her the herb's piny branches, which apparently aren't used in Vietnam, and she asked if I bought it at the grocery store. She thought I had plucked it from a tree!

If there were any common space in this apartment, I would hang out with her. We usually stay in our rooms or out of the apartment, so it's easy to let a week go by with only barely saying hello. But still, when she was gone for a month over semester break, I missed a little human presence. I resolved to make an effort to talk with her and be better friends.

It looks like my longing for company has been doubly fulfilled! She returned today, bringing one of her sisters with her. She had called me from Vietnam to let me know, but had not mentioned how long her guest would be with us. The first thing I noticed when I came in tonight was the presence of a huge number of shoes that weren't her own: winter shoes and flip-flops and dress shoes and boots. More alarmingly, added to the vinegar and cooking oil on the counter, is a package of some kind of supplement drink for pregnant women. I have a feeling my living situation will be not what I expected when I first moved in here....