Toi khong co chia hoa

I came home at 1:30 a.m. after a Friday evening out with the girls to find that all three of the locks were on the door. Long ago, my key for the third, square lock had broken off after too many unsuccessful attempts and I had never replaced it because I was never locked out without Steven. Unfortunately, this evening, Steven and his key, were up in our apartment behind two very heavily locked doors.

Looking around my on the street, I noted a group of men sitting at a table at the end of alley drinking beers, a few people walking by on the side walk and the usual stream of trucks lumbering by every five minutes. Not enough people to make a complete fool out of myself in front of, but witnesses nonetheless. I reached through the door and grabbed the lock and banged in against the door hoping that Steven was up watching TV in the living room and would hear me. Nothing. I was attempted to knock again, but didn't want to risk waking up the neighbors at 1:30 in the morning.

I walked back out on the side walk and looked up at the windows. All of the lights were on. Still not sure of what to do, but noting that I was drawing looks from everyone still out on the street, I retreated down the alley and pulled out my phone contemplating my next move. Steven lost his phone in a cab when we came back from Singapore so I couldn't call him. I could go back to Marjie's to sleep, but I didn't relish the idea of getting a ride all the way to her house just to be locked out in someone else's neighborhood if she didn't answer the door. I thought about getting someone to call him on Skype, thinking that the ring might wake him up, but I wasn't even sure if he had the computer on. Looking up, I found myself at the end of the alley and decided to stick with Plan A. Throwing rocks at the window.

I went to the next street and gathered up a handful of stones. Walking back down the alley to our street, I dreaded the thought of being more of a spectacle than I already am, merely being an American in Vien Nam. Tomorrow I would be "that crazy foreign woman whose husband locked her out of the house." Then I had an idea.

Walking out of the alley on to the street, I walked up to the men at the table. As they looked up at me with startled looks on their faces, I handed each of them a rock and pointed at our window. "Toi khong co chi hoa," I told them in my broken Vietnamese, "I don't have a key." "Chung toi di ngu." "My husband is sleeping." Two of the men smiled, shook their heads and handed me back the rocks, but the third guy got up and joined me.

We walked over to a patch of sidewalk under our living room window and let the first rocks fly. But no movement from inside. We exhausted our supply of rocks, watching as they pinged off the bars over the windows or disappeared over the balcony. We looked up, then looked at each other and immediately began collecting rocks from the sidewalk. The rocks got bigger and bigger, but still no Steven. We moved to the bedroom window. A whole ten minutes later, I was ready to give up, but my accomplice was more determined. He began breaking up pieces of broken sidewalk and chucking them at our bedroom window.

Finally, there was movement from inside and Steven's head peared out from behind the curtains.

"STEVEN!", I shouted. "LET ME IN."

His head disappeared. I turned to the man beside me and said, "Cam on, qua," "Thank you very much." He smiled and headed off for his bike. I noticed that he was idling on the street as I waited for Steven to unlock all of the locks to let me in and didn't drive off until I was safely inside.

When I got into the living room, I noticed that the glass doors had been left open and the floor was littered with rocks. Too tired to clean them up, I followed Steven to bed.