“Then, the crow’s-feet on your eyes only slightly starker, you wrap your fingers around the air where her calf should be, knead it as it were fully there. You continue down her invisible foot, rub its bony upper side before cupping the heel with your other hand, inching along the Achilles’ tendon, then stretching the stiff cords along the ankle’s underside.
When you turn to me once more, I run to fetch a towel from the case. Without a word, you slide the towel under the phantom limb, pad down the air, the muscle memory in your arms firing the familiar efficient motions, reveal what’s not there, the way a conductors movements make the music somehow more real” (75)
In this scene, Vuong describes the mother as she cares for a customer, an old woman who asks to her to pretend to wash the amputated section of her leg. The mother shows empathy for the woman, taking care of the phantom pains of a lost limb that the woman can still feel around her. In this moment, there is a juxtaposition between concrete reality and imagination – the language is detailed, literal as Vuong describes the parts of the leg that the mother pretends to wash from the “Achilles’ tendon” to the “stiff cords.” By using such precise language around human anatomy, it almost makes it seem as if the foot is real, that this is truly happening, rooting the narrative in realness.
The actions of the mother reflect how interracial, intergenerational care can reveal the phantom hurts and lives of individuals. Throughout the book, the mother is described as carrying wounds from her past life, where she sees and hears things that are not real as a result of her PTSD. In this scene, there is a sense of empathy, when the mother understands what it feels like to carry loss beyond a physical wound, and this shared feeling connects her to the old woman, who may otherwise, not shared any similarities to Rose.