by Leslie Gould
She hurried along the sidewalk, dragging Binh by his sticky hand. Sweat beaded around her brow under her hat. He wiggled away from her and slumped to the ground, scooting up against the concrete wall of a bicycle shop. “I’m tired,” he whined. “I want to go home. I want to sleep.”
“Uncle wants to see us.”
“Why can’t he come to us?” Binh put his head in the crook of his arm.
Why couldn’t Quan stop by the shack? She was growing tired of his demands. Her stomach hurt. She grabbed Binh by his arm, jerked him to his feet, and then lifted him into her arms. He began to whimper again. He was too heavy to carry; her lower back ached. His head knocked against her hat, sending it off her head to her back. The ribbon tightened around her neck.
“My ear hurts.” Binh pushed his head against Lan’s cheek.
She squeezed him in frustration. Not his ear again. She didn’t have the extra money for the doctor. Lan hurried up the stairs to the Justice Department, through the open door, and then stopped as she entered the dark landing, unable to see. “Grandmother.” Binh slid from Lan’s arms.
“Mother?” Lan’s eyes adjusted. “Why are you here? Why did you leave Binh alone?”
“Lan, look who is here! Older Sister!” Mother smiled, showing her broken teeth, and grabbed the hand of the woman next to her.
Binh climbed onto the wooden chair and stood. The woman sitting beside Mother rose to her feet.
Lan took a step forward.
“Yes. It’s me. Cam My.”
Older Sister hugged Lan close. Lan felt her sister’s soft flesh, her plump arms, her full breasts. Lan pulled away, taking in Cam My’s short auburn hair, her round face, her light skin; the eye shadow, the color on her lips, the scent of good perfume; the Western skirt, and the sleeveless top.
“Older Sister has been in America,” Mother said, “all these years.”
“No, no.” Older Sister shook her head. “Since the late seventies. But hush; we must not talk about it now.”
“Why are you here at the Justice Department?” Lan peered at Cam My and then down at her own dirty blouse and dry, dark skin. Her single braid weighed against her back.
“Brother brought me here. He’s investigating me.” Older Sister laughed nervously.
“Why?” Lan stood with her arm around Cam My’s waist.
“Adoptions. I facilitated adoptions in the North. But he seems to think that I’ve been working down here, too.”
The three women turned toward the sound of footsteps. Older Brother stood in the doorway. “Come in,” he said and then cleared his throat. “All of you.”
Three chairs faced his desk. The women sat, and Lan pulled Binh onto her lap. He reached toward the desk, aiming to grab the pen that stood in a holder. Lan pulled him back. It was the same office Lan had sat in more than two months before when she had relinquished the children, but now light made its way through the windows, and the stacks of papers were gone.
“It’s time for honest answers,” Older Brother said. “I am ashamed to be investigating my own sisters. I need answers so I can write my report. A couple from America is traveling to adopt Mai from the orphanage, and I need to finish the investigation. I believe Lan accepted money for her daughter, and, Cam My, I think you’re involved.”
Lan bowed her head. What was Older Brother talking about? She glanced furtively from Older Sister to Older Brother.
“You’re speculating. I would never pay a mother for her baby.” Older Sister held her head high.
“No? But you’ve worked with the Americans who are arranging Mai’s adoption.” Older Brother sat tall behind the desk.
“I did, but I haven’t associated with them since last year, and then it was in the North, not here in Vung Tau.” Older Sister crossed her legs.
“Why do you no longer work with them?” Quan’s eyes bored through Older Sister.
“They no longer take babies from the North.”
“Why?”
Older Sister shrugged her shoulders. “Did you ask them?”
How could Cam My be so flippant with Older Brother? Didn’t she care that he was a government official?
“I did. I asked Mrs. Benson, Mrs. Maggie Benson. She said they were uncertain of the facilitator’s qualifications. The facilitator. That would be you.”
“We had a misunderstanding,” Cam My answered. Binh reached out to grab the pen from the desktop again. Lan jerked him back.
“You paid a birth mother for her baby,” Quan said.
“I would never buy a baby. I told you that.”
“No one paid you for your own baby?” Older Brother asked. Mother put her hand to her mouth; Lan pulled Binh closer. Why was Quan bringing Chi into the conversation?
Cam My paused and then asked sharply, “My own baby?”
Older Brother nodded.
Cam My shook her head. “For Chi?” She took a cigarette from her leather purse. “Of course not. You’re as bad as the Americans, remembering the past like it was yesterday. Chi left Vietnam nearly thirty years ago.”
“And you haven’t regretted giving her up?”
Older Sister lit her cigarette and looked at Lan, then at Mother, and finally at Binh. She put the cigarette to her lips, inhaled, and then glared at Older Brother. He pushed an ashtray toward her. “What kind of life would she have had here?” Cam My’s perfectly manicured nails caught the light as she flicked ashes from her cigarette. Her hand shook slightly.
Older Brother turned toward Lan. “Did Older Sister pay you for Mai?” Binh buried his head against his mother’s chest. Lan closed her eyes and pulled Binh tightly against her midriff, against the spot in her stomach that began to burn.
“Quan.” Cam My leaned forward, waving her cigarette toward him. She said his name with force, the way she had when they were children. “Lan and I haven’t seen each other in twenty-six years. I already told you that.”
How can Cam My be so brave?
“I don’t believe you.” Older Brother leaned back in his chair.
“Believe me. I had no idea where they were. I went back to the rubber plantation, but they were gone. No one knew where they went. I searched in Saigon—Ho Chi Minh City—but no one knew of them. You have …” Older Sister paused, as if she searched for the right word. “… reunited us; your suspicions have brought us together, and for that I’m very thankful.” She bowed her head.
Older Brother scowled at Lan. “I’ll ask you one more time. Did Cam My pay you for Mai?”
“No.” Lan’s voice quivered as she said the single word, her head bowed deeply
“Let’s go eat,” Older Sister said, waving for a taxi. “Maggie Benson told me about a barbecue place here in Vung Tau.” A taxi stopped, and the women and Binh climbed in the back. Older Sister sat in the middle. Mother took her hand and held it tightly. Lan pulled Binh onto her lap.
The taxi driver turned south. “Wait,” Lan said. “Turn back. We need to go to our place to get Hang.”
“Hang?”
“My oldest child.”
“How many children do you have?”
“The two.” Lan hesitated. “And the baby girl. And you? How many children do you have?”
“Just Chi.” She inhaled and then exhaled slowly, flicking ashes out the window. “Is this the first time you’ve given up a child?”
Lan nodded. “I took Binh to the orphanage too.” Her son tilted his face toward hers. “A couple from America wanted to adopt him—the same ones who are coming for Mai—but I took him home.”
Older Sister licked the tip of her index finger and shook her head. “He would have had a good life in America. Plenty to eat. School. College.”
“That’s what I told her,” Mother said. “A woman has to put her children before herself. Didn’t I do that for you, Lan?”
“You never took me to an orphanage.”
Mother shrugged her shoulders. “You were all I had. Everyone else was gone. I needed someone to take care of me when I was old. Beside
s, no one would have adopted you; you were too old.”
“You wouldn’t have gone to America anyway,” Older Sister said. “Maybe France. After the war Americans couldn’t adopt from Vietnam, not until the early nineties.”
Lan directed the taxi driver down the dirt road toward the shack. “I was married to Hang’s father. He left before he knew I was pregnant.”
“By boat?” Cam My asked.
Lan nodded.
“Did he make it?”
“I never heard from him.” Lan held Binh close.
“I’m sorry. So many died,” Cam My said. “Only three on my boat survived. At first I wished I hadn’t. I hope it was quick for him.”
Lan felt the pain spread from her stomach to her chest. She took a big breath and then smiled as Hang ran toward the car, waving and grinning, her braids flying. Cam My laughed. Lan rolled down her window. “Get in,” she said. “I have someone for you to meet.”
“Our luck has changed,” Mother whispered across the restaurant table to Lan. “First Quan shows up and now Cam My. Life will finally get better.”
Lan nodded, a little dizzy from the thought of both Older Sister and Older Brother showing up within weeks of each other. Surely she could take care of Hang and Binh now. Older Sister would help support them. She thought again of the baby, but the little one felt farther away now, felt as if she had already started her journey to America. Lan shook her head. Her stomach hurt.
Older Sister ordered for all of them—pork and french fries, salt-and-pepper shrimp and Coca-Colas. She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke toward Hang. “Don’t ever smoke,” she said to her. “It’s very bad for you. In America the children are told not to smoke.” Hang stared at her newfound aunt with big, admiring eyes.
At the next table, a group of young people in their twenties toasted each other with Tiger beers, shouting, “Yo!” in unison. Lan thought of Cuong. She glanced down at her sweat-stained blouse, then at Older Sister in her pretty clothes, then back at the young people. There was a cake with white frosting on the table.
“What are they doing?” Lan asked.
“Celebrating a birthday.”
Binh pulled at his ear. Lan ignored him, hoping it was just sore and not infected again.
“Everyone in America celebrates birthdays,” Older Sister said.
“I want a birthday!” Binh knelt on his chair. She wasn’t sure of the exact date Binh was born. It was after the midautumn festival—that’s what she told the orphanage director. The director said they would choose a birthday for him.
“Why did you take your daughter to the orphanage?” Older Sister asked.
“I can’t provide for another child.” She was weary of her answer. It stabbed at her, reminded her of her failure.
“I wish I could help, but I think I’m going to get kicked out of Vietnam. Then I won’t have a job.” Older Sister pulled an ashtray from the center of the table and flicked ashes onto the clear glass bottom.
“Why?”
“I gave a birth mom money, actually a few birth moms in the North. Mind you, I didn’t pay them for their babies, not like Older Brother thinks, but I gave them money to make things easier after they took their babies to the orphanages. They were so sad, so lost. I remember what that’s like. Brother interviewed one of the birth moms. She was nervous, confused. She said I gave her money for the baby. I have the Vietnamese after me, well, mainly Brother, and now the American INS.”
“What will happen?” Lan asked.
The young people at the next table toasted again, yelling, “Yo!”
Older Sister shrugged. “I’ll go back to California. Maybe I’ll find a job translating in social services again. Although the need isn’t as great now.”
“The U.S. will let you go back?” Lan rested her hand on Binh’s shoulder to stop him from rocking back and forth on his knees.
“They have to. I’m a citizen,” Cam My answered.
“Send us money when you go back.” Mother’s eyes filled with tears.
Older Sister patted her hand. “I will … when I can, when I find another job. If my legal bills aren’t too high.” She put the cigarette back to her lips and mumbled, “If I don’t end up in prison.”
The waitress brought five Coca-Colas to the table. Lan pulled Binh onto her lap and held the glass for him. She didn’t want him to spill it and draw attention.
“Have you seen Chi?” Lan positioned the straw in Binh’s mouth. He stared at the young men and women at the next table.
Older Sister took a drink of her Coca-Cola and then began to light another cigarette. “I’ve e-mailed her a few times and talked on the phone twice. Her American name is Cheryl.” Cam My inhaled and then exhaled slowly. “One of the American women I work with helped me track her down. She was adopted by a family in Colorado.” Lan raised her eyebrows. “Its in the U.S. It’s a state close to the middle of the country.”
“Go on,” Mother said, as if she’d heard of Colorado before.
“She graduated from college. She lives in Chicago; it’s a big city in America. She married a white man and designs programs.”
“What does she do?” Mother squinted at Cam My.
“Computer work.”
Mother nodded her head. “That’s good. Maybe she will send us money.”
“No.” Cam My wrinkled her nose. “She’s American. She wouldn’t understand.”
“How did you leave Vietnam?” Lan trailed her fingers along Binh’s neck, playing with his hair. The waitress slapped a stack of napkins on the table.
“I left from here, just south of Vung Tau, on a fishing boat in 1978.” Older Sister’s hand shook a little as she rested it by the ashtray. “I ended up in a refugee camp in Indonesia for two years before going to America. Because I could speak English, I got a job as a translator for social services. Learning English from my American boyfriend paid off.”
Lan thought about Chinh. Hang had been born in 1989. That meant Chinh had left in 1988, long after Older Sister had filed the country. “Are you married?” she asked Older Sister.
“Twice. Divorced twice.”
“Did you search for your American boyfriend?”
She nodded. “But I was too late.” She took another drag from her cigarette, tilted her head, and blew the smoke toward the open-beam ceiling, and then looked from Mother to Lan. “He died in a car accident two years after he returned home.”
Lan thought of the big American with hair the color of sand. Life was hard even in America.
Older Sister put out her cigarette. “Where’s our food? I’m starving.”
Hang squinted at her and laughed, then filled her cheeks with air and moved her head from side to side. Lan shook her head at her daughter and slid Binh onto Hang’s lap. Hang was right—Older Sister looked far from starving. Life in America had been good to her. A waitress served the group celebrating the birthday. Although the other patrons were far better off than Mother, Hang, Binh, and Lan, none of them appeared to be as wealthy as Older Sister.
Mother clapped her hands. “I want all of my children together before Cam My goes back to America. And my grandchildren. Sunday we should all have a dinner to make up for lost time.”
“Even Older Brother?” Cam My fingered her gold earring.
“Of course. He is my son, my long-lost son. Even the baby,” Mother said. “I will see her one last time before she goes to America to start her happy life.”
Lan shook her head.
“Yes, Lan. Do it for me.” Mother patted her bun at the back of her neck.
“I can’t take her back to the orphanage again.”
“I’ll help you,” Older Sister said. “I’ll go with you to the orphanage, both to get her and then to take her back. I’d like to see her.”
Rain began to pour outside the open door of the restaurant. The waitress bringing in the barbecued pork from outside rushed toward them, her long hair wet, her white shirt splattered with rain. She placed a platter of pork on the table,
followed by a platter of shrimp. A second waitress brought french fries. The smell of the food made Lan’s mouth water. As the waitresses hurried around the table, Binh jumped from Hang’s lap and scurried over to where the young people celebrated. Lan caught sight of him and then gasped as he poked his finger through the white frosting into the cake. She stood quickly, pushing her plastic chair back on the concrete. “Binh!” she called out. “Stop it!”
A young woman who sat next to the cake grabbed Binh’s wrist and scolded him. The man sitting next to her laughed. Binh smiled. The young woman let go, and Lan snatched Binh by the arm and then pulled him back to the table as she apologized. Binh climbed back in his chair and grabbed a handful of french fries.
“I see that one gives you trouble,” Cam My said and then smiled. “I like his spirit.”
Lan pulled her chair to the table and glanced at Binh. She had left marks on his arm. She took a long drink of Coca-Cola. Her stomach hurt just above her belly button. She pressed her thumb against the spot.
“Look what we’ve become.” Older Sister glanced down at her plate as she cut her pork with a knife and fork, then up at Lan. “Older Brother, the investigator. Me, the baby buyer, and you, the uneducated, unwed mother.”
Part 3
May 25-June 28, 2001
And we know that all things work together for good
to those who love God, to those who are the called
according to His purpose.
ROMANS 8:28
Chapter 31
The airplane soared over the lush landscape topped with wisps of clouds; a river cut through the greenery; a hill jutted through the canopy of trees that gave way to villages, then to large buildings all jumbled together. The crowded plane buzzed with Vietnamese conversations. Gen imagined the stories of the passengers, the people who escaped and were now returning to see their homeland and their families.
“How do you feel?” Jeff took her hand.
“Like I’m nine.” As if it had all just happened—the war, Morns death, losing Nhat. She turned from the window to face Jeff.
