by John Shors
Though the day was just unfolding, Vietnam was already changing. People had died. Mothers had ushered new life into the world. A cloud was being painted on a ceiling of the Iris Rhodes Center for Street Children. A cancer-stricken girl named Tam clung to her grandmother’s back and was carried to a market where they’d spend the day begging. A nearly blind policeman tried to catch criminals. And the bones of lost Americans were overturned by a plow.
Vietnam, a country that had known little but war for many generations, was strangely peaceful, as if the spirits of the slain had somehow infiltrated the prejudices of the living. Hope abounded across the land. Hope often obscured by shanties and brothels and misery but, nonetheless, the collective aspiration for a better tomorrow.
TWO
Steps to Nowhere
Making her way back to her seat, Iris glanced at Noah, who stared into the blackness beyond his window. She saw the unmarred side of his face, which was defined by a thin, almost delicate nose and jaw. His blond hair was short and ungov erned by gel or spray. It was almost accidentally stylish, as if he’d come from a movie set. His eyes were turned away from her, but she knew they were a light blue—to her the color of the oceans on a world map. Though his scar faced the window and not her—which she assumed was no accident—she’d seen where his skin had been pulled together. The forced fusion of torn flesh started above his right eye and curved back into his hairline. It looked like a trail of purple lipstick.
Though he was not a large man, Noah’s knees pressed into the seat in front of him, and as soon as Iris sat beside him their elbows touched. She looked at his tray table, which bore two Heineken cans that the stewardess hadn’t bothered to remove. A third can was in his right hand. Though Iris had tried to initiate conversations during the long trip to Asia, he hadn’t seemed eager to talk. During their school years he’d always been the first to speak, and she found herself repeatedly surprised by his silence.
“Why did you come?” she asked quietly, finally voicing what she’d wondered for the past few days.
Noah didn’t turn to her but continued to stare at the blackness that would soon become Ho Chi Minh City. He raised the beer to his lips and drank. When he set the can on his tray table and shifted in his seat, Iris followed his movements and saw the outline of his prosthesis beneath his pant leg. “Because of my mother,” he replied, his voice smooth and soft, so unlike the wound on his forehead.
“Your mother?”
“She needed me to go.”
Iris watched him open a small container and place two pills in his hand. He took a gulp of beer and swallowed the pills simultaneously. “How much does it hurt?” she asked, unsure if the medicine was for his forehead or his leg.
He pointed to his knee. “Do you know what the army calls my stump?”
“No.”
“A residual limb. That’s what everyone calls them. Sounds kind of cool, doesn’t it? A residual limb. But to me it’s just a stump. A stump that hurts.”
She looked away from his leg. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”
“Do you want to talk about any of it?”
Noah took another drink, then pointed to his can as a stewardess came by. She nodded and he set his beer aside. “I don’t remember much about your father,” he said.
“He was a vet like you.”
“Was he wounded?”
“A doctor would have said no. But I’d say yes.”
Noah nodded, wondering how many companions her father had seen die, if he’d killed, if he’d been lied to. Noah thought of his friend Wesley. He thought of the Iraqi man who’d run toward their checkpoint, trying to get their attention. They had shouted at him to stop, and when he didn’t, Wesley had opened fire, killing him. Later, when they’d learned that he’d been in a traffic accident, and that his baby girl had been bleeding to death, Wesley had spoken of taking his own life. Noah had saved him that night, but it hadn’t mattered. Two days later, still awash in his sorrow, Wesley had failed to hear Noah’s warning and had driven their Humvee past a discarded backpack. The bomb made the world explode. Everything turned a bright and brilliant orange. Noah’s leg wasn’t found. Wesley was pieced back together but never regained consciousness.
Their plane was suddenly buffeted by turbulence, and Noah instinctively cringed. His heartbeat quickened. His neck perspired. He felt as if the walls were closing in on him. He swore silently, reaching for his beer, drinking what remained in the can. Closing his eyes, he asked himself if he’d care if the plane’s wings fell off. At least then his pain would be gone, his hatred gone. For he hurt and hated so much. The hurt radiated outward from his lower back and his stump. The hatred stemmed from lies—deceptions told to prompt a war that had cost him a leg and a friend.
The stewardess gave Noah a fresh beer, which he quickly opened and consumed. “We should get a do-over,” he said, noting lights in the distance.
Iris set her Vietnam guidebook down. “What?”
“One do-over in life. Is that too much to ask?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I’d give everything I have for that chance.”
She saw the bitterness of his expression and wondered if her father had experienced the same thought. “It isn’t right . . . what happened to you.”
He drank deeply. “I used to love you. Imagine that.”
“We were kids. And I—”
“Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“If you’d been older, things might have been different.”
He shrugged, then awkwardly repositioned himself in the seat. “I won’t get in your way.”
“I want your help, Noah. I could really use your help.”
Despite the beer and the painkillers, his stump ached and he continued to shift in his seat, glancing away from her. Ho Chi Minh City was coming to life below. Lights flickered like stars, as if the world had been turned upside down. “Do you still believe in good?” he asked.
She nodded. “My father was doing something good. He spent the last two years of his life doing it. He believed in it. And I’m here because I believe in it.”
“I believed in the tooth fairy. In Santa Claus. In going to war. Shouldn’t we know, instead of believe?”
Iris didn’t begrudge Noah his bitterness, because as a girl she’d shared it on many occasions. Still, her eyes found his and she said, “I know that I love my father and my mother. I know we’re going to land soon, and that I’m scared to death about what I’ll find. And I believe in good. Because if there wasn’t any good in the world . . . well . . . then there wouldn’t be any music, or books, or children. And to me, at least, sometimes those things . . . they . . . they pull me through the pain.”
Noah mused over her words, finishing the last of his beer. To him, pain was impenetrable—an ocean that he couldn’t swim across, a mountain that he could never summit. “We’re here,” he said, watching the runway rise toward him, wishing that he were like Iris, who had only lakes and hills before her.
FROM THE ROOFTOP BAR OF THE Rex Hotel, Ho Chi Minh City resembled some sort of carnival ride. Neon signs flickered. The headlights of countless motor scooters illuminated French-colonial buildings and treelined boulevards. Women—clad in everything from traditional full-length dresses to Donna Karan knockoffs to tank tops—strode down sidewalks bordering art galleries, massage parlors, sushi restaurants, and nondescript government buildings.
The symphony of the city—a combination of horns and screeches and beeps—rose to mingle with the sounds of a band that played in the bar. The lead singer did his best rendition of “Hotel California,” his Vietnamese accent giving the song a surreal quality never heard on a Western radio. Seven Rex Hotel employees attended to a handful of occupied tables. Near the edge of the balcony, a young Australian couple sat with a pair of Vietnamese street children. The children’s tattered clothing—short-sleeved shirts, shorts, and sandals—would have looked at home on
a scarecrow. The boy’s features were as disheveled as his clothes. His dark hair jutted out in odd directions. His eyebrows were thick and nearly touched. His face was wide and dirty, his teeth crooked and stained. Most prominent, his left forearm ended in an ugly stump. The girl, ten and a half years old and slightly older than the boy, wore her hair in short pigtails. Her face was the opposite of her companion’s—narrow and delicate. Her smile was balanced, her nose rounded with slightly flaring nostrils. Both children were small for their ages, the result of lifelong malnutrition.
The girl, Mai, studied the game before her. It was Connect Four, which featured a yellow, upright board designed to accommodate falling checkerlike pieces. The black and red pieces were dropped by opposing players until someone managed to connect four of their pieces in a row, winning the game. Mai was worried, because her friend, Minh, seemed to be losing to the visitor from Sydney. And the fate of an American dollar rested on the outcome of the match.
“Don’t be a twit,” the Australian woman said to her companion as he prepared to drop his black piece. “He’s got too bloody much happening on the other side. You’d best put a stop to it right away.”
The traveler pondered his move.
Minh hoped that he wouldn’t listen to the woman, for she was right. Scratching a bug bite with his good hand, Minh tried to slow his breath, to hide his anxiety. To the Australians, the game was a way of passing time; to Mai and Minh a win would feed them for a full day. Better yet, a win would almost ensure that Loc wouldn’t beat Minh for his failure.
“What you going to do, mister?” Mai asked in broken English, twisting a plastic ring that she’d found earlier in the day, not used to the feel of it on her finger. “Maybe I fall asleep before you make next move. Same, same as last game.”
The Australian glanced at his watch. “Christ, it is getting a wee bit late. If we’re going to find a pub, we’d better leave.” He dropped his piece into a slot far away from where Minh had done most of his work.
“You’re a bloody idiot,” the woman griped, shaking her head.
Five moves later, Minh was victorious. He nodded to the foreigner and, unsmiling, took the greenback.
Mai emptied the game board of pieces. “One more game, mister? I bet you lucky this time.”
“Against that little bugger? Not a chance.”
“He lose already two time today. You can beat him. Sure, sure.”
The Australian stood up. “I reckon we’d best be off. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have at it again.”
Minh and Mai watched the foreigners depart. The woman had consumed several soft drinks, and Mai handed Minh a half-empty glass of Coke. “He was good, wasn’t he?” she asked in Vietnamese. “Except for that last game. He was way too frustrated to win that one. I’ve seen policemen with more patience.”
Minh nodded, sipping the sweet drink, savoring the taste of sugar.
“Another dollar and we can quit,” Mai said, tapping her foot against a chair leg. “Should we wait outside the Sheraton? Or Reunification Palace? Or Q Bar? Remember the last time we were there? Was that just two nights ago? You won seven dollars. Remember that? The night was perfect and everyone came outside. I sold four fans and you . . . you, Minh the Conqueror, won almost every game. What a night that was. Let’s go back there. Maybe we can find a game with someone who wants revenge. They should all be nice and drunk by now.”
Minh finished the Coke, pleased that Mai was happy with his winnings. He nodded again and then began to put away his game.
A waitress strode over to their table. “Was he good tonight?”
“When isn’t he good?” Mai replied, leafing through her thin stack of bills and handing the woman two dollars. She’d have preferred to give her an equal amount of Vietnamese dong, but everyone coveted American dollars, which were more stable.
“Huy wants three,” the waitress said, gesturing toward a uniformed man standing behind the bar. “He says if you can’t pay that, you need to find somewhere else to play.”
Mai started to reply angrily but realized that the woman’s eyes contained sympathy, not greed. And so Mai handed over an additional greenback. “Maybe if Huy paid as much attention to his customers as he does to us, he wouldn’t need another dollar,” she replied, knowing that after Loc took his cut, only a dollar would remain for Minh and her.
The woman shrugged, pocketed the money, and left. Mai muttered to herself, checking her bag to ensure that none of her fans had fallen out. “Let’s go,” she said, “before the tourists spend all their money.”
Minh took a final glance at the bustling city below. He then lifted the battered box that contained his game and followed Mai. As she weaved around tables, he listened to her say good night to the staff and the few remaining patrons. Though his stomach was empty and called for attention, he paid it little heed. At least they would eat tomorrow. Assuming he didn’t lose a game, that was. Watching Mai’s thin frame, and knowing that he earned most of their money, Minh walked faster, nervously trying to recall the games of two nights before. Whom had he played and how had he won? How would they try to beat him tonight?
On the narrow sidewalk that separated hundreds of passing motor scooters and a few cars from nearby shops, Mai and Minh walked toward the opera house, the basement of which contained the popular Q Bar. Large trees, whose trunks had been painted white, jutted from square holes in the cement. Bordering the sidewalk were stalls that sold pho—a traditional soup usually containing rice noodles, beef, green onions, and bean sprouts. Other shops sold snacks, silk ties and blouses, original artwork, antiques, war relics, and airline tickets. The sidewalk was populated with children who hawked packs of postcards, disheveled men who carried passengers via bicycle taxi to distant parts of the city, and attractive women who handed out brochures touting nearby restaurants, clubs, and stores. Some women wore the ao dai—a traditional, long-sleeved dress that was often silk and had buttons that ran from the front of the collar down to the underside of the shoulder to the waist. The tight-fitting ao dai covered most of the wearer’s pants, which were usually an identical fabric and color.
Mai knew many of those they passed and offered smiles and greetings. The same men, women, and children tended to work in particular areas of downtown, selling their wares to wealthy Vietnamese and tourists. “Are you hungry?” she asked Minh, taking the stub of his forearm in her hand.
He shook his head, stepping over a sleeping dog.
“Me neither,” she replied, though it was untrue. An immense, Russian-built truck rumbled past, shouldering dozens of motor scooters aside. “Want me to tell you a story?” she asked, for he enjoyed her tales.
Minh looked at her and nodded, eager to take his mind off the looming matches.
“Remember that little boy . . . the one who came from the jungle and shivered all the time?” Mai asked. “He slept under the bridge with us the afternoon it rained so hard? You won eleven games that night, Minh the Great, and after Loc left us, we got three ice-cream cones. That little boy had never eaten ice cream. Remember?”
Smiling, Minh unconsciously licked his lips.
Mai squeezed her friend’s stump. “And even though that ice cream made him colder, he laughed at the taste of it. He tried yours and mine, and he couldn’t stop laughing. He thought ice cream was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.”
Minh walked closer to Mai, remembering how they’d giggled, how they’d ended up giving the boy all their ice cream. Where had the boy gone? Did he still like ice cream so much?
“He was a sweet boy,” Mai said. “In some ways, he reminded me of you. He didn’t talk much. Maybe all that shivering made him tired.” She squeezed Minh’s stump again. “Do you think you’ll win tonight? I hope so. Too many kids are selling fans. And we’ve all got the same ones. I’m so tired of selling stupid fans. And Loc takes too much of our money. Someday, Minh, someday we have to leave him.”
Minh glanced anxiously about, worried that Mai would be overheard.
“
Oh, he’s not around here,” she said. “He’s in an opium den, spending our money. He probably couldn’t find his own ears right now.”
Minh nodded, slowing to watch a barber who attended to a boy perched atop a bucket. The barber had hung a cracked mirror from a building and meticulously snipped at his customer’s locks. Sitting nearby on an old-fashioned bicycle was a woman, presumably the boy’s mother. Minh studied the woman as he passed, studied the boy as well. What would it be like to have a mother who sat and waited for him, who liked looking at his face?
“I’ll find a drunk one for you tonight,” Mai said, leading him across a street, walking erratically so as to avoid the looming headlights of scooters and taxis.
Minh shook his head. He didn’t like playing the drunks, for they could be cruel to Mai. And they always seemed to ask about his hand and why he never spoke.
“I wish you’d play them,” she countered. “Their money’s so easy to take. They toss it about like trash. Ah, you can be stubborn, Minh the Powerful. As stubborn as that old water buffalo we saw the other day. If only I could play like you. I’d beat every drunk tourist in the city and we’d be rich.” Mai turned toward Minh and saw that he was watching boys kick a soccer ball in a park. “Did you hear anything I said?” she asked, knowing that he did, but understanding that his thoughts were with the boys, that he was somehow in their company.
Mai understood because she also knew how to place herself in the company of others, to pretend that she inhabited different worlds. Minh was better at the game, of course. But she still played, still imagined that she walked among schoolgirls, ate pho on the street with her father, read a book while waiting for her mother at the market. Mai, like Minh, played the game because it transported her from a place of hunger and pain, weariness and fear. In the pretend worlds she didn’t have to worry whether or not Minh would win, whether Loc would beat them, whether she’d have to someday sell herself to survive. In these worlds she went to school, Minh was her brother, and she was loved and protected by those who had given her life.
