by John Shors
Tam moaned, rubbing her blanket against her aching knee. “Why . . . why do I call you Little Bird?”
“Because I carry you on my back. We fly together and see so many things.”
“I like to fly.”
Qui heard the weakness in Tam’s voice and suddenly felt trapped. They’d been at Ben Thanh Market for six hours and had only about two dollars to show for it. If they didn’t make more money, Tam’s suffering would soon be much worse. Qui stood up, adjusted the bag that would hold her granddaughter, and asked a nearby cyclo driver for help.
Before long Tam was in the sling, the sides of her knees pressing against Qui’s back. Qui slowly moved down the congested sidewalk, grunting from the exertion. She begged as she walked, beseeching tourists to buy a book. Tam moaned more frequently, and Qui longed to take her home. But they couldn’t go home just yet. Not when daylight existed and tourists were abundant.
“I love you,” Tam said. “I love you . . . when you fly with me.”
“I’d never fly with anyone else,” Qui replied, stepping around a sleeping dog.
“Will you still fly with me when I go to the new world? After I wake up with all the other children?”
“Of course, my love.”
“Will I like it there?”
Qui reached backward, feeling Tam’s brow, caressing the contours of her face. “Your knees won’t hurt there. And you’ll be able to run. You won’t even need me to carry you.”
“But you will . . . if I ask?”
“As often as you like.”
Tam dropped her blanket and, grunting with effort, Qui managed to pick it up. They were now in the heart of downtown, the wealthiest area of Ho Chi Minh City. Tourists were everywhere, walking along tree-lined boulevards toward Reunification Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral, and Tao Dan Park. Galleries, banks, travel agencies, restaurants, and hotels sprouted like polished mountains from the pavement. Qui’s heart began to quicken its pace, for she wasn’t welcome here. Nevertheless she had no choice but to walk these streets.
At a busy intersection stood a Louis Vuitton store, a glass-and-steel creation that might have been a diamond set on a giant’s ring. Inside was a quiet and open space, so unlike the nearby environs. Qui, of course, had never been inside the store. But she’d seen well-dressed men and women emerge from it carrying beautiful purses and bags. The purses, she knew, sometimes sold for vast amounts of money—more money than she’d ever held in her life, more money than was necessary to buy Tam’s painkillers for many months.
Though leery about being harassed by the police or someone else, Qui walked to the store and stepped beneath the sweeping glass-and-steel canopy that rose above her. Believing that she’d invite less trouble if she stood, Qui forced her tired body to stay straight. She peered into the store and saw an unknown world that she’d never touch or understand.
For a few minutes no one entered or emerged from the store. Qui’s back began to ache. Her legs trembled. Her breath tumbled through the gaps between her remaining teeth. Tam started to moan again. Hearing her granddaughter suffer, Qui turned around, looking for someone who might help.
Before long a white-haired couple emerged from the glass doors. They each held a crisp shopping bag. Qui stepped toward them, holding out a book. “Hello,” she said in English. “Do you like book? Will you please buy book? I have good one for you.”
“We have enough bloody books already,” the man replied, taking his companion’s arm and leading her away.
“My granddaughter sick. I need money for medicine. Just little money. Please, kind sir. Please help us.”
“If she’s ill, fetch a cyclo and take her to a hospital.”
Qui watched the couple depart. Her back throbbed, and she longed to sit and rest. But she stood, politely asking other shoppers to buy her books. People tended to look at her with pity or disdain, sometimes acting as if they didn’t hear or see her. They walked away, clutching their full bags, and didn’t glance back. With each disappearance, Qui’s sense of despondency increased. Did she and Tam appear as animals to these people? Was Tam’s life of so little meaning?
Despite her best efforts, Qui began to cry. She balled her fists and wiped her weary eyes. Why is Tam dying? she asked herself, looking skyward. Why does no one care? And why . . . why, sweet Buddha, does this world let a little girl suffer so much? Suffering should only be for the old. We’re ready for it. We know it’s coming. But not Tam. She shouldn’t hurt so much.
Qui’s knees buckled. She struggled to stand. Suddenly a security guard was beside her, pulling her arm, taking her away from the storefront. She asked him to leave her be, to help her granddaughter, but the man only pulled harder. He must have scared Tam, for she started to cry. And Tam’s tears caused the walls to fall down around Qui. She’d built these walls to protect herself, to protect Tam. But now the walls were falling, smothering her. She shuddered and wept and pleaded. She told the man that her granddaughter was dying, that she was in pain, that a little pill could take the pain away. The guard only tugged with more determination, his fingers biting into Qui’s flesh.
And then, seeming to appear from nowhere, a dark-skinned woman from a foreign land stood beside her. This woman reached into a pocket and withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. The bill was placed in Qui’s hands. Qui bowed so low that she almost fell over. The woman helped her up. Still weeping, Qui grasped the woman’s fingers tightly, squeezing the flesh of Tam’s savior. Qui repeatedly thanked the stranger, handing her a book. The woman smiled and said good-bye.
Once again Qui could breathe. The walls were quickly rebuilt around her. Tam would not suffer so horribly tomorrow, or the next day or the next. Qui wiped tears from her cheeks, and then her hands found Tam’s face, and she told her they were going home, how they would fly like birds to a nest of their making.
FOUR
A Smaller World
Iris awoke early, her internal clock still unadjusted to the time change. Dawn had just stretched its radiant body across the sky. Roosters had screeching contests in the distance. The beeps of unseen scooters sounded as often as the ticks of an old clock. Raising her head from the futon that she’d laid down in the office, she looked appreciatively at the cluttered room. On a nearby desk she’d placed several prepublication copies of novels that she was supposed to review. Her notebook was also present, within it a collection of thoughts and musings that she was trying to assemble into a novel. Though she’d worked on it for six months, she still hadn’t finished her first draft. To her disgust, she knew that her characters were as deep as the paper upon which she wrote. She still didn’t understand them, which made it impossible to bring them to life.
Aware that the income generated from her book reviews was important, but suddenly unwilling to do what she’d done so many times, Iris ignored the stack of review copies and her deadlines. Instead she dressed quickly, putting on jeans and a blue T-shirt. She left the office, peeping into the classroom, where Noah slept. She counted nine beer cans sitting under his cot. His prosthesis also rested on the floor. How odd it looked—a rod of sorts connecting a shoe to a hard plastic sleeve that fit over his stump and thigh.
Iris wished that she could help Noah, that she had training in such matters. She wished that nine beer cans didn’t litter the floor of her father’s classroom. The cans seemed sacrilegious, as if casting sins in all directions. Impulsively, she walked in, quietly collected the cans, and disposed of them. Noah continued to sleep on his belly, not stirring. The skin of his stump was puckered and scarred.
In the stairwell, Iris heard noises coming from the kitchen. She was surprised to find Thien cutting up a pineapple. Thien wore an apron over her paint-splattered clothes. The same baseball cap was perched atop her head.
“Good morning, Miss Iris,” Thien said, smiling.
“You can call me Iris. If you’d like to.”
“I am preparing breakfast for you. If you are going to work, you must have a full belly.”
Iris nod
ded, watching Thien’s quick fingers. Thien began to sing quietly, her voice melodious. The Vietnamese words were still foreign to Iris, but she was no longer afraid of them. On the contrary, Thien’s voice put her at ease. “Do you mind,” Iris asked, “if we paint a little first? I’d like to work some, then have breakfast.”
Thien removed her apron and placed the pineapple in the refrigerator. “Will you help me paint the clouds? They are so hard to get right.”
“I think what you’ve done is wonderful,” Iris replied, following the smaller woman upstairs. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you learn English so well?”
“Oh, my vocabulary needs improvement. But I tried hard to learn in school. And for three years I worked in a hotel, behind the concierge desk. I was very lucky to have this job.”
“I bet you were good at it.”
“I worked hard, Miss Iris. I was happy to help the guests. They had come so far, and I wanted them to enjoy their time in Vietnam.”
Iris and Thien walked into the dormitory. Thien used a screwdriver to open a can of white paint. She dipped a wooden spoon into the paint, swirling it around. She then handed a balled-up piece of newspaper to Iris and proceeded to a far corner of the room, where a table had been covered with an old sheet. Thien eyed the outline of the cloud above. After gently dipping her own ball of newspaper into the paint, she stepped onto the table and dabbed at the interior of the outline. Several drops of paint fell atop her shoulder, but she paid them no heed. “You must be gentle,” she said.
Iris watched Thien dab at the surface. Thien was quite good, and Iris shook her head. “I think you should do this. I don’t want to mess it all up.”
“It is only paint, Miss Iris,” Thien replied. “It can always be covered over. Now please try.”
Hesitating, Iris continued to watch Thien work. Soon Thien began to sing softly, as if unaware that Iris was so close. Her voice, high and haunting, breathed life into long notes, into a song that Iris didn’t know whether was sad or joyous. Still, the song soothed her. Thien’s voice was beautiful, rising and falling as if carried by winds.
After a few minutes, Iris began to work, carefully dipping her newspaper into the paint and then dabbing the area within the cloud that Thien was fashioning. Thien continued to sing. At first Iris applied as little paint as possible, but she quickly grew more confident, putting greater pressure against the ceiling. The cloud billowed outward.
“See, Miss Iris, you can do it,” Thien said, wiping her nose, covering its tip with paint. “Did you ever think that you would make clouds?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“These are good Vietnamese clouds. Full of rain and dragons.”
“Dragons?”
“Dragons are everywhere in Vietnam,” Thien replied, continuing to paint. “If a river runs red, a dragon below the water is bleeding. If a breeze blows suddenly across the sky, a dragon must be flying above. And warm rains mean that dragons are crying. We Vietnamese love dragons, which deepen the seas, guard our treasures, and rule the natural world.”
Through the countless books she’d read, Iris had come across several stories of dragons. “In the West,” she said, “dragons are seen as evil, as creatures to be destroyed.”
Thien paused in her work, her full lips tightening together. “To be destroyed?”
“People feared them.”
“In Vietnam, dragons are the greatest, the most noble of creatures. They have protected us for thousands of years.”
Iris filled in the last part of the cloud. “And you see dragons in these?”
“I see parts of them.”
“This cloud . . . it turned out well, didn’t it?”
“You are a wonderful painter, Miss Iris.”
The two women moved the table and began to create another cloud. “Do you really think we can open the center by Christmas?” Iris asked, for this had been her father’s plan, and he’d told local officials as much.
“Christmas is still a month away. We can paint many clouds in a month.”
“But what else needs to be done?”
“Painting mostly. And gathering textbooks. And hiring a teacher. And of course, the playground must be built. Maybe your friend can work on it. Such a man should work outside.”
Iris nodded but said nothing, wondering what Thien meant. Finally she asked, “Why do you work here and not the hotel? You said it was a good job.”
Thien gently pulled apart her ball of newspaper, so that it would leave a different impression. “You should walk with me, Miss Iris.”
“Walk with you?”
“Walk the streets. Then you will understand why I am working here. Why it is my honor to work here.”
Iris glanced around the room, eager to see it complete. “I’ll walk the streets. Today. But still, I’d like to know why you’re here. If that’s all right with you.”
Thien set her ball of newspaper aside and reached into her pocket and withdrew a small, red fruit that resembled a cross between an apple and a pear. She offered the fruit to Iris, and when Iris shook her head, Thien took a bite. “On the outside, the street children are not beautiful,” she said. “Their clothes are dirty. Their hair is uncombed. Sometimes they are crippled in some terrible way. This is often why they have been abandoned.”
“My father told me about that.”
“But inside, Miss Iris, inside, these children are beautiful. They have such smiles. And such laughs. Nothing could ever be so beautiful.” Thien took another bite of the fruit. “But after a time, the children no longer smile or laugh. The streets destroy them. The children begin to steal, to sell drugs, to sell themselves. They have no choice. Your father understood these things. And he wanted to give the children a chance, to bring them into his center where they could learn and be safe. When he asked me to be his assistant, I felt like I was the luckiest person in Ho Chi Minh City. Because I was going to be able to help these beautiful children.”
Iris nodded, wondering why she hadn’t felt lucky to come here, to finish what her father had started. “Let’s go now,” she said. “I want to see what you’ve seen.”
Thien finished the fruit. She then stepped from the table and, taking Iris’s hand, helped her down. “Your father told me about your wonderful heart,” she said, leading Iris toward the stairway. “And I am most certain that he is smiling on you now.”
RISING FROM BED WAS ONE OF the most difficult challenges that Noah faced each day. Asleep, within a womb of oblivion, he was protected from the demons that haunted him during daylight. His mind could rewind time, step backward, and recollect an age when he was happy. His body couldn’t remind him of his aches—the fire in his back, the pain of his inflamed stump. And his hatred for those whose lies cost him his friend and his leg was at rest.
When he was awake, the world was not one of light, but of darkness. Noah feared this world, for he lacked the power to save himself from his thoughts, his pain, and his hatred. He looked into mirrors and saw a stranger. He turned on the television and saw a man he wanted to kill. His loved ones were no solace. Despite his best efforts, he was envious of their happiness, their lives free of pain. They didn’t understand his sufferings. No one could.
Noah sat upright on his cot. He rubbed his eyes. His detested prosthesis lay on the floor. He looked at the contraption the way a miner dying of lung cancer might observe his pickax. He swore softly, pulling the carbon-fiber sleeve upward until it rose around his thigh and rested against his stump. Most days he placed a gel on his stump, which served to bind the sleeve to his flesh. But in the heat of Vietnam, his stump seemed swollen, and the gel didn’t tempt him.
After pulling on loose-fitting travel pants, Noah stood up. To his surprise, he realized that the beer cans he’d scattered about the previous night had disappeared. He walked unsteadily into the office, looking for Iris. He tried to remember the Vietnamese girl’s name but couldn’t. And so he quietly moved about the building, wondering whom he’d run into.
&nb
sp; Despite the clouds, birds, maps, and trees that had been painted on the walls around him, the rooms and halls felt claustrophobic, and he suddenly had to escape. He stepped outside the center and was confronted by sights that reminded him of Baghdad. The buildings were white and stained. Television antennas and rusting air conditioners dotted roofs. The street was patched like an old quilt and was full of potholes. The smell of diesel fuel filled the air.
A scooter passed him, its driver dodging potholes as if a child playing hopscotch. Noah followed the course of the battered street, emerging onto a much larger thoroughfare. The sleeve of his prosthesis chafed against his stump, rubbing it raw. He tried to favor his injured leg, and his graceless gait produced an ache in his back. He swore, bitterness rising within him. An immense truck approached, and he thought about falling in front of it, about how such darkness would feel.
A pair of young women in traditional dresses walked past. Their eyes found the scar on his forehead and he glanced away. The sidewalk was thick with pedestrians. He shuffled past them, needing to flee, but not knowing where to go. Several children soon trailed him, asking for candy and pens. He had neither, and they left him, their voices replaced by those of the city. These noises assaulted Noah, reminding him of the sounds of war. A motorcycle engine became a jet, a thumping jackhammer a machine gun. The siren of a police car pulled him back to roadside bombings. He closed his eyes, leaning against a lamppost. He tried to remember what Iris had said, that good things still existed in the world. But his stump and back ached. His will to endure was gone. And goodness was but a word.
Noah passed a streetside vendor who sold clothes from a stainless-steel cart. Money was exchanged and soon an olive-colored baseball cap hung low on Noah’s brow. Though the fabric hid his scar, he felt no less naked. And so he hurried into the lobby of a nearby hotel. A Western-style bar was present and he sat down and ordered a Tiger beer, which descended his throat as if water. He couldn’t get the alcohol into his system fast enough. A second and a third beer were finished as quickly as the first.
