by John Shors
As Minh guided Mai toward the elevators, he realized that he was going to have to save her. She had led him for too long. She’d been his voice, his mind, his hope. She’d told him stories at night when he needed to hear, held him close when he needed to feel. Now it was his turn to hold her. He knew that she was close to breaking. She had been that way for several months, sometimes crying when she thought he was asleep. Unless he changed their fate, her laughter would no longer please his ears. The street was slowly killing her, though she pretended otherwise. It was killing her as it killed everyone else—even Loc.
Minh brought Mai and Tung into the light, the real light of day. And since he had no immediate plan to save Mai or to buy Tung some formula, he simply headed toward the giant Western hotels, where the stakes were always the highest.
THE STREETS WERE DARKENING, MOVING IN concert with Noah’s mood. Carrying two plastic bags, one that threatened to burst from the weight of its load, he shuffled forward, trying to ease the burden on his prosthesis. He hadn’t taken a painkiller of any sort for several hours and his stump and lower back throbbed like giant toothaches. His pants pocket held several pills, and he was tempted to escape from his misery. Unfortunately, the pills numbed his mind as well as his body. And knowing that Thien had brought Tam and Qui to the center, and that they were awaiting his return, Noah wasn’t ready to enter oblivion. After he saw her, gave her his gift, and said good night, he could take his pills, enjoy a drink, and then slip away into a realm where he’d float for a few minutes before falling asleep.
Noah tried to take his mind off his pain by gazing at the strange sights around him. He circumvented an outdoor restaurant, which was really nothing more than three wooden tables encircling the base of a large umbrella. Young soldiers and a family occupied the tables, slurping up big bowls of pho. Not five feet from the patrons, a woman wearing a purple blouse chopped vegetables on a wooden block and dropped them into a stainless-steel cauldron. She talked incessantly, provoking laughter from the soldiers, who drank beer and had their arms around one another.
Noah turned toward the street that ran alongside Iris’s center. Not far ahead, a group of men were huddled tightly together, many of them crouched or kneeling. Noah had seen several such gatherings, and knew that the men were gambling. But he wasn’t sure if they used dice or cards or something else altogether. The men were intent on whatever lay before them, chatting excitedly, getting closer to the ground. A boy on the periphery of the group waved to Noah, who returned the greeting and stepped into the street, dodging scooters.
Soon Noah was in the center. The smell of garlic seeped from the kitchen. The first floor was empty, though voices drifted down from above. Noah ascended the stairs slowly, as if a toddler first learning to walk. He listened to the voices, which switched back and forth between Vietnamese and English. He might have heard Tam once but wasn’t sure. He tried to remember her face. She’d been so wet, so light against him. Did she really put her arms around me like that? he wondered. Like I was her father carrying her to bed?
He entered the dormitory, noting that Iris and Thien had moved two bunk beds against each other, so Tam and Qui could sleep together on the bottom beds. Tam lay on one bed but was propped up by some pillows. Qui sat next to her, wearing a new dress. Noah realized that several of his whiskey bottles had been wrapped in colored paper, set on nearby chests, and filled with yellow flowers. He didn’t know what kind of flowers they were but was amazed to see these same flowers depicted on the new pajamas that Tam wore. He glanced at Iris and then Thien. His gaze swung back to Tam. “Hello,” he said quietly, the sight of her in a soft bed causing his eyes to dampen.
She smiled. “I no want dream tonight.”
“Why not?”
Stretching out her arms, she replied, “This better. I want . . . feel this bed all night.”
Noah nodded. “It’s yours,” he said, taking a step toward her, reaching into one of the plastic bags, and removing a Vietnamese doll. The doll wore a traditional Vietnamese dress, an ao dai, which was blue and adorned with white bamboo leaves. The doll carried a circular pink purse, and her long hair fell from beneath a conical hat. Noah handed his gift to Tam. “Maybe you’d like to share your new bed with her.”
Tam’s eyes widened. She’d never touched anything so lovely, and she held the doll with reverence, afraid her fingers might dirty the beautiful silk dress. She looked closer and saw that the doll had white gloves and shoes. Her lips had been painted red. A pearl necklace surrounded the high collar of her dress. Tam touched the doll’s hair with her forefinger. The hair moved. It wasn’t plastic. It seemed real.
At that moment the pain in Tam’s bones seemed to travel somewhere else. She didn’t feel hot or cold. She didn’t find it hard to breathe. She wasn’t even tired. And she didn’t wonder where her mother was, or why her mother hadn’t come home for so long. At that moment Tam was happy. She made sure that her fingers were clean and then she touched the doll’s dress, tracing its contours, pretending that its leaves were blowing in the wind.
Realizing that she needed to thank someone for her good fortune, Tam looked up, forgetting where she was. A tall man stood before her, a Western man. His eyes were kind, and she remembered that he’d given her the doll, remembered how he’d carried her through the rain. “Thank you, mister,” she said, gently stroking the doll’s hair, careful not to dislodge her hat. “Thank you so much. For everything.”
Noah noticed how Qui was beaming, how the lines seemed to have fallen from her face. “What are you going to name her?” he asked.
“Dung,” Tam replied.
Thien smiled at Tam, then turned to Noah. “In Vietnamese, ‘dung’ means ‘beautiful.’ ”
Iris watched Tam kiss her doll’s cheek. She wanted to e-mail her mother, to let her know the good that her father’s center had already done. “Is it too cold in here?” she asked Qui. “Too hot? Or do you need any more food?”
Qui lowered her head, still not believing their extraordinary change in circumstances. “No, Miss Iris,” she replied, wondering if she were dreaming, knowing that waking from such a dream would be more than her heart could handle. “You already do too much for us. Please no worry about us again.”
“And you know where the bathroom is?” Iris asked. “And how to work the shower?”
Qui had never used a shower and was sure she’d continue to fill a bowl with water and clean herself with a damp cloth. But the American woman had gone to great lengths to show her how to operate the complex system of faucets. And so Qui nodded. “You too kind, Miss Iris,” she said, unused to having someone worry about her, and not knowing what to say. “Please go rest. You must be tired.”
Iris looked around the room, wondering if she and Thien had forgotten to tell Qui anything. While Noah had been searching for his welcome gift, they’d spent the better part of an hour showing Qui where everything was. They’d been detailed, perhaps too much so. In any case, Iris worried about her guests’ first night. She wanted things to go smoothly. “I’ll leave the light on in the hallway,” she said. “And I’ll check on you later.”
“Thank you, Miss Iris,” Qui replied, turning her gaze from Iris to Tam, who was pretending to comb her doll’s hair. Tam grinned, looking as if she weren’t sick and in pain, but happy. Qui’s eyes watered. For a thousand nights, she had prayed for miracles. She’d prayed until exhaustion or bitterness had overcome her. Remarkably, just as she had ceased to believe in miracles, when she’d felt betrayed by the mere existence of the word, a miracle had finally befallen her.
Swinging her gaze back to the Americans, to the foreigners she hardly knew, Qui shook her head in wonder. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or to hold these tall strangers in her arms. All she knew was that she could live a hundred lifetimes and never be able to repay them for what they’d already done. “Thank you, Miss Iris and Mr. Noah,” she said softly, her voice threatening to crumble. “What you do for Tam, it beautiful.”
Iri
s saw the tears in Qui’s eyes and she smiled. “Sleep well tonight.”
Noah and Thien also said good night and followed Iris into the stairwell. Iris was about to head down to the kitchen, but Noah touched her shoulder and pointed to a metal ladder that ran from near their feet to a trapdoor in the ceiling above the stairwell. “Follow me,” he said. Clenching the remaining plastic bag in his teeth, he slowly made his way up the ladder. Each step sent a spasm of pain pulsating from his stump to his back, but he didn’t change direction. The trapdoor had no lock and he pushed it open, dust drifting on him.
Noah climbed to the rooftop and helped Iris and Thien move up and into the fresh air. Dusk was about to blossom, and the fading sun spread a layer of itself on the faces of buildings and towers. This layer made structures glow as if they’d been painted crimson instead of white. Traffic, most of which was unseen, hummed without pause—the steady pulse of the city.
The center’s rooftop was covered in smooth river stones. Noah nudged a stone with his good foot, wondering what purpose it served. He then withdrew three cans of Tiger beer from the plastic bag and handed a can to both Iris and Thien. The women looked at him expectantly, but he wasn’t sure what to say and so said nothing. Thien opened her can and handed it to Iris. She then opened Noah’s can and then the last. Forty feet below, scooters beeped and darted.
“I’d like to thank you both . . . for putting up with me,” Noah said. “I don’t make it easy. And I’m sorry about that.”
Thien shrugged, sipping her beer. “My life is easy, Mr. Noah. So please do not worry about me. It is my pleasure to know you.”
Iris watched Thien, watched how her eyes seemed to linger on Noah’s face. “She’s right,” Iris said, tasting the beer, savoring its coolness. “It really hasn’t been a problem.”
Noah nudged another stone. “Why did you send me to those places?”
Iris thought about her answer, not wanting to bring the wrong words to life, aware that the wrong words could turn him away. “Because I wanted your help,” she said. “Because I knew your heart was good.”
“If I stay for a while . . . I’ll still have my bad days, you know. I’ll still drink. I’ll still have a lot of anger in me.” He glanced toward the setting sun, wondering if any of his friends were dying in Iraq. “Just because I saw something that changed me doesn’t mean that . . . that I’m changed.”
“It doesn’t mean that you’re the same either,” Iris replied.
He continued to eye the skyline. “I want to help. But don’t expect the impossible from me. Because I don’t want to disappoint you.”
She lowered her beer. “Do you know how much work we have to do, Noah? In about twenty-five days we’re supposed to open. Have you thought about that? About the supplies? The teacher? The money? The upkeep? Or finding just the right group of children from the thousands out there?” She shook her head, watching a plane disappear toward the setting sun. “Anything you can do for Thien and me . . . for the center . . . is gravy as far as I’m concerned. So there won’t be disappointments. Don’t worry about that. Just do what you can, and know that whatever you do will be a blessing for us.”
Noah looked up from the stones. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. But I want you to understand that anything you can do is important. Is really important.”
Thien saw a piece of glass on the roof and placed it in her pocket. “The girls on the street, Miss Iris, they are starting to talk about your center.”
Iris turned to her. “What are they saying?”
Thien took Iris’s hand and smiled. “Tomorrow, when you are working, look around. You will see them, walking by, pretending to go places. But they will be observing the center. I have seen them already. And I have heard them talking about the room with the clouds.”
“But how could they know about the clouds?”
Thien looked skyward. “Oh, perhaps a little turtle spread the word.”
“A little turtle in a baseball cap?” Iris asked, smiling.
Sipping his beer, Noah watched the women. He liked how Thien so often reached for Iris’s hand, as if they were a pair of young sisters. He had always heard that Asians were unaffectionate. But he’d found that, at least in Vietnam, nothing could have been further from the truth. “You know, we could build something here,” he said, wanting to bring himself into the light that seemed to surround Iris and Thien.
“What?” Iris asked.
“Well, look at all this space,” he said, gesturing around them. “This roof is huge. And it’s so open. We could . . . I don’t know. Maybe we could build a vegetable garden. There’s so much sun and rain. The children could learn how to grow their own food. I bet they’d love it.”
Thien clapped her hands. “My father is a farmer,” she said excitedly. “I can get seeds. We can grow cucumbers and onions and garlic and dragon fruit and even some flowers.”
Iris looked at Noah and smiled. “So this means you’re staying? At least for a few more weeks?”
He considered his options, knowing that he could return to Chicago, wander around Asia, or remain here. Wherever he was, his demons would still follow him and his pain would rarely leave him in peace. He thought about Tam, about children he’d never met but who were sleeping somewhere on the streets below. If he stayed, he could help them, even if he couldn’t help himself, even if his own mind and body were beyond repair.
“I’m going to build the playground,” he said, looking from Iris to Thien, aware of the happiness in their eyes. “I’m going to build them a beautiful playground, and we’ll see what happens after that.”
EIGHT
A New Day Dawns
The river was higher after the recent rains, evidence that the mountains to the north had also been saturated. Minh sat on a boulder at the water’s edge, staring into the murky shallows. He thought about the seven dollars he’d won the previous night, disappointed in himself for the final game of the evening. After winning three straight games against a German student, Minh had lost the fourth game on purpose, expecting that his opponent would agree to play him again for higher stakes. And the foreigner had decided to do just that. But as they’d started to set up the game board, the student’s friends had arrived, and he’d left, parting with a triumphant smile.
After Loc had found them and taken his customary five dollars, Mai and Minh had been left with two dollars. They’d spent one on a dinner of rice and eggs. The other they had buried under their basket. Minh had wanted to hide both bills, but they hadn’t eaten all day, and he knew that he couldn’t play and win so many games while on the verge of starvation.
Turning on the boulder, he saw that Mai was still asleep in their basket. She’d been quieter than usual since her attempt to get the money for formula. Minh didn’t like it when she was withdrawn, for her voice was one of his favorite things. It made him smile and sometimes even laugh. He was sad more often than not, and with Mai so gloomy, there was no chance for him to be happy.
Mai had told him once that she wanted to see the mountains, and Minh sometimes thought about her words. He knew that, were they to escape, Loc would follow them to a city. A city of any size would have opium dens. So Hanoi and Da Nang and Hue and Nha Trang were places they could never call home. Loc would find them in such places. The five dollars a day they paid him ensured that he ate and, more important, enjoyed his opium and women. Minh was sure that he and Mai weren’t the only children that Loc had working for him, but he believed that no other children provided him with as much money. Minh had overheard enough conversations to know that five dollars a day was more than the average factory worker, teacher, or policeman earned. And so Loc would never let them escape. Not if they went to a city, where he’d have an endless supply of opium and could rely on loose tongues to inform him of their whereabouts.
But if he and Mai were to flee into the mountains, to a small village somewhere remote and unknown, Loc wouldn’t have the will to follow them. Th
e problem was that Minh had never been outside Ho Chi Minh City. To him, the city was its own planet, and the countryside beyond it was an entirely different universe. As terrified as he was of Loc, the thought of hopping on a truck and heading off into distant mountains scared him even more. Whom would he play Connect Four with? What if Mai couldn’t sell fans? What would they eat? Would another man, perhaps even crueler than Loc, come to control them?
Such questions made Minh feel so very small. He knew that he was short and thin for his age, and with only one hand he’d long ago realized that he could never protect himself or Mai from any physical threat. He could win at games, he knew that much, but beyond this skill, what could he do other than save a few dollars and hope to somehow escape the shadow that seemed to always be one step behind them?
“Still thinking about that last game, aren’t you?”
Minh turned, surprised to see Mai standing before him. Her pigtails were slightly askew, as if sleep had rearranged her scalp. He watched her yawn, and then he shrugged.
“Oh, I know you are, Minh the Cheated,” she said, sitting nearby on a half-buried truck tire. “Everything was just right. We were going to win, and he’d have been angry, and we’d have won again and again. It might have been one of our best nights ever. As good maybe as the night when you played that opera singer and she bought every one of my fans. Do you remember that? The big lady? With the big laugh? She sang us a song, and I thought that cyclo would break when she sat in it, and then she had us sit right in it with her. Right on her legs. And we were her tour guides that night. I told her everything about the city, and she asked question after question.” Mai smiled, glancing above toward the bridge. “That poor cyclo driver. I bet he couldn’t walk for weeks after that night. How he sweated. I’m sure he was happy to see us go. Even if she did give him that huge tip.”
Minh’s brow furrowed.
