There was nothing even like the moment when Tien rose from her prayers when she brought me to her room and was not ready for us to touch. There would be no touching and I knew it and still there’d never been a moment for me like when I sat on her straw mat and she turned to me and I was having trouble taking a breath with her hair down for me this first time like it was. I sat on the straw mat and she turned to me and behind her the smoke rose from the incense she’d lit, dark, without a flame, and her hair was coming down a little bit over one shoulder and she smiled at me and I said, “Why is there no picture?”
He surprised me when he knew about the ancestors. He asked me why I did not have a photo on my shrine and I think I acted in a strange way then. I had known for many years that someone would someday ask me questions. For too many years I waited for questions with fear in my heart, but no one said anything. I was the orphan daughter who lived with her grandmother and I knew all that I should say at school and my grandmother knew whatever she knew to say and you could not tell any other story from looking at my face.
I said to him, “I will make the tea now.”
He is a good man. A careful man. He said, “That would be fine.”
I went about the task that my hands know so well. But there were so many things in my head. My memories. As they have always been, some are clear. Some are not. My mother is clear, in a certain way. I thought of her while I made the tea. I lay with her sometimes and we slept and I do not remember when was the first time I asked the question. Maybe I never did ask about my father. Maybe this was a thing that she told me before I ever had a chance to notice. My father was a soldier and he was dead in the war. This was all there was for me to know. And she would cry very quickly about this and there were many tears and I did not try to know more. But once, I asked her why only Grandfather’s picture was on her ancestor shrine and she said that there were no photos of my father. I did not ask another why. She had not yet begun to cry and I stopped before she did.
Then there was one night, and it was near the end of things. The liberators—though I did not think of them in that way then; I was a child and my mother was a bargirl—the liberators were very near and there were many rockets falling into the city. So there were no men coming to her bed and I was beside her. I could smell only her on that night, nothing of the sea. She smelled good and I told her so and she said it was a soap that came from America. It was 99 and 44 one-hundreds percent pure, she said, like me, her sweet daughter. I pressed closer to her, at her side, and her arm came around me. I wondered for a moment what it was in me that I was not one hundred percent pure and I thought to ask her. But before I did, she said that I could stay a good girl even without a daddy.
He was on her mind that night. She wanted to speak of him and I waited and I was glad, I think, to hear whatever she might say. My friend who told me of the dragon and the princess and whose mother also worked in bars was very proud that she was the daughter of a Vietnamese colonel. And though he had not married her mother and had now gone far away, he’d taken my friend once to the beach at Vung Tau. Since all I really knew was that my father was dead, my friend said things that I did not like. She said that my father was probably some man who came to the bar. She touched my face and turned it one way and then another and she said that he might be an American. I had already heard some things about how babies are made, mostly from Diep herself, but I had not grasped it yet really and I was not entirely sure why she looked for this in my face, and I slapped her hand away and I went home, and that night I wanted to ask my mother if my father was an American from the bar. But I was with my grandmother instead and I asked her. I told how Diep had looked at me and said this thing. So my grandmother put her hand on my shoulder and took me to the mirror and her face hovered over mine there. This is Tien, she said. Then she gently drew away from me and only my face was in the mirror. Is there anyone else that you see? she asked.
I tried. I had no answer yet if he was a Vietnamese man or an American man and I did not yet know why he would show in my face, but I looked and I saw only what I had always seen. No, I said. And I stood there and looked at myself and my grandmother was nearby. I could feel her there for a few moments and then she was gone and I watched my own face watching me and I found I did not have any more questions.
But on that night in April of 1975, when my mother already had secretly decided to go away from me forever—so that I could live a better life in the new Vietnam—I understand that—and so that she could live at all, believing as she did all the slanders about what the new government would do to a prostitute for the Americans—I understand all of this—on that night, she had to explain more about my father. I think my grandmother made her do this. My grandmother must have known of her plans by then and though she taught me that I am myself and that I am alone, she also wanted me to know the truth about this from my own mother. What hard words must have passed between them that I never heard.
My darling, my mother said to me, your father is dead. Do not forget that.
I am certain that is what she said. Whenever I have remembered this as an adult she sounds a little bit crazy. She was, I suppose. In ways that at eight years old I could not see.
I know he is dead, I said to her, and she must have heard the tears in my voice because she sat up and turned to see me and there was still a lamp burning nearby and I could see her face and I looked hard there for something of myself. I remembered my face in Grandmother’s mirror and I wanted to see if there was something of my mother clear in me. I was not sure. She was blurred now with my tears and what I saw mostly in her face was the squeeze of a feeling that I had never seen in anyone’s face.
Your father, she said, and her voice quaked and would soon crack but then there was a great crack in the air and the room quaked and the lamp went out and we turned to the window, my mother and me, and the night sky was red and my mother turned back to me and I could not see her face clearly anymore. But her voice changed. It was very calm.
She said, Your father came from far away.
Like the dragon who was the ruler of all the oceans, I said.
She knew this story, too. All Vietnamese know this story. She hesitated and then her hand came out and she cupped me under the chin with her palm. I wanted it to be true just as I had always heard it. But she waited and waited and then she said, This is different. Her hand fell and she looked again at the red sky. There was a dark chattering out there in the distance. Gunfire.
And then she said, This dragon did not live in a kingdom of water. He lived with his father and mother in a distant place and they were all dragons there. And his father went every day into a fiery hole and this was the wealth and the work of his kingdom. Fire. He would descend into fire and there were other dragons there and some of them were his enemies. They were killers. Your father’s father once fought a terrible fight deep in this fiery place and he killed his enemy there. He did not know this but he fought his enemy and killed him for the sake of a beautiful little girl, a fairy princess on the far side of the world, for if he had lost this fight and had died there, his own son would never have been born and then this girl child would never have been born either. But he killed the seed of another dragon and his own did not die and so your father was born and he grew from a child into an adult. His mother was gentle and feared for him but when he was old enough he, too, went into the fire. And then one day his father told him that there were places of fire far away and there were new enemies and he must go there and fight them. And he did. And he met me and he loved me and he planted a child in me with his seed, a beautiful child, but before she was born, he died in the midst of fire.
The redness of the sky was very bright now. My mother had rushed to the ending of the story and I was a little bit angry at her. I wanted her to tell this again. Tell it more slowly. She rushed through the places that I wanted to hear about the most, but now she was cryi
ng and I had much to think about already and when she bent to me and kissed me and then lay down, I let her hold me close and I said no more.
I never had a chance to ask her about that story again. A few nights later the sounds of the rockets and the gunfire would not stop and there were people running in the streets and everyone knew that the end was near. Or the beginning, as I would later learn. But my mother knew nothing of the future. All she knew was her own guilt and the fear that all she had done would be found out and destroy her and me as well. So on a night that I now know to have been April 29, 1975, she called me to her from my grandmother’s place and when I came into our rooms she had a bag packed and sitting by the door. Much of this is not very clear to me in my memory. She was dressed in black pantaloons and a drab green peasant shirt and a woven conical hat sat on top of her case. I must have known what would happen. I felt heavy in my arms and legs, as if I had just woken from a deep sleep. She spoke to me and I heard little. I am sure she told me how much she loved me. I am sure she told me how sad she was to do this. But I remember nothing clearly until she took me by the shoulders and crouched down and brought her face very near mine. She did not smell of the American soap that was so pure. She did not smell at all. There was sweat on her brow. She looked at me with her eyes full of tears, but her mouth was hard.
You must understand this, she said. You must never speak of me again. I am dead. You are an orphan. The people who are coming into our country now are hard people. They would kill me for what I have done. They would make life very bad for you if they knew whose daughter you are. They would take you away and they would hurt you. Do you understand?
I heard the words now, very clearly. But I did not understand. Still, I said yes to my mother. I knew that the world was changing in some terrible way. That was enough to know at this moment. She nodded and she looked away to the window and then her eyes came back to me and some struggle was inside her.
She said, There is one more thing you must know, but in knowing it you must now never speak of it to anyone. Do you understand? This is a most important secret. I have thought of telling you this but I was afraid. Why should you have to carry this secret? But your grandmother thinks it is right. And since you will live with her now instead of me, I must obey her. Will you keep this secret from everyone forever?
Yes, I said. Yes.
Then she told me this thing. Your father is dead, she said. He is dead.
I know, I said.
More, she said. He was an American.
I could not quite take that in for a moment. That was a sea too far away and too deep to think of. And not a sea at all, she had said. A kingdom of fire.
And steam was rising hot in my face. The water was boiling. I took the pot off the hot plate and I waited to let all these things pass from me. Ben was in the other room, I was making tea for him, and he was the only man I wished to understand.
I carried the tea tray in and stood before him and he looked up at me from where he sat cross-legged on the mat and his eyes were dark, like they had been wood burned to charcoal by some great fire. He knew there should be a picture on my altar and in his eyes were questions about me.
I gently placed the tray on the table, covering the white cranes. I crouched there and I poured the tea and I tried not to make a sound, letting the tea slide from the spout softly, one cup and then another, Ben’s eyes on me. I looked once at him and did not look again, not even a glance, and then I brought the pot to the tray very slowly, letting it settle there in absolute silence. I heard him breathing. It was very faint, but I was aware of it even then. It felt as if he was touching me. Just hearing his breath was a private thing, a touch like I had never felt before.
The shrine is for my father, I said. He died in the war and there are no pictures. My mother is also dead.
I said no more. Ben’s breath sighed out long and soft and it was a deep kiss of sympathy to my ear. I’m sorry, he said.
I did not answer. The tea was poured. I kept my eyes lowered and I did not tell my secret.
Our lips touch. Tien’s hand is at the back of my head and she pulls me to her and we kiss. This gesture of desire, the press of her hand on me to bring us to this touch: though I will soon be forty-eight years old, there has not been any moment in my life when I’ve felt desired in this way. And before I met Tien, my own desire was a ragged thing, a scrap of retread by the highway kicked up now and then by the force of a passing truck.
My first night on this return to Vietnam I wandered out of the hotel and down to the hub of the city, a circular fountain where Le Loi and Nguyen Hue cross, and I stood there in the fine mist from the rush of water and I faced toward the gingerbread City Hall, its facade full of columns and spires and lit up with spotlights and Ho Chi Minh’s bronze statue in the square in front, him sitting on a tree stump with his arm around a little girl, and behind me was the river. And all about me the streets were full of the Vietnamese on their motorbikes and they were racing around and around.
And one motorbike went around the circle a second time and a third, probably more times before that until a faint hey you slid out of the roar of motors and finally caught my attention and I saw the two faces turned to me. There was a young man with a mustache driving, and sitting behind him, her arms around his waist, was a woman in a short skirt. The second time around, their faces were turned again to me and he smiled and slipped his chin a couple of quick times and she was young, the flash of her was pretty and there was a fine mist of envy prickling at the back of my neck because of her arms around the man, even though I knew what was going on and I could buy that privilege for myself. The third time she blew me a kiss, and her night-dark hair was rolled at the back of her head and she had a long, slender neck and her shoulders were bare and she was beautiful. But she and her pimp did not have time to circle again before the mist was just fountain spray, and I wiped it away and turned from the street, and though it was my first night in Vietnam and though the first woman I ever thought I loved was a Vietnamese woman and though this face circling behind me now and wondering why I had stopped looking at her was a beautiful face, there was nothing running in my limbs hut the heaviness of night and the drag of a dozen time zones.
I went back to my hotel just off what used to be Tu Do Street and I stood at the window for a little while. I would not pluck her from the flow of traffic but I watched the little stretch of Tu Do between the buildings below, and the motorbikes coursed there without cease, like blood, and I raised my eyes to where the river was, visible that afternoon but invisible now in the dark. There was only a great red neon heineken on what I knew to be the far bank.
And I thought, What kind of man am I? I had traveled a long way and I was tired, but I had not touched a woman for nearly two years and the woman out there was beautiful and though I would have to pay her, that’s how it had begun with Kim. Not that I was looking for love that way again. It was about being a man, and I have lived most of my life among men, at the mill, in the Army, out over the road with the big rigs, and no man I ever knew would understand that I couldn’t be with that woman who was out there in the dark, ready to come in to me. That I couldn’t pay her what she wanted and bring her into this room and lie with her nakedness and her softness and her wetness and find that very good. I didn’t fully understand it myself.
I turned from the window and the room was dim but I did not want light. I lay down on the bed and the paddle fan moved above me. I was on top of the covers, clothed, as if I wanted to think, as if I wanted to lie there and not have anything in my head at all. I didn’t. And then Mattie lay down next to me.
I closed my eyes and the fan clucked softly overhead and it was quite a few years before Mattie and me could figure out this wasn’t the way life was supposed to be. In the dark, though, on my first night back in Saigon, she just lay beside me and it was her from sometime out in the dim middle of our marriage, someti
me after there was no more South Vietnam, sometime when everyone who never went there was trying to pretend none of that ever happened, sometime out there when, for me, the things you’d expect to be the toughest had actually finally stopped being a very big deal—the dead men and the wild thrash of fear when there were a lot of bad sounds going on around you and you could look out of all the windows of your truck and you could see just these rice paddies and jagged trees and a road disappearing in smoke and there was no place to run and the thrashing inside you would begin so hard you’d think you’d never be able to draw another breath and that was how you’d die, without a mark on your body, just slumped over dead from the fear, and it tasted like there was blood in your mouth but there was no blood, not yet. But that hard stuff was pretty much gone by the middle of my marriage to Mattie. It was like getting over the death of your father and then getting over the death of your mother. You think it’ll never end but then one day you realize that it has pretty much ended. The hard stuff was gone, and the marriage was, too. The passion of my fear was gone. And whatever it was that passed for passion between her and me was gone, too.
I opened my eyes and Mattie had vanished and the fan blades sliced above my body, softly, softly, over and over, and I wanted to think that sex had nothing to do with what had brought me to this bed in this country where I once had desperately counted the days till I could leave and never look back. But there was a fullness in me, something unreleased, and I recognized it as the readiness for sex and it felt connected to something important, and I knew the way it was supposed to be: you go inside a woman and you release the stuff of you that suddenly feels so important and she releases something in herself to you, and from all that, a new thing is supposed to come about, a single thing between the two of you, your two selves, a thing that is whole. That was the alternative to the truck-stop view of sex. And it was something I wanted, something I sensed when I found my mother touching my father’s back in the kitchen.
The Deep Green Sea Page 4
