So that was how I met my only aunt. Aunt Ginseng came and went like a ghost, a dream, a wind, between the midnight moon and dawn, in all that fog. I could not decide whether to love or dislike her. For one thing, she had made Ma plead. I knew, however, that the servants were right: Auntie Ginseng was very beautiful, even in those dirty looking, ill-smelling black pajamas and funny hat of hers. The amber-brown-sugar skin shone like the color of light from the lantern she held in her hand the moment she left us. Yet, she could not be as beautiful as my Ma. She was never graceful like a willow tree. Ma said wherever Ginseng went, in that long journey of hers, her fate was probably with the goddesses of Vietnam.
I kept Aunt Ginseng’s pebble in a little satin bag that used to hold Ma’s pearl strand, and from that day on, I thought of Aunt Ginseng in a different light. She was no longer the elephant rider but instead a lone traveler who chopped down bamboo logs and walked through muddy ponds, in humid whirling winds, across winding streams that held golden frogs and silver trout. There, she collected golden pebbles for me. Lady Trieu’s golden armor had shattered into pieces that sank into the bottom of those streams and turned into smooth pebbles. The woman warrior with braided hair, clad in black pajamas, jumped from tall trees like a leopard and crawled through marshes like a crocodile.
4. A WAY HOMEWARD
In a way, I wished Aunt Ginseng had never come home the second time, so that I could continue dreaming about her as the black-clad tigress whose fate belonged to the Vietnamese goddesses.
But she did return home the second time. And the last.
The years passed and I reached my teens, eventually celebrating my fifteenth birthday in 1949. The news of Aunt Ginseng’s return arrived in the summer of 1949 in a telegraph from Tonkin. Ma started crying after reading it, almost hysterically, and then the household was suddenly animated because Ma ordered the servants to make preparations. Weeks of preparation, anticipation, and celebration ensued. Ma announced to everyone in the house that although Aunt Ginseng had been captured again and imprisoned for years at Hoa Lo—that infamous prison in the north—the protectorate government had finally pardoned her. This was more understandable since, at the turn of the century, the progressive liberal socialist Albert Sarraut came into power as governor general of Indochina. He had implemented more humane and liberal policies in the colony, and had become the hope for many Vietnamese intellectuals.
So, my aunt Ginseng, the female warrior, would soon return home to rest.
And since my aunt would come home soon, Ma joyfully announced, perhaps we would soon be hearing from Uncle Forest. Ma’s eyes sparkled, her voice rose an octave, and her words started running together with the excitement of an earnest child. The prospect of a reunion between the three children of the Mystique Concubine became the rejuvenating potion that made Ma a new woman.
Hopes were high and preparations, lavish. Ma hired teams of seamstresses to cut, sew, and embroider silk and linen for Aunt Ginseng. A new bed was built by the carpenters out of rosewood. New lace curtains were made. Dried birds’ nests were stocked in anticipation of her homecoming, for the preparation of a special kind of nutritious soup to help improve her health.
I was still going to school daily. The students of Lycée Dong Khanh talked about my aunt’s release, confirming to me my aunt was indeed famous. Every day after school I came home to Ma’s joyful eyes and the house’s bubbling, festive spirit. Her laughter rang in the air as she paraded around, supervising the teams of cooks and seamstresses. She wanted everything to be perfect. Weeks went by, and Ma’s happiness was almost too full and her animation, too high.
I came home from school one day to an abnormal silence. No light had been lit, and the house was absolutely quiet, as though the heat of the desert had brushed through the air.
I went into the new quarters set up for Aunt Ginseng and found Ma sitting alone in the dark. All the servants had retreated to their own quarters. The door to the bedroom reserved for Aunt Ginseng was left ajar.
“Don’t go in there, Dew. Your aunt has come home and needs to rest,” Ma said quietly, as though she had no energy left.
I dashed my eyes around, knowing something had gone wrong. Very wrong.
I pushed the bedroom door open. The room, decorated with hanging silk scrolls, lace curtains and satin blankets, was empty. I stood in the middle of the room, bewildered and upset. And then I heard someone speaking, out in the interior courtyard, together with the sound of uneven footsteps.
I rushed to the courtyard and found her, the shadow of the woman who had come home. Ma had followed me, trying to catch up.
“Dew, your aunt is very ill.”
The shadow turned around and I had to jerk back. I found not the young, vivacious woman in black pajamas who had yelled at Ma and had given me a pebble, but a stooping, limping old woman with dead eyes and a scarred face. Parts of her brows were missing. She stared at me without seeing me.
“Do you have a womb and a pair of breasts?” she asked.
I approached her and grabbed her hands. The wrists, too, were full of scars. One little finger was missing.
“Do you have a womb and a pair of breasts?” she repeated.
“Don’t listen to her, Dew; she is not herself,” Ma said.
I felt her face. No longer that amber-sugar-brown skin. The scar tissue rubbed against my fingers. She smiled. The mouth was crooked. I noticed, too, part of her upper lip was missing.
I let go of her and stood dazed while Ma tried to catch the disfigured woman and bring her inside. She faintly resisted but still managed to push Ma aside. Limping on her foot, the old woman ripped off her blouse. Under the dying twilight, I saw scar tissue on her breasts. The nipples were missing. I covered my eyes.
The topless woman was singing strings of senseless words.
“Do you have a womb and a pair of breasts?” she finally sang the question like a chorus.
Ma had forbidden the servants to come in. That night, I helped Ma feed Aunt Ginseng her bird’s nest soup, and then we washed her together in the porcelain tub, rubbing a hot towel over her scarred and nipple-less breasts. I felt her rough scar tissue, thinking of the smoothness of white magnolias. My tears dropped onto her shoulders, and I could not make a sound. Ma was biting her lips all the time. She did not cry.
That night I sat by my bedroom window looking out at the magnolia tree. Aunt Ginseng was singing her question like an imbecile.
I saw Ma walking the front yard under all that moonlight. She circled the magnolia tree several times, bent to pick up blooms from the ground, and placed them next to her face. And then she threw them at the tall tree. She repeated the gesture several times, and I watched the white petals scattering around her.
I called out to her, and she turned toward the window where I sat. I could see her face under that moonlight. It was full of tears.
“I will not take this, Dew! I will not!” she yelled, competing with the sound of Aunt Ginseng’s gibberish singing from inside the house.
“You and I, Dew, we will write Albert Sarraut!” she went on yelling. “We will write Sylvain Foucault in Paris!”
I saw Ma spring forward and then fall to the ground, among all those white petals. I climbed onto the window and grabbed the iron rods, my hand reaching out to her.
From the bed of white magnolias covering the damp ground, Ma looked up at me.
“They’ve butchered my beautiful sister. They’ve destroyed her mind.”
In the following weeks and months, Ma prohibited most of the servants from entering my aunt’s quarters. Caring for Aunt Ginseng became the exclusive task of Nanny Mai.
Ma and I wrote letter after letter, and Ma started making trips to Saigon and Hanoi to present my aunt’s case and press for the prosecution of her torturers. She contacted newspapers and hired translators to prepare papers to be sent to Paris. I had never seen Ma so feverish.
While Ma was away for her trips, I cut magnolia blooms and floated them in the porcelain bowl. I cl
eaned the rosewood frames with lemon juice and burned incense sticks. Aunt Ginseng would limp around the house singing her favorite line. She took off her shirt at least once a day, displaying her disfigured torso and smiling her crooked smile.
I no longer dreamed about Lady Trieu’s golden armor or the black pajama tigress. My aunt had come home, but my perfect notion of an unbeatable female warrior was tarnished. As it turned out, the former governor general Albert Sarraut did not respond to Ma’s plea for justice, and my uncle Forest never came home to join his sisters.
The return of my disfigured aunt in 1949 imprinted tragedy onto my otherwise peaceful, well-protected life. Understanding the tragedy became my entree to the turbulence of Vietnamese history. That summer, I learned that in 1945, while I celebrated my eleventh birthday, safe and secure in Ma’s big house in Hue, the Vietminh occupied the Opera House in Tonkin up north and declared independence for the country. But France returned to Indochina shortly thereafter, and the Vietminh fought the French. My aunt Ginseng and my absentee uncle Forest became legends in that war. They were among the famous sons and daughters of the Vietnamese Revolution. But to me, my aunt Ginseng became my notion of tragedy, and my uncle Forest remained just a name. Their pictures never filled the empty frames in Ma’s well-polished altar room.
After the summer of 1949, I lived through the Revolution and greeted my young adulthood in the false sense of protection offered by Ma’s beautiful house and its beautiful garden. In my growing ambivalence about my sheltered existence, I watched the dying days of French colonialism. In 1954, the Vietminh won the war, at last. Defeated in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, France let go of Indochina, leaving space for the Americans, the Chinese, and the Russians.
And another war ensued, allegedly against the Americans, making Vietnam famous.
During the summer of 1949 when Aunt Ginseng stayed with us, no one in the house spoke very much. But in all that sadness, fate found a way to make me believe, again, in the mystical relationship between my aunt, me, and Ma’s magnolia tree. It happened one night when Ma was away from home, somewhere in Cochinchina or Tonkin, searching in vain for justice and for a forum to prosecute the colonists’ crimes committed against her twin sister.
I woke up in the middle of a summer night, feeling the heat coming from outside. I saw the window open, framing imbecile Ginseng’s scared and crooked face. The moon was hanging behind her. Apparently she had wandered into the front yard and had pushed my window open. She was staring at me, with a lantern in her hand, just like the first time we met.
“Come inside, Auntie; you are letting in the heat,” I said.
She did not respond, the lantern flickering in her hand.
I reached out for the satin bag underneath my pillow, where I had stored her pebble, and showed her the stone. “Remember this?”
She was still staring. I approached the window, holding the pebble against her lantern, the iron rods of the window frame separating us. “See this? The golden shine. It’s a piece of your golden armor, Auntie.”
She grabbed onto the iron rods to scrutinize the stone in my hand. “It’s yours, Dew,” she said.
Oh, Heaven, she had just called me Dew.
“I am Dew, you remember?”
I was overjoyed. My aunt was lucid. “You named me, remember?”
“Of course I remember. You are Dew, my niece. I am in Hoa Lo, behind bars, and you’ve come to visit me.”
My aunt had regained at least part of her memory. I wished Ma were here to see for herself.
“You are no longer in prison, Auntie; you are home now,” I said, and she nodded.
I rushed to the front yard and took her to her bedroom. She began taking off her shirt.
“Don’t, Auntie!” I took her hands and led her to the mirror. “You are a lady. Don’t take off your shirt.”
I sat her down in front of the mirror and combed her coarse, prematurely gray hair. I divided her hair into halves and made two braids.
“Remember how you came home the first time? You had braided hair like this. You were very beautiful then.”
She stared at herself in the mirror, motionless.
“You are still very beautiful, Auntie,” I hurried on, wanting her to feel good. She looked at me with the gaze that exposed my lies. I looked down to the floor in shame.
“Can you keep a secret for me, Dew?” she said, dreamily.
“Yes, I would do anything for you, Auntie,” I responded without thinking.
She reached out for my shirt pocket and removed the pebble. Very swiftly she put it on her tongue and swallowed. She was quick and determined and I was too stunned to react. Then, her eyes dilated while she choked and coughed violently. I screamed out, but the door to Aunt Ginseng’s bedroom was tightly closed, and the servants, including Nanny Mai, were all soundly sleeping in their own quarters separated by the interior courtyard. My aunt put one hand over my mouth and the other hand over my throat. For a moment, I could not breathe. She was smothering me. We struggled for a while until she calmed down, letting go of my throat. We collapsed together.
But the pebble was just the size of a peanut, and it had not hurt my aunt, although I knew she would eventually get sick. Lying next to me, the invalid woman began to talk.
“Dew, that’s the secret. I just swallowed the secret. You promised you would keep a secret.”
“You are ill, Auntie. I need to tell someone. You need to go to the hospital. That pebble—”
“No I won’t, I won’t go anywhere. I am home, remember? This is where I grew up. I won’t be sick anymore. I just swallowed Lady Trieu’s armor and it stays with me.”
I stared at the tissue around my aunt’s crooked lips. The ragged flesh vibrated together with her speech. My aunt was not crazy. Not at the moment. She knew what she was doing.
“To get this secret, Dew, they would have to cut open my stomach, and I won’t let them. They already pierced my womb and cut my breasts, Dew.”
“Auntie, please.” I winced. “Don’t talk about it.”
“But I have to, Dew, I have to talk. I have to.”
I got up and rushed out. I went to my room and locked the door. I left my aunt alone.
I heard noises from her quarters all night. Strange, shrieking noises. Furniture being dragged on tiled floor, cloth torn by hand, without the aid of scissors.
I did nothing. Nothing. I just sat by the window and stared out at the magnolia tree under all that silver moonlight. Hours passed and then I saw my aunt limping out to the front yard. Just as I had seen Ma the night of Ginseng’s homecoming. The servants were all in their quarters and nothing could stop Ginseng.
“Where is your gold armor, Auntie Ginseng?” I whispered from the window.
My very ill aunt Ginseng had all of a sudden become very strong, and she was dragging and moving chairs to the yard all by herself. She tried to pile them up beneath the magnolia tree. She struggled. She failed. She fell. She got up again. She limped around until she achieved what she set out to do. She was very skillful and determined. After all, she was the female warrior who had pursued Lady Trieu’s dream. She had picked up the golden pebble for me from a stream, and she had kept going until they pierced her womb and cut her breasts. And then she swallowed the secret and made me join her.
So I joined her by watching from my bedroom window. She dragged the lace curtains into the yard with her, and then she climbed on the pile of chairs and reached out for a strong branch. She knew how to pick the strongest of all branches like an expert. No matter what, she had come home.
The lace curtains Ma’s seamstresses had sewn for Ginseng’s homecoming flew around the disfigured woman who reached out for the magnolia tree. And then she became the falling bloom herself, dangling in the air, forever, until the moonlight caught her and off she flew. I knew it was too late. And I, her beautiful dew, sat by the window and watched. The same way I had watched the earthworms die.
The air was still and cool, as though my aunt had brought b
ack the fog.
I left my aunt fluttering in the night and went to the mirror and took off my shirt. I saw a skinny girl, so pale her skin was almost tinted blue. I was no female warrior and could only hold a shovel. My world was confined to Ma’s front yard and the steps of the red-brick schoolhouse called Lycée Dong Khanh.
I imagined myself without nipples and a pair of stabbed breasts and wondered how it felt to have darts of hatred pierce through my womb. When streams of blood flowed, they would permeate the ground and come to life as reddish earthworms. I whispered to Auntie Ginseng that I wanted neither the footsteps of Lady Trieu nor the solitude of Ma, who was always waiting. I whispered that for the rest of my life I would just plant, plant, and plant. I promised Auntie Ginseng that I would give her the best of magnolia trees bearing the smoothest petals so the young cheerful girl could pick them and throw them around like table tennis balls, in ripples of laughter surrounding a peaceful childhood.
I brought my palms together and formed a little pond, in which I could see the wiggling helpless earthworms stabbed to death, their blood smearing all the lace curtains that circled and strangled my aunt. I went to bed while white magnolias danced around my aunt, drops of dew gathering on her damp skin, healing scars and softening rough tissue to make her beautiful like the past. I let her be.
I placed my head onto the pillow and realized I had never asked my aunt why she loved throwing magnolia blooms. Out there, I knew she would find a way to tell me, somehow, sometime, and she would not blame me for sitting and watching. After all, it mattered very little why she did what she did. To me, in the end, she had chosen to return home.
To her magnolia tree.
PART FOUR:
HUE, SAIGON, PARIS, AND MANHATTAN
SIMONE
1. THE CHILD PERFORMER AND HER NIGHTINGALE
Daughters of the River Huong Page 12
