Daughters of the River Huong

by Uyen Nicole Duong

  After we finished the coffee, I went home with him, some studio apartment in some building on the west side of town. Young James was elated and proud when I lay down on his blue-striped bed sheet, the mink coat flung open. It had been too easy, he said sincerely, asking me again and again whether I would change my mind.

  He did not know me, so we talked for a while about him, his hand travelling up my stockings. He tried but could not undo the snap of the garter belt, his fingers nervously and greedily moving away from it, up to the dark triangle above. I told him there was no hurry, and we kept on talking. He was half Italian, and had never known a real Asian girl. He bragged about how he had traveled to Europe with a camera. Priding himself as an engineer, he was also a fitness freak, always working on his muscles, always watching out for his diet of vegetables and energy drinks, believing he would find himself, his fortune, and beautiful girls that way.

  I did not contradict him and began to undress. He wanted to watch. I took off my silk blouse and skirt, garter belt, and stockings, and he asked that I leave the matching black lace bikini set on underneath the mink coat. It was an erotic fantasy of his, he said, predictably. His hand fumbled underneath the black lace and I felt cold. So cold that I grabbed his wrist and told him to stop. I threw on my clothes, grabbed my purse, and ran.

  I could not get the brown eyes and lashes and the Mediterranean features of this man named James out of my mind, so I called him and returned to his West Side apartment the following day, upon his promise that he would first show me his new computer system—state of the art—one of his hobbies. This time, I had on a long, full skirt and a turtleneck sweater. When we got through with the computer, James stretched and casually lay down on his couch. I looked over and found André’s eyes.

  Beyond all control, I longed for the pony ride of childhood. I moved my leg alongside James’s rib cage, although there was no desire in my heart. It was an aggressive invitation, because I was a woman and no longer a child. James grabbed the front of my turtleneck sweater with his clumsy and greedy fingers. His eyes lit up, and he flashed a beautiful smile at me. A look of surprise, followed by a smile of misplaced confidence, reflecting the knowledge that sooner or later he would be my lover.

  I looked to James’s square face and bluish chin, and found again the pair of beautiful, clear brown eyes under thick, curly lashes, which gave me peace. It was the same pair of cheerful eyes that had looked up at me when, in the tropical garden of Hue, I spread my legs and sat on a beautiful Western male—a man with a complex conscience and the spirit of a melancholy poet, a man who bore almost a hundred years of my history and a collective guilt upon his shoulders from the black-and-white photographs he had seen of Indochina, such that as a grown man, he had to become attached to a little Vietnamese girl. I had bent down and kissed him in the garden, before pain and anguish crept in. In that pair of eyes, I found myself—the clear, happy, compartmentalized innocence that dangerously approached ignorance, the selfishness of tender youth that could easily and unintentionally destroy the peaceful sanctity of childhood.

  I kept going back to James’s West Side apartment and making love to him only because he looked like André, in a short-term relationship described at best as repeated one-night stands. Like most women, I closed my eyes during the act. Occasionally in the middle of lovemaking or the restful state of the aftermath, I would be struck with the terror of abandonment. So I opened my eyes to make sure André had not disappeared, and found, next to my face, those beautiful, thick, curly lashes, closed in contentment under languorous lids. I was peaceful again. But soon I realized the lashes were James’s. Sorrow swept through my limbs when I realized I had offered my body to a stranger who did not care why I did what I did.

  And as I closed my eyes again, I painfully realized that with my consent, this stranger, a user of my body, was entitled to love me this way, a way I had never been able to offer to André.

  19. THE PHONE CALL

  About a year after my thirty-fifth birthday, sometime in November of 1991, I was in my Manhattan office when I received my mother’s letter telling me that my family had heard from Dominique. Dominique would like to talk to me about André.

  Holding my mother’s letter in my hand, I looked out at Manhattan’s sky from my office window. Something inside me signaled the warning that perhaps disaster had hit. Instinctively, I dreaded the moment I would have to call Dominique in Paris, yet I could not understand the source of my anxiety. All of a sudden, I remembered Grandma Que’s story about the Mystique Concubine’s haunting anxiety. It was all about the Face of Brutality awaiting her outside her half-moon window of the ancient Violet City: the threatening power of uncontrollable fate.

  In the days to come, could there also be the same Face of Brutality awaiting me in the daylight of New York City? My own sense of fate?

  Constance had announced the rehearsal schedule for the next concert series, with Haydn’s “PauckenMasse” and Mozart’s “Misericordias Domini,” K. 222. I had used the rehearsal schedule as an excuse to delay the phone call I would have to make to Paris.

  One Sunday night, I decided to stay in my Manhattan apartment, skip rehearsal, and order a pizza, knowing I could not go on avoiding the inevitable.

  I moved the telephone from the nightstand to the floor. The telephone sat on the hardwood floor, and I stared at it, twisting the cord around my wrist.

  I got up to put a load of laundry in the washing machine.

  My heart raced and I could not concentrate. I kept sorting and resorting my dirty clothes. Folding, unfolding, and refolding bed sheets. Turning the dryer on and off. I tripped over the laundry basket. I spilled detergent on the hardwood floor. Finally, I dumped all of my clothes, dirty as well as clean ones, dry ones and wet ones, into the washer and closed the lid.

  I went to my bedroom and dialed the Paris number my mother had forwarded in her letter.

  “Allo, allo, qui est là?”

  She sounded the same—the elegant Parisian accent and husky resonance.

  “Parlez, s’il vous plait. Qui est là?”

  I couldn’t make a sound.

  “Ecoute toi, salaud.”

  She was getting impatient and vulgar, calling me an SOB. Typical Dominique. Cool, aloof, and elegant at times. Temperamental and crude at times.

  “Tata Dominique,” I finally uttered tiny sounds. “C’est moi, Simone.” I stuttered in rusty French, small courtesy sentences, carefully constructed.

  A moment of silence ensued at the other end of the phone line, and then the Parisian accent sharpened. “Simone, I knew you would call. It took longer than I thought.”

  I stared at the wandering patterns in the ceiling stucco.

  “Aren’t you going to ask, Simone? About the papers, Simone?”

  She said les papiers. Some personal papers? If she meant the newspapers, she would have said les journaux.

  “All those pictures of Indochina, Simone. The things he kept.”

  The ceiling was about to drop. I swallowed several times to keep it in place. “Tata Dominique, I don’t know what papers you’re talking about.”

  “I want to give you those papers. That’s all.”

  Twenty-one years ago, at times her Parisian accent could sound so sweet, when she was baking petits-beurres or stirring her soupe à l’oignon, forcing me to eat so I could quickly grow tall. All I ever wished then was to have a Parisian voice like hers.

  “He did it, Simone!” she yelled. “Get it into your head. About a year ago, in November. And mind you, he was Catholic.”

  My head became the pillar holding the ceiling in place. It would collapse on me, soon. Oh, Simone, poupée Si, cutie Si, coquettish Si. Back to your laundry, Si. And then perhaps life would be normal again. My thoughts went back to my birthday last year. November of last year. My birth month; the year of my thirty-fifth birthday. Where was I? What was I doing? Did I feel a stab in my gut? Did I feel anything at all? Life could have been hatefully normal over a year ago,
on such a day, or a night.

  Dominique was calling me a poseur. The ceiling moved and became dozens of faces, hanging over my head and nodding in agreement.

  “Ask, Simone. Ask how he did it. I am ready.”

  I felt the lump in my throat. I could not make a sound.

  “Let me ask you then,” she said, slowing down. “He went to America to see you, didn’t he?”

  “He was here,” I said.

  “I knew it. What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Liar! You fucked up his mind, again. You did a lot, Simone, even when you were still a child. He told me everything. What happened at number thirteen, St. Jean Baptiste? I’ve known for so many years. Remember, I was his wife and his friend. I saw your eyes the first time in Hue. You were a child with eyes of a woman.”

  She was speaking all in English. I wished she would revert back to French, as I did not want to understand.

  “The balcony, Tata Dominique?” I asked.

  “No, Simone. There was no more balcony at Rue St. Jean Baptiste. Get it into your head. Come to Paris and check it out yourself. They renovated the building. And chopped off the Roman pillars.”

  She kept speaking, and I saw you, André, standing on the eighth-floor balcony of number thirteen, Rue St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle, twenty-one years ago. The morning after our fated night, you were climbing over the Roman pillars. You were walking on the limestone railing, your arms stretching wide to help you keep your balance, like an airplane. You were not looking down, although Paris must have spread herself below you, in the transparent white, gleaming sunlight. You were about to fly.

  “Please don’t jump, André!” I had screamed that day in Paris. “I promise to be a good girl!” I had cried out.

  The “Dalida” record was playing inside. “Les yeux battus la main triste et les joues blêmes. Tu ne dors plus tu n’es que l’ombre de toi-même.” Those beaten eyes, the sad hand, and the ghastly cheeks. You don’t sleep anymore. You are just the shadow of yourself.

  I kept yelling, but you couldn’t hear me. You kept on walking, tiptoeing, balancing on the limestone railing. Away from me. The top of the Eiffel Tower was not too far away. Perhaps you were trying to catch it.

  “Oh, please don’t jump, André, please, nothing can that bad. I can’t be that bad.” I could still hear my own voice shrieking.

  I did not really want to know. But Dominique kept on speaking. “Oh, mon Dieu, it’s not the balcony, Simone!”

  “The bathroom, Tata Dominique, the bathroom.” I spoke of memory, where he first showed me image of a black rose.

  “Oh, God, not the bathroom. It’s the bedroom at St. Baptiste. Isn’t that what you want to know? Why didn’t you just ask, pervert? You are insane, Simone. When you came into my house,” she continued, “you touched things that weren’t yours. And he let you. With eyes of a woman and poisonous hands, the child touched and everything turned black.”

  Black, black, black—the word duplicated itself, like a broken record.

  The black rose!

  On the other end of the phone line, she went on to supply me with all of the details I did not wish to hear.

  20. REQUIEM IN NEW YORK CITY

  In my Manhattan apartment, I went to the washer and opened the lid. I looked inside the washer. Dry clothes. Wet clothes. Dirty clothes. Clean clothes. Socks and bed sheets. I kept putting more things in. Filling up the washer. My life was in it. I closed the lid. The familiar noise of the washing cycle numbed my eardrums.

  I sat there, for hours. Perhaps Sunday night had passed. Slowly.

  I saw it, André. I saw what happened.

  You stood by the glass door. You were looking out at the stars and the moon. Perhaps it even snowed slightly. The lights of Paris filled the horizon, and the Eiffel Tower pierced the blackened sky. City of Love. City of Lights. You were watching, André. Simply watching the city of memory. You stood motionless. In a robe.

  It was the same robe. Inside it was dark like this, André. Dark like my Manhattan room at this moment. There was no more balcony, she said. So you could not step outside to walk on the railings of the balcony. You were turning, André, toward the dark space inside. Leaving Paris to the thousand lights outside that glass door. I let you walk through that dark space. Alone.

  Toward the bathroom. You kept on moving toward the bathroom.

  That was where I had gone, André, at number thirteen, Rue St. Jean Baptiste. I turned on the bath and I was cold. You went to the kitchen to boil water. You returned to fill the tub with warm water and scented soap.

  Under the bubbles, I kept crying. I wanted to prove to you how ridiculous it was for the Parisians of St. Germain des Prés and the nuns at the music conservatory to mistake me for a twelve-year-old child. But you turned and walked away.

  I stayed under the bubbles for hours.

  Finally, you came in and gave me a towel and told me there was nothing to fuss about. All it meant was the process of growing up. I threw the towel back at you. You looked away and left the bathroom in a hurry. When I cried again, you stood behind the door and told me I would have to wrap the towel around my bubbled body and stop being a child. I promised to be good, and you reappeared and gave me a rose, telling me it was to celebrate my coming of age. I stopped crying. I was safe. I dipped the rose in the bathtub where the water seemed to turn pink to my eyes. I asked you what would happen to the rose. You said it would dry up. And the rose would turn black.

  In that bathroom, I held the rose he’d given me. I had something no one else had. I had a black rose.

  You were inside the same bathroom.

  Hold on to life, André, hold on and wait. For me.

  I began to run. I ran toward you, André. To Rue St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle. I bumped into the concierge of my building.

  I could hear him calling my name behind me. Ms. Simone? Ms. Simone!

  Monday morning. Manhattan was awakening. It was no longer dark outside. The night lights were all extinguished, replaced by a gleaming sun. Thousands of New Yorkers were out on the street, beginning their hectic day all over the city. In and out of subway entrances. With their newspapers. Hot dogs. And bagels. They moved on. With life, André. Moving on. I kept running, in between them. I kept bumping into them. Some of them cursed. Others stared. Others did not notice.

  It was dark, André, where you were. It was light and sunny, André, in Manhattan. But both places were cold. I was here and you were there. You were still rummaging in the dark.

  Stop, my gorgeous André. Stop wrinkling. Stop aging. Stop going in there and rummaging. What were you looking for? All those black-and-white pictures of the faraway past, of a L’Indochine that obsessed the melancholy young boy of Paris? L’Indochine was gone and you were still looking.

  I kept running.

  I passed Bergdorf Goodman. Saks Fifth. Henry and Bendel. Sixty-eighth Street. The Ritz Carlton. I passed all the vibrant spots of Manhattan.

  I screamed and held out my hands. I aggravated pedestrians. I antagonized busy New Yorkers. Still I could not get where I wanted to be. I couldn’t reach you.

  Wait, André, wait.

  The blade.

  In the bathroom, you found the blade.

  You took it and went from the bathroom into the bedroom.

  Back in the bedroom.

  You lay still, panting, weeping, and I was still on top of you.

  In confusion, I smiled my innocent yet deadly smile. I wanted to stand up, naked, hairless skin and raised nipples.

  Precious André, why are you weeping?

  I rolled and put a white pillow between my legs. And I looked sideways at you, from the corner of my eyes. My eyes beamed. I rolled my childlike naked body over your weeping self. I was just a lonely child yearning for affection, wanting to repeat the game of childhood. So, I kept moving and rolling until the slippery wetness and your cry made me frown…

  Oh, André, precious André, perfectionist André, for all th
at happened that one night, there was nothing else. Nothing deliberate, nothing willful on your part. Then why did you suffer so much, torture yourself so much, for so long? Let your guilt be mine. Why did you have to take it all and condemn yourself with it? And then I turned away from you, to leave you alone with your pain…

  Hearing your agonizing sobs, even in sweet innocence and all the excitement, even then, for a moment I was terrified to face what I had done.

  But then, it was all too late!

  You stood in that same bedroom, staring at the bed. Was it the same bed?

  In the dark, you were raising the blade.

  I was still running. In Manhattan. Breathless. Blurred eyes. Dry mouth and empty stomach. My breath turned into smoke, André. It was cold here. And it was cold there.

  No, André, No.

  I stopped at the traffic light. Hurrying, impatient New Yorkers had to stop with me.

  You hit the hardwood floor. You bent and curled up into a fetal position. Embracing your own wounds.

  I bent, André, embracing my own wounds. It hurt where you hurt, André. I bent, but it was not over for me. Somebody picked me up. The green light was on. And people around me moved.

  Blood flowed and flowed, André. It flowed forever, until it could flow no more. And then blood turned black. And froze. Into the color and shape of the black rose.

  There was a black rose, André, in the dark space where you lay.

  Someone was dragging me on. A few people gathered around me. A few more. And then a circle was formed. Curious faces bent over me, separating me from Manhattan’s sky. Curious faces, but not concerned faces. Whoever dragged me to the sidewalk must have passed by a New York hot dog stand. Or perhaps it was fresh pretzel and mustard. Smoke must have come out of the hot dog grill, or was it my breath, my sign of life? Life was all around me, and I smelled death.