He’d shaken his head, “Sometimes you get lucky and all the people that want you dead are dead.”
Mother had not joined me in the US as she said she would when she sent me away when I was thirteen. For five years, before I went to live in a college dorm, I moved from one place to another. I lived with relatives I’d never met as a kid in Vietnam. Once I exhausted their kindness and hospitality, they passed me on to acquaintances of Mother’s, including her friends, old teachers, political affiliates, political exiles. Every year, I received a letter from her bearing the same words: I’ll be there soon. She would not. She was always taken up with a new cause, tangled in a new fight or the same one that shape-shifted into something that looked like her own reflection.
On a Vietnamese newspaper online was a photo of her standing next to the President, his arms around her waist. People gossiped on Internet forums about them having an affair. My heart raced, contemplating the idea that she might have remarried by now and had other children. From oceans away, I watched her rise up the communist ladder. She would chip at the bricks, upset the structure, casually insult the top leaders in government. More people disappeared. Somehow she remained, growing more and more powerful.
A blogger wrote about Mother, “almost mythical . . . an ornament in Parliament.” Little by little, she had gone from being in hiding to being in full view on the front pages of most newspapers. She appeared on TV, speaking to the entire country and the forty-five men at the round table whose ties might be too tight, choking them at the throats, leaving them unable to combat my mother’s words. Maybe she was merely decorative. Maybe the men were amused. The blogger speculated that my mother was still alive because the country was changing, an optimistic thought, or simply because she was lucky.
A different writer expressed that they didn’t think she could survive on luck for long. Something had happened: she’d quoted the American constitution on Lunar New Year during a speech when she was supposed to remind citizens of the Party’s legacy. She acted as though she was merely saying it in good spirits, not meaning to offend. But the words were clear, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of petition. Those words did not escape even the most insensitive ears. The National Assembly forced her to resign based on charges of dishonesty, citing an incorrect date on the document she’d filed in running for the position of Secretary of Energy. It was small and could have been easily overlooked, except that they were looking for any reason to get rid of her.
She’d taken it too far. Newspapers started to suggest she was an American spy. Family members and friends of hers were brought into the spotlight; their private lives scrutinized and debased. Amongst these lines of journalistic blackmailing, my name was nowhere to be found. When I left Vietnam, my birth certificate was destroyed, my name erased from the record. My mother had no daughter. It was her gift to me.
2
Montauk around January, the beginning of a new year. There were never many people there in winter, and the heavy snow and wind kept the streets of the town even more desolate. I walked from my motel to an Irish bar, the only place open that day. On the window was the sign Hiring pianist. Must be able to shuck oysters. There was an older man sitting at the bar, slowly nibbling a fry, his eyes fixed on the TV. The Seahawks against the Redskins. In the back corner, a young couple was drinking soda. I sat down across from them.
“The usual?” The waiter asked.
“Please.” I said. I’d only been coming here for three days. In a place where nothing much happened, familiarity was established quickly.
I looked at the woman. Her hair was black and so shiny it was almost reflective, falling over the side of her face and onto the table. She kept pulling it behind her, but it would again curtain her profile as soon as she leaned forward. The more I looked at her, the more it seemed I’d once known her. The man was speaking, periodically putting his whole weight on the edge of the table, or, pressing his back against the chair to lean away as far as possible. He looked as if he was trying both to engage the woman and to distance himself from the things she said, which he seemed to find painful.
The waiter returned with my eggs and sausage gravy. He went over to the couple, nodded to them, and left. The man talked animatedly for a few more minutes while the woman opened and closed her eyes. A small branch hit the window to the man’s right. The woman’s eyes lingered on the window long after the wind blew the branch away. The man stood up, removed his knit hat, and sat back down. He said something, to which the young woman put her fingers over her lips and started biting them. When he stood up the second time, he put on his hat and walked out.
I put some cash on the table and was getting ready to leave myself. I wanted to get to the harbor before sunset.
“Excuse me,” the young woman was standing in front of me. “I’m sorry to bother you. I don’t have my wallet. My husband—he just left.”
“Are you alright?” I said.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. Water pooled into her eyes. “It’s a few dollars for the drinks, but I haven’t got it.”
“Don’t worry.” I said, taking out a few more bills from my wallet. “Sit down if you like. I was just leaving but we could stay,” I offered. I didn’t want to see her cry. I wouldn’t know what to do with her tears.
She pulled a chair out and fell into it, as if she’d lost control of her weight.
“Where are you going? In this weather?” she asked. Her face was bright again. Had I been imagining a grief-stricken woman?
“Just to the harbor.”
“I’ve never seen the ocean in a snow storm,” she said, her eyes searching mine, as if she could see snow falling inside my pupils.
“I don’t think I have either.”
“Can I come with you?”
“What about your husband?” I asked.
“He’s fine. He’s watching a movie right now, I’ll bet. Our motel has some old VHS tapes: Dances with Wolves, Forrest Gump, other stuff. Can you believe it? A tape player . . . ” Her voice trailed off. Outside, the wind was blowing harder, rattling the bell of the entrance door. Nobody else came in.
“You’re welcome to come if you like, but it’s stormy out—it’s not so safe,” I said.
“I know. But you’re going, aren’t you?”
I drove to a stretch of beach with no one else around. We parked in front of a rock wall, as close to the shoreline as possible, knowing we couldn’t stand outside too long. My companion pulled her hair back and tucked it inside her hood. It stayed there this time. The snow blew against our faces, frosting our eyelids. She walked ahead of me, bending down every now and then to pick up a pebble, a shell, some other discolored and vibrant thing. After she had collected a handful, she crouched down and stacked one on top of another. She continued until there were four miniature pillars.
“Help me,” she said.
We connected the pillars with more rocks and seashells until we had a square. I stood up, took a few steps backward, amazed at the little structure we had created. I was so focused on building the walls that I hadn’t noticed the baby crab who was now crawling around inside the square.
“Look,” I said, pointing the creature out to my companion.
“He’ll figure it out.” She walked on ahead of me.
“Hey,” I called, “You never told me your name.”
“Lilah. Lilah.”
I smiled at the way she said her name like it was the beginning of a song.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m your new friend, Lilah, who has just helped you build walls around a crab.”
I stared at her back, her narrow and boyish hips, and wondered what the little girl might look like as a woman. My body surged with tears that wouldn’t fall, pricking behind my eyes. I wondered if it was in that moment that I decided I would imprison any creature my new friend might ask me to, follow her anywhere
just for a chance to show her I wouldn’t abandon her. To love someone, perhaps, was not about what you could give her, but a way to remedy your loss. A decision both spontaneous and premeditated—to breathe under water and drown together as the rest of the world floated above you.
I chose this part of the beach because I’d sensed somehow that Lilah would prefer not to be disturbed. I realized now that it wasn’t necessary to try to find an empty stretch of beach. With the snow falling so thick and the wind bellowing even louder than the ocean, nobody could see or hear us from two or three feet away, even if they somehow desired to be out in this bleary white. Her outline was beginning to disappear when she turned around and waited for me.
“So, what are you doing in Montauk?” she asked.
“Just trying to remember some things. It’s my first long stretch of time off from work in two years,” I said.
“I get it. I’m so forgetful myself.”
My heart was beating faster. I was glad we were now side by side and she couldn’t see my face.
“There are things you wish you could forget though. Don’t you think?” she said.
“No. I want to remember everything that’s ever happened.”
“Really?”
“Forgetting is natural. Remembering is much harder,” I said.
“My husband has an excellent memory.”
“What does he do?” I said, looking out at the waves. We weren’t alone after all. I spotted a black dot pushing itself against the waves. When it was further out, the black dot stood up and surfed back in.
“He works at a plant that engineers computer parts. He’s a risk manager.”
“And you?” I said.
“I make prosthetic eyes, which sounds technical, but the work actually requires a lot of interpretation. I like to think I’m a painter of sorts. Everything is done by hand because every person’s eyes are unique, but even within a pair of eyes, there is a subtle difference.”
“Because there’s more than one self in everyone,” I said.
She looked at me, a faint smile on her face, her head slightly tilted to one side. “That’s what I think,” she said. “So if I do my job right, you wouldn’t be able to tell what you’re looking at isn’t real.”
I looked out at the waves and thought if they rolled into me, it would hurt but wouldn’t make me bleed the way the little girl had bled when she dove into our imagined ocean. “Can you tell if mine are real or not?” I teased. The cold had made me bolder than normal. She grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward her. Our faces were so close that her breath warmed my nearly frozen nose.
“My clients are forced to remember their trauma every day,” she said. “Having an artificial eye helps them forget. Some days, they even feel normal.”
We started to head back in the direction of the lighthouse. She fell behind me.
I waited for her to catch up.
“You know,” she smiled, stretching her already cracked lips. They bled a little. “My mother hung herself when I was seventeen. Would you want to remember something like that?” She licked away the blood.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know. I suppose if you forget everything, you could start over,” I said.
“Like a newborn!” She pulled her hood in to cover her chin and it muffled her voice. She walked away toward the car. I didn’t try to catch up with her. I thought perhaps she preferred it that way.
Back at my apartment in the city, like thousands of nights since I’d come to the United States as a girl, I sat alone under a softly lit lamp. So many hours had passed in this way—my own silence growing sharp edges while my mother’s friends, my host families tried in vain to draw me out, throwing scraps of kindness at me like at a rabid dog. But now I was alone.
During the first few years in the United States, my yearning for Mother and my old life at the camp had morphed from simple aches and tears into sleepless nights full of desperate bargains with the universe and finally—when I realized that there would be no soldier to come collect me for a second time, no reunion with Mother, and no little girl to offer me her rare friendship, that I’d been abandoned—resilient anger.
I’d thought that I could punish Mother by resisting all my host families’ attempts to care for me as their own, but I’d only succeeded in punishing myself. I remembered a father, a Vietnamese political dissident, who was especially kind to me, causing resentment in his wife and children. At mealtime, everyone else could use any bowl or plate he pleased but I would always receive the same brown, plastic plate. Even though the father was more attentive than many other hosts I’d been with, he never noticed. One night, he didn’t come home for dinner and I found my plate with a mash of food next to the family’s dog’s dish. I knelt on my knees and lapped it up as the children watched, thrilled and horrified. With every swallow I prayed that this would be enough for them to forgive my intrusion in their life. Encouraged by their laughter, I crawled around and leapt up and down, clicking my knees on the hard wood floor. They laughed and laughed. But I took it too far. When I barked at the daughter, jumping up to scratch her thighs, she burst out in tears. I couldn’t help but smile. In order to become real, you have to affect something outside yourself. As she pushed and kicked to get away from my grip, as her mother pulled on my ankles and dragged me off, I knew I was somewhere, I was someone. I was an agent to a feeling she would not forget—I existed then. The father yelled when he came in and saw me, my forehead, nose, and hair sticky with food and sweat, “What the hell’s going on here?”
“We don’t know,” his wife pleaded, eyes teary. “Something’s wrong with her.”
One after another, they helped me pack my bags and sent me away with promises of change, of another family more equipped to deal with “children and trauma.” I’d heard these words so many times, spoken in hushed voices behind bedroom walls, casually at dinner, and sometimes hurled at me as though they were meant as insults. By the time I understood that America was permanent and became grateful towards my hosts, I was old enough to live without a guardian.
I still wondered, though, why they had found my silence so offensive, as though it was an attack on their generosity. American children seemed to have been born with the innate knowledge of how to be their parents’ child. I would see them at the park burying their faces in a sandpit and when it was time to leave, they would kick and scream while their adults carefully brushed sands off their eyelashes, and kissed their gritty lips. I would feel resentment swell in my chest—these children were clumsy and careless. They babbled endlessly. They tortured and attacked their wide-eyed caretakers who seemed more like fanatic admirers than parents. They had done nothing to earn that love. I had been patient and well behaved. I had asked for nothing. And that was exactly what I’d received.
On the Internet, thousands of couples looked for a stranger’s baby to call their own. I was fascinated by the idea of surrogacy, disgusted at its promise of fulfillment and completion for these people who did not, would not consider the possibility that they might fail to love the child. And I was hopeful too—if two perfect strangers could devote their life to taking care of a baby they didn’t give birth to—then I might be wrong about my mother and how she felt about me.
I looked down at my hands; though I was twenty-four, the skin was wrinkled and stretched thin from being exposed to chemicals at the laundromat. I rubbed the tips of my fingers together, trying to feel for my prints, small swirls that were uniquely mine. There was nothing there. After I took a second job at the coffee shop, I was able to rent a cheap room. I had not wanted more until now. The money my mother had given our relatives to turn over to me if I went to college was gone. I’d registered for the first semester and dropped out after only two weeks. I wasn’t ready to commit to a path. I’d rationed the money meant for my tuition and supplemented it with my small income from other jobs. Up until I turned twenty, Mother had continued to s
end money. It was the only link left between us. I had not heard from her since.
It seemed so simple—loan your body for nine months and get a large sum of money. I would be able to go to the movies, eat a meal in a restaurant without counting my change instead of a diet of leftover stale croissants from the coffee shop. I could even go back to school. In a moment of delirious anger—and hope—I booked an appointment at a fertility clinic.
I called the manager of the granite building where the stranger from the subway lived. He said there were a studio and a one bedroom available. I asked him to send me the application. I told him I intended to move in as soon as possible and no, I didn’t need to see it. Then I called my landlord and let him know I wanted to terminate my lease.
I received the keys to apartment 2B in the granite building. The stranger had passed me on the stairs, but showed no sign of remembering our first encounter on his doorstep. I nodded when he greeted me. We exchanged the usual pleasantries. He’d told me he was a lawyer and I responded that I hoped to have a career one day too. Then I busied myself with my moving boxes and excused myself.
A few weeks after I’d moved in, I sat on the steps outside our building to wait for him. My new neighbor had a habit of walking up and down our block in the evening. He came out as expected, wearing a faded green corduroy jacket, which looked threadbare and not warm enough even on this mild winter day. He said hello to me, more welcoming than the usual New York manner that was pleasant but disinterested in further conversation. He was both reserved and welcoming.
“What’s a young lady doing, sitting here on a Saturday night?” he said. Up close, I could see the grays on his temples and the crescent wrinkles under his eyes.
“No plans tonight,” I said.
“That’s not a bad thing. Too many people over schedule, down to when they’re going to shit,” he said.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked.
If I Had Two Lives Page 11
