by Lan Cao
“It is better,” she announces reassuringly, working her hand around my neck to prop me up.
What is better? And then I remember. Sometime, a few days before, perhaps, I had fallen and scraped a patch of skin from my arm. A searing pain registered through my arthritic joint. A tingling feeling radiated from my nerves. I can still hear the hushed chorus.
It could have been serious. An old person’s broken tissue can easily become ulcerated.
A punctilious vigil was maintained. Mai paid the Korean housewife in the ground-floor apartment to watch over me while she worked and when Mrs. An could not be here. I cooperate. It is important in a place like this to be pleasant. Nothing happens here that is not noticed.
Mai and I live in an apartment in Sleepy Hollow Manor, a small complex housing an amalgam of transplants displaced and dislocated from the world over. In the evenings, I hear the clash and clangor of Hindi and Tagalog, Korean and Chinese, and of course the familiar and comforting elocution of southern Vietnamese. Much of life spills forth and is conducted outdoors here. Pleasantries and gossip as well as business exchanges and proposals are discussed in the front yard and back garden, on sidewalks and stoops. Women in saris may work as receptionists or nurses during the day but after hours they double as gold merchants or moneylenders willing to finance under-the-table businesses for the ambitious—ticket scalping, catering, hairdressing, marriage brokering. At Sleepy Hollow Manor, New World ingenuity combines with Old World desires and networks to spin a furtive, anarchist version of the American Dream.
Still, no one here knows how things were for me. Years ago, my now-crooked fingers were made to perform wondrous feats. Through these fingers ropes and cords were passed through tangles and loops and emerged as knots that came with names: the double Blackwall hitch, fisherman’s bend, Turk’s head, cat’s paw. It was all part of the training. We rehearsed every contingency while blindfolded. Cyanide pills were sewn inside shirtsleeves and trouser hems. I practiced the motion with my hands tied. Body curled forward to receive the end to suffering, I bit open the seams. The pills would be within tongue’s reach if a mission failed. I could swallow death.
It is almost eight in the morning, but the light is beginning to darken under the weight of hanging clouds.
Mai seems shaky, perhaps because she dreads having to drive in this weather. She searches for her handbag, a huge leather pocketbook that contains her wallet, books, papers, and other miscellaneous items that she often cannot find because they are buried at the bottom.
“Your cell phone is over there.” I point to the chest of drawers by the door. “Where you left it last night.”
“Thank you,” she says. She picks it up and starts thumbing messages on the tiny keyboard. She usually sticks it in the back pocket of her pants but I notice that these trousers have no pockets.
There is the sound of a key jiggling in the lock. “Hello, hello,” a voice calls from the threshold.
It is Mrs. An. The high cheekbones, knife-blade sharp, make her stand out in any setting. She has been in this country almost as long as I have but, unlike me, she escaped by boat after the war. She still dresses conspicuously native, in silk shirts and sparkling gold threads. She is rather slender, but she knows how to position her body for leverage and can lift me with one hand. She floats my way and wedges a pillow behind my back, exuding benevolence. I have known her for decades and am comfortable speaking my language with her. It is lucky that she lives with her family on the same floor, only two doors down from us.
“I’m sorry I’m here so early, but I am on my way to work earlier than usual. I’m worried the road will turn icy,” Mrs. An explains. She sputters. When she feels overwhelmed, her facial muscles pull. I watch the left half of her face dance upward. She pushes her palm against it as if to press it into submission. “Argghh,” she lets out a fierce sigh. The tick continues, up, down, sideways. She is losing patience with its incalcitrance.
“Oh, good, you are still here!” she exclaims when she sees Mai.
Mai nods.
Looking at my daughter, I can sense the mass of unarticulated feelings hovering about her. She is small-boned, almost deceptively delicate, her skin smooth and supple. Her thick hair falls in sheets and shines in almost lacquered blackness. Her eyes are charcoal black, like the seed of a longan. I fed longans long ago to my daughters. Dragon eye, literally. The fruit is round with a thin, brown shell. Its flesh, white, soft, and juicy, surrounds a large black seed.
Mrs. An cranes her neck and looks toward the kitchen, checking to see if there is food on the counter for me. She manages a derisive laugh when I ask her who is working the shift with her today. “The young ones won’t bother to get out of bed on a day like this.” She sulks, though with a discernible degree of satisfaction. “The nursing home has a lot of trouble finding reliable aides.”
She and Mai give me my meals on most days, although I can manage by myself more than they believe. She is the one who noticed my swollen feet and hands and worried about my ability to breathe. A month ago, at the hospital, they removed one gallon of water from my lungs. Even now my breath comes out in serrated gasps like a fish out of water. I close my eyes, separating myself from my physical body.
“It’s all right, Aunt An, I can stay home awhile,” Mai says. “I am not going in for another two hours.” Mrs. An is not really her aunt. It is simply the Vietnamese way of bringing close friends into the family fold.
Mrs. An nods. A long effervescent hiss comes out of the coiled pipes.
I glance at the basket on the credenza. There is a plate of sticky rice, dried shrimp, and Chinese sausage. A bag of persimmons, unskinned. I also smell simmered catfish and rice, even though both are in a tight-lidded stainless steel tiffin box. There are four canisters stacked one on top of the other, held together by latches and fitted into a metal frame with handles on top. Each box contains a different treat.
Mai subscribes to what we traditionally call com thang, monthly rice. Her subscription entitles her to home-cooked Vietnamese food made by two women who have over the years developed a steadfast following. We now dine on whatever the two women choose to prepare and deliver each day.
They typically bring comfort foods. Fried vermicelli; catfish caramelized in soy sauce, fish sauce, and melted sugar; potbellied tomatoes stuffed with minced pork and onions; a clear broth soup that is so delicate it tastes more like tea than soup; eggs scrambled with bitter melon. Today there is also a thermos of tea and sticky rice.
Although I can do it myself, Mai feeds me, scooping the sticky rice from the plate with her fingers and rolling it into a ball. I open my mouth and swallow what she slips into me. Time floats, then curls and curves backward into itself. Coaxed by the lure of memory, my mind drifts into an imagined world from years past. The distant chant of an itinerant peddler hawking food swims in my ears. Tamarind pods fall on the misshapen sidewalks, cracked open by the Saigon heat.
I shake my head, almost too violently. Saigon still wraps itself around me and squeezes with sudden force.
Mai turns on the television. A weather map shows precipitation remaining in our area, which, combined with the cold temperature, is certain to mean more snow. I see arrows and lines and a shaded spectrum of pink and red that looks almost ornamental.
“Are you cold?” she asks as she hands me a tissue for my runny nose. Her narrow shoulders slope inward, giving her a meek, seemingly serene appearance, but I know better. Poor child, I think. Memories course through both of us and sometimes they short-circuit inside her. My hand trembles as I try to protectively clasp hers.
I nod. “This is so good. I love that you order this food. Remember how your sister loved caramel pork?”
Her face darkens but she gives me a tentative smile and offers me a cup of tea poured from the thermos. The thick, smoky flavor of a full-bodied black tea rises. She tilts the cup at just the angle that makes the flow manage
able. I am touched by her tenderness.
On television, the undulating green of a rice field grabs my attention. I can almost taste the succulence of a blade of rice, green and sharp, against my tongue. Pagoda roofs slope with architectural deliberateness against the Saigon skyline. Above, a helicopter hovers. Conical hats ruminate, bowing toward black earth covered by a shimmering liquid green. I reach for the remote control and raise the volume notch by notch. Tanks roll, truckloads of soldiers hop into chaos, voices emerge brittle with anxiety and sorrow. The number of dead is chronicled, one by one. How quickly they are counted. A precise tabulation of American dead, American wounded.
Scraps and remnants of glistening green present themselves to me, from a distance. Many layers of forests, thickly canopied. I can see the earth where death is interred. The scarred trees, the dark shades of green that spill over from branch to branch, as each overgrown layer fights off vines and tendrils in search of sunlight, space, and growth.
I take a deep breath and look again, though I wish to forestall insurgent introspection. Over and over, newscasters recall Vietnam from the American consciousness.
Quagmire.
Now stretches of monochromatic orange and brown desert sand tremble in the sun’s haze. Desert towns are besieged against a drifting landscape of sand and sloping plateaus. I hear of continuing fights in embattled cities along the Euphrates. Basra. Nasiriyah. Najaf. In the background, outside the focus of the camera’s lens, a cactus blooms amid the sunburned sagebrush. I see the crumbled sections of mosques, the traveling dust storms, the treacherous movement of shadows against gentle date palms. There is no assurance of order here in this self-canceling landscape where sand obliterates sand. Everything now occurs here, the way it occurred there so many years ago. A disputed town is controlled by a clutch of government soldiers one day, unofficial militias of one religious sect or another the next. A soldier’s body is found floating in the Euphrates. Armies slip across borders, attack, and retreat. I think of Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Vientiane, Laos. I might have been echoing them in my sleep.
The names that once ignited high passion have changed, but the ends of the earth were once found there, as if they had been there forever.
I lie still as she takes my hand and places it on her knee. I know what she is doing but my mind is on the screen. I take in a deep breath and hold it inside me before letting it out. I can feel the squeaky lungs bucking and rebelling. But still, after a few minutes I manage to find a rhythm of alternating inhalation and exhalation. The body still hurts and disobeys but I am learning to ignore it. I can move on. I look into Mai’s face. She starts with my baby finger and clips her way to the thumb. The clippers make crisp, snappy sounds, sending the jagged edges of my nails flying. As I slip back into the slow pulse of that place from long ago, I hear the tart scraping sounds of the broom against the floor. It must be a Vietnamese broom by the full throaty contact it makes on tile. The rice straws, bundled and bound together by vines, scrape and scratch. I feel a tear run down my cheek. I listen to the sweeping motions, left to right, left to right. My nails are being recovered and swept into a dustpan.
A television announcer asks about exit strategies, that pernicious little phrase. I know the calamity of being this country’s ally. The unleashing of warring factions, of fire and chaos, and then the declaration of victory. The escalating cost is proving to be too much—too much blood, too much treasury, all adding up to a pointless generosity. I can see politicians in Washington, D.C., preening for the next news cycle. How can they be blamed! They didn’t know things would turn out like this. I watch what is going on as someone who was born in a poor country. I see how they swing the wrecking ball. I know how the weak country has to wheedle.
With each successive moment they are deeper into the very war from which they wish to exit. It is familiar, a shadowed history that stalks and does not recede.
It has been more than thirty years since Vietnam fell. But 1975 is still here, held to enormous scale inside me.
It is now 2006. The year hardly matters. Why would it be different now? They continue to cartwheel from one disposable country to the next, saving the masses and abandoning them.
Mai has returned to my bedside and wipes my face with a washcloth. She does not seem to mind my occasional lapses; she has her own phantoms and demons. I know that she makes private but regular sojourns to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. I know that under her neatly folded shirts are pamphlets and booklets about the history, conception, and construction of this haunting structure. Once, I happened upon her stash when I folded the laundry. The mere photograph of it on a book’s glossy cover tugged at my heart. Two black triangular granite walls coming together to form a V, sunken belowground like a scar in the earth. Names of American dead are etched row by row on its shiny surface. A diamond next to the name means the person was killed; a cross means the person is missing.
Mai props me up and plumps several cushions behind my back. She has become the keepsake of my memory. “Tell me,” she says. And inevitably, I do.
It is 1963 and I am back in Saigon—the suffocating haze of heat. One day before the coup.
It was late afternoon and I had awoken from a long nap. I thought of nothing, not of motives or consequences, and that itself was of enormous consolation and satisfaction. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, a calm beige. There was a lightness in my body, an abiding sense of possibility, merely because for that singular moment I hoped for nothing. Perhaps the lightness would stay. But at the very moment I wished for it to remain, the feeling collapsed inside me. The door opened and a sliver of half-light entered the room. My wife slipped into bed and positioned her head on my chest. I whispered, “Em, darling. Quy.” She breathed softly into my neck. Her hair floated, its long soft strands brushing against my face. She wore loose clothing that flowed. The cotton fabric was so thin I could almost feel the full nakedness of her body pressed against mine. Ours was an old-fashioned courtship that continued right through the domesticity of marriage. Her mouth rested on the nape of my neck; her skin settled into mine. I shifted her body and allowed my palm to ride the length of her back. I closed my eyes. If only I were a painter, I’d have been able to capture her form and essence with a few brushstrokes, a fluid line here, another there.
My wife pulled me closer. She hummed the slow, cantabile passage from Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu. We were surrounded in each other’s warmth. I exhaled. A feeling of contentment worked its way slowly into my being, the same feeling that had entered me when I first walked alone with my wife not long after we met. I hoped for nothing; I was already certain that we would spend our lives together. All around us was a vast rice field, the single point of access into the country’s soul. I loved its opalescence, rich earth redolent of harvest; the froth and swell that churned and roiled when the monsoon swept through the country, draining off years of accumulated wrongs and faithlessness.
The first time I kissed her as we stood by that field had surprised us both. She tasted faintly of sugar. I did not quite know what love would feel like, but in that moment, I believed I understood everything. Something moved inside me. “Anh,” she had said, softly. “My love.” Her voice was polished, like a stone rubbed smooth by a river’s flow.
“I have never kissed before,” she whispered. She called my name. “Minh.”
Right through my heart surged a thrill so fierce it made me desire not consummation but restraint. I wanted to prolong the moment. I wanted to fall to my knees in complete surrender.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-two.”
She hesitated. “I am not yet twenty.”
I said nothing.
She drew herself closer to me, her face against my shirt. She too was holding back, leaning against me, but not quite. Her breath danced against my skin. I felt the ping ping ping of my nerves dancing up and down my spine.
I
would not reveal any of this to her. I knew these protesting facts—the ways of old Vietnam. Status mattered and I had none. I was an errant son from a distant land. My parents were Vietnamese but made their living as shopkeepers in Vientiane, Laos, where I was born. I was only traveling through Vietnam, panning for gold in the tributaries of the Mekong River.
Still, over the course of weeks, months, she convinced me that we would find our way into the world by love’s intuition alone, the way each day inevitably followed the next. We hung on to this belief, even when her parents disapproved of the marriage and disowned her.
If I could be granted one wish, it would be this: to go back to that time when I first fell in love by the rice fields. I would return to the place I had left and it would still be there, waiting. Just as my wife would be. There, among a profusion of green, in a flowing purple ao dai.
• • •
How did a small, skinny country clinging to the coast of the South China Sea attract the attention of a great power?
I see the cursed geography of Vietnam. A conquered country cleaved into two halves, the northern half under Ho Chi Minh and the southern under Ngo Dinh Diem. The differences between the two were stark. The North was tightly clasped inside the iron-clad scaffold of the Communist Party. The South was a loose archipelago of centrifugal impulses, each spilling away from the center, each seething with its particular desires, fractious babble, and fierce passion.
Our efforts to forge a national identity out of the South’s divisions were opposed by a tangle of local, religious, and secular interests. President Diem himself was impeded by his own police and secret service, all of whom had split loyalties. From the Hoa Hao to the Cao Dai to the Binh Xuyen sects, each commanding its own sprawling army, from the biggest to the smallest landlords, from the French to the Chinese monopolists with coffers of silver and gold, everyone had something to fear from the president’s ambition for a strong, centralized national government. And everyone in this group did what could be done to sabotage this dreaded possibility. The rest simply waited.
