The Lotus and the Storm

by Lan Cao

  They are indifferent to my private unease.

  At the first forking of a faint memory, I feel something inflate and then move slowly through the gloom that is mine. As always, the truth returns, exerting a great downward pressure against my chest. Despite the surface composure, memories race inside my head, making their claims and counterclaims on my consciousness. Every image is replayed backward. The sharp crack of a gun bleeds into a pool of blood. I touch it, feeling the burned steel against my palm. James falls. I hear again and again the click of the trigger, metal pulled back against metal and released. I crouch in the jar, my inert body pressed fully against Mai. A kite, barely stirring, hides behind a chimney. I can see our mother disappear into the distance almost beyond my field of vision, searching for the dead daughter she loves. It does not help that I look like my sister. It can be confusing for her. “Khanh, Khanh,” she calls. Her back, long and narrow, walks away from me and heads for the door. I see it all, each needling detail. It is indeed a tattered composition remapping itself on the neural circuitry of my brain.

  We are on the sofa, in front of the sliding balcony door. I see Cliff’s face and mine reflected in the glass. The words come out suddenly, before I realize what I’m saying. “Cliff,” I say noncommittally, in a soft, pathetic voice. “Cliff,” I repeat with a single exhalation. “My mother.”

  My voice cracks through the meek, querying plea. I want to understand. But only those two words come and I am suddenly overtaken by a furious remorse.

  Cliff becomes quiet, his eyes watching me with unease. “You want to talk? I wasn’t sure you’d want me to,” he says.

  I nod. I am full of dread. I push down Mai and keep her submerged. “Yes,” I say, prompting him forth.

  Cliff clears his throat and opens another bottle of beer. When he finally speaks his voice is soft, barely audible above the hum of kitchen appliances.

  “Your mother suffered quietly and privately,” he says. “I would never tell you this while your father was alive.” He touches my hair. I look away. “Your father owed his life to your mother. Did you know that?”

  Our father owed his life to Uncle Number Two, but I am sensing that this fact is also linked somehow to our mother. Our father has told the story many times. In the middle of a ruthless rebellion that enveloped our country that day in November 1963, it was Uncle Number Two who managed to protect his friend from his fellow conspirators. He had looked the coup leaders in the eye and insisted on the sanctity of personal friendship.

  I know that story.

  “Many men were in love with your mother. Or coveted her,” Cliff says matter-of-factly.

  There is suddenly a memory I cannot quite place. It did not belong to me originally but has over the years become mine. Our mother was sitting at a table with Uncle Number Two. There were platters of pastry and a jug of salted lemonade. There was a whispered fight about something. Uncle was pacing, gesticulating, and sighing. He was cajoling, his eyes tearing, believing that ultimately she would answer his question if he made himself relentlessly intrusive.

  Uncle Number Two was in love with our mother.

  As if he can read my mind, Cliff says, “Everyone knew Phong loved her. Though he was not the only one.” He gives me an embarrassed laugh. “But she truly loved only one man. Did you know that?” He looks at me beseechingly.

  I nod, less from certainty than perhaps from a wish that it were so.

  Cliff hesitates, then continues. “Phong pled with his superiors to save your father. I’m sure you know that.”

  “Why did he risk so much?” I ask.

  Cliff answers abruptly. “For love, of course. A man does what he does for love. Love provides a plausible excuse for anything. Even for behaving badly. Inappropriately. As Phong did, so he could get himself closer to her.”

  “Cliff,” I say. That, and nothing more.

  He knows I am waiting even if I don’t know what it is I am waiting for. He shakes his head and takes a deep swallow of his beer. He is disappearing into the past, into love. “She suffered,” he repeats what he already said. “She certainly suffered. And when your father withdrew, she suffered even more.”

  Something slips. It’s just those words. I feel a fierce baring of fangs. Though I cannot yet bring myself to contradict him, I feel an instinctive need to defend our father who, even through the quiet sadness that enveloped him, managed to take care of us.

  A hard wall falls between Cliff and me.

  “She left us,” I say with exaggerated force, my heart rising to meet the impending confrontation. And before I know that such words can come out of my mouth, I hear myself tell Cliff, “I hate her.” Those three words, uttered with appropriate reproach and outrage, mark a turning point. I know these mood reversals, the combativeness that accompanies them, and the voluptuous release that follows. Love and hate—cleaved into two even halves. I now cling freely to the more burdensome, wholly unmediated portion. Hate. I feel it completely. It is a mutinous rage with no possibility of reconciliation.

  Cliff’s face is drained of color and he looks at me with unfaltering disapproval. But I am too afflicted to care.

  “I hate her,” I say again. The words reverberate in me, raw, angry, and sacrilegious. One tear gathers, then another, pooling inside my eyes.

  “She saved your father,” he says firmly.

  “I thought you said Uncle Phong saved him.”

  “Your mother did. She . . . gave herself to Phong. Neither your mother nor father was able to survive this act.”

  A sob heaves out of me. I manage but one word. “No. No,” I say again, more forcefully. Cliff places a restraining hand on mine.

  “No,” I repeat, this time in a guttural shout. He removes his hand and retreats into himself, looking exhausted and battered.

  A sinking feeling, mixed with the sullen thrill of anger, settles in the pit of my stomach. My hand swings upward in one fluent motion with my back arched backward for leverage. I throw the beer bottle against the wall, then cover my head with my arms. Shards of glass scatter on the floor. The clouds of Tet loom above us and the room is sucked into an explosion of orange that glows above. Panic races through me. Cliff scuttles forward as if to catch a falling object, throwing himself over me like a protective blanket. His hand clutches my chin. I swipe at him, resisting his touch. I feel an index finger pull me staunchly by the jaw so that my face meets his. He struggles to pry my hair from the iron-fisted grip of my fingers. “It’s okay,” he says. “Mai,” he calls. Though I did not know it, I have drawn blood. The scratch marks on my neck are red and damp. I aim to follow fury to the very place where destruction began. I hear the smallest whisper thrumming in my ears. “It is all right, it is all right,” the voice says.

  It is not our mother’s voice. It is Cliff’s voice, mixed with another person’s—mine. I too try to reassure. It is all right, it is all right, I say to Cecile. Again there is Cecile’s soundless, intermittent crying. And continuously ringing in my ears are Mai’s grumbles and reproaches. She is still blaming me for James’s death. My hand clenches into a fist and, just like that, with demented fury, I unleash a succulent whack against her stomach.

  Cliff fumbles to collect himself. Large hands grab me by the wrists, restraining me. We are there together, as if we had arrived at a truce, as he holds me in his arms. He keeps me there and refuses to let me go. His touch calms me, ushering in the slow but palpable return of my sanity.

  Cliff is explaining what I suspect troubled our father. “Phong might have pled and begged whoever was in charge. But he did it because your mother did what he wanted,” he says. “And she paid dearly for it.”

  “My father,” I say. I try to produce a conventional conversational tone. I wish to defend him against I am not sure what.

  Cliff interposes. “Your father, yes, suffered too. He tortured himself, she said, trying to figure everything out.” He pa
uses. His voice is overcome with sadness. “She entered into a relationship with Phong, who promised to use his influence with the coup leaders to spare your father.”

  From the look on his face I know he is speaking the truth. I am beginning to see the pieces come together, as if transformed by the click of a kaleidoscope. I see a child standing on tiptoe listening to her mother and a family friend talk. They are upset. The man, who is an incessant presence, turns sour and surly. Perhaps after much coaxing he is trying to pull an agreement out of the woman. Knowing what I know now, I wonder if it was perhaps an agreement to turn the one-time bargain into a continuing affair.

  “Your mother loved you,” Cliff tells me. He goes on about the various conspiracies and convolutions of 1963.

  I am not soothed. At the most pivotal of moments, she left and turned to someone else—and worst of all she opted against leaving with us in 1975.

  “She stayed behind and left us to go off by ourselves,” I say wearily. “She left him.”

  Cliff touches my arm and sits back as he slowly retracts from me. I think he is preparing to retreat before the threat of another outbreak. He does not want to provoke me.

  Our mother did abandon us. It was unreasonable and wrong. And here we are, still inside the lingering spirit of this abandonment. All these years later this banishment and our father’s death only reinforces the fact of our aloneness.

  I repeat to myself, We are alone, and I feel the full consequence of those overlapping words inside my very being.

  As if he can hear my thoughts, Cliff says, “You are not alone.” He is emphatic as he gathers me against him in remembered togetherness.

  The simplicity of his answer touches me. Cliff examines the purple redness on my neck and shakes his head. He runs his fingers against the patch of flesh that is chafed and bruised. I have been revealed, and the shame of it brings another stream of tears to my face.

  Cliff, though, normalizes every anomaly with a brief, practical suggestion. “A little dab of Vaseline might soothe,” he says. And then, after a pause, “I talked to your father before he died. I think you should know that.”

  I freeze and wait. “You wrote him a large check,” I say. “I found the note you wrote him in a box under his bed.”

  Cliff looks sideways and then at me. “I only wish he had included me earlier. I wish our friendship could have continued. As far as the check was concerned, he called me and said he needed money but wouldn’t tell me why. Of course I didn’t even ask. I knew it must have been important if he felt he had to turn to me.”

  “Weren’t you surprised you heard from him out of the blue?”

  “I’d imagined the day so many times that when it happened, it felt natural,” Cliff answers. “The links one forges in life aren’t so easily undone. Especially the kinds I had with your father. I had faith in that.” His eyes widen. He reaches over and holds my hand. “Listen, what I want to tell you has nothing to do with the check. It’s far more important.

  “Don’t think you are all alone. You are not alone. And your mother had very good reason for staying behind. As you’ve gone through his papers, you know that I’ve been writing to your father for years. He wrote back once and only once, telling me to leave him alone. But I didn’t give up. And in the last six months, I heard from him not once, but twice.

  “It took some time figuring out where you were after 1975. You have always been on my mind. I want you to know that your parents’ friend did not just disappear from your life. Before I left, I made one of my closest aides in Saigon promise me he would help get you out. He was in the unit in charge of evacuating Saigon and he ordered all his men to be on the lookout for you and your father. I got the report from him that you and your father had boarded one of the last helicopters to leave. But I had no news about your mother. I made several telephone calls and found out that your father was in Fort Indiantown Gap and from there I learned you had moved to Virginia.”

  He puts out a tense, tremulous laugh. I see his eyes focus intensely on mine. Instinctively, I lower my gaze and wait for him to continue. “Your father said in that first letter that your mother had decided not to leave. And that he had no way of finding out what was happening to her back in Saigon. And then he ended the letter by asking me to not write him again. I struggled to find a way to put things right with him, but he was intent on shutting himself off.”

  He stops and puts his hands on my shoulders. “After thirty years of absence, of course your father contacting me was a surprise. And not a surprise. His voice was weak but clear. He told me your mother was pregnant in 1975 and the child was mine. Just like that, very matter-of-factly. Can you imagine how I felt? Probably not.” He shakes his head in doubt. “Of course I wanted to protest my innocence. I never wanted your father to know this, although I suspected he knew all along. I never wanted anyone to know this. At the same time I also wanted to thank him for calling and letting me know. ‘I thought you would want to know,’ was what he said to me. And I told him I did.”

  “I loved your mother,” he declares earnestly.

  “Did she love you?” I ask.

  “To be honest,” he answers obligingly, “if she did, it’s because I loved her.” He jabs his finger at his own chest. “Your father and I had gone on a dangerous operation together in Cambodia, and when he was under fire, I did what I could to ensure he was safe.” He smiles self-consciously. “I downplayed it. I told your parents it was just a matter of military duty. But the truth is, I did it for her. By pure instinct. I didn’t want her to suffer another death of a loved one. I think she knew it.”

  “I know the story. My father told me that you risked your life,” I interrupt.

  “Whatever it was, your mother was very touched by it. We’d both sacrificed something of ourselves for someone else. On that level, she understood me. And turned to me. And who could have ever predicted that she would get pregnant at her age and we would have a child together.” He turns away from me, looking into space. He fidgets. I see his back quiver and only then am I aware that he is crying. “Your mother loved you very much. Never doubt it.”

  I still can only guess at what might have happened years ago to our mother. Still, with this news, I can cling to the gentle swell of a new order: Our mother did not behave capriciously, or hard-heartedly. She was flawed but not heartless. We were not callously abandoned. Cliff tells me that although the whereabouts of my sister are not known, he believes she is still somewhere in Saigon. A part of us is out there, somewhere, waiting for a reunion.

  “I hadn’t planned to tell you any of this,” he says. “But you wanted to know and I think it will do you good.” He pauses, then asks, “What will you do now?”

  “I will take him home,” I say. My answer surprises me. I hadn’t known it until now, but once voiced, it seems like the most natural thing in the world—to take him home. To the place where a part of our mother still is.

  “Home,” Cliff says with visible emotion as he smooths a stray hair from my face.

  We remain together on the sofa through the evening’s pallor, displaced and disassembled. I cannot help but look at him with a mingled sense of pleasure and surprise. The same thought must run through him too. “So this is who you’ve become,” he says several times. He turns teary when I tell him what Uncle Number Two told us about our mother. We pass the time bringing each other indulgently up to date about the events of our lives. His sons have married and have children of their own. His wife died years ago.

  We eat, drink, and surf the television channels. Through long moments of enveloping silence, I am filled with memories of our time together in Cholon. And I am certain the same memories inhabit him.

  28

  Knowing

  MAI, 2006

  I am back in the country where I was born.

  If one measures the depth of love by the persistence of sorrow following love’s separation o
r loss, then I can say I truly love this place. And for the Vietnamese, indeed that is how love is weighed and judged, by a lifetime of grief. Loving is bound up with suffering. I grew up with stories about pain, love, and fidelity. A woman waits for her warrior husband to come home. She carries her child to the top of a mountain so she can witness his return from the summit’s peak. Through heat and rain, she waits, until she becomes a rock, eternally frozen in time. In matters of the heart, we persevere and endure, even in the face of hopelessness.

  For years, when it was morning in Virginia, my mind drifted steadfastly twelve hours forward to evening in Cholon, where every unpretentious detail of life over there can be rehearsed with habitual affection, reimagined with quotidian particularity. It is as if I remain aligned somehow with a different time zone, subjunctive and contingent. Cholon became phantomlike, a childhood city lovingly buffed in my imagination to a perpetually lustrous glow. In this habit, I found both pain and its antidote—solace.

  And now I am here as if by magical transport. Though it feels instantaneous and magical only because I took a sleeping pill on the plane. When I arrived in the evening, Tan Son Nhat Airport seemed unreal, with its runways spilling theatrically over the land and its rows of lights shining a path that glowed as if illuminated from within. As the plane made its descent, tracing a downward arc across an ebony-dark landscape lit by the hypnotic allure of starry pinpricks, I was barely awake. From above, the city was but a blur of color that lovingly came into focus only as the plane began tipping its wings. When the plane landed, I felt as if Saigon had been willed into unlikely existence by an extravagant act of faith—mine.

  The next morning I get ready to venture into the streets. I find myself reflexively studying the faces of people around me, even though I fully realize the improbabilities associated with the exercise. It might be nothing more than poetic conceit, but I tell myself I will recognize her soul the moment I am in her vicinity. And so I go on staring at features, searching for signs of the Eurasian mix. One of these young women might be our mother’s lost child.