My grandparents summoned my mother and father to their bedroom the next evening, after the servants and the rest of the family had gone to sleep. My mother sat on the bed beside my father as she tried to rock me to sleep. My grandparents stood by the window. My grandmother barely looked at me, and when she did she glared. Whatever pleasure she had felt about my presence in the world had turned to something else—resentment, hatred even. My mother could feel her hostility and held me tighter.
“What’s going on?” my father asked innocently. My poor father, whose hairline was already beginning to recede a little—he was truly always the last to know. He was a good son, a good husband, a good brother, and even a good father, although a bit awkward in that role. He had always done what his parents asked of him. He had begun working for the family business at the age of sixteen, loading and unloading heavy boxes and crates and then driving all over the country to deliver the goods for their customers. He had loved school and had wanted to go to Saigon for high school and then perhaps Taiwan for university, so he could see more of the world, but his parents insisted that there wasn’t enough money, that education after a certain point was a waste of time and money; he was better off learning the family business. And so, feeling the burden of being the eldest son and probably because it was the safer and easier thing to do, he gave up on his dream of learning and seeing the world. Then his mother told him he was getting too old and he had to get married and start a family. His grandmother, my great-grandmother, urged my father in that direction as well, believing that his marriage and her first great-grandchildren would bring her fortune and much luck in combating her ailments. So he did what he was supposed to do and married the girl his mother chose for him. Always the dutiful son. He had no idea what was about to happen.
“Your daughter is blind,” my grandmother announced to my parents in her loud whisper. This was not a family that minced words.
My father was silent for just a second but then regained his voice. “What do you mean she’s blind? What’s wrong with her?” He turned to gaze at me in denial. In the darkness of the room lit only by one bare incandescent bulb, he could see nothing wrong.
“She has the cataracts, the same thing as Na, but much more severe, it appears. Na can at least see with glasses. This one is not even seeing big things.” My grandmother spoke with the authority of the quack doctors she so despised.
My mother knew what my father was thinking, could feel the fear even—was it genetic, was it her fault, his fault? One child to have cataracts could be a fluke, but two? Would Mau go blind, too? She could not look at him.
My grandmother gestured to my grandfather, who had turned to stare out the window with his back to us, and then said, “Dieh and I have been thinking about what should be done, and we feel that there’s no chance of fixing her eyes. There are no doctors left, and even if there were, the doctors in this country are incompetent. They could do nothing to help her. We feel that it would be best to give her something so she can sleep and never wake up. It’s better to put her out of her misery, so she doesn’t have to suffer needlessly.”
In unison, my parents sucked in air so they would not faint from the horror of my grandmother’s words, gaping up at her, searching for signs of insanity. But her dark eyes were steady and her jaw set. In her most reasonable tone, she said, “I know what I’m saying sounds drastic, but you have to think about what’s best for her and what’s best for this family.”
My mother, so caught up in self-blame, guilt, and grief, had simply assumed that she would continue to care for me as she had cared for Lyna, hopeful that there would be a doctor, an herbalist, someone who could help now or later. She spoke for the first time, daring to challenge her mother-in-law, as she had never done before. “I can’t do that to my own child. She’s my flesh, my responsibility. I will care for her by myself.”
My grandmother could and would punish anyone who dared to challenge her, especially a daughter-in-law who lived under her roof. “You cannot care for her by yourself, or don’t you realize that? Have you forgotten that you have other children, one of whom already has vision problems? Have you thought about what her life is going to be like? Have you? I have! Can you imagine what it’s like not to be able to see? It would be a miserable, horrible existence. I’d rather be deaf than blind. She won’t be able to walk down the street by herself. She won’t even be able to get around the house without bumping into things. And what about when she starts getting her period? She’ll bleed all over the place, dripping like a wild bitch. And who would ever want to marry a blind girl? Who could love a blind girl? Who would voluntarily want to take care of her? No one. And without anyone to take care of her after you are gone, she’s just going to end up on the streets begging for food like the armless and legless people you see now. Do you want your daughter to end up like that? Do you?”
My mother clutched my head and unconsciously covered my ears. She could feel tears building up under the attack of questions and the words that felt like daggers in her stomach. She pressed her lips together, fighting the tears, because she knew that they would be viewed as a sign of hysteria and weakness.
My father spoke then. “Of course we don’t want that fate for her, but don’t you know that there might be some doctor somewhere who could help her? She’s our blood. It just seems so wrong to do that to her.” His voice was desperate, begging.
Now my grandmother turned on him. “Doctors? There will be no doctors. Don’t be so stupid! You know as well as I do that come tomorrow the police may be knocking on our door and arresting you for having served in the wrong army, and you could be joining those doctors you believe in so much in the reeducation camps. And then what good will you be to this blind child of yours? Who knows if you’d even come out of there alive? Or tomorrow they could come to our house and steal the clothes off our backs, not to mention our gold if they manage to find it, just like they’re doing to the other families with a penny to their name. They’ll come for us soon enough. How are we supposed to take care of a blind child when we have nothing? And worse yet, a blind child who will grow up to contribute absolutely nothing to this family? She won’t even be able to go sew or clean the house. And have you even thought about what people are going to say about us once they realize we have this in our family? I’ll tell you what they’ll say. They’ll say that we are bad luck, cursed; they’ll look down on us, on you and your son. Is that what you want?” Grandmother was shaking with indignation, so convinced that she knew best, incredulous that anyone would question her judgment.
There was silence. And then finally, she spoke once more, calmer now. “You two need some time to think about this and then I’m sure you will see the wisdom of what I’m suggesting. You should go to bed now.”
My parents did as they were told. For the next three weeks, my grandmother pummeled them with the same impassioned assaults, until their collective will weakened, until they agreed to see the herbalist she had found, a man in Da Nang who would concoct a potion that would make me sleep forever.
* * *
—
By the time we came to stand before the gray concrete building where the herbalist lived, the voices in my mother’s head had quieted, and in their place was a protective numbness, an armor to withstand the pain that was to come. My father, who was at his core a pessimist and a worrier like his mother, had put on his own armor since he had decided to come to Da Nang. My mother followed him up the steep stairs to the herbalist’s apartment on the fourth floor. They said nothing to each other, having withdrawn into their own solitary sorrows.
My father knocked, and the door opened to reveal a man whose thinning, whitening hair suggested that he was nearing the end of his middle-aged years. My father spoke without preamble, calling him Uncle, a title of respect in Vietnamese for a man of his own father’s generation. “Uncle, we were sent here by your wife. She said you would be able to help us.”
The herbalist opened the door wider and stepped back to let us in. Inside was a one-room apartment, lit by a single open window and a kerosene lamp on a wooden table. In one corner was a cot, and in another a two-burner stove connected to a gas tank that sat underneath. Against the wall were shelves lined with a cornucopia of dried and drying herbs and other plants, spices, and knobby roots. Along the top shelf lay a long ivory tusk with its point blunted, perhaps by the herbalist himself when he had ground the tip and poured it into a simmering pot of thick tea to unleash the magical medicinal powers of an elephant’s tusk. The room smelled of everything in nature, of trees and leaves, of roots buried in dirt, of the bones of dead animals. It smelled of decayed and decaying things and yet of life, too, for these were the herbalist’s secret ingredients to improve, and sometimes to give, life.
The herbalist’s wife, a woman who sold tobacco and hand-rolled cigarettes on the streets of Tam Ky, had recommended the herbalist to my grandmother. My grandmother had known her for years, but not because my grandmother smoked her cigarettes. The Tobacco Woman, with her rotting teeth and greasy hair, was well known for being closely connected to the supernatural world. The spirit of her deceased grandfather frequently visited her to guide her and advise the living souls of the community who were fortunate enough to fall within the Tobacco Woman’s good graces. The Grandfather Spirit moved and spoke through a teenage boy from a nearby village who when occupied by the Grandfather Spirit would bike immediately to the Tobacco Woman’s house, where he would stay for one or two days, ready to help those who sought his counsel. In exchange for allowing the Tobacco Woman to sell her wares in front of our store, my grandmother was informed with all haste by the Tobacco Woman or one of her children when the Grandfather Spirit had returned. After years of advising my grandmother by the light of an oil lamp in a one-room shack on what lottery numbers to select, which had proven more often right than wrong, the Grandfather Spirit and the Tobacco Woman had a loyal believer in my grandmother.
And now, without saying why, my grandmother had asked the Tobacco Woman for the name of a good herbalist far away from the curious eyes and ears of Tam Ky, and the Tobacco Woman had named her own husband, a man with whom she no longer lived, but a man she still believed to be a good and useful practitioner of the healing arts.
“So what can I help you with?” the herbalist asked after my parents had sat down at the table, each with a cup of tea in hand.
My father fidgeted with his faded red teacup as he said, “We were hoping that you could help us with our newborn. She can’t see.”
The herbalist bent over my mother and me, leaning in so he could get a better look at my eyes and pulling the lamp toward him. “Hmmm. It looks like cataracts. Surprising that it should happen in someone so young. I can give you medicine that will strengthen her eye muscles, but to tell the truth, I don’t know of any medicine that will make this go away. Sometimes, we squeeze lemon juice into infected eyes, but I don’t think her eyes are infected here, although it wouldn’t hurt to try that, too.”
“Actually…uh…we don’t want you to give her medicine to make it go away because we know there isn’t anything like that. We want you to give her medicine to make her not suffer so she can go someplace where she will be able to see perfectly forever,” my father clarified in a voice that was barely audible above the motorcycle engines and beeping horns from the streets below.
The herbalist deliberately drew away from my mother and me then, returning to his side of the table and his chair. “Is that really what you want to do?” he asked.
My parents did not respond, except to look down at the cement floor littered with bits of spices and herbs.
When the herbalist spoke again, his voice was low, too, but firm. “You know people come to me because they’re afraid of dying of cancer or they have such high blood pressure they might keel over any second. Some women come to me because they can’t get pregnant. And I try my very best to help them all with the knowledge my father passed on to me and the knowledge his father gave to him. I can’t get involved in the sort of dirty business that you’re asking me to do. I’m sure there are other people who can help you, but I can’t. I understand the pain you must be going through, I truly do, but I don’t believe in this sort of thing. I’m sorry.”
With those words, the numbing armor around my mother began to crack, the tears rolled down her face, and without realizing it, she hugged me tightly and said to the herbalist, “Thank you, Uncle! Thank you so much!” Her tears were tears of relief, of incredible joy. Her body felt lighter, its way of celebrating this reprieve. This herbalist was proof that there were still sane people in this world, people who thought what she and her husband were about to do was wrong, people who would think that her mother-in-law was insane. She would be angry when they returned with me still alive, but at least my parents could say honestly that they had done everything they were supposed to do and it was the herbalist who had refused to cooperate.
My father grabbed me then, hugging me for the first time in my short life. He got up quickly and headed for the door, indicating to my mother to follow him. He wanted to leave before the herbalist had a chance to change his mind. My father thanked the man for his time and rushed out the door with my mother close behind him. The herbalist must have stared at the door long after we had gone, wondering what exactly had just happened with this odd couple who had said they wanted one thing but acted like they wanted something else entirely.
At home in Tam Ky, Grandmother was at the door to greet us as we approached long after the sun had set. “What happened?” she demanded.
“The herbalist wouldn’t do it,” my father said, pushing past her with me in his arms.
“Why not? Did you offer him all the gold I gave you?” Her tone was laden with accusation. My grandmother had given my father several ounces of solid gold bars that morning, precious gold she had taken from the hiding place in the gutter behind the house, enough to compel a poor herbalist to do anything, she believed.
“No, I never got a chance. It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow. The man was very firm.”
“Everyone has a price. I would have been able to figure it out!” my grandmother insisted.
“Then you should have gone yourself!” my father snapped back as he turned to glare at his mother. It had been a long and exhausting day, and he just wanted it to end.
The edge in my father’s voice was enough to make my grandmother back off, at least for the moment. She knew her children and when and how much to push them. But still, she could not help herself; she had to have the last word. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find another way.”
My parents ignored her, walking up the stairs and away from my grandmother, leaving her threats for another day.
She would have found another way to kill me, too, but by then my great-grandmother had heard of her daughter-in-law’s dark machinations and commanded that I be left alone: How she was born is how she will be, Great-Grandmother declared. And because my great-grandmother was the ultimate matriarch, her word was law and no further attempts were made to end my life. Of course, that didn’t stop my grandmother from forbidding my mother to breast-feed me (which my mother tried to do in secret, but her milk soon dried up) or forbidding me from eating anything but rice gruel while my brother and sister had real sustenance (or as much sustenance as was available under the Communist regime). Because of my blindness, I was viewed as a curse on my family, doomed to a life of dependency, unmarriageability, and childlessness—and therefore worthlessness. No doubt my grandmother believed she was doing me a favor.
This secret had taken on the weight of shame, as secrets sometimes do. It was a burden that my mother could no longer bear, and so she was finally compelled to unburden herself to me. For the first twenty-eight years of my life, my attempted infanticide was an event known only to the parties involved. But on the last night of a visit home, as I sat re
cording my mother’s voice telling the story of our family, I had a sense of what she was about to tell me. I already knew. As she spoke, I could see the scenes play out in my mind; that’s why I believe that the soul remembers trauma long before the mind can retain actual memories.
It was after midnight; everyone else was long asleep, and I was to fly back to New York the next morning. My mother was spent as she came to the end of her story, and said she was telling me the truth of what had happened only because my grandmother was by then dead. She added that I was to tell no one—particularly my grandfather, father, and siblings—that I knew of the “matter.” In the ensuing years, I disobeyed my mother. I recently told my siblings; I’ve told Josh, of course; I’ve told close friends; and now I’m telling the world.
One day soon, I hope to have the courage to ask my father for some answers, not in anger but in forgiveness, to gain a better understanding of the motivations of those involved, to tell him that I forgive him and my mother for their complicity. I’m just not ready yet. I’ve not spoken of the secret to my mother since that night, except once after my hemicolectomy, after we’d known that I had cancer for five days and I knew she was not handling it well—she was angry, fearful, guilt-ridden. I spoke to her in the privacy of my hospital room, with my sister there as moral support. “You have to tell people that I have cancer, Mom. You need to tell people so they can help you through this.” No response. No surprise. My mother is a very emotionally repressed person. “Mom, you know better than anyone else how strong I am. You know better than anyone else how unlikely it was for me to be where I am today. Considering ‘that matter’ when I was born, you know how unlikely it is for me to even be alive, much less living the life I’m living now.”
The Unwinding of the Miracle Page 6
