by Leslie Gould
She dropped the wet hair from her mouth and peered through the window out into the grove. She remembered her family’s laughter from four years before as if it still hung in the branches of the trees. She and Older Sister and Older Brother and Second Brother had chased each other through the grove of trees, up and down the tunnel-like rows. Her sister and brothers hid from Lan, but she always found them because of their laughter. That was before Second Brother stepped on the land mine. Older Brother had staggered through the rubber trees carrying him to the house. Mother draped her body over the bloody corpse of her younger son. Older Brother finally had pulled her away.
Now Mother’s rising voice interrupted Lan’s memories. “You are no son to me, Quan,” she shouted.
Lan hurried to the doorway. Older Brother stood straight and tall, his thick, black hair like a crown on his head, his square jaw more pronounced than before. An older man nodded at Quan. Behind them, an open truck-load of Viet Cong soldiers held rifles across their chests.
Older Brother extended one hand to Mother. She spit in his face. He wiped it away and grabbed her arm.
“Mother!” Lan screamed and then clamped her hand over her mouth. Why did Mother spit on Older Brother?
He looked toward the doorway and then said to Mother with disgust, “Everything has changed. The land belongs to the people; we have a country to rebuild. And Father is not coming back; he’s dead. I saw him die yesterday when Saigon fell.” He pulled a wad of papers from his shirt pocket. “Here are his documents.” He threw them in the dirt.
Lan kept her hand clamped over her mouth. Father? Dead?
Mother bent and slowly picked up the papers. She stood and glared into her son’s face, as if she might spit again. “Where is he buried?”
“I don’t know.” He straightened his shoulders and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. “Now go pack what you need, but leave the valuables. Those belong to the people.”
Quan nodded toward the soldiers in the truck. Mother glanced at the papers in her hand. “There are no valuables, Quan,” she said, squinting at her son. The man standing beside Older Brother smiled, and the soldiers jumped over the truck railing and fanned out around the house.
Older Brother took long, quick steps toward Lan. He’d grown taller and thinner since he had left. He was eighteen now, a year younger than Older Sister. “Where is Cam My?” he demanded.
“Saigon.”
“Where is her baby?”
“America.” Lan whispered the word through the cracks between her fingers.
“When?” Quan demanded.
“Two years ago.” Lan bowed her head.
“Right after I left. Chi is in America then. The pigs. She’ll be ruined. Blood should stay with blood.” He glowered at Mother and then peered beyond her to the older man standing by the truck. Lan thought of Older Brother holding his niece, cradling Chi in his arms. Lan held the memory close because it had surprised her, and now his talk of blood surprised her too. So many felt that American soldiers’ babies didn’t belong in Vietnam, felt that their blood was bad.
Quan hit the doorframe. His anger had not lessened with the end of the war, even though his side had won.
Mother stood in the middle of the room shifting onto her tiptoes and then back down to her heels. She looked like a stork, perched on the branch of a mangrove tree above a raging river, not knowing whether to dive for food or fly away to safety.
Lan heard Older Brother’s voice in the courtyard. “The trees are healthier. Much stronger than two years ago. The workers can stay in the house. Another grove should be planted behind this one.”
Mother planted her feet firmly on the tile floor. “Get two rice baskets. Put your sleeping mat, mosquito net, and a pair of clothes in one. Get a bag of rice and the packet of dried pork from the cupboard,” she ordered.
Lan quickly did as Mother instructed and then sat back down on the divan, the basket between her feet. She watched Mother take the photographs of Lan’s four grandparents and the photo of Second Brother off the family altar. One by one Mother wrapped each in a swatch of silk. She turned toward the bookcase and took down a photo of Father in his uniform and wrapped it in silk too. Then she pulled a slender stack of snapshots from between two of Father’s books and added it to her collection.
“Get two sets of chopsticks, two spoons, the rice pot, the teapot, two bowls, and two cups.” Mother placed the photos in the second rice basket. “Wrap the breakable things in your clothes.”
Lan nearly tripped as she hurried back and forth to the kitchen. “Slow down!” Mothers tone was stern. She kept her eyes on the basket as she worked.
Lan saw her mother’s beaded jewelry bag wedged between the wrapped photos. “How long will we be gone?” Mother didn’t respond. “When are we coming back?” Lan turned her head to the side and peered up into her mother’s face.
Mother bowed her head. “We’re never coming back.”
Never? Lan swallowed a sob. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Quan coming?” Lan pulled a strand of hair toward her mouth. “Will he take care of us?”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t want to go.” Lan dropped the strand of hair. Mother shook her head. It was tradition—Older Brother should care for Mother.
Lan buried her face in the rough fabric of the divan. It smelled of dust and sweat, of rain and time. Leave this house? Their land? The ancestors and Second Brother? Cam My had been right.
“Come, be brave. Get up. We must go.” Mother picked up both baskets and handed one to Lan.
Mother glanced to the left, then to the right, squinting beneath the brim of her hat. Lan knew that Saigon was west, to the left, and the South China Sea to the right. They had gone to the ocean once when Father came home for a week, before Second Brother had died. Her throat tightened.
Mother looked to the left again. Then she took Lan’s hand and turned to the right, toward the sea. The two started walking, away from the house, away from the grove of trees, away from dead Father, away from Second Brother, who was buried under the slab of concrete with the red and gold Buddha sitting on his chest, away from the ancestors, away from Cam My and Older Brother and baby Chi, far away in America.
Mother didn’t look back, didn’t look at the house she’d swept three times a day for twenty years, didn’t look at the trees. Lan looked back over her shoulder quickly. The breeze moved the branches of the trees. Caoutchouc, the French word for rubber tree, meant “wood that weeps.” The nuns had taught her that. A single, jagged sob stumbled from Lan’s mouth.
“Walk, don’t cry. You’re all that I have left,” Mother said.
That night they slept on the edge of a rice paddy with the mosquito net wound around them. Before dawn, half-asleep, Lan drew near to her mother. Tears from Mother’s face fell against Lan’s cheek. She could feel Mother’s chest heave. Mother needed her. I will take care of you, Lan vowed. The way Older Brother should.
The nuns had taught her a prayer, a French prayer. Notre Père qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Father. God. Ancestors. Someone. Help us.
Chapter 3
Gen gazed out the backseat window as her father turned into the Rose City Cemetery. It had been over a year since Mom had died, and he had come home early from work to take them to the cemetery.
Aunt Marie sat up front on the passenger side. “Are you feeling up to this, Marshall?” she asked.
Aunt Marie still stayed with Gen every day after school. Gen hoped that next year her father would let her go to a friend’s house or stay alone.
“We’re having an end-of-the-school-year party tomorrow.” Gen hooked her hands over the back of the front seat.
Aunt Marie turned toward her slightly. “Genevieve, it’s inappropriate to talk about school right now. Sit back against the seat. Use good posture.” Dad inched his way around a curve in the road.
&
nbsp; Why had it taken over a year for Moms gravestone to be made? Gen wanted to ask the question out loud, but she was certain Aunt Marie would scold her for that, too. Her father parked the car next to the mausoleum near the back of the cemetery.
“Don’t walk on the graves,” Aunt Marie chided, her sweater buttoned tightly across her front, her sheer burgundy scarf tied under her neck. Gen studied the ground, not sure where the graves were. She fell in step behind her father. He stopped and stared straight ahead. Gen read the marker slowly. Sally Jane Hauer. Beloved Mother. September 14, 1940 to April 4, 1975.
“Good grief, Marshall!”
Gen glanced at Aunt Marie.
“Why did you put your name on it too? What if you remarry?”
Gen read the marker: Marshall Frederick Hauer. Beloved Father. February 26, 1929 to—and there was a blank space. She began to cry. Her father patted her shoulder, but she cried harder.
“That’s enough, Genevieve,” Aunt Marie said, clutching her purse.
Gen stared at the ground, at Aunt Maries practical beige shoes, and tried to stop.
“It’s all right.” Her dad patted her shoulder again, then took her hand and led her toward the car. She hid her face against his sports jacket.
A month later he sat in a lawn chair in the middle of the backyard, facing the ridge with the golf course below. The green and white weave of the plastic stretched across his back.
“Dad?” Gen called from the patio. He didn’t respond. It was July third, a Saturday, the day before Americas bicentennial. He was in charge of the picnic at church the next day. Gen walked across the lawn and tapped her father on the shoulder. As usual, he didn’t answer. When Mom was alive, she would say, “Marshall. Gen’s talking to you.” Now it was up to Gen to get his attention, but sometimes it wasn’t worth the effort, and she pretended she hadn’t spoken at all.
Worried he’d forgotten to buy the supplies for the picnic, she tapped him again. Was he asleep? It was so unlike him to sit down; he kept busy with housework, yard work, and “work work,” as Gen called the briefcase full of papers he brought home from his job at the downtown insurance company.
Gen stepped in front of him. He wasn’t asleep. She peered into his gray eyes, shaded by his bushy eyebrows. “Daddy?” Again he didn’t respond. He was going for the record, the longest delayed response ever. She was sure he would mumble “Yes?” in another minute. It was always a question, that “Yes?” with his voice rising in a hint of surprise, as if uncertain she had spoken.
She sat cross-legged on the grass and stared at him for a moment, but then her throat tightened, and she looked away. She glanced down at her denim cutoffs. The ends were beginning to fray. She wore her Lassie League baseball shirt with the words Rose City across the front. She played second base. The red sleeves were splashed with pink because her father had washed the shirt with a load of whites and lots of bleach.
Gen held her head up again. “Dad, are you okay?” She reached out and gently shook his pant leg. The fabric felt cool, the midmorning sun heated her face, and the thick grass tickled her bare legs. The warm scent of the freshly cut grass filled her nose. She could hardly breathe. She pulled on her fathers other pant leg. Again, he didn’t respond. He looked eerie. “Dad,” she said. “We have the church picnic tomorrow. Is everything taken care of? Do we need to buy paper plates or anything?” Gen had been excited about the bicentennial all year.
Tomorrow, after the church picnic, they would watch the fireworks over the Columbia River. She swallowed again; her mouth felt dry. What is wrong with him? Why is he acting this way? She sat and stared, and every few minutes she checked her new Timex watch that he had given her for her birthday. She should call Aunt Marie. That’s what her father would want her to do. She squinted against the bright sun and then glanced over her shoulder, wishing someone would appear to help her, to tell her what to do.
At 11:15 she walked into the house and phoned her aunt. “I think something’s wrong with Daddy.”
Ten minutes later Aunt Marie stormed through the house to the backyard. Her gray hair bounced as she walked. She halted in front of her brother. “Marshall, what is going on?” He kept staring. “Snap out of it!”
Minutes passed. Gen felt her heartbeat keeping time. Still her father sat, staring.
“He’s had a nervous breakdown,” Aunt Marie finally said, standing with her hands on her hips.
A nervous breakdown? Why? Have I been bad?
“That Sally,” Marie muttered. “I know she was your mother, and I shouldn’t talk this way, but I’ll never forgive her for what she’s done to him.” Aunt Marie called the doctor. Gen sat in a white metal lawn chair on the patio and listened to her aunt in the kitchen. “No,” Aunt Marie said. “I will not call for an ambulance. We’ll get him there if we have to drag him.”
The breeze pulled the scent of honeysuckle across the patio. A bee landed on the arm of the chair. Gen jerked her hand away. Aunt Marie hung up the phone and hurried through the open door. “Come on,” she said. “I need your help.”
They each took one of Dad’s arms, hoisted him from his chair, and propelled him around the side of the house in a lopsided fashion to Aunt Maries Chevy parked in the driveway. Aunt Marie forced his head down and his body into the backseat. Gen climbed in beside her father.
“Psychiatric ward,” Aunt Marie said to the man dressed in a white coat at the emergency entrance.
Gen started to climb out of the backseat. “No,” Aunt Marie commanded. “Stay there.”
The man rolled a wheelchair up to the car. Only really crazy people ended up on psychiatric wards. Did they ever leave? Did they ever get better?
She watched her father disappear behind the glass-and-metal hospital doors. Would he ever come home?
Late that afternoon Gen and Aunt Marie shopped for the picnic. “We’ll go to church, then to the picnic, and then to see your father,” Aunt Marie said as she pushed the shopping cart across the parking lot. “I hope we bought enough paper plates. I hope your father recruited people to set up and clean up.” She unlocked the trunk of her car.
“Dad and I planned to go watch the fireworks tomorrow night.” Gen lifted a bag of paper plates from the cart.
“Oh, no,” Aunt Marie said. “We won’t have time for that.”
The heat from the asphalt swirled around Gen’s legs. “What did the doctor say?”
“That your father will be fine.” Aunt Marie unlocked Gen’s door and hurried around to the driver’s side Gen climbed in, rolled down the window, and sank against the burning vinyl, relieved.
Aunt Marie continued to talk as she started the car and gripped the steering wheel. “The doctor said that the breakdown was caused by stress and grief. Your mother should have thought of this before she flew off to Vietnam, shouldn’t she?”
Gen trailed her hand out the window, staring at her wristwatch. Her sweaty legs stuck to the seat.
During the picnic when people asked where Gen’s father was, Aunt Marie answered that he’d been hospitalized the day before for tests. “It could be his heart,” she said. “Maybe his stomach.”
Afterward, Aunt Marie drove to the hospital. Gen started to follow her through the double doors into the psychiatric ward, but Aunt Marie turned sharply with her hands on her hips. “Children are not allowed.”
Gen stayed in the waiting room. It didn’t feel like her father was going to get better. She sat down on a green vinyl chair and smeared her index finger on the metal arm. Her heart pounded. Why Mom? Why did you have to go to Vietnam? She stood and turned the chair so that it faced the wall. She kicked with her right foot, hitting the white wall with the toe of her dress shoe. If Mom were here, Dad wouldn’t be sick. If Mom were here, we’d go to the bicentennial fireworks. She wanted to stop missing Mom. She wished she’d never heard of Vietnam. She wished the country didn’t exist.
She thought about how she had burned her thumb last winter when she was heating water for hot chocolate. She had put a larg
e bandage on the burn, but a few days later it became infected. She took the bandage off, examined the yellow pus oozing from the base of her thumb, and then put a bigger bandage over it. A week later her teacher asked to see her hand. The teacher called Gen’s father, and he took her to the doctor. “Don’t ever put a bandage on a burn. It needs air to heal,” the doctor said and then wrote a prescription for an antibiotic.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that? Not to put a bandage on a burn? She was a nurse.” Her father scowled as he talked, as he drove up Sandy Boulevard toward their house. Gen stared out the car window. So somehow this is Mom’s fault too? It was as if they were all covered with yellow pus. No one wanted to talk about how they felt. No one wanted to feel.
She shouldn’t have cried at the cemetery, even though it was about Dad’s name on the marker, not about Mom’s. Maybe he knew she still hurt though, still had a bandage over an icky, oozing wound. She kicked at the waiting room wall again.
“Genevieve.” Aunt Marie stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. “You’re marking the wall with black streaks.”
Gen turned toward her aunt.
“And wipe that pout off your face.”
Gen didn’t go back to day camp that summer. Aunt Marie said with all the trips to the hospital it was easier not to worry about it. Her father stayed in the hospital for two weeks. After he came home, Aunt Marie brought a meal, along with Gen, and then lectured her on keeping her room clean. She showed Gen how to scrub the toilet and scour the kitchen sink with Ajax. “I know I shouldn’t say this, but I have to be honest. Your mother wasn’t known for her housekeeping.” Her aunt rinsed the sponge under the faucet. “You need to learn to do better.”
Her father seemed more relaxed. He said he finally felt rested. He had two new bottles of pills in the medicine cabinet, and Gen kept track of his moods. On sad days she would be especially quiet, she wouldn’t disturb him while he read the paper, and she would set the table without being asked. He sat and watched more television. Sometimes he didn’t mow the lawn until Gen commented on how tall the grass had grown. When her father went out of town on business later in the summer, Gen stayed with Aunt Marie. She left determined to keep him well.