by Leslie Gould
“You’re brave to come here,” he said. They were just minutes away from Tan Son Nhut Airport, where her mother had died.
The plane began to descend. A sea of rooftops gave way to a runway lined by decrepit hangars, concrete half circles, and old helicopters. Ramshackle homes backed up against a fence just a few feet from the runway. Gen braced herself for the jolt of the landing. Jeff squeezed her hand as she searched the terrain outside the window. Where did my mother die? The plane taxied around an old hangar; a new building and a bus came into view.
A blanket of hot, steamy air smothered them as they stepped off the plane, walked down the metal stairway onto the burning tarmac, and boarded the crowded bus. Gen held on to Jeff to keep from bumping into the travelers crammed against them.
They made their way through the check-in, answering the officials’ terse questions, and then descended the stairs to the concrete floor of the dingy terminal. Jeff swung each of their bags off the conveyor belt and loaded them onto a cart. After customs they headed out the door and into the throng of people crowded around the exit.
“What if Maggie isn’t here?”
“Then we’ll take a taxi to the hotel,” Jeff said. He looked like a giant in the crowd. All around, Vietnamese nationals searched for their loved ones coming home from America. The travelers carried boxes containing televisions, microwaves, rice cookers, and fans.
“Need a taxi?” shouted dozens of drivers outside the terminal.
Gen shook her head. “There she is!”
Maggie waved at them. She wore silk pants and a blouse; her gray hair was knotted on top of her head.
“Isn’t this great?” Jeff shot Gen a smile as they followed Maggie through the tunnel of people. It was great. The crowd, the energy, the adventure, and the baby ahead of them.
The adoption agency van was air-conditioned. “This is Bao,” Maggie said, nodding at the driver. “He works for the agency as a driver, interpreter, and now as a facilitator.”
Gen watched Maggie fan herself as they pulled away from the airport. “It’s been unbearably hot,” she said. “It’s cooler in Vung Tau, but there are more mosquitoes.” Bao pulled into traffic. A man on a scooter buzzed by, then another carrying a woman and two children. The woman wore a floppy cotton hat and tattered, long-sleeved gloves.
Gen reached into her backpack for a roll of mints. She dug past her bathroom bag, journal, pen, and extra set of clothes. She felt along the very bottom and found the mints, along with a small package. She pulled it out. Who had put it in her bag? Jeff shook his head. She read the tag taped to the purple wrapping paper. “To Gen; Love, Dad. May you find what you are searching for in Vietnam.” He had carried her backpack at the Portland airport on their way to the gate. He must have slipped it in without her seeing. She felt the package. The figurine of the old man, she guessed. Dad’s giving it back to me. She felt a rush of relief.
“Who’s it from?” Jeff asked.
“Dad.” She peeled back the paper. It wasn’t the old man with the white beard and cane; it was the Vietnamese girl in the red tunic and pants holding the wooden doll. She gasped.
“What’s wrong?” Jeff asked.
“I haven’t seen this since long before we got married.” Gen ran her finger over the figurine’s chipped nose, along the carved braids, and then over the faded red tunic and pants. “Dad must have had her all these years.” Why had he decided to return her now?
The van came to a sudden stop; Gen wrapped her fingers around the carving, hiding the figurine in her hand. A river of scooters flowed around them, the drivers weaving in and out of traffic. A load of bananas was strapped to one, a keg of beer to another. Three girls wearing white ao dais, conical hats, and long gloves crowded on another.
Buildings made of wood sagged next to sturdy new structures painted in pastel colors. Beggars walked beside men in suits. A white building came into view. “What’s that?” Gen turned her head, taking in the cross perched atop a boxy steeple.
“A disco,” Maggie answered.
The van inched along. “There’s the U.S. Consulate.” Maggie pointed to a new, sprawling stucco building with green trim and an American flag. “That will be your last stop before going home.”
“I predict that two weeks is all it takes,” Jeff said to Gen. “We’ll be home for harvest in plenty of time.”
Gen smiled at her optimistic husband. If they didn’t need to get back for harvest, she would choose to stay longer. She slipped the carving back into her bag. A taxi driver honked at a scooter ahead of them and swerved onto the sidewalk as he turned the corner. A woman on a bicycle stopped to avoid being hit. A cyclo driver pedaled across the street, causing Bao to brake abruptly. Gen grabbed the armrest. There were no seat belts in the van.
“That’s Notre Dame Cathedral,” Maggie said. “It’s a smaller replica of the one in Paris. Our hotel is just a few blocks from here.” A bride wearing a Western gown posed in front of the red bricks of the cathedral. An entourage of attendants, her groom, and a professional photographer stood on the sidewalk. On the corner an amputee dressed in ragged pants and no shirt leaned on one crutch and held out his hat to those passing by.
The van crept around a corner as a wave of scooters sped by and then pulled to a stop. The pale yellow People’s Committee Building towered majestically over the plaza in front of the hotel. A garden of orange, red, and yellow zinnias surrounded a statue of Ho Chi Minh holding a child on his lap. Gen stepped out of the van into the heart of Saigon. The red-tiled roofs of the buildings scraped the brilliant blue sky. The blaring horns and blistering heat swept over her, welcomed her, and enticed her as she and Jeff headed up the stairs and through the open doors to the lobby of their hotel.
“Try to get a good nights sleep,” Maggie said as they waited to register. “We’ll leave for Vung Tau tomorrow in the early afternoon and go straight to the orphanage to see Mai.” The marble floor reflected the light from the giant chandelier; a waist-high vase filled with tropical flowers stood in the center of the lobby. The woman behind the counter wore a burgundy ao dai. The hotel was more elegant than Gen had expected.
“I need your passports,” Maggie said.
“Why?” Jeff asked.
“The hotel keeps them on file while you’re here. Government regulations. It’s how they keep track of foreigners.”
“But I didn’t think we should give anyone our passports, ever.” Jeff ran his hand through his curls.
“You have to in Vietnam. It’s the way things work,” she said.
Gen smiled nervously as Jeff handed Maggie both their passports.
Gen and Jeff stood on the corner by the hotel. The buzz and honks of the four lanes of motorbikes and cars reverberated around them. “You buy gum?” a girl who looked five shouted, pulling on Jeff’s arm. He pulled out two five-thousand-dong notes and handed them to her.
Gen hoped someone was watching the little girl. She spotted a woman sitting on the plaza in front of the statue of Ho Chi Minh make eye contact with the child. Relieved, Gen smiled and took Jeff’s arm. “Honey, if you keep giving away your money, you won’t be a millionaire for very long.” They’d just exchanged a hundred U.S. dollars for a million and a half Vietnamese dong.
“It was around sixty cents,” Jeff said. The traffic slowed, and he stepped out into the street. “Stay with me,” he said to Gen. A surge of scooters and cars headed toward them. “Don’t slow down.” The motorbikes buzzed around them like a raging river around a log drifting downstream. Exhilarated, they reached the other side.
“Madame, monsieur, buy postcards!” a girl yelled. “Fans! Books!” She stood on the corner. “How about stamps?” The girl opened her book. “Are you from America?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Why are you here?”
“To adopt a baby.”
The girl smiled.
“Where did you learn English?” Gen asked.
“Some in school, but I quit when I was ten. Mostly I lear
n from Americans. I want to go to USA.”
“What about your family?”
“They don’t want me to go. I support them. You buy postcards? stamps? books?”
“Postcards,” she said. “I’ll take ten postcards.”
“Fifteen thousand dong.” The girl quickly folded the three notes from Jeff and stuffed them in a money belt around her waist. “You find me, okay? Buy from me, okay?”
“We’re going to Vung Tau tomorrow,” Jeff said.
“Oh, Vung Tau. The beach. I’ve always wanted to go to Vung Tau. It’s like heaven. Okay, you buy from me when you get back.”
A scooter buzzed past with a cage full of croaking toads strapped to the back. A group of men sat on the sidewalk in small plastic chairs, smoking and drinking tea. A man pedaling a cyclo pulled onto the sidewalk beside them. “Need a ride?” he called out.
“No, thank you,” Jeff said.
“So many people speak English. And they seem to like us. I expected them to resent Americans,” Gen said, as a woman selling white blossoms stopped in front of them.
“Lotus flower,” she said. “You buy?”
Jeff took out his wad of money, peeled off a note, and handed it to the woman as she handed him a single bloom. The woman swung her yoke back over her shoulders and hurried on with her buckets of flowers.
Jeff handed Gen the lotus flower. “Thank you,” he said, bending down and kissing her on top of her head, “for wanting to adopt from Vietnam.” The smell of exhaust from the sea of motorbikes and cars, mixed with cigarette smoke, whiffs of sewage, and a dash of incense, swirled through the sweltering air around them.
After dinner, full from spring rolls and lemongrass chicken that Gen had eaten with a fork, they headed back toward the hotel. The tropical sun had set an hour before, and now the cars and motorbikes had their headlights on, adding to the carnival atmosphere of the street. Throngs of people gathered on the plaza in front of the hotel. Children rode tricycles and bicycles. The entire crowd seemed to be waltzing to the music of an ice cream cart that an old man pushed through the square.
Gen and Jeff ducked into the store kitty-cornered from the plaza to buy water for the trip to Vung Tau. Light from the overhead fluorescent bulbs bounced off the linoleum floor. Umbrellas, rain slickers, shoes, clothes, food, and snacks lined the shelves. An American man with dark, thinning hair stood with a little Vietnamese boy by his side, shopping for camera film. “Chao em,” Gen said to the boy, estimating that he was near Binh’s size. He smiled. “Hello,” she said to the man.
“Bryce Gordon.” He extended his hand. “And this is Daniel.”
“I’m Gen Taylor. This is my husband, Jeff.” She bent down to the little boy. “Hi, Daniel.” He smiled, showing brown teeth, and hugged his father’s leg. Gen looked up at Bryce. “He’s wonderful. How old?”
“Nearly three.”
“How long have you been here?” Jeff asked.
“Four months.”
“What?” Gen felt herself falter. Four months!
“We have twenty left to go.”
Daniel continued to hug Bryce’s leg as his father spoke. Bryce and his wife had traveled to North Vietnam in February to take Daniel home. Their adoption agency had assured them that all the investigations and paperwork were done. It turned out that the investigation hadn’t been completed and the paperwork was delayed.
Each day they were told they would have the documents “tomorrow” or “the next day.” They trusted that the details had been taken care of and that the delay was routine, but after five weeks in Hanoi and no straight answers on why the adoption was delayed, they traveled to Ho Chi Minh City, hoping to iron things out with the help of the United States INS. When they met with the INS, they found out that their facilitator was under investigation by both Vietnamese and American officials. Bryce’s wife, Sue, an attorney, needed to return home to Atlanta. They decided that Bryce would stay and finish up the paperwork.
“After I’d been in Vietnam nine weeks, they told me that the birth mother had been paid. It might make sense for a birth mom to be paid for a baby, if a facilitator was really crooked, but not for a two-year-old. Most people don’t want two-year-olds. We didn’t. We wanted a baby, until we saw Daniel’s photo, and we knew he was the child for us. After the final investigation we were told we couldn’t adopt him.”
“Why?” Gen was horrified by the story.
“Because the birth mom had been paid. We had a choice. Take Daniel back to the orphanage and have him live there the rest of his childhood to be turned out on the streets at sixteen, or I could live here in Vietnam with him for two years.”
“I don’t get it,” Jeff said.
“The United States INS will recognize a child as yours if you live in the child’s native country for two years with the child,” Bryce explained.
“What about your wife?” Gen was dumbfounded. They planned to live apart for two years? She couldn’t imagine it.
“She’ll come over when she can. In fact, she should be here in two weeks.”
“What do you do?” Gen asked.
“I’m a writer. Theoretically, I can work from here, over the Internet. I have a laptop. Daniel and I spend quite a bit of time in Internet cafés.”
“Where are you staying?” Jeff asked.
“I found an apartment a few blocks from here that costs much less than a hotel.”
Gen shook her head. “Unbelievable. It must be so hard to be away from your wife. To not be together as a family.”
Bryce smiled a little and shook his head. “What else could we do? What would you do?”
What would we do? Gen glanced at Jeff and then back at Bryce and Daniel.
“What a great little kid,” Gen said, avoiding the question. What would we do?
A torrential rain poured as Gen and Jeff hurried from the store. They dashed across the street, each swinging a five-liter jug of water. Gen held her white lotus blossom close to her body, trying to protect it from the pelting rain. In seconds they were soaked and standing under the awning of the hotel with dozens of other people, some sitting on their scooters and bicycles to wait out the storm, others holding baskets of fruit and flowers. “Would you like to buy a rose?” a little girl asked Jeff, holding a red rose out to him. She wore a frilly Western dress and scuffed white sandals. Scabs covered her legs. Jeff dug in his pocket, gave the girl the money, and then handed the rose to Gen, bending down to kiss her on the head again. Gen smiled and wagged her finger at him.
“Don’t do that teacher thing.” Jeff laughed.
“Stop buying things,” she said. “We’re going to run out of money.”
A man on crutches extended his hat toward them. Jeff gave him a few notes, and then they dashed through the doors of the hotel, leaving behind the humid mix of exhaust and rain. The storm continued as they stood on their balcony, watching the motorbikes circle the plaza. The drivers hunched forward with colored rain slickers draped over their headlights. Red, blue, yellow, and green lights paraded by, casting reflections on the wet pavement. Jeff put his arm around Gen’s shoulder.
“I’m so happy,” he said. Gen couldn’t speak. She thought of the figurine in the bottom of her backpack. She thought of Mai. A baby from Vietnam. Life felt balanced. She thought of her mother. How could she stand to be away from Nhat for an entire year, from the time she first held him until the time she traveled back to bring him home? How did she feel when she held him again? The closer they got to Mai, the more she understood Mom. Gen gripped the rail in front of her. And then Mom put Nhat on the plane alone, hoping to get her friend Kim to the United States. That Gen couldn’t understand.
Gen leaned forward, extending her hand to the night, to the rain, to Saigon, to Vietnam.
Gen woke thinking about Bryce and Daniel. What would we do? A stream of light peeked between the yellow drapes. The bedside clock read 5:15. She heard voices in the street and then a bouncing ball. She opened the balcony door and stepped out. Below, a group o
f barefoot boys around twelve years old played soccer in the street as the sun rose. They used the back of a parked bus as a goal. Across the street a man thrust his arms and legs in martial arts kicks and punches.
“This is the day that I meet my daughter,” she whispered into the muggy dawn.
Chapter 32
I saw Older Brother’s apartment yesterday,” Cam My said to Lan. “It’s very nice. TV, stereo, video player, microwave. Small, but nice.” They sat outside the doctor’s house on plastic chairs.
Binh clung to Lan’s neck and whimpered. “I should have brought him yesterday. I hoped it would pass. Now Mother will be disappointed if we don’t get Mai and get back to the house.” It was Sunday morning, the busiest selling time of the week. Lan had planned to work in the morning and then go get Mai. Now she would miss a whole day.
“It will be all right,” Cam My said.
“Why do you think he gets ear infections all the time?” Lan shifted Binh to her arms and rocked him gently like a baby.
Cam My shrugged. “In the U.S. they’d put tubes in his ears. He wouldn’t be able to go swimming, but his ears would get better.”
“Tubes?”
“It helps the fluid drain and keeps it from getting infected.”
Binh sat up and rubbed his eyes and then his ears. He peered into Lan’s face and thrust his head against her shoulder. Having Older Sister along calmed Lan. People listened to Cam My. She got things done; she took charge and didn’t seem afraid of anything. All the neighbors, including Truc, who was the most successful of Lan’s friends, were in awe of Older Sister. Even Mother took notice when Older Sister scolded her for napping instead of watching Binh. “Lan works hard to support you,” she had said to Mother. “The least you can do is take good care of her son.” When Lan explained that she still owed the doctor money, Cam My said that she would take care of it. Lan’s stomach hadn’t bothered her in two days.
“What time does Older Brother plan to come today?” Cam My asked.
“In the early afternoon,” Lan said.