Things We Lost to the Water: A Novel

by Eric Nguyen

  “ ‘What?’ Công asked, because what did he have to confess?

  “ ‘Confess!’ they continued. But he had nothing.

  “They left him for an hour. When they came back, they were carrying buckets of water. They started pouring them on him. The water kept coming. Bucket after bucket. Wave after wave. Like magic, they did not run out. He barely had time to breathe before the next one came down.

  “They would do this for days, he told me,” Lan said. “For weeks. Can you imagine? Weeks? Two weeks into the regimen—that’s what they called it—they stopped feeding him. They only gave him this rice water. But even then, he was so afraid—scared of the water—he could scarcely drink it. He endured this for a month before he found a way to escape with a group of other men. There was a hole near a fence. He escaped by foot.”

  Hương remembered Công knocking on their door after five months away. He’d collapsed into her arms. Her hands still remembered those bones. Even now, she felt them on her skin. He had told her nothing. Her eyes welled up.

  “He decided he had to leave. All of you—him, you, the boy.” She looked up and around, as if afraid to speak. “Vietnam, he said, was no place for a family. He would get you out. He had to get you out. So…”

  “He planned everything,” Hương interrupted.

  “Yes, yes he did. But at the edge of the water, when his foot hit the ocean, something came back to him. Memories,” Lan said.

  Memories, Hương repeated in her head.

  “He remembered—he told me—about his trip to France once. It was before he met you. He was studying abroad for six months. He thought he would love Paris. He thought he would have wanted to move there. But it was so different from everything he knew: the food was difficult on his stomach, it was always cold, the people were rude.

  “One night, he was walking the streets of Paris alone after class. He was tired and he sat down on a bench. He fell asleep. When he woke, he forgot where he was and couldn’t find his way back. He flagged down a small old French woman to help him. ‘Where am I?’ he asked her, ‘I am far away from home,’ but she, seeing who he was, started screaming. ‘Un Chinois!’ she called him. ‘Un Chinois!’ A Chinese. She started crying for help. No one came. She spat in his eye and ran away. That was one of the memories he saw as he stepped foot into the water.

  “Then, another memory rushed back to him: the reeducation camp. The water falling over his head. Those breathless moments. Those men laughing with revenge in their eyes.

  “He said he became another man at that camp. Something, he said, in his soul broke. How could he ever return to his previous life after all of that? That was the question he asked himself as his body froze on the shore, on that water.

  “Chị Hương, you have to know this: all he ever wanted was here, in Vietnam, among his people, in the life he had always known. He realized he couldn’t have it then. Not ever. He had become a different man. He could not be the husband you needed. He was not the man you loved. His life was over, he said, but at least they could start again, they could become something—the two of you—and it will be beautiful and that was all that mattered. That was all that mattered to him, chị Hương: that you escaped, that you survived.”

  He would be captured again. When he was released, he was put under house arrest. That was when he sent the letter, Hương realized. That vague letter. Please don’t contact me again. It is the best for the both of us.

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She wanted to be back in New Orleans suddenly, she wanted to be in her own bed, someplace to nurse her own grief, hold it tight greedily, let it engulf her.

  Lightning blazed the sky, followed by a strike of thunder. Suddenly, rain poured.

  “The clothes!” said Hương, getting up, glad to have something else to talk about.

  “Don’t worry,” said Lan. She motioned with her hand for Hương to sit back down. “They were wet anyway. And I have more clothes inside besides.”

  Hương sat down and watched the clothesline sag. Lan left and came back with a box of tissues. Lightning flashed again; the wind picked up a little. Water pelted the ground into mud. It reminded Hương of hurricanes. Though it wasn’t as strong, it was still frightening. Lan continued washing. Every few minutes, she stopped to massage her hands.

  “I’m sorry you have to hear all that from me, Chị Hương,” she said. “In a way, I’m jealous you knew him before. You knew the real him.” She started washing another spoon.

  “Let me help, Chị Lan,” Hương said after drying her tears. “You must be tired. Let me help.” They switched places. Hương cleaned the rest of the silverware and then the plates and then the bowls before she found what else she wanted to say, what else she must say.

  “There was another baby,” Hương started. “I was having pains before we fled. I didn’t tell him.” But she did tell him and she remembered thinking what life they would have together—the four of them—in another country. She continued, “I had to stop so many times. We were running through the jungle to get to the beach.”

  The rain came down harder. Hương watched as the wind blew at the clothes. A solid yellow shirt, a pair of brown pants—simple clothes swaying mournfully. It felt like a terrible, lonesome place to stay during a storm.

  After the funeral, they would celebrate Công’s life. There would be, she was sure, loud music and food and alcohol. The kids would have a table, the adults their own. They would talk over each other, each proclaiming he knew Công the best, could give evidence of his great life. Remember when he did this, remember when he did that, wasn’t he a kind man, a smart person. All of them would wear white mourning bands around their heads, half smiling in remembrance. By the end of the night, they would be too drunk to feel the pain of loss.

  “Anyway,” Hương continued, “we decided long ago one of the children would be named Khoa. Công wanted to name Tuấn Khoa, but I argued against it.” She had thought it was an ugly name, and, in the end, he surrendered to her. It was like him to do so, she remembered that; he liked her happy. “When I gave birth to Bình at the refugee camp, I had forgotten about Khoa.”

  Hương repeated the name. “Khoa.”

  Now, she realized, hearing the rain and the water stroking a porcelain bowl in her hands, it was a lovely name. Indeed, the loveliest: the way a short, abrupt sound from the throat rushed sharply to the lips to be held lovingly before it left to become a word and disappear in the storm-time air: Khoa, K-hoa: K-hwaah.

  “Công should have that name,” said Hương, standing up. “His tên thụy. He would like that name,” she said.

  When Hương was finished with the dishes, they both went inside. Lan gave Hương the mourning garments and showed her the map of the procession—how they’d pass the library, the temple, and a school to get to the creek. There they’d scatter the ashes into the water. Công would ride the current into the Saigon River, then into the Nhà Bè. From there he would be led out to sea. At some point, she thought, he might even see the Gulf and Lake Pontchartrain and then perhaps the Bayou Versailles, where she’d lived all these years.

  Tuấn

  1999

  Tuấn wanted to see his old home. After his mother gave him the address, and after Lan checked the maps to give him the right street name (because all the streets were renamed), he and Vinh headed out into Saigon together on a motor scooter. Vinh sat up front because he knew how to drive, and Tuấn held on to the seat.

  Since his mother told him they were going to Vietnam, he’d started dreaming about the country again. In those dreams, he walked through the maze of Saigon. The city was wrapped in morning haze, and he couldn’t see much ahead. He’d take a step forward and immediately forget where he was. When he got close to something—a store or a restaurant or a church—he couldn’t make out the words on the sign and became frustrated. He needed to get back to Vi
etnam; that was what those dreams meant.

  They passed the large concrete compounds of the suburbs and made their way onto busier streets, stopping at a wide boulevard. Scooters and motorcycles and bikes and the stray car crisscrossed the road.

  Vinh paused and laughed. “I remember!” he said.

  “What do you remember?” Tuấn asked.

  “The traffic. The awful traffic,” Vinh said. “Just hold on tight.” He revved up the engine and pulled ahead.

  Tuấn let go of the seat and held on to Vinh. “Fuck,” he said.

  Everyone else, it seemed, wasn’t bothered by the reckless traffic. A woman was eating a stick of meat as she sped past them. A child sat sidesaddle as his bike pulled forward. A motorcyclist popped up his bike and rode on one wheel before disappearing ahead. Finally, Vinh slowed into a right-hand turn and then a left and the traffic faded. They rode straight for another five minutes before stopping at a block of storefronts. Some were closed and had their aluminum doors slid down shut. Others were open, but it didn’t seem like many people were in them. It was nine in the morning.

  Vinh parked the scooter and they both hopped off. Tuấn reached for the piece of paper with the address.

  “This can’t be right,” Tuấn said more to himself than to Vinh. “We lived on a block with other houses. There’s only…” The store signs told him nothing; he couldn’t read them. A woman came out of her restaurant and set out small red plastic chairs and several matching plastic tables. She held a cigarette in her mouth the entire time until she noticed them and took it out.

  “Are we lost, brothers?” she asked.

  “No, no,” Vinh answered. “The kid”—he pointed at Tuấn—“he’s looking for his old home. Before the war. We’re from America.”

  “There haven’t been houses here in ages,” she said. “At least as long as I’ve been here.”

  “How long have you been here?” Vinh asked.

  “ ’Ninety-one or ’92?” she said. Tuấn looked disappointed. “Do you remember if it was at the end of the street?” She pointed to the far end, a couple of yards away. “Or was it closer to the park?” She pointed behind them at a gated field. A lone boy dribbled a soccer ball.

  Tuấn tried to think. He pictured a narrow, tall building with a balcony. He remembered that much. He wanted to see if he could get up on that balcony and take a photo looking out. It was what he remembered most, the place where he waited for his father’s arrival home. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Well, I can tell you this,” said the woman, “when I came here these buildings were new.”

  Tuấn walked past the woman as if not hearing her and down the street.

  “Thank you,” Vinh said, following after.

  No, this couldn’t be the street, Tuấn thought. He turned around. It was exactly like his dream—cruelly, a dream come true. Except nothing was covered in fog. It was all clear and he was still lost.

  * * *

  —

  The funeral was more like a party than a funeral. After they walked to the creek, where Lan let him throw a handful of ashes into the water, the procession walked back to the house. Food was already laid out and a man was filling an ice cooler with beers. Music, reedy horns that reminded Tuấn of bagpipes, blared from speakers. Everyone gathered in small groups for conversations. Tuấn, not knowing anyone, stood to the side. At one point, Lan took his arm and walked him around. Công’s son, she would say, and they would comment on how strong and smart he looked—a spitting image of the old man, they’d say—and they would tell him how sorry they were. He wanted to tell them he didn’t know the man. To him, his father had died a long time ago. He’d grieved already. Now it just felt like everyone was catching up to the fact, fifteen years late.

  By three everyone had left, and Lan cleaned everything up. Tuấn and his mother tried to help, but she seemed determined to do it alone, so they went back inside and began packing. They would leave tomorrow morning.

  “Did you see the old house?” his mother asked him.

  “It wasn’t there anymore.”

  “A shame.”

  “They must have torn it down, built over it. Nothing but shops now.”

  His mother sighed with a defeated look. Her wrinkles seemed more defined now. She was quiet and still for a while, as if she were remembering something, and Tuấn wished she would say it aloud, so they could both remember it together. “A shame,” she repeated and shook her head. Her lips trembled. Tuấn reached out to hug his mother and she leaned in to him. “Another shame your brother’s missing all this,” she said.

  “I know. I tried to get him to come,” Tuấn said. “He’s not ready.”

  “Not ready for what?” She let go and began packing again.

  Ready to be back with his family, Tuấn thought, ready to face the death of a father he never knew.

  When Tuấn had called him with the news, his brother had shrugged it off—“People die every day, T.”

  “But he was your father,” Tuấn had said.

  “No, he was your father. There’s a difference.”

  “You should come. It’s the right thing to do,” Tuấn insisted.

  “Have fun,” his brother had said.

  Tuấn didn’t tell any of this to his mother, and now she added, “You can’t expect to be ready for everything. Sometimes things just happen whether you’re ready for them or not. Haven’t I taught you boys that?”

  Before they left, Lan gave him some of his father’s things. “I wouldn’t know what to do with them. It would only make me cry if I kept them.”

  When they landed, it was already ten at night in New Orleans. As Tuấn turned on his phone, he saw he had five text messages. All from his brother.

  “I need to talk to you,” said the last one. “TONIGHT,” it read. It was from yesterday.

  He hoped it wasn’t an emergency. As his mother dropped him off, Tuấn couldn’t remember the last time he had talked to his brother face-to-face. For a while, they lived together in his one-room house in Tremé. It was almost like they were kids again, with beds on opposite sides of the room. Then he got into UNO, which made Tuấn really proud—his own brother, a college student!—but also somehow suspicious. How did he pull it off? Who was the professor he hung out with: Schultz? Schmidt? Scheibe? When his brother came out, that was what Tuấn worried about: that some older man would take advantage of him. (Or AIDS, which the newspapers were always talking about, that gay cancer.) Was that the case? From his dorm, Ben would send him postcards semi-regularly, the kind you could buy at tourist gift shops. As time passed, the message would become vague: Doing fine, he would write, or Am fine, he would say, or sometimes just Fine, which Tuấn thought was an amazing waste of paper, and their mother thought so as well.

  “What’s wrong?” his mother asked him when he got out of the car.

  “Nothing, Ma,” he said through the open window.

  “Was that your brother? On the phone?”

  With his mother and brother not talking to each other, Tuấn was their mediator. The role tired him sometimes. They were both adults now, and Tuấn had no idea why he had to be in between their issues. But he hated seeing his mother’s mixture of anger and anxiety, hated to see it simmer.

  “No, Ma,” he said. His heart sped up for a second and then slowed down, the way it always did when he had to lie. He looked at her to see if she could tell.

  “Oh. Okay” was all she said. As his mother got older, Tuấn noticed, she put up less of a fight. A resigned dignity came on her face and she nodded. “Take care, okay?”

  “Okay, Ma.”

  * * *

  —

  “Zup?” Tuấn texted back after he set down his luggage. He set the phone down and got something to eat. The only thing he had was Lucky Charms. He ate it dry. It was Ben’s favorite
cereal growing up, and over the last couple of years he himself had developed a taste for it.

  An image popped into Tuấn’s head then: His car sat outside their Versailles apartment and he was standing there with the hood open. It was the radiator that needed fixing. It was, for a long time, the radiator that always broke. He was taking a look at it when Ben ran out and, out of nowhere, said he wanted to take the car for a drive. Tuấn must have been nineteen or twenty then and Ben fourteen or fifteen, about to start high school. It was the end of August—’92 it must have been—and his girlfriend at the time, Thảo, was away at Catholic camp, where she worked as a camp counselor (funny, he would think in hindsight). Ben smelled like a pool. He was always going to the pool back then, at first with his friend but then the two of them stopped being friends and Ben had to ask for rides or take the bus.

  “Why?” Tuấn asked. “You don’t even have a license. You’re not old enough.” Tuấn filled the radiator with water. It was always heating up; it needed a way to cool down, that was his thinking.

  “Please,” Ben was saying. “Just one time. I just want to know what it feels like to drive.”

  Tuấn remembered smirking. “Fine,” he said. He threw the keys at his brother, which flew past him and landed in the dirt. He was never good at sports.

  * * *

  —

  Within five minutes, Tuấn finished what was left of the Lucky Charms and his phone glowed green and vibrated. The power of the vibration made it jump off the table. His brother was calling now. Tuấn took hold of the phone and, deciding he needed to air out the staleness of the house, walked outside.

  “Finally,” Ben said. No hi or hello. “I’ve been calling you all week.”

  Tuấn leaned against the house. His legs felt like mush; funny how sitting for so long made your legs tired. He slid down and looked up at the moon, and the air around it bent like the mirages he saw in films.