by Karin Tanabe
I stared at her for a few moments, then bent down and whispered in her ear. “Go back to France, or I really will kill you. Or better yet, I’ll make sure you rot in a jail cell, just like I made sure my father would. Turns out I have a knack for putting people behind bars.”
Marcelle did nothing to acknowledge what I’d said, coughing harder and wheezing, water still in her lungs. It was enough. I started to rise but stood quickly when I heard a bang. The back door had flown open, and Khoi was running our way. What he wanted was Marcelle, not me. I started to sprint in the other direction as fast as I could, away from the house.
Lanh was idling just around the corner, as promised.
Wordlessly, he handed me a large pinch of the ky nham I’d asked him to buy. I ingested it, then drank from the glass bottle of water he handed me.
“Are you sure it’s not too much?” I asked. Just as it had in the tea, the herb had a pleasant, earthy taste to it. There was no indication it was going to make me half crazy.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Enough so you will be sick again, but this time, not too sick.”
“Walk with me a few blocks and then leave me,” I said. “Then go back to the house and telephone the police. Tell them where they can find me. The rest will work itself out.”
“Oui, madame,” he said, taking my arm. He helped me lie on the ground, then walked to the car, opened the door, and looked back at me to make sure I was all right.
I smiled at him and pointed at the sky. The sun was bright and comforting.
“For you, it will always shine like that,” he said, getting in the car.
I lay back on the stretch of grass, looking up at the sky, waiting to feel sick again. I now knew all the symptoms, physical reactions I had mistaken for frayed nerves.
Marcelle was probably inside the house by now. Khoi would have called a doctor, and she would be filling his head with lies. She thought she knew everything about me, that smug, awful woman. But there was one thing she didn’t know. One thing I had never uttered aloud, even to the doctor.
My sister Eleanor was dead because of me.
Eleanor was my mother’s last baby. After she was born in my parents’ bed on the first Saturday in June 1918, with only the help of a midwife, my mother swore she would never have another one. Especially after she saw Eleanor’s face, which she and my father immediately called “simple.”
“There’s something wrong with her,” my father said, handing her back to my mother after holding her for only a minute or two.
“Your father’s never touching me again,” my mother said to me, exhausted from the birth. She was hugging the tiny baby, but just twelve hours after she was born, she came to me with her and said, “Jessie, you take her.” She had done the same thing with the two girls born before Eleanor. I was sixteen. I was used to being my siblings’ mother and the only source of adult love in the house.
Eleanor was a terrible sleeper. Maybe if she’d been a good baby, things would have ended differently, but she wasn’t. I tried to quiet her as best I could at night, taking her out of the house into the sticky summer air when she woke up, but sometimes nothing I did would soothe her.
My father had kept from backhanding us—or, worse, beating us senseless—until we were old enough to at least cover our faces with our hands. But with Eleanor, he didn’t wait. One night after drinking himself into a stupor on homemade alcohol, he hit her across the face when she was wailing. She fell unconscious.
She came back to life somehow after that and slept in my arms, but she had stopped crying. Her screams had turned to barely audible whimpers. She might have been different from the rest of us when she was born, but my father had handicapped her for life with one blow to the head.
I didn’t want to leave her side after that, not trusting anyone else with her, but when school resumed in September, I had no choice. I was aware by that point that my only paths out of Blacksburg were education or marriage to someone on the outside. Someone who had no idea who the Holland family was.
I walked home from the first day of school the long way, as I had in previous years, enjoying my thirty minutes alone, the only time I ever had away from my siblings or schoolmates. Sometimes students from the technical institute came to that corner of the woods in the afternoons, as there was a pretty pond there, but mostly there were only deer. On that hot day, I didn’t see another living soul.
I walked past the pond into another clearing in the woods but stopped when I heard a noise. I thought it was an animal, but I turned to see that it was a man. My father. He was standing by the pond, swaying drunk. In his arms, he had the baby. In one motion, before I could open my mouth, he took her tiny body and pushed her under the water. Even from afar, I saw a ripple as he held her down. She was moving something, a tiny arm, a leg, as she struggled to survive, even at three months old.
I wanted to run to her, to save her. My father was drunk, I could have knocked him down, but I stood paralyzed. In those few seconds my mind dictated that I should stay still. More than I wanted to save the baby, I wanted to save myself and the rest of my siblings, who had already endured so much from him. That desire overwhelmed my instincts to rescue Eleanor.
When my father stood up, there was no baby in his arms. Before he could see me, I turned and sprinted away. I ran all the way into town, to the police station, without a glance over my shoulder. I told them what I’d just seen, not adding that I could have reached the baby in time if I’d tried. The officers sped in their cars to the pond, and in the oppressive summer air, they fished out the dead child and went to find my father.
I could have saved her, I told myself, looking out at the water after they’d gone. But what kind of life would she have had? She would be happier in death, I was sure. And with her death, I would be happier in life.
My father was sentenced to life in prison. My mother was distraught, not because her baby was dead, it seemed, but because she was left to run the farm alone, left with all her children, whom she didn’t love and had never once tried to protect from her husband.
Years later, when I became a mother, I realized that I probably could have done both. I could have found a way to save the baby and save myself. But at sixteen, I’d been too terrified to try.
I looked at the sky, which was starting to wave in front of me, and thought of Marcelle floating facedown in the water, just as Eleanor had.
It was strange to realize how much Marcelle had known of my life before we met. How much she hated me because of the man I’d married. If she’d only known that she could never hate me as much as I hated myself for Eleanor’s death, maybe things would have ended differently. I looked down at my watch. It was faceup and still ticking perfectly. Victor was right; it was a very good watch.
My stomach started to lurch, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the police to find me.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jessie
November 21, 1933
The chickens on the Holland farm. The only animals among the tobacco. I dreamt that I had to collect one for the slaughter, in the dead of winter. I only needed one at a time, usually. But how did a person decide whose time it was to die? Even a chicken? Just as I always did, in my dream I chose one that was looking away so I didn’t have to see its eyes.
I had almost murdered Marcelle exactly the same way, without seeing her eyes.
“Madame Lesage,” I heard a voice say over and over as I started to wake up. It wasn’t until I dared to open my eyes that I saw I’d been dreaming. I wasn’t back on my parents’ farm. I was still in Indochine. In a hospital bed. The voice I was hearing was a doctor’s. But next to him was Victor.
“Oh, thank God,” Victor said, hurrying to my side and putting his arms around me.
“Where did you go?” I said, weeping and holding him, not even acknowledging that I was in a hospital. I knew why, even if he didn’t. “At the station. Where did you go? You and Lucie just disappeared. I was terrified,” I said, my voice muffled as I buried my
face into his shoulder.
“Lucie rushed out of the bathroom,” said Victor, releasing me. “She said you were sick and needed help. We went to ask the stationmaster if there was a doctor nearby, as Lucie was very upset, and he said there was, just a block from the station. I went running off to find him, and Lucie came with me. I didn’t realize until I reached the doctor’s office that she was right behind me. She should have gone back to you, but she followed me. When we returned to the station with the doctor, you were gone. Up and vanished. We were looking for you everywhere, all over the city. We were traveling by taxi and pousse-pousse because Lanh was gone, too. Lucie was extremely upset. But then, luckily, we were at the station again, fetching our bags, when Cam came to explain. We’ve been at the hospital now for hours. All day.”
“All day?” I repeated. “How long have I been here?”
“About eight hours,” said the doctor, pushing his glasses up his long, thin nose. “It’s nearly midnight and you came in a bit after four. You were awake for some of it, but I don’t think you’ll remember.”
I shook my head. I remembered nothing. I looked at his dark brown hair, his tired blue eyes. He did not look the least bit familiar to me.
“I’d like to examine you again now that you are awake, Madame Lesage, but there is a police officer here who would like to speak to you first,” said the doctor. “May I show him in?”
“Of course,” I said weakly. When the doctor left, Victor reached for my hand and whispered, “Lanh told me everything.”
I nodded, gripping his hand harder.
“But don’t tell this policeman a thing,” he added, before greeting the uniformed man as if they were old friends. “Better if we take control of the situation ourselves,” he whispered. “My uncle, I’m sure, would prefer it.”
When the policeman had gone, I turned to Victor and for the first time noticed that he’d grown older. He did not look like the carefree boy whom I’d met at Maxim’s; he looked like a man who had seen quite a bit of the world, not all of it good. He had slight lines at his eyes, and his lips seemed thinner, less inclined to smile.
“Victor,” I said, turning to my side. “Who are Anne-Marie de la Chaume and Cao Van Sinh?”
He thought for a minute and then sat on the side of my bed in his wrinkled clothes.
“Anne-Marie de la Chaume? I haven’t thought about her in years. She’s a cousin of mine, distant, on the Michelin side. I believe she went crazy a few years ago. And the other name? What was it?”
“Cao Van Sinh,” I repeated.
“A native man? Did he work for us? I don’t know. I don’t recognize that one.”
“Marcelle said you would know it. She said that the Michelins ruined their lives. Trieu said that it happened several years ago, perhaps before Marcelle and Arnaud came here.”
“I know who he must be then,” said Victor after a pause. “I had forgotten about this family stain but you saying her name has jarred it back. Anne-Marie fell in love with a native man. Cao Van Sinh must be him.”
“You have a cousin who fell in love with a native man? A Michelin cousin?”
“I do,” he said. “I’d forgotten, but at the time it did cause quite a stir.”
“Where is she now?”
“I have no idea. France, I imagine. Though she could be anywhere. From what I heard, she lived a life devoid of boundaries.”
I stared at him, waiting for him to continue.
“Anne-Marie was a student in Paris when I worked for André. That much I know. And she fell in love with this man, who must be Sinh Cao. He was a communist and she became a communist, too. She even wrote for L’Humanité, if you can believe that.” He looked at my face. “Yes, I suppose we can believe anything at this point,” he continued. “Her parents found out and were very upset. Her mother is the Michelin, her father is a minister. Or a senator? Something important, and very conservative. They learned that Sinh was traveling back to Indochine, and they asked André to intervene on their behalf. They wanted to make sure that this boy, this communist, could never set foot in France again. I think I helped André with it all, actually. We dealt with the secret police all the time then. We still do. André wrote to someone in Annam, that’s where this boy was from, I believe, and it was done.”
“And that caused Marcelle and Khoi to hate Michelin? And to hate us by association?”
“Maybe,” said Victor reflectively. “Who are they to her?” he asked, his eyes red and exhausted.
“I believe they are Anne-Marie’s best friends,” I said after a moment. “Family, to her.”
“I remember now,” said Victor, standing up suddenly. “That boy, he died. In Haiphong. Something went wrong when he was detained at the port, and I think by no fault of ours, except maybe tangentially, he was shot. He died in Haiphong.”
“He died?” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Victor. “I’m only remembering it now because we just again employed the man who shot him. A few days after we arrived, Édouard sent a note saying that we were indebted to him—that he’d helped solve a problem for us—but that he’d fallen on a bit of a hard time and that we should hire him. He was a policeman before, but now he’s in Haiphong. You met him, actually,” he said, pausing, as if starting to see the way the web was weaved. “In Haiphong. His name is Paul Adrien.”
THIRTY-SIX
Jessie
January 7, 1934
I turned in the Delahaye and looked out the back window at the yellow house as it faded into the distance, its beloved shape receding behind us. It wasn’t Lanh who was taking us to the train station; it was a hired man. Lanh was on vacation. Victor had wanted to do something kind for him, a gesture to show how thankful we were that he had saved me. A trip, I had suggested. A long rail journey so he could see every train station in the country if he wanted to.
Next to me was Lucie, in pants instead of a starched dress. She looked like a different child, as we had cut her long hair to her chin the week after I’d left the hospital. We had all needed a fresh start, but thankfully, she still felt like my Lucie. I put my right hand on hers but gripped the gift that Lanh had given me before he left with my other. He had told me not to open it until we were out of Hanoi, and somehow I’d managed to obey his wishes.
After weeks of chaos, calm was starting to return to our lives.
After a second night in the hospital, the doctor told me that he suspected poisoning. I had been fearful that I would have to lead the horse to water concerning the diagnosis, but the French doctor was thankfully intelligent enough to recognize how my symptoms fit together. When the policeman got involved, I told him that I strongly suspected Marcelle de Fabry was behind my poisoning. She had illegally obtained my medical files from France. She was plotting my return trip before I even arrived in Hanoi. Her cigarettes, I told them. That was how she poisoned me. And through my drinks, too. Through a strong tea. The policeman went to the de Fabry home, where he and another officer found a large amount of ky nham, as they later described it to us, in her dresser and, as I had suspected, rolled into cigarettes. Arnaud was home at the time, an unfortunate turn of events. He said it was all a great misunderstanding, that they used the herb in small quantities themselves as a relaxing agent, and accompanied the police to Khoi’s palatial home, where Marcelle was.
I was later told by Lanh, who obtained the full story from Khoi’s surprisingly bribable servants, that Marcelle flew into a rage, claiming I had tried to murder her and she had never administered poison to me. She repeated exactly what her husband had said. They used the herb for themselves. She was the one who was being targeted, she claimed. She showed the police the marks on her neck. She said it was a miracle she was alive. That if Khoi had not spotted her, she would be dead by my hand.
The police had countered her. They said they had more than enough to arrest her and mentioned the name of my doctor in France whom she had bribed. She didn’t admit anything to them, but the servants told Lanh that her guilt was
obvious.
When the police came to the yellow house a day later, they told us that they planned to arrest Madame de Fabry, but Arnaud was attempting to bribe them out of it. He had put up quite a sum of money to keep his wife out of prison, even a courtroom.
“I don’t care how much he’s given you,” Victor had shouted. “She has been steadily poisoning my wife for two months! The fact that she lived is by the grace of God alone and her good American stock. You have to—”
“Force them to leave Indochine for good. Exile or prison. Offer that to Marcelle and see what she decides,” I’d said. I knew that Marcelle would choose a jail cell in Indochine over an apartment in Paris, just so she could be near Khoi, but Arnaud, I was sure, would not allow it.
And he didn’t. He arranged for a position back in France, we were told. The police assured us that they would sail soon and never set foot in Indochine again. And at my behest, they ensured Khoi could not go with her.
“See that they leave very quickly, please,” I’d asked the police officer when Victor left the room. “I can’t stand the idea of having to see her again. And also”—I handed the man a large stack of crisp piastres—“see that she is under your watch between now and the day she boards the boat. I want to make sure she never sees Nguyen Khoi again. I’m sure that even one conversation between them will be to further plot my demise.”
“Of course, Madame Lesage,” he had said, taking the money. “Your leniency with her is to be admired.”
He had no idea that even a few years away from Khoi could smash her heart for good.
I looked down as the car jolted forward, our temporary driver not as experienced as Lanh. A new ring was on my finger. It was a light blue stone, not worth anything. Glass, most likely. Cam had said that it had been sent to me by Lanh’s sister after Lanh told her that I’d been in the hospital. The Michelin money was so often used for good. That’s what Khoi and Marcelle didn’t understand. That girl was receiving a great French education, and her life would be forever changed because of it. I would certainly see personally to that.