by Hoa Pham
“I will hear her,” I declared. I did not want the village to be pillaged and my family killed.
“The whole village has heard her now,” Bà said. “We have to protect ourselves.”
During the days that followed the village made more offerings to the Lady of the Realm. I was included in the worship. They began to offer me the choicest portions of our meals, and would not take a refusal for an answer. Gifts began appearing at our house. Mother would fawn over the presents and take them, and my sister’s presence was like a thundercloud. Even Học, my older sister’s fancy, started paying attention to me. First he asked me about my dreams. I told him what I told all the villagers. I did not want to tell him about how his corpse’s shocked open eyes had transfixed me in the dream. Then one day he brought me some purple flowers.
My sister saw the flowers and stamped on them, grinding them into the ground.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I told her through my tears. “They were for the Lady of the Realm.”
My sister snorted at my naïveté. “I’m not too old for Học. You are too young,” she snarled at me before storming out, refusing to sleep next to me and my foreboding dreams.
Only one person did not treat me any differently after Bà recounted my dream to the village elders. Tài. He still splashed water on me when I went by the river and teased me good-naturedly.
I visited him every day climbing up his favourite trees where he would perch and look out over the hills. From up there the village was small, surrounded by the square bamboo fence that marked out our village from the fields around.
We would sit close together, shoulders touching, and we would make up stories together to pass the time. My favourites were the miracle stories of the Lady of the Realm where she would make herself known and save villages by her divine intervention.
Sometimes we would be so engrossed, we forgot about the threat of the Việt Minh invasion. But other days it was all we would talk about.
“If the Việt Minh come this way you have to run,” Tài said to me one day. “Don’t wait for anyone.”
“But what about Bà?” I could not leave her in the village.
“Bà will protect the Lady of the Realm,” he said. “And in return the Lady will protect her. You are a young girl. You will be in danger.”
I stared at him quizzically. I saw my reflection in his eyes. I was becoming a woman, and I wasn’t a young girl anymore, I thought rebelliously. Then I realised what he meant.
“What would we do if the Việt Minh come here and defile the Lady?” I asked. The refugees from other villages had told us that they destroyed everything they saw.
Tai sighed for a moment looking out onto the horizon.
“The Lady will come to you in dreams, Liên. If our village is destroyed, maybe you should try and find her. Bring her back to save us.”
Then he smiled at me and my heart lifted at his lightness.
That night I had a beautiful dream. I was breathing in and out at the base of a giant white marble Buddha in the trees. Young novices in brown played in a waterfall beneath me. The sun shone and instinctively I knew that we were in a time of peace. The Buddha smiled down on me and in the distance I could hear chanting of the Heart Sutra.
I woke up to a sense of peace that I have never felt in real life.
I shared my dream with Bà and Bà smiled.
“We can look forward to seeing the giant Buddha in the future. Once President Diem is gone, the Buddhists will be able to restore the spirits of the people.”
“Does the Lady of the Realm mind me praying to Buddha?”
“No. She is in the guise of Quan m who hears the cries of the world with the Buddhists. The true spirits are not jealous of their followers’ faiths.”
So as well as my daily prayer to the Lady, I prayed to Quan m and the Buddha too.
But to no avail.
Later that day I asked Bà where I could find the Lady.
“The Lady is with you always, little Liên,” Bà told me. She stroked my wrist with wrinkled fingers. She was the only one that ever told me I was beautiful.
“That’s not what I mean. Just suppose they come here and destroy her. Then where would I find her?” I asked.
Bà patted the ground next to me and I sat down cross-legged in front of the wooden hall. Inside the hall incense was burning and the smoke tickled my nose.
“I won’t desert you, Bà, or the Lady,” I declared, putting my arms around her.
Bà smiled then tilted my chin with a wizened finger.
“Child, if the Việt Minh come, you must hide. I will hide as well and afterwards we will escape to the mountains. Don’t come looking for me. I’m cleverer than any Northerner!”
I chuckled with her.
That afternoon I gave the best portion of my meal to the Lady of the Realm. Her statue was garlanded with leaves and daisies, and her smile was freshly painted.
“Protect us Lady,” I prayed.
Unexpectedly the next morning, Father took a day off fishing. I had not slept well, fearing my dreams, and my sister had to coax me awake by pinching me.
“We have to ensure that our ancestors look after us,” Father muttered an explanation and even helped Mother cook up extra cakes for our ancestral graves.
We followed him, first Father and Mother, then me and my sister trailing behind, carrying the offerings. When we came to the village cemetery, Father found the mounds where Grandfather was buried and made a deep bow. Bà joined us with sticks of smoking incense and she murmured prayers for the ancestors.
“We cannot leave our ancestors’ land,” Father said to Mother, as if bringing up an old argument. “Who else will look after their memories?”
“We can’t if we are dead!” Mother protested too loudly.
“No one is going to die. Little Liên will warn us,” Father said proudly.
I gulped. My nightmares had been getting worse. I wanted to say that the warnings were to be acted on, and the Lady did not send them lightly. I wanted to say that Mother was right.
But I was still too scared of Father and too uncertain of myself. This I would regret for the rest of my life.
That night the dream came earlier. I felt the bones crunch under my feet and the metallic taste of blood in my mouth. When I woke, I spat out blood. I had bitten my tongue. It was still night. My stomach cramped and I could not sleep.
I went out to the village đình to visit the Lady. The night was cool from the sea breeze. Then I saw a flash of metal amongst the trees. Immediately I froze. I turned around and walked slowly back towards where my family were sleeping. As soon as I was within the shadow of houses, I ran straight to my mother and shook her by the shoulder.
“They’re here!” I whispered fiercely. She jolted awake and woke my sister with a prod.
“We must warn the others. Liên, prepare the boats.”
We ran from our home on quiet feet. I headed towards the beach where our boats were resting upside down from the last catch. On the way, I thought of Tài and Bà. After I prepared the boats I would find them, I told myself.
The night was dark with only a fingernail sliver of the moon in the sky. Among our fishing boats, I struggled to turn them over one at a time, as quietly as possible.
Then the sound of the bell rang through our village. It rang urgently. Once, twice, thrice.
I had only overturned two boats as the first families came out onto the beach.
Men rushed to help me. Bà and my mother and sister were nowhere to be seen.
We scraped the first boat along the shore and it seemed like the very weight of the boat was holding us back from our escape. Sand grated on my feet as I pulled the prow into the ocean with the men. We had launched the first boat of women and children into the sea when the Northerners appeared on the beach. Our fisherman advanced on them with wooden staves and I despaired.
I helped with the second boat and shoved it into the sea.
Then a Việt Minh
appeared out of nowhere. Someone screamed.
He grabbed me and I struggled. He tore at my pants and grabbed my groin.
Then he dropped me as his hands came away sticky with my monthly blood. I landed with a thud on the sand. He threw himself on top of me and I struggled as he forced his way inside me. Pain lanced through my insides and I screamed, beating him futilely with my hands.
Then he saw the fracas on the beach, shoved me aside and ran to join in.
Terrified I staggered to my feet, hearing the scrape of a boat being pulled into the sea. I pulled up my pants and stumbled over to help.
More desperate hands grabbed at me.
“Come with us, Liên,” and I was lifted reluctantly into the boat as it ploughed into the sea. On the beach the men I knew from birth were being slaughtered.
I helped with the rowing and the launch of the sail. Our gazes were pinned to the shore. Our village was lit up in silhouette by fire.
Children cried as the women prayed and murmured the mantras to the Lady of the Realm.
But she did not come to save us.
We stayed out at sea until the sun rose. My throat ached with thirst and my eyes were swollen from crying. Smoke smudged the horizon as we searched the shoreline with weary eyes for signs of survivors.
“Has the Lady spoken to you?” one of the women asked me, grabbing my sleeve desperately.
I shook my head, biting my lip, not wanting to meet the hope in their eyes. I feared the worst as we beached the boats up from the village in a small cove. We could only hope to sneak back to our village to discover if the Việt Minh had stayed or not.
I resented the murmur of the women and children around me. I wanted Bà to hold me, and my family to be creeping back to the village, not these others.
I looked up into the trees to see if Tài was there.
He was not.
The forest was eerily quiet as if nothing had happened.
Then we tripped over the first body. It was Học, bullet wounds seeping from his back. He had been running away. Where was my sister? He should have been with my sister!
I clambered up a nearby tree to look down at the smouldering ruins of our village. The village đình was destroyed, a blackened stain on the land. I saw bodies scattered around the ruins of houses. But I was so far up I could not tell who they were.
There was no movement. I waited for a while but the only thing that moved was a stray chicken running across the ashes. Trembling,
I returned to the ground. The remaining villagers’ eyes were round, the devastated look of refugees.
I could not speak, only stammer out what I saw. “I think they have gone,” I said, and they mutely accepted.
Carefully, we went back to the village. I scouted ahead with another child. The smell of smoke, ash and burning flesh filled our senses. I began coughing and couldn’t stop.
More bodies. I turned them over, my stomach churning. None of them were Việt Minh. They were all the people I had grown up with, shot for no reason.
The Việt Minh had massacred the village.
I found the remains of Father at the đình. Hot tears streaked down my face as I searched for Bà. The Lady of the Realm’s statue was reduced to a stump. Ashes were hot under my feet as I circled the remains of the village in ever widening circles.
As if from a large distance, I could hear the others wailing and crying.
My mother and sister were nowhere to be found. Then I found Bà’s hairpin made of tortoiseshell in what was once our house. The bodies in our house were burnt beyond recognition. One of them could have been Tài trying to find me.
I wanted to vomit at the smell.
Clutching the hairpin, I retreated out of the village and went back to the beach where the fishing boats were. The remaining boats had been set alight and destroyed.
I collapsed on the sand, weeping.
When I came to, the other villagers had clustered around me sitting dazed on the sand. They were looking at me expectantly as if I could say something, do something that would save them all.
“The Lady has deserted us,” I said bitterly. She had not protected Bà, and Bà had worshipped her all her life.
The others started muttering amongst themselves.
“Where can we go now?” one child cried forlornly, echoing what we were all thinking.
“South,” a woman said. “What do you think, Liên?”
I stared back at her. They were expecting me to lead them.
I nodded helplessly. Even if I was gifted with prescience from the Lady, what use was it? The Việt Minh still came. Despite our precautions, the village was dead.
From the others, I learnt that none of the dead were women or children. The Việt Minh had taken them away. They began to discuss whether they could follow and rescue them. A group of women and children, we would be captured ourselves, I thought.
“We need an army to get them back,” I said.
Where would we find an army?
“South,” I replied. The larger Vietnamese towns would take us in. Some of them had military garrisons.
We gathered together without speaking. We were too frightened to stay around the village to bury the dead, just in case the Việt Minh came back. I bowed and prayed to the centre of the village for the newly deads’ forgiveness. Behind me, the others followed suit.
I bundled up my hair and stuck my short bun through with my grandmother’s tortoiseshell hairpin. Then I led the refugees back into the forest to head to Saigon.
UPEKSHA,
LOVE THAT GOES BEYOND ALL BOUNDARIES
SAIGON, 1964
The heart of the prajnaparamita.
The Boddhisattava Avalokita while moving in the deep course of the Perfect Wisdom shed light on the five aggregates and found them all equally empty.
After this penetration he overcame all pain …
THE HEART SUTRA
My dreams were lanced by fire and carnage. I feared sleeping but was so exhausted from running every day that I crashed regardless. Then I dreamt again of a waterfall and the white Buddha.
It was the only thing that gave me hope.
Guided by this dream I sought refuge at the largest Buddhist monastery in Saigon. Surrounded by traffic, its courtyard was an oasis of calm amongst the hustle of the city. When I stepped into the meditation hall and heard the murmur of monks and their mantras, I was reminded of peace again.
Na-mo A-vo-li-ke-te-ra. Na-mo A-vo-li-ke-te-ra.
I bowed to the white and gold porcelain statue of Quan m overlooking the shrine to the departed dead. Her smile was tranquil, and just looking at the curve of her cheeks made my soul settle inside once more. The Buddha inside the main meditation hall was gold, not the white of my dream. But I knew not to ignore my dream’s significance.
I had heard good things about this monastery, their most prominent monk Thích Nhất Hạnh` who had founded the School of Youth and Social Service. They were looking for volunteers to practice engaged Buddhism, to help out those suffering because of the American War. Both women and men joined the SYSS.
My fellow villagers took to the pho kitchen and rested in the shadow of the giant gold Buddha that overlooked the meditation hall.
I wondered whether I would be able to pray for the Lady on this holy ground. I was angry at what had befallen us and wanted to do something, anything. Maybe the SYSS was one way to assuage the damage that the Việt Minh had done. Maybe working for the temple will help peace. In my dream I was in a monastic’s robes. Perhaps I can make my dream come true.
So I signed up to volunteer. They assigned me a mentor, a young nun with merry bright eyes whose happiness and enthusiasm infused me with good heart. I was to be her assistant.
Hương was beautiful and her smile was full of light. I tried to return her smile but I could not; my heart was too heavy from what I had seen. Her spontaneity and warmth lifted me out of my bitterness, and I suddenly longed to be like her, and be able to be open of heart again.
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The days of mindfulness in the temple were a source of joy to me. Each action in the monastery was done with mindfulness with my brothers and sisters.
Washing the dishes. Dipping our hands into the soapy water and feeling the rinse of each plate. Sweeping the floor, concentrating on each sweep to and fro. Hearing the birds in the courtyard and the murmur of voices in a new fresh way.
We would meditate together and my practice picked up and deepened, surrounded by the concentration of all those around me. My consciousness would relax and extend beyond my body in the stillness of the sangha, the community. When I opened my eyes, my gaze would rest on the painting of the Buddha on the scrolls in the hall. He was serene, his half smile reflecting the calm within.
Present moment, wonderful moment. I am fresh as a flower.
I am as still as a mountain.
I am like water reflecting.
I went to the main meditation hall where the Buddha was gold not white. I prayed for the time to come, I now knew better than to ignore my dreams. I was waiting for my prescience to come true. I would not be killed by war and Vietnam could achieve peace.
Hương and I stepped onto our rusty old bicycles to ride out into the country where our help was most needed. As we rode over dirt tracks criss-crossed and rough from many people travelling, I saw the ravines of destruction across the green rice paddy fields that once were harvested in season. They were blackened with fires. A small shrine had been blasted apart and shrapnel lay everywhere. It was hard to winkle people out of hiding. It was not until Hương had stopped in a clearing and rung a bell three times that their curiosity got the better of them, so they emerged from the ruins of their villages.
I witnessed despair and horror pulling me back in bitterness. Hương never faltered, except the furrow of her brow became deeper. Now when she smiled occasionally at me, it was wan and sick. She taught me how to wash wounds and bandage the hurts and burns of the people. I could only nod in empathy at the stories people told, of women raped, and men and children slaughtered. This was familiar to me, too familiar.