I held on for dear life.
CHAPTER
Forty-Two
Sonny, 1988
I’d never, ever really enjoyed holding babies. They were squirmy and fussy and totally boring. Besides, they were kind of stinky and gross. So, whenever somebody offered to let me hold their baby at church, I usually pretended that I had to go to the bathroom or said I had a sore throat so I could get out of it.
I wasn’t a baby person.
Well, that was until I met Holly.
When I picked her up it didn’t matter if she was screaming her head off, she’d calm right down, fitting perfectly into the crook of my arm. She had all these adorable little faces she’d make, and I couldn’t help but laugh at her.
Sometimes when I’d talk to her, she’d open her eyes and look right at my face.
Mom said that it was just gas, but I swore she was smiling at me half the time.
After work, I totally drove way over the speed limit so I could get home faster and see Holly. Mindy yelled at me to slow down, but I ignored her. I didn’t want to miss any time I had with my baby sister.
That day, I paced the family room, holding on to Holly after Mom finished feeding her. She was wrapped up in a blanket just like a little burrito, and when Mom looked away, I loosened it so her arms could be free.
“Mom,” I said, “why are her hands black?”
“Oh.” Mom looked up from her lunch, bleary eyed. “Huh?”
“Is this ink?”
“I tried cleaning it off.” She shrugged.
“What, did she, like, break the law and have to get fingerprinted or something?”
“Who had to get fingerprinted?” Mindy asked, rounding the corner into the room.
“The baby,” I answered.
“It’s not a big deal,” Mom said. “They took her handprint at the doctor’s office today. That’s all.”
“Didn’t they do that at the hospital?” I asked, grabbing a baby wipe and rubbing it against Holly’s hand.
“It got smudged.”
“I remember when someone came to get my fingerprints,” Mindy said. “Remember that, Mom?”
“How do you remember that?” Mom asked. “You were so little.”
“I remember a lot more than you know.”
“Was that the guy in the black suit?” I asked. “I thought he was there to arrest you, Mom.”
“Oh, you did?” she asks, her mouth full of ham sandwich.
“Why did they need those anyway?”
“You know what,” she said. “I haven’t thought about that in a really long time. It had something to do with a few kids from Vietnam who weren’t supposed to have been brought here. They were trying to get it all sorted out and return those kids to their families.”
“Are you serious?” I asked. “And they thought Mindy had a family over there still?”
“I don’t really know.” Mom pulled the tomato slice off her sandwich and dropped it onto her plate. “We never heard from them again, so we just assumed everything was fine.”
“Like, they just dropped it?” I asked. “And you never followed up?”
“I guess so.”
“So, wait.” I turned toward Mindy. “Do you still have family over there?”
Mindy got her deer-in-the-headlights look she had whenever someone put her on the spot, and she pushed her mouth all to one side.
But before I could press Mindy for more information, Holly tensed her whole body and made the cutest little grunting sound.
Well, it was cute until I realized what she was doing.
Who knew a baby would poop that much? Gag me!
Holly went down for a nap and so did Mom, leaving Mindy and me to fold the baskets of clean laundry that had piled up. I didn’t mind, really. It was actually kind of fun to look at all the tiny clothes.
“I had a mother in Vietnam,” Mindy said.
“What?” I asked, looking up from a little onesie with ducks on it.
“I remember my Vietnamese mom.” Mindy bit her lower lip. “I mean, not what her face looked like or anything. For some reason I can’t remember that. But I know she was alive when I went to live at the orphanage.”
She grabbed a cloth diaper and folded it into quarters.
“Was she nice?” I asked.
Mindy nodded.
“She had this hat that I used to like to wear. It was kind of shaped like a pyramid.” She used her hands to draw a triangle over her head. “I have this memory of her running with me, like she was carrying me.”
“You mean, she was running from something?”
Mindy nodded.
“What was it?”
“No idea,” she said. “It’s a little foggy. You know? But when she was running, I dropped her hat, and someone stepped on it. Then she took me to the orphanage. I thought she was sending me away because I broke her hat.”
“But that wasn’t why, right?” I asked.
“No.” She shrugged. “I’m sure it was because she wanted me to be safe.”
Through the baby monitor we heard Holly stir, and both Mindy and I held our breath, waiting to see if she’d start screaming. She didn’t and we both relaxed our shoulders.
“Do you miss her?” I asked after a few minutes.
“My Vietnamese mom?” Mindy wrinkled up her forehead. “Sometimes.”
She got up and grabbed a stack of baby undershirts to put away upstairs in Holly’s room. When she didn’t come back down, I went to see what was up.
The door to our bedroom was only closed partway, and I looked through the gap to see Mindy sitting on the edge of her bed, her back toward me. My sister who hardly ever cried was sniffling and her shoulders bobbed up and down. Her fists clenched and unclenched on the bedspread.
Holly squawked and Mindy turned at the sound, seeing me looking in.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, letting myself in and making my way to sit with her.
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“Someday we’ll find her,” I said. “I’ll help you.”
“It might be impossible,” she said, resting her head against my shoulder.
I reached my arm around her and leaned my head against hers.
“Maybe,” I said. “But at least we can try. Right?”
“I guess so.”
“And once we find her, we’ll go meet her,” I said. “Together.”
“We will?”
“Like I’d let you go there without me.”
We sat like that for a few minutes while I tried to think of something really smart and really compassionate to say. I even ran through all the memory verses I’d learned in Sunday school, trying to find just the right one for that moment.
But all I could think about was the cross-stitch that Mom had hanging in the family room. Aunt Dana gave it to her one Christmas, and it was pretty much the cheesiest thing I’d ever seen. It had these cutesy little baby birds in a nest and a mama bird with her wings stretched out over them like an umbrella, shielding them from the abnormally large, sky-blue raindrops.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, was stitched above the birds. Then below them, And under his wings shalt thou rest.
When I heard the verse in my head, it was in an English accent. That always happened when I read the King James Version.
I tightened my hold on Mindy.
“Hey, Sonny,” she said.
“Yeah?” I said.
“You’re hurting me a little.”
“That’s all right.”
I didn’t ease up.
After spending so much of my life trying to protect her, trying to fix everything for her, I realized that it wasn’t my job. It never had been.
I wasn’t the mama bird in the cross-stitch.
I was one of her chicks.
CHAPTER
Forty-Three
Bruce, 2013
When Dale died, I didn’t necessarily lose my faith in God. It was more like I gave up believing that he cared. If he
had, then he wouldn’t have allowed my brother to die. He could have protected Dale, but he didn’t.
The image that I’d kept of God holding us in the palm of his hand didn’t seem to be true to me anymore.
It wasn’t until I became a father that I weighed the burden of protecting my own kids and realized I couldn’t shoulder it alone. I’d need a whole lot of help.
I made the choice to suspend my disbelief.
I’ve seen shimmers of God’s interest every once in a while ever since.
Sitting in front of the computer screen, I can’t help but think what a holy moment I’m in, Mindy standing behind me and Linda in a chair next to me.
“See?” Mindy asks. “Right there.”
On the screen are two photographs, side by side. The one is of little Minh at the orphanage in Vietnam, holding the sign with her name. The second is of a group of kids, arms around each other. A few smile or flash a peace sign. But those kids don’t hold my attention. There’s only one child in that picture that has my heart skipping all over the place.
“It’s me,” Mindy whispers, pointing at the one off to the side.
Even in black and white, the impetigo marks on her face stand out. It is, without a shadow of doubt, her.
“How did you find this?” Linda asks.
“This boy,” Mindy says, pointing to one of the kids holding his fingers in a V, “saw my post and emailed me this picture. We were there together, I guess.”
“Oh, honey.”
“He said these were taken at an orphanage in Thu Duc right outside Saigon,” she says. “Well, it’s Ho Chi Minh City now. Anyway, he gave me a few phone numbers to try for the orphanage and an email address.”
“The orphanage is still open?” I ask.
“Well, it’s changed hands a few times, but they’ve kept some of their records.” She leans back in her chair. “It can’t hurt to see if they’ve got anything that can help me.”
“Was he able to find his birth family?” Linda points at the boy.
“Yes.” Mindy nods. “He visited them last year. He has all these pictures from his trip. It’s incredible.”
She clicks on a few links so we can see. Pictures taken through the airplane window as it landed on a runway lined with palm trees. One of the man approaching a cluster of people and another of a woman pulling him into a deep embrace. And on and on.
He even posted a video of him touring his childhood home.
“I remember this,” he says several times, pointing to this or that.
His experience has me feeling a whole lot more hopeful than Paula’s documentary that we watched on Halloween.
“You’ll need to learn some Vietnamese,” Linda says.
“There’s a woman who gives lessons over Skype,” she says. “I’ve had a few sessions already.”
“Good for you, honey.”
“Are you going to call that number?” I ask.
Mindy nods. “I did right before I came over here.”
I hold my breath, waiting for her to say more.
“And?” Linda asks.
“They said they’d let me know if they find anything.” She shrugs. “So, now I wait.”
Linda’s the kind of woman to start watching Christmas movies as soon as the Thanksgiving leftovers are packed away in the fridge. I guess that’s better than getting up in the wee hours of the next morning to stand elbow-to-elbow with other shoppers at the mall.
We pop A Christmas Story into the DVD player and the three of us settle in.
I’m glad Mindy agreed to stick around for a little bit. It feels more like a holiday with her here.
Right about the time when Santa tells Ralphie that he’ll shoot his eye out, Mindy’s phone rings. I hit pause on the movie, and we all look at the screen of the phone.
“This is it,” Mindy whispers, covering her mouth. “I’m kind of scared.”
“Answer it, honey,” Linda says. “We’ll be right here, won’t we, Bruce?”
“As always,” I answer.
Mindy swipes on the screen to answer and gets up from the couch, headed toward the kitchen. On our end we just hear a couple of “uh-huhs” and “I understands.” She jots a few notes on a tablet of paper on the counter.
“Yes, thank you,” she says before hanging up.
I hold my breath, waiting for her to tell us what’s up. But I let it out when she turns, leaning back against the edge of the counter and tapping the phone on her forehead.
“Mindy?” Linda says. “Okay?” She tilts her head toward Mindy, her way of saying we should get up off our rears and go to our daughter. We do, and Linda uses her hand to smooth Mindy’s hair.
“What did they say?” she asks.
“According to their records, her name is Hoa,” Mindy says, not turning toward us. “She told whoever filled out the paperwork that she was a house cleaner in Saigon.”
Linda smiles. “It’s something. More than you knew ten minutes ago. Right?”
That’s my babe. Always seeing those sunny sides.
“Maybe.” Mindy turns and drops her phone next to the pad of paper. “I don’t know. I’m not really sure how I’m feeling right now. Maybe I should go home and sleep on this. I can think about it in the morning.”
“Makes good sense,” I say.
“Are you okay to drive?” Linda asks. “You could just stay here.”
“I’ll be fine. I need to be alone with this, I think.” She sighs. “Is that all right?”
“Of course it is, sweetheart,” Linda says. “Don’t worry about us, okay?”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She puts on her coat and grabs her purse. Linda makes sure she takes a piece of pumpkin pie with her, handing it to her before pulling her into a tight hug.
“I love you, Mindy,” she says. “We’ll find her, okay?”
Mindy nods and kisses her mama on the cheek.
“I’ll walk you out,” I say, shoving my arms into a jacket.
The night’s gone icy cold, and I know everything will be frosted over come morning. Soon enough we’ll have piles and piles of snow to contend with. Well, that is if we have the kind of winter I prefer.
“Fiona’s is open tomorrow,” I say. “We can pick you up for breakfast if you want.”
“Can I call you when I wake up and let you know?”
“That’s fine.”
She opens her car door but doesn’t get in right away.
“I shouldn’t get my hopes up,” she says. “It’s probably best if I manage my expectations better. I might not find anything. I need to prepare my heart for that.”
“But you did find something, didn’t you? You’ve got her name. That’s a start.” I put my hands into the front pockets of my jeans. “We’ve made progress.”
“There could be a hundred thousand women named Hoa in Vietnam.”
“Well, that may be true, but don’t stop hoping yet. All right?”
“I’ll try not to.”
“This is just a little dip,” I say. “Not a crash landing.”
I watch her back out of the driveway, and I follow her taillights until she turns right on the road that’ll take her to her apartment.
Emily Dickinson said that hope is a little bird, singing her heart out during a terrible storm. Even on cold nights like this one, that feathered friend trills on.
One thing Emily didn’t say—had she even known?—was how all that singing got the attention of the one who formed that bird by hand.
It’s the nature of small birds to sing their little hearts out.
And it’s the nature of God to hear them.
CHAPTER
Forty-Four
Linda, 1975
I hadn’t kept much from my rockstar days. But deep in the closet I shared with Bruce was a getup I used to wear when my band was playing a set with a bunch of Janis Joplin songs. It was a flouncy blouse that I put together with a knit vest and a micro-mini skirt that drew all the wrong kind of attention.
It was what I was wearing the day I met Bruce.
He, of course, paid me the right kind of attention. I didn’t catch him peeking at my legs at all that first time we talked. Instead, he looked me right in the eye.
What a guy.
It pleased me to no end when he stuck around at the coffee shop until our show that night, and when I sang “Piece of My Heart”—my version a more vampy, smooth one than Janis’s—I tried not to look in his direction because I knew I’d crack, I was so nervous.
I’d long ago sold all the other ridiculous clothing to a friend who was heading out to LA to seek her big break. Every feather boa and wide-brimmed hat went. My leather pants that I’d saved every penny to buy and my go-go boots too.
But that outfit I couldn’t so easily part with.
The girls were outside and Bruce wasn’t due home for another hour, so I pulled the whole ensemble out of the closet, curious to see if it might still fit.
Thankfully, that kind of top was more than a little forgiving and didn’t cling to anything I’d rather it not. The skirt, on the other hand, I couldn’t get up and over the hips that I’d acquired while pregnant with Sonny.
It was just as well.
Taking off that skirt—which required a lot of pulling and praying—and hanging it all back up, I felt such relief that I’d let all of that go when Bruce and I started our little family.
It was a fair bargain for all I got in exchange.
Besides, I’d always have music.
I slipped on my soft jeans and an old T-shirt of Bruce’s, making my way to the kitchen.
I had a tuna noodle casserole to get in the oven.
Sonny insisted on checking and double-checking her paper bag full of school supplies. She simply would not get ready for bed without making sure that every last thing was at the ready for the first day of school.
“First grade is a big deal,” she told Minh. “This is the year we learn to read.”
Minh nodded and smiled as if her sister was saying the most wonderful things.
“Okay. It’s all there,” Sonny said, getting up from the floor and crossing the room. “Good night.”
“I’ll be right there to tuck you in,” Bruce said.
“You don’t have to do that anymore, Dad.” She put her hands on her hips. “I’m in first grade now.”
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