She Weeps Each Time You're Born

by Quan Barry

  It was illegal to have that many people gathered in one place, but Son figured it was all right. They were probably organizing a search party for the missing children. Son climbed onto the porch. Please come in, Uncle, he said to the mysterious stranger who’d saved them. It wasn’t Son’s house, but Rabbit would never think to ask. The old man just shook his head and held on as Rabbit climbed over the railing with Binh on her shoulder. For a moment the two children stood in the light of the moon. It was only after the man had shoved off that Son realized he should have run inside and found a dry book of matches for the stranger, but the old man and his silvery bird were already lost to the dark.

  Inside it was crowded. On the floor lay a crude hand-drawn map of Asia. Son could see lines running through the ocean connecting Vietnam with other countries in the region. Nobody seemed concerned—Rabbit half naked, Son with a deep scratch on his cheek, the injury twisting down his face like a lightning bolt. In addition to Huyen and Qui, Son’s uncles were there as well as Dr. Kao and a group of ten or so raggedy men Son had never seen before, their clothes hanging in tatters. One of them had a small red mark staining his face where his hairline had receded, the thing shaped like a jewel. Some of the ragged men spoke a language Son had never heard before, the language flat and unmusical. Then someone was coming forward, the man’s shoulders thin as rungs. One eye brown, the other sky-blue. Ba, said Son, running for him.

  The All-Seeing Lady is the one thing we take with us wherever we go. That’s not to say it’s wrong to dream or imagine ourselves differently. Some of us are still making peace with this stratum, the way we are merely rustlings in the world, crescents of light glinting on waves. Sometimes we remember what it was like to have agency, the appearance of control, which we know even at its core is only an appearance.

  BY MONTH’S END THE STREETS WERE CROWDED WITH THE Autumn Moon Festival. Red lanterns hung along Duong Le Loi, though each remained dark. Since the end of the war, nobody had candles to spare. Outside the one pho shop that still served white onions the four lanterns the owner lit at twilight were dark by the time the moon rose. Someone had blown out the candles as if making a wish and pocketed them.

  The Autumn Moon Festival was second only to Tet in importance. Even before the war it had a reputation for being the one time of year when the whole world turned a blind eye to wrongdoing, the holiday a day of thanksgiving for a bountiful harvest, a time to be with family and celebrate good fortune. The doctor had decided they would travel in separate groups. Son and the men would walk to the rendezvous point through the city of Cantho, the women going by river. With the festival raging all night, nobody would notice a group of men slumping around the city in frayed clothes, some of them with their pants held up by rope, one man missing an entire sleeve.

  All week Son’s mother Phuong had been telling their neighbors that his sister was getting married. Son didn’t know if Sang knew the truth or not. Dr. Kao said it would look less suspicious this way, the men and women traveling separately. Just try to relax, the doctor said, as the group of men walked through the festival. One of the sun-dark men tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. All the same the doctor patted him on the back.

  People were gathering along the riverfront. There was talk of fireworks, but nobody believed it. The government couldn’t even protect its citizens. The year before just one province west, in An Giang, the Khmer Rouge had crossed the Cambodian border, killing more than three thousand Vietnamese in a single night. The night it happened, Rabbit lay burning with fever on the floor of the floating house, her small arms cradling her head, her hands frantically rubbing her ears. In the border city of Ba Chuc there had been only two survivors.

  The sky was ablaze with the Autumn Moon, the brightest moon of the year. The doctor had conceded there would be a lot of light. It’s a risk, he’d said, but we don’t have enough money for more than two bribes. They were counting on guards stationed around the city to leave their posts, the whole world drunk on rice wine. None of the adults had told the children what they were planning. For the past two weeks the men talked of Malaysia and Hong Kong. There was always a series of numbers in the air, the discussion dragging on into the early hours of the morning. Weight. How many days. Fuel. Water. Everything that could be planned was planned. The doctor anticipated the worst but knew, if it came, it would be like nothing they could imagine. Son could tell his uncle Hai didn’t like the doctor and that the feeling was mutual, but for now they needed each other.

  Tonight as they walked the streets, the doctor was dressed like everyone else. There was a hole in the knee of his pants, and for the first time his wrist was without its watch. All over the south, professionals like Dr. Kao had been replaced by northerners with little or no training. Ever since reunification, southerners were being pushed out of their jobs and forced to eke out a living on the streets. In the moonlight, Dr. Kao looked just as ragged as the rest of them.

  The men who didn’t speak Vietnamese were careful not to talk. Son wondered what would happen if people realized they were Cambodian. At one point one of the Cambodians bumped into a woman carrying a baby. The woman stopped and demanded an apology. The man acted as if he were drunk and stumbled on without saying anything.

  Under an archway festooned with lanterns the Cambodian with only one sleeve bumped his head. He slapped himself on the cheek and laughed. There was something childish about him. Walking the festival streets he genuinely seemed to have lost all his cares. Son kept his eye on the man. They had already lost him twice in the crowds as he’d stopped to gawk at various vendors. Mooncakes and exotic fruits. Black-market items openly displayed. American toothpaste. Potatoes. Sesame oil from Thailand. White silk gloves that ran all the way up a woman’s arm.

  The man with one sleeve stopped again. Son squeezed his father’s hand and nodded to where the man was standing peering at a collection of jars. The seller was squatting in front of some newspaper she’d laid on the ground. When the man stopped to look, she reached deep in a sack and began rooting around in it, pulling out a live snake, in the sticky evening air its body twisting on itself like an amulet. The woman held it up by squeezing the sides of its head, the trap of its jaws sprung wide, its teeth tiny and mouse-like. She held it out for approval, and the man with one sleeve ran his finger over its cool length, its skin patterned and dark. People were starting to stop and stare. They seemed unsure of what to make of a grown man stroking the underbelly of some common snake, then clapping his hands together, delighted.

  In a loud voice the woman launched into her patter. Look at you. A stiff wind would carry you away. The man didn’t blink. Quickly Dr. Kao came forward and handed the woman a few bills. Cam on, she said, taking a rusty knife out of the waistband of her pants and laying the thing down in the street, all the while pinching its head, its tongue flitting like a ribbon. Even after she’d hacked through the throat, the tongue still flickered in and out, eyes glassy and black. At the first sign of blood, the man with one sleeve covered his eyes. Son could see his bottom lip quivering.

  The woman kicked the head into the gutter and made an incision down the length of the body, the snake still wriggling. A small crowd had gathered to watch. With her fingers the woman dug in the stringy wet meat, then pulled out a glistening sac the size of a pea and motioned for Dr. Kao to pour himself a glass from one of the jars where dead snakes were kept preserved in a clear rice wine, the snakes bleached and curled tight, eyes pale as marbles. Then slowly, as if squeezing a boil, the woman milked something green and inky into the doctor’s plastic cup, each drop falling like a tear. When she was finished, she dropped in the crushed sac.

  Dr. Kao touched his elbow with his free hand in the traditional way. Một, hai, ba, DÔ! someone shouted. Một, hai, ba, DÔ! the doctor said, and downed it, his face smooth as if he were drinking water. When he lowered the cup, the gall bladder was gone.

  The woman twisted her fingers inside the snake and snapped out another organ. She dropped it in a se
cond cup, which she herself filled, the wine turning a dull pink. The moon was just beginning to rise over the cityscape. The woman offered the glass to Son’s father. Một, hai, ba, DÔ! the crowd shouted. In the silver light An’s blue eye looked cloudy. He seemed as if he might faint. The chanting grew louder.

  Son snatched the cup out of his father’s hands. On his face the deep scratch throbbed from the night out at the Dragon’s Head. He closed his eyes and threw his head back. The thing hit his teeth but he didn’t gag. He rolled the heart around in his mouth. It tasted like a hot coin. Son thought of the place where his father and all the other men had come from. That first night in Rabbit’s house the men’s stories of fields lined with skulls with the flesh still on them. He swallowed as hard as he could, the heart beating all the way down. The crowd roared.

  Son lowered the cup. The bleached moon hung in the sky. The man with the bloody diamond on his face patted him on the back. Son still couldn’t believe the man was Rabbit’s father, that someone like Rabbit even had a ba. He wondered about the places his father and Tu had been, his father who they had all assumed was dead. Tu took the cup from Son and handed it back to the woman. He put an arm around him, and together they moved through the crowd.

  Qui rowed the three of them up to the floating house in the last rays of the sun. Downriver a heron skulked in the tall grass by the water’s edge. The second boat was full of their possessions. They would all ride together in the first and pull the second one behind. Son’s sister Sang was standing on the front porch, her heavily made-up face a soft pink, skin coated as if with frosting. From her seat in the boat, Rabbit thought Sang looked as if she were posing for a portrait, her black hair piled high, lips the same blood-red as her dress.

  Phuong hurried out the door carrying one last sack. It made a strange rattling sound as she walked. Her face was smudged with what looked like ashes. Child, she said to Sang. Take this. In the fading light Phuong held the sack out to her daughter. Sang stamped her bare foot. It made a damp squishy sound. Mother! she said. She hated it when Phuong used the word meant for children. Sang was fifteen years old. She was old enough to have a baby. She knew how it was done.

  From the sampan Huyen spit in the river. Qui nodded to Rabbit. Even Rabbit knew they didn’t have time for this. She sighed and hopped out of the boat.

  Two days earlier in the floating market Huyen had traded Binh for the red ao dai. The silk was threadbare in places, the dress obviously used. And now Sang stood on the porch in the red ao dai waiting to be carried downriver. This morning she had put it on as soon as she woke up, even though they wouldn’t be pushing off for hours. The night before she had laid it out at the foot of her mat. In the morning when she slipped it on, it smelled musty, as if it had been stored in a rice shed. You smell funny, Son had said at breakfast, waving his hand in front of his face. You don’t know anything, Sang said. She went back to humming to herself.

  The day the dress appeared Rabbit had watched Huyen load Binh in the sampan one last time. She knew Huyen wouldn’t be bringing the bird back from the market. Please, Rabbit said. I can take care of her—she’ll feed herself. Hush, said Huyen. It won’t be happy where we’re going. The old woman tucked some fresh betel leaves in her cheek. Only a fool puts his heart in things.

  On the front porch Phuong handed Rabbit the sack her daughter wouldn’t carry. It was heavier than it looked. Rabbit hoisted it up onto her shoulder. Her head filled with voices, some of them so old they seemed to speak another dialect. Rabbit closed her eyes and rubbed her ear with her free hand. There were so many she couldn’t pick out just one, the voices unintelligible as static. She turned to climb back over the railing and down into the boat, but Sang held her back. Me first, the older girl said before climbing down.

  Phuong had told all their neighbors about Sang’s marriage. It’s sudden, conceded Phuong, but she’s ready. It explained the comings and goings of the past several days, the strange men peering out of the windows. The other families in Ba Nuoc nodded and offered their tempered congratulations. We wish you one hundred years of happiness, they droned. Mostly they were grateful for the show. When the authorities asked, they wouldn’t have to act incredulous. As if they hadn’t noticed their neighbors packing up all their worldly possessions right underneath their noses. They could tell the government officials we saw her standing right there on the front porch in a red ao dai with a full face of makeup. They could say yes, there were strange men coming and going at all hours of the day. We thought they were the groom’s family.

  Sang stepped down into the boat. Rabbit watched as the older girl tried to catch a glimpse of herself on the surface, but the river was turbid with silt. Then they were floating away. Qui stood in the back with the bamboo oar in her hands. Her curtain of black hair was loose and almost skimmed the water. From time to time the second boat would bump them in the back, making their possessions rattle. Sang was trailing her fingers in the water. After sunset it was a dangerous thing to do. Rabbit kept her eyes on the horizon. Downriver the heron began flapping its wings, beginning its long ascent into the air.

  The man with one sleeve tapped Son on the head and pointed across the water. They had been waiting in the marsh grass twenty feet from shore for what felt like an eternity. Things had begun to fall into place when their group had left the swelling crowds at the festival. They had walked two hours east, the paths empty as the countryside celebrated in Cantho. As they waited in the marsh grass, the tide was out, but the water was beginning to rise. By the shore it was still too low for a sizable boat to clear. So far upriver the tide was just a matter of inches. There was a line of ants running up one of the tall blades of grass. Son wondered how the ants got there, how they moved over the water from stalk to stalk. Then he looked down and saw a string of ants striding on the surface, a black line snaking all the way from shore. He wondered if the moon was so bright the ants thought it was day.

  The man with one sleeve tapped him again. Son looked to where he was pointing. At first he couldn’t see anything, but then he saw it—in the distance the tip of someone’s cigarette drifting past. Son woke his father up. They had been squatting along with the other men in the tall grasses on the edge of the Turtle Marsh for the last hour. It was well past midnight, the moon in the third quadrant. Son noticed the back of the doctor’s shirt was damp with sweat, though Son himself was getting cold.

  The Cambodians began whispering among themselves. The man with one sleeve cupped his hands around his mouth. He let out a series of short squawks, each one like the noise the white-eared night heron makes when disturbed. When he finished, they waited. From across the marsh a sequence of squawks echoed in the night. The doctor closed his eyes. Son could see his lips moving. With his hand, Dr. Kao touched his forehead, then several places on his chest.

  They watched the drifting boat come to a stop only a hundred feet from shore. In the moonlight Son could see two sampans coming their way. The boat itself didn’t seem large enough to take them all. It was a fisherman’s boat built for a crew of five, ten at the most. He knew at best the motor would be a relic from before the war. There were no new engines to buy. He wondered where his uncles had found the boat, if they had actually paid money for it. If it was stolen, he wondered if that would affect their chances, the boat’s karma tainted, all of them doomed before they’d even set out.

  After the sampans reached them, Son and his father and the man with one sleeve were the only ones left waiting in the reeds. There wasn’t enough room for everyone. Someone whispered that a sampan would be back shortly. Son could feel himself shivering, the snake’s pulpy heart somewhere deep inside him. The moon lay on the water like a hole filled with fire. The man with one sleeve was playing a game with his fingers. Even as the others loaded up the sampans and moved across the water, the man kept pressing his fingertips together in different patterns—thumb to the ear finger, the first to the ring. Son knew the man could do it all night long, could do it all the way across the sea or in
the overcrowded cells his father had described where men had to take turns lying down because there was so little room.

  His father had fallen asleep again. An’s fatigue seemed endless. From across the water in the moonlight Son imagined An might look like something in the heron family, his delicate silhouette as if branched, bones hollow. He held a hand up in front of his father’s mouth and waited until he could feel the breath on his palm before lowering it.

  Son heard them before he saw them. They were rounding the headlands when they came into view. A string of shadows moved along the path like figures cut from black paper, their voices traveling over the water. A few of them carried torches, the light dancing like little souls. They were still a half mile away, but it didn’t matter who they were. If they were a patrol, then they would all be arrested, the ragged men put back in cells where the whole cell had to defecate in a plastic bucket with a hairline crack running the length of it. If they were peasants, they might ask for money in exchange for their silence. Son shook his father. Ba, he said. The man with one sleeve was already wading out into the river. They couldn’t wait for the sampan to come ferry them across the water. Son grabbed his father’s hand and followed.

  Ordinarily the swim wouldn’t have been difficult, but the boat was anchored in deep water. The deeper the water, the more unpredictable the current. Son was holding his father’s hand when the drop came and the current took them. He felt his father jerked downriver, their hands ripped apart. He could feel the soft earth disappear beneath his feet as the water picked him up. He knew he couldn’t cry for help or all would be lost. The trick was to swim upriver. If he swam for the boat itself, the current would bring him up short. The man with one sleeve seemed to know this. Son could see him swimming for a spot thirty feet upriver of the boat. He began to head for the same spot, but he could hear the sounds of someone fighting for breath. Already ten feet away his father was floundering, his body spinning wildly in the water. There was so much light on the surface of the river, he looked as if he were being spirited away by moonlight.