She Weeps Each Time You're Born

by Quan Barry

  Except for the color of her hair Qui hadn’t aged since the night they pulled Rabbit newly born out of the ground. If anything her face looked even younger. Her complexion that never burned was still bright and soft as the skin of a baby, only now her long silvery hair gave her an unearthly glow. On occasion Rabbit had trouble remembering how Qui used to look.

  Qui propped the bicycle against the wrought-iron fence. The front of her blouse was dry in the early hours. She swung the basket off the seat and put it down next to the metal drum where the two of them kept a small fire burning as they worked. Their tabletop was a piece of cardboard covered in plastic, which they balanced on bricks they’d scavenged from a work site. Rabbit could still hear the sound of the Russian’s ring singing in the air from when he had brushed the metal earlier with his hand.

  Suddenly Son popped up from behind the fence. He glowered at her. The scratch on his face flared as if fresh. Rabbit put her fingers in her ears. More and more he wasn’t the boy she remembered, the quiet boy who’d slept in his mother’s arms, the boy on the roof of the pilothouse searching the stars. As she herself moved into young adulthood, he’d become her second conscience, a being who knew things about her that no one else knew, the secret thoughts racing in her blood.

  As swiftly as he appeared, Son disappeared without a word behind the gate. Rabbit took her fingers out of her ears. The reverberating sound of the Russian’s ring on the metal fence had gone dead.

  The morning passed slowly, the July heat like moving through water. Across the street some of the men in the concrete pit had taken off their shirts, the sweat raining down their bodies as they lifted their legs in the thick mud. Rabbit tried not to stare. A delivery man carrying some packages stopped on his way out of the dorm and bought a tea. What’s in there, she said. The man wiped his brow and held his cup out for more hot water. For a moment he stared at Rabbit, the strange freckles spotting her face. Mostly just beds, he said. Rabbit couldn’t tell if she felt disappointed or not.

  A few minutes before noon Rabbit stoked the fire with an old broom handle. The sparks flew loose, the air rippling over the barrel. Each day she and Qui set up under the cinnamon tree, the fragrant trunk twisted and crumbling. The men who had paved the road had orders to cut down everything, but they left it standing. It was then that the tree stopped producing seeds, the shallow roots damaged by the heavy road equipment and the run-off. There were still patches of green sprinkled through the canopy, but mostly the tree was dead. Over time the wood of the trunk was growing less and less fragrant, though the woman who sold pancakes across the street still pounded a few wood chips into a fine powder at the start of the business day.

  When the lunch hour came, a group of Vietnamese workers walked over from across the road. Then Rabbit was taking money and pouring hot water, Qui squeezing the lemon in and adding just the right amount of honey. As always there wasn’t much talk, just the quick exchange of bills. Qui and Rabbit had been selling tea for the past year. Under Doi Moi, individuals were allowed to start their own businesses, and private enterprise was flourishing. Today the line seemed longer than usual. Rabbit could see Van standing among the workers, holding the rag in his hands. As always Van waited until the other laborers had been served before hobbling forward. Some days they ran out of lemons before his turn came. Rabbit wondered if Qui’s silence made her seem all the more approachable to him. Van with one hand missing all but its two primary fingers, his hand like a fractured smile.

  Ever since the first week they’d set up on Duong Khiem, Van appeared every noon with a red chrysanthemum that he presented to Qui. In the midday sun he would stand and carefully unwrap it from an old rag he kept damp to keep the flower from wilting. When he learned Qui didn’t speak, he stopped saying anything. He would simply touch his forehead with his two remaining fingers before holding out the great whorled bowl of the flower. Qui always took the chrysanthemum with a small smile and tucked it behind her ear. In her silvery hair the flower gleamed like blood on snow. Each night in their one room near the bus depot Qui would carefully remove the flower. Rabbit never saw where she put it. In the morning it was never on top of the trash heap by the door or in the small chest where Qui kept the few things she treasured—the chipped blue rice bowl from the grave where Rabbit was born, the burlap sack filled with bones that Phuong had carried out of her floating house once long ago. By morning, each blossom was gone.

  The line inched forward. Van held the flower out and touched his forehead. Where he got red chrysanthemums in Hoa Thien in the northwest corner of the country nobody knew. The other men stood in the shade of the cinnamon tree. Through the leaves the sun dappled the ground. Then the twenty minutes were over. The workers filed back across the street. Qui began to tidy up. There would be one more rush when the workers went home before sunset. Van would be back with just his sad little smile, his mangled hand. As she did each day, Qui would hold out a second cup to him, but he never accepted it. They both knew he didn’t have the money. He would simply touch his forehead and smile. Qui would nod, her silvery hair tinted indigo in the twilight.

  Rabbit took a deep breath. For a moment she thought of her father, the strange red diamond marking Tu’s face, and the night Qui had touched the birthmark with her fingers, her long black hair cascading over both of them like a blanket as their bodies rocked back and forth. Abruptly Son popped up behind a crate. You’re too young, he whispered, then disappeared again.

  They were still tidying up from lunch when the first truck turned up Duong Khiem. Something was wrong. The Russians never came back early. The pancake seller across the street boldly stood up to watch. Two men in the concrete pit stopped moving altogether. Only Rabbit averted her eyes. She could hear the tired sound of feet scraping the pavement as the men filed past in silence on their way through the gate and up the steps into the dorm. Most of them gripped their cigarettes with all of their fingers.

  Within minutes a second truck turned the corner. The men off-loaded with their frozen stares. Rabbit let herself look, but she didn’t see him among them. She watched as a pack of dogs jumped out. Something in her stomach began to tighten.

  Fifteen minutes later the last truck roared up the boulevard. This time only a few men got off. They seemed more distant than the others, their faces hardened as if they had come from the very ends of the earth. A handful of them were spattered from head to toe, some with bits of matter dried in their hair. One of them was so spattered it was as if he had bathed in it. His cold wolf eyes were the only part of him that wasn’t bloodstained. A silver ring encrusted with blood gleamed on his finger. Briefly the knot in Rabbit’s stomach loosened.

  Son was sitting on the curb holding a piece of tree bark in his hands. He watched Rabbit as the men walked into the dorm. The blood-soaked specter with the icy eyes was the last one up the steps. You should have been there, Son said. He held the bark up to his nose and inhaled deeply. It wasn’t a criticism, just the truth. Rabbit felt her eyes burning.

  The day dragged along. Across the street the school rose a few feet. Some stray customers bought tea. The honey started to harden. The sky grew dark and menacing, but for the time being the rain held off. Qui began to pack up. At the bottom of the basket there was a single lemon left, the thing hard and misshapen. Rabbit tucked it in her sleeve. Maybe she would use the rind for something, add twists of the peel to a soup. With the broom handle she raked through the fire, spreading the ashes around until it went out with a small hiss. A strand of smoke curled up into the air. Rabbit helped Qui load their things onto the bicycle. Van nodded to them before heading the other way down Duong Khiem.

  Rabbit and Qui were almost to the first intersection when the pancake seller who was still packing her things whistled. They turned around and saw the fire burning strong in the metal drum they left each night under the cinnamon tree. Quickly Rabbit ran back with the broom handle. She didn’t understand. There was hardly anything left to burn. After she put it out, swirling the broomstick aroun
d in the flames, she touched the side of the drum with her fingers. It was cool to the touch. She put her whole hand on it just to be sure.

  Rabbit walked away, peering at the skin of her palm. The pancake seller whistled again. The flames leaped up like the branches of a tree. This time after she put it out, she peered deep into the drum. There was nothing in it, not even ash.

  The final time she and Qui stood together watching from a distance up Duong Khiem. The pancake seller was at their side. The sun was going down on the other end of the boulevard. Bats were beginning to knife through the evening air. The women stood for whole minutes, universes born and falling dead. A bat dropped out of the sky. The pancake seller nudged the creature with her foot. They all looked up at the exact moment when the fire ignited. The thing lighting as if the drum were full of gasoline, and someone had tossed in a lit match.

  For a long time none of them moved. Then the pancake seller turned the bat over and righted it. The thing spread its wings and shot straight up into the air. Down the street the fire was still burning. Go on, Rabbit said to Qui. Go home. I’ll see to this. Qui fingered the flower in her hair and nodded. The pancake seller clucked her teeth and went her own way.

  There was no rush as Rabbit walked back. Maybe this time she would let it burn. Even from down the street she could smell the cinnamon tree on the wind. She breathed the scent in, filling her lungs. Overhead black clouds raced through the sky. She thought of the ocean at night, clouds like an invading army. Peering up into the tree’s boughs, she could see a cluster of long yellow flowers studded with the little round fruit black like pepper. It hadn’t been there in the morning. She stood studying it. She had never seen the tree flower.

  When she looked back down, he was standing by the fire. His hair was wet, eyes blue as stars, the skin of his face pink where he had scrubbed it raw. He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt. She didn’t know how to tell him. Chúng tôi đóng cửa, she said. We’re closed. He shook his head. Я хочу избавиться от этого вкуса во рту. I have to get the taste out of my mouth. The first flashes of lightning appearing in the heavens. Already she could feel a dark wave cresting in her body, though where it would lead she didn’t know. The scar on his neck glowed in the light of the fire. And so it began. The two of them speaking in their own languages, though it didn’t matter. Each one talking as if to comfort himself.

  Rabbit reached up her sleeve and took out the small misshapen lemon. The Russian had to look at it a moment before realizing what it was. Прекрасно, he said. He took it and tore off the rind with his bare hands. Then he shoved it in his mouth and bit down. Slowly his face changed, the skin trembling around his eyes. Finally the taste of something besides blood in his mouth.

  The fire turned a steely blue, then abuptly died out, the color like stars twinkling on a mountain. The Russian banged the barrel with the side of his fist. The metal rang on and on. Rabbit flashed on the image of a dead sow, its stomach rowed with big rubbery teats, things buzzing in the charred barrel of its torso. She wondered where she had ever seen such a thing. Already the Russian was walking away down the street. He spit the lemon out into his palm and turned around. Ты идешь, he called. You coming? Overhead the sky at once darkening and growing lighter as the thunderheads flashed. Rabbit took a deep breath and ran to catch up.

  They walked side by side without touching. The Russian’s strides were long, but Rabbit managed to stay with him. They passed a group of Black Hmong scurrying along the road. The Red and Black Hmong lived up in the terraced hills stretching all the way to Sapa. Gradually their culture was being erased. Ethnic Vietnamese were flooding into Hoa Thien, the government anxious to build up the towns along the border with China, Vietnam’s ancient enemy. The Hmong women wore deep indigo scarves in their hair. The matriarch of the group walked at the front chewing something, the muscles tightening in her jaw. One of the younger women eyed the Russian, her curiosity evident. Xin chao, said Rabbit. Xin chao, said the matriarch. When the old woman smiled, Rabbit could see she was missing several teeth, but the ones she had left were a familiar dark red in color.

  Rabbit knew the Russian was taking her to the quarter where the Russians went to drink kvass and listen to music. There was a café run by a mixed breed who was said to be the granddaughter of Lenin. Rabbit didn’t know what happened in that part of town, but once Giang had told her she didn’t need to know, Giang’s lips stained and swollen. The Russian was striding up ahead. Rabbit could hear music playing like the kind she sometimes heard coming from the dorm. Мы оживаем в ночи, he shouted over his shoulder. We Russians come alive at night.

  They passed a café. Men sat out front smoking water pipes and waiting for the rain to arrive before moving inside. There was a Vietnamese policeman in his uniform sitting at one of the outdoor tables playing chess with a Russian. The policeman had his hand on his queen as he sat studying the board. He looked up at them as they passed. Спокойной ночи, the policeman said. The other man sitting at the table laughed.

  The Russian led her straight to the house. From the outside it was western looking. He pulled a key out of his pocket and opened the door. There were newspapers and ashtrays piled on a card table. A small Japanese refrigerator buzzed in a corner. She watched him walk up a flight of stairs. When he didn’t come back down, she put her hand on her chest to slow her heart and followed.

  Son was sitting at the top of the steps, the scratch on his face inflamed the same as it was the night he’d injured it fishing the Mekong long ago. Looking at him, Rabbit marveled that she had ever been that young, that the two of them had ever been mistaken for brothers. Son looked her full in the face. He was crying. I hear you, Rabbit said, stepping over him and on up the stairs. But he just cried harder.

  When she entered the room, her heart fell silent. There was nothing but a western-style bed and a table with a chair, in the open closet a few suits and a pair of shoes. She felt something stirring in her body. Every morning for the last month she and the Russian had stared at each other as he walked by on his way out to the Nam Yum to search for the dead among old mines. She took a deep breath. She could smell cinnamon coming from her hair.

  Outside, the sky opened up with a tidal roar. The rain fell like nails on the tin roof. She knew it would only last ten, fifteen minutes at the most, the monsoon rains always torrential but brief. When it stopped, it would stop on a dime. In fifteen minutes the moon would be out, sailing through the heavens, the world left dripping, cleansed.

  On the table a candle was burning. Shadows quivered on the walls. The Russian was curled up in the bed, his clothes heaped on the floor. The rain hammered the window. Rabbit looked at his body, the dark tan and the dramatic lines where the skin went white. She could see a spot he’d missed. She twisted a corner of her shirt and wet it with her mouth. The bed sank slightly with her weight. A spot just behind his ear. The blood came away easily.

  When he rolled over, his eyes gleamed, the blue flecked with gold. Then he was slipping off her pants, the ring on his finger cold on her skin. She could hardly hear the sound of her own breathing through the thunder. He ran his face over the inside of her thighs, the pale blond hair of his young beard like a stiff brush, his hair light with sun, skin dark with it. The rain was erasing the outside world, leaving only this room and the bodies in it.

  He put his mouth on her. She stopped breathing. She felt herself riding a wave. The long interval as it crested. She could feel her body crying, every door opening in her skin. When he pulled his head away, he was laughing. You taste like honey, he said. He reached up and kissed her on the mouth as if trying to explain.

  That first time the two of them seated and facing each other. Legs tangled together. Both of them with their hands on each other’s back. Rhythmically pulling themselves closer and closer. The room abruptly illumed with lightning, their bodies incandescent in the flash. Periodically she would look him in the face. His cold blue e
yes on her until the feeling swelled and she had to look away.

  When she kissed his scar, the silvery light dawned in her head, her ears itching as if an insect had wormed its way down the aural canal. Then it was all there, the disembodied voices of the dead—Afghanistan, a small boy in a long shirt running away, then the sudden explosion in the Russian’s neck as the grenade went off, the concussive bang, the air like a hammer, his best friend Mikhail running toward him with the blacksmith’s iron that had been heating in the fire right when the grenade exploded, the smell of his own burning flesh filling his nose and lungs.

  The moon sat squarely in the window. Already the rain was down to a light patter, outside the sounds of things dripping from a great height. The Russian put her fingers in his mouth. She could see where he had smeared her blood on his chest. Nothing about it had hurt. Lastochka, my little swallow, he said, drifting off to sleep. She had to fight to keep all the voices rising off his skin out of her head. There were so many dead by his hand in that foreign place. I hear you, she whispered. His name was Levka Zaytsev, the lion and the hare. He was nineteen years old. He had seen literally everything.

  Two hours before dawn Rabbit opened the door to the room she shared with Qui in the row of flimsy rooms next to the bus depot. The moon was still in the sky. Qui was sitting in the corner milking herself into a jar, her silver hair flowing down her back like a mirror. With one hand she was squeezing the swollen orb of her right breast, with the other plucking bits from the red chrysanthemum and quietly slipping the tufts in her mouth.