by Kien Nguyen
“No, thank you. Just three bowls of Peking duck soup for the kids, the largest portions that you have.”
“You two ladies are not eating?” She looked at my mother and Mrs. Dang.
They shook their heads in unison.
At a table next to us sat a half-naked local prostitute and her customer. They clung together with legs crisscrossed and arms locked like a pair of Siamese twins, slurping their noodles loudly. My mother sat at the edge of the bench, playing with my short hair.
“Where did you go this afternoon?” she asked.
“I took Jimmy and BeTi to see Loan.”
“You are very smart for an eleven-year-old boy, Kien,” she remarked. “What made you think of going to see her?”
“I didn't know where else to go, but I knew we had to get away from the house.”
“What happened at Loan's?”
The lady returned with a tray full of food. The bowls she set in front of us had faded flowers painted on them. Steam rose from the rich, tawny broth, burning my face with its vapors. My stomach gave a violent twist, and my mouth ached from salivating too quickly. I collected myself by giving my soup a twist of lemon.
At the next table, the prostitute suddenly sat up, screaming into the dark yard with a harsh voice. “Get out of here, you whores.” On her naked shoulders and arms, tiny sores bloomed like red carnations in spring. “Stop following me everywhere.”
The soup lady shrugged. “Her children,” she explained to us matter-of-factly. “They come here every night to watch their mother eat. And every night she kicks them away.”
“I don't see anyone,” Jimmy said.
“Of course you don't,” the woman answered. “They are too black to be seen, but they are out there.”
I looked out into the thick night. There was not a star in the sky, not a streetlight in the alley. Yet, I could see two pairs of eyes burning at us like hungry wolves.
“American mixed?” Mrs. Dang asked.
She nodded. “The ‘burnt-rice’ kind.”
“That's too cruel,” my mother remarked. “Why didn't the mother just give them away if she doesn't want them?”
“Well, folks, don't think she hasn't tried.” The soup lady mused. “That wretched woman sold most of her kids as soon as they sprouted their first baby teeth. Those two she couldn't sell. They are black girls. Who wants them?” My mother didn't answer. “I'll tell you something even sadder than this,” the woman continued. “A few months ago, she lost a child, an older sister of those two, about ten, eleven years old. The girl used to come around here begging for food. They grabbed her one day. It happened right here down this street. Three men. They had some sort of agreement with the mother, buying the kid's virginity. Well, they took her to that deserted farm next door. One of them put his you-know-what in her mouth while the other two pinned her down. The poor child didn't know, so instead of pleasing him, she bit down on it.”
My mother interrupted her, looking at us. “Eat your soup, kids. Don't listen to the adult conversation!”
Mrs. Dang spoke up. “I've heard about that story. They killed her with a rock.”
“That's right,” the woman agreed. “Smashed her head like a bug. Nobody heard her screaming. The train was too loud when that happened. Then they paid the mother to keep her mouth shut. The police couldn't find the killers, and the girl died in vain. No one cared.”
“I remember that little girl,” Mrs. Dang said thoughtfully. “Her hair was so bushy, it looked like a beehive from afar.”
“It got shaved the day before she died,” the soup lady said. “It was so kinky, anything that fell into it disappeared. They got all kinds of stuff out of her head; you name it, toothbrushes, combs, paperclips, rubber bands, and God knows what else. I tell you, your children are lucky that they are white. At least they have a chance to live. The burnt-rice have only bad luck.”
I finished the soup and laid the empty bowl back on the table. My sister lapped at her soup slowly like a kitten. My mother looked at me in astonishment. “You ate so fast. Would you like to have another bowl?”
I hesitated. “Why don't you eat, Mom?”
“I am not hungry,” she said.
“What happened to you, mother? Why did it take you so long to come home?”
She avoided my stare. “You don't want to know.”
“Of course I do. You were all we could think about. You went to Saigon, right?”
“We got arrested in Saigon for trading without a license.” Her eyes fixed on her nails. “The real let-down wasn't the jail time we had to serve, but we lost all of the money.”
“What happened?”
“How in hell should I know? We were having breakfast at the market when I noticed this Chinese guy sitting across my table. I thought I recognized him as a merchant. Dang and I went over, making small talk.”
“Small talk?”
“Business talk. The next thing I know was, he pulled out a gun and handcuffs and arrested us in the middle of the crowd. We were thrown in jail.”
I pushed the empty bowl away. “Maybe I shouldn't eat anymore, Mom. You don't have much money.”
“Don't worry,” Mrs. Dang interjected. “I have a couple of red Chairman Ho's left in my pocket. You kids go ahead and enjoy yourselves.”
LATER THAT NIGHT, after she had put BeTi and Jimmy to bed in my grandparents' room, my mother came to say good night to me. She sat on the edge of my bed, looking at me through eyes filled with pain. The once highly maintained beauty had long abandoned my mother's face, leaving behind a mask of naked desperation. For a moment, I couldn't recognize who she was, and the confusion stirred up panic in me.
“What would you have done if I had never come back?” she asked.
“I don't know, Mother,” I told her. “I'd have waited for your return.”
“What if I didn't come back?”
“Why wouldn't you? You have responsibilities.”
“I couldn't be responsible for you if I were dead. That could happen sometime. If it did, what would you do, Kien?”
“I don't know. Please stop asking me these questions. Just tell me what to do,” I cried out in fear. “We were going to beg for food if you didn't come back. Jimmy wanted to sell Lou, but we couldn't.”
My mother burst into tears. “Would you abandon your brother and sister?”
“No.”
“My poor boy.” She reached out to hug me, and I could taste her tears mixed with mine. “I want you to know that if the thought of walking out on them did cross your mind, you don't have to be ashamed of it. I understand.” She lifted the sleeve of her blouse to wipe her eyes. “It's all right now. I am here, and you are safe. So go to sleep.”
As she left, I called out to her.
“Yes, darling.” She turned to face me. “What is it?”
“Please don't leave us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Iwoke up the next morning, doubled over from a stabbing pain in my lower back. Even breathing was painful. I crawled out of bed and walked slowly toward the bathroom, passing by Moonlight's room on the way. She sat in front of a mirror, staring dully at her reflection. The path that led to the outhouse seemed endless. With each step a thousand specks of glittering black light exploded in my eyes. I didn't bother to lock the door behind me.
It was not until I was in the middle of relieving myself that I realized instead of urine, I was passing blood. Thick globs of scarlet liquid gushed out of me. I was so frightened, I pulled my shorts back on, letting the rest of the blood stain the front of my shorts as I staggered out to search for my mother. She was in my grandparents' bedroom with Mrs. Dang. When she pulled my shorts down to examine the problem, nothing looked out of the ordinary except for the red streams I released.
“What is wrong with him?” my mother cried out in distress. “Help me, Dang.”
Mrs. Dang shook her head. “The beating has broken something inside him. We've got to take him to the doctor.”
“I
can't afford a doctor,” my mother said. “Besides, what good can a bunch of college graduates do? They never know what they are doing.”
“Then take him to your mother's herbalist. See what he says,” Mrs. Dang suggested.
I had taken a sharp blow to one of my kidneys, the herbalist pronounced. Since I was young and strong, it would not leave any permanent damage. The bleeding stopped after a few doses of the bitter herbs he prescribed.
WEEK LATER, my grandparents returned from the hospital. My grandmother's foot was still swollen and throbbing, filled with pus. From afar, it looked like a giant, overripe eggplant. Sitting in her favorite chair in the garden under the shade of a jackfruit tree, my grandmother listened as Moonlight read the Buddha's scripture to her. Gusts of afternoon heat tumbled down on top of them, creeping through the branches like dozens of snakes. Their tan skins reflected the sun, and their naked feet buried into the hot sand. They lost themselves in the chapters of the sacred book.
In the past few months, Moonlight's health had noticeably declined. Every morning she woke up coughing. Then, by the well, she sat for hours with her shoulders drooped in between her knees, trying to expel mucus out of her lungs. A couple of times she threw up blood. Her cheeks had lost their rich shade of oolong tea and taken on the gray of a rotting lemon. Moonlight carefully tried to conceal her sickly appearance with makeup. The thick powder made her look like an opera singer before a performance.
She greeted me the moment I walked into the garden. “Hi, Kien. How are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” I replied.
“How is your back?”
“It is much better. The herbs helped.”
“I want to go to the temple and get some blessed medicine for my cough. Do you want to accompany me? Maybe the monks can give you something for your back. Or we can pray to the Buddha for Grandma's health.”
“Okay.”
I accepted Moonlight's invitation, simply because I adored her company. She had not seen Ty Tong for several weeks due to her illness. I missed keeping guard for them under the magnolia bushes down the street at night, as they stole eager kisses in each other's arms.
The temple was located on a side of a mountain, twenty kilometers from the house. Local people knew it as Spirited Mountain Temple. Its door was open for the sick everywhere. The trip took us twenty minutes by bus, another twenty minutes to climb the mountain. From the ground, a total of one hundred and forty-two steps cut into the rock led to the main lobby. Moonlight had to stop several times on the stairs, but in due time we found ourselves walking into an open ground filled with visitors.
The lobby overlooked the entire city and the nearby towns. Its floor was covered in dark blue tiles, which were constantly being swept by the faithful worshipers until their surface had become like a dark ocean, reflecting the sun. A giant lotus with each of its petals carved from marble sat in the middle of the ground. Its base, a cylindrical octagon, depicted hell in a series of eight pictures. Sitting inside the petals was a statue of Buddha, four stories high, of white marble. His hands folded neatly on his lap, he sat with closed eyes as he pondered his own tranquillity. Rumors said that his third eye had originally been made out of a large emerald, which got either lost or stolen through time. A green light bulb had since replaced the stone to cover the hole in the Buddha's forehead. Its light illuminated his serene face, keeping the sacred place in order, regardless of the vast number of visitors each day.
The red pointed roofs and golden columns of the temple stood behind the Buddha, as beautiful and ancient as the mountain it rested on. Each worshiper was allowed to pray for one wish inside a large room filled with incense clouds. The altar was set at the far end of the room, decorated with more Buddha statues in various shapes and sizes. Most of them were covered with gold leaf, or made out of bronze. A large copper urn in the center of the room held the incense. In rows from either side of the room, monks dressed in yellow robes sat in meditation.
Along the mountain, a sheet of water flowed against the rocks, entering the temple from the roof. Once inside, it wound its way behind the altar and escaped through a drain in the floor to join the river below. The mist it left behind rose like fragrant steam, keeping the temple cool all year round.
On a side of the temple, a small brown brick road led to an area where the monks dispensed herbs. A small cottage behind a dense bamboo forest at the end of the road served as a hospital. Moonlight took a number from a nun standing by the entrance and we walked inside the waiting room.
After she had received three little bags of herbs, we strolled out to the lobby. The city seemed minuscule below our feet.
“Tell me, when we were inside the temple, what exactly did you pray for?” she asked.
“I was praying for Grandma. Hoping she would get better soon. Then I asked the Buddha about my father.”
“Which Buddha did you ask? By the way, that is more than one wish, Kien.”
I sighed. “I know. But I prayed to the biggest one in the center, the statue that has lots of hands coming out of his body. I was hoping he could give me another wish.”
“Of course, the famous one-hundred-hands-and-thousand-eyes Buddha.” She cleared her throat. “He is very powerful. He could grant you any wish that you may have. What did you ask him about your father?”
“I asked him who my father is, whether he is thinking of me, or if he knows about my existence at all.”
Moonlight raised her eyebrows. “Difficult questions! What if you don't get the answers?”
“Then I will continue to ask him every time I come here until I do get the answers.”
“Why do you want to know about your father, Kien?”
“I hate living here,” I said without thinking. “I want my dad to take me to America someday.”
Moonlight began to sing. In the muggy afternoon, her voice sounded like a mournful cry.
“How are you and Ty Tong?” I asked, trying to stop the sad song. “When are you going to see him again?”
“I don't know,” she said. “In a few years if I am lucky. He was drafted by the military last week to fight in Cambodia. He will be leaving by the end of this month.”
“Really?” I sat up and looked at her. The thought of Ty Tong in the military service was incomprehensible to me. “But today is the last day of the month.”
“That's true,” she said. “He is leaving this afternoon.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “Then why didn't you stay home to say good-bye to him?”
She didn't answer.
Suddenly, I understood. “You didn't come here for the herbs. You came here to ask the Buddha to protect him, didn't you?”
She nodded. “Yes, but there is a catch. He is not going to Cambodia.”
“How come?”
“He is going to escape. And I am praying for him to get away safely. That was my wish.”
“No!”
“Yes. It's getting late. He probably has left already. Let's go home.” She got up from the bench.
I offered my arm, which she held tightly. “Don't worry,” I reassured her. “I'll pray for your health next time, Moonlight.”
She smiled and leaned over to peck my cheek with her cold lips. “Thanks, sweetie. But if you are going to pray for me, who will ask the Buddha about your father for you?”
I shrugged. “That can wait. You are my only friend in that house. I want you to get better.”
I LEARNED LATER from Duy that Ty Tong had left for Singapore while we were sitting at the temple that afternoon. His mother had bribed many officers in town to enable him to escape. Moonlight received a letter from him a month later, stamped with the Singapore postmark. It was the only letter she would ever receive from Ty Tong.
1980
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The herbal treatments did not cure the infection in my grandmother's foot. For two years we watched her waste away until she could no longer leave her bed. Each morning, we drained the wound into a basin. At night,
her monotonous praying would keep us up, and the clicking of her fingernails on the Bo De beads echoed in our ears. The herbalist suggested that my grandmother's foot be amputated at the city hospital. But medications were scarce and when available, expensive, and the hospital offered minimal care, so my grandmother remained at home and anticipated death.
One afternoon, my mother and I traveled deep into a forest on the other side of the mountain. For hours we followed an overgrown path until we came to a large soursop tree. Tentacles that grew from its thick branches reached down to the ground like locks of hair. The soil was covered with the black, velvety shells of soursop fruits, which sprang softly under our footsteps like a satin bed. My mother pointed upward. Following her gaze, I saw a bamboo cottage that hung like a bird's nest from the top of the tree. This was the home of Dr. Ang, a wizard who had built a reputation among the poor for the bizarre miracles he had performed.
It got dark early in the woods. Since the wizard did not invite us into his home, we spent the evening sleeping on the ground next to the ancient tree's powerful roots. In the eerie blackness of the jungle, flickering lantern light made his cottage glow like a tinderbox and kept the wild animals from venturing near.
The next morning, we took the guru home with us and led him to my grandmother's bedroom. The old man squinted his eyes with curiosity at my grandmother. Politely, he asked my mother to tie my grandmother's hands to the bedposts as he prepared for the surgery. When he punctured my grandmother's foot with a sharp knife made out of a human femur bone, a jet of pus and blood squirted out, spraying his face. Pouring wine into his mouth, he then blew it out in a vapor mist all over her foot. Like a vampire feasting on its prey, he sucked out the pus and spat it into the basin below. The wizard cleaned the wound in that fashion for almost two hours. Finally he laid her foot back down on the bed with a look of satisfaction and sat down on the ground.
“All done,” he said to my mother. “Your mother will heal. But she won't walk again.”