After our trip, I never mentioned my before-home to Mother again. The prison had unscrewed my last hold on the memory of a life before the camp. Whenever I tried to recall it, to describe it to myself, it became nothing but a fictionalized place, a haze of words.
7
I found my father’s death certificate in between the pages of one of my old manga books, an early issue of The Queen of Egypt series. The only reason I had decided to reread it was that the publisher had to delay the translation of the newest issue from Japan that month. Apparently, the government departments of Entertainment and Education were debating the series’ ethics. There were many explicit scenes unsuitable for children. The certificate read:
Name: NGUYEN VAN TU
Death: 10 FEBRUARY 1990
Born: 1 OCTOBER 1955
Cause of Death: SHIPWRECK
The certificate was granted eight years later. The paper looked new even with its crease. It couldn’t have been there for more than a few days. This was my mother’s way of telling me one of our battles was over.
For many years, my father’s unacknowledged death had hung over our family. The ship, which was crossing South China Sea on its way to the Philippines, had sunk, taking with it twenty merchants and five hundred tons of cargo. My father, a seasonal worker, was not on the list of those on board. Legally, he had been labeled missing. I took the piece of paper with me and ran out to look for the other children.
One boy was sitting on the veranda in front of quarter B59. I told him to alert the rest of the boys, code 26AD56.
“Woot woot!” He shouted and ran off, his arms pulling on the invisible horn of a train.
I assumed the little girl would be at her apartment. It was lunch break at the camp. It was incredibly hot. Everyone had withdrawn either to the dining area or their own residence. The football field was also empty. I walked under a row of silky oak trees, skipping on shadows of leaves. I made twelve skips consecutively without landing on my heels. By the time I got to her building, I was sweating.
The little girl’s place was on the third floor. All the doors to the apartments on the lower floors were open, presumably to let air circulate. I could hear words being exchanged, hushed and unhurried, unlike the boisterous conversations between soldiers. When I reached the little girl’s floor, the front door was also cracked slightly open. I pushed it a few centimeters wider and squeezed in. On a metal table by the window were untouched plates of food. They looked different than the things my mother would make. A big fly, the size of the tip of my pinkie, was sitting on the plate of steamed water spinach, cleaning its front legs. I walked to the apartment’s bedroom where the door was wide open. The little girl was cradled in her father’s lap, his back to the door. Her skinny legs dangled off the bed. Her wide eyes met mine, but for the next few minutes no word was spoken.
“It’s alright. You’re fine. This is alright,” her father said. I wasn’t sure whether he was reassuring her or asking a question. His voice sounded sad. His fingers were tracing her inner thigh up and down, then her calves, and her feet. Her toes curled when he touched the bottom of her foot.
Except for her eyes, I couldn’t see above her legs. I was suddenly aware of my heart inside my chest. There was that warm sensation again in between my legs. I felt like crying. Since her father hadn’t noticed me, I took a few steps backward and stood by the front door.
“Is anyone home?” I said. I didn’t know why I hadn’t just left. It’d felt too dishonest to pretend I was never there at all. I waited for an acknowledgement.
The little girl’s father got up and came out of the room first. She was right behind him. Her cheeks were red and her lower lashes moist. She looked like she’d just woken up.
“She’s a little feverish . . . ” he said.
“I was just wondering if you want to come with me. Code 26AD56,” I murmured to her.
“Can I go now?” She looked up at him.
“Sure. Don’t stay out too long,” he said.
We met up with the boys under the banyan tree in between building complex A and D, fifty-six steps from a bomb shelter, and twenty-six steps from our other meeting point. The boys were already in a circle. We sat down on a vein of the tree.
“What’s the emergency?” the tallest one asked.
I fiddled with the paper, twice folded, now rumpled and sticky with sweat. I could not muster enthusiasm, but was afraid of disappointing them.
“They declared my father dead.” I brought out the certificate.
The boys cheered.
The boy who sometimes gave me oranges stood up and pulled my arms. Everyone got up after us, including the little girl.
We jumped up and down in a circle. My father’s certificate was passed around and waved in the air like a white flag. It felt special again when it got back to me.
“Yay,” the little girl whispered.
“Thanks.” I said.
“He looks nice, your father,” she said. “Are you mad at me?”
“No. Why would I be?” Not until that moment did I realize I’d been avoiding her eye contact. I smoothed the paper out on the ground and looked at my father’s photograph. He was just a stranger. Why did I care what happened to him?
“You should keep this.” I handed her the paper.
“Really?”
“Keep it safe for me.”
“I’ll guard it with my life. I promise,” she said.
“No, don’t. Do whatever you want with it. Pretend it’s yours.”
She pinched me hard on the arms.
“Ouch! What was that for?”
“Just making sure you’re not dreaming.” She smiled. “Look how handsome my father is!” She stared at the photo.
I wasn’t sure whether or not she was joking, but it didn’t bother me. I was only glad to have made her happy, and from a thing as meaningless as that.
8
During Lunar New Year, the adults were drunk on talk of future successes, defeat of old enemies, increase in financial gains, cosmological happiness. Indoors, the light was turned off. Red lanterns in the shapes of dragons, dogs, pigs, lotus flowers, and heroes from popular Chinese dramas created overlapping pools of shadows. I sat on a stool in the kitchen to be close to my soldier. While I watched him, I cracked open roasted pumpkin seeds between my front teeth and saved them in a pyramid-shaped pile next to me so I could eat them all at once. My soldier was hacking a boiled chicken into various parts. On the counter, there were two full plates of more chopped chicken. Another plate had the chickens’ entrails, liver, heart, ovaries. I asked him if I could have some rice wine. He nodded, spooned out a scoop of fermented rice from a plastic container and dripped a little liquid on it. I ate it in one bite. He told me to slow down; fermented rice should be taken slowly. I asked for more. He said he didn’t want me to get drunk, but gave me a scoop anyway, even bigger than the first.
“I don’t feel drunk,” I said after finishing it.
“How would you know if you were?” he said.
I went outside like that, not convinced of drunkenness, with a pleasant tingling on the insides of my cheeks and on my tongue. The little girl was in the sugarcane field spinning in circles. When I was near, she collapsed at my feet. It seemed the clouds themselves were casting a lazy violet on the ground beneath us, rather than merely reflecting the moonlight. It was my second Moon Festival at the camp, and I no longer missed the life I had before. It felt as if I’d always been here and always would be.
“Do you want to hear a story?” the little girl asked.
“Sure.” We walked through the field, the thin, long leaves of the sugarcane brushing our hair and faces. I dangled my butterfly lantern in front of us. I pretended we needed it to see the path in front of us, but instead of illuminating our way, light from the candle reflected through the red film of the lanterns sliced our features
into geometric fragments. “What’s that?” I asked, gesturing to the plastic bag the little girl was carrying.
“Oranges. It’s my full moon gift from father.”
I have always liked the smell of orange. It was the only fruit my mother would peel and feed me herself. I would rest my head on her lap while she dug her fingernails into one and tore off its skin. The bitter and fragrant liquid would splash on my skin, into my eyes, but I didn’t complain. Those were the few times I wasn’t nervous around her. I remember one night when my mother was feeding me an orange and watching television. Gone with the Wind was at the part when a girl stood barefoot inside a barrel of grapes and a boy was kissing up her calf to her inner thigh. I turned my head away to show I wasn’t interested in watching, but it didn’t matter because the image had imprinted itself onto my mind. Whenever I had the chance to be alone, I would see the girl again, her ankles inked with grape juice. I would rub myself gently at first and then not without my consciously willing it to, my hand would work on its own, slowing and quickening until my whole body broke away like quicksand, until it no longer belonged to me. The fresh scent of citrus made the space between my legs warm.
The little girl began her story, “Once there was a king who was in love with his daughter.”
“I’ve heard this one before. It’s boring,” I said.
“No you haven’t,” she said. “He loved her so much that—”
“Tell me something else.” I insisted. For some reason I became agitated.
“Once there was a princess who was in love with her father,” the little girl began.
“That’s the same thing! I don’t want to hear it.” I walked on ahead of her. When I looked back, she was spinning in circles again, mumbling to herself, Once there was a king, once there was a girl, once there was a princess.
I wasn’t ready to hear her story that night, or many more nights after that. It wasn’t until a year later when we were lying on an oxcart loaded with green stalks of bananas and looking at the faint, dusty sky that she would again try to tell me. We were ten years old. She no longer pretended that her father was a king and she was a princess. She no longer told herself that he did what he did out of love. Many times I’d seen her gestures, her expressions, both the brief and the permanent, and felt as though she was telling me and not telling me at the same time. Her single act of rebellion was denying his existence, refusing to admit she had a father. When asked if she could come to my previous birthdays, she didn’t say “I’ll ask dad,” but simply “I’ll see if I can go,” as if she were on her own.
Occasionally, though, he would do something to make her happy. Once he gave her a tube of lipstick that had belonged to her mother, whom he claimed had left right after her birth. She cherished it and stayed home for days without going out to play. As a payment for his gift, I thought.
Her undulating between gross submission and rebellion confused me. Did she love him or hate him? When she finally came back to me, she didn’t bring the lipstick.
“It’s a whore color,” she’d told me.
The flaky skin on her lips still had a maroon stain.
Maybe we just got tired of pretending something wasn’t there, even though it shrouded everything we touched, followed us wherever we went, and bound us to a contract of silence. Or perhaps she told me word by word what her father did because I’d earned it. I’d been at the camp long enough for her to believe I wasn’t leaving her.
The black shadow that had lurked in so many of our early childhood games suddenly had a name. The child kidnapper, the forest full of bent nails, the little girl’s cut. On the oxcart, flies and mosquitos were buzzing around us but we were comfortable. We fantasized about how to take revenge. The best we came up with was that lately, he had been complaining about sharp pains in his chest. Maybe she could climb on top and fuck him until his heart gave out.
I pictured myself in this scene often and relished the face I saw when I looked down at him, fat and filled with blood. I became the little girl, driven with purpose but emptied of feelings. I could not separate myself from her. Her nightmare became my fantasy. Her fury flowed out of me wet and sticky. The spasms that coursed through me were as much mine as they were hers. The only difference between us was that the subject of her inner life was singular, pointed, obsessive, but I did not know who or what I loved and hated with mirrored intensity. My chest contracted painfully from violent emotions and I didn’t know why.
These kinds of fantasies occurred more and more frequently, and I resisted them less and less. Never did I picture my own father in these sexual dreams. Only the idea of one.
One Friday, the soldiers didn’t have rock climbing practice, instead they were in the adjacent yard striking blocks of bricks with bare hands, so the little girl and I had the space in front of the rock wall to ourselves. I had already started assembling our ship out of bricks when the little girl came. By then, I had mastered the design, and so did it listlessly. I decided to expand the ship, adding a room for the little girl’s imagined elephant, an animal she told me she often dreamed about. Having listened to her describe her dreams in lucid detail so many times, I’d begun dreaming about her elephant too. When I told her this, she said she’d sent him to me. I leaned on the deck of our ship, pretending I was looking out at the ocean. As if she could read my mind, the little girl said, “It’s so stormy out there, captain. What if we sink?”
“I’m not captain,” I said. Though I wanted to play what-if, that idea didn’t rouse me out of my lethargy.
“Yeah, you are. You’re your father the captain and I’m your mother.”
This suggestion startled and excited me. I said dramatically, “My love, what should I do? I’m afraid to die—”
“Oh, but you’re already dead,” she said. This made us crack up in hysterical laughter. “It’s me who must leave this world behind to join you. Throw me overboard!”
I threw myself toward her, our chests bumping together.
“I’m afraid I can’t, dearest. I’m nothing but a—ghost,” I said, raising both hands to convince her I was transparent, which was what I assumed ghosts to be.
The little girl sighed, “Must I do this alone?” She climbed on top of the deck, steadying herself as if against a strong wind. “If I must, to be with you again,” she muttered and leapt forward, floundering her arms for seconds in the air like a bird with broken wings about to crash. I gasped at her landing on the concrete with a thud, her elbows bleeding. In our what-if games, she would always act as though everything we said and imagined would materialize and threw herself into her role without regard to the consequences. I climbed out of the ship and went over to her.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She grinned and continued at an attempt to lick her elbow with her tongue. When that failed, she lay down on her back.
“Where is the ocean, do you know?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, but when I went to the prison—”
“I wish we could go there together some day.”
I nodded and took her elbow up to my lips and licked it. A moment passed. She stood up and began removing the bricks from our structure. She started at the hull, pulling out the blocks one by one. The ship looked wrecked—silently—as though it’d yielded against an invisible boulder. The little girl continued to take away the bricks methodically and so quickly that in seconds the whole thing seemed to have vanished before my eyes.
I was old enough to be at the shooting range. I stood behind my soldier, aiming at a cardboard human with my pointer finger when my underwear suddenly erupted with a thick fluid. I was embarrassed and unsure at first if I’d peed myself.
My soldier had recently started to tell me about an old girlfriend who was studying in New York. She was a brilliant chemistry student. At first, he’d calculated all the ways to join her. They wrote each other letters for a year. Sometimes she would se
nd him postcards with pictures of the city. Like in many long distance relationships, when his life no longer compared to or reflected hers, they stopped talking. She’d faded from his mind, but the picture of glass towers floating on equally glassy water remained.
“Everybody dreams about New York in one way or another,” my soldier said while checking the remaining bullets in his gun’s chamber. Even if he thinks he’s not, he is.”
I mimicked his movement with an invisible gun.
“Or maybe it’s that everybody dreams about the United States,” he continued, and made three continuous shots, two of which landed dead center, and one of which could not be found.
I started to hear about the United States more and more frequently in conversation. It was a place that contained equality, opportunities, dreams, elections. Adults spoke of this country as if it were a temple made of money, money plastered to walls, money floor, money roof. Sacrosanct and exclusive.
“Want to try?” My soldier said. “With a real gun?”
I nodded. The feeling in between my legs was suddenly overwhelming, more than ever before. I was sure I hadn’t peed myself because it felt thick, almost solid. I moved behind the yellow tape and squeezed my legs together. Before my soldier could show me what to do, I squeezed the trigger. The bullet left its chamber and I was propelled backward, unprepared for the reverse force. I dropped the gun; it landed on the ground. I crouched down and covered my head with my arms. My soldier bent down next to me.
“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”
I opened my eyes slightly to peer at him over the nook of my elbow.
“You might not remember, but outside our camp—out there, there is no soldier, no gun, no shooting range.”
“What do people do?” I said.
“Go dancing.”
When we left the shooting range, I ran into a bush, pulled down my skirt, and squatted. My inner thighs were stained, evenly on both sides, as if someone had dipped a brush in a pinkish red and painted two leaves there. I liked that I’d begun to change colors and liked even more that the color was red. Once I got home, I planned to scoop out some of the substance and put it in a jar so I could show the little girl. I didn’t want her to have any reason to call me a liar and I wasn’t sure how long red would stay.
If I Had Two Lives Page 6