A torrent of rain flooded the street. I paid a moped rider to take me across the river.
“Hang on tight,” he said. I gripped his shoulders as he slid through lines of traffic, our bodies always at a slant from the ground. We rode onto a ferry and waited as it carried us to district two. Behind me grey sheets of rain fell mercilessly. The paper my neighbor had given me with the little girl’s address had soaked thin. Rivulets of ink flowered from the letters.
“I can only take you as far as the twin temple,” he said.
“I don’t know my way around here. Is it possible to go to the address I’ve given you?” I said.
“I suggest we go back then. You can try again another day when it isn’t pouring.”
“Isn’t it the monsoon season? I’m only here for a few days. I can’t wait till it dries up.”
“I’m sorry, miss,” he said.
Once the ferry parked, we rode down a slated chrome ramp and entered the red country. The moped wheels dove deeper and deeper into the soft, red mud as we pushed forward. Despite the water being over our ankles, many cafés and shops stayed open. The waiters held metal tins, which they used to scoop up water off the floor and pour it back out to the street. Here the road was open and empty except for a few naked boys playing in the rain, their chests, necks, faces smeared with mud.
“I can’t go any further. I need to push the moped back,” the rider said.
“Where is the temple?”
“Keep walking straight on the main road. It’ll be up there to the left.”
I gave him more money than the amount he’d asked for at the beginning of the trip. He refused. “Good luck,” he said, and turned his moped around, pushing it toward the river.
I went into a makeshift shop, propped up by three wooden planks and covered with a large plastic tarp. The shop sold various paraphernalia, seemingly only one of each item, including a sewing kit, chewing gum, an energy drink, a mousetrap. Though my clothes were already wet, I asked for a raincoat and a map. The shop owner was a middle-aged woman wearing old pajamas with a pattern of daisies. Her stomach protruded through the thin fabric.
“A map?” she said. “Like a world map?”
“A map of this area.”
“There’s no such thing. Where are you going?”
“The twin temple for now. I heard they have lodging there. I don’t think I’ll make it to where I want to go tonight.” I unfolded the sticky address paper to show her.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure where that is. The folks at the temple will help you out.”
“Do you have a phone I can use?”
She took a phone from her back pocket, which unlike the makeshift tent, was shiny and of the latest mobile technology. I told her Minh’s telephone number and she dialed it. When he picked up, I told him my predicament and that I wasn’t able to go back tonight. He said that if I took too long I might not get my daughter back because his wife adored her. Since their house had flooded, she was teaching my daughter to fold swans and put them out to float. In the background, I heard my daughter yell swim, swim in Vietnamese.
I plodded in the mud. My legs were wooden. Fatigue crept in, making me question the reason for my return, the aimlessness of my direction. I thought about my last conversation with Lilah and Jon. It had been windy that night. Jon’d had to shut the door to the back porch because tree branches were hitting the glass windows. I’d not noticed the beginning of a storm that night, just as I’d ignored the darkening sky when I set out to look for my childhood friend. For thousands of years, it seemed, the natural world had curated men’s sorrow—warning us of our fates, linking us—the material world—to the immaterial. I looked around me for signs that I wasn’t alone, that Jon and Lilah were still with me if in some other form. But if they were in the earth beneath and the sky above, I couldn’t decipher their message. I asked myself if this might be how you go mad—by looking so desperately that you would eventually see what wasn’t there.
I came to a sea almond tree and stood underneath it for a while. Its leaves, a bright glistening green, stood out against the maroon mire, brown clay roofs on houses, the inflamed sky. I looked behind me and saw I’d arrived at the temple, which was a small, two-tiered building with cement walls. There was nothing that indicated it was a Buddhist sanctuary except for a necklace made out of jasmine flowers hanging on the stakes of the gate. I went inside. Off to the side of the main building, another much smaller one seemed to be in progress; stacks of bricks were unevenly lined up to each other. As I got closer, I realized it was probably the work of a child’s game. I walked up a flight of stairs. The doors were open as pagodas were expected to be. Two straw mats covered the cement floor. On a wooden table sat a ceramic Buddha, cracked from age. He wore many jasmine necklaces. The whole room smelled of the floral fragrance. On either side of him were candles and incense. I sat down on the mat. For a long time, nobody disturbed me. With my eyes closed, I listened to the static sound of rain and the hollow wind hissing its way through fissures on the walls. A novice monk in gray robe came out to greet me and lead me to a back room where there were baskets of fruits and a stove. He gave me tea and asked whom I wanted to dedicate my prayer to.
“I wasn’t praying,” I told him.
“Your eyes were closed for a long time in front of Buddha.”
“I was only resting,” I lied. I’d been talking to Jon and Lilah in my mind.
“Would you like me to pray for someone?” he said
“They’re gone now. They don’t need prayers,” I said.
“Everything comes back. Like a circle.”
I asked him if I could spend the night. I was shivering.
“We could provide food, but no lodging. You’re a woman,” he said.
“Should I go back out there and pray for you to let me stay?” I said, more bitterly than I’d intended. The young monk’s face grew pink. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired,” I added.
“You can sit in our library. If they ask, I will say you fell asleep reading books,” he said.
“You came up with that rather quickly.”
“We have to read many scriptures,” he said.
As the sun came up, I was woken by the chants of monks. I went out to the courtyard. The air smelled fresh from the rain. Doves and tiny quail covered the ground and pecked at the rice someone had left there for them. An older monk in a mustard-colored robe was sweeping leaves on the ground. I came up to him. I described the novice monk I’d met last night and asked where he was so I could thank him. A beguiling smile swept across the monk’s face.
“It’s been a while since the brothers have visited us, but it seems they are back,” he said. “Are you by any chance a twin?”
I told him I wasn’t.
“Curious. Our temple is named after the twin brothers. After one died at war, the other shaved his head and joined the monastery,” he said.
“Which war?” I said, suspicious that I was being lured into a trap.
“He died here at this temple with the same bullet wound through his chest that his brother got. At first it looked as if he had committed suicide, but the weapon wasn’t found. Murder didn’t seem likely either since he was a simple novice monk at a modest sanctuary. Who would look for him here?”
“The person I saw last night was alive. He wore a gray robe,” I said.
“Look around you. There is no gray robe anywhere. Our garments are either brown or yellow,” he said. “In the past, one or both of the brothers had appeared in the uniform they died in. The people who’ve seen them before were also twins. You’re the first one who isn’t.”
I walked away from the monastery as the satiny light of the morning sun gushed through the invisible and gaping hole in my chest. For the first time since I came back to Vietnam, I felt welcomed and wanted—my twin, my little girl was still waiting for me.
The monk told me it was best to go on foot because the path was muddy, bumpy, and too narrow for vehicles to pass. I tried to walk in a straight line through the outdoor market, but was frequently diverted by salesmen and women offering me their merchandise. When I got to the end of the market on the other side, I came up to a bridge that fit the monk’s descriptions: it was locally known as a monkey bridge because it was built out of rope and only a few worn out wooden boards. You had to sway with the bridge as you walked across it. On one side of the bridge, houses were propped up only a few inches above the river by wooden planks. Children swimming in the river screeched with laughter as they watched me inch across. Several times, my foot missed the board when I tried to focus on steadying my upper body. I thought of how my neighbor had made this journey before based on a single address he found in the district archive. Though he hadn’t said it specifically, I now knew it couldn’t have been easy. I was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude.
How fortunate that she was really there. As soon as I set foot on firm ground, I saw all around me young green shoots of rice and felt as though she was near. Water buffalos stood around, wagging away flies with their tails. I walked the seemingly endless field and arrived at a village.
She was sitting on the ground near a banyan tree, her body partly covered by shadows of leaves. Immediately I recognized her features, though half of her body was marred by fire. Or perhaps it was from her burns that I knew. I bought a bag of sugarcane juice and watched her from afar. Her palm was faced up in her lap and her lips trembled. A woman who was walking by dropped a few coins and something wrapped in banana leaves, probably rice pudding into her hand. My friend did not move or acknowledge this gesture of kindness, but continued to stare ahead. I asked the owner of the juice cart about her.
“That woman there? The poor thing lost her mind after her husband had a stroke and died. The women around here love her. They bring her and her little girl something every day,” he said.
“She has a child?”
“The brightest thing you’ve ever met. Too bad she’s cooped up inside all day. What about you? Where are you from? How did you end up in our little village?”
“Far away. It took me years to get here.”
He gave me another bag of sugarcane juice. “Take it to her for me. She’ll know who it’s from. I’ve been asking her to marry me for years. You might wonder why, since she is crazy and some might say she’s not even half good,” he gestured to his own face. “But when I look into her eyes, I feel like she understands me but chooses not to answer. Maybe I’m the crazy one.”
I thanked him, went under the banyan’s shade, and sat down next to her. I handed her the bag of juice. We drank our juices together.
“You have an admirer,” I said.
She didn’t respond or look at me.
“When I saw the rice paddies, I thought it must be you who planted them. It had to be. How foolish I am not to know you would never work in any kind of field again,” I said. She stopped drinking the juice. I couldn’t read her facial expression since there was none. I watched her breathing for any change. Perhaps I’d imagined it but it seemed her breath became more shallow and rapid. I said nothing and sat next to her until the sun retreated out of sight and a pale moon cast a bluish light on my friend’s face. I took a piece of paper from my bag and put it in her open palm. It was the only drawing of hers I’d ripped out of my notebook before we burned everything. She had drawn a giant hand, the palm an ocean, holding two miniature elephants. It was a dream she’d insisted I could join when I would go to sleep. She didn’t look at it.
“Your admirer was right. You’re not crazy,” I said. “Say something please.”
She looked at me, her face blank, “I don’t know you. I have no idea who you are.”
Her words grated me. I felt at once invisible and vulnerable to shards of pain. My neighbor had said she was ill. I had not known it was an illness so acute and isolating it could not be cured.
We sat together until night fell. The whole time my lips were pressed together. I was worried I would say the wrong thing. She seemed oblivious to my struggle, and maybe my existence. The sky started to sprinkle again. She stood up and walked away from the banyan tree. I followed behind.
We reached a low bamboo fence. She went in and left it open behind her. I continued to follow silently. Her house was simple and orderly, a straw mat in the corner for sleeping, an oil lamp, and a few manga books. Everything had its own place on the floor. There was no indication of a mad woman living there. A little girl was sleeping shirtless on the floor. When she heard us, she woke up and crawled toward her mother. The girl had round and large pupils, which stared at me.
I bent down to talk to her, “I have a daughter about your age. Would you like to meet her?”
The girl nodded fiercely.
“I’ll bring her tomorrow. What’s your name?”
“Kem,” she said. “Like ice cream!”
“You are just as lovely as an ice cream,” I said.
“Mama, do you have ice cream?” Kem said to her mother.
My friend sat down on the straw mat and took the things people had given her that day out of a plastic bag. She gave the rice pudding to her daughter and ate the ball of sticky rice herself. The girl ate the pudding ravenously. She consumed every bit of it with delicious pleasure, the ground beef and pork, the mushrooms. She gave me the quail egg inside the pudding.
“Thank you. When I was a little girl, I always saved the egg for last so I know how special it is.” I asked my friend how old her daughter was.
“Five,” she said.
The girl smiled a mouthful of crooked teeth. “Are you going to live here?” she said.
“I have to go tonight, but I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise.” I said. “What are the books over there? Are you reading them?”
“I look at pictures,” the girl said. “I love the pictures!” she crawled to the stack of books and took one out to show me. I noticed she preferred crawling rather than walking. Her knees and palms were calloused and black from dirt. She showed me The Queen of Egypt manga, the same series I’d loved as a girl except these covers were different, a new edition. She opened to a dog-eared page and pointed to a word bubble.
“The queen is saying to this man take a bath, you’re so dirty!” she said. I smiled at her made-up version.
“He does look filthy, doesn’t he?” I said.
My friend snatched the book from her daughter’s hand and threw it in the corner. In one swift motion, she pulled down the girl’s underwear and slapped her behind repeatedly. “How many times have I told you not to make shit up anymore!” She pushed and the girl fell over. She rolled onto her side, pulled her knees up to her chest and mumbled pained sounds, though she didn’t cry.
“If you want to come back, come here and teach her to read. Otherwise, don’t bother,” my friend said.
I agreed and left.
That night at Minh’s house, my daughter told me she could count to twenty in Vietnamese and learned twenty animal names in Vietnamese as well. I fell asleep to her reciting rabbit, bear, horse, monkey, rabbit, snake, dog, cat . . .
In the morning, I placed an international phone call to my neighbor. It was about eight o’clock at night in New York. He picked up, hungry for information about QQ. He expressed his concern about her getting stomach flu because neither of us got antiviral shots before going. I told him we were in Ho Chi Minh City where life was urban and we lacked nothing. I said that considering this was our birth country, he sure worried a lot. He apologized, saying that he’d been back and knew things had changed, but continued to think about it the way it was when he was a young boy. I updated him on Minh: that he wasn’t well off and felt regretful of the opportunities he’d passed up, but was happy.
“His wife is kind to us. She’s teaching QQ to read Vie
tnamese,” I said.
“That’s something we should have done, but it’s difficult—” he said
“I know.”
“It is easier for me than for you. I’ll make an effort to talk to her in Vietnamese from now on,” he said.
“We don’t even talk to each other in Vietnamese.”
“Little by little.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“We’ll try.”
My daughter got a cold so we couldn’t go back to my friend’s village as I’d promised. I didn’t have a way to let her know so I had to accept waiting until QQ got better. Two days later, we took a taxi to the market near the Twin Temple in district two. From there we walked our way back to the village. QQ was good for most of the trip, only complaining a few times and scratching at the mosquito bites on her ankles. Her legs were not long enough to step from one board to the next on the monkey bridge so I carried her on my back. When we got to the rice field, she tried to press her head to my hip. I realized she was afraid of the water buffaloes.
“That’s con trau—one of the words you learned. They are nice animals. They won’t hurt you,” I said.
She became excited and pointed at one buffalo and then the next, repeating con trau, con trau, con trau. We arrived at the village. I looked for my friend right away at the banyan tree, but she wasn’t there. The juice cart’s owner told me he hadn’t seen her for two days. I held my daughter’s hand and we half-walked, half-ran to the little house with bamboo gates.
In the candid sunlight, the walls looked greyer, the front door splintered at the corners. Inside, an unnatural heat emanated from where my friend and her daughter lay. On the floor, the bamboo wrap from the rice pudding was spread out. The leaves looked chewed on.
“Mama’s sick,” Kem said.
“Come here, Kem. You and QQ go play outside.” I handed them a bag that I’d brought, full of fruits, sticky rice, and mango cakes.
If I Had Two Lives Page 21