Genius Loci

by Edited by Jaym Gates

  Thus my story is a hybrid of this experience—a clear reflection of the fact that I am a Vietnamese American—a person that has survived that flight from Việt Nam. One for whom the word "hope" has become a strong part of my cultural identity rather than "suffering." My story has a happy ending—it departs from the mythology and legends of Vietnamese ghost stories which all end in tragedy. I have yet to come across one that has a happy ending (in the American sense of a "happy ending").

  It's not that I want to minimize the experience of boat people. Rather, it is a fantasy dream. A dream in which I am able to do what I can never do. Relieve the spirits that hang over the South China Seas, usher them into peace and tranquility (hopefully they have found their own way—but I have no power to do this or help them with this other than my own intentional thoughts) and…Can I say it? Bring back my cousin and his wife who fell prey to pirates in the South China Sea. He is dead, she is…? Through my story I erase or obliterate their tragic fates, bring them back from the dead into this country where they can join their parents and siblings, where they can celebrate their sacrifices so that their family can survive together in another land.

  ***

  They are in the fragmentation of raindrops during monsoon season and the quivering of evaporating dew in the dawn of sea salt mornings. I am intimately familiar with them, for I have always been surrounded by spirits. Our village was built around a cemetery abandoned during the war. That was where we migrated to when our hamlet was massacred and over a thousand lives lost. Ghosts were seen as regularly as any villager, wandering through the tombstones in our gardens, passing the evening dinner table, and swirling in the incense in our temples. I often caught a glimpse of them in the air as if in shards of broken glass. With them always lingered a scent.

  It was this same scent that permeated the air when we drifted into the crests of the South China Sea. It was intermingled with the smell of misery and remorse and the taste of sweetened rust, as if you plunged an abandoned nail into sugar cane and then sucked on it for days on end. I knew then that we had ventured into that ghostly stretch of sea in which the souls of people still lingered aimlessly, struggling against the powerful waves, gagging at the descent of salt water into their lungs, playing out their deaths over and over again as their hope for life somehow continued long after their demise.

  As soon as her swells began to coil around the boat, I felt the mood on board shift. Elders grouped together above us on the deck to set up a small altar. Damp joss sticks were lit and inserted into nicks in the wood and muffled invocations whispered.

  “Let us pass in peace dear sister, dear brother, dear mother, father.”

  From the darkness of the cabin below, I felt them pass through me, the victims of the sea, friends and family and strangers.

  #

  Twice she had beaten me. Swallowed my brother and sister, captured scores of people in my village, and betrayed my father.

  “I hate you,” I whispered to her.

  “Mine…” I thought I heard her whisper back to me.

  But it was only the sound of her salty tentacles rippling against the rotten wood of our fishing boat. My back was turned to her as I methodically dumped the mixture of bile, feces and urine that had been collected in the buckets kept at various corners of the small boat. She felt uncharacteristically calm, a quietness that made me nervous. I averted my eyes from her, focused on my task. The mere sight of her caused such anxiety to well in me that I had taken to severe bouts of vomiting.

  She was nearly impossible to avoid though; her blue green eyes taunted me from all directions. Trying my best to shut her out, and preferring the familiarity of the contents of the buckets to her misleading beauty, I studied the mixture of bits of rice and undisturbed fish bones from the previous night’s meal. They were the markers of our life. So long as we breathed, these buckets would be filled.

  Leaning back, I dipped the first bucket into the warm waters, keeping my eyes on the deck in front of me, following the lines of the wood grain. Instantaneously, I felt her tongue brush against my fingers, lapping at the blistering salt seared there. I pulled back reflexively, causing the bucket to fall overboard. Swearing, I reached to retrieve the bucket. It was then that I caught it out of the corner of my eye—a smudge of blackness on the horizon, half dipped into the ocean, half set against the sky. I turned toward it, although it loomed over the sea.

  Within seconds the vastness of the sea reached out and struck me flat across my face. A wave of nausea overwhelmed me as I was flooded with visions of my brother and sister devoured whole in our second attempt to escape Việt Nam and the faces of children, shallow and starving, in the arms of their mothers who held them above water as they themselves were slowly pulled down, their legs entangled in the seas’ slimy tresses. Nausea buckled my knees, dry heaving the dehydrated contents of my stomach onto the deck.

  “What use is this child of yours?” said the man near me. He gave me a disdainful look and then turned to seek out my mother, whom everyone had paid with their blood and treasure for passage on our family’s small rickety fishing boat.

  His scan of the deck was stopped short at the black mass that was once nothing more than a stain in the corner of the sky. It was gaining size as if it was absorbing

  the sky, the clouds and the ocean around it.

  “Row—row the other way!” my mother yelled.

  “But that will take us back!” But the oncoming blackness motivated all hands. People began to row back towards the country we had fled. Try as we might though, we could not travel as fast as the patch was growing. I felt paralyzed as I watched it swiftly consuming everything around it. With it came a deafening howl and the stench of sweetened rust filled my senses, pungent and sharp. But, here in the black void, I noticed a difference. Here there was also the distinct musk of human sweat perspired in desperation.

  #

  At one time I had loved the sea. Every waking morning was filled with rituals of welcoming her waters, which always stayed damp on my skin. Nearly ten years ago when our father first purchased this boat, we had all looked towards her as our savior, a means to carry us away from Việt Nam. Since we lost Khánh and Trúc though, she was nothing more to me than a cruel deceitful being that could never be trusted.

  Our first attempt was foiled almost immediately by the police patrols along the shoreline. The patrol boat had forced us ashore and all those passengers that did not dive into the waters had been shot on land. Several dozen people decimated within seconds.

  On our second attempt, we got as far as we are now, the South China Sea. On that trip the fear of police had passed into the fear of pirates. We had been six days at sea and our supplies were low. That was when she betrayed us. When we were at our weakest, when the human waste we threw overboard spoke of death and starvation, she let out her siren’s call. And then they came, partners in treachery.

  They invaded our boat, carried away our food and supplies, captured all the women and girls. The screaming was manic with people lunging, flesh and bones sacrificed to attempt to stop them. But they had strength and machetes. And we had nothing. It is a nightmare that keeps playing over and over in my head. My brother had charged at two men who had grabbed my sister. For this the sea clamored up and claimed him.

  As they dragged us onto their ship, I grabbed my sister and dragged her overboard. The sea promptly pulled us down until we were both under our boat. I felt her hand loosen from me in the same instant that my consciousness slipped from me. When I awoke I was lying on the deck, the sound of sobs all around me. My mother hovered above me, her graying hair disarrayed about her face, the body of my father, his face bearing the sharp laceration of a machete, in her arms.

  Despite all this, or in spite of it, three years after burying our father, we began anew, recruiting the same families that had once lost members with us. What else did we have to lose? Many thought we were cursed. All the more reason to flee. We had two choices. A
country that had lost all respect for human rights or the sea with her unpredictable melodies. Which was more treacherous? We chose the sea.

  On this third trip, only twenty-five people came with us. The boat felt oddly spacious, as if each individual had at least five extra inches of space in which to breath. In past attempts, we had crammed a hundred people into our tiny fishing boat. Every inch of space on the boat had been filled with a body, often sitting on top of each other, the hope of escape overriding the need for personal space. Two hundred total for both attempts. Fewer than seventy-five survived those, only to return to Việt Nam were they languished in prison for the treasonous act of attempting to escape. My mother and I were the last of our family of five. We had nothing left to lose but each other.

  #

  With no light, there are no markers of the days and time rolls into itself hour after hour, minute after minute, second after second until it becomes irrelevant. We had among us a single box of matches and a few candles. Though their wicks were long, we sought to conserve them, not knowing how long we’d wander in the dark void. It was on my watch that it first occurred to me that the candle, like my hunger, remained still as if frozen in time.

  The wick seemed not to diminish nor the candle wax drip, and the spoonful of the salted rice I had eaten lay savored on my tongue and cooling in my belly as if I had just eaten it. And yet in the next instant, I was hungry again as if I had not eaten in a month and the candle had burnt down almost to the end of its wick. When I rose to blow it out, for fear of losing our only source of light, I was once again staring at a candle that seemed to have been burning for only a moment.

  Like a story told in reverse, out of order and out of context, moments passed or were about to occur and occurred over and over again as if they just happened. I could not take the inconsistencies anymore. I retreated to the cabin underneath the deck, huddling among the children and elders where I sat numbly staring at blackness all around me.

  Mother poked her head down into the cabin from the deck.

  “Child!” she hissed.

  I ignored her.

  “My child!” She marched down the steps, trampling over people as she made her way to me. Peering right into my face, the flame of the candle in her hand burning my eyes, she pinched me. Hard. But still I refused to respond. What would be the purpose? The damn sea had won again. There was nothing that can explain the darkness above except our deaths.

  “We are dead mother,” I said, “Dead.”

  “Shut up and get up. I need your help!” She grabbed my arm and dragged me up to the deck. She was fierce, like a firefly, unwilling to be daunted. She attempted to lift me up but gravity helped me stay dumb and docile.

  “No mother. There is nothing out there. No light, no life, no fish, no sound, nothing. We are on our journey to the next life. I want to see father. I want to see Khánh and Trúc again.”

  She slapped me then. Hard. It stung and I blinked.

  “Father would be ashamed of you,” she said.

  The words struck at me harder than her slap. I shook her off and started up the stairway, into the impending darkness.

  Reaching the deck, a wave of intense anxiety immediately overtook my senses. I could feel the sway of the water so much more strongly than below deck and the boat leaned, tremulously unbalanced on one side. I searched for something to grasp onto as the feeling of sinking came over me. I whimpered and my knees gave and I fell onto the deck.

  On deck stood and squatted all of the adults on the fishing boat. I should have been with them. I had come of age last year and was by far the strongest and tallest among them. I could see all this in my mother’s fierce eyes. But instead I had chosen to cower among the elderly and the children, welcoming death to my side. At least there my family members would outnumber the living.

  “We need you to help us bring down the broken mast. Its weight is making the boat lean into the water. If it falls, it will bash a hole in the hull.”

  “No…ma…no…I can’t…” Violent images began to flood me. Mother guided me to the mast that leaned to its side nearly cracked in half but not quite broken all the way through. It hung over the side of the boat, pulling it into the water. People were furiously bailing water. The sight of water immediately threw me into a fit.

  I started wheezing, my eyes shut tight. I dropped to the ground again, pulling my arms around my head, blocking out the image of water pummeling me, water pulling Trúc and Khánh into the sea.

  Mother shook me. “This is our boat, this is our responsibility. You know this boat better than anyone here and you are the right size. We are all too small, the children all too small, you are strong. You need to do this or else this boat will sink.”

  I began to inch backwards. I felt my mother’s arms around me, trying to grab me, and I broke into a sprint until I reached the stairs. Before she could catch me, I had made my way back down to the corner of the cabin where I pressed myself against the children there.

  Mother did not return. We listened as the adults began to speak quickly and excitedly, shouting commands and urgings. I clamped my hands over my ears shutting out their voices, shutting out my cowardice. Then there were yells and screams that I could not shut out and a heavy splash into the water.

  The boat began to rock and shake as footsteps could be heard running back and forth, then more shouts and splashing before a sudden chilling silence. We all looked up towards the opening, though the darkness was so profound that we could see nothing.

  Then I heard my mother’s wail. A pang of guilt stabbed at me and I bolted up the stairs onto the deck, reckless of the wrenching in my belly. Immediately I was accosted by a frantic man.

  “This is your boat, we paid you to take us on this hellish trip. Get up and do something or you’ll see your mother die. What kind of ungrateful child are you?”

  Pushing him aside, I ran onto the deck which was completely illuminated for the first time since the darkness had descended upon us. The strong smell of sweet iron filled my nostrils and a chill immediately entered my bones.

  Before me, rising rapidly from the water, was a serpentine creature glowing silver, and massive in proportion. Around it the whipping lashes of the sea framed it on all sides. It roared as loud as thunder, echoing with tortured voices. The monster’s ascent finally halted and at the very top of it was the face of a man, small and severely disproportionate, as thin as a skeleton, the hollow of his cheeks caving inward as his mouth distended unnaturally. He reached two long limbs towards mother, who was sitting stiff in fear on the broken mast, a butcher’s knife in her hand, poised as if in mid-action at the edge of the mast.

  “Mother!” I screamed, shock and guilt mingling violently on my tongue as I realized that she sat where I was supposed to be, doing what I had refused to. I began to scramble up the mast, attempting to reach her.

  Several men and women grabbed oars and began hacking at the monstrosity only to find that it began to sprout limbs—arms, legs, and hands began to distend from the trunk. Mother stabbed her knife at the man reaching down towards her. I inched closer to her, but the sweat and slime of the sea and my own anxiety created a slippery coat on the mast, making me lose my grip and forcing me back down.

  Then faces began emerging from its body, each grotesquely pulled back as if stretched too far. They peered at us, screaming words that were blended one into each other. Their voices dripped of grief and sorrow, speaking of the dream we all had, of escape, of freedom. Faces wavered in and out, faces I knew well.

  Nghĩa

  Thuy

  Ngọc

  Binh

  Khánh

  “Khánh! Mother, its Khánh!”

  I caught mother’s confused expression. In that moment a man directly in front of me pierced his oar deep into the creature, sinking it between the faces of two villagers that once lived side by side, both lost to the sea in our last attempt to escape. Their faces scrunched up in pain.

&
nbsp; For an instant, their voices became clear, calling my mother by her name: “Hoa.” Different tones, different dialects, different pitches, but all the same name. I lunged after her, attempting to climb the mast again but flailing miserably on the oil of my own fear. Mother threw herself onto the broken mast, wrapping herself around it. The limbs of the man at the top of the creature elongated, grabbing mother, tearing the broken mast from the boat. The boat immediately shook sending everyone on deck tumbling.

  Mother’s face twisted in pain as her torso and legs were swallowed by the mutilated human appendages, the trail of a tear etching a faint scar along her cheek. Within seconds she disappeared into the creature. Almost as suddenly as it appeared, it sank swiftly into the water taking its glow deep into the abyss, leaving us shrouded in total darkness.

  Once again, I had been inches away when the sea stole someone from me. I stood and screamed out at her with all the rage in my being.

  “Give her back to me!”

  #

  For durations I cannot remember, the instances of my mother’s disappearance, of arriving on deck to see her perched on top of the mast, of staring at the tumble of arms and legs and tormented faces, replayed itself out of order.

  Around me people began screaming as the spell broke, slipping in and out of what had happened, what was happening, and what will happen. Attempting to avoid insanity, we talked ourselves through each intervalof time. We began to move through time collectively, no longer allowing separation to tear at our minds.

  When I could grab cognizance of the now, it felt as if I was taking a seat within my own body. As soon as confusion came, someone would shout, “Now!” and immediately we busied ourselves; the various tasks of maintaining the deck became paramount to avoid losing our minds. We became more and more cognizant of when we were, of the instant moment and when we would fall out of it. I sharpened oars and created makeshift weapons. I darted back and forth from the deck to the cabin to check on the children who ran in circles, unable to cope with the ever-changing slippages in time, and the elders who sat holding their heads.