by Lan Cao
James puts his arms around Mai’s shoulders. “Come close to me,” he murmurs into her ear. She looks at him, suddenly unafraid and intrigued. The miracle of it is this: how little things from such a long time ago can still be remembered as if they had occurred only yesterday. Tamarind trees, not much taller than when she was a little girl, still grace the streets. I feel the impulse to jump up and grab a low-hanging pod, crack it open, and suck on its sticky pulp while twigs scrape underfoot.
“Remember how your Chinese grandmother disapproved of our music?” he asks Mai. He tells her he has gone to Cholon many times to look for her. “I didn’t forget her,” he says. “I never found her.”
She clasps her hands in her lap and gazes down at them. James is laughing at something. His hand rests on the curve at the nape of her neck. She hesitates to tell James where she is staying but he insists on walking her to her hotel. They stand by the entrance, among hotel personnel in traditional silk garb who open the door and bow as hotel guests go by, greeting them in the requisite spruced-up voice. She notices that he is edgy. I too recognize his nervousness. It is like mine. He lingers by the lobby entrance and then tells her that he will see her tomorrow.
• • •
The sidewalks offer us reminders of how things were. Mai’s stomach feels the sharp bite of nostalgia as they examine mementos hawked by vendors, objects of importance only because of their link to something now defunct. James tells Mai that he has all of the South’s old paper money and will give the bills to her. But Mai wants her own. They are being sold and displayed under glass cases. There is the red one-hundred-dong bill with the picture of Le Van Duyet, national adviser to emperors, great statesman, and protector of Christian missionaries from persecution. There is the orange-tinged five-hundred-dong bill with a photograph of the Presidential Palace. It was through the iron gates of this building that two North Vietnamese tanks crashed when they entered Saigon that last day in 1975. Despite James’s protestations, Mai buys both and pays full asking price for them without even bothering to haggle. I remember the plates of banh cuon Uncle Number Five and our mother bought with a one-hundred-dong bill and the red plates of fireworks they bought with the five-hundred.
What they need is simply to touch. They hold hands as they walk. The sidewalk is being repaired and whole cement tiles are being lifted up by jackhammers. The gravelly surface pokes at her heels with each step she takes. Peanut shells are scattered about.
The reality is that they have today together, and any other way of looking at time, perspective, scale, or distance, hardly matters, at least on the surface. They spend the day lounging about, walking here and there, as if it were the very route they were meant to take all their lives. They sip pressed sugarcane juice when they are thirsty, eat steamed peanuts to tide them over until the next big bowl of pho noodle soup. A breeze soaks up the humidity. Wind. So sweet and cool. They walk into several boutique shops on the main boulevard, the old Tu Do Street, so Mai can buy souvenir lacquer boxes as gifts for her law firm friends in Virginia. Saleswomen instantly lift their heads and slide toward them, shadowing their every movement in a space-invading way that Mai finds offensive.
“They don’t know any better,” James tries to mediate. “It’s a different sense of space here,” he explains. Of course I understand. But not Mai. He nudges her to admire the lacquer shine and luster and the mother-of-pearl inlay. He tells her when she hesitates that anything that seems mundane here because it is one of so many will be beautiful in America. They pick out several sepia photographs of old Saigon for her to frame when she gets home. A vendor hawking durians stops when she sees Mai eyeing her basket from the store’s threshold. James picks out a medium-sized one and asks her to split its thorn-covered husk open. He does not want the vendor to touch the flesh. I know it is a sweet concession to Mai’s concern for contamination.
“Leave it in the fruit,” he tells the vendor. It is the first time she hears him speak Vietnamese and she is impressed by it. Mai loves that moment when the tongue touches the durian’s soft, creamy flesh. She loves how the custard pulp melts in the mouth. Mai is in a sweat, but she is happy squatting on the sidewalk with James by her side.
They walk past the Sheraton Hotel with its burnished marble walls and stairs, its ground floor housing a glass-encased Gucci store, then past the Esprit shop occupying the large corner across the street, past the row of small boutiques selling designer jewelry and other curios made of buffalo horn and tortoiseshell, past restaurants and cafés adjacent to the relatively new Versace store that has, James said, recently displaced a small coffee shop. Mannequins flash their metallic sheen through transparent designer dresses and half-zippered jackets. A wind starts to blow, then intensifies as it whistles toward the harbor. James pulls Mai under an aluminum awning into a small newspaper shop with racks of postcards in the front. A man looks at them through lifted eyes, barely nods, then returns to rocking himself slowly on a cane-bottomed rocker.
Mai is drawn to this small space crowded with stacks of old books and magazines, maps, and other miscellaneous papers. Old books are stacked against a row of windows in the vestibule. The sun enters at a slant, making dust speckles visible against the glass. She peers through a glass-enclosed bookcase, searching meticulously through the tattered covers for an English copy of The Tale of Kieu, the book she has brooded over since our mother first read it to us. She sees the curious stack of belongings pushed against a wall—photo albums, loose photos, letters—intensely personal, yet offered for sale, and in a surge of emotion she reaches over to touch it. She picks a random photo from a pile stored in a plastic container. It is a picture of a young woman, face illumined, palely but professionally, by the photographer’s ivory light. It is but one among many loose photos. There are photo albums that remain wholly intact. There are family snapshots. Some are Polaroids, others glossy three-by-fives with white borders. Their colors, once lustrous, are now leached away. Some are wallet-sized, tinted a faint sepia. Next to the pile of photos are letters, evidently international by the flashes of red and blue along the envelopes’ borders. Some have never been opened and perhaps never delivered to their intended recipients. Mai eyes the left-hand corner where the sender’s address is written. San Jose; Washington, D.C.; Frankfurt; Paris. Judging by the postmarks, most of the letters were sent by boat people between 1978 and 1980, writing home to let their loved ones know they survived crossing the various oceans.
A faint smile crosses the proprietor’s clouded face as he moves into their line of vision. He tells them he bought the photos and letters thirty years ago.
“Why?” James asks.
“So things that deserve to be passed down to someone won’t be discarded. Their owners fled and left everything behind.”
James nods and gives him a smile in return. He is leafing through a pile of old maps. His eyes widen as he follows the many red and black lines and the circles and stars used to designate towns and cities.
The proprietor intervenes. “These date a long time back,” he says. He tells James he has sold many of them to film people making movies about Vietnam. He proudly names some of the movies he has been involved in. Indochine, The Lover, and The Quiet American.
When they leave that store, with its unclaimed photographs and letters, I feel a discomforting countercurrent. There is a swell beneath the waves. I muster all the strength I have to suppress it, for fear it will seep through our shared skin and infect Mai’s time with James. And then I am surprised by the realization: This is the first time I have wanted to protect Mai from the invading presence of my turbulence. This is the first time I have wished to avoid a deliberate escalation with her. Indeed, for this moment, as I watch her walk with James toward the harbor, her pale face for once serenely disposed, I feel a rare surge of kinship with her.
Mai wonders aloud to James whether any of our family photo albums might be among the pile edged against the wall in that store. What would
be the chance of that?
• • •
One day in the late afternoon, almost early evening, Mai takes James by the hand and tells him she wants to do something with him that day. They are at the harbor of the Saigon River again, where several large ships, one a rusty oil freighter, are waiting to be repaired. A gauntlet of shirtless men, wearied by the sun’s heat, nonetheless take aim, striking molten iron with hammers half the length of their bodies. Downstream, a row of boats are rafted together by the shore, swaying and tugging against the mooring lines. The water naturally draws one’s eyes toward the horizon, across the river, where coconut trees etch the water and sky with reflections of meditative green. A lone fisherman stands on the wharf by a railing of eroded plywood and casts his rod, its monofilament dancing with the movement of wind and water.
Mai has made all the arrangements by phone. She has timed it so that the trip will be swathed in the purple half-light our parents loved. She searches for a boat with a large dragon’s eye. The boat’s owner, a frail middle-aged man, looks at her balefully. He is full of reverence and sentiment. He understands the purpose of the trip.
He crouches down, gives the motor cord a scrupulous tug, and pulls it in a single stroke. We are under way.
Mai runs her hand against the boat’s warm, wooden flanks. This is a busy river with boats chugging upstream and downstream. Green water hyacinths float on the water in tight, twisted swatches past a pale crescent of gray-shingled houses and houseboats where families are cooking and eating. James leans against the boat’s side, his hands wrapped behind his neck. Hydrofoils slice through the oil-filmed water, taking passengers on a two-hour trip to Vung Tau. As we get farther from the city center, away from the sluggish cloud of smog, I smell a trace of sea salt in the air. I feel the ripple and pull of currents under the boat as it heads into the gathering distance, toward the deep, past-dispelling curve of the open waters. James switches positions, pulling Mai toward him. He is so close to her I can feel his breath against my cheeks. He offers her a bottle of water from his knapsack.
Of course I know what Mai is doing but I don’t think James knows the plain facts of the voyage. It is a nice enough evening for a river cruise. After a few moments she asks him if he knows why they are on the boat. Before he can answer, she puts her hand in her rucksack and with great deliberation removes an object from it. She holds it with both hands and stares into the deep blue before us.
She shows him the smooth metallic box that contains our father’s ashes. Mai looks at James and tells him she wants both of them to drop her father’s ashes into the water. I feel sad our father’s life turned out as it did. But I am also strangely reassured. Through our father, I see it is possible to love one person in your lifetime, the way he loved our mother. It is possible for love to endure.
Mai is sending him off the way he would want to be, not fixed and earthbound and weighted down by a headstone but free and flowing, untouched by ephemera. And then suddenly, a thought she has been quietly struggling with enters her head, and with clarity and precision takes on the shape of a decision: She will not try to find our sister’s grave. The cemetery where Khanh is buried is run-down and half-abandoned. There can be nothing consoling about it.
James looks at Mai solemnly. “Your father used to stand by a patch of flowering weeds and watch us kick the ball around the soccer field,” he says. “He wanted to hear you talk.” I know James is referring to the time when Mai lost her voice after Khanh died. “He wanted to hold on to the sound of your voice,” he adds.
It is a pleasure for Mai to be given that memory of our father.
Mai chooses this moment to tell him that she has another sister somewhere in Vietnam. She goes on to tell him about our mother and Cliff. She anticipates questions but James is unfazed.
“She was taken to an orphanage in Vung Tau. I think I should go there to see if there is a record of her. Maybe find out what might have happened to her,” Mai says.
“There was only one orphanage in Vung Tau and it was demolished a few years ago,” James tells her. He explains matter-of-factly that our sister might have already left the country. There is a program for Amerasians who want to leave, James tells her. Many have left.
Mai asks him if he is surprised by this story and he tells her no.
“Anything can happen in life,” he says. “Look how we have found each other.”
The steel-gray water churns, far from the seductions of the world, its surface sequined with a spectrally silvery foam. The boatman turns around and flashes his wide-eyed, brows-up look, as if to ask, “Here? Or here?”
“Here,” she volunteers. Here has a fine, generous sound to it. This body of water will merge at some point with the South China Sea. Mai smiles at him, and he takes that to mean anyplace in this vicinity is fine. Here it is, then. Seaweed tinges the water green. He turns off the motor and lets the boat drift in the salt-smelling breeze. Their names differ and they seem separate and distinct but oceans and seas are all connected to one another in a tumultuous web.
From where I sit, the great body of water before us prophesies not boundaries but continuity. I know Mai picked this body of water because of our mother. I stare it down. For years she was a ghost, invisible, absent, living a life apart from us, occasionally pantomiming devotion. Now she is somewhere in the South China Sea. Soon our father will be released to join her.
A conflicted tide moves through me. I still feel the piercing pain of Mother’s rejection. With clarity I see the angelic face, not looking at me. Years later I am still waiting for her to complete her gaze toward Father and me. But now on this boat I feel tiny valves opening up in me, expanding the blood vessels and opening up the pores. I fight to contain myself. A strange sound escapes me. The barriers between Mai and me have been weakened. She feels my cries and I feel hers, as if our nerves glow, crosshatched, and we are bound together by a maddening, common vulnerability.
This is as good a place as any, I think. Waves slap the sides of the boat and produce a ravaging swell of foam. Mai stands up with James. The water is alive, its skin breathing. Mai looks straight down into the exploding waves. In one swift movement, she dips her hand into the box, as if what she is doing requires speed and determination. The ashes are there, inside a plastic bag. They feel personal—velvety and soft, fine like soot, with the occasional grittiness of bone. Mai gives the bag a little shake and tilts it toward the water, sifting the last handful into the waves where they immediately disappear. It is both shocking and comforting. At that instant I do not feel bereaved. There is beauty and fierceness in the moment itself: shafts of purple, granular light hammered against the water, a profound distance at once vast and seemingly bottomless, the sun beginning its preternatural descent, disappearing slowly beyond the curve of the earth.
With sudden force, the waves turn choppy. Mai hands an envelope to James and together they scatter petals of roses on the water’s surface where the ashes were and watch them float away, pulled inside a membrane of shimmering ripples, inside a submerged, reconfigured symmetry. The boatman nods. I imagine it is a signal of his implicit approval—here is a little golden hush of consolation, the surprising relief of death held and released.
This is what I would want for myself as well, when the time comes. This is one way of putting to rest the question about home. Tears well up in my eyes. And just like that, with a modest turn and tilt of the mind, everything shifts as I slip into an invisible line of trip wires where equilibrium itself is provisional and arbitrary.
Mai feels it too. She presses thumb and index finger against her lids. The interior voices are back in full punctuated heave. I calm myself and, in so doing, calm Mai.
Sometimes things are aligned and we feel singular and contained. Sometimes things are jumbled and mixed up, a shuddering mystery that needs to be carefully dealt with.
Mai leans back, resting her head against the bulk of James’s chest. Her
stomach claws momentarily inward. For now she focuses all her attention on calming the unruly tendrils of my frayed nerves.
The boatman whistles a tune. The wind blows a cool breeze into my face. I keep my eyes shut and feel myself being on the same side as Mai and little Cecile. All of us are here to remember our father and mother. Mai breathes deeply. She is aware that all of us are caught in the same vortical web of emotions. Too many feelings collide, clashing and canceling one another. My heart is stilled and inverted, suspended inside a long slow wave of conflicting tides. It will soon be over. I imagine the thin strip of verdant coastline that lies ahead as the boat makes its way, by infinitesimal degrees and on an even keel, back to shore.
• • •
Mai holds James’s hand when she steps onto the dock and does not let it go. She hangs on to him to reassure herself of his continuing presence. The little trip to release our father’s ashes has bared her nerves. The road opens up in front of them, as if to coax them along the shortest route to the hotel. James puts his hand on the small of her back to nudge her small, erratic steps forward. She allows the fatigue to take over even as her body rights itself and cooperates with his efforts. He walks into the lobby with her and ushers them into the elevator.
Without a word, he picks her up and carries her to the bed, a gesture both innocent and charged. His bare arm rubs against her hair, making electricity. The mattress sinks slightly but holds firm, offering relief. He lies next to her, caressing her hair and stroking her face. A silence, deep and pervasive and free of explanation, floats and swirls about. The air conditioner blows, stirring coolness into the flush of humid air. Her head rests on the slope of his shoulder. There they lie in their somber colors and lingering warmth, caught between stillness and motion.
He holds her tightly, his face wet from her tears and his. Their shared memories come at them obliquely. “Mai,” he keeps saying, whispering her name merely for the sound of it. Coming from him, the word is uttered with a slight upward tone, as if to suggest a question when it is in fact meant as a declaration. Occasionally his tone takes an upward, then downward, turn, and her name pronounced thus takes on a different meaning—“always.”