In a country where many had very little and love is still the one thing left of your own that you can give someone else, it was Say taking back his love from Maida, I am sure, that drove her to the river, because when you are poor, there is much honor to receiving someone’s love. There at the river, Maida cut the lifeline of her orchids, slashing at the roots, and threw them in. As they floated away, she held on to them.
* * *
—
The cassette from 1995 contained only two voices. Mother says the Lee family, who takes care of Grandma Joua, has shut her in one room of the house. A sickness has left her with little energy to stand or walk. Grandma Joua’s white hair has been cut short like a man’s—they claim it is easier to clean. She is losing her mind, Mother says, screaming awful stuff about everyone. About her past. About her husband. Her son. For being an orphan. For being abandoned. Her memory, too, is fading and, with it, the right words. Grandma Joua, that fast voice, speaks even when nobody is near, like she is speaking to spirits. Mother says she tells everyone they should forgive Grandma Joua because she is old, and no more does she know what is right and what is wrong, what is real and what is past.
But when I reached Grandma Joua’s section of the cassette, she says she has not been cursing anyone. She has chased away old spirits by accepting the words of the Bible, and only she is speaking to God. And no one visits her anymore. The Lees lock her in a room because they do not want to hear the Truth. They call her crazy. But I got no sense of that as I listened to her voice. She sounds as she did back when I was twelve. Her loud breathing, as she speaks her words, is strong as my pulse. Grandma Joua says only one person in the world cares for her now, the Lees’ only daughter, but she is growing up, growing old, and soon will be gone, she is afraid, from her life.
* * *
—
The heart, use it enough, it thickens over. Same as your hands and feet, grows tough. And accepts new love, holds it without feeling pain. In the spring of 1996, Say found a new sweetheart. This time, I will kill myself, he said. By then, Mr. Cha had found a job driving a motorcycle cab. Mainly, his customers were orchid collectors seeking the untouched orchids of the remote countryside. It bothered him because he knew the countryside growers did not want always to sell, but sometimes, too much was the money. Quietly, some who did sell asked for buyers from Mr. Cha, and they would tip him if the collectors were generous. Sometimes, the buyers also tipped Mr. Cha if he led them to good orchids. But his savings was not enough to pay for Say’s bride, whose price was $4,300—her father refusing to accept anything but full payment—though Bee’s wife was finally paid for.
One early evening in the seventh month, Mr. Cha brought over his cassette player-recorder. He had heard I had received a cassette from America. I went to my corner of the house and searched in my bag for the cassette. When I came back, he was crying.
Who passed away? I said, because rarely men allow you to see them weep, except for the dead. Tears dripped down his bony cheek and collected into bigger drops at his chin.
When he caught his breath, he told me he had just made $400. I was so happy for him I, too, started crying—I did not make $400 in two years! I was glad these were tears of happiness. But I was curious, and because he was a man you do not give space to, nosy me said, Made, found, or stole? No person I knew made $400 in a day.
Made, he said. I earned it. He told me two whites, their hair the color of rice chaff, hired him to drive them into the countryside. Were they looking for orchids?
Please just show us the beauties of your country.
Opium? Heroin?
Keep driving, they said, fast. Get us a wind to cut this heat.
Far into the countryside, they asked him to pull over at a roadside grill stand. They requested he join them and bought him lunch. Afterward, they wanted to visit the Emerald Buddha temple in town, near Rue Labeottadok.
Where did you get your yellow hair from—is your grandfather white?
No, no, Mr. Cha said. We have yellow hair, too, going back hundreds and hundreds of years. He told them the story of a Hmong warrior who fought the Chinese. So courageous was he in battle, the ancestors’ spirits rewarded him with gold hair. For however long you live, may gold grow on your head. Strange, I thought, because I did not recall hearing that story from my parents or grandparents when I asked about the yellow-haired Hmongs—always, their looks warning me I wanted too many answers. So I wondered if Mr. Cha had created a story because he was ashamed of his hair, this need for a glorious past so, without shame, he could live life in the present. As though life goes on only by one courageous act or decision, followed by another act, another decision. And on and on, allowing him to say, I got here because all these things happened exactly this way, and only this way. We are the seeds of the spirits, Father had said about beginnings. Only gods have no seeds.
Mr. Cha said one of the two men—the skinny, tall one—touched his hair. Then the other—older and balding—held Mr. Cha’s hair in his hand like he was weighing the worth of it, he, solely from touch, able to know the quality and value of something.
You have beautiful hair, the tall man said. He held Mr. Cha’s hair up to his nose and breathed it in. Mr. Cha felt the end of his hair get sucked into the wet inside of the man’s nose. How would you like to have a drink with us at our hotel?
We’ll reimburse you for any lost business, the old man promised.
If he did not need to drive in the humidity for the money, then he surely was not going to. Mr. Cha thought they might buy his hair, which he was willing to cut for the right price. They stopped briefly at the temple, long enough for the whites to drop a sweat, say they had seen it.
At the hotel bar, no more than two kilo-may from the temple, Mr. Cha sat between the whites. The weather sank the liquor right into his gut despite the lunch he had eaten. The whites spoke to each other over him, sometimes looking at him, both touching his hair. An hour passed. The old white asked if Mr. Cha would like to make more money.
How much? Mr. Cha said.
Two hundred from me. Two hundred from him. Four total.
American dollars? Mr. Cha said.
Yes, they said.
What do I do?
In their room, the men counted the money and handed it to him. Telling me this, Mr. Cha’s shoulders started shaking, a few words, now and then, sputtering through the tears on his lips. Soon as his hand felt the money’s weight, he managed to say, knowing it was real, to keep it, he was willing to do anything except die. Because he still had duties.
I did not ask what happened next, I did not want to urge him on. I was quiet because I was thinking of my own husband. And I stood and went to start dinner.
This too much for you? Mr. Cha said. You won’t even let me finish? I can’t even go on—
Whatever you did, I said from across the hut, raising my voice, wanting to be heard, it was for your children. You are a good father. You try your best without a wife. Would my husband believe I was trying my best for our daughter?
After a few minutes, when I did not return to my seat, when I refused even to face him, Mr. Cha walked out of my house, believing, I am sure, I had insulted him by lying to him. What he did not know was I had come to agree with him about one thing, and I needed to walk away, so he could not see me acknowledge he was correct: it was a good thing for him his wife was not alive to see this.
* * *
—
Days later, I told Mrs. Kethavong I needed a one-day break. You finally found a husband? she asked. He visit you while daughter’s in school? When I did not answer, she said, Go on, but tomorrow you must fish. Tomorrow, all you must tell me. All was this that I told her—I added an ending to the story of my husband as my horse: Finally, I had seen enough to know how it would end, that the last river we must cross is wider and deeper than the Mekong. And, no wings to bear us above the burbling w
ater, he could carry me only so far before tiring and sinking, having only human strength.
I went to Brother Pha, a village elder and clan brother to my husband, who knew the funeral rituals and who also played the qeej. I hired him to go with me into the jungle. Into my ker, I placed a dead chicken wrapped in a bag, boiled eggs, an arrow and bow, a knife, a small umbrella, cold rice, a small bottle of rice liquor, four small cups, two bowls, and sticks of incense. Hnuhlee shouldered a ker full of joss paper folded into the shapes of boats, money for her father.
When we started walking, Brother Pha asked me where we were going. The truth was, I did not know. Thirty minutes outside of our village, we entered the path into the jungle. Ahead of us, the feet of some animal scratched away, the sound of a straw broom sweeping a slate floor, startling me with its flight, unveiling a memory. My husband believed different animals can understand each other. When you go hunting, he said, it is not enough to be unseen to only the animal you hunt—all you must keep hidden from. Gibbons have learned to watch for the quick flight of birds, listen for their urgent, piercing calls; barking deer will raise tail at the ghostly howls of the gibbons; wild pigs will run with the deer, chasing squirrels to their holes. But not everything will run warning others of an intruder, giving away your location. You will have a bad hunting day if you are seen.
Travel this path long enough and it will start to climb, more brushes and branches in your way, black stripes barely visible against the dark jungle green, more fallen trees, their leaves yellowing, scattered, skin on the jungle floor, for you to step over, one foot and then the other, back onto the damp orange ground. In one hand, Brother Pha carried his qeej. His other hand held the gong, and tied to his back was a calfskin drum. I had no place in mind; I would let my heart tell me where to stop; I knew only I needed to get higher, closer to the mountaintops, to where they disappeared into clouds; I listened for the flight of birds.
My back and feet hurt, Hnuhlee said after two hours on the trail. Ma, you mean to cripple me with this weight?
I stopped, in the lead, and looked back at her. She was opening a bottle of water. Don’t be disrespectful, I said. The money you carry is important. Don’t curse it. Hnuhlee’s hair was loose, hung over her eyes, her ears. She looked away when she saw me coming toward her, pouring water on her face. I wanted to yell, she was wasting drinking water. But she knew what we were doing, and maybe she was stopping, slowing us down because she refused to accept it. If ever a mother loves her daughter, it is in moments like this, when she knows for the longest they have shared the same dreams, stored away the same hopes. Hnuhlee, too, had waited all these years, keeping alive that image of her father’s return.
I wasn’t cursing it, Ma, she said. I wouldn’t do that.
I held her face in my dirty hands, cleared away her hair so I could see her better. She is a head taller, dark skin like her father, but I see myself in her eyes, the flat of her cheek, the round of her chin. There was a time when I, too, had walked into the jungle with a ker on my back for this man.
Oy, Ma, Hnuhlee said when she saw me wiping away my tears. We have loved him long enough. Forever he will be with us. We respected his memory. I nodded. Hearing it from her, more than if it came from anyone else, made me feel better about my decision, made me believe this was right. I ran a forearm across my eyes. When I turned back to lead us, I apologized to Brother Pha. We women are holding you up.
Don’t apologize, Sister, he said. I know what it is like to retrace your past. It is better to go slow, that way you are certain you won’t miss a step, you won’t get lost.
In a clearing high in the mountains, a small area seemingly untouched by the war, after six hours of walking, animal cries all around us now, my skin warm and wet through my shirt, I slipped off my pack. The bottoms of my feet stung with blisters. Beside a small stream that ran from a place higher in the mountains, I took out the things I had carried. Hnuhlee helped me build a small altar out of river stones. I stuck incense sticks into the spaces between the stones and lit them. I took out two bowls, filled one with rice and eggs. In the other, I placed the chicken. I poured a small cup of liquor and placed it between the bowls. On the ground before the altar, I laid the arrow and bow, knife, and umbrella.
I looked at Brother Pha, said, We do it here. His eyes narrowed, underneath stirring with doubt, held still to see if I might change my mind. His name is Yee Pha, I said. He was born in Phou Keum. He is the son of Hue and Maitong Pha, who live in America now. He is a dead of war. He has no son to send him home. I am a poor woman with only a daughter. This is all I have money for. You, as his brother, help him, please, to get where your ancestors are.
Brother Pha nodded his head. Do not worry, Sister. I will do what the spirits allow. He soaked the ground with a cup of liquor, then asked our ancestors’ spirits to please hear him. Yee Pha, today we call your name to help you rise. He held his qeej between his hands. With the drum, I moved closer to the stream, striking it as Brother Pha had instructed. As he chanted and played the qeej, its sound the language of the dead, to lead my husband home, I told Hnuhlee to burn the money boats and let the ashes drift down the stream, into the Mekong, into the sea, into the ocean. Wherever the ashes washed up on, whether back on this shore or that other, and whatever they touched, whether five feet from us or five million, I wished my husband would find them and know they were from his wife and daughter.
Rise, I said, hitting the drum to let him know. Hear the call from Brother Pha’s qeej. It is playing to lead you home from where the war has laid you down.
Rise, I said. Follow it through the jungle on trails you cut those nights you were by yourself after you left us in search of your parents.
Rise, I said. Leave your gun.
Rise and follow the trail back to the refugee camp, where your daughter was born. Rise and tread again the path we took when I decided to become your wife, after you came back from war the first time. Rise and let go of the hatred and courage you clung to during the long fighting that turned you into a man and me into a woman. Rise and regain your youth, the right to fear without shame, and know again only a body whole. Rise, go back to Fi Kha, where you first saw me, where I gave you a cucumber as a gift. Rise and go on. Return to Phou Keum on that trail now covered with weeds because the falls of our people’s feet no longer land there to keep it clear. Rise, do not tire. I walk behind you, and if the fortunes are good and the spirits of our people see to it, our daughter will be long before she follows us on this road. Rise and walk between your neighbors’ houses. You are almost there. Walk. Push open the door of your parents’ house. Hear the blow of the qeej. Pick up your shirt. This is your first home, the place where you were born.
Insects stopped chirping and trilling, animals silenced their calls, and all held quiet for my husband’s trip home—that is what I want to tell happened. But the qeej and drum had no effect on the world like a sack and engine block hitting water. No ringing silence even, like the ones in my husband’s stories, those I convinced him to share on nights he could not sleep, of how every jungle skirmish, every bomb drop, every grenade explosion, always, was followed by a fleeting moment of truce to let the earth re-form full, to see where things stand, a moment to allow you to walk away, or stay—a time that many men, if by themselves, would dive headfirst into, he said—before death, again, leveled the living. In truth, the noise seemed to get louder now that I was listening. No pauses of hesitation. No silence from fright. Their cries, all bemoaning the heavy burden of living, were only confirmation for me—a language, finally, I learned to understand—that our debts to the dead must always be paid through our living.
Rise, I said, waiting, the drum beating in time with that of my heart, waiting for that silence, for my breath to catch, for the drum to stop.
* * *
—
Within a month, Mr. Cha made enough money to pay off the bride price of Say’s wife. Within tw
o months, he made enough to buy a three-bedroom stucco house, with a stone-floor courtyard, lights, and glass windows. They shared a hand-pumped well with ten other houses. The house was in a different section of Vientiane, and I needed to walk from Phondachet to the river where I fished, then pay a fisherman to take me across the river, then walk another ten minutes before getting there.
I knew Mr. Cha had started using opium, but had said nothing to him. Bee came and got me the day Mr. Cha awoke from a high that made him cough blood. I found him on the floor of his bedroom, dried blood at the corners of his smile. Settled into the lines of his face and cracks of his hands were dirt and opium tar.
Maiker, he said, lifting his head, stuck there in his own waste. How I’ve let my mother down! It is my destiny to see you, so you can scold me with a mother’s tongue about cutting my hair. A Dutch orchid collector had shaved his head, $250 alone for that gold. The black veins there were like snakes around his skull.
How long has he been like this? I said, turning to Bee, to Say, to their wives.
Four days, Say said. We stopped bringing him food. He won’t let me or Bee help him to use the toilet, to clean. Kept shouting, Only a woman! Only a woman! Lay there, smoked, and fell asleep. Woke up only to do it again. He won’t let our wives help either.
Heat some water, I said to the wives, wondering if they had actually tried to get him cleaned, if their love or sense of duty as daughters-in-law could overcome their disgust. I pushed past the brothers and placed the big plastic tub they used for rinsing vegetables in the courtyard. Stand him up, I said. When I pulled Mr. Cha’s shirt over his head, I saw his chest bones, the thin ridges along his stomach. His pants were heavy with piss and shit. Despite the smell being more awful than a dead man, I did not flinch—he could no more hurt me.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 100th Anniversary Edition (2019) Page 40