Beyond the cemetery was the temple where you used to be able to hear the monks saying their prayers, but the government had come and taken the monks away. If the monks had still been there, Thant, when he was a little older, would have gone to join them for several months to practice his religion like a good Buddhist son. He would have had his head shaved and been given an orange robe to wear.
The whole village had been called together and told that the government had closed the temple. My grandmother had muttered under her breath that the temple was the property of the village and that the gods would destroy the government for closing it. My father and mother had tried to hush her, but not before the officers had heard her. Since that time they had never ceased to watch her.
The Chans’ store was our favorite place in the village. There were all kinds of things to see and smell: fragrant spices, dried fruits, clouds of mosquito netting, pyramids of straw hats, sweets, woven fish traps, snakelike coils of rope, ceremonial candles, incense, and joss sticks. Many of these things were covered with dust, for few could afford to buy them.
In front of the store were some tables where you could have a bowl of noodles or a cup of tea. One of the tables held household possessions for sale. The villagers brought them in to exchange for food or for a little money.
“Mai.” Thant tugged at my arm. “Look, it’s our incense burner.”
“It can’t be,” Anh told him. “What would it be doing here?”
“It is. Part of its tail is broken off just like ours.”
I looked closely at the brass peacock. It did look like the one that had stood on our altar as long as I could remember. Next to the incense burner was something else that looked familiar: a white china offering plate with a border of blue chrysanthemums. I knew it must be ours because right in the middle of the plate was a picture of a dragonfly. Thant was pointing a finger at some ebony chopsticks. There were four pairs bound together by a bit of red ribbon. They were the chopsticks our mother brought out when company came.
“There are your teeth marks, Thant,” Anh said. Once when Thant was very young he had grabbed one and chewed on it. Our father had wanted to punish him, for the chopsticks had been passed down from one generation to another, but our grandmother had said it was a good sign and showed that Thant would eat well all of his life.
Our possessions seemed to be scattered about on the table: rice bowls, our best cooking pot, the kerosene can, our father’s sickle, our mother’s green silk sash with the small tear that she had carefully mended. Anh and Thant wanted to ask the Chans where they had gotten all of our things, but I made them wait outside while I went in to get the tea.
I wanted to tell Anh and Thant the secret of our leaving, but I had given my word. I thought our parents must be desperate in their need to get money for the trip; otherwise they would not have risked selling things that might be recognized by our neighbors, who would surely guess we were planning to leave. I felt sadder than ever, for when my mother told me we were leaving I hadn’t realized everything we owned would have to stay behind and that all the familiar bits and pieces that went to make up our life would disappear.
On our return we saw our father standing at the doorway. We ran down the path toward him, scattering the ducks. I thought our father had never looked so sad, not even when the police had taken him away to the camp for a year. Inside the house we could hear the wailing of our grandmother and the soft hushing noises of our mother.
Thant grabbed at our father’s leg. “Why are all our things at the Chans’? Are we going to get new ones?”
Father frowned. “Where did you see them?”
“On the table in front of the store,” Anh told him.
Father hurried us inside. Calling to Mother, he said, “Chan has our things out for everyone to see. You said he promised to wait until tomorrow.”
“What can it matter?” Our mother sighed. “No one in the village would be so cruel as to give us away. In a few hours we will be gone.”
“You told me we wouldn’t leave until tomorrow,” I said.
Anh stared at me. “You knew something and didn’t tell us.”
“It wasn’t Mai’s fault,” my mother said. “I made her promise not to tell.”
“But why tonight?” I insisted.
“We have heard that the officers are coming tomorrow for your grandmother,” Father said. “Listen carefully. As soon as it is dark, we will leave the village and take the road to Go Cong. We must travel by night. It will be a hard trip and a dangerous one. We can carry only a few things. At Go Cong there will be a boat. I will have charge of the engine.”
“When will we come back?” Anh asked.
At that our grandmother began to wail again. “Who will tend the tomb of your father and grandfather and great-grandfather? Leave me behind,” she begged. “I’m too old to go to some barbarian land. Leave me here to die in peace.”
“We cannot leave you behind. Part of the reason for our going is the danger you are in. I am your oldest son and you must obey me.”
Muttering, our grandmother began to gather together the little envelopes of paper and the small bottles and boxes in which she kept her herbal medicines. She looked at no one. Even Thant could not catch her eye. I saw how old our grandmother had grown. Her skin was darkened and shriveled like the husk of a coconut from years of work in the fields. Her shoulder blades showed through her shirt, sharp as two knives. She was hard and spare like a pebble worn small and thin by a stream.
After checking carefully up and down the path to be sure no one was in sight, our father removed the altar stones and began to scoop away the soft dirt of the floor. In a few minutes he had uncovered a metal chest. He opened it and looked proudly at the tools that lay neatly arranged inside. “These are our passage on the boat,” he said.
We needed to take water with us, so I was sent out to the large brick tank to bring in rainwater. I carried a bit of netting with me to strain the mosquito larva out of the pail. There had been almost no rain, and I had to lean down into the tank to get what little water remained. In another week it would be gone and we would have to carry water all the way from the well in the village. I caught myself. Only we would not be here.
Leaning down into the dark water tank was frightening. Suppose a ma da should be lurking there, I thought. The ma da were the ghosts of the drowned who could not rest in peace until they had lured someone else to perish in the water to take their place. Children were the ma da’s favorite victims. My grandmother told terrible stories of how the ghosts float over the water wailing, “It is cold, so cold.” I hurried into our hut, nearly upsetting the pail. If I was afraid of a rainwater tank, I thought, what was it going to be like with the great sea all around us?
When the darkness came, our father ordered everyone to join him at the family altar. Reverently he lighted the joss sticks. Our grandmother handed him offerings of rice and the tea I had bought to place on the altar. We all fell to our knees and kowtowed. In a hushed voice our father explained to our ancestors why it was necessary for the family to leave our home and our altar. “If we do not go, my children will come of age without their grandmother and their father. There is no one to teach my son his religious duties. In the schools the children learn to disobey their parents. The dead are no longer honored. We ask that you forgive us and when we make a suitable home for you in some far country, that you will come to us and take your rightful place at our new altar.”
We kowtowed once more, and our father told us to take up our baskets. But it was many minutes before we could bring ourselves to do as he asked.
Our grandmother was the last to leave the house, the house of her son, her husband’s house, and the house of her husband’s father. The basket she carried was so large it tilted her whole body to one side. “You’re taking too much,” my father complained. “What do you have in there?”
“There is nothing in the basket but a few clothes and my medicines. Would you deprive me of those?”
Thant wa
s taking double steps to keep up with our father. Our mother and Anh walked hand in hand. I was left to walk beside the grandmother, who grumbled and scolded under her breath. Once I paused to look back over my shoulder for a last glimpse of our house. It seemed to me that the whole family was still back there drinking their evening tea, while the six people who hurried along the path were no more than moon shadows that would disappear with the first cloud. Leaving the house forever made me feel like a turtle that had climbed out of its shell. Anything might hurt me.
Our grandmother yanked at my sleeve to hurry me along. A quacking sound came from her basket. It was the two Tet ducks. The rest of the family was too far ahead to have heard the ducks. My grandmother reached over and pinched me to let me know I was to say nothing. I grinned. It was two things less to leave behind.
PART TWO
The Journey
3
“Our journey to Go Cong will take us two nights of walking,” our father said. “We have no papers from the government giving us permission to leave our village, so we must travel when it is dark.”
At first we kept to the road, where the walking was not difficult, but just before daylight an army jeep rumbled over the crest of a hill. “Quickly!” My father led us into the brush, where it was swampy. We sunk to our knees in muck.
“Are there snakes?” Anh whispered before my mother put a hand over her mouth.
The beams from the headlights of the jeep touched the trees we were crouching behind. I heard the soldiers’ laughter and saw the glow from their cigarettes. Anh was holding on to me so tightly I could hardly breathe. Only minutes after the soldiers passed by, the ducks popped out of our grandmother’s basket and began quacking.
My father was furious. “How could you be so foolish as to carry those ducks with you?” he demanded of my grandmother. “If that had happened when the jeep was passing we would have been captured. Get rid of those fool ducks at once!”
My grandmother sat down on the road next to her basket. “If they cannot come, neither will I.”
“Then stay.” My father led us away. We kept looking over our shoulders at the grandmother, who was sitting with her basket where we had left her. As the distance grew, she became smaller and smaller. Thant and Anh began to cry. At last my father cursed under his breath and motioned to her. She picked up her basket and with no great speed joined us. “If I hear one more sound from those birds, we will kill them on the spot,” he warned her, but no one believed him.
As soon as the sky lightened and the sun began to rise, our father led us deeper into the swampy ground. Thant stumbled over the fallen trees and Anh was half asleep. I had stopped thinking about anything but moving one foot after the other. Each step we took sent up a cloud of hungry mosquitoes. We finally came to a rise in the ground where we could huddle together and keep dry. All around us grew strange plants with huge green leaves. The roots of the trees stuck out of the water like large crooked hands. Birds called from the tops of the trees with unfamiliar songs to warn one another of our coming.
The dampness and the heat made us listless. No one wanted more than a few bites of the rice cakes our mother handed out. All day long we dozed off and on, waking to slap at a mosquito or to move into a bit of shade. I had a blister on my foot from the long walk. I did not know if I could walk much farther, but as soon as the sun set, our father hurried us out of the swamp.
Father swung Thant up on his shoulders, and I had to half drag Anh along with me. Mother was carrying both her own and our grandmother’s basket. Just when I wanted nothing more than to sink down on the ground, not caring whether the soldiers found us or not, we came up over the crest of a hill and there before us were the lights of Go Cong. “They look like fireflies,” Anh whispered. We all stood still, awed by the sight of such a large city.
Now we were much less safe. The swamp and brush had fallen away. It was all open country. Small lakes and acres of paddies lay on either side of us. If soldiers came along there would be no place to run for protection. We hurried, but our father urged us to go even faster. “We must get to the town before daylight.” Several times he took a scrap of paper from his pocket to memorize the drawing of the house of the man who would lead us to the boat. To ask directions in the city would be to draw attention to ourselves as outsiders.
It was early morning when we reached the outskirts of the town. A shopkeeper was opening the shutters of his store to prepare for business. We could see that his shelves were nearly empty. From one of the street corners an officer watched suspiciously. Bicyclers passed on their way to work. I stayed as close to my parents as I could. Even our grandmother walked in my father’s shadow. I was disappointed at how shabby everything was.
Father cautioned us to keep our eyes on the ground and not to gawk like country people. As we wandered through the narrow streets, he consulted his bit of paper. He was guiding us toward a house when a policeman blocked our way.
“Where are your papers?” the officer demanded. He was thin and looked as though he had been on duty for many hours and still had many more hours to go. If father had shown our papers, the officer would have known we came from a distant village. He would have been suspicious.
“We live just outside the town,” my father said. “We are paying a visit to my cousin, who is ill. We were upset when we heard of the illness and did not think to bring our papers.”
“What do you have there?” The officer reached out for the basket that held my father’s tools. Not only were such tools forbidden, but if they were discovered, they would be taken away. Then there would be no place for us on the boat.
With a quick shove, my grandmother pushed her way in front of my father, giving the officer a sly grin. “Our relative, who is dear to us, is very sick, and we are bringing him nourishment to make him strong.” She pulled back the cover from her basket and the ducks thrust their heads up and looked about with wild, beady eyes. “It is possible that one duck might serve to feed him,” she said, “in which case this second duck might not be needed.”
The officer looked longingly at the ducks and then over his shoulder. There was no one else on the street. His hand reached out and grabbed one of the ducks around its neck and snatched it out of the basket. So great a look of pleasure came over the officer’s face, the duck might already be in his pot cooking instead of flapping about in his hands. He stuffed the bird inside his jacket and turned on his heel. As he walked briskly away, we could see the legs of the duck dangling out of his jacket.
“The ducks you wanted me to leave behind,” my grandmother said smugly, “have saved our lives.”
4
Father said, “Quickly, it is the house with the banana tree.” It was a poor-looking house with a few scrawny chickens scratching in the yard. No sooner had we started up the path than the door opened wide like a mouth hungry for food. We were hurried along by a man who called himself Quach Loc. His wife stood next to him. They looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Both were short and plump with round faces and pudgy, dimpled little hands. “Come in.” Quach Loc rushed us through the door, which he hastily shut. “You are the Vinh family? You have brought your tools?”
My father opened his chest, proudly displaying what was inside. The man nodded his approval. “Your boat is owned by Captain Muoi. I am sure there will be no trouble. It will be a pleasure trip. You must buy your food for the journey. I know a place where it can be had with no questions asked. I will go with you. First you must all have a cup of tea.” Loc indicated that we should be seated.
We dropped our baskets with relief and sank down onto the floor mats. The man appeared friendly, but he smiled too much. I began to be afraid.
“I believed the food would be provided,” my father said.
“Provided! No, indeed. You are lucky to have a passage on the boat. Provided! Some people are never satisfied. But my wife will provide you with tea. Yes, indeed. Quach Loc knows how to be hospitable.”
While the te
a was being poured out, I glanced quickly about the room and saw that a woman and a girl were sitting in the shadows. The girl was about my age and was wearing American blue jeans. I knew what they were because I had once seen a boy come through our village in the dark blue trousers.
Quach Loc called to the woman, “Bac si Hong, you and your daughter Kim must join us.” We were surprised, for bac si is a title that indicates honor is due the person. Loc turned to us and in a low voice said, “Bac si Hong is a doctor. It is very strange to call a woman bac si.”
I saw that the doctor lady disliked the fat little man. The girl, Kim, moved shyly to her mother’s side and hung on to her mother’s hand. They seated themselves a little apart from us. I knew it was rude, but I couldn’t help staring at the woman. I had never seen a doctor before. A doctor who was a woman seemed almost unimaginable.
Quach Loc whispered to us, “Bac si Hong has had a most sad time. Her husband, who was once a well-known university professor in Ho Chi Minh City, was taken away by the police. Only last month he returned a sick man and died. Bac si Hong and her daughter will be on the boat with you.”
Bac si Hong and Kim did not drink their tea. Their faces were empty of expression. I saw that both the mother and daughter had squares of white material pinned to their clothes to let others know they were in mourning. I looked hastily away, but Thant could not take his eyes off the two strangers. He inched his way to the bac si, who was very beautiful, and touched the soft material of her skirt. My mother was horrified at this rudeness and pulled him back, but the bac si had come to life and reached out for Thant’s hand.
Our grandmother was frowning at the bac si. We had heard the grandmother scoff at doctors, because they had to go to school to learn to heal. “You cannot buy such knowledge,” she always said. “It must be passed down from one sorcerer to another.”
Our father excused himself. “If food is needed, I had better go and find it. We thank you for your tea.”