Dragon House (20 page)

Noah nudged another stone. “Why did you send me to those places?”

Iris thought about her answer, not wanting to bring the wrong words to life, aware that the wrong words could turn him away. “Because I wanted your help,” she said. “Because I knew your heart was good.”

“If I stay for a while . . . I’ll still have my bad days, you know. I’ll still drink. I’ll still have a lot of anger in me.” He glanced toward the setting sun, wondering if any of his friends were dying in Iraq. “Just because I saw something that changed me doesn’t mean that . . . that I’m changed.”

“It doesn’t mean that you’re the same either,” Iris replied.

He continued to eye the skyline. “I want to help. But don’t expect the impossible from me. Because I don’t want to disappoint you.”

She lowered her beer. “Do you know how much work we have to do, Noah? In about twenty-five days we’re supposed to open. Have you thought about that? About the supplies? The teacher? The money? The upkeep? Or finding just the right group of children from the thousands out there?” She shook her head, watching a plane disappear toward the setting sun. “Anything you can do for Thien and me . . . for the center . . . is gravy as far as I’m concerned. So there won’t be disappointments. Don’t worry about that. Just do what you can, and know that whatever you do will be a blessing for us.”

Noah looked up from the stones. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. But I want you to understand that anything you can do is important. Is really important.”

Thien saw a piece of glass on the roof and placed it in her pocket. “The girls on the street, Miss Iris, they are starting to talk about your center.”

Iris turned to her. “What are they saying?”

Thien took Iris’s hand and smiled. “Tomorrow, when you are working, look around. You will see them, walking by, pretending to go places. But they will be observing the center. I have seen them already. And I have heard them talking about the room with the clouds.”

“But how could they know about the clouds?”

Thien looked skyward. “Oh, perhaps a little turtle spread the word.”

“A little turtle in a baseball cap?” Iris asked, smiling.

Sipping his beer, Noah watched the women. He liked how Thien so often reached for Iris’s hand, as if they were a pair of young sisters. He had always heard that Asians were unaffectionate. But he’d found that, at least in Vietnam, nothing could have been further from the truth. “You know, we could build something here,” he said, wanting to bring himself into the light that seemed to surround Iris and Thien.

“What?” Iris asked.

“Well, look at all this space,” he said, gesturing around them. “This roof is huge. And it’s so open. We could . . . I don’t know. Maybe we could build a vegetable garden. There’s so much sun and rain. The children could learn how to grow their own food. I bet they’d love it.”

Thien clapped her hands. “My father is a farmer,” she said excitedly. “I can get seeds. We can grow cucumbers and onions and garlic and dragon fruit and even some flowers.”

Iris looked at Noah and smiled. “So this means you’re staying? At least for a few more weeks?”

He considered his options, knowing that he could return to Chicago, wander around Asia, or remain here. Wherever he was, his demons would still follow him and his pain would rarely leave him in peace. He thought about Tam, about children he’d never met but who were sleeping somewhere on the streets below. If he stayed, he could help them, even if he couldn’t help himself, even if his own mind and body were beyond repair.

“I’m going to build the playground,” he said, looking from Iris to Thien, aware of the happiness in their eyes. “I’m going to build them a beautiful playground, and we’ll see what happens after that.”

EIGHT

A New Day Dawns

T
he river was higher after the recent rains, evidence that the mountains to the north had also been saturated. Minh sat on a boulder at the water’s edge, staring into the murky shallows. He thought about the seven dollars he’d won the previous night, disappointed in himself for the final game of the evening. After winning three straight games against a German student, Minh had lost the fourth game on purpose, expecting that his opponent would agree to play him again for higher stakes. And the foreigner had decided to do just that. But as they’d started to set up the game board, the student’s friends had arrived, and he’d left, parting with a triumphant smile.

After Loc had found them and taken his customary five dollars, Mai and Minh had been left with two dollars. They’d spent one on a dinner of rice and eggs. The other they had buried under their basket. Minh had wanted to hide both bills, but they hadn’t eaten all day, and he knew that he couldn’t play and win so many games while on the verge of starvation.

Turning on the boulder, he saw that Mai was still asleep in their basket. She’d been quieter than usual since her attempt to get the money for formula. Minh didn’t like it when she was withdrawn, for her voice was one of his favorite things. It made him smile and sometimes even laugh. He was sad more often than not, and with Mai so gloomy, there was no chance for him to be happy.

Mai had told him once that she wanted to see the mountains, and Minh sometimes thought about her words. He knew that, were they to escape, Loc would follow them to a city. A city of any size would have opium dens. So Hanoi and Da Nang and Hue and Nha Trang were places they could never call home. Loc would find them in such places. The five dollars a day they paid him ensured that he ate and, more important, enjoyed his opium and women. Minh was sure that he and Mai weren’t the only children that Loc had working for him, but he believed that no other children provided him with as much money. Minh had overheard enough conversations to know that five dollars a day was more than the average factory worker, teacher, or policeman earned. And so Loc would never let them escape. Not if they went to a city, where he’d have an endless supply of opium and could rely on loose tongues to inform him of their whereabouts.

But if he and Mai were to flee into the mountains, to a small village somewhere remote and unknown, Loc wouldn’t have the will to follow them. The problem was that Minh had never been outside Ho Chi Minh City. To him, the city was its own planet, and the countryside beyond it was an entirely different universe. As terrified as he was of Loc, the thought of hopping on a truck and heading off into distant mountains scared him even more. Whom would he play Connect Four with? What if Mai couldn’t sell fans? What would they eat? Would another man, perhaps even crueler than Loc, come to control them?

Such questions made Minh feel so very small. He knew that he was short and thin for his age, and with only one hand he’d long ago realized that he could never protect himself or Mai from any physical threat. He could win at games, he knew that much, but beyond this skill, what could he do other than save a few dollars and hope to somehow escape the shadow that seemed to always be one step behind them?

“Still thinking about that last game, aren’t you?”

Minh turned, surprised to see Mai standing before him. Her pigtails were slightly askew, as if sleep had rearranged her scalp. He watched her yawn, and then he shrugged.

“Oh, I know you are, Minh the Cheated,” she said, sitting nearby on a half-buried truck tire. “Everything was just right. We were going to win, and he’d have been angry, and we’d have won again and again. It might have been one of our best nights ever. As good maybe as the night when you played that opera singer and she bought every one of my fans. Do you remember that? The big lady? With the big laugh? She sang us a song, and I thought that cyclo would break when she sat in it, and then she had us sit right in it with her. Right on her legs. And we were her tour guides that night. I told her everything about the city, and she asked question after question.” Mai smiled, glancing above toward the bridge. “That poor cyclo driver. I bet he couldn’t walk for weeks after that night. How he sweated. I’m sure he was happy to see us go. Even if she did give him that huge tip.”

Minh’s brow furrowed.

“Don’t look at me like that, Minh the Curious,” Mai said, wishing that they could meet the opera singer again, having never heard such a beautiful thing as her voice. “Do you expect me to be quiet forever? I’m not like you.”

A mosquito drifted between them and Minh struck swiftly.

“I don’t think he saw that coming,” Mai said, glancing for other such pests. A baby cried somewhere in a nearby shanty, and Mai thought of Tung’s little sister. The shields Mai had encircled herself with that morning cracked and started to sway, but she quickly patched them up, forcing thoughts of Tung and her own lies toward a distant place. “I think we should stop by that American’s street center,” she said, voicing what she’d mused over during the long hours before dawn.

Minh paused from wiping the mosquito from his palm. Mai had spoken of the center several times, but never about visiting it.

“It can’t hurt to say hello, can it?” she asked. “We’ll be careful, and make sure that Loc’s not following us. If he doesn’t know about it, he can’t hurt us for it.”

Instinctively, Minh glanced around, not only to ensure that Loc wasn’t nearby, but also to see that they were beyond earshot of anyone else. He thought of Mai’s suggestion, wondering about the street center. He had heard about it many times, of course. He’d heard that it was to house girls, though, and so he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He couldn’t imagine being separated from Mai, and she wouldn’t be safe there anyway. Loc would track her down.

Minh took his good hand and grabbed Mai’s wrist, pretending to drag her away.

“I know he’d find us there,” she said, her tone suddenly angry. “But what’s the harm in looking? Maybe they can help us, Minh. Did you ever think of that?”

He put a finger to his lips.

“Tung was going to steal that formula, wasn’t he?”

Minh looked away, wishing she’d lower her voice.

“And do you know what would have happened then? We’d have been caught. Oh, Minh, we can’t keep doing this. I’m getting too old for this, for selling fans and worrying about the police. Do you know what happens to girls like me who stay on the street for too long? Do you know what they start to sell? That’s right. They sell themselves . . . until there’s nothing left of them.” Mai’s eyes started to tear as she imagined such a fate.

Moving beside her on the tire, Minh put his arm around her. He saw that she was staring blankly at a bush, which didn’t surprise him. Better to look at something green than the ugliness that surrounded them. They both did that in the city above, avoiding the areas where older street girls worked, where the girls beckoned to passersby from dimly lit buildings. Minh knew that Mai hated the sight of such buildings. She’d refused to walk by one once, even after Loc had threatened to beat her. Loc hadn’t hit her. But he’d smiled.

“Can we go to the center tomorrow?” Mai asked softly, still staring at the bush, which was draped by several dirty plastic bags from when the river had been even higher.

Minh nodded, wondering how the bush managed to live amid all the filth.

“And can you win today, Minh? Please? I’m too tired to sell fans. If you won a lot today, we could take some time off tomorrow and visit the center. And do you know what? I heard there’s a room full of painted clouds.” Mai looked up and saw nothing but the stained and pitted bottom of the concrete bridge. “They say you can just sit and look at the clouds. Let’s go there. Please. I’ll say hello to everyone. You won’t have to do anything.”

Nodding once again, Minh rose from the tire. He moved along the water for a few paces, coming to the bush. Carefully he removed the plastic bags from where they’d wrapped themselves about weathered branches. He set the bags aside and then followed Mai toward their basket. He’d found a discarded roll of packing tape the previous night and had tried to cover his entire game box with the tape so as to waterproof it. The box glistened in the faint light, and Minh picked it up and placed it under his arm.

Minh watched Mai tidy their bedding. He wanted to tell her that he’d never let her become one of those girls, that despite his fears he also hoped to go to the mountains. He wanted to tell her so many things—that the bush reminded him of her, that sometimes he hated leaving their basket, that he was trying to devise a plan for how to trick Loc. But not having the courage to bring life to such words, he simply pointed to his game box and then held his forefinger in the air.

Mai shrugged. “So, you’re going to be number one today?”

Minh pretended to grab a basketball rim and pull it down.

“You’re going to be the Shaq?” she asked, smiling.

He set his game down, and pulled even harder at the imaginary rim.

Mai giggled softly. “And the Shaq’s going to be even more powerful than usual? Even more dominant?”

He nodded, gesturing for Mai to speak more.

“And he’s . . . he’s going to stomp on his opponents. And break their feet. And dunk shoot over them. And take the ball and . . . and step back and shoot a three-point shot. And when his opponents try to score . . . well, then . . . the Shaq is going to . . . He’s going to grab the ball out of the air and pop it like a balloon.”

Minh grinned, pretending to do whatever Mai was saying.

Soon she was laughing. Soon the two friends were walking along the city streets, pretending to play basketball, to do things that their bodies were incapable of doing but their minds were not. As an imaginary ball bounced between them and their sandals rose higher than usual above the cracked cement, they didn’t notice that their bellies were empty. And for a while they were like any other children out for a stroll.

 

 

IRIS LAY IN BED, STRETCHING. HER body was still somewhat unaccustomed to the time change, and she had worked late the previous night, ensuring all her father’s paperwork was in order. Drinking Vietnamese tea and listening to Thien sing in the background, she’d hammered away at an oversize calculator until the tips of her fingers ached. The number six button on the calculator often stuck and then repeated itself, making her start over on whatever problem she had been tackling. Math had never been one of her stronger suits, and she’d rechecked her work time and time again, finding more mistakes as the evening progressed. One thing soon became clear—the center had enough money to sustain itself for about a year. But beyond a year, a budget didn’t exist.