If You Lived Here (35 page)

I can only tell the truth. “I thought I could help you.”

“Help me?” she demands. She makes it sound like a crime. “You’ve done so much for me. I just wanted to make things better.”

She glares at me, completely exasperated. Then she stands up and goes into the bathroom as if she can’t stand to be in the room with me a moment longer. Minutes later, she comes back, slips on her nightgown, and gets into bed. I switch off the light. Even in the darkness, I can see that her eyes are open, staring at the ceiling. “Can you forgive me?” I ask, but she refuses to answer.

In the morning, I suggest that we skip the appointment, but she insists on going to meet her sister. At eight o’clock, we are walking beside Hoan Kiem Lake. The road that runs beside the lake is thick with commuters on motorbikes and the air is a lethal mix of dust and exhaust. A thin veil of clouds spreads across the sky, and the air, already, is very hot. We walk next to each other, but not together, really. I can feel her disgust with me. I feel disgusted with myself for meddling, for believing I could solve her problems on my own. I’m not sure that our friendship is old enough to withstand this kind of betrayal.

“Mai, I’m sorry,” I tell her again. I’d like to tell her what happened, but she won’t even look at me.

At first, my mission seemed to go so smoothly. I simply walked into the café and ordered a Coke. I thought maybe I would just check out the place, gather information I could report back to Mai to let her know that her sister’s life seemed good now. I didn’t expect Lan to bring over my drink herself and then sit right down to chat. “Where you come from?” she wanted to know, pulling up a chair. She leaned forward, eyes bright and full of curious anticipation. Her knee touched mine. She looked at me like we’d been intimate for years already.

“America.” I found myself glancing around the room wildly, looking for an exit in a smoking building.

“You come by yourself all the way Vietnam?” “You speak good English,” I said.

“You flatter me!” She laughed, patting my arm. She had an easy, good-natured way about her, not at all what I’d imagined. Then she got back on track. “You married?”

I sipped my Coke, so cold, clinking with ice. My mother read some Centers for Disease Control warnings about how ice in Vietnam could carry cholera and she made me promise to stay away from it. But the cold Coke tasted so delicious. Just a few more sips, I told myself. “Is this ice from boiled water?” I asked, trying to take responsibility for my health, my life, my presence in this place. To be honest, though, she could have told me that she made the ice by mixing water with cholera spores and I would have kept drinking. The world was so hot, the drink so refreshing. She looked at my Coke. “This ice? You no worry about this ice. We boil. We have lots foreign customers here. We take good care you. Don’t

you worry.”

In some subtle way, she did remind me of Mai. They have the same fine-boned and delicate beauty, the same bad accents, the same way of pursing their lips when they listen. But Lan seems alive, and Mai acts like someone trying to be alive. “Is that your daughter?” I asked, looking at the teenager watching the TV.

She laughed and nodded. “You a mom?”

Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I’d come to the wrong place. They might not look alike at all. What do I know about Asian faces? “What’s your name?” I asked.

She touched her finger to her chest. “My name Lan,” she said, eliminating one possibility. “What your name?”

Her face was so gentle, confident, serene. I felt like I’d discovered something unexpected. Without contemplating what I was doing, the words came out. “I’m Shelley. I came to Vietnam with your sister, Mai.”

Her hand dropped. Her eyes closed, then opened, darted around the room, then closed again. For a long time, she said nothing. When she looked at me, her face had turned completely hard. “Why you come here?” she whispered.

We talked for an hour. Other customers entered the café and she ignored them. Her daughter took their orders, served them, glanced at us to try to figure out what was going on. Lan didn’t take her eyes off me.

Now, in retrospect, I realize that I did almost all the talking. I started out describing Mai’s life in Wilmington, then slowly moved backward: the grocery store in San Francisco, the refugee camp in Hong Kong, the boat trip out of Vietnam. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to go farther back than that. Farther back than that, Lan knew already.

“You bring her here,” she said. Her face had closed completely. “Tomorrow. I be here seven o’clock. Waiting.”

I nodded.

Now I understand what I’ve done.

At first, the café seems closed. The metal accordion doors are opened only wide enough to allow a single, small person to squeeze through, and, from the bright sidewalk, the room inside looks dark and empty. I lean through the door. “Hello?” I hear voices inside, then movement, the clatter of dishes. Mai stands behind me.

After a moment, Lan appears from the back room, hurries forward, and pulls back the gate. She glances at Mai but her face shows no expression.

Mai whispers, “Lan.”

Lan looks at me. “Come inside,” she says in English, ushering both of us in. “You want something drink?”

I shake my head. Mai hovers behind me like a shadow. When she doesn’t move, I take her arm and lead her to a chair, then gently nudge her into it. “Actually, yes. I think we’d both like some tea.”

Lan stands beside the counter, getting the tea ready. Her daughter peeks her head through the door of the back room, assessing her aunt. Mai looks at the floor. After a minute, Lan carries a tray to our table, pours us each a cup of tea. I take a sip of mine. It seems wrong that I should be sitting here, witnessing this reunion. I’m an outsider, really. And it’s all my fault.

Lan begins to speak. Her Vietnamese is slow and rhythmic, like the recitations I hear from women praying in the pagoda. From somewhere deeper inside the building, I can hear the sound of a radio, running water, a bouncing ball. Through it all, Lan’s voice continues to drone.

Mai doesn’t move. I can’t understand the Vietnamese, of course, but I’m beginning to guess about the content. Lan stands above us, her body stiff, her face impassive. She doesn’t take her eyes off Mai. And she keeps talking, never raising her voice, never lowering it. Mai puts her hands to her face. Her shoulders begin to shake and you can make out the quiet sounds of sobbing. Lan keeps talking. Mai pulls her knees up to her chest and her head drops against the top of them. She reaches her arms around her legs, hugs herself, rocks. Lan continues.

I push my hands against my knees and stand up. Enough is enough. “I’m going to take her home now,” I say. “I didn’t bring her here for this.”

Lan’s eyes remain on Mai. She keeps talking.

I lean over and rest my hand on Mai’s shoulder. “Come on, sweetie.

I’m sorry. Let’s go.” Mai doesn’t move. “Mai, let’s go.”

Lan continues. She’s waited twenty years for this moment. Nothing’s going to stop her now.

“What are you saying?” I demand. She doesn’t even look at me.

Mai has shriveled into a ball in her chair. Her body shakes, but when I try to get her to stand up, she refuses. Lan keeps talking.

I raise my voice. “That’s enough. I don’t know what you’re saying, but you’re wrong.” Somehow, I’ve managed to drown her out. She pauses, looking at me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell her.

“I know my baby dead,” she says, offhandedly, as if she’s giving me directions. “I know my sister kill my baby, then go live in America. You tell me I wrong about that.”

“She didn’t kill your baby. It was an accident.”

Lan’s gaze is a finely sharpened knife. “You want adopt your little boy,” she says. “When your little boy drown one day because someone not watching, then you come back here, lady. You tell me about accident.”

I pull at Mai. “Come on. Let’s go.” She won’t move.

“You come back here your baby dead, you tell me about accident,” Lan says.

I let go of Mai and look at Lan. “Okay, then. Let me tell you a few

things about your sister. This girl who killed your daughter. Here’s what she did: She closed her eyes and kissed her boyfriend. At the wrong moment. And your daughter died because Mai wasn’t looking. Then she got scared and ran away. She was nineteen years old. A kid. I’m lucky. I don’t have to live with having made a mistake like that. You’re lucky, too. You can live your life hating her because of those mistakes. And Mai? What does she do with her life? She pays for it every single day. All day. Every single day.”

Lan is breathing heavily now. She grins. “She pay for it in America.

Very sad life.”

“Yes. What do you know about life in America?” I could hit her. “Do you remember that when Khoi first decided to leave for America, Mai planned to go with him? That’s right. But then she changed her mind at the last minute. She loved her family. She loved Hanoi too much to leave. On that day, during that kiss, she was saying good-bye, she thought forever, so she could stay with you. And then your daughter died. She lost her mind. They both did. They went to America. And Mai’s been paying for it ever since.”

Lan shakes her head. She looks suddenly exhausted.

“You don’t have to believe me,” I tell her. “But it’s the truth.” I make a gesture that takes in the café, the pretty paintings on the walls, Lan’s fashionable clothes, her daughter in the back room, and Mai, sitting in her chair sobbing. “After all these years, you have joy. I saw you yesterday. You can smile and laugh with a stranger. You have a daughter, your father, your home here in Vietnam. Mai has nothing in her life that gives her joy like that. She has tortured herself every day for twenty years. It’s time for her to stop.”

I pause, waiting for Lan to speak. When she doesn’t, I say, “Let her stop now. Let her stop!”

Lan looks down at Mai, whose face remains buried in her lap. No one says anything. Then Lan lifts her hand, waves it dismissively, and walks away, disappearing behind the curtain that leads to the back room.

I pull Mai off the chair. She lifts a hand to her face, looks at the door, looks toward the back room, looks at me. She doesn’t seem to know what

to do with herself. I take her arm, lead her out the door and onto the sidewalk. Somehow, she manages to walk across the street and around the corner, out of sight of the café. Then she stops. She shivers in the heat. “You hold me?” she asks. “Okay? Hold me?”

I pull her toward me, wrap my arms around her. Her body feels like rods of glass. “It’s okay in Vietnam,” she sobs. “It don’t matter here. Nobody think we’re lesbian.”

“I know.” I stroke her hair with my hand.

“Girls hold hands in Vietnam. It don’t mean nothing.” “I know,” I tell her. “I know.”

Mai insists on coming with me to all of my appointments. She may not have forgiven me entirely, but she refuses to leave me, and she seems calmer now, a woman purified by fire. She translates, quietly, while Mrs. Huyen talks to officials at the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Transportation (don’t ask me why—they chat with each other as if they’re friends). When, in the afternoon, Lap offers to drive me out to see Hai Au, Mai insists on coming along. I don’t think she wants to be alone. She doesn’t seem angry. She seems blank now, like someone who had one emotion left, and used it up.

Two days pass. Three. Four. I haven’t called Martin since I received his letter. There was a time when we might have helped each other through grief, but we’re on our own now. The officials have given me two weeks, and the time wastes away. Five days pass. I will wait my two weeks. And then I will refuse to leave without my son. Of course, I don’t fool anybody. The government will throw me out whenever it’s ready. I will become the first American dragged kicking and screaming from Vietnam.

I continue to visit Hai Au. I realize that I may simply be torturing myself, that I may be torturing him as well, but I refuse to give up hope. I do the only thing that I can do: I continue to act like I’m his mother. I fall into a routine. Every day, I bring food, not just for him, but for all the children and their caregivers, too. Great big bags of rice. Bananas, water morning glory, meat. I keep an eye on the staff, make sure he gets

as much as he wants at every meal. He responds by eating voraciously and, perhaps, gaining a bit of weight. He also continues to hide extra food. Once, I uncurled his fingers and found that his little hands were full of rice. How much good can I do for this poor country? Very little. But, today at least, I can keep these children fed.

Time with Hai Au gives me hope, a dose of reality, or the reality I choose to accept. I used to dream about my child, but everything looked wispy then. Now that I’ve met him, I don’t think of him as wispy at all. I’m accumulating facts and details. Here’s one, for example: He loves cats. You can set a cat in front of him and he will grab it and lick it if you let him. Maybe it’s the fur. I don’t know. The word for cat in Vietnamese is
mèo
(perhaps they allow their animals to name themselves here).
Mèo
is one of his five words, along with Co (his cribmate), bottle, more, and “
ba.
” I don’t know the actual meaning of that word. He uses it as an all-purpose signifier for any animal other than a cat.

The boy is fickle, too. On Wednesday, when I got to the orphanage, he smiled when he saw me. Then he cried. Later, he smiled again. Now, I have lost count of his smiles. He also has a scream like an electric drill, which he uses as a weapon. And he pulls my hair. I should have expected as much. Vietnamese don’t have red hair, and they don’t have curls. At first, Hai Au liked to grab handfuls and jerk. Now he pulls just a few strands, hard, without letting go. It takes forever to unknot his fingers from my hair, and the expression on his face—eyes squinched, face turning red—reminds me of a boxer knocking the hell out of his opponent. Later, he lies asleep in my arms, his fingers entwined once again in my curls. He fights so hard against sleep that it seems like the peaceful and uncomplicated resolution to a silly war. At those moments, I run my lips across the top of his head. His smell is some sweet mix of soap and milk and sweat. This is my son, I tell myself. It couldn’t be some other baby in some other country or some other crib. This boy. This one.