Beauty Rising (16 page)

Hoa and I both went into the shop around nine the next morning, but it was still closed. We waited. We waited until 9:30 and then 10 but no one ever came, so we finally went home. We wondered the meaning of this, but decided that we would just need to wait everything out. Hoa used her free day to visit her sister in Hanoi, so she caught the 11 AM bus while I headed back to my room and went back to bed. I was still feeling the effects of a restless sleep coupled with too much alcohol. I was gone to the world in about five minutes.

At about 12:30, I heard the outside gate swing open and the teacher’s dogs started barking and yipping. The chickens scattered , but I paid little attention and turned over to go back to sleep. A moment later, I heard the door to my room open, and I turned my head slightly, barely opening my eyes to see who it was. There was a quick movement across my room to my bed. Someone grabbed my hair and yanked it back quickly. Pain shot through my head.

“You little whore.”

I looked up and Hue, Mr. Duc’s daughter stood over me pulling my head back with my hair.

I let out a scream.

“Shut up, whore,” Hue yelled at me.

Another young woman was with her. She came and stood directly in front of me.

“This is what you get for seducing our father.”

She took her nails and ripped them across my left cheek as Hue continued to hold me up by the hair. Blood started running down my face and they mixed with the tears and screams that I kept yelling.

“Go ahead and scream you bitch. But you are going to pay for what you did.”

The second girl then ripped her nails across my neck and Hue let go of my hair and punched me in the eye. I fell back down into the bed, my legs and arms flailing as they forced themselves on top of me. That’s when I glanced up and saw a third woman in the room – an older woman dressed very fashionably.

“Stop,” she said as she came towards me. Both of the girls stopped fighting with me and stood off to the sides as she approached. I sat up in the bed trembling, a broken animal cowered in defeat, but I looked straight at her.

Suddenly the door to my room opened again, and in walked Teacher Minh looking concerned. He stopped cold when he saw the three women around me. Mrs. Duc looked back at him and motioned to the door with her head. He looked at me for a moment, and then he looked back at Mrs. Duc, nodded slightly and turned around and left. I would have no salvation from my fate. I was at the mercy of Duc’s wife and daughters.

“So you are the skinny little whore who has been sleeping with my husband?” she asked and glared at me as I shook uncontrollably. “I will not be made a mockery of. You think you can use your pretty face and young figure to woo away a prestigious man like my husband? I know the likes of you. Money. Always looking for money. They say politicians are corrupt, but no, it’s the low class whores like you who seduce with evil intent – you are the corruptors. You will get what is coming to you.”

She held in her hand a bamboo stick.

“Turn her around.”

The two daughters grabbed my arms and tried to twist me over onto my stomach. I resisted fiercely until Mrs. Duc smacked me across the face with the stick. I then relented and turned over. One of the girls grabbed my shirt and ripped it off revealing my bare back. Then Mrs. Duc started slashing my back with the bamboo time after time after time. I cringed with every lash. She kept hitting me perhaps three dozen times. I had lost track. I moaned in pain and cried in my pillow. Then one of the daughters, and it didn’t really matter which one, took their nails and started ripping them firmly down my back. The pain was unbearable. I could do nothing but cry. After another five minutes, they turned me over. My back burnt with pain and blood dripped all over my bed. I cried and cried as I covered up my bare chest with a sheet.

“The girl looks sad,” Mrs. Duc said smugly. “You should be sad, whore.”

I looked down, afraid to glance at their smirking faces.

“Will you ever see my husband again?” she asked.

I kept looking straight down. Hue slapped me strongly across the face.

“Answer her. Will you ever see my father again?”

I shook my head.

“You aren’t as stupid as you look. If you do, then this is what you can expect.”

The second daughter punched me twice in my right eye.

I felt dizzy and wanted to pass out.

“Okay, whore, I believe you. But if you are foolish and try to see him again, I’ll kill you.”

Mrs. Duc glared at me with intense hatred. I didn’t doubt her word. Then she held up the stick high once again and hit me with all her might across my face. I fell onto the bed and just closed my eyes in a state of semi-consciousness. Apparently they left at that point. I lay in bed for several hours before I finally came around and tried to pull myself together. My back throbbed in pain. I lightly put a thin cotton shirt around my body and went out to the spigot in the courtyard to clean up a little. I stood over the spigot for a moment and looked around the courtyard. I noticed Teacher Minh looking at me through the slits in the slotted glass windows of his living room. When he saw me looking back at him, he closed them quickly. I squatted down and wet a towel rubbing it slowly over my face. My back was too raw to touch and the thought of water on it pained me even more. It would have to remain as is for the moment. My thoughts zoned out for several minutes and I don’t know how long I squatted there with the water running. I finally, got up went into my room, and ripped all of the blood stained sheets off the bed. Then I sat down and again wondered what I was supposed to do. It was at that moment I noticed all of the contents of my purse emptied onto the floor. I looked for my wallet, but it was gone. All my money was gone. I had nothing. I couldn’t even escape Thai Nguyen if I wanted to. I sat back down and held a mirror in front of me, seeing for the first time my two black eyes which were swollen. I also had red puffy fingernail scars down both of my cheeks. I wanted to die. Co Thu couldn’t help me, and Hoa was away. My instincts told me to run, but I had nowhere to go and very little money. I sat and pondered my slim prospects when Teacher Minh came to the door.

“My Phuong,” he called in.

I tightened up my clothes around me and closed my eyes as pain pulsed through my back as the shirt came in contact with it.

“Yes.”

He stepped two feet inside the door. The room was rather dimly lit, so it was doubtful that he saw the extent of my injuries.

“I want you out of here. Tonight.”

“Teacher Minh. Please, I need you to help me. Please.”

“You need to get out of here. Be out by eight.”

“But Teacher, I have nowhere to go. I…”

“Out. I cannot be associated with these kinds of things. I need to have respectable tenants here.”

He turned around and left. He and his family had always been kind to me. Over the past year, I had offered several times to cut his children’s hair free of charge, and I always enjoyed talking in English to Teacher Minh. But this obviously was too much to handle. Mrs. Duc showing up at his house and raking over a girl was a powerful message. He had become too closely associated with messy business and wanted no part of it. I couldn’t blame him, but his actions and words hurt me deeply. I had no one but myself, and at that point I doubted I would ever rise again. I just wanted to die.

At that moment, a text message beeped on my phone. I reached over and pressed
Read.

“
Meet me tonight at 9. I want to see you. Duc.”

The Last Meeting

I had nothing more to lose, and I held dearly to the belief that I had an ever so slim amount to gain by meeting Mr. Duc one more time. Perhaps he would show me some sympathy if he saw this pathetic, battered figure coming towards him. Perhaps I was more than just an evening fling to him. I clung to nothing else but this dim hope.

From the time Teacher Minh left my room, I had spent every moment in a painful daze. I slowly tried to collect my things, but I ached all over and I couldn’t even remember what items belonged to me and what to Hoa. Around 7, I finally got up the courage to call Hoa. I told her everything, and she was in tears pleading with me not to go anywhere till she got back. I told her I wouldn’t be there much longer. She yelled at me to not go to Duc’s that night. She asked me to put Teacher Minh on the phone, but I couldn’t bear to go and face him again, so I refused her. She was furious at me. Finally, I hung up on Hoa, unable to put up with her frantic talk anymore. My life precariously teetered on the brink – one last night – one last meeting. I realized that I could be dead by midnight, and it didn’t seem like such an undesirable outcome.

I readied two small bags and left many other possessions behind. I had a small amount of money that had been stashed away, but it wouldn’t do much for me. I piled the bags one of top of the other in the basket of my Honda motorbike. Without an electric starter, I would have had to walk because I never could have kick started the thing in my condition. I keep my head down and looked only straight ahead as I started the bike and left the courtyard. Spying eyes followed my every move. Everyone in my neighborhood would have known about me by now. Neighbors, once friendly, shielded their faces and looked away as I drove past, only then to turn back around and follow my trail out of sight with their eager eyes. I twice drove around the city, past the clock tower, down towards Mo Bach and the university, out past the bus station and then left down the main drag back to the clock tower downtown. I had nowhere to go. The only standing invitation I had was from the gates of hell itself – the place that got me into this predicament in the first place. I circled three or four times around the clock tower but with every turn the big hand approached twelve. The clock possessed me – I felt bound to obey its call. There was no other force in the world working for me at that moment except for that clock, prodding, cudgeling, and nudging me forward to my destiny. I couldn’t pull away from its magic. A bus came barreling into the traffic circle. If I only had the courage to quickly turn sharply right into the path of the bus, it could all be over, but it passed without incident and I caught one last glimpse of the clock as I drove straight towards the market. It read 8:57. I turned past the market and went down a few blocks, past the movie theater and into the courtyard of the People’s Council Guest House. The gate was open, but the courtyard was completely empty. No one stood at the door and the guard house too stood vacant – an oddity.

I dismounted my motorbike, grabbed my two bags – one in each hand for I could not imagine placing either of them over my back – and tepidly walked through the open front doors. The lights in the large entrance hall burnt brightly, but no one was in sight. It was the first time I ever came here without Cuong greeting me. Perhaps it was a warning sign, but I had long ago passed the safe route. Once you fall off a cliff, there are no more warning signs. Each time I lifted my foot to go up another step, pain shot through my body, but I continued the long trek to the second floor guest house room on the left – the one I knew so well. The large wooden double doors had six large panes of glass in each one. Curtains had been drawn from the inside, so I could not see in. I took a deep breath, and with much effort pushed down the stiff metal handle that unlatched the door with the sound of a click-click-click-click-click. I slowly opened it fully, picked up my second bag which I had placed on the ground and walked into the room closing the door behind me. The room was empty, but I noticed that the door to the balcony was open because the door’s full length curtain flapped in the wind. I put down my bags and walked slowly towards the balcony sensing Duc’s presence. Perhaps all would be well.