Beauty Rising (29 page)

“Yes. We know. His name is Nong Klung. His church is only five kilometers from here. I can take you there.”

“His church? He has a church?”

“Yes, today Wednesday. He at home for sure. I take you there.”

“No, sorry. That is the wrong person.”

I thought for a moment I might have gotten lucky when he said they knew him, but when I heard he was alive, I knew it was a mistake.

“You don’t want to go?”

“Well, do you know if Nong Klung had any children?”

The young man turned back to the elderly men and chatted for a minute.

“He has two sons and one daughter.”

It was a good try
I thought to myself.

“But his daughter disappeared about four years ago. Nobody knows where she is.”

My heart pounded. Could it really be true? I had to find out for sure.

“Take me to him.”

“Okay, but we can’t go by taxi. We go back way on foot.”

“Okay.”

I went back to the taxi and took out my large backpack and my one shoulder bag. I decided to jump in feet first with no turning back because I had nothing to lose. I told the driver he could leave, and I started walking with the young man into the forest. A trail of children clipped my heels at every turn. One of them caught up with me and handed me a bunch of bananas. Others would try to sneak up from behind and rub the hair on my arms. They were the cutest little kids, and I didn’t care what they did to me. I even found myself smiling at them from time to time.

We walked on a small trail through the lush vegetation. After about thirty minutes of heart-pounding walking, we climbed a steep, muddy embankment and stopped at a clearing overlooking the valley. I huffed and puffed insufferably, bent over with my hands on my knees trying to catch my breathe.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“My name is Long.”

“How did you learn English?”

“My father work very hard so I can go to better school near Ban Me Thuot. I get to study English there, plus I take more English classes at night.”

“How much farther to the church?”

“It’s just down there. In bottom of valley.”

“Do you know the pastor?”

“Sure, I know Pastor Nong.”

“What about his family? Did you know his daughter?”

“No, he’s only been here a short time. I met his sons but never his daughter.”

I still couldn’t believe what I sincerely hoped in my heart.

We continued the trek down the slippery slope and after another forty minutes came to a cluster of houses with a rather large church standing in the center.
This can’t be it,
I said to myself.
My Phuong’s father didn’t pastor in a church building.

Several people came and greeted us as we entered the village. Long talked with them and then led me over to the church building. We walked up the four wooden steps and entered a long structure which had wooden walls, open windows, and bamboo floors in which you could look right through the cracks and see the ground below it. I wondered if I would soon be looking up at them since the thin strips of bamboo seemed to give way so much, but they continued to hold me as we walked to the front.

A short older gentleman with a round face, bald head and a kind smile approached us. Long exchanged greetings with him and he came over to me and held out both hands to shake.

“Wel-come,” he greeted in broken English.

“Hello.”

Student Long explained a few more things about me and then they whisked me to the back of the church where they rolled out a mat and invited me to sit. Before I knew it, a tea cup filled with piping hot strong green tea was in my hand.

“This is Pastor Nong.”

“My name is Martin.”

We both nodded our heads and smiled.

“Can you ask him if he knows a girl named My Phuong?”

As he translated, I pulled out a photograph of her and held it up to him. He immediately took it out of my hands, and his countenance changed as tears of joy started streaming down his face. He exchanged some words with Long then Long confirmed it all.

“That is his daughter. Where is she? How do you know her?”

My poor My Phuong. I felt sick for her. I had found my way back to her home – the one she never knew she had. I sat across from her father, tears streaming down my face, and glanced deeply into my soul to see if I had the strength to tell him the truth.

“I’m sorry,” I trembled, my voice shaken, weak and raspy. “She is dead.”

Long’s face became stern and mournful. He glanced at Pastor Nong and dreaded being the messenger. His head fell toward the floor, and without looking at all at the expectant pastor, he mumbled some soft subtle words – easily spoken to help dampen the blow. But soft words can usher a blow of brute force. Pastor Nong, raised his hands to the sky, then fell to the floor, face tucked in the bamboo, and wept. I sat stunned, and my stomach felt upset. I breathed heavily looking at the love of a father being poured out from the very depths of his being. After a minute, Pastor Nong lifted his head and whispered something to Long.

“He wants to know what happened to her.”

What could I say? I looked at Long.

“She told me about the day that Pastor Nong was arrested. And she told me how she went to the authorities and asked about you, but they informed her that her parents were dead. After that, she ran away and never came back.”

Long relayed everything, and Pastor Nong got very animated.

“Pastor Nong said that his wife did die in prison, but that he was released about one year ago and then came to pastor this small church in the village. He wants to know everything that happened to her.”

We spent the next two hours translating the story of My Phuong’s last four years. I was careful not to say anything about the ordeals that My Phuong endured in Thai Nguyen. I told them that she went to school and won a scholarship to come to America. They seemed to believe it. But when it came to her death, I couldn’t tell them the truth. I couldn’t bear to tell them the absolute truth. So I told them that we had married which was true. I had the marriage certificate and a wedding band to prove it. But I told them that shortly after our wedding that she was involved in a terrible traffic accident and lost her life.

Pastor Nong had been holding both of my hands during the whole story.

“I have something for you,” I said directly to Pastor Nong.

I removed my hands from Pastor Nong’s gentle clasp, reached into my shoulder bag and pulled out the large Rubbermaid container with duct tape all around it. I pulled off the tape and then opened it up. In one of life’s more uncouth moments, I turned around to try and shield what I was doing and then pulled dad’s Ziploc off the top and placed it in a handkerchief and slipped it quickly back into my bag. I just kind of smiled at them without any explanation. I put the lid back on and turned around and handed it to Pastor Nong.

“These are My Phuong’s ashes. I thought you would want them.”

Pastor Nong held the container in his hand and just looked at it for a few moments. Finally, he placed them on the floor and came over and hugged me many, many times. Long kept saying “thank you, thank you” over and over again.

“He says you will stay. You must stay for as long as you like. You are part of our family. Will you stay?”

“Okay,” I said. “I can stay for a night.”

“Yes, you will stay.”

That evening, the whole village showed up at the church for prayer meeting. They all had heard the fantastic story about the strange American who had married Pastor Nong’s long lost daughter. They also planned a memorial service to bury My Phuong. They sang many hymns and Long did his best to translate what he could. After the singing, Pastor Nong stood up and gave an impassioned talk about God’s plans. He told all about how My Phuong had finally come home and that now she is in a better place. I hoped he was right. She deserved to be someplace better, but the whole service left me feeling sad. I just missed her.

After the service, we walked up through the hills for about ten minutes and came upon a small graveyard of stone crosses. They dug a hole and then Pastor Nong gave another thirty minute talk about the afterlife. When he finished, he asked me to come forward which I did with much uneasiness.

“He said that he wants his son to put the ashes in the hole.”

I looked at him blankly.

“You. He considers you his son.”

With a heavy heart and tears in my eyes, I took the Rubbermaid container from Pastor Nong, praying beyond all hope that I wouldn’t do anything clumsy with it. I opened it up, leaned over and perfectly dumped the ashes in the hole.

“Goodbye my sweet My Phuong,” I whispered.

After they finished the burial and placed another cross in the ground, we walked back to the village where they gave me a feast and treated me like royalty. I felt very undeserving. Pastor Nong seemed so happy to have closure in his life, and I only wondered what closure might feel like. Around eleven at night after we had exhausted all food and talk, I lay down on a mat on the bamboo floor of Pastor Nong’s house and finally nodded off.

Right around daybreak, I decided it was time to try and get it right, one last time. I took the handkerchief which held dad’s last remains and went off over the hill looking for an appropriate spot. I walked and walked thinking about the first time I had tried to find a final resting place for dad. After about thirty minutes of wandering back and forth, I came upon a large rock jutting out of the ground. Just below the rock was a banana tree grove which immediately grabbed my attention. I ran down through the grove and within seconds I saw a large lake just one hundred or so meters away.

“Dad, I made it.”

I ran back up through the low lying banana branches and stood below the large rock imagining the beautiful girl, sitting on the rock smiling at my dad, but the only girl I could see on that rock was My Phuong. I saw her long black hair, her piercing black eyes and her clear, clean complexion. I saw the white edges of her
ao dai
shift in the wind. She waved at me and smiled, and I walked towards her just staring into her eyes. I stood at the base of the rock where my dad had his girl, and I now had mine. I opened up the Ziploc and dumped the ashes. A gust of wind whipped through the trees and the ashes spread evenly along the ground like a dusting of snow.

“I did it Dad, I did it,” I said as I sat down with my back against that rock. “I love you both.”

I leaned my head back and cried. It was, I guess, a cry of relief more than anything. A cry of cleansing. I had nothing more to contemplate, nothing more to wrestle with, nothing more to do. The past evaporated before my eyes, and I sat as an empty vessel waiting for the sea to take me where it would. Before I knew it, I had nodded off in exhaustion.

About two hours later, a small boy and girl stood over me excitedly poking my arms trying to wake me. They talked furiously and pointed back up over the hill. They tugged on my arm, and I willingly followed. Within minutes we were back in the village, and it seemed like everyone in the whole valley stood gossiping away about the AWOL red-headed giant. They smiled and cheered when I came down the hill, and some of them even started clapping. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what all the fuss was about. Long greeted me as I entered into the circle surrounded by my adoring fans.