Gift of the Golden Mountain (81 page)

     She looked at her watch. It had been twenty minutes. She left the keys in the car and began to make her way to a point where she could scan the crowd. It seemed to be multiplying, young men were climbing the walls of the embassy, and in the flashes of light she could see them silhouetted against the barbed wire. She was caught in a wild surge, pressed forward. She could feel her heart pumping, could feel a hot burning under her arms. A blast of wind from the helicopter, hovering over the crowd, blew her hair into her face. She pulled it back with her free hand so she
could scan the crowd. An, Hao, they had to be behind her.

     "Please," she shouted, pleading, "I need to go back," but no one heard, or cared.

     Out of nowhere, it seemed to May, a camera crew was behind her and wedged her in as they moved forward. She had no choice but to go with them.

     "Mei-jin," she thought she heard. "Mei-jin!" She pushed herself up, stretched to see. An, it was An who was screaming at her.

     May shouted at the camera crew to help her, at the same time lunging backwards until her muscles sent flashing pains, her arms reaching out to An. "Help me get to her," May begged them. The sound man tugged at the cameraman's sleeve, pointed to An and Hao, then to May. They stopped their forward movement, and began to swing the camera back and forth, first at May and then back to An, who was holding Hao above her head, making a path through the packed humanity.

     "Help me," May screamed, pulling hard at the arm of the cameraman. They followed her, like a phalanx, the cameras going.

     "Take my hand," May shouted, reaching for An.

     An was holding the boy above her head, he was crying. "Take him, take him," she screamed at May.

     The crowd surged again, pulling them apart, but a man in the crowd passed the child over his head to May. She reached, felt her hands under his arms as the full glare of the television lights caught them.

     "You bastards," May screeched at the crew. "Stop that and help me get that woman."

     When she looked again, An had been swept to the side, she was out of reach. Holding the child firmly in one hand, May pushed away the camera, wanting to shield him from its awful glare.

     "An," she screamed into the crowd.

     "I cannot go," the child's mother screamed back, "I cannot go."

     The embassy gates opened to allow eight Marines through. At first May thought they were coming to rescue her. Then she saw
they were heading toward the camera crew. She held the child to her, tightly. She could feel him tremble.

     The camera swung away from May to a point behind them. A young Vietnamese pointed an M-l rifle at the approaching Marines. May froze in place, she was locked in, she could not move. "Get him," shouted one of the Marines, a tall black man, and another marine lunged at the man with the weapon. In the turmoil, the television cameraman went down. The weapon was wrested from the Vietnamese, and May watched as a Marine picked up the camera and smashed it to the ground.

     As the black marine pushed his way back, she grabbed at his sleeve. "Help us," she said. "I'm American."

     They were inside the gate, looking out, but she could not see An in the crush of Vietnamese pleading and begging to be allowed in. A helicopter hovered, lowered itself into the compound. Hao wrapped his small arms so tightly around her neck that she could not breathe.

     "Little brother," May managed to gasp, "I will take care of you until your mama comes back. Shh, shh little one." She held tight to him, aching for his loss, breathing the awful pain of it. Her arms and her back hurt, but she could not think of that. The roar from the sky assaulted her senses. It was as if the bats, grown enormous, had come out of the trees and were roaring inside her head.

     A light rain began to fall. She ran for cover, stumbling through a clutch of Vietnamese who cursed and kicked at her.

     "Chinoise," one of them spat in disgust.

     "American," she screamed at them, her anger bursting through. "I'm American."

     She felt a hand on her arm, an insistent voice close to her ear. "Mrs. Diehl," he said, "it's okay, come with me." He tried to relieve her of Hao, but the child screamed and she said, "No, it's all right."

     "Hayes is pretty frantic," the young political officer said, "I'll try to get a line through to him. And we have to get you on a helicopter pretty fast now. It's coming down to the line."

     "All these people," May said, looking about her at the swarms in the embassy compound, "will they all get out?"

     He pretended not to hear her question. May knew the answer, and suddenly she felt her cheeks glow hot with shame.

Marylee called to tell me that Hayes and May would be bringing the boy home, that Andy's son would be staying with the Diehls in Burlingame. Her excitement was contagious. "Faith," she said, the words spilling out and over themselves. "Can you believe what May did? Did you ever think . . . they are in Bangkok for a few days, the child needs to be checked by a doctor, and May and Hayes are trying to find out what has happened to An. May told me to call you . . . she knew you would be worried," Marylee sputtered, adding, "Andy's son. My grandchild. Bless May, going in like she did . . . I cannot believe it, I simply cannot."

     Marylee is totally immersed in the refugee program. The Diehls have a Vietnamese family living with them—a mother and father and two children, twins, a boy and a girl who are a year older than Hao.

"It's pretty chaotic down there," May laughed, when I asked how it was in the Diehl household. "Marylee is making a major effort to learn Vietnamese, and her pronunciation must be pretty funny because she has them all in stitches. How are the Nakamuras taking all of the uproar?"

     May frowned. "Not well. I'm afraid. The whole thing with Sam . . . missing now, for two years. They are convinced he was captured by the Viet Cong and is in a camp somewhere. They still think he was on some kind of secret combat assignment."

     "They must have asked Hayes to help them?" I probed.

     May shook her head, sadly. "Oh yes, and he has very dutifully gone through the proper departments, and the last record they have is of Sam leaving Saigon on a World Airways flight in October of 1973, en route to Oakland, with stops in Manila and Honolulu. He never went through U.S. Customs."

     "So," I said.

     "So," May shrugged. "It is terrible for them, the Nakamuras, but it would be worse, we think, if they knew the truth. And in some ways it comes out the same—Sam is lost."

May had planned to return to Washington with Hayes, but when she told Hao she would be leaving he burst into tears, so they decided she should stay on until he became more accustomed to the Diehls, and was not afraid.

     "As much as we might wish he were, he is not our child, he is An's," May told Hayes. "As long as a child has a parent who loves him and wants him, our job is to reunite them. We've got to get her out of there, to bring his whole family out if we can, and if they want to come. Then we can be Hao's godparents, his loving aunt and uncle."

     "And what if we can't get her out?" Hayes wanted to know.

     "We must," is all May could say.

May stayed on for a month, and part of that time she spent with me, going over all the details of that last day in Saigon and, though she laughed at the idea of it, helping me bring the "May Papers" up to date.

     For lunch she fixed us little sandwiches of nut bread and cream cheese and Lapsang Souchong tea and we went through all the old papers, making notes and sorting. It was at one of these working
lunches that I remembered the two men who had come to question me on the day Saigon was falling.

     I was angry with myself for having forgotten. "They said it was only a routine background check," I told her, lamely.

     "As it happens," May interrupted, "that is exactly what it was. I'm not supposed to tell anybody," she went on, grinning, "but you're as good a secret keeper as I know. The most curious thing has happened, Faith. Suddenly, all sorts of strange things have come together . . . Daddy has become a sort of hero in Washington. The revisionists' view is that what he wrote about the Chinese Communists was correct, after all. And suddenly my name—as his daughter—turns up on a small list of people who are invited to visit China as the personal guests of Chou En-lai, and we are told that it is because he respected my father as 'a friend of China.' I suspect the Chinese know about Grandfather. If nothing else, my name should have tipped them off. Or maybe Rose told them, she has been moving up in the hierarchy. Whatever the reason, the State Department seems to think that Hayes and I will be assets in Beijing, at the new embassy. If all goes well, Hayes will be posted there."

     "Does he want it?" I asked.

     She grinned. "He's studying Mandarin night and day. Calls to practice with me every night. Does that answer your question?"

     "And you? Do you want it too?"

     She hesitated. Then smiled, slowly. "It would have been a lot easier to say 'yes' before Hao appeared on the scene. But yes, I do want it. Very much. It will be wonderful to be both Chinese and American, and in a position that could have real influence in bringing the two countries together. And of course I'll get to see Rose."

     "And your mother?"

     "Yes," she said, drawing out the word so you knew there were qualifiers, "but only if I can make her life happier. I don't want to disturb her equilibrium."

     I was not sure I could speak. I reached across the table for her hand. "Darling May," I told her, and my voice failed me, cracking to a whisper. She understood, finally she understood something of the failure of love, and found it in her heart to forgive, and then to go beyond that to give.

     It was a long time before I could speak; finally I asked, "And Hao?"

     She hesitated, thinking. "Marylee isn't drinking, not at all anymore. Of course, she talks twice as much. Hao calls her 'Grandmother Talk-talk'—he's got a funny little sense of humor. But he is taking to her, and she is his grandmother. He stays in his father's old room . . . all of Andy's high school pictures are on the wall. I think he is in a good place to wait for his mother . . . it's better that he stay with the Diehls, here on this coast where there are so many Vietnamese. Better for Hao, and for us—as much as I want him, and as much as Hayes wants him. To be honest with you, I am more than a little distressed by these people who want to bring all the babies out of Vietnam, to give them 'new parents' here. I think that when those babies have parents who want them, who would keep them if they could, we should be working to help them stay together, not taking their children from them on the guise of giving them the 'good life in America.' Hao loves his mother. He can't understand why she gave him to me that night. He doubts her love. Kit helped me, and I intend to help Hao and An. I am going to bring them together, if she survives this awful time."