The Beauty of Humanity Movement (74 page)

“I will keep the broth hot in anticipation of his return,” H
ng said, which became true the moment he uttered it. This would be his vigil.

“Did Ðạo tell you we had another baby, H
ng?”

H
ng took a step backward, startled by the news.

“Last month. A baby brother for Bình. But the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck.”

Amie’s voice was one of quiet desperation, her expression one of pain. “His face was blue from lack of oxygen,” she continued, “but instead of cutting the cord and freeing him, the midwife just pulled the cord tight.”

“An act of mercy,” H
ng said gently. “It must have been too late for the child.”

“But not for the child’s sake, H
ng. Not for my sake or Ðạo’s either. Do you know what the midwife said?” Amie’s lips were trembling now. “A child like this will be of no use to the revolution,” she whispered. “This is what prompted Ðạo to go to the country. To finally see the devastation for himself. To be able to write of it.”

H
ng suddenly felt Ðạo’s presence, as if they stood side by side bearing witness to the carnage of his village. Ðạo now understood that the revolution would not stop short of murdering everyone who stood in its way. But they had missed the opportunity for this conversation, the moment where Ðạo might have said,
Now I understand with my heart
, and H
ng might have said,
Forgiven
.

“Perhaps you should take Bình away from Hanoi for the time being,” H
ng said.

“Yes,” replied Amie. “We will go back to my mother’s village. You’ll send word to us if you hear anything, won’t you?”

“Of course,” said H
ng, leaning over to the rattan drawer. “And take these. They belong to Bình.”

He watched Amie run down the street, her hand gripping the boy’s short chopsticks, her
áo dài
flapping behind her like a struggling kite.

B
eyond the sound of birds, there is little to suggest it is morning when Maggie strikes a match to light the gas burner. She sits down on a hard wooden chair at the table and waits for the kettle to boil. The sky outside the kitchen window is an industrial grey designed to challenge the most resilient of spirits, so unlike the blue expanse of a Minnesota morning at this time of year. She misses home—the ease and familiarity of it— though she misses fewer people than she expected. It’s easy to assume colleagues as friends until you are no longer working beside them every day.

She always felt herself an alien to some degree—not at work so much, but in the wider world. It happens when people—even the most enlightened among them—can’t resist asking you where you’re from. It reminds you that you have no attachment to the history or geography of a place, except insofar as you are pioneering your way through it in your own lifetime, your roots buried in some faraway earth.

You don’t always want to answer the question.

And the answer is not always the same.

Maggie presses the plunger into the Bodum prematurely, forcing it down with both hands. She adds a thick dollop of condensed milk to the cup and takes her first sip of coffee, pressing a fingertip to the few grains of coffee stuck to her bottom lip.

Despite the dullness of the day, she’s looking forward to spending it with T
. He showed her the lake the other day; she introduced him to some art. She wonders if he considers it a fair exchange.

Only in her last year of high school did Maggie realize she wanted a career in art. It had never occurred to her as a possibility before because she lacked artistic talent, something her father must have realized when she was just five years old. She hadn’t known there were options like curation until a trip with her sociology class to see an exhibition documenting the protests in Tiananmen Square.

“But why are they placed so far apart?” she had asked her teacher.

“That was probably a curatorial decision.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the curator takes the work and presents it in such a way as to tell a story. If you read these pieces from left to right, chronologically, you realize how much of the story is missing. All that white space. You go from thousands of people in that shot to only one person in the last shot. Maybe you’re supposed to use your imagination to fill in the gaps.”