The Lotus and the Storm (15 page)

Everything that occurred then occurs right here, right now, and repeats in a perpetual present-tense time loop. Every moment I spent with my sister before this moment also occurs again and again, in the present tense. It is time bending, taking away my breath.

I am still there, at that moment when God or fate or a split second before or after could have made a difference but did not.

And that is how I still am today, in a half-life that only waits and sometimes hopes.

 • • • 

It is still a mystery where the bullet came from. It was Cholon, in 1967. She was thirteen. I was nine.

Seasons change but her absence is a hole I cannot fill. A primitive pain lies beyond the reach of language, like an
oui yaaah
that is too deep to be cried out. I stop talking after her death. Our parents ask, then beg, then order me to speak. Perhaps I should say “my” parents but I can't because saying “our” honors my sister's continuing presence. Just one word. Any word. They are well intentioned. They fear my remoteness is intended to punish. The truth is I have become capable only of pure, uninflected silence.

Our family goes through the outward motions of mourning. I wear a rectangle of white cloth pinned to my left breast. I absorb everything, note the lightness our father tries to instill in his own voice, the long wail that leaks from our mother's chest one Sunday afternoon when she mistakenly believes she is alone.

I become a stone, elemental and geologic, transcending the human and the mortal. I merge seamlessly with the shade of gray that surrounds our altered lives.

Soon our mother begins visiting my sister's grave every week. She does not announce it but I know because she leaves the house with a bouquet of flowers and a small bag of food soon after Father leaves for work. The spell of the cemetery runs through her. I recognize it because it runs through me as well.

Sometimes she takes me along with her. I watch so I can remember the way my sister's name was carved into the stone. I watch silently as our mother gathers a few branches of frangipani blooms in one hand and a bag of sticky rice in the other. Hands folded together in prayerful supplication, she whispers to herself freely, as if I do not hear.

“Forgive me. Forgive me,” she says importunately, over and over. “If only I hadn't asked you to stop and get into the car . . .” I hear the murmur of voices take on a different tone, a tone that beseeches. I let her be.

I still don't speak, and more and more I come to feel content within my crucible of silence. With each new day, I feel a sense of raw, unadulterated abandon. Friends offer their diagnoses.
Mat hon,
they whisper. I am someone who has lost her soul.

As time passes, my silence tolls with mounting intensity and force. Our parents stop trying to draw me out and go about their own simulated lives, removed a reasonable distance from mine. I am relieved to be left alone, feeling as though I were a child of whom little will be expected from now on. I know what I can get away with without triggering ferocious reactions at home and make sure to manifest some sense of normalcy. I know that they will use school as a gauge, so my attendance is perfect. I do everything the teacher asks. Over time, I even begin to like being separate from the more animated world.

Our parents think silence means absence. But I am present enough to witness what they do. I see the down-turned corners of their mouths. When they talk to each other in my presence, they say only what is most obvious. Our mother drops her eyes when she talks. “Dinner is ready.”

Our father says, “Wonderful. I am sorry I was kept late at the office.” His eyes momentarily look at hers and then fix themselves on his rice bowl.

She moves food around with her chopsticks. We are eating pork ribs. I can hear the sharp gristly crunch of bone against teeth.

“The sauce is very good,” our father remarks.

Our mother nods. “Five-spice powder from Aunt Number Three.”

Our father tilts his head as a way of signaling his confusion.

“The Chinese rice dealer. Tomorrow I will go see her. I probably won't be back in time for dinner.”

“Doesn't she usually come here?”

“Yes. But not always.”

“Hmmm.”

I drift out of their conversation. Their voices sound strange, like a song sung on one note. When dinner is finished, each of us returns to the welcome solitude of our own private space.

As always, I find consolation in
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
. It is precisely when our parents begin accusing each other that I turn to the stories of Scheherazade for support. Our mother lashes out forcefully but quietly. “We
should
have moved long ago,” she says on the other side of the wall, the
should
thick with a blame that refuses to let go. “Our house is too close to the military police. My brother warned us they would target the police headquarters. He warned us to be careful.” For a moment there is only a sorrowful silence. And then there is our father's voice, summoning up his own curt defense followed by a string of words I am relieved I cannot make out. “Your brother is a Vietcong and who knows what else.” The sentence is followed, I imagine, by a dismissive wag of the hand. “That he is a Vietcong is all the more reason to listen to him when he gives his warnings,” she retorts.

A knot gathers in my chest. Quickly I return to the stories I know so well. This is where I learn that we read so we can hide within the pages of a book. That there are few things more reassuring than a story silently relished. A boy rubs a magic lamp and, arms outstretched, sits on a flying carpet. I see the opening of a cave. The sky blushes purple. Among the crowded bazaars and narrow streets, a minaret stands. Everything else falters and recedes.

 • • • 

One day, I find a new friend, a cricket who likes to sleep in a matchbox with needlepoint holes I poke one by one into the cardboard sides. I get down on my hands and knees to look at it. I touch its iridescent wings. It creeps tentatively onto my hand, then tickles its way up my arm one day when I am in the garden among the hewn rocks and tangled vines that hug our mango tree. It is a tickle not much different from the addictive ritual shared with my sister, the sort that produces a tingling on the skin's surface and coaxes me into solace, then sleep. The cricket appears injured; one of its legs is falling off, one of its wings partially torn. I don't flick it away but carry its slumbering body indoors with me. A persistent chirp, announcing its simple presence, lulls me into the night. Hello, I say soundlessly after school. I spend the hours reading. And the cricket is simply there, demanding nothing. A small rag on the windowsill keeps it warm. It is easy to please. It lives in my room, and whenever it wants to, it crawls into the matchbox on my night table to sleep. It shows no interest in escaping into the garden right outside the open window. I imagine the cricket making its way through the dark pungent earth, the neatly clipped stretch of grass, the open wilderness, while I am away at school. But like me, it is drawn to the safe confines of the box.

Hello, I say, soundlessly again, before bed. I can hear its response: a sharp scratch against the box and a soft chirp, small and wounded. Together the cricket and I listen to the murmurs of nocturnal life. Darkness inspires revelations that are less visible during the day. I know that we are still fighting a war and that our father is still caught up in it—no, has disappeared into it. That our mother is even more remote now than before. That we all want to be comforted, yet we are contemptuous of consolation when it is offered. That Khanh's death has diminished our lives.

From my room night after night I can see a window light up when our mother or father returns. I can hear footsteps in the yard, then the creaky hinge of our swing set. Our father would be sitting there staring at the powdery sky, living inside the nocturnal distance that stretches between him and the rest of the world. I too know that distance all too well. I let him be, as I hope he would let me be. Our father simply sits there, cauterized, night after night on the swing and submits himself to the agitation of darkness. Mosquitoes and gnats buzz around his head. When our mother's car approaches the driveway, its wheels crunch against loose pebbles on the partially tarred street; headlights shine a wide-angled beam at our house. I can hear our father move in a rush from the swing. His bedroom door rattles open, swift and certain, then closes with a click. He is still in the smaller room, two doors away from our mother's. My heart flutters as I wait to see if something will happen.

Our mother does not follow him. They are far apart from such a possibility. I put my ear against the wall of our mother's room. Now anger and grief bloom at night, when they are dark and raw. Through the force field of silence, I can hear it, the turbulence of clear liquid splashed against glass, releasing sorrow. I suspect it is vodka that flows so profusely. It would be feasible for our mother to harbor this furtive little secret, this inconsequential personal foible. Still, she has taken to drinking tea and eating wedges of lime to cover the odor. I know because when we eat crabs or lobsters, we dunk our hands into bowls of tea and lime juice to remove the fishy odor. Our mother is taking every measure to conceal her new habit.

I take a deep breath, then another and another. I believe that by sealing myself in silence, my other senses have grown sharper. I am developing an ability to see through walls, unearth others' lives of subterfuge, remove the thick cloaks they use to conceal. A tortuous warren of electrical wires and pipes lies behind drywall. Insects are burrowing through the foundation of our house, centipedes, termites, ants, beetles. Our mother will soon swallow her pill. I want to walk to her room and offer her a moment's kindness. But I cannot and the desire passes away soon enough. The more I am able to discern, the more I want to flee. Next door, night after night, our mother's grief works its way deeper inside her bones and sinews. Grief engulfs her very spirit.

I nurse my yearning for something else. James. I can still see his finger on top of her wound. And James was the one who cried that evening. I have never seen a man weep so extravagantly. But I cannot bear to be near such an outpouring of grief. An echo chamber of turmoil. I have become used to our father's porcelain gaze, our mother's discreet sorrow, the implosion of melancholy within. And what once seemed an everlasting connection—my sister, me, and James, three unabashed points always together, like sun, earth, and moon—has been broken.

James tries to stay in touch with me. But Father makes it is easy for me to rebuff him. In one of the few moments after my sister's death when he seems to be aware of me, and not simply of his perfunctory fatherly duties, he has forbidden me to go anywhere near the military police compound. He holds me tightly and shakes a finger for emphasis. His warnings give me maneuvering space to avoid James. There is gravity to his instruction and I know our Chinese grandmother will strictly enforce it. Now on those rare occasions when my Chinese grandmother and I take our evening walk, we turn left from the front gate, not right. Right is where it happened.

One day we pass by our corner eatery. Standing under the wide shade of our tamarind trees, young men flick cigarettes, tap their feet to the raucous beat of bass drums. James is squatting on a low footstool. In his hand is a bottle of “33” beer.

I see James take a big swig, then his eyes catch mine. We are face-to-face. I cannot pretend I do not see him. Our Chinese grandmother nudges me toward him. James comes upon me, kneels down, and holds me close inside the clasp of big, muscled arms, crushing my face against his chest. Once again his tears flow without reserve. I wince. It seems that the next appropriate thing to happen would be for me to say something to him. But I remain in the endless snarl of my own silence. Our Chinese grandmother tries to communicate with James. I watch the hand signals. She is trying to tell him I no longer talk.

I am aware that my face has the plain, gray look of a stone statue. I watch the unfolding of their intricate pantomime.

Really? James struggles to express himself in Vietnamese. Really? He points to his mouth, then shakes his head.

As he moves, the sleeve on his white cotton shirt is lifted. I am shocked but touched. He has a new tattoo—it is the date of my sister's death, etched on his arm in cobalt blue.

Our Chinese grandmother nods, points to her own mouth, points at me, and then shakes her head. James grows somber. He crouches down, leveling his eyes with mine, and hugs me. I put my hand on his back and feel the tight little knots I once touched with my heels and toes. He offers his finger for me to hook, but although I want to, I freeze. James smiles reassuringly. “You will be okay. I'll be back.”

When we come home, my cricket is waiting for me in the amniotic silence of my bedroom. I put the cricket on my hand and together we take a walk in the garden. Leaves rustle above as sparrows flit from a cluster of star fruit trees. Nearby, the mango tree I used to hide behind stands still and erect. Green mangoes hang low among the red glossy leaves, drooping from the stems. Unripe and tart, they can be dipped in chili powder, sugar, and salt, a delicious combination of sweet, sour, and hot in the mouth. I can almost taste the tanginess against my tongue. The night hums with nocturnal creatures. In response, my cricket makes its own little chirps. I put a finger to my lips and shush its shrill little calls.

I ask the cricket if it wants to stay outside tonight. I keep my palm open to allow it to jump off, but it clings to my skin, opting to suffer life's shortcomings with me instead. Above us the stars gleam. I imagine one blinking at me. Here on earth the cricket and I will hide out together in friendship. I will have the cricket by me while I wait for life to make its turns.

 • • • 

Later, as I lie in bed, the moon peeks through my window, shedding a soft ivory light into the room. This is the time of night when funny things unspool for me and I can feel the stirring of their dark, ridged edges. I close my eyes, turn my face. I can feel them move through my body, clots of memories that dislodge, then liquefy. Perhaps the darkness serves as an anticoagulant. Things unclot and bleed at night, dissolve and reveal their true form. Perhaps time moves differently at night, not across the face of a clock, in seconds, minutes, and hours, but through a reticulated space of loops and curls, dips and lunges, that spiral endlessly inward.