The Lotus and the Storm (23 page)

I took my car and drove as fast as I could out of Saigon. I had driven for hours, taking in the silent sweep of the landscape in the attenuated light of November. It was a few months before Tet 1968, a few months after the death of my child.

I passed verdant, unscorched fields. Cows grazed behind haphazardly constructed fences. The sun shed its light in broad sheets of soft golden hues. Here and there wind-whipped houses steadied themselves against the elements, their thatched roofs looming out of a soft green. For us, green is the color of faith and fate, of prosperity and well-being. Our eyes are drawn to the sight of it—rice plants sprouting faithful orbs of emerald that nurture and nourish.

I was crossing into a different landscape. The roads turned into broad, smoothly paved inclines. These were roads constructed by the Americans, designed to bear the humming weight of multiton trucks and tanks, to accept and hold in their bosoms a promised victory. These roads, bluish under the haze and heat, would take me farther and farther away from Saigon.

The Vietnamese have a belief that lies at the very core of our being. Family comes first. This is our lethal truth and its dull slog.
Ruot thit,
innards and flesh, we would say. True loyalty, true complicity, lies there, among the intimacies of persons, families, and friends. We do not in our hearts consider it corrupt to favor family and friends over strangers. It is not marvelous to be law-abiding. It is marvelous to be loyal.

Still, I thought I had failed. I could not be loyal to both the army and my wife.

My wife had pled with me to save her brother, the enemy combatant captured by an airborne unit under my command, the revolutionary brother who mocked us for our modern comforts and reminded my wife every chance he got with a litany of unoriginal sophisms that he was fighting for the nation's soul. We were behind closed doors. I knew my daughter, still muted by silence after her sister's death, was in the adjacent room. I did not want her to hear her parents argue. I thought a peace of sorts had prevailed between her mother and me, as we ate and drank our way out of grief with Cliff as inadvertent witness. But her sudden request angered me, throwing us off balance.

How could I be asked to act against principle and, worse, betray my men? I had been presented with impossible alternatives. I could not simply let her brother languish in prison. But I could not simply have him released. For this man, I did what I did because my wife, already fragile following our child's death, asked it of me. In the end, I couldn't bear to cause her any more pain.

I seemed to have produced the desired result almost miraculously, effortlessly. I made a phone call. I visited the holding cell. I pointed to the rust-flecked metal door. The paratrooper in charge did not wince when he was asked to unlock the cell. His loyalty was not to a rule but to me, the brigade commander. He saluted and did what he was told. Still, I hoped I would see no one on my way in and out of the military prison. When it was all over, I left, astonished by the absence of complications, the ease with which my request had been so competently performed. There is a war going on, a voice inside me said. Yet, recklessly enough, I could simply decide to release the enemy. Let him escape back into jungle hideouts where he could plot new attacks against the country and new violence against our troops.

I was filled with a deep sense of self-remonstrance as I stood outside the holding cell, monitoring the release of my wife's brother with an elaborately maintained calm. I felt an intolerable gravitational pull. My daughter's death. My wife's grief. Of course I gave in to the call.
Ruot thit.
Me and mine instead of the greater good. I was doing what needed to be done for my family. I closed the door and heard its reassuring click. I took it all in and slowly walked out.

From the corner of my eye, I could see a fleeting figure, on the periphery of my awareness, slipping through the swing doors—Phong, I thought. For no discernible reason, his name entered my mind. Ever since the coup, his name was for me tied to foreboding itself. Shame and guilt bound themselves to me. I glanced about. Was it merely coincidence or did I imagine him? He had no reason to be here. Yet an uncharacteristic coldness spread and the pungent smell of cigarette smoke, his brand, entered the room.

Moments later I found myself driving out of Saigon, into unfamiliar territory. I wanted to be released from the machinery of war itself, from the pull of family loyalty and its sinister other half, that inchoate, hard-hearted echo of treachery.

I tapped on the accelerator. The car grumbled but answered my call. It rushed forward and kept going. As the green earth flew vertiginously past, loneliness enveloped me. Beyond the highway was a thin scattering of thatched huts laid against a landscape of unpopulated emptiness.

I stopped the car and got out. The countryside opened itself fully to me, and its flaws, as much as its grandeur, moved through my heart. The simple huts were fully exposed to the elements, to the forces of nature wholly indifferent to human aspiration. I imagined a life among those fragile walls. There would be no pretense of security when the sky opened up. There would be no other option but to submit and shake the rain off meekly as it blew through the cracks and open seams. One would have no choice but to feel a storm's thrash and its ferocity, unmediated by the constructs of human hands designed to mask this melancholic but inevitable truth—the singular fact of mankind's preordained insignificance, our impermanence in the scheme of things.

Right here was where you could surrender and allow yourself to be brought to your knees, to be battered. As if in love. As if in grief. As if to slip into a state of being that is unbeing, unlabored, unburdened. Because under the surface of daily stings and struggles, defeats and ongoing battles, there was truly, in the end, nothing to struggle against. It could all be let go.

If only that were so.

There was still the matter of the war. And when that thought returned, the rice-field green vanished, and with it, the promise of benediction.

Back inside the car, I could feel the wind blowing steadily through the half-open window as the engine revved to a heady speed. A stinging, sizzling warmth rose from the asphalt. The sun glared against the windshield. The car and I headed back into the city. With each clack of its gear lever, I knew what would inevitably occur. The texture and heft of life would soon return. And just that quickly, the possibility of finding some other way of being vanished.

At first it looks to be nothing more than a depression in the earth. But the black, mirrorlike surface of the wall pulls you in, as if by force, even as it demurely reflects the images of its surroundings. Up by the left corner is a pair of faces, mine and Mai's, superimposed on and hovering over rows and rows of names. The walls, glossy and dark and V-shaped like bird wings, seem to stretch into the distance, one wall toward the Washington Monument to the east, the other toward the Lincoln Memorial to the west.

Here, on this most emotional of spots, death is recorded by precise arrangement and sequence. The names are etched in chronological order, according to the date of casualty; within each date of death, the names are alphabetized. The names of the first dead flow from the right flank of the wall, starting with 1959, while the last of the dead come in from the left flank. As a result, the earliest and the latest deaths are engraved next to each other on the wall precisely at the apex of the V—first and last coming together full circle.

I am in my wheelchair, following her as she inches toward the panel engraved with the year 1968. Around us, men in old fatigue jackets congregate with their families. They are here looking for the names of their fallen comrades. Some want to engage in the search themselves. Others ask Park Service volunteers for help. I am transfixed by a sight before me. A Vietnamese man wearing a jacket bearing the South Vietnamese Airborne insignia stands erect, removes his beret, and salutes a name on the wall. I fight back tears, tears for the American names on this wall and the countless Vietnamese names unknown and unconsecrated. I wish I could recede into the background. But the wall, bearing so much grief, draws you in. Mai is here to engage in the simple act of touching the stone, feeling its cold surface against the palm of her hand. I lean back, watching. “You have to touch it, Ba. There's something about touching it.” She pushes me closer to the wall, takes my hand and runs it over an engraved name. James Baker. Like other names, his appears without gilding, stark gray lettering, less than an inch high, against black stone.

Mai places a piece of paper over his name and rubs a pencil over it until “James Baker” is charcoaled on the stenciled white surface. Then before we leave, she takes out a photo of her and James and her sister from years ago and places it against the wall, along with a white rose.

MAI, 1971

I
t is an evening like any other evening in our house in Saigon. Father is still at work. Our mother is with Cliff. These days, she devotes her time to an organization that helps widows of soldiers. Father says that Cliff takes Mother to meet other Americans who want to give money to the group. Father is relieved that she has a friend and a new interest. I suspect Mother wants to bury her hurt. I wonder: If I cry into pillows silently, what do grown-ups do for solace?

My Chinese grandmother is resting on her bed in our bedroom, fanning herself with a piece of cardboard. More and more I feel her watchful eyes on me, especially after James's death. I do not listen to rock and roll anymore. I keep the tape he gave me in a drawer. The cardboard sheet drops from Grandma's hand. She has fallen asleep.

What does she know? Has she met Cecile? Who is Cecile anyway? Galileo's playmate? Where is Galileo? I don't know the answer to any of those questions. I look across at her bed. I see her folded arms and outstretched legs, her head laid innocently on our duck-feather pillow.

I dare not close my eyes. I dare not breathe. I know I am watched by someone.

The vendors come out to entice. They park their baskets and prepare to dazzle the neighborhood with their cooking. I smell the scent of grilled meat, pork fat, and sautéed scallions as smoke from portable grills sharpens the air outside our windows.

The clock ticks. I tiptoe into the bathroom. I know something will happen and I hope to catch it—whatever it is—as it occurs so I can be a witness. I stand on a stool and look in the mirror. I try to see what others might see. I see the strangeness of my face and at the same time its utter simplicity. I see the component parts of it, nose, eyes, and mouth, indifferently, haphazardly put together. In this dim, restless silence, I am aware of a swell rising inside me, careening and breaking over and enveloping my entire being. Nothing has to happen, I say.

It can still be stopped. It is not inevitable.

But it is already here, this immense, slumbering presence that has been murmuring in my body and tearing me inside out. I am alone with something big that seeps through my skin and lives within me. I slap cold water against my face. It might wash off the wrongness, startle it and make it flee. I stand firm demanding that the wrongness leave, but it refuses. And so here I stand, diminished, compromised. I shiver as I try to fight my way back into existence. I see my arms go up, as if to shield my body's less expendable, more vital core.

It is a current, strong and swift, and it carries its own desires within its essence. It wishes to have me.

I look around. I am still in my house, inside its solidly laid bricks, one on top of another.

Suddenly, for the first time since this all started, I realize what is happening. I am helpless. I am being pulled down.

This other self and I have reached a tipping point and no amount of effort can restore the balance. An angry, scowling face, mottled red, not mine, not my dead sister's either, stares back at me. There is a look of grudge and injury on it. Through the bellow of shuffling, pulsating voices, I again hear the voice from the cistern that comes with that face, the voice that shrieked the command for me to be quiet even as James was being killed, the voice that repeats itself over and over, as if to announce its presence and its permanence with a desperate sense of persistence. This new angry being will ruin me. I see her shadow as it touches mine. I see her fingertips as they reach toward me.

I have the urge to be free of her. And I have the parallel urge to let her win.

If I stop struggling, I will fail. If I allow that to happen, I will be lost.

At last, something more powerful takes over. I give myself permission to let go.

When I come to, a big purplish bruise has imprinted itself like a mark of shame below my neck.

 • • • 

Darkness has descended. A pale sliver of moon hangs on the sky's edge. The vendors have gone. I no longer hear their chants. My Chinese grandmother stares at me. Neither of us speaks for at least a full minute.

“What is the matter with you?” she asks worriedly. Not “Is something wrong?” but “What is the matter with you?” My sister's death and James's death have created an experiential split in our family. My parents and my Chinese grandmother cannot understand my experience across that divide.

Yet a part of me thinks my Chinese grandmother, who spends so much time with me, must have seen it all. She must have known I took momentary leave of my body. Her face registers concern. Her eyes probe. I feel a churning queasiness. I look around quickly. Everything is in its place. The pillows are on the beds. The pens and pencils are in their holders and the papers and notebooks are neatly stacked.

On instinct I touch my chest where I feel a sharp, jabbing pain. I see a stretch of a dark crimson bruise. I know there are broken blood vessels bleeding red and purple into the skin. My knuckles ache. I dread the questions that will be asked.

Miraculously, none are. She simply lets me be.

That night, I see an outcropping of redness in my Chinese grandmother's eyes, as if tears are welling up in her.

“I will sleep in your bed from now on,” she says, “with you.” She is staring at my contusions.

I used to sleep only with my sister. My Chinese grandmother's bed is a few steps from ours.

I nod. I accept her suggestion. I look for my pillow. Even now I cannot go to bed without a pillow clutched against my breast. As I fall asleep with her curled by my side, she whispers a gentle warning.

“Don't hit yourself anymore. I will hold your hands and tie them to mine if I have to.”

I say nothing, neither a denial nor an admission. But inwardly I am shocked by her remark. I think about what it all means, the face that scowls snaggletoothed in the mirror, the voice that murmurs and takes over, obliterates me from consciousness.

I lie in bed in fear and shame. I wait for my Chinese grandmother to doze off. Once I am sure she has settled into a deep sleep I go into the bathroom and wash my face. Suddenly I am aware that the mirror is something dangerous. With my eyes squeezed shut and with a bar of soap, I lather the entire surface of my face. Something silent and sodden rises up in me. I am aware of my reflection on the mirror's surface but I do not permit myself a look. I am too aware of what I might see, an eerie manifestation of a new, split self that adopts my form and face and stands in a spark of angry, grievous judgment of all that has occurred.

I wash and wash until my face hurts. I keep my eyes closed. I can wash off the mood, the madness, and the awareness. But I know that something still resides there. It is a parallel world that churns and cleaves and can at any moment open up and swallow me whole into its froth and swell. Still, I think, in this interlude of silence and calm, the remainder of the night is salvageable. I will tread into it gingerly.

I return to my bed where Grandma is sleeping, where a newly rescued world should be within my grasp. I draw close to her. But just as I am about to fall into sleep, I feel that ominous presence again.

 • • • 

In school things can take on a reflexive, ritualistic quality. Day after day I position myself at the edge of classroom activities. I watch my teacher's fingers as she writes on the blackboard. Brightness flashes from a thin gold bangle on her wrist. A single drop of sweat meanders down her face. A gecko stares downward and blinks at us from the ceiling. A boy sitting to my left tries to get the attention of his friend on my right. The classroom spins dizziness into me. My throat is parched.

I see sneakers. I see a phalanx of black military boots.

I sit still, unable to breathe. There is James, dying in the perpetual dusk, in the sinister beauty that is peculiarly Tet's.

And then something within me falters. Light from the ceiling dims. Objects ripple and blur, coalescing with others nearby. Everything becomes faint, feeble. I blink. Nothing comes into focus. And with the world's contours and edges obscured, I feel myself slip into a half-light of absence and erasure. I am beginning to disappear into the very depths of remorse and shame itself. And then the blackness takes over.

I wake up at home, exhausted. Our parents hover tenderly enough over me. Mother produces defeated little sighs. She is as always an awkward mix of signals, distant one day, concerned the next. Her attention is mostly elsewhere but occasionally it is directed at me. Next to them is a doctor who takes my pulse, feels my forehead to gauge my temperature, and listens to my heart. I feel the rubbery flatness of the stethoscope against my chest as it is maneuvered through the opening between my buttons. I am worried he will see my bruises. I know what is beneath my shirt—a darkening purple that is pulpy to the touch. My bedsheet still smells of camphor and eucalyptus and other ointments my Chinese grandmother rubbed on me last night. I contemplate my position and on a whim I confess that I feel faint. There is a strange comfort in hearing myself invent an utterly normal symptom for something that I know is so abnormal.

I feel an inflatable cuff against my upper arm. The doctor squeezes a rubber bulb until it gets larger and larger and then at a certain point he releases the pressure. My Chinese grandmother is nearby, watching with knowing eyes as the doctor asks my parents questions. I hear this and that.

“She just faints?”

My parents look at each other, then nod. “That is what the principal tells us,” Mother answers.

“Low blood pressure,” the doctor says, as if that should explain it all.

Mother holds my hand as a needle is inserted to take my blood. She looks ardently at me and whispers assurances. “Close your eyes,” she says. I do not need to be coaxed but my fears lie elsewhere. I hold my breath and close my eyes. I imagine a yellow beak nudging me. I know the calm is provisional. The voices can start at any time.

It is all the more important, then, to be vigilant. I hold on to our mother's hand with one hand and to the armrest with the other. I keep myself anchored that way, to hold the moment. Let this be enough. Let this be enough.

Days later, the blood test results tell us that everything is normal.

 • • • 

I begin to think of boxes. Time can be unwound and stored inside four metal corners. I begin to strategize against these recurring ambushes. I find an old tin box with elaborate pictures of dragons and celestial beasts. I draw a picture of the angry face and solemnly place the picture in the box. I convince myself that I have caught a monster from the ocean's ominous depths and sequestered it in a secure, metallic compartment. I put the box under my bed. It keeps her—the interloper—locked away.

For a moment, as I slip my drawing into the box, I have another glimpse of her as the stormy, dark-eyed stranger who shoved me into the jar and kept me from shouting my warning to James.

Outside, insects drone their disapproval in the suffocating dankness of the summer's humidity. I am deafened by the din, by the discordance of internal combustion that rises higher and higher in the slipstream of my mind. She stands there at the ocean's rim, ready to grab me whenever she wants to.

After I close the box, I feel better immediately.

 • • • 

Sometimes Mother takes me with her when she goes about her activities. For months now she has been planning a benefit event with Cliff. But there are still many things to do.

This is Saigon and it is 1971.

Father is not home this Sunday. It rained last night and there is a silky, clean feeling to the morning. Our front door opens, ready to receive the rush of air from a rogue wind that remains even as the rain has left for the coast. We have errands to run, things to do. It is destined to be a fine day as we wait for Cliff. As vendors hawk their breakfast preparations, I sit in front of the house watching them as Mother gets herself ready upstairs. A dog greedily chases its tail. I remember that Mother's favorite composer, Chopin, wrote the
Minute Waltz
about a dog and its frantic tail. A tamarind pod scrapes against the sidewalk. When Mother comes down from her bedroom, she looks gorgeous, almost imperial. She is wearing high-heeled pumps with spangles that sparkle. The wind blows through the two gleaming folds of her satiny
ao dai
. At this moment I am filled with love for her.

I know what she has become. She is at once a mother and not a mother. I want to touch both her clarity and her mystery.

Cliff arrives and whisks us away in a black Opel. Our mother tells me she has something planned that I will like very much. Cliff drives nonchalantly into the Saigon traffic, joining its unstoppable flow. Every car, ours included, speeds along unless it has to stop to avoid a collision. Once we have escaped the crisscrossing traffic, Cliff lowers his window to usher in the breeze. The rush of air produces a constant hum and whips up Mother's long hair. She shakes her head and smiles as Cliff tells her something. When she struggles to crank her own window down, Cliff stops the car by the roadside and reaches across to help. He holds her hand and together they turn the handle. It is stuck. They try again. The tips of his fingers wrap around her wrist.

As he returns to his seat and drives, Mother snakes her body out the passenger side window and begins to photograph the passing scenery with her camera. The
ao dai
glistens and clings to her slender frame before it unspools and delivers a glossy whiteness into the transport of wind.

Cliff whistles. He handles her with a casual ease, as if she were without any sadness, and so she is. He reaches over and pulls her back in.

She is oblivious to the speed of the car. Everything will be blurry, I think to myself as I watch her click randomly at this and that.

The car stops in front of a little house. As the three of us walk toward the front door, I hear a steady drumbeat and stop. A gritty guitar riff, part rancor and part melody. Growling vocals. It is rock and roll. I look at our mother. It is not her kind of music. But it is the kind I once loved.