The Lotus and the Storm (6 page)

Khanh shows me packets of banknotes and gold bars wrapped in plain tissue paper. “Take this to the window and look,” she says, handing me a bar of pure yellow gold. Urged on by my sister, I inhale its metallic smell. “Better than money printed on paper,” she explains.

I nod. My sister returns the notes and gold bars to their rightful place. When she shuts the door of the safe, it clicks securely into place.

 • • • 

Our father's military salary is meager. And so our mother's natural anxieties are aggravated by her mother's indelicate opinions about his modest beginnings. Having married him instead of someone with the possibility of a more prosperous future, she must be the one to rebuild the family's fortune. The only other option is to reclaim Grandmother's acres of lost land, flat stretches of inert green at a distance beyond our powers of intervention.

At times our mother is plagued with a quiet, slow-moving sense of unease, even in the midst of noise and commotion. Our father believes its source is news that came years before I was born, news that her father, a wealthy landowner, had been captured by the Vietcong and held in a secret hideout. Villagers friendly to the government had leaked news of his captivity and the general whereabouts of the secret hiding place. But no one knew the exact location. It was a place of phantom enemies, sniper fire, crushing vines, and overgrown jungle. A place without borders. Vietcong would attack then retreat, come then go. Our father went on a secret mission to try to rescue him but his helicopter was downed. He was badly wounded and the mission failed.

It was there, in that unknown place, that our grandfather was decapitated, his head sewn onto a pig's body staked by the trapdoor's entrance. A photograph of it was later delivered to our house, into our mother's hands. It was carefully framed to suggest the details of his death. There was a plastic pail. Knife against whetstone. Bloodied ropes. I wasn't there but I could almost hear the infernal howls of agony inflicted and prolonged. Imagination can be a terrible thing. Our mother has been haunted by what might have happened to her father. The only girl among a brood of three boys, she was the one most coddled by our grandfather. I can see her clearly, even years later, stilled by sorrow and anxiety.

Since our grandfather's death, chicken and ducks are no longer served in our household. I am told our Chinese grandmother once bought live chickens from the market and killed them right in the garden. That is how chicken is eaten in our country. But our mother cannot bear to hear the futile flapping of wings trying to escape death. She cannot allow our cook to wring a feathered neck or to cut it and let the blood drain over a bowl. Our cook was offended at first. He took it to mean that our mother lacked faith in his skills. Of course it had nothing to do with skepticism on our mother's part and everything to do with grief. For our mother grief can appear in midsentence and leave her altogether inconsolable. Even the most ordinary objects and events can bring about her grief. A hard, unpeeled green mango, the kind our grandfather liked to eat. A sickle moon on a starless night. But some things are certain to provoke it. Definitely a knife's blade against the neck.

And definitely Uncle Number Five's visits as well. Uncle Number Five is our mother's younger brother and he calls her Big Sister Number Four. His presence represents the complications of family and signals the confluence of loyalty and betrayal. For her, his impromptu appearances mean that the awful war that our father has to wade into every few weeks is indeed fully alive and capable of entering this sacred space of house and home. Uncle Number Five rarely arrives at our house except when it is dark and always for short, surreptitious visits. He always arrives unannounced, carrying with him the sediments and smells of faraway places. Of our mother's siblings, Uncle Number Five is the closest in age to our mother. She wants him to come home but dreads his return.

The photograph of our dead grandfather is becoming damaged, worn, sullied from repeated handling. Our mother does not know the exact date he died but, based on the timeline of his capture, she picked a day to commemorate the anniversary of his death. On that day, my sister and I are allowed to see the terrible picture of a half-pig, half-man figure. The clear lines and edges of objects, torso, animal—they have faded and become smudged. But in our mother's memory they have become all the more clear, as the days pass and she is able to add imagined details, telescopic and microscopic, to his final hours. She can see and hear what is right in the picture and what is not. Her protracted agony is, in that way, self-inflicted.

And so that is why our mother dreads Uncle Number Five's return. He evokes their common childhood as well as the war's unbearable brutality. He is a Vietcong and, hence, surrogate assassin. Youthful delinquency taken to the utmost extreme. Worse yet, although he is saddened and deeply affected, our uncle remains an unwavering Vietcong even after our grandfather's death. His explanation—if one could call it that, our mother says, sighing—is merely that evil itself is not the province of any one group, any particular ideology. This continued loyalty to the other side and the claim that the Vietcong is the true nationalist, the peasant hero fighting American imperialists, almost cleaves our family apart, although after so many years we have settled into long periods of acceptance and calm.

There will be trouble if it is discovered that our family harbors Uncle Number Five in our house. Our parents warn us not to say anything to anyone about his dark presence. There are to be no politics discussed when Uncle Number Five is in the house. Our father prefers to meditate alone in his private room. You can tell by his forced smiles that he struggles to accept Uncle Number Five for our mother's sake.

When they are together, our mother tells stories archived since their childhood and Uncle acquiesces in listening to them over and over, delighting her by adding his own dead-on details. “Do you remember when,” Mother asks again and again. “Do you remember when we ate
com chay
and you broke your front tooth?”
Com chay
is what my sister and I covet as well. Rice left to simmer on low heat after the water has boiled off will form a charred crust at the bottom that sticks, carbonized, to the pot. Our Chinese grandmother would pry it out delicately with a spatula and it would emerge sanctified as a flat, crispy layer topped by a thin fluffy coat of soft cooked rice. The best finishing touch is a few spoonfuls of oil garnished with sautéed scallions and garlic.

Reminiscing, there is no judgment, no condemnation. History and familiarity usher in tenderness and expand our capacity for forgiveness. Sometimes our mother and uncle communicate with their eyes, as if the language of silence were the best evocation of their ties. Perhaps they fear that words could be misunderstood. Our mother clucks and pulls her little brother's ear lovingly as if to chastise him. They talk animatedly into the night, gesturing with their forks and glasses, winking at each other. Happy childhood stories are what they both choose to remember. The rest they forget.

Sometimes they have arguments, but those are tolerated because they are not centered on the war or the Vietcong. One such fight started when our uncle made a remark about our Chinese grandmother.

“Big Sister, how long will she stay?” our uncle whispered.

“Who?” our mother asked.

“The Chinese woman.”

“The children love her. She's like family now.”

Our uncle made an “um” sound, as if to fill in the ensuing silence with some sound.

“I'm only your younger brother,” he said in a self-deprecating voice. “And you know I am not the type to hold anything against foreigners or even the Chinese.”

It was then our mother's turn to make her particular “um” sound, demurely suggesting that she knew better but was too polite to say more. Our uncle continued, staring into our mother's eyes with a steely expression. “You should not trust these Chinese too much,” he cautioned. He said “Chinese” in the tone of one trying to repress an unpleasantry. “The Chinese are seldom harmless. There is a reason why they are called the Jews of Asia. It's one thing that they are here and seem to have no interest in being one of us. It's another thing that they want to own and control everything. We should not put up with profiteers and speculators.”

“She is from a family of poor shopkeepers in Tra Vinh. They are hardly profiteers. They have very little,” our mother answered, arching her eyebrows for emphasis.

Uncle Number Five sighed. “You live in Cholon, which is practically a Chinese city. It has warped your perspective. As usual, you see only what is right before you. I'm talking about the big picture.” He wore a steadfast look on his face and patted our heads. He was the one who had to keep in mind what was important, in the long run, for our sake.

“And I,” our mother insisted, “prefer the little picture. We love
this
woman, who happens to be Chinese.” She turned to us and smiled. “Do you love your Chinese grandmother?” she asked us. She scooped my sister into her arms and caressed her long hair with her palm. Khanh was all too happy to submit to the powers of our mother's attention.

“We love her,” we answered in unison.

Our mother flashed a sharp, cutting look in our uncle's direction. She planted a loud, exaggerated kiss on Khanh's forehead. As if that were too meek a show of maternal love, she then pressed her face against my sister's hair and inhaled Khanh's very essence into the depths of her own being.

Presumably to cut off any further talk about the Chinese, our mother pushed a bowl of rice and a clay pot of braised fish toward Uncle. The fish had simmered all day on a low fire. Its sticky caramel-and-fish-sauce liquid was dark and russet-colored.

“Eat,” she ordered, with both maternal velvetness and authority in her voice. He obeyed.

Even though our uncle mainly visits with us and our mother, he sometimes pays a short call to our father in his private room. Our mother agonizes over the possibility of friction between husband and brother. She finds the muffled whispers emanating from Father's study excruciating.

“But why, Mother?” Khanh asks. “Why is it not possible for Uncle and Father to just talk?”

Our mother shakes her head. “They are too serious to enjoy themselves bantering.”

Uncle Number Five is rarely serious with us, however. He is prone to spontaneous laughter. Once he comes into our house, he enfolds us in his arms, large wings that spread like those of a white crane over our shadows. He accommodates and indulges. Galileo, our uncle proclaims, is not just a genius but a constellation of genius. The sun is but one in a river of stars. And the earth orbits around it. Imagine saying that then, he says, playing to my sister's ardor for all that is Galileo.

Once, during one of our uncle's many visits, my sister and I were playing hide-and-seek in an upstairs alcove around the corner from our father's room. Our game happened to coincide with Uncle's private meeting with our father. In retrospect, perhaps Khanh had timed it that way. From the perfect stillness, I could hear an occasional whisper, a stirring of words, but never enough to make out what was actually said. Underneath the muddle of a word here and another there, we could make out the tone, hushed yet heavy. A claustrophobic intimacy. I crouched behind a cluster of potted plants in the corner of a long hallway to wait for my sister to seek me out. I watched as she tiptoed toward the stairwell near the door. I wanted to run after the purple ribbon of her ponytail but instead froze in place. My sister crept across the tempting stretch of tiles and pressed her ear against the door to our father's room.

Khanh's eyes widened. After a few moments, my sister quickly slid away and ensconced herself next to the potted plant and me. The door opened and our uncle walked out. With a slight backward glance, he said, “Trust me,” and again, “Trust me,” before heading down the stairs. My sister and I held our breath. Our father was staring at us.

“What are you doing?” he said, uncharacteristically gruff.

“Nothing,” I said, feigning innocence.

“Not you,” our father said. “You,” pointing his chin at Khanh.

Our father plucked Khanh up and held her by the waist. My sister dangled from his arm, fingers splayed as she struggled to escape. Not knowing what to do, I kept quiet, sifting through the bewildering lines of allegiance I felt toward each of them.

“No,” my sister hollered in spittled fury. Our father put her down gently but firmly. I had rarely seen her this flushed, this petulant. I lingered on the edge of tears, watched as our father led her by the ear, even as she flailed, into his room. I could see the glare of her astonished eyes. The door closed with a bang. I suspected she was being punished but still I felt excluded and miniaturized. I hovered nearby, working up a heightened sense of danger and dreaming up ways to rescue her.

It was hours later when Father emerged with sister in hand for dinner.

 • • • 

That night before bed my sister and I engaged in our usual ritual of raiding the cupboard. I had become addicted to the rush of doing that which is forbidden. There, waiting for us, was a feast forged from leftovers. I imagined it before I even got to the cupboard—a lick of the tongue along the rim of a clay pot still filled with morsels of pork and caramel, more concentrated in sugar and salt after sitting in a dark cupboard than when first brewed on the stove. By midnight, the evening's intensely earthy flavors had commingled and deepened. We scraped the bottom of the pot and poured spoonfuls of scallions and garlic on rice left over from dinner. I loved the burned and slightly smoky sugar drippings sprinkled in fish sauce that still coated the cast iron pan. I ate while my sister stood watch by the slit of a half-opened door.

But I was in a hurry this time and my sister knew it. “Come,” she said. We crept back upstairs to the sanctuary of our bedroom. Our Chinese grandmother was still asleep, head off the pillow, mouth wide open, her body tightly curled on the bed across from ours.