Three

“Mai, are you awake?” Hiep’s voice floated over to her, interrupting her dreams. Mai started to move and felt the hard surface beneath her. Of course, she remembered now. They were with Small Auntie and her family.

“Mai, wake up.” An insistent tug on her shoulder.

“Uncle Hiep, is that you? I couldn’t remember where I was.”

“You were moaning last night.”

“I had some bad dreams,” she said, still shaking. “I could sleep all day.” She yawned.

“We can’t do that. We’ve got to go back to the registry.”

“Oh, please, just a little longer … ”

Hiep nudged her with his foot. “Get up, you lazy girl.”

Mai sat and peered up at Hiep frowning down on her. Where was Small Auntie? And the children? The boat was deserted, though wisps of smoke came from a cooking fire nearby. Above her, pale purple and pink threads of light painted the eastern sky, erasing the night. Beyond her, she could see the gray-blue sea, their abandoned fishing trawler, forlorn, caught on the coral reefs.

She jumped down from the boat to the sand and followed Hiep past the light brown tents sprinkled along the beach to the Red Cross tent. Inside, a long line of men, women, and children waited to be interviewed. Mai sat on the ground at Hiep’s feet while he filled out a form that a young Vietnamese man had handed him. She looked at the tables, where man sat interviewing refugees. The old woman who had been next to her on the boat was ahead of them, leaning on her son’s arm. Hiep finished filling out the form and handed it back to the young man, who carried it over to a table where a man speaking English sat with a Vietnamese translator next to him.

Mai remembered the American soldiers on the Mekong before Saigon had fallen. One had given her a chocolate bar. So delicious. She should have shared it, but instead she had taken it to her room and eaten it all. Perhaps this man was an American. He finished interviewing the couple sitting at the table and called their names.

Mai pushed her hair out of her eyes. Hiep grabbed her hand and they went over to the table. She prayed that they would give the right answers so that they could go to America. Hiep gave his name and age first, and then Mai was asked for hers.

“Nguyen Mai” she said in the traditional Chinese way, last name first. “I’m fourteen.” She knew that if she’d said she was younger, she would get to go to school longer in America. But Mother and Father had taught her to always tell the truth, and so she did. Hiep gave his brother’s name and address in the United States, in that strange place called Chicago. When the Red Cross made contact with Third Uncle, Hiep would ask his brother to sponsor them.

“We’ll do everything we can,” the young man said through the translator, his forehead beaded with perspiration, his face bright red with the heat. “Sometimes it takes a while. And, of course, there are so many waiting to leave. Just listen for your name to be called on the loudspeaker; that’s how you’ll know a decision has been made.” Then the man gave them their meal tickets.

Mai left the Red Cross building with Hiep feeling confused.

“How long will it be?” she wanted to know. The uncertainty scared her. Would they be here a month? A year?

“I don’t know, Mai. But we have a much better chance because we have family in America. I’ll hang around the Red Cross in the mornings and listen for our names to be called.” Hiep’s voice wavered and he dug his hands into his pockets. Mai could tell he was frightened too.

As they walked back to the boat, Hiep asked Mai for one of her gold bracelets to pay Small Auntie for their living space. Small Auntie had asked him for money as she had led them to her boat.

“Mother told me to keep these. They’ll bring us good fortune.”

“Mai, this is our good fortune.” Hiep held out his hand.

Mai reached inside her pants, ripped part of the seam, and slid a gold bracelet out. She slipped it onto her wrist. So beautiful. Then she slipped it off and handed it to Hiep.

“Here, take it. I still have one left. Don’t ask me for that. And don’t tell Small Auntie I have it. She’ll want it too.” No wonder Small Auntie had grabbed them on the beach. Don’t trust anyone, Father had warned them.

Hiep took the bracelet and put it in his pocket. “You’re right. I think she hopes we have a lot of gold, but we’re lucky to have a place to live. Two people alone aren’t assigned a living place.”

Mai believed what he said was true, but she’d promised Mother. She hoped she would understand. One bracelet would still bring them good fortune. She would never give that away.

Hiep walked away and Mai squatted in the sand and watched the waves cascading onto the beach. Where was she? Where was the world she’d lived in before that day three years ago, in 1975, when the Communists had taken over her land? Before then, life had had a predictable rhythm. She’d never worried about going hungry when she saw the sacks of rice coming to her family’s rice mills to be processed.

How she loved her ancestral home. If she closed her eyes and tried, she could see the entertaining room, the family altar in the front. Grandfather sat in a carved chair with a high back, sipping tea, smoking his big cigars, and visiting with the village elders. Mai could still smell the aroma of his cigar smoke and hear his voice above the others as they discussed the rice crop.

Beyond that was her grandparents’ bedroom, with an elaborately carved wooden bed draped with mosquito netting and covered with a thin mattress. Her own bed was a straw mat on a wooden bench that she’d shared with Ba Du, her nanny, until she’d turned five and her mother thought she was old enough to sleep alone.

She thought about Father, so sure of himself. He had managed all the rice mills for Grandfather. But later, when he’d sat under the mango trees and talked with her uncles, his voice was fearful and his eyes had dark circles under them.

She rose from the sand and walked toward the boat where Small Auntie was beginning the evening meal.

“You’re lucky they let you ashore,” Small Auntie said as she squatted on her heels and stirred the rice over the open cooking fire outside the boat. “So many people here.”

Hiep handed Small Auntie the gold bracelet. She shook her head, turned it over in her hands to examine it, and then tucked it into the pocket of her shirt.

“Too many. When we first came a year ago, the island was almost deserted. Now the soldiers only let you land if your engine is broken. So many people suffer.” She sighed and stood up, wiping her hands on her long loose pants. “If the soldiers find out that your engine does work, they will tow you back out to sea, to face the Thai pirates who rob and rape. If they don’t get you, thirst and starvation will.”

“Why would the soldiers do that?”

“Too many people here. Island’s too small.”

“But what do the people do?”

“I don’t know.” Small Auntie shrugged. “There are other islands. Sometimes a storm comes and they drown. When I came, we almost didn’t make it. But my husband, he’s a smart man. He kept the engine running. We would have all died, all two hundred of us.”

Small Auntie looked up at Mai, who widened her eyes in disbelief. Two hundred on this small boat? Three hundred people had been on her boat, but it had been much bigger than this one.

Mai thought of the rest of her family. What if they were out there in a boat, drifting with no food or water as she had been, and no one rescued them?

“Enough of this.” Small Auntie smiled. “You’re here, and you must help. You can start by watching the children while I finish the cooking. They are always getting too near the fire.”

She pointed to the four small children playing in the sand. The oldest was Minh, a boy about ten, holding a ball of string that he tossed in the air. Two little girls, Huong and Diep, who appeared to be about six and four, sat quietly and watched him. The youngest girl, Nhu, toddled toward Mai with her arms outstretched. Mai bent over and picked her up, surprised at how light she was. The child smiled and reached out for her hair. Mai sat down next to the other children. “Want to play a game?” she asked.

They didn’t answer, their solemn eyes fixed on her. She showed them a game she had played with her sister Tuyet. She drew some squares in the sand and threw a pebble on the first square and hopped to it. Then she threw the pebble to the second square. “Here, you try.”

They watched her silently, slowly joining in. She was happy they were entertained, but a sad feeling came over her. She missed her family.

Small Auntie interrupted her thoughts. “Tomorrow morning, Mai, go to the Red Cross headquarters with Minh and get our food. The ship comes about eight. Get there early before they run out.”

Small Auntie gathered the rice bowls and called them over to eat. She smiled as Mai helped the children before serving herself.

Mai felt safe with Small Auntie. Even though she was a small woman, about Mai’s height, she could hold a crying child on her hip with one arm and lift a cooking pot full of rice with the other. Her voice was strong and full of authority. Uncle Sang was off at the wells. Fresh drinking water was scarce and the men spent their time digging while the women and children lined up three times a day for food rations, hauled water, and gathered twigs for the cooking fire.

“Digging wells is dangerous work,” Sang warned them that evening around the fire. “Not many tools. Sometimes I have to work with my bare hands. Scoop the sand into buckets and dump it on the ground.” He dug his hands in the sand and let it run through his fingers. “Men have died,” he said, lowering his voice. “Cave-ins. Thirty meters down—very deep. You be careful,” he said, pointing to Hiep. “Tomorrow you will leave with me in the morning for the wells.” He stood up and stretched. “Now I must rest.” Sang turned and disappeared into the evening shadows.

Mai was worried, but Hiep was excited. He strutted around, proud to be considered a man even though his hands, Mai noticed, were soft, those of a student, not a laborer. Great-grandfather, be with him, she prayed.