Love and Honor

Bạc Liêu, 2019

“Grandma . . . what are you thinking about?” A soft voice pulled Quỳnh out of her reverie. She had been remembering a rainy night in 1970 when she’d walked the streets of Sài Gòn alone, after her sister’s death. She shuddered, reaching out for Diễm, and held her granddaughter close. She wished she could lock the gate to her past and throw the key away. At the same time, she wished she could talk to herself—the young girl of eighteen—and tell her not to lose hope, because despite feeling like she’d died along with her elder sister, she would survive and would never let anyone look down on her, ever again.

“Grandma, will you sing for us?” Tài nestled against her, and Quỳnh wished she had found Phong sooner; she loved being the grandmother to his two wonderful children. She was lying on Tài and Diễm’s bed in their home, inside the cocoon of a white mosquito net. Tài and Diễm were already teenagers who no longer needed lullabies to lure them to sleep, but still, they asked Quỳnh for songs or bedtime stories every night during her visits. As if they, too, wanted to make up for lost time. As if they needed her as much as she needed them.

Quỳnh embraced her grandchildren in each arm. The warmth of their bodies calmed her turbulent mind. It had been a year since her reunion with Phong, but the reality felt as fresh as a rice field that had just received seedlings.

“À à ơi . . .” Her voice rose against darkness. “Gió mùa thu mẹ ru mà con ngủ năm canh chày, là năm canh chày thức đủ vừa năm hỡi chàng chàng ơi, hỡi người người ơi em nhớ tới chàng em nhớ tới chàng . . .” She sang louder, as if to declare that she had a voice, and nobody could erase it.

That day at the café, when Quỳnh revealed her connection with Dan, Phong was stunned. He had blinked, stayed silent, then shook his head. “You’re worse than I imagined,” he said. “You’ve ruined two lives instead of one. What kind of an aunt are you, to give your niece away, after Hoa’s mother had just died?” He flung some money onto the table for his coffee before hurrying out to the street. She was sure she would lose him forever, but a few minutes later, Diễm ran toward her, calling “Grandma! Grandma!”

Now, on the bed, she kissed Diễm’s cheek, inhaling the girl’s scent. Earlier in the evening, she’d rubbed coconut oil on her granddaughter’s hair to be able to comb it, and was astonished at the healthy glow of Diễm’s skin, the unique beauty of it. For many years, Quỳnh had spent money on whitening cream like so many Vietnamese women she knew, and on sunny days never left her house without covering herself from head to toe. Now she could see Heaven had blessed people with their different skin colors, and regardless of their differences, they were beautiful in their own ways.

“Grandma, that’s a really romantic song.” Diễm giggled. “Do you think about Grandpa Tim when you sing it?”

The word “Tim” sent a knife through Quỳnh’s mind. She swallowed. “Yes . . . of course. I used to sing him lullabies and he’d always fall asleep with a smile on his face.” As Trang had often said, she’d launched the javelin, she had to follow its path.

“Tell us more about Grandpa Tim, Grandma,” Tài asked.

The bedroom door was open and Quỳnh could see the altar Phong had set up for his father, from which three red dots peered down at her, like eyes of a hovering ghost. Even though Phong was a Catholic, he followed the Vietnamese customs of ancestor worship. He had burnt incense for his father before going out with Bình that night to a cải lương play. He prayed to his father so often, whispering Tim’s name. Every time Quỳnh saw her son do it, she wanted to scream.

“Grandpa Tim really didn’t have any family left, Grandma?” Diễm nudged her.

“Well . . . he was the only child. His parents died young. He was so lonely that he joined the military, to seek companionship.” She caressed her grandchildren’s backs. “Now . . . close your eyes and dream of something sweet, darlings. You have school early tomorrow.” The more she loved them, the more she feared their questions.

“I don’t like school,” Diễm said. “And I hate some of my textbooks. They say American soldiers were bad, they were killing machines. When we read those passages in class, I can feel my friends staring at me.”

“Oh . . . I’m so sorry.” Quỳnh hugged her granddaughter tighter. “Don’t feel like that, please. You should feel proud about your grandpa, not ashamed of him. Remember that he wasn’t a combat soldier? He wasn’t involved in any fighting. He was an administrative officer who helped a lot of Vietnamese, actually. He processed paperwork and payments that enabled the rebuilding of houses, medical clinics, and schools in Kon Tum.”

Quỳnh wondered if she should go to Diễm’s school and talk to her teachers. Atrocities did take place during the war, but they weren’t just committed by the American side. What purpose did it serve anyway to teach children about hatred, to continue glorifying victory while not acknowledging the human costs on all sides?

“Grandpa Tim would want me to study in America, don’t you think?” Diễm asked. “Schools there would surely be better.”

“Shut up,” said Tài. “Don’t stand on one mountain and say the next is more beautiful. America has its problems, too. You know there’s tons of racism there too, right?”

“Tài, no harsh language, remember?” Quỳnh tapped her grandson on his shoulder. “It’s true that each country has its own issues, and it’s up to us to live our lives the best we can, wherever we are. . . . As for studying overseas, if you are keen, we can arrange it, but perhaps at university level, not before.” Some of Quỳnh’s friends had been sending their school-aged children and grandchildren to boarding schools in the U.K. and the U.S., and although Quỳnh could afford it, she wanted Diễm and Tài to stay close by. She needed to see them often, now that she’d found them.

“Something is going on with my father . . .” said Tài. “He’s become restless again. He’s thinking about doing another DNA test and register the results with a larger company to have a better chance of finding Grandpa Tim’s relatives. He said Grandpa Tim must have had aunts and uncles who might have children. Now that he’s with you, he feels luck is on his side, Grandma.”

Shock jolted through Quỳnh’s body before settling into the pit of her stomach. So heavy, it pinned her down onto the mattress. She’d just found Phong, Bình, Tài, and Diễm, and now she risked losing them again. It had taken her nearly two years since meeting Dan and Linda before deciding that she would embark on a search for her first son. There were many reasons that changed her mind: Khôi’s secure position at his university, a traffic accident that nearly killed her, her retirement from the daily operation of her business, and the repeated nightmares. Never had she imagined that Phong lived so close by.

The day her taxi had been hit by a container truck—the driver squashed beyond recognition, while she lost consciousness and found herself many hours later in an emergency room in a full-body cast—was the day she realized she’d been given a chance at redemption. She realized that if she could turn back time, perhaps she would raise Hoa and Phong herself. The rumors about the Communists’ punishments hadn’t been true, they didn’t burn those with permed hair nor chop off painted fingers. She knew no women who were imprisoned simply because of their sexual relations with Americans. Tiên, a woman from her bar, decided to raise her Amerasian child and they’d been left alone. It was true that some mothers were interrogated and sent to the New Economic Zones, and others were asked to report to their local police stations for months, but there were no mass executions.

She had reached out to Thiên after the accident. He immediately organized the DNA test for her. Finding Phong had been a miracle, and afterward she’d traveled to Sài Gòn and taken Khôi out for dinner. At his favorite Japanese restaurant, she had told her second son the same story she’d told Phong. She was talking about Phong’s wife and kids when Khôi threw his serviette onto the table. His chair scraped against the floor as he stood up. “How can you tell me now that your life and mine have been based on lies?” he said, then walked out, leaving her with two full plates of sashimi and sushi that neither of them had touched. He stopped talking to her for many weeks. Now, even though he brought his family back home occasionally for a visit, he asked her not to mention Phong. He refused to meet his half brother, even during the New Year. A few months ago, he’d sent her a text: “I worked hard to help you with your business. I was there for you throughout the years. I traveled with you on many overseas trips and translated for you, remember? When it comes to inheritance, don’t forget that he is not entitled to anything!”

Phong didn’t yet know about the text regarding inheritance. Khôi stood to inherit plenty of money, but Quỳnh knew now that she would be giving a share of it to Phong as well.

Phong had visited Quỳnh several times at her house, together with his wife and children. She’d taken them to her shop, explained her business to them, and introduced them to her staff. She hosted a dinner for them, to which she invited her relatives, friends, and neighbors. Her story about Tim seemed to have amazed people, but they were more interested in Phong’s life, in his experiences at the reeducation camp, in what it was like to be an Amerasian. “Your story should be made into a movie or written into a book,” someone had said, and she could only laugh at that.

Quỳnh was grateful that Phong seemed to have forgiven her. She’d wept when he called her Mother for the first time. It happened during their third meeting, her first time visiting his home. She’d brought along canvases, paints, and brushes, and spent the afternoon having fun with Tài and Diễm. They decided to paint Mun the dog, and the end result looked so much like a bear that Mun barked at the painting. As her grandchildren doubled over with laughter, Phong had leaned toward her, saying, “Cảm ơn Má.” He’d thanked her with not just his word, but also his smile.

Phong had told her to give Khôi time, and that he didn’t want to cause any tension between his mother and his younger brother, but as months passed and Khôi continued to avoid him, Phong must have felt hurt and disappointed. He almost never expressed it to her, though, as if life had tested him enough to make him patient with its struggles. But how long would his patience last?

“What have you been thinking, Grandma? Didn’t you hear my question about the DNA test?” Diễm nudged her.

Quỳnh blinked. “Oh . . . I was just . . . recalling Mr. Dan’s last letter. When did he say he and Mrs. Linda are coming back?” She didn’t want to talk about DNA tests. Not to her grandchildren, who were too young to understand that the results of such tests may not just reveal family relations.

“They’ll be back this September, Grandma,” Diễm said.

“I wouldn’t mind listening to you read the letter again. You did such a great job translating it, young man.” Quỳnh patted Tài on his arm. Tài was taking an intensive English course and used Dan and Linda’s letters to practice his language skills. Hardworking and ambitious, Tài would graduate from high school in a year; he planned to study computer science at an international university in Hồ Chí Minh City.

“Ah, I’m glad you asked, Grandma,” Tài said cheerfully, “because I improved my translation.” He got out of the mosquito net and Diễm switched on the light.

As Quỳnh sat on the bed, her back leaning against the headrest, flanked by her grandchildren, she thought about the milestones of their lives that she had missed: their first words, their first steps, their first day at school. She wished she’d been there to pick them up when they fell down, dry their tears when they sorrowed, and double their laughter. She wished she’d been able to color their childhood with joyful memories, the way she’d done for Khôi’s children. She needed to do more to bring Khôi and Phong’s families together. She would go to Sài Gòn in a few days to talk to Khôi again.

That afternoon, as she worked with Phong in the garden, she had watched butterflies fluttering on squash blossoms. In the pink rose apples and green guavas around her, she saw reasons to believe that Khôi would change, the way the flowers and the fruits were maturing in front of her eyes. Once Khôi got to know Phong, he would be proud of his half brother—a survivor, a man who overcame all odds.

“Today I gave my teacher this new version of my translation, Grandma,” Tài showed Quỳnh his notebook. “He said I stayed true to Mr. Dan’s letter and managed to make it sound natural in Vietnamese.”

“Your teachers are way too easy on you.” Diễm snatched the notebook from Tài’s hand. “Let me be the judge.” She started reading aloud.

Dear Quỳnh, Phong, Bình, Diễm, and Tài,

Can you believe it, that this is the first time I am writing with Vietnamese diacritics? Looking back, I am amazed at how I always stripped diacritical marks from Vietnamese names and words, to make things look and sound easier. Forgive me for the many times I misspelt your names! My Vietnamese teacher highlighted the importance of Vietnamese tonal marks to me. He pointed out that by writing Tài’s name as Tai, I called him “Ear” rather than “Talented.”

Diễm clutched her belly, laughing out loud. She turned to Tài. “I’m going to call you Brother Ear from now on.”

“Don’t you dare!” Tài narrowed his eyes.

Diễm giggled. She turned back to the letter.

Linda and I are making a big effort to learn Vietnamese because we’re returning this September. My sister will travel from Australia with her family and will join us in Hồ Chí Minh City. We are so excited and can’t wait for you to meet her.

We still have a lot to do before the trip. We’ve been working with our psychologist, Dr. Hoh, to set up a charity to provide psychological support to people affected by the war and by Agent Orange. It’s Mr. Thiên who gave us the idea, helps us with the paperwork and he will be the manager of our operations in Việt Nam. Isn’t that amazing? We are grateful that our family and so many of our friends are joining hands with us.

Just three more months and we’ll see you again! We are counting down each day and can’t wait to visit your home. Linda is very excited to go fishing with Tài and Diễm, taste the delicious vegetables in Phong’s garden, visit Bình’s rice field and hear her sing, and learn how to cook from Quỳnh. We will test our skills with Phong’s musical instruments, of course, but might not be brave enough to take up your offer to ride on a water buffalo!

Tài and Diễm: your English is getting so good; I hope one day I’ll be able to write you letters in Vietnamese the way you are writing to us in English.

Bình: thank you again for sending Linda the áo dài dress. She still wears it to all our parties. Her friends are jealous and want tailor-made clothes, too.

Quỳnh and Phong: it’s truly a miracle that you have found each other. It makes me smile every time I think about it. Your reunion enables me to believe in God again. I hope our family will be further extended when we find Hoa.

See you soon!

With many warm hugs from Seattle,

Dan (and Linda)

It was the second time Quỳnh listened to the letter but she still found herself teary-eyed. She noticed how positive Dan sounded, how enthusiastic.

“Did Mr. Dan really write ‘our family’ in the original letter?” Diễm asked Tài. “Or did you make it up?”

“Make it up?” Tài snorted. “I had to show both the English and Vietnamese versions to my teacher, you dumbhead.”

“Hey, no foul language, remember?” Quỳnh said sternly. “Of course Mr. Dan and Mrs. Linda are our family, for the many things they have done for us, and we for them. But more than that, we share a common history that bonds us together stronger than any blood ties.”

“When you answer the letter,” she told Tài, “could you ask how someone could make a donation to their charity?” None of her family members knew, but over the years, she had donated money to hospitals, pagodas, and orphanages. She’d had good financial fortune, and it was her duty to share her luck with others. And she hoped the psychologists from Dan’s group might talk to Phong, who had told her about his past panic attacks.

“Please, Grandma . . . can I have Mun?” said Diễm as they settled into bed again.

“We’re not supposed to have the dog in bed, but I’m sure Grandma won’t tell,” Tài laughed.

“Ah . . . That could get me into big trouble with your parents, but I suppose it’s worth it.” Quỳnh laughed along. Spoiling her grandchildren was not only her great joy, it was her job. Mun was half-sleeping in her basket when Quỳnh picked her up and brought her to Diễm. The dog smelled like a rose from this afternoon’s bubble bath.

With the warmth of her grandchildren against her, Quỳnh sang one lullaby, then another, and another, until Tài and Diễm relaxed in her arms and their breathing became regular.

Quỳnh slipped from the bed and stepped out to the front yard. The stars were alive above her. They looked like Trang’s eyes. Quỳnh brought her palms together in front of her chest and looked up. In the star’s twinkle, she was reminded that her sister lived on—Trang lived on in the light that had given Quỳnh strength in her darkest moments.

“Thank you for helping me find my son, chị Hai,” she whispered. “You arranged for Phong to meet Dan, then for Dan to find me. You brought us together.” She bowed to the stars’ light. People who died young are said to have supernatural powers, and she believed this now. She believed in the blessings of the dead, and the interconnectedness of life. And she believed that all stories relating to the war were connected, one way or another, by blood.

Looking up to the sky, Quỳnh saw Trang’s face. She was still nineteen, forever young, forever beautiful. Before Trang’s burial, Quỳnh had knelt down next to her sister. She’d wiped all the blood away from Trang’s face, covered her sister’s head with a scarf, took off Trang’s torn clothes, and dressed her sister in fresh shirt and pants. “You are the most special angel,” she’d whispered to Trang, trying not to cry, for she’d heard tears that touched a dead person would prevent him or her from having a peaceful departure from earth.

“Chị Hai, I know you’re watching out for me, so please do more,” Quỳnh told the stars. “Please convince Khôi to accept Phong. Please protect my secret. Please help us find Hoa.”

She had prayed for Hoa often. She wished for Hoa to be at peace. She hoped that Hoa was loved by her adoptive family, who could make up for her parents’ absence. She wished she could find Hoa one day, to tell her how profoundly her mother had loved her.

Quỳnh had loved Trang, too, even though she’d never been able to say it aloud. She’d realized the depth of that love in the abyss of sorrow she experienced after her sister’s death. The sorrow that drove her to drinking, that made her undesirable to the men who frequented the Paradise Bar. After that rainy night when she was kicked out of the bar by her boss, she’d wandered around, wanting to take her own life. Another madam had plucked her out of the street, brought her to her brothel, Minh Anh, and pushed her into the arms of men.

The stars blurred as Quỳnh’s tears started to fall. She cried silently: for herself, for Trang, for the countless young women whose lives had been nothing but firewood in the furnace of wars.

When her tears dried, Quỳnh stood up to go back into the house. She got a whiff of the incense’s fragrance. She’d always loved the smell, for it represented respect, honor, and sacredness, but now she winced, for it reminded her of her lies.

Yes, she had lied to Phong. She had made up her story of romance with Tim so that Phong felt pride in his father and in himself. And now, she could see that the story helped her grandchildren, too.

Phong knew she’d worked at the Hollywood Bar. That part of the story she couldn’t twist because it involved Dan, Linda, and Thiên, but she told him she’d quit after her sister’s passing. Unable to find a decent job afterward, she said, she had sold tea and soft drinks on the street.

The truth was that at the Minh Anh brothel, she’d had to have sex with too many men to remember their faces. None of those men had told her their names. None had shown her any tenderness. She had merely been an object to them.

How could she ever tell her son the truth, that he wasn’t the fruit of a love story but the product of prostitution, and that she didn’t know who his father was? Phong’s father could have been one of the men who had poked at her as if they were poking at dead fish, who had mocked the shape of her eyes, who had called her unspeakable names.

Inside the house, the three red tips of the smoldering incense were still hovering in darkness. Without thinking, Quỳnh stretched her hands and grabbed the incense. The embers sizzled into her palms. She smelled burnt flesh but squeezed them tighter, her heart hammering in the cage of her chest.

In the yard, she dropped the incense. She trampled on it until each stick became dust. With each stamp of her foot, she vowed that the darkness from her past would never touch Phong. She would never let her son know the seeds of his life had come from the depths of her humiliation. She loved him. Out of that love, she had planted the story of Tim and grew it until its fruit tasted sweet in Phong’s mouth. She’d heard Phong telling others about his father with such pride and knew that the sweetness of her fruit of deception was not only real, it was necessary.

Tim was her secret and her fantasy, the name she’d picked out of a book of translated literature. She chose that name because it meant “the heart” in Vietnamese.

She had tried to kill Phong before he was born. She’d beat her fists against her stomach when she found out she was pregnant. She’d swallowed bowl after bowl of bitter herbal medicine.

Now, she was thankful that Phong had refused to let go.

In her decision to continue lying to her son, sometimes regret clouded her mind. Was she denying Phong’s chance of knowing his father, and Tài and Diễm of knowing their grandfather and his family? “No!” She told herself firmly. It was not worth the risk of putting Phong through pain. Whatever Phong and his family needed from his father, she could provide for them. She could take care of them and love them more than any American could. And in a way, Phong had already found his American parents in Dan and Linda, who had become like grandparents to Tài and Diễm.

Phong had been looked down on by too many people, who had called him bụi đời—a child of dust. She must keep showing him, in every way she possibly could, that he was the child of love. She respected his decision to look for his father’s relatives. In case he found them or his father, she would deal with the consequences, but for now, she would protect him.

She had tried to live an honest life, but the war had given her no choice. It had forced her to make up a version of herself that was acceptable to others. In a way, making up stories had been the basis of her survival and her success. Her lies had enabled her parents to go on living, and now her lies would protect her sons, their families, her business, and herself.

In her recent visit to her parents’ home, she had unearthed a secret box she’d buried in the garden. The box contained the many letters she and Trang had written home over the years. Those letters hardly contained any truth, but they were beautiful to read. And upon rereading them, she saw how writing them had enabled not just herself but her loved ones to escape horror, and to experience the taste of another life. She was tempted to burn the letters, destroy all the evidence of her past, but decided instead to bring them home. They were safe now, buried deep under the earth, below the banana plants, below the flowers that hung like the red lanterns that once filled the village of her childhood during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The flowers under which she and her sister had waited, full of yearning and hope, for their father to return from the war.

She went into the kitchen, diluted a pinch of salt into a bowl of warm water and disinfected the burns on her palms. She swept the yard with a broom until there was nothing left that would betray her. She checked on her grandchildren and pulled their blankets higher onto their chests. Mun came to Quỳnh, her tail wagging, her wet nose buried into Quỳnh’s arm. Quỳnh picked Mun up, taking solace in the dog’s warmth. She tucked the mosquito net tightly around her grandchildren’s bed. With tears in her eyes, she watched the still shadows of Tài and Diễm. She hoped her grandchildren’s dreams were taking them to a peaceful world where humans were kind to other humans, so that no one needed to live with regret and sorrow.

Out in the yard, with Mun in her arms, she sat waiting for Phong, the stars and the moon bright above her head. There had been days when the starlight had been concealed from her eyes by clouds and storms. But she knew such light was always there. Bright and inextinguishable.