Thirty-Six

They’d been children when last together. Now they stood on opposite sides of the Plexiglas window, the slight young woman dressed in clothing fashionable for Hanoi—fitted blouse, miniskirt, teetering heels, heavy makeup around the eyes whose sadness belied her youth—but just short of scandalous in Salt Lake; the youth grown man-size, his muscled frame testament to the American faith in bountiful servings of meat, potatoes, and vitamins.

She waited for him to recognize her. Watched his lips form her name. Watched the tears, even as she herself began to weep, prevent the word.

“What happened?”

The inevitable question.

“Someone paid Miss Hoang to keep me behind.” Mai spat the words.

“Even more than the American Mother and Father paid to adopt us?”

A slow nod.

His eyes grew wide. “But why? Why separate us?” Even as he asked, he feared the answer, the one he’d assumed for all these years. There was more money to be made in the kickback from Fat Fingers, who would auction Mai off to the highest bidder, than from the adoption. He called down curses upon Miss Hoang.

“No. Miss Hoang, she cried and cried when she told me. And she let me stay on at the orphanage, keeping me away from Old Quang, giving me a job there so I wouldn’t have to leave when I turned fourteen. It was her way of apologizing. But she said, ‘What am I to do? This money will help so many children.’ When I learned how to use a computer, I tried at the internet cafes, searching for you. But I did not know American Mother and Father’s names, and I did not know your new name, and Miss Hoang would not tell me. ‘You must accept,’ she said. But I never accepted. I knew that someday I would find you.”

The corners of Mai’s mouth tilted in a sad smile. “But I did not think that when I finally did, it would be here. This”—she looked around the visiting room—“this thing they accuse you of. I do not believe it. It is not possible.”

Trang lifted a hand from the glass and waved it, as though shaking off a bit of dust, something meaningless. “It’s not. I didn’t do it.”

“Then, who? And why?”

“I don’t know.” His shoulders sagged. His eyes, so alive at the sight of her, went dead again.

Mai’s eyes narrowed. “Listen. Maybe this is nothing. But maybe not. Do you remember the day American Father was sick? The day before we were to go to America? That day started as so much fun!” Even now, Mai clapped her hands at the memory.

“Bryce—Dad—is sick today. So we’ll make this a special time. Just us girls,” American Mother said when she arrived to pick up Mai, who felt almost ashamed as she skipped out of the home without her brother. She had worn her best ao dai, her only silk one, a many-times hand-me-down nearly too small for her, frayed about the hems but a lovely jade-green, the color of new beginnings. She’d brushed out her hair so that it trailed over her shoulder, knowing the Americans were unaware of the shame its waves represented, and tucked a hoa dao, a peach blossom, behind her ear. The flower was purloined from one of the arrangements whose appearance coincided with the arrival of the Americans, and its presence in Mai’s hair would not have gone unnoticed.

She would pay, later, another child’s wrist flicking in a casual backhand as she passed, a hiss trailing her. “Thief girl. Maybe Fat Fingers finds you before the Americans take you home.” Soon, though, there would be no more slaps, no pinching and twisting of the soft skin of the inner arm where the bruises wouldn’t show. No more chasing a few individual noodles through watery broth, no never-quite-dry mattresses.

She led American Mother to the Old City’s main attraction, Hoan Kiem Lake, both of them twirling the matching paper parasols her new mother had bought to keep the sun from unattractively darkening their skin. Mai was too polite—and besides, she did not yet have the English words—to let her new mother know of the mistake involved in choosing parasols of white, the color of death.

“We went to the cafe overlooking the Turtle Tower. You know the one.”

Trang did, and his heart swelled at the memory. Cafes and restaurants lined the east side of the lake. There, wealthy people and tourists took in the centuries-old view that gave the lie to the high rises beyond. The small concrete pagoda, topped with twisting dragons rearing their heads from its tile roof, took its name from the golden turtle who had demanded a magic sword from an emperor. Mai and Trang had spent countless hours skulking around the lake’s edges, trying to catch sight of the soft-shelled turtles that occasionally poked their heads above its placid waters. They had to be careful, though. Waiters who spotted the pair when they approached cafe patrons with sad faces raised, beseeching hands extended, drove them away with shouts and kicks.

But no one chased Mai away on this day. Her small brown hand clasped firmly in her benefactor’s white one, she sauntered past the waiter in her new pink dress with the scratchy petticoats, almost disappointed when his glance slid past her, seeking instead the ruffians who would disturb those seeking only to sip their sugary concoctions in peace.

“Anything you like,” American Mother said.

Mai liked sinh to bo, the rich avocado drink that was a dessert in itself, and she also liked a slice of chocolate cake with coffee ice cream. She was surprised when American Mother ordered only a croissant, waving away the waiter’s suggestion of ca phe sua da, the iced coffee syrupy with condensed milk that most tourists drank by the gallon.

“The ice, it is safe,” the waiter assured her.

But American Mother shook her head, explaining to Mai that her faith did not permit her to drink coffee, or tea, or even soda pop. Mai, who had envisioned Coca-Cola with every meal in her new American home, slid this unwelcome bit of information into the mental file, along with uncomfortable shoes and starched, stiff clothing. When the croissant arrived, American Mother only nibbled at it.

“Why?” Mai asked, unable to fashion the entire sentence in English. Why, with so many delectable things, not partake? Especially when, as with all Americans, money was no object?

American Mother put her hands to her waist, nearly as tiny as that of the average Vietnamese woman. Mai and Trang had already commented on this difference. It was taken for granted that Americans were fat, lumbering through the Old Quarter burdened by their high, hard stomachs and wobbly butts. But not American Mother.

“I work hard at this,” American Mother said. “I watch everything I eat.”

Mai didn’t understand. One just ate—and if one was a former street rat, one ate as much as one could, whenever one could. But she nodded as though the woman’s words made sense, and agreed again as American Mother commented approvingly of the legions of women and others taking their morning exercise at the lake, doing vigorous aerobics to the beat of a boom box despite the ascending mercury heartlessly burning off the mists that lent such a mysterious and picturesque air to the Turtle Tower.

Later, in the full heat of the day, the cake and ice cream and avocado commingled uneasily in her stomach as she stretched to reach the pedals on the swan boat that bobbed on the much larger West Lake, their next stop after Hoan Kiem. She tried not to notice the curious looks from people toward this pair disporting themselves on the lake beneath their funeral parasols.

Wavelets struck at the boat in whispery slaps, nearly obscuring American Mother’s question. “How old are you really, Mai?”

Mai didn’t know the English word, but held out her other hand, fingers spread. Five. And again. And, finally, thumb and forefinger. Twelve.

“Are you sure? Do you … have you … do you have blood yet?” American Mother gestured toward her lap.

Mai grasped her meaning. “No. Not woman.”

“Oh, Mai. You are more of a woman than you know. You are going to be a great beauty.”

She looked so sad when she said it, her weak chin trembling, her awareness of her own plainness nakedly apparent. Mai hunched her shoulders and drew her arms protectively forward, obscuring the damnable buds on her chest, her still-childish body nearly a match for American Mother’s own. She searched for English words to force American Mother’s attention away from her and toward the russet tower rising high above the lake.

“Tran Quoc Pagoda,” Mai announced. “Very old. Very important. Very beauty.”

She herself looked beyond the pagoda and scanned the shore, wondering if American Mother might later buy her one of the trinkets from the stalls set up to woo tourists. The lakefront promenade was nearly deserted at this hour, when most foreigners retreated to their air-conditioned hotels. Except for one man, so impossibly familiar that Mai had to look twice to ascertain that it was indeed American Father, supposedly too ill to accompany them on their outing.

He must be feeling better, she told herself. Maybe he was looking for them. She started to raise her hand in a wave. His head jerked. He’d seen her, and immediately looked away. Mai lowered her hand. He turned toward the woman approaching him; a girl, really, not much older than Mai herself, head tilted, walking with an exaggerated sway. She put her hand on his arm.

American Mother lay the parasol aside and shaded her eyes. The boat took a lurching turn, American Mother’s left foot jammed against a pedal. Her glance skated toward Mai. She’d seen her husband. And she wondered if Mai had seen him, too.

Mai made the sort of split-second decision that had helped her survive the streets, until it hadn’t.

“This lake,” she said, pointing to the far shore, away from the problematic presence of American Father and whatever he was up to. “Biggest in Hanoi.”

She chanced a quick glance over her shoulder, just long enough to see American Father shake his head, to see the woman move away. But an American man, walking alone? There would be another woman, and another beyond that. Boys, too. Officially, Vietnam was communist, but among the demimonde, capitalism ruled.

“Those houses.” Apartment buildings lined the lake, walls of glass to take in the views. “Very rich people.” Talking, talking, trying to reassure American Mother that her attention was elsewhere.

Was American Mother’s face a little redder, her lips drawn a little tighter? Maybe. But, as Mai reminded herself, all white foreigners suffered terribly in the heat. And American Mother seemed absorbed by the columnar pagoda rising eleven levels into the sky, the boat rocking gently on the water, floating farther and farther away from the husband who clearly wasn’t sick at all.

She said nothing of the day’s events when she returned that evening to the Kind and Caring Home. Why torment Trang with descriptions of the treats he hadn’t shared?

Instead, she insisted they practice their English as they packed the things American Mother and Father had bought them, soft tracksuits for Trang, frilly dresses for Mai. And shoes! Trang got the puffy sneakers he’d long craved, the Nike knockoffs he recognized from the Hang Dau shoe stalls in the Old City, but poor Mai saw her feet stuffed into stiff shiny shoes of fake patent leather that scraped blisters into her heels and toes. She consoled herself with the thought that Miss Hoang would likely claim the clothes and the awful shoes before they left for America, and also with Trang’s assurances that real American shoes were probably far more comfortable than the look-alikes.

“Tomorrow,” he reminded her. They chanted the strange English words together. “Thank you.” “Please.” Which came out like “Plea,” both of them unable to twist their tongues around the damnable hissing consonant at the end, so unlike the gentle vowel sounds that ended Vietnamese words. “I love you,” though. That was easy. And, most thrilling, “Mom.” “Dad.” They were ready.

Morning brought Miss Hoang. “They’re waiting in the taxi.” Something different about her, features more pinched, steps shorter and choppier than usual. She held out her hands for their new clothes, the shiny books with their smooth thick pages, and whatever candies they’d yet to consume. “American airplanes—they allow only one small bag.”

Mai shoved the horrible shoes toward her and tried to look as though she was sorry to give them up.

Miss Hoang jerked her chin toward Trang. “You. I must speak to you alone. In my office.”

Trang followed her. But at her office door, she turned and put the flat of her hand to his back, ushering him toward Kind and Caring Home’s front door. And outside, onto the street, where his new mother waited beside a taxi. She opened the back door and stood aside, then slid in beside him. She closed the door. “Dad is still sick. At the hotel. We’ll pick him up.”

The driver turned the key in the ignition. The sea of motorbikes parted and flowed around them as the taxi slid into traffic.

“Wait!” Trang screamed. “Wait for Mai!”

His new mother spoke through tears, crying so hard Trang could barely understand the words. “There was a problem. A last-minute thing. Miss Hoang just told me about it. Mai cannot come. Not now. Just you. Oh, Frank, I am so sorry. We’ll work it out from America. We’ll bring her home as soon as possible.” She reached to hug him.

He pulled back, comprehending only that the taxi was moving farther and farther from the Kind and Caring Home without his sister. He tried to open the taxi door but the lock would not give. He beat the windows with his fists, begging for help from the passing motorbikes. People averted their eyes and gunned their engines, speeding away from the unseemly spectacle as he screamed and screamed for the sister left behind.

Mai and Trang twisted in their chairs, eyeballing the camera, whispering in bursts of Vietnamese, interspersed with enough English to keep the guard at bay.

“I have missed you so much, my brother.” In stilted, proper English. Then, quickly, “Was he sick when you went to the airport?”

“No. No more than when you saw him at West Lake.”

“They left me on purpose. And they told you I was dead. But why?”

The guard scowled their way. Mai raised her voice and said, again in English, “I will be here two weeks only on this trip.” And, nearly beneath her breath in Vietnamese, “My coming here. He knows I saw him that day. Looking for a woman.”

“Two weeks,” Trang said in the same loud voice. “After so many years apart, it is not much time.” He coughed and spoke below it. “Not him. He is not like that.”

Mai pursed her lips. No need to say anything, to point out that all men were like that. “I know what I saw.”

“No. It is not so. I cannot believe it.”

Mai rapped at the glass. The guard shook his head. She ignored him, the older sister, taking charge, demanding attention. “And now you cannot believe”—she waved her hand, taking in the odious visiting station, the guard, the orange jumpsuit—“this, this catastrophe. Brother, you must open your eyes.”

He closed them instead. “Why did you not tell me, that day?”

Again, the pursed lips. A foreigner, even American Father, chasing women? It would have been like telling him that the sun had come up in the morning, that the rains poured down in the afternoon. She sat wordless.

Trang squeezed his eyes tighter shut still, trying to come to grips with this new reality. When he finally spoke, it was from a place of great pain. But his eyes were open again, clear of the doubt that had clouded them. “That is why they told me you were dead. That is why they told me I’d never get the mission I wanted to Vietnam, and why I couldn’t be permitted to go back, even to find your grave. Because … ”

“Because?”

“Because if I found you, found you alive, you would tell me. It would—”

They were back to their childhood, each divining the other’s thoughts, Mai now finishing her brother’s sentence.

“It would ruin him.”