“SOMEWHERE BEFORE THE Be River empties into Lake Waterfall Dreams,” Auntie Mao said, “you’ll find the prison. Your Má was held there after you and your Ba escaped.”
“Why weren’t the letters sent? Who kept them under the altar?”
Auntie Mao evaded Maia’s questions. “Your Má had more than a few suitors. It’s regrettable she chose your Ba.”
When the roosters crowed at dawn, Maia and Na bid goodbye to JP, who had decided to stay with the motley troupe to care for the dying camel. He wanted to explore the nearby underground tunnels he had read about. Maia sensed it was more than just an interest in history but did not ask, nor did he pry about her hasty departure and lent his motorcycle readily. Na had agreed to accompany Maia without any explanation beyond sightseeing. The two women borrowed JP’s used Minsk and returned to Ho Chi Minh City on National Highway 1. From the city, they followed the Dong Nai River northward to the Be River.
Maia and Na took turns driving. They stopped early for a breakfast of phở and iced coffee along the way and then for gas and a lunch of cơm bình dân later. They followed the Be River until late afternoon when it crossed Route 13 and continued westward toward Cambodia. When they finally stopped at a roadside diner to ask for directions, they learned that they had left the Be River a while back and were following a provincial stream. They were advised to take Route 13, which ran parallel to the Cambodian border, for about ten more kilometers to the village Loc Ninh, where they could find a place to spend the night and set out again in the morning.
The roadside diner, a long rectangle with rough concrete floor and white plastic tables and chairs, was deserted except for a group of timber truckers. The owner’s young twin daughters led the women through the diner, past the family’s cramped living quarters, to the well in the backyard to wash up. The eatery fronted the noisy and dusty thoroughfare to draw travelers. The back opened to acres and acres of lush coffee fields and a pine-fringed horizon.
On the table when they returned were stewed catfish with pork belly, bitter melon soup, and steamed white rice. At the next table a sunburnt trucker eyed them. He downed his iced draft beer and spoke loudly to his companion.
“Saigonese don’t come up this way.”
“My neighbor was traveling to the highlands last month,” his friend said, picking his teeth with a splinter, “when a group of FULRO rebels hijacked the bus and robbed everyone. The Công An News reported that they raped two passengers.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” The first man snorted. “But if the highlands are sealed off again, that would be inconvenient for business.”
After dinner, Maia and Na were upset to find that they had a flat tire. They tried not to suspect foul play as they pushed the motorcycle from the diner, following the twins’ lead off Route 13 onto a dirt road to an open market. Among the fruit stalls, vegetable stands, and baskets of herbs and grains, they saw a shrunken old man sitting on a wooden box with an eroded air pump set before him. On the bicycle behind him hung a small cardboard sign advertising SỬA XE. He beckoned.
They left the Minsk with the repairman and wandered through the marketplace. The smell of deep-fried shrimp and mung bean patties from a bánh cuốn stall filled the air. The vendor in a lilac đồ bộ waved customers to her footstools and knee-high tables as she served plates of steamed rice rolls filled with pork mince and wood ear mushrooms, garnished with blanched bean sprouts, fresh mint leaves, and chili fish sauce.
Merchants squatting on their haunches hawked their wares in woven baskets. The two women stopped at a sundry stall where Na bargained for dust masks, sun gloves, rain ponchos, a vial of White Flower Balm, and a dozen lacy underpants in assorted sizes and styles. Na, wearing a tank top, tight-fitting jeans, and high heels, gave the impression of a well-to-do spendthrift foreigner. The vendor quoted prices much higher than what she finally settled for when she realized Na was as savvy a bargainer as any local Vietnamese.
After stopping at a dessert stand for warm banana tapioca with coconut cream, they returned to pay the repairman for the patched tire, but now the Minsk would not start. When asked what was wrong, the old man shook his head and shrugged. He packed up his tools in the wooden box, secured it to his bicycle rear rack, and pedaled away.
Na kicked the immobile cycle. “JP got a clunker!”
The women circled the heap of inert metal as if viewing the dead. They flanked the Minsk and shook it back and forth, causing gasoline to drip from its teardrop tank. The motorcycle stood nonchalantly, its headlight staring at them like an oversized glass eye.
Maia questioned her plan. After finding the prison, Na was going to return to Ho Chi Minh City on the Minsk, and Maia would catch an express shuttle to continue to the Central Highlands. But now what? The glass eye stared at her unblinkingly. How could they have gotten lost following the Be River? Where did they miss the turn?
They were just short of wailing when a rugged darkskinned man with wavy hair approached. He offered to give them a lift to Loc Ninh. He had a large wooden boat-like cart attached to his three-wheel motorcycle, which could transport the Minsk. He had just dropped off his last delivery for the day and was shopping for food.
When the women agreed, the young man left his trike motorcycle and boat-cart with them and disappeared into the marketplace. Moments later he returned with a case of Angkor Beer, two kilograms of escargots, pig intestines, anchovies, fresh chilies, and herbs. He had ordered a block of ice that a girl would deliver around midnight on her bicycle rear rack.
“A drinking party,” he announced, adding that he lived with his mother. They had a đi văng if Maia and Na needed a place for the night.
Several hundred yards off Route 13, the cartman stopped at a longhouse nestled under coconut palms. In the front yard, an old woman was rinsing a large pot of glutinous rice beside the well. Surrounding her were woven baskets of husked split mung beans, shredded coconut, and fresh pandan leaves.
“My mother sells xôi at the market in the morning,” the man said.
The old woman glanced up at them, smiled, and continued picking out the stones and debris from the basket of dried beans.
“Chào bác,” Na said and then followed the man to find an outhouse.
Maia sat on her haunches and joined the woman in her picking, gathering the stones with her thumb and forefinger, tucking several into her palm before scattering them. Besides a creaky bicycle passing by on the dirt road or the occasional roar of a motorcycle in the distance, only the wind ruffled the stillness.
“Ở đây rất yên tĩnh,” Maia said. The old woman smiled, showing black lacquered teeth stained with red betel nut juice. Strands of white hair escaped from beneath her loose blue turban. After rinsing the mung beans, she handed Maia a basket of pandan leaves to wash. “Bác nấu xôi gì vậy?” Maia asked.
“She doesn’t speak Vietnamese,” the man said, returning from a shower. He spoke to his mother in an indigenous tongue and then said to Maia, “She’ll show you where to sleep tonight.”
With a kerosene lamp, the old woman led Maia and Na into the longhouse to a plank-bed next to the window that looked out into the front yard. She swept the dust off with a pillow and released the sides of the mosquito net. She dimmed the lamp and left it on the family’s altar.
Maia and Na crawled under the mosquito net. They exhaled as soon as their backs touched the polished plank đi văng. On the thick wooden beam that ran across the A-frame ceiling, they could see a carved inscription in the flickering kerosene light. They read the words in unison like two schoolchildren.
Đồng bào Kinh hay Thổ, Mường hay Mán,
Gia-rai hay Ê-đê, Xê-đăng hay Ba-na
và các dân tộc thiểu số khác
đều là con cháu Việt Nam, đều là anh em ruột thịt.
—H.C.M.8
“Do you believe that people in the lowlands and highlands are brothers and sisters, all children of Vietnam?” Na yawned and turned on her side, her back to Maia. “What would Nobodaddy say about a half-blood?”
“That’s the creation myth, isn’t it? Fifty children on the mountain, fifty in the sea?”
Na seemed to be asleep.
Maia lay awake, watching the evening sky through the window, remembering the man in her great-aunt’s photograph and the initials H.C.M. She was now convinced that he was none other than Ho Chi Minh. She recalled the poem penned on the back of the photograph.
Mountains enfold clouds, clouds mountains,
The river heart a faithful mirror.
Restlessly wandering the Western Range,
I look back at southern skies, missing old friends.
Great-Aunt Tien and Uncle Ho. How did they know each other? What was their relationship?
“Hey, girl,” a voice called softly through the window. “Are you awake? Come join us!”
She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. She kept count of those who came through the gate that squeaked and rattled like a timeworn accordion on its last legs. One by one, the guests greeted the host in an inaudible minority tongue. The men feasted and afterward fell into a hushed conversation. She did not understand the content but heard fervor in their voices. She suspected that she and Na had traveled into an area where the remaining members of the Front Unifié pour la Libération des Races Opprimées continued to operate. Sometime during the night, she realized Na had gotten up and gone out. She peeked through the window at the group of men sitting cross-legged on the dirt ground. Na sat with them. They were young and old but all appeared strong and resilient, conversing across the fire that still burned bright.