MAIA REACHED THE outskirts of the Central Highlands in late morning. The poet’s directions for locating her great-aunt were straightforward. From Waiting Mountain, go northwest toward the border of Vietnam and Cambodia. Beyond the outermost town’s open market, wooden church, and footbridge, cut through the thorny honey locust forest to a clear stretch of barren land. On a plateau behind a bamboo fence, look for a thatched longhouse with square windows.
“You’ll know when you’ve arrived.”
The dwelling sat on red dirt amid overgrown tussocks and bamboo. The place was quiet except for the wind ruffling tall grass, a stream flowing over rocks nearby, and an occasional whistling that sounded like a child or wild dog.
She walked along the bamboo fence to a latched gate and let herself in. She crossed the bare dirt yard and followed the smell of cooking to an open area behind the house. An elderly woman on her haunches with her back toward Maia was fanning several fires. Over the fires were a pot of rice and barley, a pot of dark green leafy vegetable soup, and a pot of stewed meat.
“The bowls, please,” the woman said without looking around.
Maia hesitated. The woman stood up and turned. It was her great-aunt. Her head was shaved, but Maia recognized her strong features. She had lost the softness of youth and was gaunt in old age, accentuating her intense eyes.
“You’re not my helper from town.”
“I can help.”
Her great-aunt directed her to line up the large plastic soup bowls on the ground. “You’re family, aren’t you?”
“I am your great-niece.”
“You must be my older sister’s—”
“Granddaughter.”
“How is your grandmother?”
“She passed away.”
“Was she unwell?”
“It was her time.”
“You don’t want to go too early or too late.”
“She planted the fruit of her desire, but I don’t know what that is.”
“She did her part. But me—?” Her great-aunt stoked the fire, making embers glow and ashes fly.
“I have words from the Independent Vietnam Coalition.”
Her great-aunt did not seem to hear. Instead, she fluffed the rice and barley, stirred the soup and meat, and began to assemble the meal. In each bowl, she put a scoop of rice and barley, poured a ladle of vegetable soup, and sprinkled bits of salty meat on top.
As soon as the last bowl was prepared, Maia heard twittering and saw movement in the bamboo thicket. A group of mud-covered children came through, carrying a variety of makeshift farm tools. They stopped at the stone well to wash up before gathering around the outdoor kitchen.
The children were mostly teenagers. From a distance, they appeared normal, but a closer look revealed that each had something odd. An elfin girl with long hair came for the bowls and helped to serve others. Her lack of eyes made her seem as if she were sleepwalking. A brown lanky boy pranced along with a twisted torso, walking on all fours. A child without arms nimbly clutched the bowl with the arches of her feet. The boy without legs propped himself against another child to balance upright. One had a head much bigger than the bowl, another far smaller, both with ogling fishlike eyes. The teenager with the shakes cradled a blood red bundle.
Great-Aunt told the teenager to give it to Maia.
“I’m Binh.” The teenager introduced himself and held out the bundle. “This is the fifth meat born to the lieutenant’s family. It’s called Sixth Kabāb.” Binh grinned broadly. “Don’t make Sixth Kabāb cry.”
When the little one was placed in Maia’s arms, it woke, panicked, and wetted her. Binh gestured Maia to rock it back and forth. She was given its bowl. The children sat on the ground, eating and conversing like a flock of birds. The nursling was calm after the initial panic. Its mouth opened and chewed slowly every spoonful of food, not making a peep.
After the meal, the children worked on their assigned tasks in the silence of midday. Some practiced their penmanship while others read to themselves.
“Do you have a lesson for the children?” Great-Aunt asked Maia.
“A lesson?”
“Neither the kitchen help nor the children’s teacher came today. Something must have kept them. Did you notice anything unusual in town on your way here?”
“No.”
“They’re volunteers from public security, coming and going on a regular basis, keeping watch over this orphanage.”
Great-Aunt was sitting beside the child without arms, helping her with the spacing between the characters. With the pencil wedged between her warped toes, the child continued to inscribe over a single space, character upon character.
As Maia watched her overlay one character on top of another, she recalled the dwarf’s inscription. She wanted to ask whether it was Chinese, Sino-Vietnamese, Cyrillic, or a combination of all those scripts, and what it meant.
“Well?” Great-Aunt peered at her.
“I don’t have a lesson.”
“Everyone has a lesson. The children can’t travel. Whenever a traveler passes through, we ask for a lesson. They might be bound to their small lot, but they’re a part of a larger world. Learning from travelers will help them become aware of others and understand that an individual’s action affects the whole. What knowledge have you carried from afar?”
Seeing the children losing themselves in the tasks at hand, Maia hesitated. Their concentration enveloped the moment in serenity. She held back the message from overseas. She would speak with Great-Aunt when they were alone.
“I have stories and songs for the children.”
“Then you can tell a story and teach them a song.”
The children gathered around Maia, and Kabāb was placed again in her arms. Rocking the bundle to and fro, she told stories she had accumulated—stories from her father, stories she read in school, stories of rocks. Talking animals made the children happy, so she told an animal fantasy and taught them a bit of song.
That night Maia slept in the hammock with Kabāb on her chest. Resting a light hand on the newborn, she felt its irregular strained breathing. When the last lantern was snuffed out and the house was silent, she became aware of the sounds outside her window: the wind rustling through the bamboo, water flowing over stones, crickets chirping, and an occasional owl hooting.
Her mission was ending. The next day, when she was alone with Great-Aunt, she would relay the message to instigate insurgency from overseas. Once delivered, her assignment would be complete.
A quiet call came from outside. Was it a child or an animal? A response came back, just as quiet. The whispers rose to a crescendo, a sudden burst of animal-like sounds, followed by a play of back-and-forth from different directions.
She then heard a fragment of a song she had taught the children earlier and knew they were outside. The interplay between a tune she had learned growing up in America and the children’s night calls warmed her. She tightened her embrace around Kabāb, whose breathing had become effortless, like a leaf cradled in the evening breeze before falling on the stillness of the earth.
When Maia woke the next morning, Kabāb was sound asleep. Great-Aunt and the children had gone off to the field. With Kabāb tied on her back, she followed the footpath through the bamboo where the children had emerged the day before. Beyond the thicket was expansive rolling red dirt, barren of all trees but overgrown with weeds.
Great-Aunt was assigning each child a strip of field along the hill’s contours. Besides the children, several townspeople came to help.
“If the land were flat,” a young man from town explained, “we could bulldoze the light brush and grasses. But it’s uneven. We weed by hand.” Thin and pale, he was a few years older than Maia. His accent told her that he was from a northern city.
Maia was given a strip between the man and Binh, who gladly reclaimed Kabāb.
“After the land is cleared and the soil tilled,” the man told the children, “we’ll sow the seeds two-by-two meters apart.”
“We’re planting a forest,” Binh whispered, humming a lullaby to Kabāb.
The man dug at a spot near Maia. His voice lowered. “That’s what this country needs—a new beginning. We can’t wait for the old guards to die out. War poisoned their blood, and they’re killing the country and people. We need to slash and burn to rid the poison. We can’t do it alone. We need outside help.”
The ground heated up and cracked under the sun. Great-Aunt, carrying a pouch of acacia seeds, moved easily among the children and townspeople. She stopped between Maia and the man. “I see you’ve met the children’s teacher,” she said, resting her gaze on Maia. “An intelligent man from public security. You must consider what he says.”
The man locked eyes with Great-Aunt before setting off to help a child weed.
“You didn’t imagine that you’d be doing this kind of fieldwork, did you?” Great-Aunt gave Maia eight glossy brown seeds and then got on her haunches and began pulling up the weeds around her. “Unlike Teacher, you look like you’ve done physical labor. It hardens the body and clears the mind.”
Great-Aunt was right. Maia had spent many summers picking fruits and berries on New Jersey farms. This was her first time planting trees. Clearing and preparing the earth to sow the seeds, she felt at home among the children. She was reminded of her childhood working in the fields in America for her keep. She thought of her mother working the land while imprisoned.
She felt happy in sadness, connected in aloneness.
In the stillness of noon, hands and knees in the dirt, she decided not to pass on the message from overseas.
She slept that night with Kabāb on her chest. She dreamed of the children chanting and dancing in circles: arms raised, faces uplifted to the sky. Rain came. The acacia seeds sprouted, and the seedlings grew into trees. A forest was reborn.
Before daybreak, a slow sputter woke Maia. As soon as she became aware of the lightness on her chest, she knew Kabāb was not with her. She sprung from the hammock. Shadows flitted across the window. She dashed outside and saw the children trotting after the wooden boat pulled by the motorcycle-cartman. Binh ran haltingly with Kabāb bundled in his arms.
She trailed them on the footpath through the bamboo. They cut across the rolling fields they had cleared the day before. They entered a pine forest that grew along the mountainside. As they climbed, the sputter became faint, then fainter, then silent.
They reached the lake atop the mountain.
The cartman had unhitched the boat from his motorcycle, and the motley travelers were pushing the boat into the water.
The children rushed to the shore. Binh held the bundle out to Old Seeker.
Maia followed. “What are you doing?”
“Sixth Kabāb will go with them.”
“Why?”
“To see the world!”
“What about home, father and mother?”
“No one will miss a piece of meat.”
The children nodded.
Dawn came as gently as a cat’s paw, nudging a sleeper awake.
“Everywhere is home,” a child recited softly.
The children responded in unison, “Everyone is family.”19
Binh continued to cradle the empty space in his arms after Old Seeker took Kabāb. “Don’t make it cry,” the boy said, and the child cried, as they had never heard it cry. Tears dropped into the lake. The children watched as the boat set off across the water that reflected a waning moon above and an orange sunrise in the horizon.