Revenge and Forgiveness

Cần Thơ, 2016

Standing in front of the altar, Quỳnh looked at Dan. He was kneeling, wailing her sister’s bar name, “Kim! Kim!” as if he didn’t know her as a real person. His face was scrunched up, wet with tears. He was crying, but it was too late.

On the altar, Trang smiled from her photo. She was still beautiful and full of life. If she hadn’t died, Quỳnh’s life would be different now. She wouldn’t have to stay awake night after night, thinking that it was she herself who had killed her own sister by forcing her to go to Hóc Môn, and by driving the motorbike on that road.

Dan bent lower, hitting his fists against the floor. Quỳnh brought her palms to her ears, trying to block out his cries. She’d witnessed enough sorrow, she could no longer burden herself with someone else’s, especially when that person was her worst enemy.

Dan stood up and got closer to the altar. “Trang, Trang!” he called. The sound of her sister’s real name was sharp against Quỳnh’s blurred mind. She felt as if Trang had just died, her body bloody on the road, her head torn open.

That day, kneeling by the roadside, Quỳnh had wished she had perished along with Trang. Gone was her best friend, the pillar of her strength, someone who always believed in the goodness of people. Gone was her only sibling, who had cheered her on, had always picked her up when she felt down. She’d never told Trang that she loved her, and she regretted it.

Quỳnh looked at Dan through her tears. If you weren’t such a coward, my sister would have survived, she thought. She wanted to hurl these words at Dan. The vicious words that she’d repeated to herself like a mantra last night. But she saw the sorrow in Dan’s eyes, and knew how much he’d suffered. “It was a mortar attack,” she told him. “We were traveling on the road . . . Trang was holding your newborn baby.”

“NO!!!” Dan howled. Linda reached out to him, held him tight, and sobbed into his shoulders.

The sight of the shaken couple was too much for Quỳnh to bear. “I need to be by myself for a while,” she told Thiên and hurried outside. In her garden, she stood with her face against the rough trunk of her jackfruit tree and wept.

She didn’t know why the mortar had taken Trang’s life but spared hers. And she kept wondering whether the things she’d done after Trang’s death were right or wrong.

Never could she imagine that Dan would come back looking for Trang and their daughter. She’d seen Dan’s search notice when it first appeared in the newspaper. She immediately tore it to shreds. She cursed him, screaming, “How dare you? What do you want from my sister?”

In the days that followed, she burned incense and asked Trang what to do. She’d wanted the incense to flare up, as a sign, and when that didn’t happen, she prayed to Trang, asking her to send a message via an owl’s cry, or a sudden gust of wind, but nothing. She tossed and turned during the nights. This morning, she received her newspaper delivery and opened it. There it was, Dan’s notice again, staring back at her. He refused to go away. He refused to give up. She crushed his message into a ball. It was then that she decided she must meet him, to condemn him and tell him he’d killed Trang.

She’d practiced time and again the harsh words she wanted to fling at him. Words that would be knives that would slice his heart open and leave it bleeding. But she couldn’t do it, for she felt she was responsible for her sister’s death, along with Dan. And now, the truth about Dan’s daughter would be his biggest punishment.

She dried her tears. She shouldn’t feel sorry for that bastard. He deserved it, after what he’d done or failed to do.

“Toi xin loi,” someone said and she turned around.

Dan walked to her. He reached for her hand, bringing it to his face. His tears were hot, as hot as hers. His face was trembling hard, as hard as hers.

She raised her other hand and hit him in his chest. “I hate you, why don’t you go away!”

He nodded as if he understood her.

She launched both fists at his chest. “Why don’t you hit me? Slap me! I’m guilty, too. I killed my sister.”

Dan put his hands on her shoulders and said something. Something soft and sorrowful. Something that sounded like an apology. Then he pulled her to him.

With her face resting on his chest, she wept. She wept for Trang’s unrealized dreams and hopes. She wept for her parents. She wept for herself. And she wept for Dan and Trang’s baby.

From across the marble table, Dan was silent. His shoulders drooped, as if the regrets were piled high onto them. When he looked at Quỳnh, his eyes were brimming. “I’m so, so sorry,” he said via Thiên’s translation. “It wasn’t my intention to bring harm or pain to your family.”

Quỳnh stared at her drink. It was empty, as drained as she was. She feared the many questions that Dan would ask. It had been a lifetime since she spoke about her past with anyone. She’d tried to bury it deep into the marrow of her memory, but it refused to sleep.

Linda refilled the glass and handed it to Quỳnh. “I can’t imagine what you’ve had to go through. I’m so sorry.”

Quỳnh drank the water and let her gaze rest on the banana flowers. She’d tried to recreate the garden her parents and Trang once loved. She burned incense for them often, offered them food, and invited them to visit her. She felt their spirits and knew they were never far away. She hoped her cousin was taking good care of her family home. Even though her birth village was a part of her being, after her parents’ death she had to detach herself from it. She’d moved to this neighborhood, more than a hundred kilometers away, where nobody knew her. She’d needed a new identity, a fresh start to life.

“The pictures in your living room,” Linda asked. “Are they of your family?”

Quỳnh nodded, studying Linda. The woman’s features radiated kindness. Linda had to have a generous heart to be here with Dan. Was she married to him when he was with Trang? Did Trang ever know about her?

“Yes, my son,” Quỳnh said. “He lives in Sài Gòn with his wife and two children.” Thinking about Khôi and her grandchildren sustained Quỳnh. They were the pillars of her life. Khôi had called her the day before, saying that he was driving his family down for a visit. They would be spending the entire weekend with her. She couldn’t wait for her house to be filled with their laughter and footsteps. They would cook together, eat, play cards, climb trees, pick fruit, harvest vegetables, and fly kites. Even though her maid, Phúc, had a long list of things to do, Quỳnh had told the woman to take the afternoon off. No one should know about Dan and Linda’s visit. She would do anything to shield Khôi from the trauma of her past.

“Your son looks like a fine young man,” Linda continued, as if trying to console Quỳnh with her words, “and his children are adorable.”

Quỳnh nodded. She was proud of Khôi, who was a lecturer in business and economics at a public university in Hồ Chí Minh City. He often used her company as an example for his teaching. His son and daughter, four and six years old now, revitalized her.

It had taken Quỳnh many years of hard work to build up her business, but she’d done it. She had to prove herself again and again by pushing against sexism, deeply rooted in such proverbs as “đàn bà đái không qua ngọn cỏ”—“women can’t pee higher than the top of grass blades” or “đàn ông nông nổi giếng khơi, đàn bà sâu sắc như cơi đựng trầu”—“when naïve, men still seem as profound as a deep well; when thoughtful, women are no deeper than a flat-bottomed betel leaf container.”

People in her province now called her Cô Ba—Auntie Number Three. None of them knew her real name, nor her past. In their eyes, she was simply a successful businesswoman, a key supplier of cloth to tailors in the province. They envied her frequent trips to India, Bangladesh, and China. They admired the unique materials she brought back. Recently, retailers from different provinces in the Mekong Delta had been calling her, wanting to get hold of the batik she’d been importing from Indonesia. Two years ago, she’d stood at the Mayestik Market in Jakarta, in awe of the exquisite designs and low prices of batik. She knew the long pieces of cloth, with stories embedded into each design, would be perfect for Vietnamese áo dài. She’d enjoyed working with the artists there, incorporating Vietnamese elements into her orders.

“I am afraid to ask,” Dan said, tears still in his voice, “but please do tell me, what happened to my daughter?”

Quỳnh bent her head. It seemed as if yesterday that Trang stood in front of her, her newborn baby against her chest. “I’ll bring my baby back to Sài Gòn with me,” Trang had said, “I will raise her.”

Quỳnh sighed. “You should know that my sister loved your daughter very much,” she told Dan. “We’d planned to give Thu Hoa to an orphanage, but once the baby arrived, Trang refused to do it.”

Thiên translated and Dan nodded, “Yes . . . that sounds exactly like her.”

It was difficult but Quỳnh took a deep breath and described the motorbike trip to Hóc Môn, Trang giving birth, their fights, the journey back to Sài Gòn, the guards who stopped them, and the explosion.

“Oh God, it was all my fault!” Dan clamped his palm against his mouth. “Please . . . don’t tell me that both Trang and my daughter . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

Quỳnh brought her hands to her eyes, as if blocking her vision now could stop her mind from recalling Trang on the road: her face covered by blood, her body motionless, curled around her screaming baby. Even in her death, Trang had protected Hoa.

“My sister died saving her daughter,” Quỳnh said. “It was truly a miracle that Hoa didn’t suffer any injury.” Quỳnh recounted how loud Hoa had screamed when her mother was put into the ground by those who lived near the explosion site, brown dirt blanketing Trang’s feet, then body, then face. Hoa calmed down only when a nursing mother offered her milk. “That kind woman . . . her name was Phương . . . I met her at the medical clinic where I was treated for my broken ribs.” Quỳnh stared at the back of her hands, at their blue veins. Like the blood that rushed to her heart, her memory was gushing back to the image of Phương, a tired-looking mother who lay on a bamboo bed, one hand embracing her newborn son, another hand caressing Hoa’s back as Hoa greedily drank from her breast. “Phương lost her own mother to the war so she bonded with Hoa instantly. . . . She said there was no deeper sorrow than losing one’s parent to violence.” Quỳnh would never forget how Phương hummed a lullaby to Hoa, and how the tenderness of Phương’s voice silenced everything else: the screaming in Quỳnh’s heart, the piercing pain of her broken ribs, the thundering airplanes above her head, the shells that exploded in the distance. In that sacred and rare stillness, Quỳnh caught a glimpse of a future for her niece.

“When Phương told me that she had two sons,” Quỳnh said, “and that she’d been yearning for a daughter, I offered . . .” She paused. “She kept Hoa.”

Dan flinched, his eyes opened wide in shock.

“I’m sorry, but I had no choice,” Quỳnh returned his gaze. “I had no means to raise your daughter. And there was Hoa’s chance for a real family: a mother who loved her, a sibling her age . . .”

“Are you . . . are you sure the woman kept Hoa?” Dan asked.

“Yes . . . I gave her all the dollars you’d given Trang, and she promised to take good care of Hoa. Her husband, Thịnh, was there, too. At first he said they couldn’t feed so many mouths, but I begged him to save Hoa. I told him about Trang, our parents, my demanding job. He agreed . . . on one condition . . .”

Dan looked at Quỳnh, unblinking. Quỳnh had despised him so much, she had thought that seeing him in pain would bring her satisfaction. But now she knew the suffering of someone else could not possibly be the source of delight for another, and that revenge, however successful, would not be able to resurrect the dead.

“What condition?” Dan leaned his whole body forward, as if his life depended on her answer.

“Thịnh said he would agree for his wife to bring Hoa home if I gave them, only them, the right to be Hoa’s parents, that I would not try to take Hoa back, that I would never contact them again. He said he wouldn’t want to see his wife fall in love with Hoa, only to have Hoa taken away from her.”

Dan covered his face with his hands, as if not wanting Quỳnh to read his feelings. She wouldn’t be surprised if he resented her, or even hated her. But it was he who had abandoned Hoa first.

She had agreed easily to Thịnh’s request. She blamed Hoa for Trang’s death. She had wanted Hoa to disappear. Looking back over the years, Quỳnh knew she’d made a good decision for her niece. It was her last act to honor her sister: she’d found not just a mother for Hoa, but a whole family.

“I gave them my promise,” Quỳnh said, “After the war ended, though, I wanted to check on Hoa. I needed to know that she was okay. Unfortunately I didn’t have her new family’s address or full names. I asked at the clinic where we’d met, but they had lost the records. I visited surrounding areas and asked about for Hoa, but no one knew.”

Tears trailed down Dan’s cheeks. “It’s all my fault. How can I ever find my daughter?”

Linda held Dan in her arms. “You should do a DNA test,” she told him. “Maybe Hoa grew up wondering about her parents because she looked different from her siblings. She might be searching for you.”

“Yes, Hoa looked like a mixed person,” Quỳnh said. “She had a high-bridged nose like her father. I’m not sure, but I think her eyes were brown, like Trang’s. And she had hazel hair.”

“Do you happen . . . to have a photo of Hoa?” Linda asked.

Quỳnh shook her head. “There was no chance for photos.”

“Sister, we need your help to find Hoa,” Thiên said, opening his notebook. Dan also started to take notes. “Please tell me what you remember.”

“I can tell you everything I can recall, on one condition.” Quỳnh looked around the table, at everyone. “You won’t reveal my identity. You can’t publish my picture, my address, my name . . . You can’t tell anyone about me or this meeting.”

“Of course, Sister. We respect your privacy,” Thiên said.

“It’s more than that,” Quỳnh said. “It’s my life.”

In the world she’d rebuilt for herself, esteem was everything. Over time, the designs of her clothing products had gained prestige; her clients associated them with grace, luck, beauty, and class. The fabrics she curated and distributed were not for daily wear, but for weddings and special occasions. If people found out she’d been a prostitute or that she’d abandoned her own niece, and more, the news could crash her business empire.

The person she worried about most, though, was Khôi. Like everyone else, her son was ignorant about her past, which served him well. His family history was being investigated because he’d applied to become a Communist party member—he had to, in order to become the head of his department. He’d worked hard toward his goals, and she wouldn’t allow her past to ruin his opportunities.

“Please don’t worry,” Dan said. “Any search notice will only mention me as the father, and Mr. Thien as my friend who helps me. And we will be very careful, to protect Hoa and her family.”

Quỳnh nodded. “You can publish my sister’s full name: Nguyễn Thị Kiều Trang, and Hoa’s full name: Nguyễn Thị Thu Hoa.” She waited for Thiên to finish helping Dan and Linda write down the names before continuing. “Hoa was handed to her adopted parents on August twenty-eight, 1970.” Quỳnh described in details the location of the medical clinic, in case Dan wanted to visit it himself.

“How about Hoa’s date of birth? Any special features?” Thiên asked.

“She was born three days before, August twenty-five. As for special features . . .” Quỳnh closed her eyes. She hadn’t really looked at Hoa. She hadn’t wanted any attachment to the girl. “Sorry, I can’t remember.”

Thiên picked up his phone and typed. “Let’s see . . . if Thu Hoa published any search notice.”

Quỳnh knew the answer. She’d googled her niece’s name countless times.

Linda started looking, too. After a while, both she and Thiên shook their heads.

Dan turned to Quỳnh. “May I ask . . . did your parents know about the baby? How did they cope with Trang’s passing?”

“They didn’t know . . . And about Trang, I told them she’d gone to America.”

“You were able to convince them?” Linda asked, surprised.

“I hope so. . . . I said Trang had found herself a nice American boyfriend, that he’d been sent back to America, and at the last minute arranged for her to come along. Later on, I imitated my sister’s handwriting in letters that I attached to mine. I explained that Trang sent her correspondence via my Sài Gòn address, that it might get lost if sent directly to our village. In those letters, I described how happy Trang was, that her in-laws loved and respected her. If my parents had any suspicions, they didn’t tell me. They died a few years later. My mother went first; her doctor suspected she’d had a heart failure; my father shortly later, I think he didn’t want to live without her.”

“At least you gave your parents some hope when they were still around,” said Dan. “I’m so sorry.”

Quỳnh looked away. She couldn’t tell Dan, but he was the boyfriend in those fake letters. He’d taken Trang back to Seattle and married her. The first letter was incredibly difficult for Quỳnh to write, but eventually she looked forward to escaping into the imagined life she’d created for Trang. A life where her sister could live in peace, study at a good university, and become a doctor. Those letters had given her hope, too. Hope for a life without wars. Hope for a life where women were respected for their intellect and treated equally.

“I saw the beautiful fabrics in your living room,” said Linda. “I guess they have something to do with your or your husband’s job?”

Quỳnh nodded and told Linda about her business. She’d started it by chance, five years after the war, when she was a maid for a family who owned a tailor shop. There, she noticed that customers often asked to buy materials but the shop hardly had any designs. When Quỳnh told her employers she could travel to Chợ Lớn Market in Sài Gòn and bring back samples, they weren’t too enthusiastic. But whatever she brought back sold well, and before she knew it, other tailors sought her out. She didn’t have any real competition in the beginning. It was during the subsidized economy where free trading was prohibited. Smugglers like her could be arrested and all products confiscated, but her experiences in Sài Gòn enabled her to negotiate her way out of difficult situations, and her knowledge of the black market helped.

She told them briefly about her ex-husband, their thirty years of marriage. She didn’t mention the reasons he’d left her for his mistress: her fear of sex and her panic attacks, all stemming from her time before the war’s end. She talked at length about her son, Khôi, who loved American music and films. Khôi often visited her with his children and his wife, an architect who designed and helped build Quỳnh’s house. Recently they were insisting that she come and live with them, that she had enough staff to run her business, but she knew she could never live in Sài Gòn again. There, every street corner, every tree, every house was a reminder of Trang and of the many secrets Quỳnh had tried to forget.

The sun was setting as they said goodbye. A part of Quỳnh wanted to ask Dan and Linda if they would like to stay for dinner. It would be a normal thing to do, to show hospitality to faraway guests, but she wasn’t ready to have Dan sit inside the house like an old friend. It would be to0 much of a betrayal to Trang, after what he’d done.

“You take good care, please.” Dan held her hand in both of his. “Mr. Thien will call you right away if there’s any news of Hoa. And don’t hesistate to contact us at any time.” He’d given her their home address as well as phone numbers.

In Dan’s tears, Quỳnh saw his plea for forgiveness, but she wasn’t able to give it. Not before she could forgive herself. People said that time healed, and more than forty years had passed, but for Quỳnh, her pain and guilt were bottomless.

She reached for Linda. They hugged. When they let go, Quỳnh said, “If you find Hoa, please be her mother, on my sister’s behalf.” Strangely, she felt a bond with this woman, someone whose language she didn’t know, but perhaps grief was their common language.

Tears rolled down Linda’s cheeks. “I will . . . I promise.” She embraced Quỳnh tight.

“Thank you, Brother,” Quỳnh told Thiên, “for translating, and for helping Dan to find my niece.” She wished she’d had time to get to know the man whose scar and sorrowful expressions throughout their conversation told her that he’d been haunted by the monster of violence, too, and he’d been fighting to get rid of it.

Thiên gave her his business card. “I wish I could have done more, Sister. Call me whenever you think I can help.”