November 20, 1933
I looked up at Khoi’s dazzling white house and blinked. It was truly a storybook place, especially in the late-afternoon light. Lanh had driven off, as I’d asked him to. When I felt brave enough, I started to knock on the front door. Loudly.
No one came, but Trieu had said she was sure Marcelle was there. She had to be watching me.
I went around the side of the house, remembering the large doors in the back.
I stopped when I saw the chair where I’d been sitting with the indigène woman the night of Khoi’s party. The blood on her arms, her bare skin, it had all seemed so real to me. But it wasn’t.
The back doors weren’t open, but they were made of glass. I would be impossible to ignore.
Suddenly, I thought about how many opportunities there had been to poison me. Trieu, of course, had access to me every day, and I’d grown very fond of the morning tea she served me, but there was also Marcelle. I thought of the cigarettes she had handed me when we’d been together, the opium we’d smoked prepared by Khoi’s servants. Trieu certainly had not acted alone.
I heard a sound that broke my reverie. Marcelle was at the glass doors, looking out at me. She slowly opened them and stepped out but didn’t approach me. I ran to her before she could go back inside.
“I’m sorry to come here,” I said, panting, my eyes moving rapidly back and forth. “I’m just so sick. I’m … I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Come,” she said, gesturing to the pool, which was still uncovered despite the recent cooler temperatures. “Lie back here,” she said, sitting down on one of the chaise longues. “You’ll feel better.”
I shook my head, kicked off my shoes, and sat by the pool, putting my bare feet in the water.
She looked at me oddly, then sat next to me, keeping her body away from the edge. She leaned back on her arms and watched me. I wish I knew the last things she’d said to me as a friend. But I never would. After today, I would never see her again.
“I was out of town, and I, I’m not sure why but I started to feel so ill. I didn’t know where to go.” I threw myself to the ground and swatted at the sky.
“Are you feeling any better?” she said, eyeing me cautiously. “This isn’t the same illness that you had at Khoi’s little get-together, is it?”
How rich. A party with hundreds of dollars’ worth of champagne and piles of steamed lobsters and imported caviar was a “little get-together.” Some communist sympathizer she was.
“I don’t feel any better,” I said, putting my hands on either side of my head. I pushed them against my skull and then started hitting my head, hard. “It’s here. It’s all here. It’s a mess. And I just don’t know why.” I started to shake.
“Do you need a doctor?” she said as I met her gaze. Her voice was full of concern, but her eyes were laughing at me. I could finally see it. All this time, what I’d taken for joy, for mirth, for a sparkling personality, was actually muffled laughter, at my expense.
No longer.
“No,” I said, my expression abruptly hardening, my voice suddenly clear. “You know, I do feel better. I actually feel fine.” I placed my hands in my lap and smiled.
She startled, trying and failing to hide her surprise at my quick turn for the better.
“You look rather shocked, Marcelle. Does my sudden burst of good health surprise you?”
“Well, you seemed so sick,” she sputtered, trying to stand. I reached out, put my hand on her shoulder, and pushed her back down forcefully.
“I have seemed sick, haven’t I?” I said, moving closer to her, so that our legs were almost touching. “Practically the whole time we’ve known each other. I sure have felt sick. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” she said coolly, reaching for my hand on her shoulder and lifting it off. I let her. She was starting to understand. “Some people just don’t take to Indochine. The heat, the food, the lifestyle, or lack of lifestyle, it’s just not for everyone.”
“But especially not for me,” I hissed. “Because before you even met us, you hated me and Victor. And you were plotting my demise with confidential medical files. Because you are crafty and devious and rotten to the core.” I got even closer to her. “You’re an utter bitch, Marcelle,” I whispered.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, staring straight in front of her. “You really seem quite ill. Perhaps I should call a doctor. You have a history of outbursts, after all. Why, just a few days ago dozens of people saw you ranting and raving about a bleeding woman. Maybe it’s reason enough to send you back to Switzerland. The Prangins Clinic, wasn’t it? Though we do have our own facilities for that sort of thing here. Insanity, that is. I’m sure you’ll find them very comfortable.”
“I never said Prangins,” I replied, glaring at her.
“Of course you didn’t,” she said lightly. “And neither did I. All it took was the mere mention of Switzerland, but my goodness, didn’t you squirm. It was wonderful to watch you, Jessie, it really was. I wish I’d been there when Red smashed your ring on the boat, just like I asked him to. Good old Red, a faithful dog that one. He said you squirmed then, too, despite being out of your mind. I’m sorry I missed it, but I’ve played the scene over in my mind many times, as I’m sure you’ve played over in yours the scene of those dead men at Dau Tieng.”
“You’re right,” I said, my anger with myself competing with my anger toward her. “I have.”
“You’re a broken person, Jessie,” she said, shaking her head at me. “I don’t know how you can just sit by and sip champagne married to that devil of a man. It’s no wonder you’re going crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” I said, staring at her. “You and Trieu—I’m sorry, Hoa. You and Hoa have tried to convince me otherwise, but I’m not. My mother-in-law tried to make me think so in Paris, even convinced her son to support her, but that didn’t work, either.”
“You were mad enough—or perhaps just stupid enough—not to see that you had a communist leader in your own home.”
“You put her in my home!”
“No,” she said firmly. “You put her there. Your little company, that family, the one you so desperately wanted to be a part of. Besides, you were broken years ago, weren’t you? By your parents. Your father. How often were the beatings again? Near daily, once you were older? He only hit the babies about once a week, is that right? Is your brother Peter still blind from it? Half mad, too, yes?”
I stared at Marcelle, my mind white with anger. I had never talked about my childhood with anyone but my siblings and that doctor. Each time I shared those pieces of my past, I had to fight to remember I was safe now, that I had escaped. And now Marcelle knew. Probably Trieu. Certainly Khoi. I hated her. I hated her with more passion than I’d felt for any human besides my parents.
“But the worst of it,” she said, leaning in and whispering, “was the baby. What was she called, again? Oh, never mind, I remember. Eleanor. Baby Eleanor. She wasn’t quite right at birth, was she? Mongolism? Was that why your father drowned her in the lake? I can’t imagine what it was like for you to watch her die. You were the one who telephoned the police, right? And testified against your own father. I was able to find a little newspaper clipping from that, too. From your hometown periodical, of all things. As I said, I was in America years ago. I still have many friends there. But you never had many friends, did you? Who would want to be friends with such a damaged little girl? With a Holland? Even her own mother never loved her. But maybe that was due to madness, too. There’s mental illness around every corner with you.”
I felt the tears forming, but I would not let them fall.
“‘Complicit.’ Isn’t that what you said on the stand?” she said softly. “She never hugged you. Never comforted you. Encouraged him, you said.”
I stared at her hateful face. Like Trieu—Hoa. A woman I once found so beautiful, turned hideous.
“But then that woman found her way to Paris. Dorothy, wasn’t it?” she spat out. “Like a little country chicken swimming over to France to deliver Victor the news. The truth about the trash he’d married. How much does he know, Jessie? Does he know that your parents are alive? You told that doctor that he doesn’t. He doesn’t know your mother is a muttering lunatic, a pariah in your hometown, and he can’t possibly know about your father. I’d keep that a secret, too. Does he know how much of his money you send to that gaggle of siblings?”
“Who are Sinh and Anne-Marie?” I asked, pinching my eyes closed again.
“Just two more people whose lives the Michelins ruined. That’s what it seems like you were put on earth to do, doesn’t it? Ruin lives and deceive people. Build a life based on lies. You know, Caroline was right. To achieve all this,” she said, smirking, “you really must be quite gifted in the sexual arts.”
She paused, then lifted her hand as if to slap me in the face. When I flinched, she started to laugh. And at that moment, I cracked.
I lunged at her and grabbed her by her neck, as forcefully as I could, squeezed with all the muscle I had, and pulled her with me into the swimming pool, holding her head underwater.
Marcelle was much taller than me, and certainly stronger, but I had the element of surprise on my side.
She thrashed her arms and legs, trying to find her footing, trying to grab my arms to free herself, but she was already getting weak from the lack of oxygen. The next thing to go was the muscles in her neck. She had tried to push her head out, to break through my hands, but that bobbing motion was weakening.
I watched as her thrashing died down, as her movements started to slow. No one would blame me for her death. It was the easiest crime a person could commit. All I had to say was that I was hallucinating, under the influence of a psychotic that Marcelle herself had administered to me. When the police checked, it would be all over her home.
After a few minutes, Marcelle’s legs were no longer moving, and her dark hair was floating out around her head, which had become quite easy to hold now that it was barely moving. Her hair looked like a beautiful black halo, swaying in the water like algae.
How long had I been holding her down? Five minutes? Longer? I instinctively looked down at my watch, but my arms were still submerged in water. A person could stay underwater for quite a long time and still live. Fifteen minutes. But after ten minutes, brain damage was very likely. It was something I’d thought about for years—ever since Eleanor had died. I watched as Marcelle’s arms went limp, barely able to move. And then a strand of her hair came apart from the mass, stroking the side of my hand. I jumped. The thick strands, the dark color, it felt just like Lucie’s. And even more like Eleanor’s. I immediately let go, lifted her head out of the water, and pulled her partway up the concrete pool steps. When she was securely above water, I looked at her, her beautiful face still. I shook her shoulders, and she gasped for air and started to cough violently.
I stared at her for a few moments, then bent down and whispered in her ear. “Go back to France, or I really will kill you. Or better yet, I’ll make sure you rot in a jail cell, just like I made sure my father would. Turns out I have a knack for putting people behind bars.”
Marcelle did nothing to acknowledge what I’d said, coughing harder and wheezing, water still in her lungs. It was enough. I started to rise but stood quickly when I heard a bang. The back door had flown open, and Khoi was running our way. What he wanted was Marcelle, not me. I started to sprint in the other direction as fast as I could, away from the house.
Lanh was idling just around the corner, as promised.
Wordlessly, he handed me a large pinch of the ky nham I’d asked him to buy. I ingested it, then drank from the glass bottle of water he handed me.
“Are you sure it’s not too much?” I asked. Just as it had in the tea, the herb had a pleasant, earthy taste to it. There was no indication it was going to make me half crazy.
“I’m sure,” he said. “Enough so you will be sick again, but this time, not too sick.”
“Walk with me a few blocks and then leave me,” I said. “Then go back to the house and telephone the police. Tell them where they can find me. The rest will work itself out.”
“Oui, madame,” he said, taking my arm. He helped me lie on the ground, then walked to the car, opened the door, and looked back at me to make sure I was all right.
I smiled at him and pointed at the sky. The sun was bright and comforting.
“For you, it will always shine like that,” he said, getting in the car.
I lay back on the stretch of grass, looking up at the sky, waiting to feel sick again. I now knew all the symptoms, physical reactions I had mistaken for frayed nerves.
Marcelle was probably inside the house by now. Khoi would have called a doctor, and she would be filling his head with lies. She thought she knew everything about me, that smug, awful woman. But there was one thing she didn’t know. One thing I had never uttered aloud, even to the doctor.
My sister Eleanor was dead because of me.
Eleanor was my mother’s last baby. After she was born in my parents’ bed on the first Saturday in June 1918, with only the help of a midwife, my mother swore she would never have another one. Especially after she saw Eleanor’s face, which she and my father immediately called “simple.”
“There’s something wrong with her,” my father said, handing her back to my mother after holding her for only a minute or two.
“Your father’s never touching me again,” my mother said to me, exhausted from the birth. She was hugging the tiny baby, but just twelve hours after she was born, she came to me with her and said, “Jessie, you take her.” She had done the same thing with the two girls born before Eleanor. I was sixteen. I was used to being my siblings’ mother and the only source of adult love in the house.
Eleanor was a terrible sleeper. Maybe if she’d been a good baby, things would have ended differently, but she wasn’t. I tried to quiet her as best I could at night, taking her out of the house into the sticky summer air when she woke up, but sometimes nothing I did would soothe her.
My father had kept from backhanding us—or, worse, beating us senseless—until we were old enough to at least cover our faces with our hands. But with Eleanor, he didn’t wait. One night after drinking himself into a stupor on homemade alcohol, he hit her across the face when she was wailing. She fell unconscious.
She came back to life somehow after that and slept in my arms, but she had stopped crying. Her screams had turned to barely audible whimpers. She might have been different from the rest of us when she was born, but my father had handicapped her for life with one blow to the head.
I didn’t want to leave her side after that, not trusting anyone else with her, but when school resumed in September, I had no choice. I was aware by that point that my only paths out of Blacksburg were education or marriage to someone on the outside. Someone who had no idea who the Holland family was.
I walked home from the first day of school the long way, as I had in previous years, enjoying my thirty minutes alone, the only time I ever had away from my siblings or schoolmates. Sometimes students from the technical institute came to that corner of the woods in the afternoons, as there was a pretty pond there, but mostly there were only deer. On that hot day, I didn’t see another living soul.
I walked past the pond into another clearing in the woods but stopped when I heard a noise. I thought it was an animal, but I turned to see that it was a man. My father. He was standing by the pond, swaying drunk. In his arms, he had the baby. In one motion, before I could open my mouth, he took her tiny body and pushed her under the water. Even from afar, I saw a ripple as he held her down. She was moving something, a tiny arm, a leg, as she struggled to survive, even at three months old.
I wanted to run to her, to save her. My father was drunk, I could have knocked him down, but I stood paralyzed. In those few seconds my mind dictated that I should stay still. More than I wanted to save the baby, I wanted to save myself and the rest of my siblings, who had already endured so much from him. That desire overwhelmed my instincts to rescue Eleanor.
When my father stood up, there was no baby in his arms. Before he could see me, I turned and sprinted away. I ran all the way into town, to the police station, without a glance over my shoulder. I told them what I’d just seen, not adding that I could have reached the baby in time if I’d tried. The officers sped in their cars to the pond, and in the oppressive summer air, they fished out the dead child and went to find my father.
I could have saved her, I told myself, looking out at the water after they’d gone. But what kind of life would she have had? She would be happier in death, I was sure. And with her death, I would be happier in life.
My father was sentenced to life in prison. My mother was distraught, not because her baby was dead, it seemed, but because she was left to run the farm alone, left with all her children, whom she didn’t love and had never once tried to protect from her husband.
Years later, when I became a mother, I realized that I probably could have done both. I could have found a way to save the baby and save myself. But at sixteen, I’d been too terrified to try.
I looked at the sky, which was starting to wave in front of me, and thought of Marcelle floating facedown in the water, just as Eleanor had.
It was strange to realize how much Marcelle had known of my life before we met. How much she hated me because of the man I’d married. If she’d only known that she could never hate me as much as I hated myself for Eleanor’s death, maybe things would have ended differently. I looked down at my watch. It was faceup and still ticking perfectly. Victor was right; it was a very good watch.
My stomach started to lurch, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the police to find me.