T
rai Nguyen Phac awoke to the sound of sleet slashing against the windows and metal walls of her mobile home. She was lying on the metal floor, curled in a fetal position. Waves of cold penetrated the cheap cotton blanket on which she lay as well as the blanket that she had pulled around her. A few feet above her in the narrow bed, her husband made odd sighing whistles when he breathed.
Trai always awoke at dawn, especially in winter. In the gray light, sadness seeped through her soul. She had dreamt again that she was back in Binh Nghai beside the river and Ha Chi Thien was making love to her. The air was thick and warm, the water gurgled through the reeds, and Ha whispered a poem against her throat.
In April, when the river rises again, will you remember
My hand on your heart?
In April when I am far away in the city
Of doubt and despair?
Trai wondered if Ha Chi Thien was still alive. Three years ago, the newspapers had published a story about him. Friends had smuggled some of his poems out of Vietnam and published them in a book. They said he had been jailed by the communists. He was in the Hoa Loa Prison in Hanoi. Trai had wanted to buy a copy of the book of poems, but Phac had said Ha was still a communist.
Father Nhu had said it was wrong for her to give herself to Ha Chi Thien. God had sent her a baby to punish her and then killed the baby to make her sorry for her sin. Trai had never understood his argument. All the village girls had little love experiments with men their age. Sometimes they had babies, but their families raised them. Perhaps Father Nhu meant it was wrong for her to give herself to an outsider, a teacher from Saigon, like Ha Chi Thien.
Later, when Ha's brother, Le Quan Chien, became the Viet Cong district leader, Trai's love for Ha seemed an even worse sin to Father Nhu. When he said mass in Binh Nghai, he pointed to Trai on the bench beside her father and called her an unclean woman. That meant she would never marry. Father Nhu's interference filled Trai's father with rage. He stopped believing in the Catholic God and became a secret follower of Le Quan Chien, who said God was a capitalist lie.
Sadness swelled in Trai's soul. It was bewildering that so much evil could be born from an act of love, so much ugliness from a moment of beauty.
Trai threw off the blanket and slipped her feet into rubber thongs. She hurried into the tiny kitchen and turned on the oven. Soon warm air began to circulate. She began boiling water for tea and frying bacon and eggs. She thought it was disgusting food, but Phac insisted on eating
it. Bacon and eggs was a favorite American dish.
Suong came into the kitchen, his face heavy with sleep. Some of the sadness in Trai's soul was replaced by joy. He was growing into such a handsome young man. He was going to be tall like his father. He was even more intelligent. He spoke beautiful American. “Morning, Mom,” he said.
“Gude ⦠morring.” Trai liked being called that American name, even if she was not his mother.
Patiently, Suong made her repeat the phrase until she almost got it right. American was such a hard language. When war had invaded Binh Nghai in 1960, Ha Chi Thien had fled to Hanoi, leaving her pregnant. The VC killed the schoolteacher who succeeded him. Trai was never good in school anyway. She was always looking out the window at the sampans on the river. Ha Chi Thien had called her Miss Poppy Flower. He had asked her what she was dreaming about when she looked at the river. She said she dreamt of being a white swan, paddling through the reeds with her mate.
Trai poured a glass of orange juice from a carton for Suong. She put a dish of cornflakesâa collection of dried bread chips on which Americans poured milkâin front of him. Such awful food! But Suong loved it and grew tall and healthy on it.
Phac was awake. She heard the water running in the bathroom. Soon he came into the kitchen, wearing his fisherman's boots and rubber pants. A red woolen shirt covered his thin chest. He was so tall. When she first met him, he was the tallest Vietnamese man she had ever seen: six feet. Tall and thin, even back in Binh Nghai, with knobby wrists and ankles protruding from his black cotton clothes. He had the same angry look on his face then that he wore now.
“Good morning, Father,” Suong said, staring at his cornflakes.
“Good morning,” Phac said.
The sleet slashed against the windows and walls. In the
distance, they could hear the roar of the ocean. “Maybe they won't sail today,” Trai said to Phac in Vietnamese. “The wind is so strong. There seems to be ice blowing on the wind. What do they call it?”
“Sleet,” Suong said.
“Seet,” Trai said.
Phac smashed her in the face. Usually Trai saw the blow coming and was able to raise her hand. But this time he caught her by surprise and her head whirled to one side so hard she thought her neck was broken. Even though Phac was thin, his arms were fearfully strong.
“Give me my food, cunt,” he said in Vietnamese.
Suong glared at his cornflakes. Trai was afraid he would protest. That would only enrage Phac and lead to a worse beating later in the day.
“I'm so sorry,” Trai said. “Did I say something wrong?”
“You are putting a curse on us. You want us to starve to death. If the boat doesn't sail, I won't get paid.”
Phac was a Buddhist. He hated Trai's Catholic God. He believed in devils and evil spirits and had begun to think the ones that were tormenting him had come from the pope.
“You misunderstood me, dear husband,” Trai said. “I was only concerned for your lungs. I lay awake for a long time last night listening to you breathe. You seemed to have a difficult time. The cold has gotten into your lungs and Iâ”
“Shut up and give me my food,” Phac snarled.
Trai set the bacon and eggs in front of him and sat tensely at the table while he ate them. “I am so stupid,” she said. “I never realize how important it is to think realistically. Soon you will have your own boat and you will be able to stay home if you choose on miserable days such as this one. I would cook you something tasty for lunch. We would have a pleasant time.”
She was showing him that though she might be a cunt, she was a well-trained Vietnamese woman who was mistress
of the art of
cong,
versatile ability in the home. Desperately, Trai clung to the hope that eventually her other gifts,
ngon,
soft speech, and
hanh,
gentle behavior, would soften Phac's bitter soul and make him glad he had decided to take her with him to America. If he let her buy the proper clothes and makeup, she might even regain
dung,
subtle beauty.
As soon as Phac finished the bacon and eggs, Trai sprang up and poured him a cup of tea. He gulped it without a word of thanks. “What are you learning in school today?” he asked Suong in Vietnamese. Phac too found American a difficult language.
“We are having mathematics and social studies this morning,” Suong said. “We will study the history of the American Revolution, which happened two hundred and eight years ago.”
“What about the Vietnamese Revolution?” Phac asked. His voice was bitter.
“Our teacher says we will study it later. We have many other wars and crises to study first. But he says there is a similarity between the American Revolution and the Vietnamese war. He says the Americans in Vietnam were like the British in 1776, fighting guerrillas they could not conquer.”
“Tell your teacher he is spreading duck shit,” Phac said.
“Oh?” Suong said, looking dismayed.
“Guerrillas in tanks. Tell him that is what conquered Vietnam.”
“Maybe he could write an essay on it. You could help him,” Trai said.
“Shut up, ignorant cunt,” Phac snarled. He gestured to his cup and she poured him more tea. He gulped it again, although it was almost boiling. Perhaps he was trying to set himself on fire inside so he could endure the sleet and cold on the ocean.
“Ignore what I just told you,” Phac said to Suong. “You must pretend to admire your teacher's wisdom. That way
he will give you higher grades and you will have a better chance of a scholarship to the college of Princeton. A degree from there will enable you to become a rich man.”
“Yes, Father,” Suong said. Trai sensed that he did not believe this. He was learning more about America than Phac. It was such a confusing, complicated country. Men like Mick O'Day, who had strode through Binh Nghai like a god, who had fought the Viet Cong and smashed them, were not wealthy. An American policeman was paid little, and people did not give him presents and money like the police in Vietnam.
Mick still gazed at her with hungry eyes. He still remembered. But there was no forgiveness in those eyes. Sometimes Trai dreamt of him in her arms beside the river. It was different from the dream of Ha. There was deceit and evil in it. But there was also a kind of love. Such dreams only proved Father Nhu was right, she was an unclean woman. Perhaps when she prayed before the crucifix today, Jesus would come and console her.
Phac put on his yellow slicker and fisherman's hat. He pulled on thick gloves to keep his hands from freezing. “Good-bye, Son. Work hard today. I will do likewise.”
“Yes, Father.”
Every day for seven years Phac had said the same thing to Suongâevery day since they had come to Paradise Beach after a year in the refugee camp in Hong Kong, where Phac could not work and the Vietnamese government demanded he be sent back to Vietnam to stand trial for murder.
Phac departed without even looking at Trai. She waited until she heard him start the old car, which Mick kept repairing for him. Then she got out some rice and poured
nuoc mam,
the pungent sauce made from sun-ripened fish, over it. She poured tea for herself and Suong and let him have a few bites of the rice. A taste of home.
He thanked her and then frowned at his empty dish of cornflakes. “I hate it when he hits you like that.”
“I deserve it. I am a very ignorant woman. I've committed many sins. I am paying for them.”
“I don't believe that! Everyone commits sins. Why do you have to pay for them all your life?”
“I don't know. Go study your lessons now until the school bus comes.”
Suong retreated to his room. He arose in the dawn with his father because Phac insisted on it. He said it gave Suong more time to study. Suong complained that he did not have to study so much. He was already getting the highest marks in his class. But Phac told him to study anyway. Suong obeyed. He was the hope of Phac's life. His only surviving son.
Suong was why Phac had brought Trai with him from Binh Nghai. Their marriage had been entirely political. But he expected her to embrace Suong as her only chance to practice
phuc duc,
the creation of family strength through descendants. He knew how deep this instinct was implanted in her. She would be a good mother to Suong, no matter how much she hated Phac.
When Suong left for school, Trai cleaned the house. The other four rooms were freezing, but she cleaned them anyway, scrubbing the icy floors and walls, wiping the insides of the windows. Phac did not let her turn on the heat in these rooms because he was saving money to buy a boat of his own. He had saved almost $20,000 in seven years. It was extraordinary because his employer Desmond McBride paid him only $90 a week.
When she finished cleaning, Trai turned on the small television in the kitchen and listened to a man named Phil Donahue. He had a number of women on a stage; they talked about sex. That was an easy American word to understand. The Americans used it a lot. Trai was not able to understand what they were saying about it, but it seemed to be serious. One woman on the stage wept Phil Donahue talked in a strange, rapid way. Trai could not understand a word of it, but it was all about sex. He waved his arms and rushed up and down asking people to talk
into a microphone about it. The Americans were strange. No self-respecting Vietnamese man or woman would ever discuss sex in public.
A knock on the door. Who should be standing there in the blowing sleet but Father Philip Hart, the pastor of St Augustine's Church in Paradise Beach. Father Hart was tall like most Americans, but he had lost some hair, an oddity for a comparatively young man. He had a long, earnest face and a nose that turned up at the tip and pale blue, anxious eyes. He was not at all like Father Nhu, from Binh Nghai. He had been like a stern grandfather. Father Hart was like a worried brother.
“TraiâMrs. Phacâhow are you today? I just thought I'd drop in to see if everything was all right.”
“Oh, all fine. All okey doke.” With Father Hart, Trai relapsed into the pidgin she had learned when the marines had come to Binh Nghai.
“You're sure?”
“Oh, yes. Tea?”
“Why, thank you. I could use a little internal heat.”
They sat down at the kitchen table. Father Hart talked about Vietnam. He did not approve of President Ronald Reagan's refusal to open diplomatic relations with the communist government. Father Hart thought Mr. Reagan was a terrible president.