She Weeps Each Time You're Born (11 page)

Overhead Son searched the sky for the pale green second star in the Willow, his birth sign, but the moon was too bright. He knew even his uncles would be upset. Night with just a bamboo oar and no rope and him ferrying his childhood friend to the killing heart of the river. The worst part about it, his uncles would say as they sat drinking the
ruou nep
in the light of the fire, the sweet wine distilled from sticky rice, was that there was really nothing in it for him. He had a heart like his dead father, An, they would conclude—like An, he put everyone else ahead of himself.

After a while Son changed course again, steering the sampan the final stretch toward the Great Emptiness in the western sky. How to explain? Sometimes with Rabbit you chose to do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. You became bigger than who you were. Wasn't that what the Buddha taught? He didn't think his uncles would understand. And with the government's new policies in place, in a few short months everyone had forgotten how they used to live. Son could still remember the old way of harvesting rice, everyone out in their neighbor's fields, everyone lending a hand, the whole village prospering together. And how at the end of the harvest the village would celebrate by hiring a water puppet troupe to perform, the papery creatures as if walking on the surface of the flooded paddies. Yes. The thing his uncles would chide him for was the thing he missed most about his father. When An was with you, he would do anything you needed—climb any tree, till any paddy, or just carry you on his thin shoulders even when you could have walked. Now that the
government had collectivized the countryside, declaring everything belonged to everyone, it had had the opposite effect—it made the whole world less willing to be generous. Now nobody gave his neighbor a hand at harvest time. Each farmer was left to struggle on his own. Once Son had heard his uncle Hai say it was a good thing An was dead because this new world would've killed him.

Son steered the boat past a fisherman floating on a makeshift raft. The man's fire had gone out. A fishing bird huddled at the man's feet, but there was something strange about the creature. Son wondered if the bird's wings were rotting. Unlike other seabirds, cormorants didn't produce oil. Every day you had to let them out of their cages to stand in the sun, or their feathers would become waterlogged. With a wingspan of over four feet, if they stayed wet long enough, their soggy feathers could become heavy as weights, in time their own wings drowning them.

A match, the man said as the two children passed by, the man gesturing as if lighting a cigarette. It was more a command than a request. Son looked to Rabbit. Ever since the government had begun collectivizing the farms, robbery was on an uptick. Rabbit studied the man. His conical hat obscured his face, though she could see his long gray beard falling to his chest. He was leaning toward them, one hand invisible under the water. She shook her head. Son kept paddling. He could feel Binh's feet tightening on his shoulder. He knew his father would've stopped to help.

Within minutes he could hear the shift in the current. He kept the boat near shore. Even then he had to throw all his weight into it, the speed of their progress cut in half. There was no way he could row them out into the middle. If he did, it would be like shooting a rapid, the water sending them sailing downstream in unpredictable ways. They were still a half mile
from where the waters converged, but it was close enough. In the moonlight he could see things tornadoing past, mostly sticks and weeds but other objects as well, things bloated and shiny.

You sure about this, he said. Already she was picking the smaller bird off her wrist. Even if it comes up with all the Buddha's gold, he said, who's going to believe us? Rabbit glared. Son felt his face growing red. It was true. Nobody would question it. Adults believed every word she said.

He reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a book of matches. Out here it was a formality. The light wouldn't make a difference in the fast water. He walked to the front of the boat, the sampan rocking, and raked his fingers through the basket full of twigs and leaves they kept on board. With one match he got it lit.

It was the ancient art of fishing. After dark all over the Mekong, men in boats would position baskets of fire on long poles out over the water, the innumerable flames like a flock of moons, then up out of the depths shadows massed on the surface of the river, each one attracted to the light, moths to the flame, and
splash!
The bird dives over the edge into the darkness, thrashing about momentarily, and resurfaces only to be hauled up by the fisherman. And when he whistles, the bird opens its beak, and the man reaches in and pulls one out, the bond between man and bird sealed, the fish's long silver body flashing in the firelight. At the end of the night, the horizon pinking, the fishermen load the birds back into their wicker cages, the men's movements gentle, deferential, as if they were handling gods, each man placing a dark hood over the bird's crested head and dousing the flame, putting the feathered god to sleep.

Son slid the basket of fire out over the side of the boat. Here the river was so fast the light wouldn't attract anything other than insects, but he did it all the same.

Rabbit had her face buried in the bird's feathers. She was
talking to it with her eyes closed. Son couldn't hear what she was saying. He knew her words were building a fire in the bird. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend. Someday he wanted someone to talk to him like that.

Rabbit perched the bird on the lip of the boat. The basket of fire swung over the water as the sampan rocked in the current. It was a narrow point in the river, less than a quarter mile from shore to shore, the water gray in the moonlight. The bird extended its snakelike neck as if limbering up, its dark grace mesmerizing.

Go. Rabbit's command echoed inside Son's head. He hadn't even seen her lips move. The bird opened its black wings. He could see where the pattern had been interrupted by Huyen's cleaver. Clipping could be tricky. Hit a blood feather and the animal could bleed to death.

The bird fluttered down onto the water. Already it was moving away, its powerful feet all but invisible. Son put his hand on Rabbit's shoulder. It would all be decided under the surface. The bird would slip under, then the animal would have to call on both its feet and wings to power it back up against the crushing water. Once it dove, everything would happen quickly.

Thirty feet upstream there was a series of rocks studded in the river. The one time out with his uncles they had pulled to shore at the end of the day. Something was choking the engine. While they waited for Duc to clear it, Hai had climbed out on the nearest rock and lit a cigarette. Once Duc got the engine going they were ready to leave, but Hai was still lying on a rock, his shirt off as he lay sunning himself. Hey lady, Duc had called. Get over here or we'll leave your flat ass. Now in the moonlight Son noticed the rocks strung across the river, each one silent and black.

A halo of insects was swarming around the fire. On his shoulder Binh's feet were starting to make his skin sweat. He missed
the exact moment when the bird went under. One minute its long loose neck swayed like an S, the next it was gone.

They waited. Far away downriver pinpricks of light twinkled, whole universes being born and falling dead. Then Son could see it, the great neck craning. He could see the fish in its mouth. Even at a distance the whiskers on the fish's face were thick as wire. And of its own free will the bird was making straight for them with its offering, coming to lay the great fish at Rabbit's feet.

Neither of them saw it. It must have been sitting on the rocks waiting for the bird to rise, the pattern of stripes and spots helping it to melt into the darkness, the animal keeping its eye on the water, anticipating the spot where the bird would surface, its muscles tensing, its whiplike reflexes ingrained in the blood.

The cat leaped. It hit the bird square at the base of the throat. Even from where they were sitting they could hear the sound of the bird's neck snapping. It looked twice as big as a normal fishing cat, though the two black spots on the back of its ears were the usual markings. Son was still watching the animal gripping its prize in its jaws, eyes coated with night sheen, when he suddenly fell backward in the sampan as the boat shot out into the middle of the river.

At first he thought they'd been hit by a river croc. He sat back up and looked around for the two yellow eyes. Straight ahead he could see the rocks jutting up out of the water. The fishing cat had changed course. It was swimming straight for the rock farthest from shore.

Son held on to both sides of the boat. The water was swamping them. The sampan began to break apart. Rabbit was standing in the back, the bamboo oar in her hands. He knew she had set the boat in motion, that she was aiming for the fishing cat, but the sampan went sideways in the water, the boat caving in from the force. He was still sitting on what remained of the
floor, Binh somehow still on his shoulder. Rabbit let the oar fall from her hands. She closed her eyes. Son imagined she was already in the silvery room inside her head. If the moment were frozen, she would have looked as if she were standing on water.

Then the boat overturned. Son went under and came back up, a flame guttering in the breeze. He took in as much air as he could. Underwater it was hard to tell which way was up. He imagined a room with no doors or windows, no up or down, the room a perfect sphere. Then he imagined a wild animal materializing in the room. That's what it felt like when he would slip under—a wild animal tearing at him in a room with no way out.

The current was stronger than he'd expected, stronger than the monsoon winds that tore roofs off houses. I am going to drown. It was as if somebody else were thinking it, a third party outside himself. He thought of the voices inside Rabbit's head and the way she would paw at her ears. He wondered if he would become one of them. He was swept downriver, a piece of flotsam. He considered just letting go. The Buddha promised a special wheel of life for children. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

He surfaced again, his lungs on fire. Something was poking him in the back, trying to hook his shirt. He felt it take. He was being dragged through the water. Then a hand reached down and grabbed him by the arm and swung him up out of the river. For a long time he lay retching.

It was the man he and Rabbit had left in the dark, the one who had asked for a match. The man's raft was a patchwork of logs. His long gray beard shimmered in the moonlight. You're breathing, the old man grunted, then he went back to scanning the river.

Without Rabbit, Son wished he were dead. He imagined the front of Qui's shirt, how it would never stop weeping, her long hair tangled in knots. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He pictured a room on the moon. Could Rabbit hear his voice?
Rabbit, it's me, he thought, say something, but all he could hear was the sound of the river flexing beneath him.

When Son opened his eyes again, the old man's bird was standing over him. He could smell its musk. There was something different about the bird, its feathers strangely silver in the moonlight, almost colorless, its eyes as if filled with blood. The man was squatting at the edge of the raft and stroking with a crude paddle. Son struggled to sit up. One side of his face was aching where he had scratched it on a branch. Downriver he could see something, a black V floating on the water.

It was Binh. The bird had opened her wings and was marking the spot. Rabbit was drifting on her back and looking up at the stars, the bird floating beside her head. As the raft drifted closer, Son could see there was no panic in her face. Mày là con heo! Son said.
You dumb pig!
The old man laughed, his long gray beard rippling. You two married, he asked. He reached over and pulled Rabbit out of the water. She had lost her shirt in the current and was naked from the waist up, her ribs distinct as fingers.

The man placed Rabbit down on the raft. He picked up his oar again and continued paddling. He didn't seem to be in any hurry, his gray beard fluttering in the breeze. You're one of the Dinhs, he said. Son nodded.

They came around the bend that opened up into the cove where the houses of Ba Nuoc sat floating on the river. All were silent and dark except for Rabbit's. Even from a distance they could hear a chorus of voices carrying over the water. A throng of sampans was tied up out front.

It was illegal to have that many people gathered in one place, but Son figured it was all right. They were probably organizing a search party for the missing children. Son climbed onto the porch. Please come in, Uncle, he said to the mysterious stranger who'd saved them. It wasn't Son's house, but Rabbit would never think to ask. The old man just shook his head and held on
as Rabbit climbed over the railing with Binh on her shoulder. For a moment the two children stood in the light of the moon. It was only after the man had shoved off that Son realized he should have run inside and found a dry book of matches for the stranger, but the old man and his silvery bird were already lost to the dark.

Inside it was crowded. On the floor lay a crude hand-drawn map of Asia. Son could see lines running through the ocean connecting Vietnam with other countries in the region. Nobody seemed concerned—Rabbit half naked, Son with a deep scratch on his cheek, the injury twisting down his face like a lightning bolt. In addition to Huyen and Qui, Son's uncles were there as well as Dr. Kao and a group of ten or so raggedy men Son had never seen before, their clothes hanging in tatters. One of them had a small red mark staining his face where his hairline had receded, the thing shaped like a jewel. Some of the ragged men spoke a language Son had never heard before, the language flat and unmusical. Then someone was coming forward, the man's shoulders thin as rungs. One eye brown, the other sky-blue. Ba, said Son, running for him.