She Weeps Each Time You're Born (14 page)

Duc was surprised by how smoothly it had gone—no patrols, no stray fishermen following in their wake demanding to be taken along. In the pilothouse he watched the bay open before them. At the back of the boat Hai began prepping the motor. The tides were right. There was no reason to hesitate. They slipped into the dark waters of the bay as if it were a lake. The setting moon wavered on the waves. Then the engine turned over, the land steadily growing smaller and more distant. Within the hour it was gone.

Hai came down into the hold. He left the door open. Rabbit could feel the heat rushing out, fresh air pouring in. We're at sea, Hai said in a quiet voice. They could come up out of the darkness. The sting of the salt felt welcoming those first few hours, their throats tingling with each breath.

For the first time since coming on board, Son could see how many people there were. Bodies on top of bodies. He didn't know how they'd all fit. In addition to his own family, there were the Cambodians plus Rabbit and her family. As people began to pour out of the hold, he noticed the doctor gathering a woman and a young girl to his side. The girl was smaller than Rabbit. One of her feet was laced up tight in a thick black shoe. Together the three of them held hands and bowed their heads.
When they were done, they touched their faces and chests in the same pattern. Son had never seen the woman or girl before, but he knew who they were by the way the doctor gripped their hands.

Son and Rabbit spent the rest of the first night on top of the pilothouse. In the sea air the deep scratch on his cheek was beginning to dry. Nobody cared that the two children had stationed themselves on the roof. It meant two fewer people on deck. The boat wasn't built to carry them all. There were four other families related to the doctor. The men of the families were lawyers and engineers, men who had been to university and were forced to work as cyclo drivers and
che
sellers after reunification. Son knew that all over the river delta, professionals like these men were now doing the same backbreaking jobs as his uncles. Southern society had been turned upside down. People were dying in hospitals because the northern doctors shipped down to replace the “capitalist sympathizers” had received their medical certificates in less than six weeks.

Just before dawn there was a commotion in the hold, the sound of someone shouting. Together Rabbit and Son peered over the edge of the roof. One of the Cambodians came scrambling up on deck, Phuong trailing behind him beating his back with her fists. Sang appeared in the doorway. She was still wearing the red
ao dai
, the dress's train flapping in the wind. Phuong was screaming about the man having his hand up Sang's dress. Nobody paid much attention. Even An was more embarrassed than concerned. Everyone knew who had started it. Sang in the blood-red dress was still furious. The doctor's wife shook her head.

The sun would be up within the hour. In the pilothouse Hai was still muttering about Hong Kong. If they were refugees in Hong Kong, it would be easier to find work while they stayed
in a transit camp. Ever since the government had started harassing the three million ethnic Chinese who had lived in Saigon for generations, thousands of people had escaped the country by boat. There were refugee camps all over Southeast Asia. Hai had heard that in Hong Kong they let you out during the day. In Malaysia the people were Muslims. He had heard of the prohibitions there against pork and alcohol, even cards prohibited. Back in Ba Nuoc, Phuong had teased her younger brother. For you it will be worse than Vietnam, she said. No, Hai said, blowing a stream of cigarette smoke out through his nose. Nothing could be as bad as not having a future.

Rabbit was lying on her back and looking up at the stars. They were winking out, the sky lightening in the east. What's wrong, said Son. Rabbit glared at him, her freckled face scowling. There was so much wrong. Forty people packed on a boat built to hold a handful, the engine already starting to stutter. Rabbit turned on her stomach and peered over the edge. She located Qui among the crowd squatting on a mat, Tu sitting next to her. They weren't touching, but Rabbit could tell by the distance between them that they were aware of each other. In the wind Qui's hair tickling Tu's shoulder.

From the roof of the pilothouse Rabbit and Son watched the sun rise in the east. Each sliver poured over the horizon smooth as gold. The day passed without incident. By mid-morning it was overcast. The sky threatened rain, though none came. By noon everyone began to realize they could still sunburn even under the clouds. People took to shielding themselves with pieces of clothing. Some went back below deck. Toward evening Qui and some of the wives came around again with the rice they had cooked in advance. There was seven days' worth on board along with enough uncooked rice for another week. The doctor had decided only the men doing hard labor would get
what little of the dried fish they had. Everyone else would have to make due with just the fish sauce and whatever else they'd brought with them.

By day's end the sun broke through the cloud cover. It was hanging low in the sky when Son spotted a plume of water spouting in the distance. It's good luck, said one of the doctor's relatives. People began to clamor for a glimpse of the whale. The doctor remained seated. He held his little girl in his lap, her foot laced up tight as if in a trap. The only good fortune is in Him, said the doctor.

Just then there was a loud bang, and the engine seized up. Cái thằng con heo! said Hai. The doctor scowled and pulled his daughter closer. Duc came out of the pilothouse. Together the brothers waded through the people to the back of the boat. Most of the engine was underwater. Duc tried to tilt it up, but somehow it had become locked and wouldn't budge. A few of the men began to gather. One of the engineers reached under the water and touched something. Instantly he pulled away and put his fingers in his mouth. Thing's hot as pig shit, said Hai. It's burning oil.

Duc used the bottom of his shirt to unscrew the cap. It was a modern-enough motor that there was a separate reserve just for oil. They had chosen a motor with an oil tank rather than a two stroke because they wouldn't need someone constantly feeding oil into the gas. The engineer began to explain what might be wrong. He spoke using a lot of technical jargon. Shit, said Duc. Just tell us what we need to do. It was only their first day at sea, and already it was starting. Basically you need a whole new engine, said the engineer. Fuck that, said Hai. This is Vietnam. Nothing's new.

An argument broke out, but the doctor didn't get up from where he was. One of the Cambodians slipped below deck and found the man with one sleeve. He was sitting upright under the
stairs in a spot with no more space than a crate. The Cambodian began to explain the situation to him. The man with one sleeve nodded and squeezed himself out. As always, there was a small smile playing on his lips.

On deck at the back of the boat the man with one sleeve ran his hand over the engine and closed his eyes. Great, said the engineer. A magician. After a while the man with one sleeve explained that he was going to take a look. Someone translated. How are you going to do that, said the engineer. We can't even pull the engine up. Already Duc and Hai were headed for the pilothouse. The man with one sleeve was taking the remains of his shirt off and rubbing his arms as if to warm them up.

Within minutes he was ready. There was still some light left. The other Cambodians scanned the water. They hadn't seen any yet, but that didn't mean there weren't any. Tu stood holding a paddle. It was only as good as its length. The doctor and his wife bowed their heads. From his perch on the roof of the pilothouse, Son noticed the doctor's wife cradling a necklace in her hands, her fingers working the beads.

In his tattered shorts the Cambodian climbed onto the boat's edge. Somehow he managed to keep smiling. He was still smiling even as he jumped in. Ba says he can do anything, whispered Rabbit. Son had also heard the stories through the window of the floating house in Ba Nuoc. How the old southern soldiers like his father had been given a choice. Fight the Cambodians or stay in the reeducation camps. He was unclear as to the rest of it, how An and Tu had found each other, eventually escaping with the Cambodians all the way downriver to Ba Nuoc. All he knew was that their fathers had once been enemies, his father fighting the north, Rabbit's father siding with the Communists. Lying on his stomach on the roof of the pilothouse, Son had only one thing on his mind. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. The waters were dark and silent where the Cambodian had gone in.
The way Son used to jump into the Mekong to hide from his mother, the river closing over him like a door. What he knew. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. You can only disappear off the earth for so long.

The Cambodian came up for air three times. The sun was on the edge of the horizon. The third time he surfaced he swam for the boat and explained what had happened. They had run over an old fishing net, the thing tangled in the blades. Someone handed him a knife. He took it and put it in his teeth. As he dove under the boat, the blade cut the corners of his mouth. Instantly the blood went out in the water, a beacon calling them up from across the depths. Tu stood on deck with the paddle in his hands as if it would do any good.

The man filled his lungs to the breaking point. The light was going. Duc had turned the boat so that the engine was on the side of the setting sun. The waves were only a few feet but getting higher. The man could feel the pressure in the rib he had cracked the last and final time the guards beat him. The pain was something from his past. He put it aside and continued. How the man was able to do it. How he was able to do anything. By living in the present. The deadly fields outside Phnom Penh had taught him that. In the present there was only the pain of the present. No more. A pain you could tolerate. Endless days in the sun working the land, at night the endless rounds of meetings, of checking oneself for faults. Brother, I cut the wood in ten strokes instead of seven. Sister, I thirsted too much and didn't leave enough water for my neighbor. The Sunday speeches stretched most of the day, leaders up on the dais under a canopy and everyone else burning in the light. Even now he wasn't sure how the leaders had gotten away with it. There were so few of them and so many of the man and his family. Maybe it happened because men like him let it happen. The children dying first, then his wife falling sick with hunger. The day he came
back from the forest and no one would look him in the eye. Only the oldest child left and its days of usefulness numbered. They had to save bullets. They were told the Vietnamese were always making bullets. The Vietnamese had whole cities filled with scrap metal, factories churning out bullets designed for the sole purpose of stripping the Cambodian people of their sovereignty. And so Cambodia's resources had to be allotted, rations given only to the strongest, the obedient. The herd had to be culled. Food reserved for the hardy, the weak left to perish. All for the benefit of the Kingdom of Kampuchea. Listen, brothers and sisters. We must strike the Vietnamese in their beds, crush the baby in the womb. This is our mandate. The Vietnamese are waiting to come pouring over the border, the way they have been ruling over us since the thirteenth century, effacing the great Khmer culture, which the Enlightened One brought to us through the channels of India and replacing it with their miscegenated cultural offerings dredged up from China. Using the French to annex our lands, then after the French, using our nation to stage war on themselves, the Americans bombing us without regard. Take up the hoe in your hand. The Vietnamese all look the same, the same sloping faces, the same mongoloid features. Aim for where the three plates meet at the back of the head. War a thousand years in the making. The very day after Saigon falls we will march to Phu Quoc Island when the enemy is at its weakest. We must hit them first and keep hitting them.

Presently in the water the man is floating under the engine, a cosmonaut suspended in the blue. As he disentangles the old fishing net, his blood wafts away in the currents, one part per million, ten miles away the smell of a single drop like a woman's perfume aerating a room. The man can't see what he is doing, but there is no need to see. What he has learned the hard way. Life is suffering. Desire is suffering. Attachment is suffering. He doesn't think about what is riding on his work, the broken
boat left drifting at the mercy of pirates, every man, woman, and child's tongue gradually growing black and parched from lack of water, tongues hardening as if with scales. No future, no past. No sharks knifing toward him out of the darkness. No hunger, no fear, the stomach beginning to eat itself. Everything just present tense, this moment of floating in the sea, cutting the netting out of the motor's blades, the boat rocking in the water, the silence and the cold and the darkness and the heart beating in the chest.

On the roof of the pilothouse the children spot something speeding over the waves. Uncle, Son calls, his finger pointing to a spot in the future. With his knuckles Duc begins rapping on the bottom of the boat. The black knife skates toward them, the animal with its own sense of the present.

The man resurfaced with the last shreds of the net, blood dripping from his mouth. On board the people waved him on, Sang in her red
ao dai
, the long sleeves flapping like a flag. Hands were already over the side waiting to pull him up. In the present, the danger of the great dark fin doesn't register until he sees it. The man turns in the waves and spots the animal cutting straight for him. He claps his hands together in delight and shouts something. Someone translates. Arun says if we hook it in the eye, we could catch it.

A wave sweeps Arun toward the boat. Someone gets a hand on him. Later the others will explain that the thing was too large, its black eyes big as plates. Even if they speared it in the brain, the residual instinct could take over. They didn't have the space or the proper equipment. There were stories of men losing hands hours after a shark had been hung up by the gills, the massive head tolling in the air, then the sudden snapping of the jaws even after brain death. They were also afraid the shark's blood would attract more, the waters teeming with teeth. Arun will listen to his friends explain why they let the shark go. When
they are done explaining, he will smile and nod the way he does with everything.