She Weeps Each Time You're Born (27 page)

Then Rabbit sees her. A small girl is standing in the doorway where the sacristy should be to the right of the altar. The door itself is missing and the opening leads directly outside. The girl is no taller than Linh and completely naked, her impassive face smeared with dirt and maybe worse. The child's ribs run up and down the sides of her chest like a ladder. There were more than four hundred of us in here, says the girl. She runs a finger through the filth on the altar. Though Catholic, we still celebrated Tet, she says. We were going to begin our feast after mass when the first knock sounded on the door. The last thing I ever ate was
banh chung
. Do you like
banh chung
? Rabbit pictures the small green squares of rice and bean curd wrapped in banana leaves. Very much, Rabbit says. The girl smiles.

Moonlight pours through the empty windows. The dirt and grime blaze silver, a magical dust coating everything. There were fewer than a hundred of us when it started, the girl says. We were giving each other the sign of peace. Even when the others began to arrive and beg us to let them in, people were still greeting the new arrivals with the traditional salutations. Security. Health. Happiness. May you live a hundred years. Gracious wishes for the new spring. Peace be with you. Behind them the night lit up with fires.

The first ones who came were a mother and her three children. The woman was what my father called shell-shocked. It was the little boy who told us they were killing the monks in
Hue, lining them up and marching them outside the city. I still remember something he said. “I saw the monks in their orange robes floating peacefully along like suns.” My mother pulled me to her. One of the elders said out of the mouths of babes.

We took refuge in this church for nineteen days. After ten days there was nothing left to eat. The
banh chung
all gone. The fish and the chickens and the two pigs. More and more people coming. Telling us they were rounding up the civil service workers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, the intellectuals. After the monks they went after the families of the southern soldiers, then anyone they suspected of having ties to the Americans. The girl puts her palms facedown in the grime on the altar. It was the Year of the Monkey, she says. Monkey is a trickster. Firmly the girl presses her filthy hands on her chest. When she pulls them away there are handprints on her skin, fingers splayed like the twinkling of stars. She smiles. Nothing was as it seemed, she says.

The northern soldiers finally found us. They told us to come out. They said they wouldn't hurt us. They said they'd just send the bad ones among us to reeducation camps and then we would all be brothers and sisters. For nine days we had been praying to the Lady, someone among us always reciting a Hail Mary. When one person would tire, someone else would take up the thread, the words like a constant river. The girl stands drawing on her body with the dirt from the altar. She traces a circle around her belly button, and through the open roof the halo around the moon intensifies.

The soldiers threw a grenade through one of the stained-glass windows, she says. Three people died. She looks at Rabbit. Would you rather die instantly or piece by piece? In the sky the two moons are beginning to merge. Instantly, says Rabbit. The girl considers this.

When they took us outside, my father still had some old C4
on him. We had been using it to cook inside the church. Months before my brother had found a brick of it along a trail. We used it the way the Americans did. We'd shape small balls and light it on fire. The Americans were always heating their rations and leaving the metal tins lying around. We'd use the C4 when we didn't have any firewood. The flames aren't the color of regular fire, you know. The girl stops to think. I don't know how to describe it, she says. Almost a gray-blue.

The girl claps her hands together, sending the dust on her fingers up into a small sparkling cloud. As she breathes her ribs expand and contract like bellows. They shot Ba right away, she says. Afterward they said he was an American stooge. The C4 proved it. Why would an innocent man have the trappings of the capitalist pig on his person? The soldier shot Ba through the neck, but I know he meant to shoot him in the head. His aim was bad because he was weak and hungry. I remember he didn't look much older than my brother. When he shot Ba, none of us screamed. I don't know why. Maybe we were too hungry. I just stood watching the life leak out of him.

The girl stops talking. She turns her head as if listening for something. The moon is a solid mass in the sky. The girl looks at Rabbit and backs out the open door of the sacristy, the dust glowing on her body. For a moment all Rabbit can see are handprints and a circle glittering in the doorway. By the time Rabbit gets there, the girl is gone.

In the field behind the church Rabbit can hear the sound of running water. In the distance a creek cuts along the edge of the land. Rabbit begins to walk toward it. She takes her shoes off and walks barefoot. The earth feels spongy beneath her feet. Her soles are stained a dark red, but with what she doesn't know.

By the creek, Rabbit lets the history wash over her. The occupation of Hue and the surrounding countryside lasts a month. At first the Communists are almost reasonable, thinking
they can hold the city. When it becomes evident they can't, they begin gouging bottomless pits in the earth.

Then Rabbit hears it, the vein throbbing under her feet. What she has come here to find. She thinks back to the Black Tai in Anne-Marie. She can feel the nausea rising in her throat. It's like nothing she has ever experienced. One could walk right over the spot and think nothing of it. In this tiny hamlet of My Kan, the number of people killed is three times the number of people who lived there, four hundred and twenty-eight dead, and they're all right here where Rabbit is standing, though the government in Hanoi would deny it.

Rabbit can feel the earth being shoveled over them. Many of them are still alive when it happens, everywhere people drowning in earth. A handful will survive this moment, carrying the taste of dirt in their mouths with them forever. Toward the end two little girls are thrown in hand in hand, one shadowing the other, both their faces still as stone, one with a bullet through the stomach, the other intact, their feet small as the rose before it blossoms. The girls are obviously sisters, perhaps even twins, their eyes starry as the night sky from which they come. The young soldier in charge misbelieves what he sees, maddened by the blood and gore. I've already shot that one, he thinks. Look. Her own ghost already walks at her side.

From here it all grows stranger. Everywhere the dolorous ringing of bells. A roomful of jars filled with two-headed babies. Women in red
ao dai
flying through the air. A man playing a bone flute, the instrument as long as the man is tall, the music like the crying of seabirds, their voices calling Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Then Rabbit sees Her. It is the only time She has ever appeared to Rabbit in any form. The Lady robed in what appears to be a burlap sack, Her thousand arms wilted like the petals of a dead flower. In the sky the moon has separated again, the two moons distinct and some distance
apart, the whole sky between them, each one shining in a different direction, light falling on opposing paths. Then the Lady arranges each of Her hands in the fear-not position, five hundred palms blossoming skyward, the others pointing to the earth, Her hands radiating from Her body like the brilliance of a star. Rabbit can feel her mouth filling with dirt. Everything grows dark. The last thing she sees is a small green bird sitting on each of the Lady's many splendid shoulders.

R
ABBIT OPENED HER EYES. THE DISTANT RINGING OF BELLS
lingered in the air. The heat in the room was unbearable. She could hear the wood swelling in the door jambs, tears raining down the mirror. Moonlight poured through the window hot as sunbeams. She threw back the sheets and got out of bed. For the moment nothing else mattered. After the darkness she'd witnessed in My Kan, she needed to see it, needed it to rise to the surface of the water with its ageless face and wrinkled carapace and bestow its good fortune on her. She pulled on some clothes and slipped downstairs and out into the courtyard.

From the color of the night she guessed it was well after two. In the courtyard there was the smell of lemons. Something stirred in one of the trees. Lady, said the male parakeet, hopping out on a branch. May I serve you? Yes, said Rabbit. Swiftly the bird flew down off the bough and landed on her shoulder.

The strange black car with the tinted windows was still parked outside the gate, but she paid it no notice. For once the great wooden doors swung open silently as if oiled. On the right-hand door a small twig shot straight out of the wood, a furled green bud just at the tip where a leaf would open with first light.

Rabbit turned left on Hang Buom, the Street of Sails, and headed east to Hang Ngang. Everywhere people slept out on the sidewalk. On hot summer nights families dragged their mats down out of the upper floors of apartment buildings to sleep out in the open. At the end of the Street of Beautiful Women, Rabbit could see the water shining through the trees. The city was preternaturally quiet. Nothing moved, not a leaf or a blade of grass. Even the few fires they'd passed along the way burned as if frozen, their flames scarcely grabbing at the air. Rabbit began to wonder if something else were at play, if the world had stopped and she and the bird were walking outside of time. What if it
doesn't come to you, said the parakeet. Then that will be my answer, said Rabbit.

A couple was sitting on one of the stone benches beside the lake. The woman was straddling the man's lap, her dress hiked up over her thighs. Rabbit breathed a little easier. Time had not stopped for these two lovers on the stone bench, each of them rubbing their arms up and down the other's back. Rabbit thought of the palest shade of blue, a memory of a man's ring on her skin. On the bench the woman threw her head back and moaned.

On the other side of the Bridge of the Rising Sun she could see Jade Island where Ngoc Son Pagoda rose just behind the trees. A little farther down the path she chose a bench and sat down, the smell of lemon just at her ear. I will never leave you, said the parakeet. Hush, she said. I know. Rabbit began to scan the lake. Even when you should, you won't.

They could see things floating on the surface of the water. Plastic bags, empty soda cans, candy wrappers, all manner of trash blowing down out of the Old Quarter and into Hoan Kiem Lake. In the moonlight everything looked like something else. They sat watching the surface for any changes. After a while Rabbit said do you know the legend of the lake? No, lied the bird. Please teach me.

There isn't much to it, Rabbit said. The Golden Turtle God gave young Prince Le Loi a magical sword called Heaven's Will. The prince used it to defeat the Chinese. When the battle was over, the Turtle God reappeared and snatched the sword out of the prince's hand and carried it back to the watery kingdom of the gods. And that's why they call it Lake of the Restored Sword, said the parakeet, but just then in the water the animal lifted its great head, neck ridged where the thick skin folded up on itself, its aged face somehow full of both benediction and indifference.
The turtle moved as if bearing a great weight. In the moonlight the animal was as long as a man. As it came forward, it wagged its ponderous head from side to side, swimming right up to the edge of the lake and stopping as if to speak. The animal floated in the dark water, its eyes glistening. Lady, is this all you wanted, said the parakeet. I don't know, said Rabbit.

It was a soft-shelled turtle, its carapace without scales, its back leathery rather than infused with the intricate series of plates like its hard-shelled cousins. All throughout Asia the soft-shelled turtle was preferred for eating, its shell smooth, almost pliable at the edges where the upper shell met the lower shell. In Chinese medicine the turtle was associated with the liver and kidneys. Nobody knew how old the turtle of the Lake of the Restored Sword was. Some of the local people said a hundred years. Some said it swam these very waters two thousand years ago when the Buddha walked the earth.

Uncle, said Rabbit. She remembered how as a child she addressed everybody as
em
, even her elders. The turtle extended its head, its wrinkles disappearing as the skin grew taut, its head and neck almost annelid in nature, not the bulbous head of a tortoise but something more like an eel, smooth and gelid. In the moonlight she could see the open sores on its back, each one the size of a dinner plate, the inflamed skin pink and suppurating. It's dying, whispered the parakeet. No, said Rabbit. It's just manifesting the world it lives in.

Rabbit sat for a long time simply looking at the animal, the moon casting everything in a silvery light. The local people believed a sighting of the turtle would bring you good luck. At New Year's the shores of Hoan Kiem Lake were crowded with people straining for a glimpse. And if I never see you again,
thought Rabbit, would I still be me? Nearby a fish jumped in the water.

Suddenly a moonbeam came pouring through the trees. For an instant the turtle appeared healed of every sore, the skin of its back smooth and healthy looking. Then the animal retracted its head and turned to swim back toward the center of the lake. As it began to submerge down into the dark waters, Rabbit could see the sores still oozing on its back.

Lady, said the parakeet. Rabbit opened her eyes. Had she fallen asleep? The moon was shining in the heavens, another moon on the water. It was almost like the dream she'd just had—two moons at opposite ends of the sky.

Someone was sitting on the other end of the bench. Neither she nor the parakeet had seen him sit down. He turned to her and smiled. Even in the shadow of the trees she could see it. I have been waiting for you, the man said. If we are to have any chance at all, we must leave tonight.