The Minhs were home when Hương returned. After dinner, Mrs. Minh left
for a job cleaning at a university. Hương’s sons slept peacefully. She kept a
watchful eye on Bình. Did he understand that he’d nearly died today? Did he
know he had a horrible, reckless mother? She would have to tell Công,
wouldn’t she, about all that had happened? She would confess it to him,
everything she’d ever done—if only she were given the chance, an
opportunity to talk to him, to learn what had happened, to get him to
America and plan a way forward. For that she would confess it all.
At the camp, she had written him and mailed the letter to their home in
Mỹ Tho. When she received no answer, she wrote to their old home in
Saigon. She wrote as soon as she was able to. She must have sent a letter
every day. Noticing how many letters she had been sending off, another
woman at the camp reprimanded her.
“Are you so stupid?” the woman asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The Communists, when they see the letters, they’ll know you escaped and
they’ll know who to punish: your husband!” Hương stopped writing then.
As the sun rose, Mrs. Minh arrived home, smelling of detergent and
rubber gloves. Without a word, she joined Hương on the couch and watched
TV, which Hương had turned on for its soft glow. From her seat, Mrs. Minh
would glance at her temporary guest every few minutes as if to say something
important but ended up talking only about the shows. In this show, a witch
causes havoc by her misunderstandings but her husband loves her anyway. In
this one, there’s a magical talking horse. Here, a group of Americans are
shipwrecked. They settled on the shipwreck show, or at least Mrs. Minh did. In black
and white, it looked far away, a different place, a different time. Even if it was
a different language, it was easy to laugh at, easily understood.
Except Hương wasn’t laughing. It didn’t even look like she was paying
attention. The light on the screen bounced off her eyes.
This would happen multiple nights: Hương staring blankly at the screen in
the dark while Mrs. Minh sat on the edge of the couch in contemplation. It
made the air heavy, both of them knew, but neither one knew how to fix it.
Then one night Mrs. Minh asked, “What do you think of America?”
“Dạ thích,” Hương said. “It’s not Vietnam, but it’s not bad, either.” She
coughed to clear her throat. All day she hadn’t been talking to anyone in
Vietnamese except her sons. It felt so strange after so much silence, and the
words came out muddy and sticky.
“The priest said you left on a boat,” the wife continued. “Is that true?”
“Vâng.” Hương wanted to tell the wife about the way the water moved,
how you never got used to it, about the men on the boat and their constant
fighting, about the uneasy sense of knowing only water, knowing that it
connected the entire world—one shore to another—yet not knowing when
you might see land. There were so many things to say, and finally she decided
to ask a question, the most important question she could ask, the only one that
mattered—“Do you know how to get a message back to Vietnam? I have a
husband. He was left behind…”—but Hương stopped short of finishing when
there was shuffling noise in the bedroom, the rustling of sheets, the bouncing
of bedsprings.
She bit her lips and held her breath. Something was coming; she could feel
it. Mrs. Minh’s eyes wandered to the back of the house. Then came a scream
and the sound of glass hitting wall, one clash of impact followed by the
rainlike sound of hundreds of shards falling. The baby woke with a cry and
Hương got up to calm him. Tuấn stirred from his corner of the couch and
asked what was going on.
“Nothing,” she told him. “Nothing to be afraid of.” She bounced the baby
as footsteps made their way across the hardwood floor and the bathroom door closed and the shower turned on. The baby leaned his head on her chest and
quieted.
“I’ll go check on him,” Mrs. Minh said, standing up. “Yes. I’ll go do that.”
The couple would fight into the morning. Something else would break. At
one point, Hương thought she heard a smack on skin but she wasn’t sure.
By eight, Mr. Minh had left, slamming the door so hard Hương was sure
the house would fall down. Mrs. Minh mumbled as she prepared breakfast,
“Damn that man. Worthless…”
The next afternoon, Hương left the Minhs. With Bình in her arms and
Tuấn following behind, she walked several blocks until she saw a motel. The
word, she remembered, meant place to stay. She would stay at the motel for a
week, find a way to get in touch with Công, and get him here to New Orleans.
No one told her how to, but, she decided, no more waiting. It was time for
action. She paid in cash. The room was twenty-five dollars. She put the thirty
dollars she had left in her front pocket, holding her hand over it to make sure
it was secure. After she called him, the priest arrived the next morning. He sat in his van as
Hương led the boys out. The radio played gospel hymns, but he turned it off
as they made their journey downtown.
He had been searching for her all morning, he said when they were on the
highway. The window was down and the wind was more hot than cool. The
Minhs had told him she “just up and left,” without telling them where she was
heading. She hadn’t even left a note about where she was going, how to reach
her, or what her intentions were. She could have “dropped off the face of the
earth”—she had no idea what that could possibly have meant.
“I nearly had a heart attack,” the priest said. Did she know New Orleans
could be a dangerous place? he went on. People get murdered here. Robbed.
Beaten. She was a recent immigrant, and people could have taken advantage
of her. Why did she leave? She didn’t answer him right away. It could have been a rhetorical question.
But he didn’t have to live with them. He didn’t have to live with Mr. Minh’s
night terrors or his drunkenness. Or the couple’s arguments. He didn’t have to
live as if in a nightmare, where everywhere she turned something was strange,
askew, incoherent. That was what her time in New Orleans had been like. He
couldn’t have understood any of this. His life wasn’t complicated. He was a
priest, for God’s sake! He didn’t know a thing about suffering.
At the church, they filed into his office. The priest turned on the airconditioning and searched through the mess on his desk.
“They don’t like us,” she said finally. She didn’t know what she expected
him to say or do. Anger bubbled inside her. “You don’t understand,” she
managed to say before taking a seat.
The walls of the room were lined with certificates with fancy writing and
gold seals; crosses, some plain wood, others decorated with gold; and there
were photos, mostly of him—here with a group of nuns, there with a youth
baseball team, another a group portrait with other priests. And among all this,
a framed cream-colored piece of paper. An emblem sat in the middle and
below it, a motto: I’ —‰–š‡‰ ˜“ O’‰, ’ —‰–š‡‰ ˜“ A.
Finally the priest said, “I’ve been a priest for ten years.” He took off his
glasses, rubbed them with a cloth, and put them back on. “And I don’t think
I’ve ever taken on more than I have this year.” He went on to talk about God,
bringing up Bible stories about tests and hardships. God was testing him, he
told her.
For the first time since she’d met him, she realized she was less of a person
and more of a test to this man. She was a puzzle to figure out, a jigsaw, a
number among other numbers. He lived to serve not humanity but his ideas
and career. In that way, she thought, Catholics were not too dissimilar from
the Communists. She had been hoping this man was different. How foolish
she was to put her life in his hands.
“Don’t you understand?” he asked, rhetorically. He smiled dumbly, as if he
had reached an epiphany.
She breathed in and exhaled. She was exhausted. “Yes,” she said and left.
As she closed the door, a woman’s voice, somewhere, squealed, “Trời ơi!” Hương looked up. She scanned the pews to see if anyone was there, and
her eyes stopped at a closet door left ajar, a thin strip of light streaming out.
She paused at the threshold. Inside, Thủy, a girl younger than Hương whom
she knew from the church, was bent over a table.
“Chị Hương!” Thủy opened the door and cried out her name again. The
girl jumped up and down and reached out for Hương’s hands. “Come! You
have to hear this!” she said. Hương didn’t know how to react as Thủy moved
aside and showed her the cassette player on the table. She pressed a button
and it began to click. Soon, through the static, a man spoke.
“Thủy ơi!” said the grainy voice. “How I miss you so! It is raining here
again, my love. Can you hear the water? The heavens cry.” The voice quieted
to the sound of water pelting against mud.
The man was probably a young boy Thủy’s age. Hương wanted to laugh at
their young, naïve love. Instead, she took a step closer, inspecting the cassette
player—the spinning of the tape reel, the clicking of the movement, the
smooth buttons with their colorful symbols on top. She focused on the
spinning of the wheels. For a moment, there was no other sound except that
clicking as it echoed in that small closet.
“Thủy?” the man’s voice came on again. Hương stepped back.
“There he is!” Thủy squealed and clapped her hands in excitement. She
hugged Hương, and then, embarrassed, restrained herself.
“Thủy, when you return home, we should get married! I know that’s not
what your parents want, but…”
Thủy turned down the volume and Hương left the girl to her tape message.
Walking down Camp Street, Hương thought about the ease of making a
cassette. Unlike the letter, its content wasn’t obvious; instead, it was hidden,
unless the tape was played. But people would play it only if it looked
suspicious. If she were to label it “Uncle Hổ’s Teachings” or maybe just
“Communism,” they would not even bother looking any further into the
matter. Yet there was the cost of sending it. And would she mail it to their
Mỹ Tho address or their Saigon one? Would Công still be there? Was Công
safe? What if the Communists captured him? No, she had to wipe those
uncertainties from her mind. She needed to think positively; it was the only way. She would have to ask the priest about the tape recorder. After
apologizing for her behavior that morning, she would say politely, “Cha, cho
con mượn cái này.” Coyly, she would add, “I will return it, I swear. Just one
night.”
Công would be reached. They would be reunited. New Orleans looked
brighter and happier then. She smiled. It was the first time in weeks. Perhaps
even months.