The Unwanted (7 page)

“Anything you want.” My mother spoke in monotone. Her eyes were closed. She looked like she was falling to sleep.

“What about you, Kien?” my brother asked. “Do you want to join us?” To my mother, “Can he join us?” His eyes fixed on my face, waiting for her approval.

“If he wants to,” she answered with little interest.

“He does, don't you, Kien?”

I nodded. In fact, I dreaded to spend the night alone, awaking in the dark, and thinking of the unknown.

Jimmy and I took our positions, each of us on one side of my mother's mattress. I put my arm across my mother's belly and felt her falling asleep. As I drifted away, I watched the night pass by slowly through the window. On the ground next to our bed, the candle was still burning. Its light danced in the moving air, making strange images on the wall like the coming of hell's angels in the coloring book the nuns used to hand out to us in Sunday school.

Around four in the morning I woke up to the sound of agonizing screams. The basement was submerged in darkness as I jumped up and looked around for my mother. The only light that I could see was a tiny beam escaping from the closed bathroom door. Next to me, my brother was still sleeping, his body curled on one side with his knees bent up to his chin. He was sucking his thumb. I searched for my mother, my fear rising. Before I could cry out, my grandfather slipped beside me. His embrace calmed me down. In the dark, his breath smelled like Jolly Rancher candies.

“Quiet, little one,” he whispered to me. “Your mother is fine. Go back to sleep with Grandpa.”

“What happened to Mommy?” I asked him.

“She has a stomachache.”

From the bathroom, my mother's cries tore through the house. I heard a hollow sound like liquid splattering on the cement floor. Falling noises followed. My brother moved about for a moment. Then his eyes opened wide and he realized that my mother was missing. My grandfather reached out to hold him in his arms, muttering to him the same comforting phrases he had spoken to me a few moments ago. Together in his embrace, Jimmy and I listened to the moaning and yelling coming from behind the bathroom door.

Then we heard my grandmother's voice, thick with worry. “I can't make the bleeding stop. Loan, do something.”

Loan said, “Let mistress lie on the floor. Standing up only makes it worse.”

“I can't lie down. It hurts too much,” came my mother's voice.

More gushing sounds, and something hit the floor.

My grandfather raised his voice with concern. “What is going on in there? Madam, is your daughter well? Do you need my help?”

“No, you watch the children, please. I can manage in here. Just trying to stop the bleeding.”

“Well, it is taking too long. I am going to get a doctor,” my grandfather said.

“What?” my grandmother replied to him, panting. “Have you lost your mind? It's curfew time; do you want to get yourself killed out there? Please, stay there with the children.”

“Oh, God,” Loan cried out.

“What is it?” my grandmother asked her.

“My tummy is churning, and it's starting to ache. I think it's my turn now,” she said. “Please help me!”

The bathroom door opened, and my grandmother poked her head out. In the candlelight, the bloodstains shined darkly on her hands.

“Help me carry your daughter outside,” she said to my grandfather.

He got up from the futon to limp into the bathroom, forgetting his cane. In a minute he reappeared with his back to us, moving slowly backward with my mother's head resting in between his hands. My grandmother faced him, carrying my mother's lower limbs. Mother's body was wrapped in white towels that were dark with blood. My grandparents put my mother on a mattress opposite my brother and me. She turned to her side and curved her body into a fetal position, as my grandmother hurried back into the bathroom to assist Loan.

“Mommy, Mommy, are you all right?” my brother asked. The smell of blood made us dizzy.

My mother ignored us. She buried her head in her hands. Her knees were up, protecting her midsection. My grandfather stood at her feet.

“How are you feeling, daughter?” he asked.

She did not reply. He asked with more aggression, “Are you feeling well? Talk to me.”

My mother's face remained hidden. “The bleeding seems to have stopped,” she said, “but the fetus is still inside.”

“I see. Get some rest then. Don't think too much about it. We can see the doctor tomorrow.”

“Maybe,” was her reply.

In the bathroom, Loan and my grandmother struggled for another hour. Loan never cried out in pain. We heard her occasional grunting and panting, and finally the flush of the commode.

My mother lay motionless on the mattress for the rest of the night. Her cramping diminished as the night wore on. We could see her body shake weakly under the terry cloth, and blood continued to seep from underneath her. As morning cast its cheerful light on my mother's bed, she startled.

“The drug is no good,” she cried out. “The baby is fine. It just kicked me.”

I could see the relief wash over my grandfather's tired face. My grandmother sank down to her knees, expressing her gratitude to the gods. My mother let out another scream. Her hand curled into a fist, beating her abdomen.

“What is the meaning of this?” she shrieked. “Damn that stupid hag and her cheap drug. Why me? Why now? Damn you.” She hit her stomach again and again, screaming to the fetus inside. “Why don't you get a hint that I don't want you? Why don't you do us all a favor and just die?”

My brother and I watched, unable to utter a word.

For the next couple of days, my mother spent most of her time in bed. Four days passed and finally, the Communists came knocking at our door.

Inside, we all jumped up in terror and held each other, holding our breath, as my grandfather hobbled up the stairs. We listened as the soldiers strode across the floor into the living room. We heard the strange way they talked to each other, with a heavy northern dialect, and we heard my grandfather's voice answering their interrogation. It was not long before he bade all of us come upstairs. My grandmother went up first, carrying the wooden beads in her palms as though they were a talisman. My mother held on to Loan's arm. My brother and I were the last into the living room.

Once we were all assembled, my mother sat on a chair as the group of men stopped in mid-conversation to stare at us. Their fatigues were old and wrinkled, and the once deep green had turned to a muddy brown. The oldest soldier, a man in his forties with saltand-pepper hair, pointed a dirty finger at us.

He spat to my grandfather, “Is anyone else still down there? Or are they all here?”

“No, they are all here, sir,” my grandfather replied.

“Comrade, go to the basement to verify if he is telling the truth or not,” he ordered one of his men. Then turning to us, he asked, “Why did you hide down there all this time instead of coming out and celebrating the dawn of a new era with your country? What are you hiding from?”

“We are just a bunch of women, children, and elderly people. We didn't know what was going on. Please forgive us,” my grandfather said.

He shook his head. “That's not an excuse. This is the time to celebrate, not to hide.” His eyes swept over us, checking our faces. “Is this your house?”

“No, sir. We rent it.”

“Where is the owner now?”

“I don't know, sir. He lived in Cholon [Chinatown] before the event. So much has changed in the last four days. We aren't sure anymore.”

“Well, brace yourselves. There will be more changes, as we are in the process of wiping out capitalism from the south. But answer me, why are you here if this is not your home? Where did you all come from? And are you counter-Communists running away from the Revolution?”

My grandfather swallowed a lump in his throat before speaking. “Well, sir. We are from Nhatrang City. We didn't run away. We are here for a reason. You see, Commander, this is my daughter. She is pregnant and because she has had bad complications with her past pregnancies, we took her to Saigon. Because, sir, here she can give birth in Tu Du Hospital. We were just being careful, we didn't mean to run away from the Revolution. The timing was just bad when we ended up getting here.”

The commander wrote down everything my grandfather said. He walked toward my mother and studied her. She avoided his stare by looking down at her stomach. She had lost so much weight in the last few days that I could see the blue veins in her thin hands, which were folded neatly on her lap.

“Lady, how are you feeling?”

“I am fine, thank you, sir. Just a little weak from the heat,” she replied, not looking up to meet his gaze.

“Can you travel?” he asked her.

“Where am I going, sir?” My mother looked up at him. Her eyes glowed with lament and just a hint of seduction. Usually, this look made men bow down on their knees in front of her. It did not seem to have much effect on the commander.

He answered her coldly, “You're going back to your town. All of you have twenty-four hours to vacate this place. This is the new law from above. The country is finally reunited. Everybody is returning to his or her own home. You, too, have to go back and report to your town leader.”

“How are we going to get back home?” my grandfather asked the leader.

“I don't know, and I don't care. It's not my job to find you transportation. However, you all have to leave this place by tomorrow morning. We will return to make sure of that. If you don't leave by then, I have no choice but to arrest all of you. Children and women make no difference to me.”

He turned around, signaling for his men. The door slammed shut behind them as they headed toward the next house.

Not until they had all disappeared beyond the front gates did my grandmother turn to her husband and blurt out, “Oh, sir, how are we going to get out of here?”

My grandfather shook his head. Loan, standing behind my mother, cleared her throat. No longer did she look like a shy little maid who was trained to censor her thought before it reached her mouth. These past few days had turned her into a reserved yet intelligent young woman.

“Well, sir, if I might speak freely, here is a thought,” she said without raising her eyes. “If the government has thrown us out, they must have done the same thing to a lot of people. How do they leave? We can ask around and find out what these people are doing, and either do the same thing, or join them.”

“How are we going to get such information?” my grandmother asked.

“Go to the market,” was all that Loan said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he two markets facing Saigon River teemed with confused and nervous people. These bazaars stood side by side, separated by a small street that was always thick with soggy mud and unkempt with garbage. The first market sold mainly fresh food, from vegetables to livestock to fresh fish. The second one offered a variety of dried food in large quantities, such as rice and spices, along with fabrics, coals, and firewood. Even though tension permeated the markets' atmosphere, the exchange of goods still took place in an orderly fashion under the watchful eyes of the soldiers. People talked to each other in between purchases to find out information. The buzz of their whispers made it sound as if the air were filled with flies.

It did not take Loan long to make her first contact. By the entrance of the second market, she found a family of five looking for a way to get back to Cam Ranh Bay, a city near Nhatrang. These people had been unable to secure transportation. They were planning on traveling by foot for more than four hundred kilometers through deadly swamps and jungles where a lot of booby traps remained from the war. After hearing their plan, Loan wished them good fortune and pulled us deeper into the market.

All morning we walked through the crowd, searching for a ride. My mother was out of breath, her face pale. My grandfather occasionally fell behind, since his hip bothered him with each step. Each time we stopped in front of a group of people to ask for information, the reaction we received was the same: they all looked at us dumbly at first, then smiled with courteous sincerity. If they knew of an escape, their knowledge would remain hidden behind their smiles before they, too, disappeared into the crowd.

Just as we were about to lose hope, we stumbled upon Mrs. Tam's herbal medicine corner, which displayed baskets of dried flowers, plant roots, and wood chips. She sat behind a mountain of herbs, surrounded by customers seeking a share of her cures. Her voice raised above the noise of the crowd to catch every passerby's attention.

“What are you looking for?” she screamed. “This is for nausea and vomiting. Boil two cups down to one. This one is for inner or outer hemorrhoids. Take it with food twice a day. This one is for the treatment of coughing.”

As she spotted my mother, who stared at her with anger, she waved the crowd to silence. Looking at my mother, she asked, “Hey, old dear, where did I know you? Ah, yes, I remember. You are the mean birdie with a knocked-up belly. How are things? You don't look so good.”

“Guess how things are,” my mother retorted. “Look at me. You sold me your fake herbs, old crone. I am glad I found you here, because I want my money back.”

The old woman stood up in between her leaves and barks and pointed a finger at my mother. “Are you crazy, asking for your money back? My drugs are fine; it's you that are fake. Didn't I warn you many times that it might not work? Is it any fault of mine that you all get yourselves knocked up?” She narrowed her eyes with suspicion at my mother and Loan. “The mistress and her servant—you two are sharing the same man, aren't you? Don't lie to this old woman, some gigolo must have grabbed both of you like a pair of chopsticks. By the way, why are you still hanging around town? I thought your pompous behind should be hauled back home by now.”

My mother was boiling with rage. No one ever dared to speak to her that way before. She was humiliated as the crowd around her turned to stare and whisper at us. Standing next to her as calm as a lake in the absence of the wind, Loan answered the old woman's questions. “We can't find a ride back home. Do you know of any way, Mrs. Tam?”