Out of the Dragon's Mouth (15 page)

Ngoc turned her head toward Mai, her eyes red and swollen from weeping. “It's all my fault,” she cried.

“What is it, Ngoc? What are you talking about?” A prickling sensation ran up Mai's arms as she leaned over.

Ngoc croaked, “There's something I haven't told you. I haven't told anyone. It's a secret.”

“Is it about Lan? Tell me.” Mai grabbed Ngoc's arm and pulled it toward her. Ngoc yelped. Mai released her grip and saw her fingerprints on Ngoc's flesh. Ngoc looked at her and then at her arm.

“You mustn't tell. Our family honor would be ruined.” Ngoc's voice was so quiet Mai had to move close, so close she could feel the soft wind of Ngoc's breath on her cheek. “Before Hiep died … ”

“Yes?” Mai's neck began to hurt.

“Before Hiep died she told me why she was no longer able to eat in the morning.” Ngoc interlaced her fingers as if she were holding the secret inside them.

Mai had no idea what Ngoc was talking about. Was Lan sick? If she was sick, she would have gone to the clinic, not run away.

“She stopped her
kinh
, her monthly bleeding.” Ngoc gave Mai a knowing look, but Mai still didn't understand what Ngoc was saying. She had heard the girls talking, saying their
kinh
didn't come some months because of lack of food. But there was another reason to skip your
kinh
… An ominous reason. Mai bit the inside of her lip.

“She's going to have a baby,” Ngoc gulped, her cheeks blushing pink as the sky at sunset. She averted her eyes from Mai's.

“No, that can't be,” said Mai. “You must be mistaken. Who? How?”

Then she remembered Small Auntie's words when she'd explained the blood between Mai's legs.
Some day you will have babies.
But didn't you have to be married to have babies?

“Lan wasn't married. How could she have a baby?” Mai asked.

Ngoc frowned at her. “You don't have to be married to have a baby.”

“Not Lan, not Lan. She's not a bad girl,” Mai cried, sinking to her knees, her hands tearing at her blouse. Ngoc stroked Mai's hair.

“No, Mai, she's not a bad girl. She just made a mistake, but it's a mistake that could ruin her honor and our family's. She was very upset. I'm afraid of what she might do.”

Mai turned her head and pulled Ngoc's face to hers. “Who is the father? Who would have done this terrible thing?” she demanded.

“She told me,” breathed Ngoc. “It was Hiep.”

Mai dropped her hands and dug her nails into her bare legs. “But I thought … I thought …”

“I know. They were very careful to keep their love a secret. But Lan couldn't keep it a secret from me. She had to tell someone she was going to have a baby. She doesn't want to have the baby without Hiep.”

“We have to find her,” said Mai, tugging at Ngoc's wrist. “We can't let her do anything to herself or the baby. Uncle Hiep's baby.”

How happy they could all have been, with Lan and
Hiep married and a baby to take care of. A little miracle out of all this sadness. A baby to hold and love and remind them that despite all the killing, there was still some beauty in life, some innocence. If they found Lan, Mai could help her with the baby, and they could make up a story about it. The baby's parents had died and they had offered to care for it, raise it. Mai knew many refugee families who had taken in orphaned children. That was it: the baby was an orphan. It wouldn't be easy. The doctor, maybe he would help. When she told Ngoc her plan, Ngoc just stared at her, unblinking.

“I need to talk to the doctor. Maybe Lan told him her secret. Maybe he can help us.”

“But I asked you not to tell anyone. Please, Mai. Our family's honor … ”

Mai remembered her father reminding her to always uphold their family's honor. Sometimes that's all you had left. “Maybe I could just ask the American doctor if he has
seen
Lan. That wouldn't give away her secret.”

“All right,” Ngoc conceded, “but please don't tell him she's pregnant.”

“You're right. I won't go. I don't think he would know anything. She would have been too ashamed to go to him. But where could she be?” Mai wondered.

Just then Kim and Kien returned from gathering firewood, their arms laden with twigs from the jungle. Mai turned away from them and went into her tent. She didn't want them to see her now. She needed to sit by herself and pray for Lan, for the baby. She would have been happy to have Lan in their family. She pictured Lan and Hiep in their beautiful clothes on their wedding day, Hiep in a handsome dark suit, Lan in a red
áo dai
, her face radiant with happiness, marrying for love.

If only, if only … there were too many “if onlys” on this island. If only Small Auntie's husband had not died in the well cave-in, Hiep might be alive. If only Mai had held onto the gold bracelet, their luck would not have run out. If only Lan had told them she was pregnant, they could have helped her. If only, if only she could tell Kien about Lan. But she had to keep the secret for Lan's sake.

Mai wondered about getting pregnant. She knew it had something to do with touching a boy, and she had been frightened the first time Kien tried to hold her hand. She had pulled away, embarrassed, and he had looked hurt. When she'd told Kim about it, Kim laughed and assured her that was not how babies were made. Kim had not elaborated, and Mai had not asked her although she was very curious. It had something to do with that blood between her legs. How she hated that monthly stream. Especially having to wear that rag, hot and bothersome, and smelly.

“Mai, are you all right?” Kien stood on the other side of the rice bag partition. Mai wiped her eyes with the edge of her blouse and pinched her cheeks.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I have some news about Lan.” Kien's voice was solemn.

“Come in. What is it?” Mai sat up on the bench, her legs folded beneath her.

“Some fishermen … early this morning … ”

“Tell me. You have to tell me.” Mai scrambled off the bench and stood facing Kien.

“They found a young girl's body floating in the water.” Kien raked his hand through his hair.

“Is it Lan? Where is she?”

“The body is at the clinic. No one has identified it yet. I just heard from some women who were getting food. We should go see if it's her.”

“Does Ngoc know?” Mai could feel the soft ocean breeze as it blew through the tent and tossed the hanging rice bags aside.

“Yes, Kim is telling her now. It might not be Lan. Many bodies are found out there when fishing boats hit the coral reefs and break up.”

Mai remembered the bodies lying in the sand behind the clinic. Mothers and fathers with children, who had braved the ocean to escape to freedom. Not the freedom the Communists offered, of re-education camps and killing, but the freedom they'd had before the Americans left and the Communists had taken over South Vietnam. Only to die in the sea. But Lan was brave. Lan was strong. And Lan was lucky.
Oh, Lan, you have traveled so far. Please, please, don't let this be you.

The four friends trudged in the twilight down the beach to the clinic, crossing at the rocks with ease because of the low water level. The blood-red sun hovered on the horizon, slowly dying to the night while the waves moaned beneath it. Mai dragged her feet in the sand, her depleted body no longer a part of her, merely a puppet that she manipulated.

She remembered the pregnant woman who had died on the fishing boat. She remembered her husband's wails and how she had covered her ears. She remembered the splash as the body slipped into the sea.
Please Buddha, please. Don't let it be her.
Did she want it to be someone else? Yes, she did.

She remembered the first time she'd met Lan. The mole on her cheek, the way her hair fell over her eyes. The gentle touch of her hand as she proclaimed them family. The offer of her mother's ring. She'd been more of a sister than her own sister.

Lan had helped her survive life on the island, where the days dragged by with a dreary sameness she had not anticipated, a dreamlike existence of work-filled mornings drawing water and standing in line for food and hotter-than-she-could-bear afternoons spent languishing in her hammock, even the flies too hot to circle above her.

Hiep, the playboy. She had heard these words in laughing asides from her cousins, their hands cupped to their mouths, but without understanding what they meant. Hiep had had a gentle, easy manner that the girls had always liked. If Lan was dead, it was his fault. His fault. No one else's. Maybe that was why he had died. Guilty of two deaths, Lan's and Sang's.
Oh, Uncle Hiep, you're not who I thought you were.

Her lungs expanded, gasping for air, thinking of Lan walking into the sea, swallowing the salt water, the sea swallowing her and her unborn baby. Conscious of each breath she took, Mai wondered what it felt like to struggle for air as the salt water seeped into your lungs until you could do nothing but surrender

Shadows danced on tent walls illuminated by homemade candles. A baby's hungry whimper, the clucking sound of a mother's voice somewhere in the night:
no, no, not now
. Behind the Red Cross tent, a young man lifted the blanket off the figure prone in the sand. He knelt next to her holding a candle near her face, rotating it so that the dark did not mask her features, and through the wavering light Mai could see the dried salt crystals flecking the black hair matted against the hollow cheeks, the thin line of her nose, the arch of her brow and the lips, dark and swollen. And the mole. Where was the mole? She needed the mole.

“Move the candle.” Mai knelt next to the body, brushed the matted hair aside, and touched the waxen cheek. Smooth and unmarked as a perfect pearl. The candle wick sputtered and the light dimmed.

“No mole,” she said the words out loud to Ngoc, Kim, and Kien, who were circled around the corpse. “No mole.” Leaning over the body, she pointed with her index finger at the unmarked cheek. Then she stood up and smiled slightly at the others, digging her hands into her pockets.

“We have another body over here,” said the young man, pointing to a shape in the shadows. “She was found along the shore this morning. Do you want to look?” He held the candle suspended above the second corpse.

Mai peered down at a gray-haired woman, her face a forest of wrinkles. She shook her head and walked back to the first corpse.

“We've got to bury them in the morning. The heat,” the young man added apologetically, covering the dead girl's face with the blanket as if he were tucking in a child at bedtime.

“But what if someone is looking for her?” Mai edged away from the dead girl. Whose daughter was she? Was there someone out there missing her? Or had they all drowned?

“We get so many bodies. They have to be buried.” The young man shrugged his shoulders. Not his decision. Not his responsibility, thought Mai. What if it were his sister, dead and unidentified?

“We do keep photos so that relatives can identify them. But there are so many. So many no one knows. The boats sink and the ocean casts them on our shore. Some dead. Some alive. Luck. You've got to be lucky.” He wiped his hands on his shorts and cleared his throat. “You could always put your sister's name on the Red Cross bulletin board as a missing
person.”

Mai eyed Ngoc, who stared at the ground, her hands clasped.

“That's a good idea,” Kien said.

“No,” Ngoc said, her jaw tense. “No. We'll find her.” The wick on the candle had burned down to the oil, shrinking the flame to a pinpoint. “Thank you for your help,” Ngoc said to the young man, backing away from the bodies.

Mai reached for her hand and Ngoc let her take it. The four followed the ocean's edge, the roar of the waves crescendoing against the darkness.

If you wanted to run away on an island, where would you go? You couldn't go far. But you could hide if someone helped you. The pregnancy would become a problem once Lan started to show. How would she explain it? She would be an outcast. Mai's head throbbed.

“She could have gone to the mainland,” Kim said.

“Impossible,” countered Ngoc. “You can't just get on a boat. You have to have permission.”

Mai shook her head. She was certain Lan was dead. The image of the drowned girl wouldn't leave her. In her mind, she could see Lan's face on the body.

Kien brushed some sand off his leg and looked at Mai. “We'll find her.” He touched her chin. She stared into his eyes. “Let's sleep. Tomorrow we can start again.”

They slept on the beach that night, under a palm tree curled up in a circle, too tired to go back to camp, and it was too late anyway. The mournful pounding of the waves was their lullaby. Mai dreamed of Lan's ghost gliding along the beach, holding a baby in her arms. The baby made no sound and did not move.

Hunger pangs woke her. The sun sat on the horizon, staring at her. She woke the others and they stood in line for their breakfast rations, cream-filled rolls and canned goods.

“I think I'll stay down here and look around,” Ngoc said, licking her fingers after stuffing the roll in her mouth.

“Me too,” Mai offered, her stomach satisfied.

Kim and Kien wanted to stay too, but Ngoc shook her head. “Go back to camp. Maybe Lan has returned. We'll be there in a little while.”

Kim hesitated, but Ngoc turned and walked away from her. Kim picked up the bag of canned food she had collected and frowned. Kien reached for Mai's bag of food.

“Here, let me carry this back for you. It's heavy, and it will be easier to search for Lan if you don't have to carry this.”