Dragonfish: A Novel by Vu Tran

yours were weak and willful, a stubborn crying, as though you were already disappointed in me and mourning him.
    When I held you for the first time, you refused to nurse. You struggled in my arms and kept crying softly. Even when my voice came back, I found I had nothing to say. I remember a deep, instant love for you that felt like a locked room inside me. It’s only now as I write this, as I say these words to myself, that I begin to understand it.
    I wonder what you remember of our fifth night, when that strange tragedy began. It was a moonless night, the darkest so far of our trip. A woman began wailing and awoke the entire boat. Where is my son? she shrieked. My son is gone!
    The engine stopped and lanterns were lit. People were already looking overboard. Although a few men stood ready to jump into the sea, we all knew there was no sense in it. We had only just stopped the boat, and the calm black waters around us showed no sign of anything. If the boy had fallen in, it was already too late.
    People were consoling the mother, restraining her. Like me, she had no one else on the boat but her child.
    I remember him. He spent most of the first day retching into a plastic bag as she stroked his hair and patted his back. The yellow stains on his T-shirt were still visible the last time I saw him. He was your age, your height, thin and sickly, and his disappearance cruelly echoed what might have happened to you three nights before. What I had miraculously avoided, this woman was now suffering.
    People searched every corner of the boat. There was no trace of the boy. The captain finally restarted the engine, which got the woman screaming again. No! No! You can’t leave him behind! I must find him first!
    Somehow you had remained asleep through all of this. But now you were wide awake and clutching my shirt. Why is she screaming? you asked me. I had no idea what to say and could only turn you away and cover your ears, but you peeled off my hands and repeated your question until I finally snapped at you. Even as the shadows obscured her, you kept staring.
    She wept for hours. We could hear her over the boat’s engine, moaning in the darkness. No one could comfort her, and no one could sleep, not even you. As her fits turned hysterical, my pity for her was replaced with something like hatred. At one point I even considered quieting her by force, but at dawn she suddenly stopped, exhausted apparently, and people at last were able to fall asleep.
    It rained late that morning. Everyone’s mood improved. We collected rainwater in as many containers as we could find, and the storm was cool and soothing after days of scorching weather.
    I watched you sit nearby with two older kids. It surprised me, since you rarely played with other children, or with anyone for that matter. But then you went still as you faced the stern of the boat. I figured you had grown bored, as you often did in the company of others. You were drenched in the rain, your hair matted on your forehead, your eyes salty.
    Someone screamed. By the time I turned around, I caught only a flash of the woman’s head and arms disappearing overboard in the haze of rain. You must have seen everything, her climbing onto the gunwale and standing there for a heartbeat, for one final breath, before leaping into the sea.
    Two men dove in after her. The boat again was stopped. The storm had gotten worse and it took some effort just to get the two men back on board. Neither had seen or laid a finger on anything.
    The boat was quiet for hours save the sound of the engine and the old women reciting their rosaries. I prayed alongside them, but only for the boy.
    I remember the minutes after it happened, when people peered overboard and waited breathlessly for the swimmers to come back up with the woman’s body, and all I could think was how melodramatic it was, how cowardly. She had no right giving up. To come all this way, and then to do that.
    It turned out, of course, that she died