for nothing. Hours later, someone below decks lifted the tarp that covered the fuel store and found the boy wedged between the twenty-gallon cans, lying amid a pile of filthy gasoline-soaked rags. He had a burning fever and could barely move or make a sound. Who knows why he had wandered down into the hold that night, or how he even got there, weak as he was. He must have passed out beneath the tarp, hidden from people lying arm’s length from him, and deaf to his mother wailing his name for hours.
He was carried above deck where two older women forced water down his throat, cooled his forehead with a damp rag, and rubbed hot oil over his chest. I prayed for his recovery, yet dreaded it. What would we say when he was strong enough to ask for his mother?
He ended up surviving the boat trip somehow, despite hardly moving for the final four days. Once we made it to the camp, he disappeared onto the floating hospital, that white ship moored off the island’s shore, and we heard three months later that he recovered and was sponsored by his uncle in Australia.
He’d be a grown man now, with children of his own and stories about his childhood that he might not be able or willing to tell. He’s probably forgotten what his mother looked like. I still remember, more than I want to, her writhing in the arms of a consoler, tearing at her white blouse until the neckline ripped, her long equine face crumpled behind the tangles of her hair, mouth ajar and eyes clenched shut, that howling mask.
She must have felt she lost everything when she thought her son was gone. Until then, she had only lived for him. What was she now to herself or to the world if she was no longer a mother to anyone?
It was shame that welled inside me after they found the boy that day. I imagined myself losing you, and realized that I could not have done what she had done. I would have mourned you for the rest of my life, there is no doubt, but your death would not have been, back then, the death of anything inside me.
As I write down these thoughts, I wonder if you can read Vietnamese, if any of these words make sense or if they are as foreign to you as the sound of my voice. It is the only way I can speak honestly to you because it is the only language, the only world, in which I truly exist. I wish that weren’t so. I’ve always wanted it otherwise. My suspicion is that you’ve grown up to see things as an American would and that you live your life for yourself alone. It saddens me that you might be so distant from the world I still dream about every night, but I feel envy for you too and a strange relief.
A few months ago, I came across the jade rosary your father gave me when we first got together, tucked away and forgotten in an old cigar box of trinkets I saved from the refugee camp. I had clutched that rosary all nine days we were at sea. You once wore it like a necklace, sitting startled on our bed in Vietnam and gaping at your father, who took the photograph. It was black and white, bent and tattered from the trip across the ocean. I discarded it years ago, along with all the others.
I have wondered often if you’ve grown into some version of me or become someone entirely different, someone better. In my mind, I can only see you as your five-year-old self. Your pursed lips and cracked brow. Your eyes always bruised with thought. When you were angry, curious, you glared at people until they either looked away or scolded you. When you were pensive, you wandered into yourself like a lonely old woman.
People said that you resembled me in every way, that even at a month old, you already had my eyes, my cheekbones, and most of all my temper. Something about our likeness to each other bothered me back then. It was as though you had come into the world to remind me constantly of myself.
Your grandmother always said that I was the most stubborn, the most selfish, of her three daughters. Growing up, I never shared sweets or toys with my sisters and
He was carried above deck where two older women forced water down his throat, cooled his forehead with a damp rag, and rubbed hot oil over his chest. I prayed for his recovery, yet dreaded it. What would we say when he was strong enough to ask for his mother?
He ended up surviving the boat trip somehow, despite hardly moving for the final four days. Once we made it to the camp, he disappeared onto the floating hospital, that white ship moored off the island’s shore, and we heard three months later that he recovered and was sponsored by his uncle in Australia.
He’d be a grown man now, with children of his own and stories about his childhood that he might not be able or willing to tell. He’s probably forgotten what his mother looked like. I still remember, more than I want to, her writhing in the arms of a consoler, tearing at her white blouse until the neckline ripped, her long equine face crumpled behind the tangles of her hair, mouth ajar and eyes clenched shut, that howling mask.
She must have felt she lost everything when she thought her son was gone. Until then, she had only lived for him. What was she now to herself or to the world if she was no longer a mother to anyone?
It was shame that welled inside me after they found the boy that day. I imagined myself losing you, and realized that I could not have done what she had done. I would have mourned you for the rest of my life, there is no doubt, but your death would not have been, back then, the death of anything inside me.
As I write down these thoughts, I wonder if you can read Vietnamese, if any of these words make sense or if they are as foreign to you as the sound of my voice. It is the only way I can speak honestly to you because it is the only language, the only world, in which I truly exist. I wish that weren’t so. I’ve always wanted it otherwise. My suspicion is that you’ve grown up to see things as an American would and that you live your life for yourself alone. It saddens me that you might be so distant from the world I still dream about every night, but I feel envy for you too and a strange relief.
A few months ago, I came across the jade rosary your father gave me when we first got together, tucked away and forgotten in an old cigar box of trinkets I saved from the refugee camp. I had clutched that rosary all nine days we were at sea. You once wore it like a necklace, sitting startled on our bed in Vietnam and gaping at your father, who took the photograph. It was black and white, bent and tattered from the trip across the ocean. I discarded it years ago, along with all the others.
I have wondered often if you’ve grown into some version of me or become someone entirely different, someone better. In my mind, I can only see you as your five-year-old self. Your pursed lips and cracked brow. Your eyes always bruised with thought. When you were angry, curious, you glared at people until they either looked away or scolded you. When you were pensive, you wandered into yourself like a lonely old woman.
People said that you resembled me in every way, that even at a month old, you already had my eyes, my cheekbones, and most of all my temper. Something about our likeness to each other bothered me back then. It was as though you had come into the world to remind me constantly of myself.
Your grandmother always said that I was the most stubborn, the most selfish, of her three daughters. Growing up, I never shared sweets or toys with my sisters and
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