but I am thankful for the good job that I have. The head matron has been very patient with me and she has just hired two more Vietnamese cleaners because she says I have shown her how hard the Vietnamese work
.
I am enclosing Maggie’s second grade photograph. My dear husband, can you see how much she is starting to look like you? I worry about you so much, but when I look at our Maggie it makes me feel you are not so far away. I remain hopeful for our happy reunion
.
Your loving wife
Nhi
Maggie, still kneeling on the carpet, had wept. Her mother’s handwriting was so frail, so hesitant. She put the letter back in the shoebox with the others. They really weren’t meant for her to read. She cleared out the rest of the closet, emptying a basket of greying, utilitarian bras and underwear into a green garbage bag, only to discover more secrets her mother had withheld. At the bottom of the basket were several pieces of paper: sketches Maggie’s father had done for her as a child in Saigon. Gifts of lumbering animals he’d drawn with his clumsy claw. But her mother had taken nothing with them when they left; they had even been ordered to leave the small bag they had packed on the tarmac. Had she hidden these pictures in a pocket? They are creased and stained, perhaps with her sweat.
Why her mother had never shared them with her, Maggie will never know. But they are in Maggie’s possession now. Much the same way her mother left Vietnam thirty years ago, Maggie has returned: carrying six of Lý Văn Hai’s drawings.
Hng lies in the dark listening to the gentle patter of rain on his corrugated tin roof, wishing he could pluck whatever it was he had hoped to tell Miss Maggie out of the weeds cluttering his mind. He falls asleep only to awake startled an hour later, the rain thundering down violently from above, catapulting him back to the time of war. The worstof it was in December of 1972, what the Americans called the Christmas bombing, when the B-52s rained bombs for eleven days, destroying railway yards and warehouses, factories and airfields and roads and bridges and hospitals and schools and blocks of communist housing, and wiping out entire neighbourhoods like Khâm Thiên. It had seemed then that all of Hanoi was burning.
The Old Quarter fortunately was spared, but the bombs had landed so close to the shantytown you could feel the heat rising from the northwest. The squatters were saved by their dirty pond. The tire factory on the far side of the muddy water exploded and lit up the sky for several days before engulfing them in an oily black cloud. For weeks the city was dark and smouldering, and people were coughing up blood and crawling on all fours because they could not see their way.
Finally, the sky faded from black to smoking grey. For several sunless days, Hng and the other men and women of the shantytown waded through the oily pond, tossing debris onto the shore. He remembers pausing a moment at the sight of Lan there among the foragers, a brief look of recognition passing between them as if to say: all the pond weed is gone, all the fish, frogs and birds too, but somehow, whether by accident or design, we have survived.
It would take eleven years to rebuild the hospital, a generation to rebuild the neighbourhood of Khâm Thiên, but less than a year before the pond, without human intervention, began to show signs of new life. A film of algae appeared on the surface. The colour green returned to the palette of Hanoi.
Somehow it was only after the shock of the devastation of that winter bombing that the fear really set in. Hng held his breath, listened for the drone of another wave of bombers. He prayed for anend to the war, prayed for the mercy of a God who was said to no longer exist.
Hnger forced him to breathe again, to venture beyond the shantytown to forage among ruins, to dredge muddy craters, to drag home dead dogs, to eat the roots of upturned trees. There were losses in the community: those who
.
I am enclosing Maggie’s second grade photograph. My dear husband, can you see how much she is starting to look like you? I worry about you so much, but when I look at our Maggie it makes me feel you are not so far away. I remain hopeful for our happy reunion
.
Your loving wife
Nhi
Maggie, still kneeling on the carpet, had wept. Her mother’s handwriting was so frail, so hesitant. She put the letter back in the shoebox with the others. They really weren’t meant for her to read. She cleared out the rest of the closet, emptying a basket of greying, utilitarian bras and underwear into a green garbage bag, only to discover more secrets her mother had withheld. At the bottom of the basket were several pieces of paper: sketches Maggie’s father had done for her as a child in Saigon. Gifts of lumbering animals he’d drawn with his clumsy claw. But her mother had taken nothing with them when they left; they had even been ordered to leave the small bag they had packed on the tarmac. Had she hidden these pictures in a pocket? They are creased and stained, perhaps with her sweat.
Why her mother had never shared them with her, Maggie will never know. But they are in Maggie’s possession now. Much the same way her mother left Vietnam thirty years ago, Maggie has returned: carrying six of Lý Văn Hai’s drawings.
Hng lies in the dark listening to the gentle patter of rain on his corrugated tin roof, wishing he could pluck whatever it was he had hoped to tell Miss Maggie out of the weeds cluttering his mind. He falls asleep only to awake startled an hour later, the rain thundering down violently from above, catapulting him back to the time of war. The worstof it was in December of 1972, what the Americans called the Christmas bombing, when the B-52s rained bombs for eleven days, destroying railway yards and warehouses, factories and airfields and roads and bridges and hospitals and schools and blocks of communist housing, and wiping out entire neighbourhoods like Khâm Thiên. It had seemed then that all of Hanoi was burning.
The Old Quarter fortunately was spared, but the bombs had landed so close to the shantytown you could feel the heat rising from the northwest. The squatters were saved by their dirty pond. The tire factory on the far side of the muddy water exploded and lit up the sky for several days before engulfing them in an oily black cloud. For weeks the city was dark and smouldering, and people were coughing up blood and crawling on all fours because they could not see their way.
Finally, the sky faded from black to smoking grey. For several sunless days, Hng and the other men and women of the shantytown waded through the oily pond, tossing debris onto the shore. He remembers pausing a moment at the sight of Lan there among the foragers, a brief look of recognition passing between them as if to say: all the pond weed is gone, all the fish, frogs and birds too, but somehow, whether by accident or design, we have survived.
It would take eleven years to rebuild the hospital, a generation to rebuild the neighbourhood of Khâm Thiên, but less than a year before the pond, without human intervention, began to show signs of new life. A film of algae appeared on the surface. The colour green returned to the palette of Hanoi.
Somehow it was only after the shock of the devastation of that winter bombing that the fear really set in. Hng held his breath, listened for the drone of another wave of bombers. He prayed for anend to the war, prayed for the mercy of a God who was said to no longer exist.
Hnger forced him to breathe again, to venture beyond the shantytown to forage among ruins, to dredge muddy craters, to drag home dead dogs, to eat the roots of upturned trees. There were losses in the community: those who
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