The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao Page A

it’s only four in the afternoon. It gets dark early now, don’t you know that?”
    â€œStill. You should go home and rest,” Mai interjects.
    I don’t know how long Mai has been in the room. “You’re still here too?” I ask.
    â€œI can stay for a little while,” she says. “I don’t have to be at work until later in the evening.” My daughter sometimes takes the evening shift at the law firm, which goes from six P.M. to midnight. Her face beams with pure affability. I smile. The sun has gradually tucked itself behind the distant church steeple.
    â€œLet him rest, okay?” Mrs. An tells Mai. “I’m going home to check on the roast chicken and then I’ll return to give him his pills.”
    I hear the front door open and the sound of boots trudging down the hallway. “Leaving so early? No one has minded me one bit today,” a woman’s voice complains in the distinct accent and tone of someone from the Indian subcontinent. I recognize the voice of the crazy old woman from Bengal whose apartment is across from mine. Mrs. Amrita Amar. Her door is usually left open and the nickname Mai gave her when we first moved in has stuck. “A Door Ajar.” She thinks she is already in a nursing home and has been abandoned by her family. Mrs. An’s voice replies, “No one is leaving you. Your son is coming home at six. Your grandson Dinesh only went out for dinner with his girlfriend.” “Liar. Liar.” A wheelchair shoots swiftly across the floor and a door slams shut.
    I struggle to find a comfortable position on the bed. Although I am thin—I have never been fat, but thin is something new—I do not feel agile or light. My ankles are puffed out. Mai murmurs something as she hesitates by the foot of the bed. I turn my gaze to the ceiling, letting my eyes drift in the sea of white above.
    I can hear the deep murmur of voices outside the window where people congregate to smoke. But the ocean beyond continues to beckon through the fog and eclipse of a life from long ago. A high wind blows through the room. I struggle to draw breath. I have been given morphine to open my veins. Red pills to make my heart strong. White pills to drain excess fluid from saturated tissues. I lie back, my body drugged and duped.
    I know life can only be, should only be, lived in the present.
    I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them. Mrs. An has come back. She catches me looking at the empty space near the overstuffed armchair.
    â€œAre you looking for something?” she asks.
    I hesitate.
    â€œThere’s no one there,” Mrs. An says authoritatively.
    â€œYesterday there was,” I answer. The stolen image of a woman’s body, quietly curled into itself, a soft lavender petal, lingers. I close, then open my eyes to discover it has vacated.
    She looks at me and shakes her head. I hear a sigh.
    How did I get here? From my house in Vietnam to this apartment complex in America? she wants to know.
    I am willing to tell her the essential story that has been all too easily mistold.
    I watch her dark, flickering eyes, and the face that turns toward me, waiting.
    â€œI will tell you,” I whisper. “Soon.”

5
Salted Lemonade
    MAI, 1965
    M ick Jagger growls against a raucous surge of drums and electric guitars. This is music, the kind that imparts unlimited possibilities. That is why it is addictive. My sister and I move to its beat, knowing that boys and girls all over Saigon move with us.
    While the music blares, we take turns walking on James Baker’s back. James has blond hair that sparkles against the sun’s glare. His neck turns red, not a honeyed brown, when exposed to the searing heat. James swears he has never in his life had his back walked on. I find that hard to believe. Certainly it is a back to be admired. I can feel with the balls of my feet the two solid mounds of muscle rising under the swell of his shoulders.