Boat People

With her head resting against steel, she wondered if they cook rice in America, and whether she had remembered her good wood paddle, the one Danh gave her before peace ended in Saigon. She thought about sautéed white fish and the houses she could buy with the gold she had stashed in her robes, and in her ears, and sectioned between her teeth. She would be the wife of King Midas; she would sip gold-specked vodka and bathe in water that steamed like chimneys. She crossed her legs and held her knees so only the sides of her heels touched the scalding steel. Her hands held her belly as if to keep her child from fleeing the womb, the warmth in her palms encouraging him to stay for two months longer, just until it's safe ban than, please just stay until this boat hits the California coast and you can feel the weight of her liberty.

The boat was an uncomfortable flirtation of wood and steel, its base like a wicker basket with a few metal benches sandwiched in the weaving like pins. Above the pins lay heavy wood beams, like lumber, piled with twine. It was a hurried mess of bodies, each heavy with their own desperation.

Underneath the lumber, her body swayed with the tattered sails. As the boat ebbed in the tide the bodies of the immigrants soon piled like anchovies, their skin rough like scales, but without gills their chests nearly drowned in the churning saltwater. But it cooled their burning feet and so they bathed in it, opened their mouths to drink it, held out canteens to collect it and pour it on their children’s tongues. She sat still under a splintering beam, still cupping her stomach, whispering Hail Mary's and watching their faces turn ocean blue, their black hair like seaweed riding the surface of the water. She stared, her voice rising in prayer, letting God hear her words over the moaning. The sound was silence next to the curdling screams of bullets in backs, the pressing of grass into earth as the women fled, clutching their breasts, stampeding like boars. And so she crossed her forehead, then her lips, then her chest, and closed her eyes.

When she woke the sun had turned her skin the color of boiled lobsters, her nails growing into claws. She curled her toes and held her knees with callused hands. The fishing captain had picked up a few refugees he found bobbing unconscious, the cargo count now near two hundred. She watched the officers drag their bodies out of the water and into the boat. She imagined the squeaking of skin and steel, like the sound of hungry swans, and continued her letter.

To My Unborn Child: Please always remember to listen, and don’t you dare go deaf. When you leave me you will hear gasping and tears, shallow breaths and subtle screams. You’ll hear rubber and linoleum, cotton and concrete. Look at the sky and listen to the buzz of vapor against vapor, the static created in the clouds. Listen to figs fall, to the squealing of engine and asphalt, to the Americans walking in herds.

She had written three pages and used the paper to cushion her head from the splintering wood, to wrap the wounds of the immigrant children, the frayed edges perfect for dabbing at the lesions, its fibers sucking on the blood like leeches, her words protecting and healing contusions, ink stamped to their skin from their sweat. She was terrified that when the boat ran out of rice she would have to eat the pages, at least to satiate her stomach and her child, to give him something to feed on. She thought about which pages she’d chew on first, which words were least necessary, what he could and couldn’t live without reading. She held her rosary and prayed that the words might soak into him through the umbilical cord, that he might lie in the placenta of her wisdom and absorb her love through his reticulum.

She refocused her eyes to a boy staring into her, seemingly sobbing, touching his hand to his stomach, to his mouth, to his stomach, to his mouth. She wanted to say, I’m sorry, I have no food, I can give you gold, give me a few minutes, let me chip it from my teeth, I will give you enough gold to buy the world’s worth of pickled jicama and beef, cilantro and jasmine rice, you can build a restaurant and sell your meat, but no man on that boat would dare trade rice or water for gold, so she just laid there, shaking her head, apologizing with her eyes.

The crowd in the cargo haul loosened when bodies fell unconscious and the officers deemed them dead and fed them to the fish. Some people without children jumped. She looked at them in haste, a bitter jealousy, how lucky you are to end it so easily. They were told it’d be weeks more until they found the harbor, that the United Nations had sent boats of stripped grain and dried meat, but the pirates of Thailand had so far seized every ship, and so the refugees went hungry. I’ll eat the seventh page first. Then the fifth and then the first. Listen to oil as it sizzles in woks. Listen to shooting stars.

The crowd had cleared so that the air thinned enough so she could breathe without swallowing the humidity. She watched her chest swell and deflate, her breasts rising and falling, like the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. She watched Augustus march across her chest, leading an army of thousands, like ants crawling, or maybe they were ants, a colony growing to an empire, some receding into catacombs, others pushing forward with their shields.

A dark man placed a straw broom on her belly, pushing the insects to the floor. He spoke to her but she just looked at him blankly, her eyes barely able to focus, her hands tightly gripping her abdomen. He spoke louder and she covered her ears and moved one hand to her lips. His brows furrowed and the light skin above his lips wrinkled.

He put himself to his knees, reached for her notebook and wrote:

Vous semblez triste.

I don’t speak French.

I didn’t want the bugs to bury their eggs in your skin.

You destroyed the Romans.

I’m sorry.

She clenched her rosary and let the dark man share her shade, a piece of the steel that stayed cool, in the shadow of the sails, for only three hours in early morning. He sifted through her book, found enough room on a page and wrote:

My wife died two weeks ago in our kitchen. She was cooking rice in a nice robe and singing, singing beautiful songs like a tuy quy bird, until the room engulfed with flames from the bomb. I had to watch her body fall and her hair melt into her skin. I had to watch her blood soak into the grain. It was the color of salmon.

I’m sorry.

I’m not running from war. I just couldn’t stand to be where she was supposed to be and wasn’t.

Where are you going?

I don’t know.

I was raped by a soldier six months ago, when my family was running from Hanoi. My father left me and took my sister under his shirt to the South. I’m scared that this baby is the only thing left of my family and maybe me. I want to bring him to safety. I want to see what he looks like. I can’t even guess, I was blindfolded. I don’t know if he was white or Viet Cong. All I know is that’s when I went deaf. I couldn’t stand to hear him moan.

I’m sorry.

The steel was hot again, their skin beginning to blister from the burns, hardening like the backs of crustaceans. He let her lay on top of him to keep her belly safe from the sweltering heat. She felt his bones breaking beneath her, or maybe it was his teeth grinding and some disintegrating, or maybe it was the knuckles of the children cracking. She lay still with her head on his chest, and thought about the fifth page. Listen to chests when they throb. Listen to toes climbing ankles, to fingernails flirting with scalps. Or the sixth. Listen to bugs burn against light bulbs. Listen to their bodies smolder. They took turns letting each other break from the heat, sometimes she’d let him stand on the paper and lean on her shoulders, her words cooling the balls of his feet, embracing his kin and seeping into his pores. When the sun fell it took hours for the steel to cool, but when it did they found room to lay next to each other, cold from the harshness of the wind against their sweat, they shivered and shared a small cloth to wrap themselves in, like wet rice paper. He wrote in the corner of a page:

I’ve never loved anything as much as I loved her. It was the way she moved. It was her lips when they parted to speak. It was the plumpness of her cheeks.

I’m sorry.

Your cheeks are plump like hers. Your eyes are wide like fish.

I will keep them closed and wear a cloth over my face.

No, please keep them open.

I’m sorry.

They slept to the sound of babies climbing netting on the sides of the boat, their frail bodies instinctively climbing for air, opening their mouths for rain. Their bodies embraced while mothers tried to lift their tired arms toward their children, shaking the netting and screaming, please con trai, come down from the ropes. The boat ebbed in the sadness of their hallow bones, the frailty of their faith, the torment in their babies’ brown eyes. It was the soundtrack to their embrace, the sound of eyelids closing, of hearts struggling to beat. He nestled his head into Listen to the sirens scream. She groaned.

In the morning when the steel was hot again, she moved herself slowly on top of him. The boat tipped at the embrace of a wave and her eyes could not focus. She watched her rosary sway in her bosom, sweat and stone, as the boat tried desperately to resurface and coast along the crest. It was a pendulum ticking like a clock; it was the seconds between breaths, the minutes, maybe the hours she had left to live. It slowed as her eyelids quickly dropped and then crawled open. She saw the veins in her eyes reflect against her skin, reds of raw flank, purples of her mother’s robes. She thought of what she’d say to God. I’m sorry, I should have tried harder. I should have found food. I am so selfish, I’ve left my child without a home, without a mother. I should have eaten the letter, I should have tried to survive, I could have sacrificed something. Anything. I am the product of shame. She thought about the lightness of Heaven and the darkness of Hell. Soon her deafness would be met with blindness. She’d be deaf and blind and dumb. She’d be dead.

Her eyes twitched and she felt the darkness of Hell. She looked into the eyes of the Devil, his pupils black and bursting with angst. She watched them curdle and churn, spark and occasionally flame, white lines exploding on black. His face sweated as he stared into her and his throat expelled guttural screams.

The man beneath her calmly woke and cupped his hands over her eyes. She felt the warmth of his hands but could not move. He moved his fingers into hers but they just lay like the dead arms of an octopus. He panicked, pushing her carefully to the floor and trying to pry her fish eyes back open. Her lips were chaffing and swollen, her teeth brittle and her tongue dry. He tried again with his hands, pushing on her eyes with his thumbs, his finger prints pressed into her skin like the trunks of old trees. He cupped her rosary with one hand and prayed, please I cannot watch another woman die. He put his lips to hers and breathed, pumping her chest between breaths. She felt the weight of him, his hand like a tire rolling over her, and her eyes opened.

The Devil’s eyes had become dark clouds, his screaming now thunder, his sweat droplets of rain. Her eyes flickered and focused, the rain falling harder and louder. They climbed to their feet and lifted their mouths to the sky, their knees callused and bent, their throats dry, their tongues anxiously waiting. The water tasted sweet, like che, red beans and coconut milk, wetting their tongues and sliding down their throats in waves. She watched the panic in the eyes of the other refugees, the chaos ensue among them. They trampled each other, reaching for anything to catch the rain, buckets and bags, satchels, the mouths of the dead. Children would put their hands into the open jaws of the dead and cup the water to their mouths, splash it on their burning scalps. Some of them danced or cried, screamed and crossed their chests. Rain collected in wicker baskets but most of it fell through holes in thee weaving, wetting the steel and soaking the ropes. She watched people turn over their paddy hats, using them as sinks to bathe their babies and wash their wounds. But she and the dark man simply knelt there, eyes towards the Heavens, letting the water soak into their parched bones. The hot rain soaked a few bags of dry grain, wetting the rice until it expanded and burst the brown paper. He ran through the crowd and scooped as much rice as he could fit into his arms; he rested some on his feet and in her hair, and balanced it on her small shoulders. She tucked her letter in a straw mat, and then a cloth, and then a satchel, and underneath a bench. She watched the water soak into the skin on her belly, its hands reaching to her womb. Listen to people breathing, their chests rising and falling, listen to them talk and scream, to them whisper and cry. Listen to their phlegm gurgle. Listen to them stumble, to them giggle, to them sing. Listen to their toes crack and their eyelids twitch. Listen to peace and listen to war. These are the sounds of survival.