The Unwanted (20 page)

“I remember the route,” I reassured him. “It is not very difficult.

Once we get on the highway, if we keep on walking, we will come to a market. Do you remember it? Loan's house isn't far from there.”

“It used to be our house, didn't it?” he asked.

“It is her house now,” I corrected him. “Don't ever say that in front of Loan. It will upset her.”

As the day got older, the temperature got hotter. By the time we set foot on the highway, the tar was melting in colorless fumes; it stuck to our sandals like glue. The heated air made the scenery before us tremble into a haze. Ahead, we saw the boundless fields on either side of the road. The highway faded into a blurry dot at the end of the horizon. The stillness of summer draped over the land like an invisible blanket that smelled like burned rubber.

Jimmy whispered to me, “Are you sure we have to do this? How far is it, Kien?”

“I don't know, maybe five or six kilometers. If we want to eat, we have to find Loan. Unless you have a better idea.” I pushed myself onward, knowing he would follow.

I lost track of how far or how long we walked. I only knew that we had gone too far to turn back. There was no indication that the journey would ever end. I kept on moving, for fear that if we stopped to rest, we would not have the strength to start again.

I became acutely aware of my dried, scratchy tongue, which flopped around like a fish inside my mouth. Next to me, Jimmy dragged himself on the hard pavement with my sister on his back, trailing her dirty pillow carelessly along the dusty road. Their lips began to blister. Finally, Jimmy stopped in the middle of the road. I looked around, dimly aware that we were utterly alone on the deserted road. There was not a car, not a pedestrian in sight, just the three of us amid the endless rice paddies. A few steps ahead of us, Jimmy's dog turned to regard us, his red tongue hanging from one side of his mouth, dripping with white foam. Jimmy dropped my sister onto the ground. She looked at us and began to cry. The odor of her body was like the smell of a rotten fish.

My brother shook his head. “I can't go anymore, Kien. I have to find something to drink.”

“Keep walking,” I yelled at him. “We'll drink when we get there. You can't stop now.”

He ignored me, looking around for a cool place under a tree to rest. My sister screamed louder, kicking her feet.

“Shut up!” I shrieked, grabbing her diminutive body. “Why don't you shut up? Leave me alone. I am not responsible for you or your problems. I don't have to feed you. I don't have to take care of you. I don't have to do anything. Do you hear me? You want to die? Is that what you want?” I could not stop screaming. My face was inches from hers, and I reached for her neck. “Let me give you a hand. Let me put you out of your misery.”

I hit her repeatedly, slapping her face, pulling her hair, dragging her around the pavement, and, finally, throwing her facedown in the middle of the road.

“What are you saying now? I can't hear you. Do you want to die?” My voice cracked as I wrapped my hands around her thin neck. BeTi blinked at me.

“No, no,” she said, choking, and tried to peel my firm grip off her neck. The pillow was still clutched in her hand.

“Are you going to walk now? Or should I let you stay here and get run over by a truck?”

Her eyes continued to fix on me with the same bleak expression. I let go and staggered a few steps back. BeTi remained in the middle of the road. The hatred for my sister was so strong in me that I could taste it. Secretly, I prayed for a truck to run her over. With her death, I could be free again.

From the empty road, my sister crawled back to me on her bony limbs. Her face smudged with dirt and tears, she begged me to hold her. Exhausted, I sat down next to my brother and gasped for air. Finally, Jimmy suggested that we should continue with our journey. We got up with great difficulty, reluctant to leave the comfortable shade. Together we moved forward on the road, and my sister struggled a few steps behind.

A thought flashed through my mind. “Let's go down to the rice field,” I said to Jimmy. “If the people are planting rice, they must have watered the fields, right? Let's find the water supply together.”

Jimmy ignored my suggestion. He tilted his head, concentrating. Then he turned to me and asked, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” I asked.

He put a finger to his lips, motioning for me to be quiet. “Listen,” he said.

Suddenly, I could hear it too. From beyond a hill came a buzzing sound reverberating through the empty sky—the kind of sound made by a crowd of people. We looked at each other without uttering a word. The image of a bazaar appeared in our heads, and we ran screaming up the hill. The long-anticipated market opened before our eyes like a page out of a fairy-tale book, spreading itself beyond the foot of the hill. Behind it, the city glittered under the orange sun like Utopia.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
t did not take us long to get from the market to Loan's house. I did not forget the route, even though it had been three years since my last visit. The city was much the same as before, but the mansion had changed a great deal. Remnants of a wedding were evident in the festive decorations on the white railings and the red debris of firecrackers on the ground. The house, no longer my mother's favored eggshell color, had been painted blue. New windows and doors replaced old, broken ones. On the top floor overlooking the street, where my family name once appeared, hung a national flag.

The garden was again lush, with a variety of hybrid plants in expensive antique pots. Flowers bloomed under the encouraging sun as though to mock us with the illusion that behind the tall gate, life was still carefree. The pool, however, was empty, standing in the middle of the garden like an unsightly blemish. I found myself playing the role of an outsider, looking in like one of the dirty children my mother had trained me to despise in the old days. With a heavy heart, I rang the doorbell.

Within moments, Loan appeared at the front door with an apron around her waist and a pair of chopsticks in her hand. Upon seeing us, she grasped her face in disbelief and the chopsticks fell to the floor. Jimmy and I cried her name with joy. However, our enthusiasm died as soon as we recognized Mr. Tran's silhouette from behind the screen door. He walked out and stood beside Loan, frowning at us.

Irritably, he asked her, “Why are they here?”

“I don't know.” She ran down the steps toward the gate. “I think something happened, and they are coming for help.”

“Come back in the house this instant. I need to have a word with you. Inside.” He disappeared behind the front door.

Loan pressed her face between the railings of the gate to look at us. “How did you get here?” she whispered. “Where is your mother? Wait, tell me later.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Listen, children. Remember the back door? I'll meet you there in about five minutes, okay? Mr. Tran doesn't want the neighbors to see what's going on from this side of the house. Do you understand?”

We nodded and she hurried back inside.

Half an hour later, we sat on the wet dirt under the thick canopy of a clump of wild lilacs. There was no sign of Loan. Down the alley, a woman turned on the motor of her juice stand and began making fruit drink from long stalks of sugar cane. The sudden noise and the sweet smell churned our empty stomachs with painful waves. My sister hid her head in her moldy pillow and sniffed quietly.

A rustle of leaves behind us brought Jimmy and me to our feet. Loan appeared outside her kitchen and held the door open. “Leave the dog outside,” she said to Jimmy.

When we were inside, she noticed the bruises on my lower face. “What happened to all of you?” she asked. “Where is your mother? Is she all right?”

I didn't know where to begin. Instead, I began to cry. In fact, we all sobbed in Loan's arms. She got up from the embrace a moment later.

“I was in the middle of cooking when the doorbell rang. Let me make lunch for all of you,” she said. “Look at you. Poor kids, you must be starving.”

I sat down on the floor near the hot stove, feeling exhausted yet content. Before Loan could open the food cabinet, Mr. Tran stormed into the kitchen. His hands hung in tight fists beneath his long-sleeved denim shirt. Ignoring us, he marched toward his wife, who froze the moment she saw him. He grabbed her arm and dragged her outside.

Over his shoulder he ordered us, “Stay where you are. Don't move!”

Soon Loan returned to the kitchen. She stood in the doorway and bit her nails for several minutes. I raised myself up from the floor.

“Loan, is everything all right?” I asked.

Loan's eyes were red and wet with tears.

“Are you okay? What is wrong, Loan?” I asked her again.

She touched my hair the same way she used to when I was younger. “Kien, do you remember when I said to you that I want you to come and visit me?”

“Yes.”

“I am sorry, darling,” she said between her sobs. “I shouldn't have said that to you even though I meant every word. Neither you nor your siblings can stay here. I don't know what kind of trouble you are in, or what caused you to come here. I can't help you. I am not allowed to get involved.”

“Why? What do you mean you are not allowed to?” I searched her face. “He wants us to leave, doesn't he?”

“Remember all the letters from me that you've never gotten?” she asked me.

I nodded. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Mr. Tran was supposed to deliver them to you.”

Suddenly I understood. “But he didn't.”

Loan was shaking visibly. “I can't have anything to do with your family as long as I am staying here in his house.”

Each word she said cut a new wound into me. “I understand,” I said coldly. “Don't worry! We are leaving right now.”

“I'll walk you out. I am sorry, children. I wish I could be of more help to all of you.”

“It's quite all right. Let me get my brother and sister ready.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Home.”

I lifted BeTi to her feet. Jimmy walked outside to untie his dog from the fence. Loan turned to me and asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

The scent of sugar-cane juice still lingered in the air. “We could use a cold drink from that stand over there,” I suggested. “If it is not too much trouble.”

WE WALKED
on the familiar yet empty streets to the market once again. Each of us held a heavy plastic bag of sugar water mixed with crushed ice. The soothing taste replenished my body with new burst of energy. Without turning back, I could sense Loan standing alone in the middle of the road, watching us.

At a trash bin near the fish section, two flaxen-haired boys were busily digging in the trash. They looked up just to glare aggressively at Jimmy and me, as though preparing to defend their territory. One of the boys had lost an eye. He blinked his single blue eye and bared his tiny rat teeth while searching for a weapon among the rocks nearby. His partner quickly ate something that he had found in the garbage. Purple slime smeared his face.

“What do we do now, Kien?” Jimmy asked.

“We could beg for food,” I suggested.

“No,” Jimmy moaned weakly.

“Do you have any other plan?”

We continued to walk through the bazaar. It was overcrowded with aggressive shoppers. We hung on to each other against the surge of traffic.

“Then get ready to beg for food,” I screamed so that my voice could rise above the shrill noises around us.

“Please, Kien. I don't want to beg. We can go home and sell something.”

“What can we sell, Jimmy? Besides, who would want to buy anything from us?”

Jimmy's eyes filled with water. “We could sell Lou to the butcher.”

“You are crazy. He'll kill your dog.”

“Not if we get him to promise and hold the dog for two days. Once Mom gets home, we can buy Lou back from him with interest.”

“What if she never comes back?”

Tears rolled down his face. “Don't be evil. She will be back.”

I lifted my sister up and ushered the dog forward. “So, let's assume that you were right. Even if Mom came back, what makes you think that the butcher would keep your dog for two days?”

He ran to catch up with me. “He will. Listen to me, Kien. The man owes me a favor. If you reminded him, he would have to agree.” The enthusiasm had returned to his voice.

“Me?” I stopped in the middle of the muddy path, holding on to BeTi. “Why do I have to remind him? Are you suggesting that I have to negotiate instead of you?”

“You know I can't sell my own dog. How could I?”

“So you really want me to do this?”

Jimmy looked at my sister, who sagged in my hands like a dirty puppet. Her skin was the color of a lemon, hot to the touch. He nodded sadly.

I sighed. “Fine. Tell me what act of kindness you granted this man, so that I can remind him.”

“Okay, it happened this way. A while back, one evening,” he began uneasily, “I was playing hide-and-seek with the Tong brothers on the street when Mrs. Butcher approached us. She asked us for help. Her husband had gone out drinking with our uncle early that afternoon. In the middle of our game, we saw Uncle come back drunk and pass out on the front lawn without Mr. Butcher. Of course, his wife got real scared.”

The hill that led to the highway opened before us as the market fell behind. Beyond it, the landscape was immense, wild, and desolate. We moved slowly down the road while Jimmy continued with his story.

“So, I told her that I would find her husband. It wasn't easy, but I remembered the way. And the three of us—me, Duy, and little Roi—went across the rice fields to the next town. That night, there was a blackout and the whole city went dark. We didn't see much of the road, and we all kept falling into the potholes. Also, we were telling ghost stories and spooking each other.”

“Get to the point, Jimmy.”

“Well, you remember the stream that runs through Mr. Qui Ba's lands? It waters his rice fields even during the drought, while everyone else prays for rain —”

“Get to the point.”

“All right, I will. When we got close to the stream, we heard a moaning sound. It was weak, shaky as if it belonged to a ghost. Roi wanted to run, so did I. But Duy stopped us. We crept closer, and we found Mr. Butcher leaning against a tree, looking down at the stream. He was crying bitterly. ‘Please, God and Buddha,’ he said, staring at his crotch, ‘what have I done to deserve this? If it doesn't stop, I am going to die for sure.’ We approached him from behind. ‘Hello,’ I said to him. ‘What's troubling you, sir?’ He looked up. Under the pale moonlight, his face was smeared with tears. ‘I am dying,’ he said. ‘No, you are not. You are just very drunk,’ I said, to which he replied, ‘For the last three hours, I've been doing nothing but pissing myself away. It won't stop. I think I am going to piss to death.’ I told him, ‘It's okay. You are not pissing. It is just the sound of running water in the stream. You need to go home with us.’ So we zipped him up and got him home safely.”