Quan Barry - She Weeps Each Time You're Born

Neither of them saw it. It must have been sitting on the rocks waiting for the bird to rise, the pattern of stripes and spots helping it to melt into the darkness, the animal keeping its eye on the water, anticipating the spot where the bird would surface, its muscles tensing, its whiplike reflexes ingrained in the blood.

The cat leaped. It hit the bird square at the base of the throat. Even from where they were sitting they could hear the sound of the bird’s neck snapping. It looked twice as big as a normal fishing cat, though the two black spots on the back of its ears were the usual markings. Son was still watching the animal gripping its prize in its jaws, eyes coated with night sheen, when he suddenly fell backward in the sampan as the boat shot out into the middle of the river.

At first he thought they’d been hit by a river croc. He sat back up and looked around for the two yellow eyes. Straight ahead he could see the rocks jutting up out of the water. The fishing cat had changed course. It was swimming straight for the rock farthest from shore.

Son held on to both sides of the boat. The water was swamping them. The sampan began to break apart. Rabbit was standing in the back, the bamboo oar in her hands. He knew she had set the boat in motion, that she was aiming for the fishing cat, but the sampan went sideways in the water, the boat caving in from the force. He was still sitting on what remained of the floor, Binh somehow still on his shoulder. Rabbit let the oar fall from her hands. She closed her eyes. Son imagined she was already in the silvery room inside her head. If the moment were frozen, she would have looked as if she were standing on water.

Then the boat overturned. Son went under and came back up, a flame guttering in the breeze. He took in as much air as he could. Underwater it was hard to tell which way was up. He imagined a room with no doors or windows, no up or down, the room a perfect sphere. Then he imagined a wild animal materializing in the room. That’s what it felt like when he would slip under — a wild animal tearing at him in a room with no way out.

The current was stronger than he’d expected, stronger than the monsoon winds that tore roofs off houses. I am going to drown. It was as if somebody else were thinking it, a third party outside himself. He thought of the voices inside Rabbit’s head and the way she would paw at her ears. He wondered if he would become one of them. He was swept downriver, a piece of flotsam. He considered just letting go. The Buddha promised a special wheel of life for children. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

He surfaced again, his lungs on fire. Something was poking him in the back, trying to hook his shirt. He felt it take. He was being dragged through the water. Then a hand reached down and grabbed him by the arm and swung him up out of the river. For a long time he lay retching.

It was the man he and Rabbit had left in the dark, the one who had asked for a match. The man’s raft was a patchwork of logs. His long gray beard shimmered in the moonlight. You’re breathing, the old man grunted, then he went back to scanning the river.

Without Rabbit, Son wished he were dead. He imagined the front of Qui’s shirt, how it would never stop weeping, her long hair tangled in knots. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He pictured a room on the moon. Could Rabbit hear his voice? Rabbit, it’s me, he thought, say something, but all he could hear was the sound of the river flexing beneath him.

When Son opened his eyes again, the old man’s bird was standing over him. He could smell its musk. There was something different about the bird, its feathers strangely silver in the moonlight, almost colorless, its eyes as if filled with blood. The man was squatting at the edge of the raft and stroking with a crude paddle. Son struggled to sit up. One side of his face was aching where he had scratched it on a branch. Downriver he could see something, a black V floating on the water.

It was Binh. The bird had opened her wings and was marking the spot. Rabbit was drifting on her back and looking up at the stars, the bird floating beside her head. As the raft drifted closer, Son could see there was no panic in her face. Mày là con heo! Son said. You dumb pig! The old man laughed, his long gray beard rippling. You two married, he asked. He reached over and pulled Rabbit out of the water. She had lost her shirt in the current and was naked from the waist up, her ribs distinct as fingers.

The man placed Rabbit down on the raft. He picked up his oar again and continued paddling. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry, his gray beard fluttering in the breeze. You’re one of the Dinhs, he said. Son nodded.

They came around the bend that opened up into the cove where the houses of Ba Nuoc sat floating on the river. All were silent and dark except for Rabbit’s. Even from a distance they could hear a chorus of voices carrying over the water. A throng of sampans was tied up out front.

It was illegal to have that many people gathered in one place, but Son figured it was all right. They were probably organizing a search party for the missing children. Son climbed onto the porch. Please come in, Uncle, he said to the mysterious stranger who’d saved them. It wasn’t Son’s house, but Rabbit would never think to ask. The old man just shook his head and held on as Rabbit climbed over the railing with Binh on her shoulder. For a moment the two children stood in the light of the moon. It was only after the man had shoved off that Son realized he should have run inside and found a dry book of matches for the stranger, but the old man and his silvery bird were already lost to the dark.

Inside it was crowded. On the floor lay a crude hand-drawn map of Asia. Son could see lines running through the ocean connecting Vietnam with other countries in the region. Nobody seemed concerned — Rabbit half naked, Son with a deep scratch on his cheek, the injury twisting down his face like a lightning bolt. In addition to Huyen and Qui, Son’s uncles were there as well as Dr. Kao and a group of ten or so raggedy men Son had never seen before, their clothes hanging in tatters. One of them had a small red mark staining his face where his hairline had receded, the thing shaped like a jewel. Some of the ragged men spoke a language Son had never heard before, the language flat and unmusical. Then someone was coming forward, the man’s shoulders thin as rungs. One eye brown, the other sky-blue. Ba, said Son, running for him.

The All-Seeing Lady is the one thing we take with us wherever we go. That’s not to say it’s wrong to dream or imagine ourselves differently. Some of us are still making peace with this stratum, the way we are merely rustlings in the world, crescents of light glinting on waves. Sometimes we remember what it was like to have agency, the appearance of control, which we know even at its core is only an appearance .

BY MONTH’S END THE STREETS WERE CROWDED WITH THE Autumn Moon Festival. Red lanterns hung along Duong Le Loi, though each remained dark. Since the end of the war, nobody had candles to spare. Outside the one pho shop that still served white onions the four lanterns the owner lit at twilight were dark by the time the moon rose. Someone had blown out the candles as if making a wish and pocketed them.

The Autumn Moon Festival was second only to Tet in importance. Even before the war it had a reputation for being the one time of year when the whole world turned a blind eye to wrongdoing, the holiday a day of thanksgiving for a bountiful harvest, a time to be with family and celebrate good fortune. The doctor had decided they would travel in separate groups. Son and the men would walk to the rendezvous point through the city of Cantho, the women going by river. With the festival raging all night, nobody would notice a group of men slumping around the city in frayed clothes, some of them with their pants held up by rope, one man missing an entire sleeve.