Quan Barry - She Weeps Each Time You're Born

She was your cousin, said Rabbit. The man nodded, blinking back tears. Rabbit began to open herself, the silvery room in her head coming onto her, the room as if descending, the moon plunging toward her and swallowing her whole, the orb all around her with its silvery light and Rabbit like a candle burning brightly in the center of a lantern. Yes, she was there in the silvery room where no one else could enter, and she was waiting for the other to arrive.

She was my cousin, the man repeated. She was the daughter of my second aunt. For a moment his face seemed to brighten. We had never even met until a few years ago, he said. There was so much pressure on Xuan, the man whispered. We are both the last of our bloodline. I am afraid for her in the next life. The man was thumbing his tie clip. Rabbit couldn’t be sure if Linh had told him what would happen. Some people were eager to tell their loved ones something or to ask one final question. Some people tried to slip dong into her hand as if it were only a matter of persuasion. Okay, Rabbit said. She closed her eyes and waited.

Sometimes they came to her instantly and sometimes they were shy as deer. The experience like kneeling by a river and slowing her heartbeat to the rhythm of the landscape. The sounds of water lapping on the shore, waiting for the creature to come and drink, then raise its head.

Before I met Nhat I knew it would be difficult, said a voice. In the silvery room Rabbit opened her eyes, her ears tingling. I’ve known it my whole life, the voice continued. There was neither happiness nor sorrow in its intonation. Everything about my monthly blood was haphazard, it said. When it would come, how long it would last, the color and thickness. Everything. The words hung in the silvery air. All those years Nhat coming home from the company every day at noon. On auspicious days the two of us lying down on the floor in the old way because the doctor said western beds were too soft. My tailbone bruising.

It had been a long time since Rabbit had spoken with one so young. At the end of the first year I made a pilgrimage to the Perfume Pagoda, said the woman. All the way down the Swallow Bird River I tried to imagine my body as a nest. I imagined lining it with bits of paper, clumps of hair. I spent a full week on Huong Tich Mountain walking from temple to temple and touching every lucky thing I could touch.

Then Rabbit began to see her. She had shaven her head and was wearing a plain white robe, her sleeves long and breezy. Rabbit knew that under the robe every one of her ribs would be articulated, her rib cage jutting out like the prow of a ship. On the front of the robe there was the spot where she had aimed for the heart. The stain was not unbeautiful, like a red chrysanthemum pinned on a sheet.

Rabbit stood in the silvery light and listened to the voice of the woman once named Xuan explain herself. Each time she found herself listening to yet another soul, Rabbit wondered at the marvel of it all. In ten years’ time she had become a national treasure. The government trotted her out when they needed to know where their soldiers were buried, where to erect another monument for the northern martyrs. In the American war alone there were more than three million dead, and the end of the war was more than twenty years behind them. But as long as there were unnamed dead left in the ground, it would never be over. What the dead know. What you remember shapes who you are. The government was trying to create one memory, one country, one official version of what happened. Everything else was allowed to disintegrate and fall off the bone. All over the countryside southern remains were going unacknowledged. One side had been victorious. The other was turning into earth.

When almost two years had passed, I went to the grave of Grandmother Phan, said the woman once named Xuan. Grandmother Phan’s burial mound in Lake Bien was accessible only by elephant. The woman patted the red flower on her chest as if checking to make sure it was still there. A boy brought a ladder and helped me up, she said. I remember he wasn’t wearing a shirt, his young back already dark and leathery. I climbed up to the spot just behind the head where there was a dirty blanket and a place to sit. Rabbit began to feel herself melting into the voice until she too could see it, the boy momentarily walking away with the ladder across his shoulders, the elephant’s mammothness between her legs, the bristles of the great animal’s hair scratching her skin.

When the boy came back, he hit the elephant with a stick with a metal hook on the end. Together we waded into the water, said Xuan. It took us forty minutes to get there. Sometimes the boy would swim. Mostly we tramped through the tall grass, but when the boy swam, the elephant swam, too. In the silvery light Xuan began to play with her long white sleeves. Then we came to the island where my ancestors are buried in mounds, the grass green and thick, and at the head of each mound there’s a small hole boring straight down. Grandmother Phan’s resting place was under a camphor tree. I poured a bottle of rice wine down the hole. I left a cassette player made of paper along with a paper tape of Grandmother’s favorite music. Xuan was sitting on the ground running her hands over her scalp. Within three weeks of my visit to Grandmother Phan’s grave, my blood stopped.

I don’t know which is worse, Xuan said. I only know what happened to me. For six months my body was home to someone, the nest I’d visualized for so long finally full. Which do you think is worse, she asked. Rabbit knew the question before Xuan even posed it. To lose it before the blood has had a chance to form or to lose the form itself?

I tried to keep going, Xuan whispered. Everyone said there would be others, but I knew. I’ve always known my body wasn’t meant for it. We never should have married, she said. Rabbit was beginning to lose her in the glow of the silvery light, the light growing brighter and brighter until Rabbit would find herself back in the van. I didn’t do it out of grief, said the voice. We were cousins. He was the son of my only uncle, our blood from the same line. Through the children he will someday have, I will live on.

I hear you, Rabbit said. She opened her eyes. He was sitting next to her in the van. His thumb rested on the green tie clasp carved with the goddess. She turned to him. The dead live in us, she said. From outside Linh opened the door. A wave of air rushed in. The man let out a deep breath. So many of them expected a conversation. Time and again people sought her out for their own sense of closure. But it wasn’t about the living. The man jumped out of the van and disappeared into the crowd. It was perfect. He didn’t even thank her.

The old songs seem so foreign to us now. Like Soldiers of Vietnam, forward! / The flag’s gold star fluttering in the wind / Leading our people, our native land, out of misery and suffering / Our efforts unified in the fight for the building of a new life / Let us stand up and spiritedly break our chains / For too long we’ve swallowed our hatred / Keep ready for all sacrifices and our life will be radiant / Ceaselessly for the people’s cause we struggle / Hastening to the battlefield/Forward! All together advancing / Vietnam is eternal .

JUST BEFORE SUNSET THREE MOTORCYCLES PASSED THEM ON the highway heading south. On each a Vietnamese man sat up front driving, a foreign woman in a tank top and shorts on the back. Ever since the country had opened its doors to western tourists earlier in the decade, there was money in places where there’d never been money before. From the passenger’s seat Linh waved, her dimpled cheeks shining. One of the women raised her hand. All the way down the highway the woman remained with her hand in the air until she was gone. Her long blond hair streaming from her helmet.