Quan Barry - She Weeps Each Time You're Born

Tu said they would drive all the way to Vientiane, the City of Sandalwood on the banks of the Mekong. Vientiane Avenue was said to be wide as a river. At the Temple of the Emerald Buddha they would meet his contact who would accompany them into Thailand. Somehow An had arranged everything from the States. Tu said he was the unofficial mayor of Little Saigon. An was the one who had sent Tu the newspaper article from the Viet Herald Daily News in Orange County, in it a story about a psychic in Hanoi who had helped the government discover where a busload of northern veterans had driven off a bridge near Dak To as they were touring old battle sites. In the article one government official was quoted as saying, “Without her, the northern martyrs would forever walk the earth.” An had written in the margins: Cô ta còn sống bao lâu trước khi chính phủ phản bội cô ta? She lives . And: how long before the government turns on her?

Rabbit had known this day was coming. In Vietnam there were voices everywhere she looked. Northern martyrs, southern soldiers. The ethnic tribes. Children. The French. The Americans. The Cambodians. The Chinese. She couldn’t turn her back on them, but it would only be a matter of time before word spread of what she’d found at My Kan. Southerners would flock to the wooden doors on Hang Giay begging her to find their loved ones and tell them who was responsible. The government would put her under house arrest as they had done to a local poet who had penned a song about the southern dead. Rabbit closed her eyes. How could she leave? There will always be souls who need to be found, Tu had said. No matter where you go.

By the roadside she could see Laos stretching out before her. The country was less developed, the terraced hills a brighter shade of green. In the distance water buffalo lumbered through the landscape, everywhere the tops of palm trees like fireworks. Rabbit walked back to the others. This is because of those people in My Kan, isn’t it, Linh said. Rabbit didn’t say no. She knew that when the guard Tong arrived at the big wooden doors on Hang Giay this morning, he would tell his superiors she was missing. Maybe an official had already spoken with Viet. Maybe they already knew about Tao with her child-sized feet and the four hundred and twenty-eight bodies lying in the field by the ruined church. The government doesn’t care about the southern dead, does it, Linh said. They want to pretend it never happened. Nobody said anything. The front of Qui’s shirt remained dry. They got back in the car. The parakeet sat dumbly on Rabbit’s shoulder. An hour later Rabbit felt something wet sliding down her arm. The bird had defecated on her.

Another hour passed before they saw the first of them. The sun was already strong in the east. Qui tapped Tu on the shoulder and pointed. What is that, said Linh. Rabbit could see a series of them off in the distance, each one monolithic like a sentinel. Tu looked surprised. I’ve only heard about them, he said. During the American war the Communist rebels used this area. He glanced at his watch but didn’t slow the car down. The Americans fought a secret war here, he said. Today there are no Hmong left in Laos because of it.

Fifteen minutes later they came around a turn in the road. The hills were dotted with them as far as the eye could see. Tu couldn’t hide the wonder in his face. Okay, he said. He began looking for a place to pull over.

It took twenty minutes to walk up into the heart of it. At one point Rabbit glanced over at Qui. Something about her seemed different. The front of her shirt was crisp and dry, her face slightly animated, not as stony as usual. It took Rabbit a while to figure out exactly what it was. One of Qui’s arms, the one closest to the window where she’d been sitting, was slightly pink from the sun.

When they got to the first one, Rabbit could see that it was taller than a man, the stone gray and weathered. There were hundreds of them. Some of them looked broken but many were intact. Some lay on their sides so that you could peer into the musty darkness. We’re on the Plain of Jars, said Tu. Jars, repeated Linh incredulously. Tu nodded. Nobody knows who put them here, but they’re thousands of years old. Rabbit brushed one with her hand. It was the size of a small boulder, a circular hole carved in the top. Each one was lidless and cold to the touch. Some say they were built to catch the monsoon rains, said Tu. Others say they form maps of the stars. Linh picked something off the ground and handed it to him. Yes, he said. The thing gleamed in his fingers as if it had been polished. The land here is littered with bones.

Linh tugged Qui’s sleeve. I need a bathroom, she said. Qui nodded and the two of them walked off to find a spot. Whose bones, said Rabbit. Tu shook his head and handed her the fragment. The thing was small and tapered like it might have been part of a foot. It’s probably from the war, said Tu. Rabbit ran her fingers along the tip. Usually direct contact gave her an instant image, the picture so clear, the voice as if screaming.

Rabbit closed her eyes. She stood holding the bone and waiting for its story to come. She could feel the sun moving through the sky. Whole universes being born and falling dead. I can’t hear anything, she said. Maybe it’s too old, said Tu. Rabbit squeezed the bone even tighter in her palm. She sniffed it, then put it to her lips and slipped it in her mouth. It was sour and gritty and silent.

Then the sound of someone crying. Rabbit opened her eyes. She could see Qui and Linh walking back down the ridge, Qui’s face pink with sun as the two of them picked their way down the hill through the forest of jars. Rabbit spit the bone out into her palm. What’s wrong, she said. Qui walked with her arm around a crying Linh. I’m bleeding, said Linh. In the growing light her face look aged. Qui nodded, the front of her shirt dry. Rabbit closed her eyes again.

Already the others are heading back to the car, the sounds of Linh’s sobs traveling on the wind. Rabbit stands on and on in the shadow of a stone jar gripping the bone fragment. Sweat trickles down her forehead. The sound of insects chirring in the dry grass. Nothing comes to her but the smell of bird shit rising from her arm.

She is the One Who Hears the Cries of the World. In Her male form She is sometimes referred to as the One Who Holds the Lotus or He Who Perceives the Lamentations of the Living, in Her female form She is depicted with eleven heads, a thousand arms, the orphaned parrot who became Her disciple often on Her shoulder. Her home is a small grotto on the side of Fragrant Mountain. She can produce Her own light, can incarnate as anything or anyone. She is the Goddess of Mercy who postpones Her own nirvana for the sake of us. She will not leave the earth until every being has been freed from the dark cycle of life .

IN HER PREVIOUS LIFE, SHE WOULD HAVE HEARD THE ROAR OF their engines miles away in among the clamor of the world, her ears prickling at the distant sound. Instead she heard the roar of engines just as Linh did, the noise of their motorcycles like small boats on rough seas.

Something was biting her on the shin. Rabbit opened her eyes. She could feel the late-evening breeze fluttering through the gaps in the sun-bleached planks of the one-room hut in the shadow of the Mountain of the Fragrant Traces. Already Linh was standing guard in the doorway, the female parakeet perched on her shoulder. Even in the gathering darkness Rabbit could see the bird glaring at her as if to say you have nothing to lose by trying. You’re wrong, Rabbit thought, but she remained silent in her hammock, not wanting the bird to begin lecturing her after all these years.