Quan Barry - She Weeps Each Time You're Born

An hour passed. Linh sat by the fire grooming the parakeets with her fingers. Qui took the pale blue rice bowl off the altar and wrapped it up tight in her shirt. When there was nothing left to do, she sat down and milked herself into the dirt, not even bothering to go outside.

Rabbit lay in her hammock still holding the fish. It seemed to shine in her arms. She was still startled by the suddenness of the two unexpected visitors. It had been years since she’d spoken with the parakeets or seen Son. Whole lifetimes had passed since the rustling of voices stirred inside her. But tonight how the voices wafted easily off the strange woman, the room crowded with their music, the foreign woman’s face at once Vietnamese and at the same time something else. Rabbit had seen Amerasians before, but generally they were pale with big eyes, their noses often large and western. The woman was different, her skin a deep chocolate, eyes dark, her nose small and flat.

On the way out the door the woman had gripped Rabbit’s hands. She nodded as her guide, his voice shaking, the skin pale around his eyes as if marked by coins, expressed the woman’s gratitude. Then the woman let go and the man took Rabbit’s hands in his own. Suddenly her ears itched in the old way. An unexpected sadness filled her heart. She closed her eyes. A light dawned in the room inside her head. Somewhere a pair of naked legs lay cooling in a pool of blood under the unblinking moon. The man let go and the vision receded. Cam on , the foreign woman said, thank you , and then she and the man turned and disappeared into the darkness.

And so Rabbit was making her way to the river, the others trailing along. Tu had returned to the house shaking his head. Their neighbors wouldn’t even answer the door, scared of being seen talking to anyone who had anything to do with the one under house arrest. It was as Rabbit had expected. They would make their way on foot. On the way out of the yard, Tu grabbed the small shovel just in case, thinking of a night long ago and the things one unexpectedly finds in the earth.

Rabbit was still carrying the fish Tu had brought home for dinner. It seemed wrong to leave it behind. They hadn’t had time to do anything else with it. The fish was still alive, its skin streaked with iridescence, its mouth gaping open rhythmically as its gills folded open and closed.

Ever since they had walked back down out of the Plain of Jars, the four of them had lived in exile in their own country. Through the years they had each slipped away into their own worlds — Rabbit staring at shadows, her freckles fading as she holed up indoors, Qui and Tu entwined down by the river, Linh with the parakeets. Watching the foreign woman and her guide walk away in the moonlight, the simplicity of it had become apparent. That one could open the door and keep going, the man and woman lost to the night. Through the trees Rabbit could hear the rumblings of frogs. An insect buzzed near her ear. The government had forgotten her. She felt the knowledge wash over her. She had stayed in the one-room house all these years without being guarded because she had come to think of herself as a prisoner.

Years ago the drive back from Laos had been uneventful. Within minutes of crossing the border the others had regained their wondrousness — Qui pale as marble, Linh once again in perennial childhood, even the birthmark on Tu’s face seemed to shine like a star. Only Rabbit herself was changed. She had been the one to insist they turn around and drive back, the prospect of living in both exile and silence too much to bear. At the border, Tu’s face looked ghostly, as if drained of blood at the knowledge of what awaited them. Even after they’d crossed back into Vietnam, the silence that had enveloped Rabbit on the Plain of Jars pressed like a weight on her chest. When they pulled up at the great wooden doors leading into the house on Hang Giay, the police were already waiting. Within days the government had found a new psychic, a young girl who had been bitten by a rabid dog and awakened from her coma with strange abilities. Rabbit remembered the shame of being led away from the grand house on Hang Giay. In the papers and on the TV the government claimed her powers had been a sham. The Old Quarter ground to a halt as Rabbit was put in a car and driven off, the music from a funeral wafting down the street. Then the endless list of charges brought against her. Article 87: “Undermining national solidarity, sowing divisions between religious and non-religious people.” Article 88: “Conducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” Article 258: “Abusing democratic freedoms to encroach on the interests of the state.” It went on and on. She sat in the tiny cell on Duong Roi and imagined a monk in his orange robes, by his side a plastic bucket heaped with shit. The trial took less than a day. She had to ask the driver what was happening in the moment before two policemen got in the car. The driver said you are to be put under house arrest. How long, she’d asked, but one of the policemen got in the front seat and the driver didn’t answer. It took Tu eight months to find out where she’d been taken. Did the government even know the beauty of it? The Mountain of the Fragrant Traces was one of the sacred sites, the Lady like a star on the mountainside. Rabbit barely remembered how she had managed during those eight months on her own. Each morning she would walk down to the river and cast the bones of the fish she’d eaten the night before into the waters. In the evening she would walk back to the same spot and put her hand in. Within minutes, a fish would swim into her palm and allow itself to be lifted into the air, each day the same iridescent fish putting its life in her hands. Rabbit remembered nothing else about those days except the silence and the glittering fish who was her only friend.

Already that was another lifetime ago. Tonight as she walked in the shadow of the mountain she clutched the fish in her arms and thought of the long years of solitude she had endured. In some ways it felt as if no time had passed, and in other ways she was just beginning to realize exactly what had been lost.

At last the four of them staggered out of the trees. The river shimmered expectantly. Rabbit could see a series of wooden boxes tucked away in the treeline. She imagined the colony of bees asleep inside with their treasure, the queen like a beacon among the workers. It hadn’t rained in months, yet the boxes gleamed white as snow. Linh walked over and put her hand on one. A deep thrumming buzzed inside as if a storm were brewing in the box. The male parakeet fluffed his chest. Qui reached over and lifted one of the lids. Light poured out into the darkness. Linh stood on tiptoe to get a better look, her baby face suffused with brilliance. Rabbit peered over her shoulder. It was as she’d always imagined. Inside, golden universes being born and falling dead.

Qui put her hand in and pulled out a comb. It blazed in the night air. With Linh’s help she wrapped it up in a palm leaf, then lowered the lid and tucked the comb in her shirt alongside the pale blue rice bowl. It was all they needed. They could go anywhere. A bat swooped overhead. Maybe tonight they would go anywhere.

How many times had they been on the road? In the darkness the land looked like another world. The Swallow Bird River was like none of the other rivers Rabbit had ever known, the waters slow and dark, a mist rising off the surface. The landscape incandesced like a scene on an ancient scroll. Everywhere small green mountains rising straight up out of the earth.

She didn’t hear it until it pulled up beside them. In the moonlight Rabbit could see two figures squatting on a simple raft. The taller figure gestured with his fingers. Pay him, said the male parakeet. The sound startled Rabbit. She hadn’t heard the bird speak since Laos. Cautiously she leaned over and slipped the live fish into the old man’s arms. He hefted it in his palm as if judging its value, then handed the fish to a little girl squatting beside him. The old man was completely bald, his long gray beard pouring all the way down to his feet.