Robert Butler - The Deep Green Sea

“No.”

“If I told you half the bargirls in Saigon called themselves Kim to the men they. .”

“I would tell you to shut up now. Half the bargirls in Saigon still would have been twenty-five thousand bargirls. My mother’s name is Huong. She calls herself Huong.”

I am crying now. I say, “She holds some American GI in her arms and makes him feel like he is not about to die, makes him feel he is not alone in the world. That is okay, that is not making her an enemy of the state, that is a woman who can love a man very easy, can give him something worth a million times more than the few dollars he gives her because he wants her and needs her and so she can feed her child and her mother.”

Ben takes me into his arms. He rises to his knees and he lifts me, naked. These words have surprised me. The feeling in my body surprises me too. I understand. The way my body feels opened up: that secret part of me of course, but also the rest — my nipples, a place in the center of my chest, the palms of my hands, the soles of my feet — there is this gaping in me, a hungry space, I want to draw Ben into me like those dark stars they speak of, the stars you cannot even see in the telescopes because they burn black and they want to draw all the rest of the universe into them. Suddenly I understand my mother, I think, a little bit, the thing she might have felt with a man. I understand the men, too, the best of them perhaps, someone like Ben.

He says, “It’s still one chance in twenty-five thousand, isn’t it?”

“It is no chance,” I say, and as soon as I say it, I do not believe it. As soon as I say it, I flare hot and all the strength goes from me and I lean into him and the tears are still flowing and as weak as I feel now, my chest begins to heave and I can hear myself sobbing.

“Tien,” he says. “Darling,” he says. He holds me tight and I so much want his nakedness upon me but I am also afraid of it now. And I suddenly know what is happening in this room. It is my father’s ghost. He is a jealous man. He has been curling the invisible smoke of his soul around us, making us breathe him in, and he has wisped his way into our brains, filled us with these fears to keep us apart.

I clench at these sobs, stuff them back down in my throat, I go hard now. I will not show him my tears. Not again. I wept for him for years. I knelt before his shrine and I prayed for his soul and I burned the incense and offered him food and a place for his soul to rest so that it would not wander the land of the dead in loneliness and fear. I was a bargirl to him. I did not offer my body but I offered everything else. More than my body. He was an American GI and he was in a foreign place and I held him close with my prayers and my smoke and I said, Do not be afraid, do not be lonely. And this is how he repays me.

My eyes are dry. I lift my face to Ben. I will hold only this man now. My hands go to the buttons on his shirt and I am whispering to Ben without speaking: Do not stop me, please my darling, put these fears aside, they are from my father speaking to us, my true father who cannot bear to let me go to another man, please my darling let me touch you now.

And Ben does not stop me. I lean forward into him, pulling at the sleeves of his shirt, hugging him and stripping the shirt from him in the same gesture. And in my mind I am speaking now to my father: See this. See what I do. See my nakedness and the nakedness of my lover. You must accept this or I will never say another word to the gods for you.

I feel the sheet over my ankles and my feet, and I kick it away. I want no part of my body to be covered. I do not care if my father is watching. I will show him all of my nakedness and he will know it is not for him but for this man I love. I square around and I am pulling at the belt on Ben’s pants. My hands tremble. The belt will not yield. Ben’s hands come down and they cover mine, hold me still for a moment, and I am afraid he will stop this again. “Please,” I say.

His hands hesitate. Then he puts mine aside and pulls open the belt and then the button on his pants and the zipper goes down and my own hands help his, my thumbs hook inside his underpants and I am helping him pull all of that off him at once. I sense his nakedness, catch the faintest sideways glimpse of the dangle of him. But I do not look. Not yet. He turns his back and he bends and he takes off his socks and he is naked and I lie back on the bed and he comes over me and I put my hands on his bare back and I draw his full weight onto me, kissing his mouth, wanting his mouth to yieid, to give me that opening into him. But his lips stay closed. They are kind to me. They are soft. They kiss me on the lips, on the cheek, but they stay closed. And then his face moves to the side of mine, his body shifts and slides off the top of me. I cling to him. I will not let him separate from me. And he does not. He stops. But his arms stay about me. His body presses against my side. His face comes to my throat, buries itself there. I hold him. I am breathing very fast. My throat is tight.

I look toward the ceiling of my room. I look for a face there that I have never seen. I think I might be able to see it now. I want to speak aloud to him. But I cannot explain this to Ben. Still, I do not need to say the words for my father to hear them. If he is in my head giving me these fears, and in Ben’s head, then he can hear me like this, and I say to him, Go away. Go away now and never return. Go find the woman you loved. Be with her. She is alive somewhere. Go to her and live on her prayers for a while.

I move my hand. I have not seen that part of Ben yet. I will wait until the time is ours alone. But I move my hand. I hope my father is watching. I should feel shame at that, but I do not. I move my hand and I reach and I lay my palm against the point of Ben’s hip. He is lying on his side facing me. His arm is around me and his hand is on me, just below my breasts. His lips are pressed against the side of my throat. I wonder if he can feel my heart there. It is beating fast for him, for the thing I want to do. I move my hand over his hip and across the tight curls of his hair and I open my hand wide, like my mouth wanting a deep kiss, and he is in my palm and my fingers softly curl around this part of him that I am not ashamed for the ghost of my father to see me touch but that I have trouble speaking a word for.

Penis means nothing to me. Cock means nothing to me. In my language this part is ngo.c hành, a word that is acceptable for a person to say if there is a good reason, but when I hear this word as a girl I am very puzzled, for it is made up of two words: ngo.c, which means a gem or a precious stone, and hành, which means an onion. These things contradict each other, it has always seemed to me. And neither thing is what I am touching now with my own hand, with my own will and my own desire. The street word for this male part, the word that my friend would whisper in the hidden place inside the banyan tree where we would talk, is cu, a word that it is not acceptable to say. It means turtledove. And this is the word now. Ben’s secret part is a turtledove to me, a fragile thing, a soft thing, very soft, and it moves in my hand, a bird caught sleeping in its dark nest and I feel a very tender thing for it, and I know it is Ben’s cu and this is why there is tenderness and why I feel my heart in my throat and I hope he can feel my heart, too.

I move him in my hand, the sweet softness of the flesh spilling between my fingers. He makes a sound. I tell my hand to be still. “Does this hurt you?” I say.

His face pulls away from my throat. He takes a deep and ragged breath. I do not want to stop touching him.