But May didn’t seem to care what Ba said. She entered the house and immediately gave Thanh a few injections and then began performing a procedure. She told Thanh to push harder.

  “Please!” Thanh begged. “I can’t!”

  “Try harder,” May said. “Think of your baby. Come on …”

  Thanh bit her lip and called upon her last reserves of strength.

  Mai, who had followed her Aunt May to the house and was watching all this, suddenly got scared and ran outside. A few minutes later Mai heard the sound of a newborn crying and Aunt May’s voice telling Thanh to put a bandage around the baby’s belly button. It was already dawn and the rain had stopped.

  San began jumping up and down excitedly.

  “My daughter!” he cried. “She’s alive!”

  As she packed up her supplies, May began to cry. San noticed and felt immediately uncomfortable.

  “It’s okay,” Ba said, ushering San toward his wife and newborn child. “Let May cry. Go be with your wife and baby.”

  Under the silvery sky, the river looked white. It began to drizzle again. In the light early morning rain, May hobbled away toward the pier.

  * * *

  San eventually named the baby May.

  Ba shook her head. “It was terrifying! I’ve been a midwife for twenty years, and I have never seen such a difficult birth before.” To May she said, “You’re very talented. If we had taken her to the hospital, they would have cut her belly up into pieces.”

  A few days later, May returned to San’s house. She kissed the baby’s cute lips. Thanh was in tears.

  “My family is indebted to you forever,” she said to May.

  May gave Thanh some money as a gift for the newborn. When she refused to accept the gift, May explained, “This is for your daughter, not for you. Please take it.”

  San meanwhile stood quietly in the corner. Nobody knew exactly what he was thinking about.

  When Mai’s father heard about May delivering the baby, he didn’t try to hide his disapproval.

  “You do people a favor without thinking of the consequences,” he said. “You’re so naïve. What if they thought you were trying to get some kind of revenge? You could’ve ended up in a nasty fight or thrown in jail!”

  Ba, who had suppressed her bitterness and anger for a long time, suddenly burst out, “I’m glad you said that, because it only proves that you’re a hypocrite! Don’t try to hide the truth: you pretended to be sick so you could stay home in comfort and peace while your younger brother—my husband—had to join the military in your place!”

  Mai’s father seemed taken aback.

  “Please don’t say that,” he said to Ba. “He was your husband, but my own flesh-and-blood brother. Since his death, I’ve tried to take care of the family as best I can.”

  “Oh, bullshit!” Ba screamed. “In Party meetings you voted to approve the committee’s disciplinary decision on my case. You know perfectly well that Cun is your son. Here—take him and raise him as your own!”

  Although Ba had said this, she still clung to Cun as if she feared someone would actually try to take him away from her. She began to sob. “Son, I’m a terrible woman …”

  Mai’s father seemed shocked. “Ba must be crazy,” he said uncomfortably. Then he got on his motorbike and drove away.

  May went to comfort Ba. “All women suffer,” she said. “We just need to put up with this fate. We must find a way to show only the good and hide the bad.”

  “It’s all my fault,” Ba continued, still sobbing. “I’m not a good person.” She wiped away her tears only when she noticed Mai watching them.

  “Go away,” Ba said to Mai. “Children shouldn’t eavesdrop on adult conversations.”

  Mai sprinted home as if she were being chased by a ghost. She didn’t understand exactly what had just happened among Ba, May, and her father, but tears were running down her face. She felt angry with her father for acting so impulsively.

  She had a vivid memory of something that had happened a few days after Aunt May’s return. Grandpa wanted to give the family’s “The Country Is Grateful for Your Sacrifice” certificate back to the local authorities. While he was dusting the frame, Mai’s father had asked, “Will they also take back the war pension we’ve been getting?” Grandpa had gotten suddenly furious. He’d thrown the feather duster down on the ground, put the framed certificate in a bag, and headed right away for the community hall. Mai’s mother had cried.

  * * *

  March arrived in the village. Hibiscus flowers covered the path to the river. Grandpa had grown physically weak and begun to cough regularly. On the far side of the river were piles of construction materials. Mai’s father said, “They’re going to build a bridge over the river, and then there will be no need for boats to transport people across.”

  Mai felt suddenly sad as she realized Grandpa would have to give up his job. She knew he was getting older and weaker. She wondered to herself whom Aunt May would live with if Grandpa died.

  “Whatever you’re thinking about,” Mai’s father shouted, “I hope it doesn’t have to do with those construction workers. Stay away from the construction area. If you get a crush on one of them, you’ll get pregnant and bring us shame.”

  She didn’t understand why her father had such negative thoughts. It seemed like he was always skeptical of everyone and constantly on the alert, as if anticipating an attack.

  One day Mr. Ninh, the commander of the construction battalion, came to discuss logistics with Mai’s father, who was in charge of the local militia. They negotiated an agreement: Mai’s father would ask the militia to help secure the area around the river while the construction battalion cleared unexploded bombs from the water.

  “But you will be responsible for providing our militia members with something to eat,” Mai’s father insisted.

  They were talking inside the family’s house. Suddenly, Mr. Ninh noticed the photo of May hanging on the wall and seemed startled. He stared at the photo closely, as if he recognized the female soldier pictured in it wearing a combat helmet.

  “That’s my sister-in-law,” Mai’s father said. “They told us she had died shortly before the liberation of the South, but it turns out she survived.”

  Mr. Ninh blinked his eyes, stunned. Then he got up and left.

  The construction workers searched for bombs in the river all day. Their skin turned dark from being in the sun and mud. Mai’s classmates often teased them. One day, while Mai was at home studying, her mother came running into the house. She looked terrified.

  “You’re a sacred spirit …” her mother mumbled, as if in a daze.

  “What’s going on?” Mai’s father yelled. “Tell me, don’t just stand there crying!”

  “It’s Ba,” her mother started. “They said while she was out catching crabs she stepped on a cluster bomb.”

  Mai ran with her father to the river. A big crowd had gathered. They stepped aside to let Mai’s father through as he approached. Aunt May was sitting quietly next to Ba on the ground. May’s hair was untied, and her eyes looked soulless as they stared off into the distance. Ba was dead. Her body had been torn apart by bits of bomb shrapnel. Blood ran from her chest and limbs. A fishing net floated out on the water of the river.

  After Ba’s funeral, Mai’s father started to lose weight and look haggard. At night he would wander restlessly around the garden. One morning he said to May, “I know that Ba wanted you to take care of her son, Cun. I’m not sure if this is appropriate, but why don’t you let him live with me?”

  But May rejected this suggestion. “Let me raise him. We can discuss the details later.”

  “Okay,” Mai’s father said. “I appreciate that.”

  * * *

  The weather turned chilly at the end of autumn. In the gray sky, flocks of cranes flew in v-shaped formations to escape the coming cold of winter. People in the village started knitting sweaters. Grandpa now put on warm clothes when he went to the river pier. The construction workers had almost completed the bridge. They gossiped about how their project was almost over and the commander still hadn’t won May’s heart.

  By now the people in the village had heard the story: back in the Truong Son Mountains, May had lost her leg guarding a tunnel where a group of soldiers were recovering from malaria. Mr. Ninh had been one of those soldiers. He owed his life to May and her sacrifice. The construction workers knew that Mr. Ninh had walked up and down the length of the Chau riverbank looking for the Truong Son girl who had saved his life.

  “Maybe May will get married soon,” the villagers gossiped.

  May was living now with Cun in a new house near the river. She often sang lullabies at night to put him to sleep.

  Nobody knew exactly what had happened between May and Mr. Ninh. It was possible that the construction workers exaggerated the romance and turned it into a legend. But there was at least one undeniable truth: at night, if the workers didn’t hear May’s singing to Cun coming from the newly built house, they couldn’t fall asleep.

  * * *

  At night, the Chau River turned a silvery color. Nature seemed to be in perfect harmony. Millions of shining stars illuminated the sky and the ground. Exhausted, the villagers fell into a deep sleep. The air smelled of grass mixed with wet mud. The Chau River seemed restless—waves lapped against the shore.

  Through the night, one could hear May singing a lullaby to put Cun to sleep. Her sweet voice echoed across the river. The construction workers stopped welding and listened. Her voice was deep and melancholic and bitter. It touched their hearts. The singing flowed into the nocturnal sounds of the river and the smells of nature.

  13 / STORMS

  NGUYEN THI MAI PHUONG

  Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong was born in 1977 in Bac Giang in Northern Vietnam and is a member of the Bac Giang Province Association of Literature and Arts. She is the author of three collections of short fiction. Although she was born after the war, many of her short stories are about veterans in the postwar period, works inspired by the stories of her father and his friends who fought. “Storms” deals with one of the most insidious and persistent legacies of America’s involvement in Vietnam: dioxin poisoning. During the war, the U.S. military used chemical defoliants like Agent Orange to shear back thousands of acres of the jungle foliage that covers much of the Vietnamese countryside. The dioxins contained in the defoliant mixture are known to cause severe health problems in humans, including cancers and birth defects in the children of those exposed even decades earlier. An estimated three million Vietnamese have experienced health issues related to dioxin poisoning, and the cleanup of certain “hot spot” toxic zones continues to this day.

  * * *

  Her name was Hoa Binh, “Peace.” Her frail legs seemed to drag along the ground as she walked. Seventeen was usually an age associated with strength, an age when one was capable of snapping off the horn of a water buffalo. But Hoa Binh was thin and weak, like a cabbage leaf that had been left too long in boiling water. Her skin was pale and her nipples protruded underneath her shirt, physical traits that suggested she was still just a young girl.

  As for her face, the villagers said, “People with Down syndrome all look alike.” But Hoa Binh was not a person with Down syndrome. When she was born, she seemed normal like everyone else, but as she got older she became scrawny and frail. Fortunately her mind remained sharp. Although the village children laughed at her skinny bamboo-stalk legs under her silk pajama pants, she paid them no attention. She forced herself to get used to people’s judgmental stares and tried to forget the tormenting pain of her body.

  It was said that every family had one unlucky person who bore all the bad karma for everyone else.

  Hoa Binh eventually had learned to live with her constant discomfort and endless anxiety. But in the past few days she’d started to have the feeling that a new storm was approaching.

  One night, she dreamed that a group of villagers had tied her to a wattle tree at the entrance of the village and cut off her long, silky hair. She screamed as chunks of her hair fell to the ground. When she woke up she had an anxious feeling that something horrible was about to happen. It made her feel extremely sad, like the time she’d tried to catch a praying mantis that was running along the window sill but had stumbled over her stalklike legs and fallen down. Her father eventually had come over and silently picked her up off the ground.

  Everything would be okay, Hoa Binh thought, as long as her younger siblings remained healthy. Every morning she got up early and sat by her brother, Tu Do, and her sister, Hanh Phuc, as they slept. She wanted to make sure their legs were still normal. They were only in fifth and ninth grade; there was still a long way ahead, and who knew what would happen? Hoa Binh herself had dropped out of school after eighth grade because of her physical problems and because she wanted to help her mother, a woman who masked her innermost emotions with endless household chores.

  Hoa Binh’s father was a fastidious and cranky man. For work, he biked around the village delivering letters. He seemed unable to get over his memories of the war. He still heard artillery fire during meals and while he slept. He was suspicious and exacting in everything he did, as if he were still psychologically preparing to fight the enemy. The neighbors called him Crazy Trong. He was obsessively punctual. Whenever his wife complained about this he would yell, “If you acted like that in battle, the enemy would blow your brains out! In order to enjoy what we have today, we need to be disciplined and stick to a strict schedule.”

  Trong had once told the whole family about a terrible bombing he’d experienced back in Quang Tri. His company was marching through a stretch of mountains where B-52 bombs already had annihilated the platoon that had marched there just minutes earlier. The bombs were so destructive that they didn’t even leave a trace of blood. Only flesh and bones stuck to the scorched mountain foliage. Trong was twenty years old back then. When the bombing and shooting started up again, he had jumped into a hole to take cover. Then he had a premonition that this spot wasn’t safe, so he moved. A different soldier immediately took his place in the hole. And then, in the blink of an eye, Trong watched this soldier’s young body turn to dirt.

  Trong had never forgotten the feelings he’d experienced in that moment. They came back to him especially the day he was forced to bury his child in a sprawling cemetery outside of the village. Nobody in Hoa Binh’s family had ever forgotten this particular stormy day. Hoa Binh’s mother had given birth to another daughter after the birth of her little brother, Tu Do. Her father was delighted with the new baby girl and cooked all kinds of wonderful dishes for the family to celebrate.

  Hoa Binh liked to touch her little sister’s hands because they were so delicate. But as the days went by, the baby’s skin started to turn yellow and her body became emaciated. Hoa Binh’s mother carried the baby out into the yard. The sky was full of dark storm clouds and the wind blew violently, stirring up hordes of mosquitoes. Her mother held the baby in her arms and prayed desperately up at the stormy sky. The baby died, shriveled like a dry leaf in her mother’s arms. Outside in the yard, Trong sat motionless, holding his chest. Two trails of tears rolled silently down his cheeks. Hoa Binh didn’t know what to do. She cried and lit an oil lamp, thinking that the light might somehow help. Her mother’s hands were trembling as she asked Uncle Ut to take the baby out to the rice paddies.

  Uncle Ut said, “I don’t think Trong is going anywhere. Even though it’s so windy and dark, he’s just sitting there like a rock.”

  The war had ended years earlier and Trong had named his daughter Hoa Binh, “Peace,” but it seemed that peace continued to elude this family.

  The day Hoa Binh and her father had gone to the hospital for her health check, Trong was speechless as he held the results in his hands. Hoa Binh sat uneasily on the back of the bicycle and listened to her father’s breathing under his sweaty shirt. On the way home they stopped at a bookstore where Trong bought a book called Never Give Up. During the war he had lived in the woods under constant bombardment and gunfire; his hair and beard had grown long, his body was soaked in mud, and he’d survived on wild vegetables and creek water. But he had not felt as miserable as he did now.

  Back then Trong had been enthusiastic about joining the military. “Our singing drowns out the sounds of bombing!” people chanted. “The road to the battlefield is very beautiful this season!” There was a general excitement about joining the war effort. If people didn’t join, they would feel isolated, like an outsider. So Trong didn’t hesitate about signing up himself. It was only later, when he was stationed deep in the jungle and woke up one morning to see the soldier sleeping next to him completely covered by a giant swarm of termites, that Trong truly understood the cruelty of life.

  Trong’s mother assumed he’d died out there in the jungle. She was observing his death anniversary, in fact, the day he finally returned to his hometown. He carried his soldier’s rucksack on his back and cried out, “Mom, I’m alive!” Relatives and neighbors gathered at the house, laughing and talking cheerfully. Once she had finished sobbing, his old mother said, “The war is over and you are a hero because you have returned home alive and still strong. If you were dead, there would be nothing left for us to say.…”

  Trong’s unit had wanted to award him the title of hero officially, but he’d refused this recognition. Now he felt that he had only really acted honorably back then, during the war—his life since had been full of deception and nasty tricks. Maybe it was an act of bravery that he continued to have children after Hoa Binh. Thankfully, his son, Tu Do, and daughter Hanh Phuc grew up and developed like other normal children. Still, though they didn’t say it out loud, Trong and his wife were anxious on a daily basis.

  In her pocket calendar, Hoa Binh marked her siblings’ birthdays so she would remember those days. In the morning of their birthday she would get up early and go to the market to buy black beans for a sweet bean soup. For their birthday parties, she peeled and sliced mangoes and pomelos. Tu Do and Hanh Phuc would climb over Hoa Binh’s legs and laugh. Hoa Binh shook her billowy silk pants to tease them. Watching this scene, Trong’s face would cheer up and he’d actually smile, a smile that seemed to come from someplace very far away but made everyone happy.