Fear, cold as ice, slid down Trang’s spine. Tina had chosen Quỳnh and her as enemies. But why?

  The mustached man kept drinking, the bartender refilling his glass whenever it was empty. Once Trang had finished three Sài Gòn Teas, he stood up, pulled her to his solid chest, and said something that sounded so tender she wished she could understand it. Then he pushed a bill into her palm.

  A red one-dollar note. It wasn’t a real American dollar, but a Military Payment Certificate. Trang’s father had shown it to her, explaining that American soldiers got paid in MPC and used it for currency. Trang would need to figure out how to change the note into Vietnamese đồng before it expired. She smiled up at the man. “Cám ơn ông.” She thanked him, calling him Sir. Given their age difference, she should address him as “Uncle” and call herself “Niece,” but perhaps not when she was trying to flirt with him.

  As she watched the man stagger toward the door, the bartender tapped on her shoulder. “Keep this safe.” He gave her a copy of the bill the man had paid. “Give it to Madam by the end of the night.”

  She studied it. “But why four Sài Gòn Tea? I only drank three.”

  “Shh.” He winked and rushed to another customer.

  A smile blossomed onto Trang’s lips. She loved the fact that her countrymen found different ways to make money out of Americans. Americans were so rich anyway, a little cheating wouldn’t bring them any harm.

  A hand caressed her neck. A tall, white man bent down, his bloodshot eyes staring straight into hers. “Chào em. Em vui không?” His Vietnamese was pretty good.

  “Chào anh,” she returned his greeting, but didn’t answer his question whether she was happy. How could she ever find happiness here? If she had a choice, she’d rather be back in her field, nursing rice seedlings into young plants, spreading a carpet of green onto the barren soil, then, in a few months, harvesting golden seeds packed with the sweet blessings of Mother Earth. As a farmer, she was a creator, an artist.

  But she’d been given no choice. She pushed the dollar bill deep into her skirt pocket, then held on to it. She’d send this, all of this, home.

  The man leaned closer. “Em đệp qua.” His accents were slightly wrong. As she was about to answer that she wasn’t beautiful, he leaned closer, his breath pungent with tobacco and liquor. “You cherry girl?” he asked in Vietnamese.

  “What?” she moved away from him.

  “Want some private time, just you and me?” He winked.

  She walked away, wanting to look for Quỳnh.

  “Shouldn’t you be entertaining him?” The tiger madam blocked her way, frowning at her.

  Trang tilted her chin toward the man. “He’s scaring me, Madam.”

  “No need to be afraid of me, darling.” The man reached for her hand, but she stepped back.

  “Now, don’t you be silly.” The tiger madam waved a finger at Trang. “This nice young man just wants to talk to you.”

  “Talk? But he’s suggested a private time.”

  “And what’s wrong with that? You don’t even need to go far.” The woman smiled but her eyes were cold. “We have private rooms at the back of the bar.”

  A Flash of Hope

  Hồ Chí Minh City, 2016

  Outside the American Consulate, the sunlight felt like a blazing fire. Phong walked to the shadow of a tree, but at the sight of two policemen standing guard on the pavement, he quickened his footsteps.

  Bình, Tài, and Diễm were behind him. Their sobs were as quiet as soft rain but ravaged him like a storm.

  “Đồ vô dụng,” Phong scorned himself as useless for disappointing his family.

  He headed for the bus station. They had several buses to catch. If they were lucky, they’d be home before midnight. On the spacious Lê Duẩn Boulevard, cars and motorbikes raced past, horns beeping. They crossed the street in the direction of towering buildings, so tall Phong felt as small as an ant.

  “That arrogant woman in the consulate ruined our chance,” Bình said. “If she’d let me come into the interview . . .”

  “Then you’d have gotten us the visa? Are you saying you could’ve done better than me?” Phong sensed the blame in his wife’s voice and felt terrible. He wished she would console him, tell him they’d be fine eventually. She had known about his troubles with visa applications and should understand how difficult this was for him.

  “I told you how important this was, yet you didn’t prepare enough—”

  “Hey, how did it go?” Quang the visa agent shouted from across the road. He navigated the traffic, scurrying toward them, a cigarette between his lips. “Did you get the visa?”

  Phong dropped the folder of documents. He gripped Quang’s collar. “You told me there would be no problem. You took twelve million đồng from us. That’s nearly six hundred American dollars.”

  “Don’t.” Bình tore him away from Quang.

  “Calm the hell down.” Quang spat out the cigarette. “You want them to see you start a fight?” He gestured toward the policemen.

  Phong clenched his fists. “I want my money back. At least half of it.”

  “Are you fucking stupid? Don’t you fucking know how difficult it was for me to get an interview for you? They wouldn’t have seen you without my help. No refund. Now go home. Once you’ve saved enough money, call me. We can put together another application. We’ll try again.”

  “You rotten rat. I’ll tell the Americans how you cheated me.”

  “Go on. Do it then.” Quang ground the words between his teeth. “I can promise you this much: bring me any trouble and you’ll never be able to set foot on American soil.”

  “Don’t you dare threaten us.” Tài stepped in between the men. He glared at Quang. “Like my father said, return us half the money!”

  “I won’t return shit!” Quang spit out his words and walked away.

  Bình and Diễm squatted down, gathering their papers. Phong’s hands trembled with fury. Quang had taken all of their money. Worse, the man had planted ideas into his head, that a better life was waiting for him and his family.

  “You okay, Ba?” Tài reached for his shoulder. “I would’ve kicked that crook’s ass if it wasn’t for them.” He eyed the policemen.

  “I shouldn’t have lost my temper.” Phong shook his head. His experiences had taught him that street fights would almost always make matters worse. “You shouldn’t be like me, Son.”

  “I’m proud you stood up against that cheater, Ba. Otherwise people like him would keep bullying us.”

  Tài reminded Phong that there were too many nasty people out there. Just last week at the market, Phong had seen a Vietnamese woman dressed in high heels and a silk dress kick a Khmer street vendor’s baskets, sending her vegetables tumbling across the muddy ground. While Phong told the woman off and she yelled back at him, the seller had just bent her head, frantically collecting her water spinach, cucumbers, and tomatoes. She hadn’t responded to the Vietnamese woman’s accusations that she’d blocked the pathway. In their hometown, too many Khmer were looked down upon because of their darker skin. Having fair skin elevated one’s position in Vietnamese society as it signified education and money; the rich and educated didn’t have to labor under the sun. Phong understood the frustration of his Khmer friends; they’d told him many tales about the Khmer Empire, which was once prosperous and had encompassed many parts of the Mekong Delta, parts that were taken over by the Vietnamese several centuries ago.

  They walked. Phong eyed the long road ahead, his feet heavy, his throat dry, his head aching.

  “Nghỉ uống nước chú ơi,” from the pavement, a woman called out to him. She was standing next to a steel cart that displayed fresh coconuts and different types of drinks.

  “Do you have iced tea, Auntie?” Bình asked the seller.

  “Yes, only two thousand đồng per glass.”

  “Let’s take a break, anh,” Bình called out to Phong.

  Phong sat down on a low plastic chair next to his wife and children.

  “Two glasses, please, Auntie,” Bình said. “That’s four thousand đồng, right?”

  “Yeah, as cheap as water ferns.”

  Bình took out her wallet and paid for the tea. She was the one who saved every penny they earned. Phong didn’t remember the last time his wife bought herself new clothes or makeup. If he got to go to America, he’d use his first monthly allowance to buy a good facial cream for Bình, a cream that would soothe the sunburn on her cheeks.

  The seller took an ice block from her styrofoam cooler and shattered it with a piece of flat metal. Under her conical hat, her crooked smile revealed several missing teeth. Freckles dotted her wrinkled cheeks. She must have been around sixty-five years old. Old enough to be Phong’s mother. Did his mother ever come back to the orphanage to try and find him? Could this woman be his mother?

  “You aren’t from here, are you?” The woman asked, dropping pieces of ice into two large glasses. Phong hoped for some light of recognition in her gaze, but she didn’t even look twice at him.

  “We’re from Bạc Liêu.” Bình fanned herself with a hat she’d taken out of their backpack.

  “Ah, the legend of the Bạc Liêu Prince, I remember . . . Was he so rich that when a girlfriend dropped a coin, he burnt ten banknotes to light the dark to look for it?” The woman laughed, pouring tea into the glasses.

  “Yes, he did many stupid things like that,” Tài said.

  “Extravagant spending and his family has almost nothing now.” Diễm stole glances at the pack of peanut candies the seller had placed on the small table in front of them. “His mansion now belongs to the government. And one of his sons had to work as a cyclo driver to earn a living.”

  “Oh dear. But that’s life. Đời là lên voi xuống chó.”

  Phong nodded at the wisdom of the proverb. Life is riding high on an elephant, then low on a dog.

  Bình and Diễm reached out for the full glasses. They drank.

  The woman wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “The man you were arguing with, he promised to help get you to America?” she asked Phong.

  “You know him, Auntie?”

  “Everyone around here does.” The woman shook her head. “Don’t trust him. He makes money from mixed-race people like you, especially those from the countryside.”

  “He charged us twelve million đồng.” Bình sighed. “And the Americans . . . they just said no to our visa application.”

  “Trời đất ơi! You should have applied by yourself. You didn’t need an intermediary. But . . . to be honest, it’s very difficult to get to America now without an outsider’s help.”

  “Outsiders?” Phong was sure the woman was talking about some other type of agents, people who’d charge much more than Quang.

  “Well . . . there’re American men who come back looking for their children. They might be able to help you.”

  Phong put down the tea. “Men who were here during the war?”

  “Yes . . . they were young boys then. They’re old now.”

  “They’re coming back?” Tài and Diễm asked in one voice.

  “A few of them are. Very few.” The woman lit a cigarette and inhaled. Phong studied her through the shifting layers of smoke. Women didn’t usually smoke.

  Bình gripped Phong’s hand. “Anh Phong, your father might be back looking for you.”

  Phong swallowed. As he grew older, his wish to know his father didn’t fade, it intensified. He stared at the glass of tea in his hand. His identity was as murky as the drink. He didn’t even know whether his mother had registered a birth certificate for him and what name she’d given him. If he found her, would she tell him the truth about his father? Would she explain the real reasons she’d abandoned him? When Bình decided to marry him, her father had said, “Phong’s mother must be a prostitute and his father a killer, why marry him? Family members relate if not in feathers then in wings.”

  He had to find his parents, to prove his father-in-law wrong, so that Bình would be accepted into her family again.

  The drink seller fanned herself with her conical hat. “Now, now . . . I didn’t mean to give you hope. As I said, very few American veterans are coming back to look for their lost families. It’s a recent thing. I think these veterans . . . they’re getting old. They have regrets and want to fix their past mistakes.”

  “You met them, Auntie?” Bình asked.

  “Don’t you read the papers?” With the cigarette in her mouth, the woman combed through a stack of papers at the lower level of her cart, pulled out a page from a newspaper, giving it to Bình. “See it for yourself.”

  Phong leaned over. Avoiding the written words, his eyes stayed fixed on a picture; so faded, it must have been taken a long time ago. A white man, dressed in a military uniform, and a Vietnamese woman, dressed in an áo dài, beamed up at him. They looked young and as glamourous as movie stars.

  “The man is searching for his lady friend,” Bình said. “It’s an advertisement.”

  “Yes . . . American veterans, if they really want to find their ex-girlfriends or the children they’d had with those girlfriends, they place notices on newspapers and TVs,” the drink seller said, blowing smoke from her nose.

  Phong smacked his palm against his forehead. He couldn’t afford to buy newspapers regularly and had no TV. Still, he should have known. His father could have been back looking for his mother and him.

  “The advertisement, what does it say?” he asked his wife.

  Bình smiled in embarrassment. She gave the newspaper to their son. “Tài, you read it. I have no idea how to pronounce those foreign words.”

  “Sure.” Tài sat up, clearing his throat. “Tôm Sờ-Mít looks for his lady friend Lan Lan. Lan Lan used to work at Nguyễn Văn Thoại Street. Tôm Sờ-Mít met Lan Lan in 1972 when he was a mechanic at Tân Sơn Nhứt Airbase. Anyone with news about Lan Lan, please call Mr. Thiên.” Tài continued by reading a mobile number.

  Phong looked at Tài, expecting to hear more, but Tài had put the paper down. “That’s it?” Phong asked.

  “Yes, Ba.”

  “It’s expensive to place such a notice so one needs to be brief,” the drink seller said. “Trà đá, thuốc lá, chú ơi,” she called out to a man who stopped to buy a couple of loose cigarettes from her.

  Phong studied the picture. He saw joy and love in the couple’s eyes. He hoped they would be united with each other soon.

  He turned to his son. “Tài . . . tell me the contact number printed in this ad again.” The drink seller had said returning Americans might be able to help. Phong had to talk to Tom Smith, whose name, when pronounced by Tài, sounded like Tôm Sờ-Mít, which was memorable, as it meant “a shrimp touches a jackfruit.”

  “I can tell you,” said Diễm, picking up the paper, reading Mr. Thiên’s number aloud.

  Thiên meant “Heaven,” and perhaps Heaven was sending Phong light. Phong repeated the phone number, memorizing it. His family often praised Phong for how good he was with numbers. He could memorize and calculate in his head as smoothly as a silkworm could thread silk.

  “This drink seller . . . she knows a lot,” Bình whispered. “Let’s stay and talk to her.”

  Phong nodded and wrapped his arm around Bình’s shoulder, appreciating how determined she was. She always knew how to pick herself and their family up whenever they were let down. He pulled his kids into his other arm. When the ground seemed to have crumbled under him, Tài and Diễm reminded him that they were his strength.

  Phong paid for three peanut candies and gave them to his wife and children. He gestured at the newspaper. “Why do you think the American man is looking for his lady friend, Auntie?”

  The drink seller extinguished her cigarette. “They must have had a child together. I’m quite sure Lan Lan was a bar girl. . . . Nguyễn Văn Thoại, that’s the old name of the current Lý Thường Kiệt Street. There were lots of bars there, serving American soldiers during the war.”

  Phong studied the woman in the photo. He’d been wrong about her, but her face looked pure and innocent. “What do you think about the chance of him finding her?”

  “Hmm, it’s been more than forty years. The woman might be dead. Or she has a family and doesn’t want to be contacted. And Lan Lan, you know anyone by that name?”

  Phong shook his head.

  “Exactly. Lan Lan doesn’t sound right. Perhaps Mai Lan, or Thanh Lan? It’s been so long that the American can’t even remember.”

  After they finished their tea, Phong walked a short distance with his wife and children then told them to go home first. He needed to have his DNA test done. The drink seller had given him the business card of a Mr. Lương, saying that the man provided free tests, thanks to the help of Amerasians in the U.S.

  “I want to stay!” Diễm said, her eyes fixed on a clothing store across the street.

  “I want to know how they do this test on you. It’s so exciting!” Tài insisted.

  “You can’t miss another day of school.” Bình shook her head.

  “Your mother is right, Phong said. “Your exams are coming up. You’re very smart, but you’ve still got to study.” Phong looked at Diễm, whose eyes were brightened with curiosity, and Tài, whose face was filled with resolve, and felt pride gushing through his body. While he couldn’t finish grade one, Tài was in eighth grade and Diễm in sixth. He would do everything he could to ensure that they finished high school, and perhaps even enter university.

  Bình pulled Phong away from the children so they could talk privately. “You really want to stay a couple of days, anh?” she asked.

  “The drink seller said we need help from outsiders, I have to find them.” Phong didn’t tell Bình, but after the DNA test, he’d go back to the consulate and get some money back from Quang the visa agent. There was no way that crook could walk away like that. And he’d like to talk to the drink seller again. After she’d told him about the DNA test, a group of youngsters had arrived, ordering fresh coconuts and chattering noisily.