“Today is my grandmother’s sixth death anniversary,” Thanh said. “My mother is out shopping. You should see how many dishes she’ll be making. . . . But we’ll need plenty of food. Many of our relatives will visit us tonight.”

  Dan recalled how Kim had cooked and prayed to her grandparents on their death anniversaries. She’d believed that the dead could return to enjoy the food, and that incense smoke could help the living communicate with those who’d passed away. Dan wished he could believe in it, too.

  “Meet my father.” Thanh led them toward a man who sat in an armchair in the living room. Thanh bent down, telling the man something in Vietnamese.

  The man looked up, his eyes blank. As they shook hands, Dan studied the man’s haggard face. Was he in pain? He sat with his back hunched, his feet on the armchair, his knees against his chest.

  “How are you doing today?” Dan asked. Thanh translated, and the man’s face lifted. His smile was as timid as a child’s.

  “Nice to meet you,” Linda said and the man gave her the same facial expression.

  “What happened to him?” Thiên whispered as they sat on low chairs around an equally low table on the other side of the living room, near the altar. Thanh had opened a window and a cicada chorus streamed in, punctured by the chirping of birds.

  “He lost his memory a few years ago, Uncle. I think the English word is ‘Alzheimer’s’?” Thanh turned on the standing electric fan and a breeze rushed to Dan, easing the heat that had clung to him like a tight shirt.

  “Yes, Alzheimer’s . . . I’m so sorry,” Linda said.

  “He doesn’t know who I am, nor my mother.” Thanh sighed, and the pain in the young man’s words cut into Dan, deep in his gut. Dan had witnessed such pain when he came along with Bill and Doug to visit Bill’s mother, who had been living in a care facility and also suffered from Alzheimer’s. Every time Bill visited his mom, he would bring along a photo album of their family to remind her of the life she’d had, of the children and the husband who loved her.

  Dan turned and gazed at Thanh’s father, who was sitting there, silent, as if frozen in time. He wished he could tell the man about his wonderful son, who’d bestowed kindness to strangers and brought them home.

  On the table was a bamboo tray holding a blue and white ceramic tea pot surrounded by matching cups. Thanh poured some dried tea into the pot. “My father doesn’t remember anything from his past, except for one thing.” Thanh shook his head. “His walk through Trường Sơn Jungle during the war.”

  “You mean he was a Northern Communist soldier?” Thiên asked.

  “Yes, Uncle . . . He fought in some major battles. Quảng Trị, for example. We’re lucky he survived.”

  Dan exchanged looks with Thiên. Quảng Trị was the blood-soaked province where Thiên had commanded his troops, where Dan’s comrades had released countless bullets, rockets, and bombs to clear the way for him to pick up the dead and the injured.

  How would the man react if he knew his former enemies were visiting his home?

  “What’s your father’s name?” Dan asked Thanh, desperate to get to know the older man as a person.

  “Nguyễn Văn Khoa.”

  Thiên filled a glass with water and brought it to Nguyễn Văn Khoa. He knelt down so they were both at the same level; he talked to Thanh’s father, his voice gentle, as if speaking to a dear friend.

  “I’m sorry . . . about what your father had to go through,” Linda told Thanh. “How long was he in the army?”

  “Eight years.” Thanh poured steaming water from a large thermos into the teacups and rinsed them; slender white strands of steam whispered up his hands. “My grandma had already set up an altar for him, crying every day for her dead son. And then he came back.”

  “Your grandma believed he was dead? Why?” Linda asked.

  Dan looked up at the portrait of the elderly woman on the altar. She wore a black áo dài and a calm smile. He thought about the vicious memories snarling beneath that serene demeanor. He thought about his mother.

  “It was terrible, really . . .” Thanh poured tea into the cups. “Her neighbor listened in secret to a Southern radio, which often broadcast a list of Northern soldiers killed. One day, they read my father’s name, his home village, and date of birth. My grandma hadn’t heard from my father for a long time, so she believed it was true. Later, once he returned, my father said the radio must have gotten the list from a former comrade in his unit who had deserted and joined the other side.”

  Dan shook his head. There’d been a psychological war going on with dueling radio broadcasts. During his time in Sài Gòn, he’d sometimes listened to broadcasts from North Việt Nam, read by a woman called Hà Nội Hannah. She always brought the most terrible news about the war, announcing American units that had supposedly been wiped out, encouraging American servicemen to defect. It had been difficult to know what was true. When Hà Nội Hannah said that the American Army had massacred hundreds of civilians in a hamlet in Central Việt Nam, he’d thought it was all exaggeration and propaganda. But upon his return to Seattle, he read about the horrors of Mỹ Lai, which were confirmed by the Mỹ Lai court-martials.

  “The ironic thing is,” Thanh’s eyes were distant, “during his years as a soldier, my father used to listen to a Southern radio channel. It was forbidden, but he did it because the radio aired classical music just after midnight. He would lie there in complete darkness on his hammock in the jungle or in an underground shelter, his small portable radio pressed against his ear while his comrades were sound asleep. The music saved him.”

  The teacup radiated its fragrance in Dan’s hands. He stood up and walked toward Nguyễn Văn Khoa, a man he and his comrades would once have called a gook, a dink, a slope. They’d used such names not just on a man like him, but on many Vietnamese, even the ones fighting on their same side, like Thiên.

  Dan blew on the tea to make sure it had cooled down before giving it to Nguyễn Văn Khoa. The man received the tea, took a sip, and put it on a chair next to him.

  “Your wonderful son made it. It’s good, isn’t it?” Dan said, and Thiên translated.

  The man looked out of the window. Only silence was in his gaze.

  “I tried but couldn’t get him to talk,” Thiên said.

  Back at their table, Thanh poured more tea for everyone. “He was the best father,” he said. “He built this house with his own hands, but now it’s hard to get him to do anything. . . . I really miss him. When he came home from the war, you know what he brought along from the South? Books. He said he’d seen people burning them and he stole some.”

  “Books were burned? When and why?” Dan asked.

  “After the war,” said Thiên, “the new government said certain books were evil. So all types of books, deemed to be ‘đồi trụy và phản động’—‘decadent and anti-Communist’—were destroyed. Books written by writers in the South, translated books . . .”

  “That’s terrible,” Dan said. For a reader like him, burning books was an incomprehensible act, and most people who didn’t even read would fight for the right to open any book they chose. Those in power feared free minds, and nothing unlocked thinking like literature.

  “Where were you during the war, Uncle? Did you have to fight?” Thanh asked Thiên .

  “I was with the ARVN. Your father and I . . . we could have killed each other.” Thiên rubbed his scar.

  Linda had stood up to take a group photo, but she sat down as she heard this.

  “Does it still hurt, Uncle?” Thanh said.

  “Nah, but it painful here still.” Thiên put his hand on his heart.

  Thanh shook his head. “What the poet Nguyễn Duy wrote is so true. At the end of each war, whoever wins, the people lose. Even though my father has Alzheimer’s, he can’t get rid of the war. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming.”

  “Has he been able to receive any kind of counseling? He could be suffering from PTSD,” Linda said and Dan studied Nguyễn Văn Khoa, wishing he could do something for the man.

  “I haven’t found anyone who could help him,” Thanh replied. “I read plenty of research in the U.S. about PTSD and trauma, but little research has been done here, nor do people pay much attention to mental health. My father is suffering from trauma, this I’m sure of. He can’t be in a room with a ceiling fan for example. The fan’s spinning blades would terrorize him and remind him of American helicopters.”

  A shock jolted through Dan’s body; he had lost faith in God but he now felt God had led him here, to this conversation. “What did your father tell you about helicopters?” he asked.

  “He said helicopters were his worst enemy, that there were so many of them. They appeared out of nowhere, any time, day or night. They dropped soldiers to hunt him and his comrades down. Twice, he was chased by helicopters that tried to shoot him . . .”

  Dan looked at Nguyễn Văn Khoa. Had the man once been under the blades of Dan’s chopper? Had the man tried to shoot up at him?

  Dan turned to Thanh. He didn’t want to reveal his past, but he owed it to this young man who had shown him nothing but kindness and honesty. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Your father, I . . . it was unlikely we were in the same battle, but I was a helicopter pilot here in 1969. I was stationed at Tan Son Nhut.”

  Thanh’s jaw dropped. “You flew helicopters?”

  “My husband’s task was to rescue injured soldiers.” Linda interjected. “He didn’t fly helicopters that shot people.”

  The children were laid out in a row, as if lined up to go to class, surrounded by the brown earth, stained with red blood. What could he say to Thanh? He and his crew hadn’t slept for over two days, flying mission after mission, adrenaline screaming in their veins. The land below tried to kill them. Not soldiers, not VC, not AK 47s or recoilless rockets or Quad 50 machine guns, but the land itself. The endless green of it. That morning they had watched it spit up green tracers that raked another helicopter. The Huey, filled with troops, burst into flames, fireballing into a jungle-thick hill. The day before, another chopper had gone down, caught in an American artillery barrage someone hadn’t called off in time. He could still see the scratches in the metal of the 155-millimeter shell a split-second before it slammed into and obliterated the chopper.

  It made no sense. The reasons they were there. The reasons for them to fly, their eyelids held open as if by invisible wires piercing their skin. “Gooks,” his gunner had said. “If they’re dead, they’re VC. No sweat, GI.”

  Would that serve as apology enough to Thanh? To Kim? To the children he had helped murder? To the child he had left here?

  “I’m really sorry about what happened to your father,” Linda told Thanh. “The war ruined too many Vietnamese lives, Cambodians, Laotians, and Americans, too. My husband still wakes up screaming sometimes. You may not believe what I am saying”—her voice was filled with tears—“we’re here to offer our apologies, and to make amends.”

  Thanh wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Then I have to do something, for all of us.” He hurried to the altar, ignited a match, lit sticks of incense, and raised the smoldering incense high. Dan stood up, his head bent; he prayed for innocent lives lost, for bleeding wounds to heal, for those who had been wronged to be able to forgive. When he opened his eyes, Thanh had led Nguyễn Văn Khoa to the table. Once the elderly man had sat down, Thanh reached for Thiên and Dan’s hands, putting them on top of his father’s. Thanh spoke in Vietnamese, in long sentences that sounded like prayers. Nguyễn Văn Khoa began to tremble. Thiên, too. Dan’s body started to shake; he sensed he had been allowed to live just so that he could witness this moment when a child of war brought former enemies together. The spicy-sweet smell of incense embraced them, and Dan felt so many other dead and wounded Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese gathering around them. His crew members Ed, Neil, and Reggie were there, along with the children they’d killed. All were holding hands, praying for each other, praying for peace.

  Linda sat next to Dan on a stone bench in the garden, under the shade of trees. Birds chirped above their heads and butterflies flittered on a branch of yellow flowers close by. Inside the house, Thiên and Thanh were deep in conversation.

  “Isn’t Thanh incredible?” Linda said.

  Dan nodded. He’d written down Thanh’s email and phone number, with a promise that he would arrange for Dr. Hoh to talk to him.

  “When Thanh prayed, I joined him too.” Linda looked up to a green canopy, as if searching for answers. “I found myself thinking about Phong and his family. . . . Thanh and Phong . . .they’ve both inherited our horrible war. Remember what I told Thanh in there? That we’re here to make amends. I must honor those words.”

  Dan was on the edge of tears. He shook his head against it.

  “What is it?” Linda asked.

  “All of it. This place. I’m not sure, but I think it’s near the site where my helicopter went down . . .”

  “Where you got injured?”

  He nodded. He hadn’t wanted to tell his mother about the crash, but the army had notified her when he was in the hospital, so of course Linda knew.

  “Are you ready to talk about what really happened? It may help,” Linda said.

  He kissed her hair. He’d put up tall walls between himself and Linda. He needed to break them down.

  She placed her hand on his.

  He stared at their hands, covered by age spots. He wasn’t sure how many years they still had with each other, holding hands like this. He took a deep breath.

  “It was October twelfth, 1969,” he said. “That afternoon, my crew and I were tasked to pick up a Long Range Reconnaissance Team, or LURP as we called it. They’d radioed us the location and said everything was clear.” He focused his eyes on the rice plants beyond them. “I approached the landing zone, not knowing that it was surrounded by a large number of VC.”

  Linda gripped his hand.

  “I almost made it when all hell broke loose. While our men were being butchered on the ground, my helicopter was hit by AK-47 rounds. Mortars and rockets exploded all around us. If one of those had struck the Huey, we’d have been destroyed. The LZ was so narrow, the trees so tall, I wasn’t able to lift the helicopter up quickly. And it was raining so hard . . .” He closed his eyes. He hadn’t been at his best that day. Kim and he had had a terrible fight the previous night about something trivial. He’d thrown his bottle of beer at her, hitting her head. He’d left to go back to Tân Sơn Nhứt without making up with her and ended up tossing and turning the whole night.

  “Then?” Linda looked at him.

  “Both my gunner and crew chief were killed almost instantly. My copilot called for air support as I tried to get us out of there. I thought we’d make it back to the base but our engine had taken such bad hits, we crashed shortly after. I don’t remember how we went down, just that when I came to, my copilot . . . he was dead too.” He couldn’t tell her that Reggie McNair had been trapped in his seat with a tree branch piercing his chest.

  Linda clasped her palms against her mouth.

  “All these years, I’ve wondered why I deserved to live. It was me . . . I was responsible . . .”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s not!” She whispered. “Don’t think about the people who died, think about those you rescued, please . . . Remember David who visited us the year after your return? He told me you risked your life to save his. And Tom, who still sends you a card every Christmas.”

  He loved Linda for trying to save him, for being here, for listening. In telling her about the crash, he’d hoped to lift the weight off himself. But it was still there, still contained in what he couldn’t bring himself to tell her: the school children he had helped slaughter—there was no other word—two weeks to the day the men he mourned crashed and burned. Maybe it was not his fault. Maybe it was what Kim would call his karma.

  The weight of those dead children. The weight of the child he had abandoned.

  How to Be a Mother

  Sài Gòn–Hóc Môn, 1970

  Trang paced back and forth in the room she shared with Quỳnh and two other girls, her hands on her eight-and-a-half-month swollen stomach. Her brown bag of clothes sat on her bed. She hadn’t packed any of her books, which piled up next to her pillow. She’d spent a lot of money on them and what a waste. It was their fault she had allowed herself to daydream, to believe romance existed, to be convinced that women could overcome anything life threw at them. They were the reason she saw life in color, when she should have seen it in black-and-white all along.

  How stupid of her to have fallen for Dan. Without him, she and Quỳnh would’ve been able to pay their parents’ debts and save enough for their future by now. Dan and this baby were the worst mistakes of her life. She should have listened to Quỳnh and gotten rid of the baby. Buddha would have understood and forgiven her.

  Their two roommates, Đông and Nguyệt, were sitting on the other bed, playing cards. They worked at Paradise, a bar where Trang and Quỳnh found a job after the Hollywood had been closed down during one of the government’s anti-prostitution campaigns. Trang liked Paradise better even though it didn’t pay as much: it didn’t have a back room.

  Quỳnh had gone out to borrow a motorbike to take Trang to the house of Đông’s cousin in Hóc Môn, around forty minutes away, where Trang would give birth and hand over the child to a nearby orphanage.

  Trang looked toward the window of the room she was in. It was on the third floor and the wooden panels were shut, but Sài Gòn’s noise still squeezed in. A mother was scolding her daughter, the bells of cyclos jingled down the street, and a peddler called “Who’d like to buy some steamed cassava?” The distinctly raspy, nasal voice of Khánh Ly singing “Cát Bụi” by Trịnh Công Sơn issued from a radio: “Hạt bụi nào hóa kiếp thân tôi, để một mai tôi về làm cát bụi.”