“What condition?” Dan leaned his whole body forward, as if his life depended on her answer.

  “Thịnh said he would agree for his wife to bring Hoa home if I gave them, only them, the right to be Hoa’s parents, that I would not try to take Hoa back, that I would never contact them again. He said he wouldn’t want to see his wife fall in love with Hoa, only to have Hoa taken away from her.”

  Dan covered his face with his hands, as if not wanting Quỳnh to read his feelings. She wouldn’t be surprised if he resented her, or even hated her. But it was he who had abandoned Hoa first.

  She had agreed easily to Thịnh’s request. She blamed Hoa for Trang’s death. She had wanted Hoa to disappear. Looking back over the years, Quỳnh knew she’d made a good decision for her niece. It was her last act to honor her sister: she’d found not just a mother for Hoa, but a whole family.

  “I gave them my promise,” Quỳnh said, “After the war ended, though, I wanted to check on Hoa. I needed to know that she was okay. Unfortunately I didn’t have her new family’s address or full names. I asked at the clinic where we’d met, but they had lost the records. I visited surrounding areas and asked about for Hoa, but no one knew.”

  Tears trailed down Dan’s cheeks. “It’s all my fault. How can I ever find my daughter?”

  Linda held Dan in her arms. “You should do a DNA test,” she told him. “Maybe Hoa grew up wondering about her parents because she looked different from her siblings. She might be searching for you.”

  “Yes, Hoa looked like a mixed person,” Quỳnh said. “She had a high-bridged nose like her father. I’m not sure, but I think her eyes were brown, like Trang’s. And she had hazel hair.”

  “Do you happen . . . to have a photo of Hoa?” Linda asked.

  Quỳnh shook her head. “There was no chance for photos.”

  “Sister, we need your help to find Hoa,” Thiên said, opening his notebook. Dan also started to take notes. “Please tell me what you remember.”

  “I can tell you everything I can recall, on one condition.” Quỳnh looked around the table, at everyone. “You won’t reveal my identity. You can’t publish my picture, my address, my name . . . You can’t tell anyone about me or this meeting.”

  “Of course, Sister. We respect your privacy,” Thiên said.

  “It’s more than that,” Quỳnh said. “It’s my life.”

  In the world she’d rebuilt for herself, esteem was everything. Over time, the designs of her clothing products had gained prestige; her clients associated them with grace, luck, beauty, and class. The fabrics she curated and distributed were not for daily wear, but for weddings and special occasions. If people found out she’d been a prostitute or that she’d abandoned her own niece, and more, the news could crash her business empire.

  The person she worried about most, though, was Khôi. Like everyone else, her son was ignorant about her past, which served him well. His family history was being investigated because he’d applied to become a Communist party member—he had to, in order to become the head of his department. He’d worked hard toward his goals, and she wouldn’t allow her past to ruin his opportunities.

  “Please don’t worry,” Dan said. “Any search notice will only mention me as the father, and Mr. Thien as my friend who helps me. And we will be very careful, to protect Hoa and her family.”

  Quỳnh nodded. “You can publish my sister’s full name: Nguyễn Thị Kiều Trang, and Hoa’s full name: Nguyễn Thị Thu Hoa.” She waited for Thiên to finish helping Dan and Linda write down the names before continuing. “Hoa was handed to her adopted parents on August twenty-eight, 1970.” Quỳnh described in details the location of the medical clinic, in case Dan wanted to visit it himself.

  “How about Hoa’s date of birth? Any special features?” Thiên asked.

  “She was born three days before, August twenty-five. As for special features . . .” Quỳnh closed her eyes. She hadn’t really looked at Hoa. She hadn’t wanted any attachment to the girl. “Sorry, I can’t remember.”

  Thiên picked up his phone and typed. “Let’s see . . . if Thu Hoa published any search notice.”

  Quỳnh knew the answer. She’d googled her niece’s name countless times.

  Linda started looking, too. After a while, both she and Thiên shook their heads.

  Dan turned to Quỳnh. “May I ask . . . did your parents know about the baby? How did they cope with Trang’s passing?”

  “They didn’t know . . . And about Trang, I told them she’d gone to America.”

  “You were able to convince them?” Linda asked, surprised.

  “I hope so. . . . I said Trang had found herself a nice American boyfriend, that he’d been sent back to America, and at the last minute arranged for her to come along. Later on, I imitated my sister’s handwriting in letters that I attached to mine. I explained that Trang sent her correspondence via my Sài Gòn address, that it might get lost if sent directly to our village. In those letters, I described how happy Trang was, that her in-laws loved and respected her. If my parents had any suspicions, they didn’t tell me. They died a few years later. My mother went first; her doctor suspected she’d had a heart failure; my father shortly later, I think he didn’t want to live without her.”

  “At least you gave your parents some hope when they were still around,” said Dan. “I’m so sorry.”

  Quỳnh looked away. She couldn’t tell Dan, but he was the boyfriend in those fake letters. He’d taken Trang back to Seattle and married her. The first letter was incredibly difficult for Quỳnh to write, but eventually she looked forward to escaping into the imagined life she’d created for Trang. A life where her sister could live in peace, study at a good university, and become a doctor. Those letters had given her hope, too. Hope for a life without wars. Hope for a life where women were respected for their intellect and treated equally.

  “I saw the beautiful fabrics in your living room,” said Linda. “I guess they have something to do with your or your husband’s job?”

  Quỳnh nodded and told Linda about her business. She’d started it by chance, five years after the war, when she was a maid for a family who owned a tailor shop. There, she noticed that customers often asked to buy materials but the shop hardly had any designs. When Quỳnh told her employers she could travel to Chợ Lớn Market in Sài Gòn and bring back samples, they weren’t too enthusiastic. But whatever she brought back sold well, and before she knew it, other tailors sought her out. She didn’t have any real competition in the beginning. It was during the subsidized economy where free trading was prohibited. Smugglers like her could be arrested and all products confiscated, but her experiences in Sài Gòn enabled her to negotiate her way out of difficult situations, and her knowledge of the black market helped.

  She told them briefly about her ex-husband, their thirty years of marriage. She didn’t mention the reasons he’d left her for his mistress: her fear of sex and her panic attacks, all stemming from her time before the war’s end. She talked at length about her son, Khôi, who loved American music and films. Khôi often visited her with his children and his wife, an architect who designed and helped build Quỳnh’s house. Recently they were insisting that she come and live with them, that she had enough staff to run her business, but she knew she could never live in Sài Gòn again. There, every street corner, every tree, every house was a reminder of Trang and of the many secrets Quỳnh had tried to forget.

  The sun was setting as they said goodbye. A part of Quỳnh wanted to ask Dan and Linda if they would like to stay for dinner. It would be a normal thing to do, to show hospitality to faraway guests, but she wasn’t ready to have Dan sit inside the house like an old friend. It would be to0 much of a betrayal to Trang, after what he’d done.

  “You take good care, please.” Dan held her hand in both of his. “Mr. Thien will call you right away if there’s any news of Hoa. And don’t hesistate to contact us at any time.” He’d given her their home address as well as phone numbers.

  In Dan’s tears, Quỳnh saw his plea for forgiveness, but she wasn’t able to give it. Not before she could forgive herself. People said that time healed, and more than forty years had passed, but for Quỳnh, her pain and guilt were bottomless.

  She reached for Linda. They hugged. When they let go, Quỳnh said, “If you find Hoa, please be her mother, on my sister’s behalf.” Strangely, she felt a bond with this woman, someone whose language she didn’t know, but perhaps grief was their common language.

  Tears rolled down Linda’s cheeks. “I will . . . I promise.” She embraced Quỳnh tight.

  “Thank you, Brother,” Quỳnh told Thiên, “for translating, and for helping Dan to find my niece.” She wished she’d had time to get to know the man whose scar and sorrowful expressions throughout their conversation told her that he’d been haunted by the monster of violence, too, and he’d been fighting to get rid of it.

  Thiên gave her his business card. “I wish I could have done more, Sister. Call me whenever you think I can help.”

  Sweetness and Bitterness

  Bạc Liêu, 2018

  Sitting on the veranda of his home with his dog Mun sleeping at his feet, Phong picked up his guitar and played “Chiếc Khăn Piêu,” a song by Doãn Nho, inspired by the colorful lives of ethnic people up north. It was a love song, set against the majestic Tây Bắc region, and its lyrics empowered him. He was thrilled to be able to try different musical instruments. While the đàn sến could accompany Bình when she sang the cải lương songs, his guitar and flute could get his children to sing along, and even get up on their feet and dance.

  Two years ago he had decided to give up on his visa application, as well as the search for his parents, and the decision liberated him. Like a bird no longer imprisoned by its cage and who could now rise up into the immense sky, he gained an overview of his life and saw that he was a complete human being even without his parents. He was the one in charge of his destiny. And he was destined to build his life here in Bạc Liêu, not in a faraway country. “An cư lạc nghiệp,” people often said, and it was true. When his home was settled, his career prospered.

  His work in the rice field was still backbreaking, but his carpentry business had taken off. He’d learned new designs from several carpentry workshops and could tailor his cabinets, wardrobes, beds, chairs, and tables to meet customers’ requirements. Mr. Dan and his wife had lent a hand by sending 2,500 U.S. dollars. “This is not just from us, but also from our friends and my sister,” Mr. Dan’s letter had said. Phong had used part of the money to build a simple tin-roofed shed next to his house, which served as his working space. He had no shop, but his customers had been telling others about his work and the competitive prices he offered.

  Tài and Diễm had each written back a thank-you letter to Mr. Dan and Mrs. Linda, in which they enclosed pictures of the dog lolling her tongue next to their secondhand computer, Bình smiling next to her motorbike, and Phong grinning while holding his toolbox. In recent letters, the children had talked about Phong teaching carpentry skills to Khmer youth and to the children of his Amerasian friends. Even though they were oceans apart, Mr. Dan and Mrs. Linda had become a part of their lives: over the video calls, Phong was able to see their house and garden and showed them the renovations he’d done in his own home: a brick floor, a new roof, as well as the seasons of vegetables he and Bình had been growing.

  The results of Phong’s DNA tests had come back a long time ago, confirming his Asian, African, and Caucasian heritage: 47.66 percent Asian, 39.58 percent African, 12.76 percent Caucasian. He had stared at the numbers, and imagined the many secrets, heartbreaks, and betrayals underneath the statistics. He was happy not to dig any deeper. More than a year ago, Mr. Thiên had brought a DNA test kit on one of his visits and wanted to take another sample from Phong, saying he could send it to another company in America. Phong had shaken his head. He was content with his life.

  Mr. Thiên turned out to be kind and helpful. He’d been helping quite a few Amerasians and had connected Phong to a group of anh chị em lai—Amerasian brothers and sisters, as Phong called them—who lived in Sài Gòn or were scattered throughout the Mekong Delta. Phong had attended a few of their get-togethers and learned that he was one of the luckier ones: he had a job, healthy children, and a hardworking, dedicated wife. Most other anh chị em lai had worse problems: living in small rented rooms, unable to pay their bills, struggling to find stable employment because they were illiterate. Some had harmed themselves, and Phong was pained seeing the cigarette burns and razor slashes on their arms and legs. Two men had cut off one of their fingers during drunken rages. “Self-harm was our way to tell others that we suffer, but nobody helped,” one of the men had told him.

  Most anh chị em lai whom Phong met lived on the brink of time, waiting for the day they could leave for America, believing that their lives were not here, not now, but somewhere ahead of them. They shared with Phong stories of successful Amerasians in the U.S.: how some of them had become famous singers, business people, restaurant owners, writers. Phong admired the people in these stories greatly, knowing the challenges they’d had to overcome—challenges still endured by many. He had met three Amerasians who had been deported back to Việt Nam by the American government: they’d gotten entangled with the law and were imprisoned.

  The life experiences of anh chị em lai Phong knew sounded so unbelievable that if he hadn’t heard the tremor in their voices and seen the frustration in their eyes, he’d think that their stories were fabricated, cooked up by writers in the novels that Diễm and Tài raved about.

  One particular story that stuck with him was that of Hồng, a white Amerasian woman whose mother had given her away to a friend when she was a baby. The mother showed up a few years ago and handed Hồng an American soldier’s dog tag, her father’s. Hồng was elated and began her search. With the help of a group of American veterans, she received happy news. “When my father came to Sài Gòn to meet me, I cried so much,” Hồng had told Phong. “My father cried, too. He said he hadn’t known I existed. He’d had a short-term relationship with my mother. He said he loved me and wanted to sponsor me, as well as my husband and kids to America. At the American Consulate, we were told we needed DNA tests. And you know what happened when our test results came back? They didn’t match! My mother had fabricated the whole story about the dog tag. When she gave it to me, she said that once I found my father, I had to sponsor her over to America.” Hồng fumed. “Even if your parents find you, be careful, Phong. Don’t fall for their words easily, because words can be the most dangerous traps. If they only start looking for you now, you must ask why. Are they feeling old and lonely and need a caretaker?”

  Phong knew well what it meant to be scammed.

  He finished his song. Mun was up, her tail wagging. “You hungry yet?” Phong sat on his heels, picked Mun up, ran his hand through the dog’s white fur, laughing out loud as Mun licked his face, her tongue warm and rough. He walked, with Mun in his arms, into the kitchen, with its window open to the rice field at the back of his house. There, he mixed leftover rice with stewed fish and gave it to Mun. He watched with a smile as she devoured the food. He hadn’t wanted a dog, thinking it would cost too much, but his children had brought Mun home, given her to their mother, declaring it Bình’s birthday gift. They called the dog Mun, which meant “Black as Velvet,” a brilliant name for a white poodle.

  Phong gave Mun some water, then headed back into the shed. He was on lunch break but was anxious to continue his work on the desks for Trương Định School. A recent storm had caused a building to collapse and he wanted to deliver the furniture earlier than promised so that students could return to their temporary classroom.

  The heat radiating from the shed’s tin roof surged to Phong as he stepped inside. The two finished desks looked good, and so did the shelf where his carpentry tools were neatly arranged: hammers, planes, saws, drills, mallets. He was glad his students had followed his instructions and stayed organized.

  At his workstation, he planed a piece of wood the size of a desk’s surface. As the shavings curled and coiled into rolls, his mind was filled with thoughts about Mr. Dan. That evening two years ago, he’d sat in the lobby of Tài Lộc Hotel, stunned as Mr. Thiên told him that Mr. Dan’s daughter had been given away three days after her birth.

  Mr. Dan’s search for his daughter had revealed that Hoa’s mother had died, and Phong knew something like that could happen to him if he continued his search.

  The sound of an engine drew his attention. He looked through the shed’s open door to see Bình riding the motorbike across their front yard. Two large canvas sacks towered on the back of the bike—fertilizer for their rice plants. These days Bình worked in their field and also took care of the paperwork for his carpentry business.

  He hurried outside to help his wife unload the sacks.

  “Mr. Thiên called,” she told him, breathless. “He said he couldn’t reach you. He asked me to tell you to call him right back.” She handed him her mobile phone. “He said he’d found your mother. She did her DNA test recently and the results matched with yours.”

  “What?” Phong laughed. Either Bình, Mr. Thiên, or fate must be joking with him.

  “Apparently your mother is very excited. She’s coming here to meet you. This afternoon.”

  Phong sat in Chiều Mơ Café, two streets away from his home. Because of Hồng’s story about her cheating mother and her warnings about being careful, he hadn’t invited the woman who claimed to be his mother to his house. The café was a popular meeting venue and he could see why. Yellow Tonkin jasmine flowers hung like a curtain above him and soft music floated through the air. A standing electric fan sent a light breeze to his table, where a woman sat opposite him. Fair-skinned. Perfect makeup. She was dressed in long pants and a silk shirt, the pattern of which reminded him of the clothing worn by the royal family in Huế.