Released from the reeducation camp at seventeen, he walked to the closest city, Đà Lạt, and chose its streets to be his home. The cooler weather here suited him, as well as the lonely lakes and rolling hills covered in pine trees. He felt closer to his father staying here, as Đà Lạt used to be the holiday resort for the French and the Americans. He honored his promise to Sister Nhã’s soul by earning his meals instead of stealing them. He shined people’s shoes, collected recyclable garbage to sell, sold cigarettes and soft drinks, and worked as a porter and laborer. He slept in parks and on pavements until a year later, when a long-distance bus driver recruited him as a helper. At last he earned enough money to move into a small room that he shared with four other men.

  He spent the next two years dangling his body out of the racing bus, calling out to potential customers, pulling them on board. Two years fighting against thieves who blended in with travelers. Two years helping the driver and his customers smuggle goods by hiding them above, under, and inside the bus. Two years carrying bags of rice, corn, manioc, and sweet potatoes heavier than his own body. He didn’t mind the hard work, but watching families travel together tore at his heart. In their union, he saw himself as a solitary bird without feathers or a nest, unable to fly and having nowhere to return to. He observed the mothers around him, wondering what it would take for them to abandon their own child. He watched the women who were old enough to be his mother, asking silently if he had been a part of their life.

  His buses made frequent trips to the Mekong Delta and occasionally to other cities. One morning, he was leaving the bus station in Hồ Chí Minh City, heading for his favorite coffee shop, his twenty-year-old body exhausted, when he heard a voice, “Phong ơi, Phong.” He swirled around, stunned at the sound of his name. He’d grown used to being nameless. He was no longer a bụi đời—the dust of life—for he could rent a room; but his boss and his roommates all called him Mỹ đen—Black American. The only people who called him by his name were other Amerasians, but he hadn’t seen any of them for a long while. Some of them were still gangsters, and he’d been staying away from them to avoid trouble, and to focus on his plan. He had decided that once he had enough money, he’d buy a patch of land, and grow his own food. During his years with Sister Nhã, he’d realized that plants and nature always offered him comfort, and were in fact kinder than most people.

  “Phong ơi!” The sound of his name swam to him again through the clinking bells of cyclos and the rumblings of buses that were making their way into the station. He blinked, shielded his eyes against sunlight with his palm. The person who called was a middle-aged woman. She avoided a bicycle and hurried toward him.

  “Phong . . .” She continued to call, her voice pitched, as if she was breathless.

  “How do you know my name?” He stared at her as she got closer. Her skin was fair, her hair permed, and a pair of gold earrings dangled from her ears. She looked too glamorous to be hanging out at a bus station.

  She grabbed him by the arm. “My son . . .” She pulled him into her and buried her face into his chest. “Má xin lỗi con, Phong ơi,” her voice trembled. She’d called herself Mother, offered her apologies. When she looked up at him, tears had filled her eyes. “I . . . I gave you away when you were a baby. I am so, so sorry.”

  Her words sounded as if they had traveled from another world, so far away that they’d lost their meaning when they reached him. “Cô . . . cô vừa nói gì?” He asked what she’d just said, addressing her as Auntie. He stepped away from her, looking her up and down. She was around forty years old. Old enough to be his mother.

  “Too many people here.” She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and gestured toward those who were staring at them from the sidewalk and eateries. “Come with me and I’ll show you something. Then you’ll believe me.” She turned, waved for a cyclo.

  “You just said you’re my mother?” He wanted to shake her until she told him the truth.

  “Yes. That’s right, Son.” She pulled his arm and climbed onto the cyclo. He clambered in after her.

  She gave an address to the cyclo driver who craned forward and peddled them along.

  “If you’re my mother, where did you leave me? In front of what orphanage?” He asked, breathless. If she answered Phú Long, he’d ask about his birthmark. He wondered how she’d known his bus schedule. Had she been waiting at the station for a long time, to be able to talk to him?

  “Shhh.” She cried again, blowing her nose into her handkerchief. “Wait until you see the things I want to show you, Son. Then you’ll understand.”

  He was impatient but the woman buried her face into her palm. Her shoulders shook. Her suppressed cries stirred something deep inside of Phong. The high walls that he’d erected to protect himself started crumbling, leaving him bare. The woman reached for his hand and her warmth permeated his fingers; the warmth he’d dreamt of during the countless nights these past eight years, cold wind his only company. The tremors of the woman’s body traveled to his, and he shuddered. Something buckled, and the tears he’d held back for years broke. They rolled down his face, stinging his eyes, blurring his vision. He had thought he would never forgive his mother, but at that moment he decided if the woman could prove that she was his Má, he would help her overcome the ghosts of her past, so that they could build a future together.

  The cyclo screeched to a stop. They’d arrived in front of a two-story house. A middle-aged man opened the gate, beaming, inviting him inside. As he sat on a wooden sofa, the man whispered to the woman and gave her a thick envelope. Phong stood up when she turned and hurried out to the street.

  “Má . . .” Without thinking, the word “Mother” tumbled out of his mouth.

  The woman disappeared behind the gate.

  The man smiled at him. “Sit down, Phong. I know your favorite drink and I’ve prepared it for you.” He stirred a glass and the smell of coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk filled Phong with an intense thirst.

  He stepped away. “Who’s that woman and who the hell are you?”

  “Relax, Son. My name is Khuất. Welcome to our home.” The man gestured toward the high walls decorated with large paintings, the solid wooden furniture, the motorbike. Phong’s eyes lingered on a grand altar with the statue of Jesus Christ.

  The man poured tea into his egg-shaped cup. “That woman, forget about her . . . She has no relation to you. Whatever she said was just her way to convince you to come here. You want to hear the truth? I’m not related to you, either. But my wife and I, we want you to be our son. We asked that woman to find you and bring you here.”

  The muscles in Phong’s stomach clenched. How foolish of him to let the woman trick him with her reptilian cá sấu tears. Oh, he wanted to find her, shake her, and shout at her. She must have spied on him as he visited the coffee shop near the bus station. How cruel of her to have played on his deep yearning for his mother’s love.

  Phong headed for the door. If he hurried, he would make it back before his bus returned to Đà Lạt.

  During the next many years, Phong would often reflect on this moment and wish he had walked away. What happened next would change his entire life.

  “Can’t you just stop and listen to what I have to say first?” The man stepped toward Phong and gave him a faded photograph. “My friend . . . His name was Phi-lịp, but I called him Thằng Khờ because he was so naïve about the war.”

  Phong stared at the foreign man in the photo. A Black soldier who stood on the bank of a rice field, a metal helmet on his head, a gun in his hand.

  “He was very kind to me.” Mr. Khuất’s voice trembled. “He saved my life, but the fucking war killed him. . . . That’s why I need to help a Black person, to honor him. I know about the discrimination people like you have been facing and I detest it.” Mr. Khuất lowered his voice. “Phong . . . I’ve asked many people about you. You’ve been through a lot, and you work hard. I like that. You see . . . I’m looking for a young man to adopt. My wife and I . . . we tried for years, but she could only bear us two daughters. And you know what our old proverb says. Nhất nam viết hữu, thập nữ viết vô—a son is a child, ten daughters equal none. Our daughters will belong to their husbands’ families once they marry . . .”

  “You want to adopt me?” It was the most ridiculous thing Phong had heard; he had to laugh. “And how do you even know my name?”

  “Haven’t you heard the saying ‘Có tiền mua tiên cũng được’? We can buy everything with money, even fairies.” Mr. Khuất winked. “I have eyes and ears at the bus station and around town. I’ve looked into many cases of boys like you and know you’ll be a good fit for our family. Now, it’s up to you to decide, but once you walk out that door, I won’t ever want to see you again. I have several people on my list and any one of them would die to have a chance to live with us. The chosen person will have his own room upstairs. A bedroom of your own, imagine that. You could eat all your meals with us. There would be no need for you to work anymore.”

  “But có đi có lại. What would I need to do in return? Clean your house, be your servant?”

  “No . . . nothing like that.” Mr. Khuất chuckled. “Just be good company, that’s all I ask. As for the cooking and cleaning, you won’t even have to lift your little finger. My wife is excellent at it. So what do you say, eh? Don’t you want to give this a try? Stay for a couple of days, enjoy our home and hospitality. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

  Phong wanted to leave right then. He didn’t believe Mr. Khuất’s story about his Black friend, but he wasn’t sure he even cared. The idea of a bed, and his own room, was too tempting. He couldn’t help comparing this spacious house to the stuffiness of his shared room, so small that he and his roommates had to roll up their sleeping straw mats during the day to make space for them to move around. Their toilet was a hole dug in the small backyard. Whenever Phong lay down to sleep, he would smell the stench of shit and hear the buzzing of flies.

  He looked at the iced coffee which Mr. Khuất had placed on the table in front of him, and his thirst begged him to take a sip. When he was still debating what to do, a middle-aged woman descended the staircase, smiling broadly. As she told him how happy she was to meet him, he noticed that she was wearing a rosary chain around her neck. Like Sister Nhã.

  The rosary chain and the altar made him stay. He felt he had come to the home of God and God would help protect him.

  That night, Mrs. Khuất welcomed Phong with a sumptuous dinner. Her two daughters, one older than Phong and the other younger, didn’t say much, even though Mr. Khuất kept urging them to talk. Phong was given a room on the second floor, furnished with a wooden bed three times the size of his straw mat. It was the first time he had ever slept on a mattress. He wasn’t used to its softness, though, so during the night he got a pillow and moved down to the floor, where the cool tiles felt like home against his naked back. In the morning, he grinned from ear to ear as he practiced aiming his pee at the gleaming belly of the white Western toilet. Later, he stood in the shower, his eyes closed as the warm droplets poured down on him. For the first time in his life, he didn’t have to scoop up water from a bucket to wash himself.

  Phong thought he would stay only one day or two—to find out more about the Khuấts and their real reasons for bringing him here—but the comfort of their home felt like the embrace of the mother he’d always wanted. The ways Mrs. Khuất took care of him reminded him of Sister Nhã. She cooked for him every day and bought him new clothes. She washed and ironed his pants and shirts. As he admired himself—a well-dressed young man—in the mirror, he felt grateful. He tried to help with household chores but she told him he only needed to clean his room.

  Mr. Khuất went to work during the day and his daughters to school, and Phong felt as if the house belonged to him. There was a video cassette player in his room, together with more than twenty movies. These movies took Phong to America—a country of magnificent landscapes, modern cities, horse-galloping cowboys, and girls so beautiful that they visited him while he slept. He longed to set foot in America, if only once in his life.

  On the fifth night of Phong’s stay, when he was contemplating going back to the bus station to send a message to his boss, Mr. Khuất came into his room, waving sheets of papers in his hand. “Phong, guess what? By pure chance, I’ve just discovered your luck! Amerasians like you can now immigrate to America.”

  Phong sat up in his bed. The night before, he’d dreamt about kissing an American girl. Her neck smelled of roses, unlike the sweat of the girls he’d been with.

  “It’s complicated and expensive to put together your paperwork, but I’ll help you take care of it.” Mr. Khuất explained that to be able to leave, Phong needed to apply first for a passport and an exit permit from the Vietnamese authorities, then an entry visa into the U.S. He patted Phong’s shoulder. “Life in America is good, but it won’t be easy at first. You’ll need a family to take care of you. You’ll need someone who is fluent in English, like me, to help you.” He smiled at Phong. “If you want, we can all go, as a family. American people are kind, you see? They sympathize with people like you. Their government approved something called the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which allows Amerasians to bring families along.”

  “But we aren’t family.” Phong walked away from the bed. He’d been dazzled by the chance to immigrate to America, but now his mind was clear, like the sky after a hard rain: this family had brought him here to use him as their ticket to go to America. They’d let him watch American films to tempt him. He knew plenty of people who were desperate to leave; some had fled in fishing boats, entrusting their lives to the rolling waves of the big oceans. He’d once thought about joining them, but had no gold to pay for such a trip.

  “Don’t you worry,” said Mr. Khuất. “The truth is that some Vietnamese families adopted Amerasians years ago, and they have been able to go to America under the Amerasian Homecoming Act. And I know people who have just gotten together with con lai like you and left together. We won’t be the first.”

  Phong couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How could he go along with such serious lies that this family had adopted him? He’d had enough troubles with the authorities. Besides, he’d promised Sister Nhã that he would live an honest life.

  Mr. Khuất pushed a small silk bag into Phong’s hand. “Three rings. That’s one and a half gold tael! For you to buy whatever you need to prepare for our trip to America. When we get there, I’ll give you more.”

  Phong looked into the bag. The gold rings met his eyes. Sister Nhã had saved all her life and everything she had was worth less than two rings.

  “See how well I take care of you?” Mr. Khuất beamed. “As I said, the paperwork won’t be easy, but I know people. . . They can help register you, backdated, into our family book, so it looks like you were adopted into our family a long time ago.”

  Phong shook his head. He would need to lie to the authorities who might beat him and imprison him. He opened his mouth. “But—”

  “There’s no ‘but,’ Phong. Remember, you’re entitled to bring family members along. You are a child of America and Americans want you home.” Mr. Khuất gestured around the room. “Look at this beautiful house. I earned it with my clever mind. I work as a private English teacher now, but during the war I made my fortune by supplying sandbags to the American army. I know how Americans think. I walk with my wooden sandals in their stomachs, as our proverb says. I know them inside out. I’ve studied their rules, and I wouldn’t propose for us to go to America if it wasn’t feasible.” He squeezed Phong’s shoulders. “Aren’t you excited that we’ll all have a new beginning in America? That we can officially be a family? That I can help you there with my English?”

  “But you have everything here. Why leave?”

  “I can’t begin to tell you what the Communists did to us since the fall of Sài Gòn.” A frown deepened on Mr. Khuất’s forehead. “They took away our savings in the banks. They nationalized our factory and stole our other houses. Things are going to get worse, and I can’t let my daughters live under such oppression. All we want is to live in freedom. Would you help us, Son?” Mr. Khuất started calling Phong “Son,” as if it was the most natural thing.

  When Phong didn’t answer, the man sighed. “Just hold on to the gold while you think about it. And don’t forget, in America we’ll help you find your father. We’ll continue to be your family. You don’t have to be alone ever again.”

  That night, instead of sleeping, Phong stood next to the window, looking up to the black sky, the gold in the nest of his palm. If he’d had such fortune before, he could have saved Sister Nhã.

  He couldn’t believe that from a child of dust he had been turned into a person of gold. “You are a child of America and Americans want you home.” The words of Mr. Khuất rang in his ears. Even if the man had lied time and time again, Phong wanted to believe in these words.

  The next morning, Phong headed to the 30/4 Reunification Park, where many Amerasians hung out. He hadn’t been there for years and the park was emptier than he remembered. It took him a while to find several trẻ lai. They told him that it was true: trẻ lai could now go to America based on their non-Vietnamese features. As many mothers of trẻ lai had abandoned them or destroyed their papers out of fear of punishment from the Communists, trẻ lai could claim anyone as their family and bring them along.

  Two of Phong’s friends, who were older than him, had already been approached by rich families who wanted them to marry their daughters and bring the whole family to America. Those his age or younger had received offers to be adopted by families. The people he talked to warned Phong that even though it was possible for them to leave, the paperwork could take years. Procedures were complicated, fees expensive, bribes had to be paid, and too many people were applying. For an illiterate, penniless person like Phong, it would almost be impossible, unless he found those who could help.