The Mountains Sing(2)

Explosions draw closer. The ground swings, as if it were a hammock. I press my palms against my ears. Water shoots up, drenching my face and hair, blurring my eyesight. Dust and stones rain through a small crack onto my head. Sounds of antiaircraft fire. Hà N?i is fighting back. More explosions. Sirens. Cries. An intense burning stench.

Grandma brings her hands together in front of her chest. “Nam M? A Di ?à Ph?t, Nam M? Quan Th? m B? Tát.” Torrents of prayers to Buddha pour from her lips. I close my eyes, imitating her.

The bombs continue to roar. A minute of silence follows. A sharp screeching noise. I cringe. A powerful explosion hurls Grandma and me against the shelter’s lid. Pain darkens my eyes.

I land feet-first on Grandma’s stomach. Her eyes are closed, her hands a budding lotus flower in front of her chest. She prays as the thundering noise disappears and people’s cries rise into the air.

“Grandma, I’m scared.”

Her lips are blue, trembling from the cold. “I know, Guava. . . . I’m scared, too.”

“Grandma, if they bomb the school, will . . . will this shelter collapse?”

She struggles against the confined space, pulling me into her arms. “I don’t know, Darling.”

“If it does, will we die, Grandma?”

She hugs me tight. “Guava, if they bomb this school, our shelter might collapse on us, but we’ll only die if Buddha lets us die.”

WE DIDN’T PERISH that day, in November 1972. After the sirens had signaled that it was safe, Grandma and I emerged, shivering thin leaves. We staggered out to the street. Several buildings had collapsed, their rubble spilling onto our path. We crawled over piles of debris, coughing. Billowing smoke and twirling dust burned my eyes.

I clutched Grandma’s hand, watching women kneeling and howling next to dead bodies, whose faces had been concealed by tattered straw mats. The legs of those bodies were jutting toward us. Legs that were mangled, covered with blood. One small leg had a pink shoe dangling. The dead girl could have been my age.

Drenched, muddy, Grandma pulled me along, walking faster and faster, passing scattered body parts, passing houses that had crumbled.

Under the bàng tree, though, our house stood in glorious, incongruous sunlight. It had miraculously escaped damage. I broke away from Grandma, rushing ahead to hug the front door.

Grandma hurried to help me change and tucked me into bed. “Stay home, Guava. Jump down if the planes come.” She pointed toward our bomb shelter, which my father had dug into the earthen floor next to the bedroom entrance. The shelter was large enough to hold us both, and it was dry. I felt better hiding here, under the watchful eyes of my ancestors, whose presence radiated from the family altar, perched on top of our bookshelf.

“But . . . where’re you going, Grandma?” I asked.

“To my school, to see if my students need help.” She pulled our thick blanket to my chin.

“Grandma, but it’s not safe. . . .”

“It’s just two blocks away, Guava. I’ll run home as soon as I hear the siren. Promise to stay here?”

I nodded.

Grandma had headed for the door, but she returned to my bed, her hand warming my face. “Promise you won’t wander outside?”

“Cháu h?a.” I smiled to assure her. She’d never allowed me to go anywhere alone, even during the months absent of bombs. She’d always been afraid that I’d get lost somehow. Was it true, I wondered, what my aunt and uncles had said, about Grandma being overprotective of me because terrible things had happened to her children?

As the door closed behind her, I got up, fetching my notebook. I dipped the tip of my pen into the ink bottle. “Beloved Mother and Father,” I wrote, in a new letter to my parents, wondering whether my words would ever reach them. They were moving with their troops and had no fixed addresses.

I WAS REREADING B?ch Tuy?t và b?y chú lùn, immersed in the magical world of Snow White and her friends, the Seven Dwarfs, when Grandma came home, my school bag hanging off her arm. Her hands were bleeding, injured from trying to rescue people trapped under rubble. She pulled me into her bosom and held me tight.

That night, I crawled under our blanket, listening to Grandma’s prayers and her wooden bell’s rhythmic chime. She prayed for Buddha and Heaven to help end the war. She prayed for the safe return of my parents and uncles. I closed my eyes, joining Grandma in her prayer. Were my parents alive? Did they miss me as much as I missed them?

We wanted to stay home, but urgent announcements from public broadcasts ordered all citizens to evacuate Hà N?i. Grandma was to lead her students and their families to a remote place in the mountains where she’d continue her classes.

“Grandma, where’re we going?” I asked.

“To Hòa Bình Village. The bombs won’t be able to find us there, Guava.”

I wondered who’d chosen such a lovely name for a village. Hòa Bình were the words carried on the wings of doves painted on the classroom walls at my school. Hòa Bình bore the blue color in my dream—the color of my parents returning home. Hòa Bình meant something simple, intangible, yet most valuable to us: Peace.

“Is the village far, Grandma? How will we get there?”

“On foot. It’s only forty-one kilometers. Together we can manage, don’t you think?”