The Mountains Sing(90)

In the five months I’d been gone, we lost our home and all our land. The Agricultural Reform Tribunal had divided our fields among landless farmers, who then battled each other for their share. Greed grew like a weed in our village.

My poor Auntie Tú. Alone, she moved to her plot of land. Mr. H?i and his son helped build a hut for her. She survived on the fruits that grew in her garden. She planted vegetables and sold them. She was determined to keep going.

Mr. H?i reached for my shoulder. “Di?u Lan, around two months after your escape, a farmer saw Mrs. Tú on his way to work. . . . Her body was hanging from a branch.”

I stared at him. “Tell me I heard it wrong, Uncle. Tell me Auntie Tú is waiting for me to come back!”

“Shh.” He put a finger to his lips, glancing around us. “There was a suicide note in her hut. It said she couldn’t go on anymore.”

“Auntie Tú was illiterate, Uncle.”

“She was murdered, I know.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help her. Terrible things have happened in our village, and not just to your family, Di?u Lan. Please . . . stay away for now. Those evil people are still looking for you. I’ll send news as soon as I hear from Minh.”

BACK IN Hà N?i, I set up an altar with an additional incense bowl for Mrs. Tú. I’ll never forget her love and her generosity, Guava. Without her, I wouldn’t be alive today, I’m sure of it, and you wouldn’t be here either.

Till this day, if you happen to listen to my heartbeat, you might hear the singing voice of my Auntie Tú. She nurtured my soul with songs so that I can sing on.

And those songs helped Ng?c, ??t, Thu?n, and H?nh, who were traumatized by what they’d gone through. During their first week at our new home, they begged me not to leave their side. When I had to go out to get food, I brought all of them along. We slept in the same room, huddled on the same bed, yet they were still shaken awake by nightmares.

We talked about what had happened and tried to help each other. I paid Master V?n so that he came to our house once a week and ran a class just for us. His meditation exercises calmed the children. The self-defense practice enabled them to gain back their confidence.

Have you heard this saying, Guava? L?a th? vàng, gian nan th? s?c—Fire proves gold, adversity proves men. The challenges they’d faced made your mother, uncles, and auntie value life. They went back to school and excelled in their studies. They worked hard: cleaning people’s homes, sweeping streets, selling newspapers. We saved every single cent and spent the minimum on food and clothes.

As the fire of war was kindled between North and South Vi?t Nam, inside our North, the socialist revolution was in full swing. Those who lived in cities now faced a government campaign called C?i t?o t? s?n—Reform of Capitalists. In Hà N?i, homes and property were taken away, families shattered. The assets of my former employers—Mr. Toàn and Mrs. Chau—were confiscated. They had to travel to the mountains up north to undergo a reeducation program, which lasted more than a year.

I wished I could help them, but I bent my head in silence, and worked; anyone who questioned the government could go to jail. My job, as a fruit seller at Long Biên Market, didn’t pay much, but I was determined not to let my children starve again. Once Ng?c, ??t, Thu?n, and H?nh had settled down at their school, I attended evening classes, learning to be a teacher. We cared for each other, our love turning our hut into a cozy nest. Many years later, we sold that nest and bought our current house on Kham Thiên Street.

In 1957, nearly two years after my arrival in Hà N?i, the government announced that there had been much wrongdoing during the Land Reform. They acknowledged that the idea to redistribute wealth was correct, but its implementation spiraled out of control. They said many things but did almost nothing to undo these mistakes.

At last, though, I was free to travel to my village. Mr. H?i took me to Nam ?àn Forest. He’d buried my brother C?ng and my auntie Tú next to my mother’s grave. Standing before them, I shed bitter tears. I heard them whisper to me, on the wind that sang among the green canopies of leaves.

I tried to get back our house and our fields, but Guava, I was banging my head against a brick wall. We no longer have our ancestral home, nor the land our ancestors passed down to us.

We weren’t the only ones who suffered great losses. Many innocent people had been beaten and humiliated in public. Some had been executed; some killed themselves. Others went crazy after they’d lost everything. Two years after the Land Reform, the woman who had accused her father of raping her 159 times committed suicide. She hanged herself from a tree that had grown tall next to her father’s grave.

I CONTINUED TO look for Minh. Master V?n told me perhaps he had gone south.

Every day, I pray for the fire of war to be extinguished. Then, your eldest uncle will step over the ashes of our losses and come home. I’m sure he will.





My Uncle Minh

Nha Trang, June 1979

I held Grandma’s hand as we turned into a narrow lane. For a moment, all I could hear were Grandma’s hurrying footsteps. The footsteps of twenty-four years of longing.

Grandma, my mother, Uncle ??t, and I had boarded a squeaky train and rattled about for two days and three nights to get here to Nha Trang, a Southern province hundreds of kilometers away from Hà N?i. Auntie H?nh had arrived a short while after and met us at the station. Our years apart had transformed her into a Sài Gòn person: her hair cut above her shoulders and permed, her skin smoothed by face powder, her lips painted a rosy color. She smelled of luxury, of a dream I was afraid I’d never be able to reach.