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"Come Long-Vanh. Take a hold of me."
I stand behind him and wrap my arms around him and I can feel his
ribs and how they stretch his skin. The way they protrude in places sickens me.
"Hold tighter," he says.
He leans away from the mailbox, and I pull, afraid we will go over the
ledge if what comes free suddenly gives. The mailbox begins to tremble. Ba
Nguyen grunts as he grits his teeth. He slackens a bit before yanking, and
dense green water gushes from the mailbox. The stream is so strong that it
shoots over us, over Montana Avenue down below, over the houses immediately
across from us. The currents snake their way to downtown; they uproot trees
and swallow houses whole and carry off cars. The green body of water curves
around the newly planted mountains. The currents slow down as the water
level settles.
I stand beside Ba Nguyen, silent and unblinking.
"The Mekong Delta," he motions with his hand.
To get to the mountains we take a junk. The man working the oars is
wearing a sun hat which hides his face. His black pajama shirt is buttoned to
the neck though the sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. His forearms flex with
each rotation of the oars, and a crop of veins surface thick and permanent from
beneath the landscape of muscles and skin.
The weather is no longer what it used to be. The air is heavy with
water. Humidity was what Ba Nguyen told me. Our shirts cling to our wet
bodies, and we lean over the side of the junk to wring tight the sweat from our
clothes.
"Maybe I should have left the weather behind," he smiles as he takes
up a portion of the hem in both hands.
I can see his ribs, see where they have cracked, and the spaces between
the breaks. Purple markings point out where these breaks occurred. Ba
Nguyen balls up the hem in his hands and wrings sweat from it.
"But if I had, you would not get mountains as green as these," he
points toward the horizon.
Drifting by our junk is what is left of trees. Tables and chairs, bottles
and aluminum cans, clothes and children, men and women stay afloat and roll
with the strong currents. Other Vietnamese people in boats cast out fishing nets
to catch the debris floating by and haul them in. Their sons and daughters
untangle the debris, keeping what is useful.
We make our way beneath freeway underpasses, and we have to lie
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