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Chapter One |
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Finding Katherine… A Spiritual Journey to Vietnam and Motherhood
By Ellen Fitzenrider |
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Grey mist-shrouded mountains gradually lengthen and stretch and flatten out, like a cat laying itself out in the sun, relaxing and opening. Silent peaks transform into the structured squares and rectangles of rice paddies, shimmering with brilliant green and the sparkle of water. What was dark and mysterious, secretive even, has become vibrant and colorful and full of life. On the other side of the exit doors there is a throng of people waiting to pick up their passengers. Scanning the crowd for a name placard that reads “Fitzenrider,” I finally spot it in the hands of a young-looking Vietnamese man about my height. Well, I’m five-five, and all the men look about my height. Too young to be Binh, a lawyer, I think, but that’s him, holding up my name. He is the man who e-mailed me that picture just a month ago. “Today I am sending you this photo of Baby Thanh,” the e-mail had said. “If you would like to adopt her, please let me know.” Would I? Would I? I greet this person whom I have only known on the Internet, and he leads me to a black SUV. His English is fairly good and carefully pronounced, but with an accent, and his sentences are missing a word here and there like a lost puzzle piece. As the driver pulls out into traffic, Binh tells me that it will be about a forty-five minute ride until we reach downtown Hanoi, so I settle back to watch the scenery. Most of the traffic is motorbikes, though there are some smaller cars. Along the side of the road, people are walking, riding bicycles or leading water buffalo laden with cargo. There are the rice paddies, shallowly flooded squares of land with various heights of long, slender leaves rising out of it, blades of grass bending slightly in the breeze. There are also scattered, well-worn houses, some of them with red clay-tiled roofs that remind me of Spain. And there is honking. Drivers of cars and motorbikes alike use their horns like some kind of bat-sonar system, constantly tapping to signal their presence, or laying on them hard when they want someone to get out of their way, or when a bike or pedestrian scuttles crab-like across the highway. Through all this, everyone seems totally calm. No angry outbursts or raised fists. No tempers flaring. No road rage. This is just how things are done. The radio plays as we drive towards the city, and Binh and the driver don’t talk either. The music is mostly American, and I smile to myself as they both whistle under their breath to the tunes: “Rhythm of the Falling Rain,” and “Top of the World” by the Carpenters. Curious…each time the station plays a song, they play the original, then follow it up with a drawn out muzak-y instrumental version of the same song. Soon we begin to see more visible signs that we are reaching the outskirts of Hanoi. We turn off the paved highway, and for a little while we are on a red clay access road. But here it is even more congested. The traffic continues to thicken, and the drivers of the motorbikes now wear bandanas or cloths over their noses and faces because the exhaust fumes and the red dust from the road are so dense. The brew swirls in circles into the air and settles thickly everywhere. Along both sides of the road are stalls selling everything imaginable, from fruits and vegetables to bricks to scrap cardboard to banana trees to sacks of rice and spices. No one can see the pale skin and wide hazel eyes peering out, fascinated, through the tinted windows of the SUV. THIS DAY IS A LAST LEG of one journey and a first leg of another. It is the last leg of months of gathering paperwork, of interviews and getting fingerprinted. Of certifications and notarizations and financial statements, documents, papers and forms. Filling them out, organizing them, sending them, receiving them, getting them stamped, authenticated, certified, poked, prodded and punched. The backpack beside me on the seat has not for a second left my sight since leaving home. It contains this ‘dossier’ of about sixty pages, and it represents the end of a life where I can’t imagine that I am really going to be a mommy. I look out the window at the earth and the sky, the dancing swirls of red dust, and the milling people trying to maneuver around each other. This is the first leg of a new journey. Yes, I tell myself, I really, really am. I’m really going to be a mommy. THE DIRT ROAD gives way again to pavement, and we are in Hanoi, which consists mostly of buildings only a few stories high, wide streets and very few traffic signals. And lots and lots of motorbikes. Some with one or two passengers, occasionally three, and frequently a whole family of four or five riding: Father driving, mother in the rear with one child between them, one child in front of the father, and a little one up at the handlebars. Everyone is honking their horns. When there are traffic signals, red lights are run, greens anticipated prematurely, or they are often ignored completely. I expect to see so many accidents within my first hour of arriving in the city, but it isn’t long before I can see that there are rules...Vietnamese rules...but they create a kind of order in the chaos. Binh brings me to a hotel with the unromantic name of Army Guesthouse. The front desk receptionists wear ao dais, the traditional silk outfit for women consisting of a long mid-calf length tunic top with slits up both sides to the waist with a Mandarin-style collar over flowing pants. A large Sony flatscreen TV is tuned to a Vietnamese news channel, and in the center of the lobby stands a tinseled Christmas tree. Binh makes sure that I am checked in, then says he will be back tomorrow (Monday, I think? Yes, I guess that I lost a day in there) at 10:30 so we can get my paperwork authenticated by the Vietnamese government.
AT TWO O’CLOCK, I am sitting cross-legged on the bed in my room after a failed attempt at a nap. My rest will instead be the relaxing of my body, bringing my attention to the endless rise and ebb of my breathing that normally escapes my conscious awareness. It serves to center my being into this room, at this moment only. Forget the past stressful twenty-four hours of traveling. Forget my lists of things to bring and what I might have forgotten. For a few moments I succeed in this meditation, and a calming salve spreads fluidly through my veins. I touch this place of ‘just-being’ long enough to savor the taste of it before I feel it slipping away just as elusively. As those moments fade, a thought has entered my mind. I am just days away from meeting Lily. Lily Thanh Ly Fitzenrider, following the tradition of many families who adopt children and keep their Vietnamese name as the child’s middle name. The face that I have memorized hovers behind my closed eyelids. I can feel her breathing with me. I finally rise and head to the bathroom, where I take the picture of her out of my fannypack and prop it against the mirror. I look at my reflection, remembering a morning in August when I was getting ready for the day. I had just started filing the paperwork to adopt a little girl. A little girl that I was going to name Katherine, as I had always wanted to do since Katharine Hepburn was an idol in my teenage years. That morning as I sleepily used a blow dryer on my hair, I looked into my own hazel eyes looking back at me and distinctly heard in my head “Lily.” It was not a question. Although I hadn’t been thinking about anything in particular at the time, I knew that it was the name of my daughter halfway across the world. Lily? Why Lily? I’ve never known a Lily. It hasn’t been in the plan, or ever crossed my mind. But somehow that warm little body so far away was Lily, my daughter in the greater scheme of things, in all but presence only. If we are to be mother and daughter for the decades of our lives, bringing whatever those decades will, and whatever the relationship will be, the matter of a few months and a few thousand miles was only a technicality. She is my destiny and I hers. Our co-destiny will be together, intertwined. We will each be changed by the other, each of our paths forever altered in so many large and infinitesimal ways because of the other. Many philosophies believe that our spirits choose the body that we are going to enter before we are born, specifically choosing our parents, or a life situation so that we experience certain things or learn certain lessons, or have the chance to overcome specific obstacles. If one believes that the spirit can leave the body freely at death, that it does not die with the body, then why could it not have the freedom to enter another one just as easily, not just once, but over and over again? More than one time around? So many of the eastern religions contain this as part of their belief system, a given, including Buddhism. They see death as purely a brief segue into the next beginning, hopefully as a little bit wiser spirit because of lessons properly learned. I confess that I feel comfortable with this as part of my own personal spiritual medley of faith. But my daughter, Lily, is laying in a crib just a few hours from where I stand right now, whose spirit entered her body around a year ago, and she did so over half a year before it even occurred to me to go down this path. If we truly are in each other’s destiny, then somehow she had some advance notice. If my own belief system is to work, that is. Otherwise this whole thing will be one big fat chance occurrence with nobody having any say in how it falls into place. I can’t help but think and feel that there is less randomness than there appears to be in life. I unpack a few items and organize them on the shelves. Lily’s things I leave in the bag. I won’t need them for awhile. I do a quick survey though. Diapers, baby wipes and diaper bag. Formula, bottles, clothes, baby bowl and spoon. Little stuffed bear and elephant. Pacifier. All alien trappings to my life up until this moment. It seems hard to believe that they will soon feel as much a part of my accessories as my car keys and checkbook. My adventurous spirit won’t let me sit still for long, and I tear out the map pages of Hanoi from my Rough Guide to Vietnam, a trick I picked up on my previous travels. First of all, because it’s easier to carry than a whole book. You can fold the pages up and slip them into your pocket, and you’re less likely to leave it somewhere (like on top of a public phone: Amalfi, Italy, 1999). The other reason is to try to blend in…at least it has been in the past. Nothing brands you as a tourist more than standing on the Left Bank with a guidebook in your hand, and a puzzled look on your face as you look around for the street sign for Rue St. Germain, while Madame Foulard’s yorkie pees on your foot. Blending in is not an option for me in Hanoi, however. At every moment I am as conspicuous as a red hen in a flock of crows. From the moment I step out the hotel door, the cyclo (pronounced ‘sicklow’) drivers pester me to give me a ride. A cyclo is giant tricycle with a seat in the front that is big enough to carry about 11⁄2 people. After declining a ride, choosing instead to walk, and heading down the block, I attract many glances, some covert, others more open. None threatening, all curious. Until I hit the Opera house, an imposing remnant from the days when Vietnam was a French colony. From out of nowhere, vendors selling postcards and embroidered t-shirts swoop down on me, and I have to protest multiple times as well as walk away quickly in order to extricate myself. A block away, I stop to glance at my torn-out map pages and try to decide on a destination. At least I don’t have to worry about lunch, as I’m still stuffed from breakfast. Breakfast was an adventure in itself! Being such an international hub, the hotel at the Hong Kong airport where I spent last night’s layover really covered the bases. They had an unbelievable buffet, with stations set up by culture: the Japanese area had soba noodles with various toppings including something brown and crispy-looking, which ended up being little dried crushed fish (I finally figured out what they were when I saw the tiny little dried eyeballs); the English table had eggs and sausages and baked beans and mushrooms and tomatoes; the American setup was more eggs, hash browns and cereals; the Europeans got cheeses, cold cuts, fruit and breads and rolls; the Indians had vegetarian and non-vegetarian curries, and samosas; and, finally, the Chinese section had spring and egg rolls, a soupy-looking rice dish called congee, and stir-fried veggies and noodles. I ended up getting a little of everything. Everything that didn’t have eyeballs in it, that is. I head south, trying to get the hang of crossing the street. I would like to try to cross at a light, but they are few and far between. I observe other pedestrians, trying to discern the ‘trick,’ but it looks to me as if the trick is to just walk out. Once you do, don’t pause or stop or change direction...that only confuses the motorists. You trust them to swerve around you. I get a chance to look at shops and people-watch...peoplewatch the people watching me. Shops are clustered based on what it is they sell. One whole block is televisions and audio equipment. The next is large household appliances like washing machines. The next is children’s clothing. Motorbikes are pulled up and parked on the sidewalks perpendicular to the street, and I have to weave my way around and through them, occasionally hopping into the street at several impassable stretches. Along the way there are people sitting on steps, little plastic stools, boxes or just squatting, and conversing, sharing café or tea, or cooking and eating soup. Little stoves are set up right there along the sidewalk, and it seems that anyone can walk up and sit down for a café or bowl of noodle soup, called pho. Children are running around, shrieking, laughing, being called after by their parents, and there is an overturned open-weave basket over two chickens, serving as a cage. As I walk, young men on motorbikes call out, “Miss...Miss...you want a ride?” They pat the space behind them on the seat. Rough Guide tells me that this is an informal form of transportation, and about 10,000 dong (15,000 dong is equal to a dollar) can get you an easy ride to somewhere else in the city. A good way to earn a little extra cash in a country where the average wage is less than a dollar a day. No, I smile and shake my head. I have chosen as my first destination two lakes and a park, instead of Notre Dame Cathedral or the mausoleum of Uncle Ho — Ho Chi Minh. I go through a lot of city to get there, perhaps a mile and a half, when I come upon Thien Quang Lake. The traffic swirls around the thin rim of grass, trees and stone path that winds around the lake. Such a visual contrast to the noise of the motorbike engines, constantly beeping horns, and especially the trucks that have retrofitted their regular horns with air-horns and use them without mercy. It all creates a cacophonous bedlam. At the edge of the water, there are people using hand held nets to scoop up little silver fish that swim near the surface, transferring them to buckets a few at a time. I eye the water suspiciously, imagining it to be less than pristine. A little further down, I see a man squatting down at the edge, facing away from the water, shirttails flapping in the breeze, defecating into the lake. What a dichotomy of beauty and, and—I’m a little speechless. I hurry by, and head to the next main avenue, Tran Nhan Tong, about eight lanes wide of whizzing traffic. On the other side is Lenin Park and Bay Mau Lake. This street is a little more of a challenge to cross, and I almost chicken out and offer a nearby cyclo some dong just to ferry me over. I finally manage to cross, however, and at the entry gate pay 2,500 dong to get in. It is a peaceful old park with a high tree canopy overhead and a carefully laid-out grid of pavement in the entrance area. Serpentine swirls of paths snake through the grass leading out to the more remote parts. There are older folks strolling, younger ones playing games of badminton, and, in the secluded spots, teen-agers making out on benches. The path that leads around this larger lake is more removed from the traffic, and although it is still present, the noise is much fainter. There are tropical gardens, statues, picnic areas and a bright red wooden bridge leading to a little island with a pagoda on it. Large sweeping Banyan trees rim the lake, leaning over the water at precarious angles, and are distinguishable by the unusual roots that dangle down from the higher branches into the water. I stop in a sunny spot and sit on a bench just at the edge of the lake near one of those immense trees. The roots from the branches sweep down, like a girl with long hair gazing at her reflection in the surface of the water, the strands of her hair draping around her face to touch the shimmering surface. I pull my portable watercolor kit out of my backpack. It was a gift a few years ago, and I have been using it during my travels ever since. Strictly amateur stuff, but I find that by the time I get done painting a scene, the place is so solidly imprinted upon my memory that I hardly need a photograph. There’s a little brush, blocks of paint, each about the size of a pencil sharpener, and a water flask, all in a compact little box. I hope that I can get off a handful or so small, postcard-sized paintings on this trip, something to show Lily when she gets older. I get my supplies set up and am pondering how I’m going to manage painting those unusual roots, when I begin attracting a crowd. I have the lake, some pillars and some of the tree filled in when three young girls come up behind me to observe. They giggle, and one of them can speak a little English. “Where are you from?” she asks. “I’m American,” I reply. On the walk over here, when people asked where I am from and I answered United States, I got a few uncomprehending looks, maybe because I said it too fast. But when I said “American,” I got very enthusiastic responses, smiles, and occasionally the comment, “America? I have a cousin in California!” I have been wondering what response I would receive, what kind of reception I would get as an American in this country, especially up north. At home, when you mention ‘Vietnam’ to people, more often than not you receive a guarded, even volatile reaction. There is still a lingering feeling of ‘we were the good guys, they were the bad guys.’ This afternoon in Hanoi, I have only been greeted with positive remarks. “Oh, American! That is very good!” she replies, her eyes widening. I have brought my Vietnamese phrasebook with me. I first opened it on the plane, and quickly realized what a difficult language it is. Unlike other Asian countries, thanks to the Jesuits, over a hundred years ago the written language was converted to the Roman alphabet instead of the typical character symbols that they used to share with the Chinese, so at least it’s familiar in that way to our eyes. But the unusual pronunciations require a vast array of accent marks, dashes, dots and squiggles to indicate how particular letters sound as well as certain combinations of letters, and whether the letters strung together have a pitch that stays the same, goes up, down, dips or breaks. Depending on these marks, for instance, the word ‘ba’ could mean three, grandmother, poisoned food, waste, aunt or any. I have no delusions of being able to pick up more than a few handy phrases like hello, thank you and maybe a few food items. Forget grammar and sentence structure. If I get in a jam, at least I will have the phrasebook with me to look something up and to point. The girl goes through the litany of classroom questions: “What is your name? How old are you? How do you like Vietnam?” I tell her that everywhere I have walked people have been staring. “Because you are very beautiful,” was her reply. “You are lucky, because you are whit...whit...you are white...” she finished. I am embarrassed, and don’t know how to reply. The enormous footprint of western culture has left its arrogant mark. Here is an absolutely lovely Asian girl, and she’s buying into the commercial ideal of western beauty that none of us, western women included, can live up to. She asks if I have children. “No, I don’t,” and I leaf through my Vietnamese phrasebook/ dictionary, and can’t find the terms for adoption, or orphanage, either. “Do you have a husband?” “No, no husband.” Now I have her really stymied. Someone my age just has a husband, that’s all there is to it. “You are here with a friend?” “No, by myself.” She looks stunned. I’m still flipping pages to try to find something that will be able to describe why I am in Vietnam. I find the word for daughter, and point to it in the book. It’s pointless for me to try to pronounce the difficult Vietnamese accent marks. “I come to Vietnam to adopt a daughter, a Vietnamese baby.” I’m not sure if she understands the word ‘adopt,’ but after thinking a moment, she figures it out. “And you will take her back to America?” “Yes.” Her eyes widen. “She is a very lucky baby!” By now a crowd of about ten people has formed around us, all of them teenagers. I’m on my bench, the girls are to my right, and the rest are behind us, trying to understand our conversation. We pass the book back and forth to each other, pointing out words and phrases, and laughing until my paints have dried out. I decide to pack up and head back towards my hotel, as it’s a bit of a walk. We say goodbye, and she says maybe we’ll see each other here at the park again. “Maybe we will,” I reply. “It’s very pretty here. I’ll be coming back.” The crowd disperses and we head off in separate directions. I take a zig-zag route back to the Army Guesthouse, picking some smaller streets that aren’t so noisy or hard to cross. I pass children still carrying their backpacks from school, and mothers and grandmothers greeting them on the street. Women squat curbside with baskets of vegetables, or bunches of tiny red and yellow bananas for sale. I dodge motorbikes being rolled back from the sidewalk, and others that bump quickly over the curb from the street into the newly vacated spaces. Older men sit on their tiny plastic stools or on crates, engaged in passionate conversation, drinking tea or café. I get the feeling that I could really be walking down the street of any big city, anywhere on the planet. Apart from the exotic trappings, like the omnipresent non la, the conical hat made out of rice straw that keeps away the blazing sun, people go about their business pretty much the way they do everywhere. We all hope for the same things. We all laugh. We all revel in companionship. And we all love our children. Back at the hotel, Rough Guide tells me there is a restaurant nearby that specializes in Hue cuisine. Since I’ll be heading down that way in a couple of weeks, I decide to try it out. I’m barely through the hotel gates when one of the cyclo drivers calls out “You go cyclo?” No, I shake my head. And I move my fingers to demonstrate walking. The cyclo driver maneuvers his vehicle off the curb and wheels it towards me. “You go cyclo! It too late to walk.” “I don’t go very far. Cafe Hue. It’s very close.” I smile, but keep walking. “Cafe Hue! I know! I know Cafe Hue! I take you there!” Cafe Hue is only about five blocks away. I am suspicious about how much he would like to charge for such a short trip. Besides, it’s still light, and I like to walk. “No, no...I go there myself.” A block and a half away, he is still following me. “Missy, missy, I take you Cafe Hue. You no pay for now. I come back for you and show you the city. Then you pay.” Hanoi at night by cyclo. It might just give me a chance to see more of the places that I’ve highlighted in Rough Guide instead of being stuck in my room. “OK, OK...you can take me to Cafe Hue!” He comes closer and is beaming. I can now see that he has extensive scars on his face and neck...old healed burns that keep his mouth from closing properly. He has almost no lips. As he rolls the cyclo up to me, he tilts the front forward to bring the foot platform of the cab to the ground. This pops the back wheel of the bicycle off the ground. “OK! Yes, Cafe Hue! I take you there!” he repeats, as I climb into the cab. He tilts the bicycle back and climbs on to pedal us away. “What your name?” he asks me, and I reply Ellen. “Ellen,” he repeats back to me “Missy Ellen!” “What’s your name?” I ask. “Phuc” he replies. “Phuc?” I ask, trying to shape my mouth and lips just the right way. “Yes, my name is Phuc.” It sounds like halfway between ‘fook’ and, well, you know. How on earth am I going to manage calling him by name for the rest of the night? As I try to look back at him over my shoulder, I can’t see much, as the cyclo has a plasticized fabric cover that drapes down the back and sides, then up over the top like an awning. There is a little fringe sewn along the front edge that dangles down. Through one of the openings between the side and back, I can see the right bicycle handle bar. His hand resting on it is burned as well, and his pinkie and half of his ring finger are missing. I try to picture his face again, and wonder how old he might be. It is hard to tell with the scars. An uninvited thought enters my mind. Perhaps there was some horrible accident during the war. It’s hard to keep the 30- year-ago war from coming to mind from time to time, wandering around this city. Perhaps he was a northern soldier…or a child… and survived the bombings. And now here he is, cheerfully pedaling an American woman around Hanoi in 2001. Let’s see…how old would he have to be? I’m not sure that I’ll get up the nerve to ask how those scars came to be. Would it be rude? Would the Vietnamese consider it rude? For now, I leave the question alone. At our first intersection, one without a traffic light, he barely slows. We make a left turn, a wide, curving arc onto a main street, with motorbikes and cars, bicycles and other cyclos swerving around us. I fight the urge to close my eyes, but my legs instinctively contract and I push both feet into the floorboard. Breathe, I tell myself. We pass a construction site that has a few workers winding up for the day. They don’t have a wheelbarrow or forklift to move a pile of leftover bricks. Instead, I see the men carrying the bricks in baskets on their heads. One fellow, who is thin and wiry and looks about fifty, balances his full basket and holds the rim with one hand, while he squats down, lifts the single wayward brick above his head, places it in the basket, straightens up, and continues on through to the back of the work site. Two more right turns and we are in front of Cafe Hue. Phuc eases the cyclo up to the curb and tilts it forward so I can climb out. I look at my watch. It is 5:45. “I be here until 6:30, then we go see city.” I tell him. I notice that I have started dropping some of the words from my sentences. “6:30! OK! OK! I be here at 6:30!” At the open-air restaurant, I order spring rolls, banana flower salad and asparagus-crab soup. The menu is printed in Vietnamese with English and French translations, and a scan of the rest of it doesn’t reveal anything terribly scary (Rough Guide talks about dog meat being a Northern delicacy!), although I’m not sure if I would ever give the snake-head fish a try. At 6:30, Phuc is nowhere to be seen. Ten minutes later I start back for the hotel. When I round the final corner, I see him kicked back in the cab of his cyclo, chatting with the other drivers. When he sees me, he jumps up, hops on his bike seat, and pedals down to meet me. “We go cyclo now! Where you want to go?” Nothing about standing me up at the restaurant. I pull out my Rough Guide map, and look at the places that I have highlighted. Kimbo Cafe for dessert, and then Hang Gai, the silk district. “You know Kimbo Cafe?” I ask. “Yes! Yes! I know Kimbo Cafe! Very popular...many tourist go there. Very famous!” Off we go to Kimbo Cafe. Rough Guide says that you can get fresh French parties there, as well as home-made yogurt with fruit. Its claim to fame is that actress Catherine Deneuve once complimented the owner on the quality of his yogurt. It has been a landmark ever since. It starts to get dark, and the city is becoming illuminated with streetlights, neon signs and bright shop lights. After a few more seemingly close calls in the traffic, I finally relax and trust Phuc to do the driving. Kimbo Cafe is at a major intersection of five large streets. With a little maneuvering, Phuc has me at the curb again. Everywhere there are people, motorbikes, and vendors with baskets of fruit displayed on the sidewalk. Women, their heads covered by their non la, carry their giong ganh (pronounced ‘yung gen’) over their shoulders, the long pole with a shallow basket hanging off of each end that is familiar to me from Asian artwork. Out of these baskets, they have for sale bananas, oranges, or maybe even a little lit stove on one side, with bowls, spoons, veggies and chopped greens on the other, ready to serve up a bowl of hot noodle soup. There is a grace to the way they carry this giong ganh, with their body turned so the pole rests on the forward shoulder, the pole sticking out to the front and behind them, one hand grasping the pole in front of them, the other in back. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to maneuver on the sidewalk. Their step is a glide-and-bounce that makes the two ends bob up and down, and I imagine the spring created makes it a little easier to carry. When she is ready to switch sides, the woman pauses and drops her front shoulder while rolling the pole to the opposite side around behind her neck, assuming the same position only with the other shoulder forward now. This apparently is a major form of transport in Vietnam…I have seen it everywhere since I have arrived. The open storefront of Kimbo Café is half-way covered by a glass case. Lined up neatly inside are rows of baguettes, croissants, hot savory pies and glazed fruit pastries of the sort that you would see along the Boulvard St. Michel in Paris. Inside, I take a seat and order yogurt with fresh fruit. While I am waiting, I go back up to the cases to pick out a few things to bring back to the hotel room. Chocolate croissants, a glazed apple tart, and a few cookies. My yogurt comes in a tall, slender glass, with sliced fresh strawberries, mangoes and papaya, a long spoon and a bowl of sugar. Madam Catherine was right. Phuc has waited at the corner this time. Carrying my bag of goodies, I climb in and say “Next, Hang Gai!” The Old Town part of Hanoi is a zigzag of streets, and the shops also are arranged by the wares they sell. Hang Gai is the silk street. There is also Hang Bac, Hang Quat, and Hang Da, where you can find lacquer-ware, brass, religious items, shoes and embroidered items such as tablecloths and napkins. Phuc leaves me off at the corner, and I start out by windowshopping. Halfway down the first block, there is a break in the shops, and in the space is an enormous ancient tree with deeply patterned bark. It is hard to say whether the shops are built into the tree’s convoluted trunk or if the tree has grown into the walls of the shops. I imagine that a little of both happened over the period of many years, many decades probably. It is obviously a place of ritual: inserted in the cracks and crevices of the trunk from the base in the sidewalk to up over my head are hundreds and hundreds of stubs from incense sticks. A few fresh sticks burn as well, and they send their wispy perfume out to be carried away by the breeze caused by the passing motorbikes. Shop workers stand in front of their establishments trying to usher people in the door. “Very good prices!” they say, “Very beautiful!” pointing to the goods in their window. The larger shops have racks of clothes that you can try on. But there are small shops that have only a few sample items hanging on their walls, and bolts and bolts of cloth, brightly colored and patterned silk, stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling. They tailor-make everything they sell. I choose one such shop to stop at, and its young proprietress is quick to pull down a few ao dais from their hooks on the wall. “My clothes much cheaper, because my shop is small,” she says. Her shop consists of one wall hung with samples, an aisle less than three feet wide that goes back about thirty feet, and the left wall that is nothing but neatly folded and stacked silk all the way up to the ceiling tiles. “I use the same tailors as the big shops, but my prices are better. I give you good price!” Her English is better than Phuc’s, and she doesn’t have the habit that he does of repeating things multiple times back to you. Her name is Thuy, pronounced ‘twee.’ She is very pretty, with an animated smiling face. Her long black hair is pulled back into a pony-tail. “I will be here for two months...I don’t want to buy anything yet...I’ll have to carry it around.” “That’s OK! I keep for you here at the shop until you want to pick it up! What are you in Vietnam that much time for?” I tell her about adopting Lily. She understands the concepts of ‘adopt’ and ‘orphan,’ so I don’t have to struggle trying to communicate that. She too is very surprised that I’m here all alone, and that I am doing such a thing without a husband. Then she pauses. “Maybe it’s better that way! You do not have to take care of a husband too!” She cocks her head to one side and gives me a knowing smile, her dark eyes sparkling and laughing. It’s a girl moment...some things are universal, regardless of the culture. I smile back and turn to look at her samples, running my fingers over the smooth shiny surfaces. “How much for the ao dai?” I ask. “Ao dai?” Thuy pronounces it ‘Ow Zye’ “Twenty-four dollars, both for top and pants. Very good quality!” and she displays for me the work on the seams of the samples. “And if I buy several ao dai?” I say, copying her ‘ow zye.’ “If you buy more than three, twenty dollars each.” Swiftly she pulls some bolts part-way out of the stacks, and drapes the fabric over her arm to show me the sheen. I finger some of the fabric, gravitating towards the greens and coppers. “We can do zipper in front or side, or elastic waist. High collar and closing down front or diagonally across shoulder. Your choice of fabric buttons. Whatever you want!” Like Phuc, most of her statements sound like they end with exclamation points. In spite of the fact that I know I should look around more, and bargain a little more ruthlessly, I can’t resist and order two ao dais and two extra pairs of pants. I tell her I want to order some for friends back home, but need to e-mail for measurements. “Yes! OK!” she says as she pulls out her tape and stretches it between my neck and shoulder, from shoulder to wrist, neck to waist, waist to calf, calling the numbers out to her assistant, who looks like her younger sister. While she is doing that, we talk about me traveling to Vietnam and my adopting Lily. “Lucky baby,” she says. “Where is the baby now?” I tell her Lang Son, trying several ways to pronounce it before she understands where I’m talking about. “Lang Son! Oh, it is very poor in Lang Son. People very poor there...” ‘Lank Sun’ it sounds like when she says it. Both words are very clipped and even-toned. I practice a few times. Here I am in Vietnam, a relatively poor country, and the people in this city, Hanoi, are by Western standards, pretty poor, and they consider the people who live in Lang Son province very poor. I’m wondering what I will see when I head up north in a few days. I give Thuy $40 US as a deposit and pause at the doorway and pick out about a dozen silk scarves and shawls to bring home for gifts. Four dollars each! These she bundles up for me, then climbs up a ladder at the back of the shop, moves a ceiling tile, and stashes them above. When she climbs back down we say goodbye, and she tells me to come back in two days to try on my outfits. ONCE I AM BACK OUT on the street, I turn to find Phuc. It’s about eight-thirty, and I can’t wait to settle into the cyclo seat. I spot him parked with some other cyclo drivers again, shooting the breeze, but he hops up quickly once he sees me at the corner. He has been safeguarding my pastries as well. “Can you drive around now and show me a little of the city? That’s enough walking for me,” I tell him as he rolls the cyclo up. “You see city! OK! OK!” He pedals me around, not past any monuments or statues or famous places from what I can tell. Instead I see people coming home at the end of the day carrying their groceries, children playing and stores closing up. A light mist is falling. The blackness of the pavement glistens and reflects the streetlights, the shop lights and the headlights of the motorbikes like shimmering stars. The women carrying their giong ganh walk a little lighter, their baskets now empty. The smell of wet pavement mingles with the aroma of cooking vegetables, noodles and fish sauce. Motorbike horns beep, the rubber tires of Phuc’s cyclo splash through tiny puddles, and the rhythm of his feet pedaling me forward causes the cyclo canopy to shake and sway gently. The chopped musical sound of the Vietnamese language from people that we pass blends with it all into a city medley. Phuc carries on a conversation of his own, not waiting for any response from me. He repeats himself over and over, mostly telling me that it is very good that I am American, it is very good that I visit, that he has met many very nice Americans, and that this little girl is a very lucky baby.
BACK AT THE HOTEL, I’m ready for bed and am reading through Rough Guide again. Lang Son, it tells me, has a couple of serviceable hotels, and is mostly used as a stopping over point for travelers going on to China. The area around the border has changed hands between Vietnam and China many times over the centuries, and many of the people are ethnically Chinese. Forget about quaint villages and monuments and temples to visit, it tells me. Lang Son is a practical, industrial, commercial city. But it doesn’t matter. Lily is there. What is her story? What is her mother’s story? I cannot think about one without the other. For Lily to be my daughter, there must be a tragic other story that brings her to me. Perhaps an unwed mother in a country that does not accept such things? Vietnam is not like China with a one child only rule, so parents don’t abandon girls in favor of boys due to a restriction from the government. What brought her mother, her birth mother, to the decision to give her up, to decide that she could not care for this little girl? |
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