Chapter 42
CHAPTER 42
September 1983, Seadrift, Texas
There was another baby on the way.
Call it motherly instincts, or perhaps it was the constant craving for bún bò Hu?—the satisfying rich spicy red broth, the mountain of fresh bean sprouts, the way one had to work their teeth around the pork knuckle to remove the tiniest bit of meat, and of course, the wide, paper-thin vermicelli noodles, which soaked up the broth so beautifully. Evelyn craved it almost every morning for the past two months, so much so that she began to have phantom tastes of the flavors the moment she woke up, till the moment she went to bed. That was when she knew she was pregnant. She hadn’t had such an intense craving since she was two months pregnant with Jude.
She walked barefoot around her tiny mobile home, less than four hundred square feet. Her feet were swollen to the size of unripe melons. She could hear Jude crawling about in the living room, clanging his wooden toys together. The sound of it both comforted and terrified her. She was a mother, but a mother carrying a terrible secret. The sound of two wooden toy horses clashed against each other, going into battle, crossing the rough terrain of the cerulean woven rug. Shrieks of delight coming out of Jude became the unofficial war cry, as he continued to pit horse against horse, while there was her own pit in her stomach, rotting away inside her.
Evelyn stopped in front of the living room, unable to peek her head around the corner to look at Jude. She couldn’t bear to look at his face in this moment, not when she was pregnant with someone’s child who wasn’t Jude’s father. The guilt shattered her each time she looked into his deep-set eyes.
Every time she looked at her son, she was reminded of the day when they pulled his body out of the Gulf, limp and tangled in the fishing net they had dragged along the ground. Shrimp trawler after shrimp trawler of Vietnamese fishermen still showed up every morning after Tu?n’s disappearance to look for him. She kept hoping the net would just catch nothing more than some stray fish and trash, and for a stretch of time, they pulled up nothing but beer bottles and a few crabs for dinner.
But one morning, almost two years after Tu?n’s death, and after the court case had closed, the line became taut—more taut than usual—indicating a big catch. And she knew.
Deep in her heart, she knew that his body—or what was left of it—was at the bottom of the net.
Jude’s voice brought her back to reality. He had given up the great horse battle, and had decided to throw his horses against the wall instead. Evelyn caressed her stomach, which only protruded ever so slightly. Though it was just the slightest ridge—it was undeniably a bump of some kind. Men could easily have mistaken her for eating too much; perhaps she was just bloated. But the women at the crab factory knew. They had known before she began to crave the phantom taste of bún bò Hu?. They knew immediately when they watched her swallow her saliva a few times in a row, suppressing the metallic taste in her mouth, the scent of a thousand crabs being processed alive suddenly feeling a thousand times more tangible than before. They knew when she had to close her eyes and slowly lower herself down on a chair, her knees buckling, not just from the back-breaking labor, but from the sheer exhaustion of creating life.
Yes, the women all knew she was pregnant. They also knew who the father was.
But they all kept quiet. Not because they were trying to keep it a secret from their husbands, brothers, or uncles—but because they knew that what little joy they had these days, they had to cherish it, even if it was through unconventional means. But Evelyn didn’t see having another baby with a different man as joyful. Instead, she saw it as a burden.
Evelyn worked up the courage to peer around the living room corner and began to observe Jude from a distance. She couldn’t bring herself to hold him lately; anytime she tried, he felt light-years away in her arms, even the little moments when he fell asleep cuddling her. It wasn’t just prolonged postpartum anymore; it was a communal grief. The loss of Jude growing inside of her, the loss of her Tu?n, the new growing baby inside of her. Nothing felt easy anymore, it was only just a continuous struggle. How does one see light when it’s eternally midnight?
Jude crawled all over the blue rug, as if he were crossing his own ocean, just as she had done after the war. His little hands and feet were so courageous and unassuming, finding his way from corner to corner without fear. She thought of what to do. What to do with the baby growing inside her, and what to do with the man she had made love to one night, when she was so overcome with grief, when all she wanted was darkness and a warm body, and to pretend that she was lying next to Tu?n, one last time.
She couldn’t help but feel anger toward Tu?n. What really happened to him that night on the boat? How could he have abandoned her like this? She felt too ashamed to go back to her mother in Oklahoma City, and too ashamed to ask for help from the people around town.
The sound of metal rattling broke her out of her reverie, and she snapped out of it in time to watch Jude pull something from behind the TV console. Old clumps of dust bunnies clung to the indents of his palms, marking topography lines, and he laughed gleefully, throwing the dust up into the air. It was the cherry on top of an infinite string of bad luck. She ran forward and yelled at him to stop getting himself dirty. Frustrated with her lack of peace, and seeing how dirty Jude was, she began to cry. Little tears fell at first, which quickly turned into big, gasping sobs, the kind of sobs she hadn’t had since she was a child, throwing tantrums. She held Jude’s hands up high to prevent him from getting himself dirtier or anything else dirty.
She wondered what she would do with two children, from two different fathers, one out of wedlock, and if she should just run away before the baby was born. Or if she should just try to find a clinic that could help her. She had heard of those clinics and had friends who had gone. Just as her mind spiraled to an even darker place, out of the corner of her eye, something shiny glistened, under the TV console, where Jude had been playing. Something peeked out at her, calling her.
Evelyn stopped crying long enough to stoop down toward it. She couldn’t remember ever cleaning behind the console, not in the five years they’d been living in the house, even when Tu?n was alive. Evelyn squatted, slid her hand under the small gap, her hand blindly sifting through until it made contact with what felt like a handle. Her heart stopped, and she got up immediately, shoving the furniture out of the way. She knew what it was before she even pulled it out, and upon seeing the rusty green metal tackle box, she knew it belonged to Tu?n.
The old tackle box he had carried to his boat every morning for years, which held his hooks, lures, bobbers, swivels… even an old photo of her, anything he needed to be gone for an hour at sea or for days. Before his death, he’d replaced it with a plastic tackle box, and she didn’t ask what he’d done with the old one. Curiosity took over. Why was he hiding his metal tackle box behind the console?
She quickly brought the tackle box to the kitchen sink and wiped it down, her hands covered with dust and grime, discolored worse than Jude’s palms. She carefully opened up the box… and gasped, almost dropping it. Behind her, Jude had taken over duties as the crier, and his wails bounced off the popcorn ceiling and the small house. Outside, Evelyn could hear her neighbors yelling at one another, one in Vietnamese, the other in Spanish, for once again blocking each other’s parking spot. But none of that noise mattered anymore, because staring back up at her were stacks of cash carefully wrapped in faded red rubber bands, presumably from old bánh mì wrappers. Every compartment in the tackle box was stuffed with cash. Jude’s wailing became louder and he began to run his blackened palms all over the white walls, transitioning into a human Sharpie, taking his frustrations out.
Evelyn didn’t know whether to cry or to laugh as she began to pull out wads of cash, quickly counting how much was in there. Wads of dollar bills, five stacks of tens, and lots of twenties stared back at her. The bills weren’t crisp, some even had the familiar smell of rotten fish and cigarette smoke—the two smells that Evelyn had attached to Tu?n. A quick estimate and she could tell that there was at least $20,000.
With trembling hands, she closed the tackle box and slowly backed away from it, as if she’d opened Pandora’s box. Tu?n had talked about moving for a while, when things got really bad when the white fisherman was killed. He talked about moving to the city, to Houston, and opening up a family business, something that was just theirs, and nothing that involved fishing. He had talked about opening up a shop of some kind. She had snapped at him one night, telling him that it was all just a dream, and to keep his feet on the ground, how she’d love to run a bánh mì shop of her own one day, but she had to be realistic.
She regretted yelling at him.
Now she fell to the ground, sobbing, shoving her face into her arms. How wrong she’d been. If only she had had faith that Tu?n always had another plan. She should have had faith that he would always take care of her.
Combined with Jude’s vocal strength and her own, she didn’t hear the front door open, and in walked Huey, carrying a bundle of sad flowers in his hand, his other hand clutching his wool hat tightly.
“Em?” he called out quietly, hovering near the doorframe, too afraid to come closer to the petite pregnant woman crumpled on the ground. “Are you okay?”
She lifted her head slowly and saw Huey staring down at her. She assessed his face, earnest, young, strong, and the flowers in his hand. He must have known. Someone at the factory must have whispered it to him, or he had overheard. He knew.
There was no doubt in her mind that he was madly in love with her. He’d want her to keep the baby and he’d take Jude in as his own, and he’d marry her in a run-down courthouse somewhere in Texas. It all sounded so easy, perhaps it was a lifeline being thrown to her, and she should take it. There weren’t many other options for a pregnant, widowed Vietnamese refugee.
She slowly got up off the floor and threw a glance at the tackle box. She walked into Huey’s arms and hugged him hello.
“Marry me, em,” Huey whispered into her ear. “I’ll always take care of you. I promise. Nothing will ever happen to your family. To our family.”
She didn’t respond right away. They both stood there swaying back and forth, and she closed her eyes, and dreamt about another life. Opening up a shop of her own, somewhere in Houston. Something that was just hers, and no one else’s. Maybe even a sandwich shop, a bánh mì shop. It wouldn’t be much, but it would be a start.
“Okay, anh,” she whispered back. “I’ll marry you.”
From outside the window, she spotted Duc, patrolling the yard, watching out for the two of them, as he always did, and she closed her eyes and allowed her body to meld into Huey’s. She was tired, so very tired.