The Time Keepers

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6 Vietnam, 1976

A NH ’ S BELOVED OLDER SISTER, L INH, POSSESSED A SPECIAL talent for picking fruit off the vine that was perfectly ripe. Not one day too soon nor a day too late. Let your eyes, your nose, your fingers all be your guide , she reminded Anh. All of one’s senses were needed to ensure that the fruit wasn’t plucked too soon.

The girls grew up sleeping beside each other on woven mats and exchanging stories as moonlight crept through the cracks of their childhood home. Anh learned everything she knew from Linh, from how to braid her hair to how to wash grains of rice. But the greatest wisdom Linh had imparted was how to take the fruit from their orchard and transform it into money for their family. The sisters’ fruit stand at the local market was a jewel box of vivid colors and assorted shapes and textures. Bell-shaped water apples, bright orange papayas, and cactus-green pomelos. Their baskets brimmed with crimson rambutans and golden longans, each bundle of tiny marble-sized fruit still attached to its stem and leaf.

During the war years, every piece of fruit from their family’s orchard became infinitely more valuable. As much as the sisters missed the independence and financial rewards of their market stall, it was far too dangerous for them to journey outside their village, particularly with their husbands away for weeks at a time working as mechanics for the South Vietnamese army. But fruit and other goods were still exchanged between their neighbors through a trusted bartering system. Three mangoes for some cooking oil. Some pomelos for a new needle and mending thread.

When B?o was born, her sister, Linh, wrapped him in a scarf and kept him close to her at all times. When he grew bigger, she placed him in a basket, giving him the morning fruit to touch and eventually hold. She called him her “little man,” always running her fingers through his hair. At the end of the day, she’d retrieve one last mango, tucked away just for him. “I saved the sweetest one for you, bé tí ,” she’d remind him, using her special term of affection, before kissing him on the head.

Anh never tired of looking at her young nephew’s savoring the fruit in his hands before bringing it to his nose to inhale its intense fragrance. It reminded her of watching her sister comb through their family’s orchard in search of the morning’s perfect bounty. Linh had taken to motherhood so naturally, and Anh craved that she, too, would be so blessed one day. She watched as Linh took the knife out of her apron and peeled the skin away from the mango’s flesh and cut it into slices. As B?o ate the succulent fruit, its juice running down his chin, he’d smile as though his mother had just plucked for him the most wonderful star from the sky.

Since their parents’ death, Linh was the one who Anh looked to for guidance. She was desperate to conceive a child and clung to each word Linh uttered. Drink this tea after your monthly cycle.… Eat this herb to strengthen your womb.

“What did our mother used to say? ‘Nurture the soil, and the flowers will come,’” she reminded Anh. “Steep the nettles I gave you. It will help with your fertility.”

Anh hoped so. Just that morning, the first day of the lunar month, she’d placed a smooth and perfect custard apple on the family altar and put fresh flowers in the vase, praying to their ancestors that she would conceive.

The two sisters now sat on the edge of the wooden porch, watching as B?o played outside the family home. A small black bird pecked at the ground nearby, searching for food. “Fear is not good for the spirit. We must have faith,” Linh said. “ Didn’t I tell you our husbands would return safely from the war? And just as I promised, Minh came back to you.”

What she said was true. While Anh had worried about her husband when he was away, her sister possessed a confidence that eluded her. Linh’s fortitude only grew stronger after B?o’s birth. Motherhood had given her a sense of purpose and shielded her from despair in a way that Anh couldn’t help but envy. She yearned for something similar of her own. Her days were spent cleaning and cooking for her father-in-law, who was so frail, he spent most afternoons drifting in and out of sleep.

When her husband, Minh, did return home, however, it was short-lived. Only a few weeks later, he and Linh’s husband, Chung, were arrested by the new Communist regime for having supported the Americans rather than fighting for Vietnam’s independence.

Yet, as devastated as they both were, Linh continued to reassure her. “They will come back to us, just like before. You’ll see,” she promised Anh.

The two men were sent to a reeducation camp. While the conditions had been harsh and the methods of indoctrination brutal, Linh had again been proven right. Their husbands did eventually come home to them. But she had not predicted that their family’s suffering would continue as it did.

Under the new regime, the two couples were forced to give up their home, and the sisters’ family orchard was confiscated. They were ordered to relocate to a patch of land on the outskirts of the village that their husbands were expected to cultivate, despite their lack of any farming experience.

While every family in the village was given a rations card for a certain amount of rice, those who were considered traitors received the smallest portion and grains that were almost always infested with bugs and larvae. Ignoring her own hunger, Anh’s heart broke as she watched her sister struggle to feed B?o, who no longer looked like a healthy seven-year-old boy, but one who was scrawny and malnourished. She helped Linh as they tried to stretch the meager rice portions with bits of boiled cassava root and water. But even that wasn’t enough to fill their empty stomachs. Her father-in-law, who had somehow managed to stay alive through the war and the famine, soon grew weak and died.

Anh wondered how long they could exist on what felt like nothing more than boiled water and air. Hungry and weak, B?o never complained there was no food for him. But sometimes, almost out of reflex, he would curl next to his mother, his small fingers searching for a mango hidden in her pocket. But there was never anything there.

“We must find a way to leave,” Anh’s brother-in-law, Chung, began to whisper in private. Despite Linh’s concern for their safety, Chung kept a Japanese radio hidden in the shed. He’d found it discarded on the road and, with a little tinkering, was able to make it work again. Sometimes when they believed the village was deep in sleep, the two men would secretly turn the dial to search for the Voice of America broadcast and then usher their wives over to join them. It amazed Anh how close the voices sounded. As though America wasn’t so far away at all.