The next morning the rainbow was gone. The emperor did all the things he needed to do for his people and one night he thought that he had earned a rest, that he could return to the moon at least until morning. But the wizard came at his call and sadly explained that there was no return to the moon. Once you came down the rainbow, there was no way back. The emperor was very sad, so he proclaimed that every year on the fifteenth night of the eighth lunar month, the anniversary of his trip, there would be a celebration throughout the kingdom to remember the beautiful land that was left behind.
My little one, you would love all the paper lanterns that we light on this night. They are in the shapes of dragons and unicorns and stars and boats and horses and hares and toads. We light candles inside them and we swing them on sticks in the dark and the village is full of these wonderful pinwheels of light, the rushing of these bright shapes. I saw B
o again in such a light, with the swirling of lanterns and the moon just coming over the horizon, fat as an elephant and the color of the sun in fog. I saw him in the center of the hamlet where we had all gathered to celebrate and the lights were whirling and when our eyes met, he suddenly staggered under the weight of an invisible water jug, he carried it around and around in circles on his shoulder, a wonderful pantomime, and then he lost his footing and I could almost see the jug there on his shoulder tipping, tipping, and it fell and crashed and he jumped back from all the splashing water and we laughed.
At the festival of the moon, it is not forbidden for an unbetrothed boy and girl to speak together. We moved toward each other and I could feel the heat of the swinging lanterns on my face as the children ran near me and cut in before me, but Bo and I kept moving and we came together in the center of the village square and we spoke. He asked if my family was well and I asked about his family and I was happy to find that the father of his cousin was a good friend of my father. Bo asked if my water jug was safe and I asked if his shoulder was in pain from carrying the jug and we slowly edged our way to the darkness beyond the celebrating and then we walked down the path to the cistern and beyond, to the edge of the river.
This was perhaps more than our hamlet’s customs would allow us, but we did not think of that. I was a strongheaded girl, my little one, and Bo was a good boy. I sensed that of him and I was right. He was very respectful to me. I felt very safe. We stood by the river and a sampan slipped silently past and it was hung with orange lanterns, the color of the moon from earlier this night, when it was near the horizon and Bo did his pantomime for me.
Now the moon was higher and it had grown slimmer and it had turned so white that it nearly hurt my eyes to look at it. Nearly hurt them but not quite, and so it was the most beautiful of all. It was as bright as it could be and still be a good thing. And Bo slipped his arm around my waist and I let him keep it there and the joy of it was as strong as it could be and still be a good thing. We stood looking up at the moon and trying to see the fairies there in the middle of the dark sea and we tried to hear them singing their poems.
My little one, Bo was my love and both our families loved us, too, so much so that they agreed to let us marry. In Vietnam this was a very rare thing, that the marriage agreement should be the same as the agreement of hearts between the bride and the groom. You will be lucky, too. This is a good thing about being in America. A very good thing, and I wonder if you can tell that there are tears in my eyes now, if you can sense this little fall of water, surrounded as you are by your own sea. But do not worry. These tears are happy ones, tears for you and the life you will have, which will be very beautiful.
I look at the gate in our white picket fence and soon your father will come through. I want to tell you that you are a lucky girl. Even as my tears change. Bo and I were betrothed to be married. And then he was called into the Army and he went away before the ceremony could be arranged and he died in a battle somewhere in the mountains. The gate is opening now and your father, my husband, is coming through and he is a good man. He keeps this fence and our house free from the mildew. He scrubs it with bleach and hoses it every six months and he stops at my hibiscus, not seeing me here at the window. I must soon stop speaking. He is a good man, an American soldier who loved his Vietnamese woman for true and for always. He will find me by the window and touch my cheek gently with the back of his fine, strong hand and he will touch my belly, trying to think he is touching you.
You will love him, my little one, and since I know you understand my heart, I do not want you to be sad for me. I had my night on the moon and when I came back down the rainbow, the world I found was also good. It is sad that there is no return, but we can still light a lantern and look into the night sky and remember.
IN THE CLEARING
Though I have never seen you, my son, do not think that I am unable to love you. You were in your mother’s womb when the North of our country took over the South and some of those who fought the war found themselves running away. I did not choose to run, not with you ready to enter this world. I did not choose to leave my homeland and become an American. I have chosen so few of the things of my life, really. I was eighteen when Saigon was falling and you were dreaming on in your little sea inside your mother in a thatched house in An Khê. Your mother loved me then and I loved her and I would not have left except I had no choice. This has always been a strange thing to me, though I have met several others here where I live in New Orleans, Louisiana, who are in the same condition. It is strange because I know how desperately many others wanted to get out, even hiding in the landing gears of the departing airplanes. I myself had not thought of running away, did not choose to, but it happened to me anyway.
I am sorry. And I write you now not to distract you from your duty to your new father, as I am sure your mother would fear. I write with a full heart for you because I must tell you a few things about being a person who is somewhere between a boy and a man. I was just such a person when I held a rifle in my hands. It was a black thing, the M16 rifle, black like a charcoal cricket, and surprisingly light, with a terrible voice, a terrible quick voice like the river demons my own father told stories about when it was dark and nighttime in our village and I wanted to be frightened.
That is one thing I must tell you. As a boy you wish to be frightened. You like the night; you like the quickness inside you as you and your friends speak of mysterious things, ghosts and spirits, and you wish to go out into the dark and go as far down the forest path as you can without turning back. You and your friends go down the path together and no one dares to say that you have gone too far even though you hear every tiny sound from the darkness around you and these sounds make you quake inside. Am I right about this? I dream of you often and I can see you in this way with your friends and it is the same as it was with me and my friends.
This is all right, to embrace the things you fear. It is natural and it will help build the courage you must have as a man. But when you are a man, don’t become confused. Do not seek out the darkness, the things you fear, as you have done as a boy. This is not a part of you that you should hold on to. I myself did not hold on to it for more than a few minutes once the rifle in my hand heard the cries of other rifles calling it. I no longer dream of those few minutes. I dream only of you.