Secrets-==== Chapter Five

At that moment, Tim desired with an irresistible intensity to begin his life over again with someone like Diana, whom he knew was the most moral of all in that house. If he could, he wanted to change everything about his life from his early youth, to recreate his destiny, to say what he had not said, to do things in a right way. He reflected his past slowly in his mind, finding his way through the sever headache that now was throbbing his forehead and he blamed it on excessive drinking last night, since it was morning already.

He saw Diana as a perfect model of a decent, moral, and enduring woman. He thought Jacob was a winner among them to have a wife like her, a woman who had helped him to endure his suffering with the same love that she had helped him to enjoy his happiness. Suddenly after thirty years of using women, he felt he was falling in love with what Diana stood for. To him, Rosa was another user like him. He loved Rosa just as he had loved other women he had been with. He had thought that one could love many women at the same time, share their joy and sorrow, and never betray them to others. But all the happenings from yesterday evening to now, almost dawn, made him to change his mind. One needed only one woman like Diana.

Nothingness was his life now. It had been hard for him to come to that conclusion, but he was there finally; to accept the great annihilation in his life. Emptiness was now the other end of the rope, his life. Everything, big or small, became a prolonged nonentity for him at that moment.

Small but significant things in that house now were overwhelmed by irrelevant ones. Tim thought who cared what Thui had done when she knew what would become of her, nothing! How could Ed criticize his wife or be angry at her while he, himself, had done worse. Therefore he knew Thui's life would not change since anytime Ed would say something to her, she had something worse to tell back to him. He thought what had Rosa done if she really was in Thui's place. He realized with shock that she would not be any different than Thui. He knew Rosa as much as he knew himself.

"Rosa, you could be worse than Thui if you had her situation!" Tim murmured, suddenly discovering that he was telling the truth.

Rosa was shocked by that sudden comment. She felt that her secrets, too, soon be revealed.

"I don't believe what you just said. I thought we had so much in common." Rosa snapped at Tim. Jacob, her newly found father seemed very upset by Tim's remark, even though deep inside he agreed with him. But it was Tim, who again said:

"That is true. We do have many things in common; we both are users to the point of being abusers. We hide our faces under the mask of educators." Tim's voice was muffled. Then he continued:

"The fact is that things could not be any worse between us as it is now. I've come to know you and myself tonight. I am sure you disagree with me; but despite your opinion, I don't think I would ever be able to find the belief I've lost, or to refine the depth of misery which I'm struggling for many months now. I'm done, so are you; and that is the end of it!"

An unexplainable silence followed after what Tim said. Everyone wondered what was his suffering besides his son's death, and why he said that he came to know himself tonight! Nonetheless, Rosa, who knew for fact that her turn to tell her secrets was imminent, while trying to hide her emotion, said:

I don't understand you. I don't know what you're talking about. You're acting as though you're dying. If you have something more to say, why don't you?"

Tim started a cigarette, and asked Diana if he could have a glass of water. Diana brought him a big glass of water with ice. He drank half of the water, and then looked at people with vehemence; and he turned to Rosa and said:

"You think I'm talking like a dying man, maybe I'm dying, maybe I'm not. In this world if someone wants to understand how everything works, he must die once or get close to dying. This is just a simple rule. I don't think any of you disagree with me."

The darkness everyone felt in his heart seemed deepened as the night was passing and dawn was not much behind. But the darkness was only a pretense, only a faint justification, for everyone by now knew that Tim's secret would be the most shocking, the worst of all. Nonetheless, they all knew that for now Rosa was the one he was after. They all were prepared to hear more in this dreadful party.

"I remember my father." Tim began: " I can still see him. He was a great manipulator, but I still love him more than my alive mother, even though he is dead for a long time. He used to move his big head while his face was covered with sweat, and stare into my eyes to blackmail me, to make me cover his secrets that I'd learned from my mother. I complied because that was the only way I could get his fatherly love which was sweet and delightful. Blackmailing came so natural to him. When he was in that mood, his voice became low, appealing, and persuasive. But he did not have to blackmail me because my mother knew it. She had learned it on her own; but she didn't do anything about it because she needed my father's financial support. Then I learned that there were many form of prostitution, my mother's was one kind of it. The funny thing was that my father didn't know that in reality it was me who was blackmailing him. He didn't know that my mother knew; and I didn't tell him that she knew. It was a game with three players and we all learned to play our roles very well.

"Why am I telling you this story? I just want you to know the condition I was raised in. Having learned these things as a child, when I married Nancy, you know that story, and after what she did to me, it all reinforced my opinion of life in this world. That is why now I am wiser, and I know my destiny. I want to change. Tonight, I'm a changed man, a different person.

"All my life, up to this point, has been only a hurried instant, almost trivial race. I think every life is a drama; in my case, the drama of my life has just begun."

To Be Continued

Secrets-!@!@!@ Chapter Five

Colorful dreams often marched in front of Thui's eyes, but she always breathed more peacefully when the dreams were gone. Her imaginations varied beyond the limit of what one considers admissible when it came to morality; but even then, being high with those images, her blood ran in her veins as gracefully as before.

The day she married Ed, she came to understanding that for her to get what she wanted, she had no choice but to marry older man and to pretend happiness. On the other hand, she had to wear only one mask of her two- faced personality. She finally gave in. This marriage was different from the first one in many ways. First they did not have any prenuptial agreement, and secondly they had three children. All those would save her future; but there was one obstacle. Ed was a healthy man, old, but healthy.

####

Every one was awed by her story; they were disgusted by what she had done. They all were also amazed by her resilience. But for Ed, to learn these horrible story was like someone had put him in front of the firing squad. He felt so betrayed by the immorality of his wife, that he began crying like a little child that his mother had bought her a wrong toy, not the one she had promised and he wanted. But who was he to talk about morality or honesty? They all had heard what he had done for money. They both were murderers, one young and inexperienced, searching for a better life; and the other, old and experienced, seeking more money. The consequence of their actions were unimportant to them until tonight!

Rosa, closest in age to Thui in that house, was the first to break the silence and said with a consumed disgust in her voice:

"I'm so sick and tired of these foreign girls who cling themselves to our old men for becoming Americans! We don't need these kinds of immigrants!"

Shame had left Thui when she first told Ed that she did not marry him for love. Nothing mattered anymore. They all knew her now, knew her past, her present, her secrets. There was nothing left untold. But the one person she did not want to criticize her was Rosa. She, who was born here, raised here, and had the chance to go to college and become somebody. She wished that there was no bound or limit between the countries of the world; that they all would be just one country, speaking one language, using the same currency, and being under one government. To defend herself, first she got up from her chair, moved her head in a way that her long, thick, black hair flipped to one side, the same hair that attracted men, the same flipping that worked each time, since in reality she truly had beautiful hair; and then walked to the window, her back to everyone and then she said:

"Rosa, you and I are almost the same age. The only difference between us is that you were born here and I, there. You think you're more intelligent than me. I don't think so. It's just that you've had opportunity here, over there, I had none. You sleep with your professors to get good grades, I sleep with old men to have a life."

"Hey, it's not my fault that you're born in Vietnam. I've never had an easy life either." Rosa retorted. "You've heard my story. I am what I am very much on my own. I'm working since I was fifteen years old. I've supported myself ever since. You just can't compare yourself with me! I never killed anyone."

"I don't mind to work; never did." Thui's eyes twitched in pain. "Even now I rather work than... But the best I can do with my background and education is to be a waitress or work in a fast food place or become a house keeper. You're telling me that I killed my baby, yes I did. She was accidental, should not have been. Are you telling me that you never had an abortion?"

Everyone was shocked by what Thui said. Rosa turned pale. Her lips trembling; nonetheless, she manged to say:

"So what if I had an abortion. I didn't kill a born child. I was only three weeks behind. I didn't wait until birth to get rid of it. When it comes to work, I've worked as a waitress, in a fast food restaurant, and any other low paying job you can imagine. It's only after all these years that now I work at the university as an instructor and student assistant. It hasn't been easy for me to be where I am. I don't even live with Tim. I have my own place. If I had an abortion, it was because I was only sixteen years old and I was raped. That is no comparison to what you've done. I didn't kill, the way you described with all the details and even buried a human being to just cling yourself to an old man for your evil reason. Do all girls in your country do what you did?"

It was clear that Tim was shocked by Rosa's last statement. Everyone could see a tremor in his body. It was easier for him to endure his own suffering than other people's. He was shocked to hear about abortion. Rosa had never told him about it. He suffered this pain with Rosa; being sixteen and raped! But on the other hand, he remembered very clearly the first time he saw Rosa, how straight forward she was, and how she told him her reason for that meeting with so much ease and solace, as tough she was talking about what to eat for dinner! "How about you and me together, then you help me with writing my doctorate paper?" He definitely could not let her to get away with it; even though he felt so sorry for her that she had to go through what she did at such young age. He remembered specially her criticizing him earlier in the evening. Naturally he was not a vicious man, but learnedly he had become one because life had treated him so poorly, so terribly cruel.

To Be Continued

Secrets-:":":":" Chapter Five

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Six months later, in Dallas Harold died of a slow killing heart attack, which no one suspected, even his doctor; and Left Thui nothing. Even though he had asked his children to give her $20,000 in case of his death, they did not. They wanted to punish her for the act of their father. Besides why would they give any money to this foreign girl who had adhered herself to their father for coming to America. Since he had not included her in his will, and Thui did not know anything about American legal system, did not have any money to hire a lawyer, her immigration status was still in limbo, and her English had not yet been perfect, she allowed Harold children treated her unfairly. She knew a day will come that she would get out of this. She was contented and happy that she was finally in America. Let them come and throw her out! It was there, in Harold's son's home, where they were making her to do their house keeping to earn her ticket back to Vietnam, that for the first time she met Ed. A window of opportunity opened for her that night.

The only memory she had left from Harold which for many years came to her vision was him being in death bed. His death was sudden, very sudden. He was not feeling good for a little over a week, but it took him only one day to die. Afterwards, his doctor said that saving him was impossible. After not feeling good for a while, he got really sick Monday morning and died the same afternoon. Thui had no idea that he had heart attack. Afterwards, his doctor said that saving him, even if he was in hospital, was impossible. Thui was in the kitchen preparing chicken soup for him. He was resting in bed all morning and early afternoon. Thui had checked on him may times and talked to him. But in the late afternoon when she returned to the bedroom with a tray of food and juice and his medicine, she saw he was not lying down but sitting up in his white pajamas. His back was against the head board of the cherry wood. He was covered by a white sheet up to his chest. She was so shocked to see that everything about him and around him was so white- his white hair, his ashen face, his white pajamas, the white pillow case, the white sheet. All that whiteness somehow harmonized with the peace on his face. An unfamiliar gesture of kindness showed in his dead face... She put the tray down on the table, and went to the bedside.

She looked at his hand folded over his chest; and she realized that he was entirely dead. He could not be just a little dead. It was all or nothing. His face was smooth, white, his eyes were half opened. To the end, he was a military man. He had died with dignity, sitting straight not lying, hands folded on his chest not in some gesture of fright and horror of the last moment. Thui touched his forehead, and a sweat ran into her body. His body was still warm. It should had happened just recently. She sat on the corner of the bed and thought: "What am I going to do next?"

Ever since that death, Thui's eyes were always seen like ice; but one could not make sure that there was a fire smoldered beneath that ice. She kept remembering the last days, the last weeks of Harold's life. This man, who had brought her to America and had bought so many things from clothes to jewelry for her, a man that always gave her more money for household expenses that she needed, now was gone. In fact what Harold had done for her in six months marriage was much greater than what Ed had done in eleven years of their marriage and without any prenuptial agreement. Ed was a very stingy man. Thui had to beg him for money even to buy things for their three children.

In Harold's last days of life, without knowing that he had suffered a heart attack, she noticed how pathetic he looked. She saw unruly tears in his eyes, and she knew why he was crying. He was not a man ever to show weakness or to tolerate dependency. To watch him not being able to do what he always did for himself, was a reminder to Thui of the ultimate failure of all men. On the third day of his sickness, Thui forced him to go to his doctor with her. The doctor's guess was just some kind of virus, "it must be a bug". That is how the doctor said. He wrote the name of some vitamins and ordered chicken soup and a lot of liquid.

Notwithstanding, on his last days, he proved to Thui that he, the quite, dignified man, could bare the accident of life with honor, to the end a Military Colonel.

The six months between Harold's death and meeting Ed, Thui often tried to evaluate her life candidly! She never gave up her habit for walking in the evening; and in one of those evening, walking in dusk, she asked herself that question again. The answer that came to her was like a blow to her face. She analyzed herself in a brutal way and realized that she had been afraid to know herself because of its horrifying result.

Nevertheless, in that six months she lived life with boredom and irritation. She tried to figure out why she did not have any feeling for anything even the nature which once she so admired. She was anxious, worried; even her childish dreams kept coming back to her. She tried like a light switch to turn on and off her emotions to a different path; but it was always ambiguity that came to surface. She thought a lot about Harold, her dead husband, the old romantic man which was a lot better than many young men she had been with. With her, he had stimulated his nerves and his emotions to the point that they finally broke him down and killed him. He always wanted to prove to his young wife that he could be equal to her, and he was.

Sometimes she would lock herself in her bedroom. Harold's oldest son would hear her silent sobbing. Thui now was living in his house. He felt sorry for her, but he was not about to save her. She needed to save herself, to work for it. He was not about to respect his father's wish and to give Thui the money that his father wanted him to give. On the other hand, Thui hated him, her step son, older than her, with every cell in her body. But for now she had to endure this life and put a mask on her face so he would not know the degree of her disgust.

Their house was cozy and luxurious. He and his wife, both lawyers, had enough money to save her, or to gave her the money Harold had asked them to give her, but no, they did not. He was nothing like his father. He was a mean, unkind man. They had a very good idea that the marriage between Their father and this Vietnamese girl, his grand children's age, was not for a true love, but it was infatuation on Harold's part and coming to America and fast money on Thui's part.

Thui felt like a prisoner in this peaceful, luxury home which looked hospitable from outside. she thought about leaving them, that darkness, but she did not have the strength to separate herself from it. Besides, she did not have any skill for any type of work, except the house keeping. That was not in her plan. She had not finished even her high school. She had one more year when she had had that unnamed baby. The dilemma she was in was greater than any other things she had faced in her life. She waited for a miracle. It happened the day Ed saw her there for the first time.

To Be Continued

Secrets-"""""" Chapter Five

Then Thui would turn on the lights, first the balcony, and then all the others. The brightness would increase gradually as she would go on turning the lights, guiding them both into the threshold of night. Harold did not care much for the lights to come on, because he felt as much as the lights unveiled, they veiled, too. Light made everything meaningful, and this meant that nothing was.

Since Harold was back, thui would go to her own house, to her parents at nights to sleep. She refused to stay there because she knew it might ruin her plan. She already knew the concept of playing hard to get. Harold every night suggested to walk with her, but she always denied. She wanted that twenty minutes walk to home alone. Walking home, she mostly had the vision of the poor, inferior home of her parents, the stifling of their personal odors, and also the implicit dissatisfaction she felt there. However she knew that nothing was for ever and her luck soon would be changed.

Walking home, her mind traveled more openly on that boundless expanse. She thought intensely about what amplified her soul, or gave opinions to her about eternity and idealism.

She had moments of joy. But even her joy seemed coming like a wave of sadness. She looked at everything as though she had to challenge them; however, her soul was still shown nude in her dark eyes. She had this look of yearning on her face at all times. Her recklessness was almost her revenge on her circumstances; and on her wanting very different things, so unusual than other eighteen years old girls in her country.

When one day sitting in the balcony and dreaming, Harold told her that she brought him a new imagination and vision about life, she secretly smiled and knew that her pretending modesty, or playing hard to get, was about to pay off. He was very romantic that night and without speaking wanted her to stay. She understood.

In the bedroom, for the first time she undressed in the dim light in front of him. She was not worried anymore that he could guess that she had had a baby. Her breasts were back to normal size. There was no more milk left in them. Her figure was also back to to the shape of before pregnancy. All the walking she did, not only had made her to lose the baby fat but also had shaped her like a model.

He confessed to her that he had not had sex for a long while because of thinking about her constantly. "I couldn't!" His old body looked like a weapon, strong and sure against hers. He saw her dark eyes being naked with love, being frightened and desirable. His mistake was that he did not know that she had two faces, and each face was a true face. For a moment those eyes hurt him. First she said that they should not do it; but his burning body against her caused her not to fight anymore. As old as he was, this was the best sex Thui had in her short life. Nonetheless, their love making that night and other nights that followed were only a sort of crude primitivism to Thui.

Every morning, Thui opened the window of the bedroom so the glaring light to leap in. In one of these mornings, only after a week of her staying at nights, Harold called her inside from the balcony and asked her to sit. He seemed serious. Thui's heart began throbbing with fear. Was he going to leave her or to ask her to marry him?

"You know I'm leaving for America next month!"

Thui nodded her head for acknowledgment.

"I hate to leave you. I am very fond of you..."

"What do you mean?" Thui almost whispered.

"You know I have older children. I have grand children your age. My family will hate me if..."

Thui knew what this conversation was going to. All her plans seemed being ruined. She needed to think and do it fast. She bent her head into her chest and wept silently, visible enough for him to notice.

"I'm sorry to cause you pain." Harold said after a few moments of silence.

"No, you're not. You just used me like any other girl. I thought we have something special!"

"Oh, yes, we do, we do."

"Then marry me!"

Harold seemed being shocked by a high voltage electricity.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, I am. I love you. You need to have a life, too. Your children have their lives, you need to have yours."

"Do you really love me?'

"Yes, I do, I do..."

Harold thought for a minute. He had never imagined that an eighteen years old could be in love with him, an old man. But she seemed so sincere, so pure, so beautiful.

"Okay, I marry you but I have one condition."

Thui jumped up and down and hugged him and rained kisses on him.

"Any condition, anything, I marry you." Then she added: "What is your condition?"

"We must have a prenuptial agreement."

"What is that?" She truly did not know what that was.

"It's an agreement before entering into marriage that protect us in case of divorce."

"Oh, I never divorce you."

"I know, sweet heart. But if we have that agreement, my family would accept you much easier."

"I don't care, what ever, anything... Will you take me to America with you?"

"Yes, I will. I have my lawyer to prepare the agreement, and then we can marry when we go to America."

"Let's marry here before we go."

"Okay!"

###

To Be Continued

Secrets- <><><><> Chapter Five

Introspecting, Thui remembered how only a few hours ago she had turned the earth to hide the unwanted stuff that had intruded her life. She also remembered how she had watched that earth until all her horror was buried and she had seen just the bare soil. She had suffered this all alone without any one's sympathy. She thought perhaps no one else could have the strength to help her for digging the earth. She sank deeper into the chair. Her night dress was getting wet and heavy with rain and thought. It was the end of the day. The brightness was behind her, but another light would soon come to life.

The sky that night had the strangest combination. Where she was sitting, it rained, but a little further in horizon, the sky was clear. The moon illuminated softly in that further distance from her. She was looking, thinking; but her search and thoughts were for nothing among those white shadows, in the great expanse of silver and pearl. She thought that no one, even if she was seen wandering in the field, could accuse her of anything, for she loved to walk, and many had seen her walk all the time.

In the morning, after being awake the entire night, she went back to that place, where she had buried her baby. In fact she repeated this almost everyday until... Why did she stubbornly go back to a place where she knew she would see and feel only shame and bitterness? She did not know. She did not know that most criminals would go back to place of their crime and a lot of them would be caught there!

Sometimes she would pick up some wild flowers just to hold them tight to her breasts, as if she was holding a baby. She would wrap her arms around the flowers in a gentle way just like a mother would do for her baby. The sky above her was sometimes an enchanting blue, and other times a combination of many colors. She could smell winter in every breath she took. She thought about what her mother told her when she heard about baby's sudden death. "Isn't that a relief for you?" There was a derisive tone in her voice that Thui understood what she meant. Her mother knew.

She felt temporary in her own country, detached... as though she was abroad, or a visitor. She tried very hard to forget about the baby, but it was not the baby she wanted to forget, it was what she had done. Finally the day she was waiting for came. When she noticed how much Harold wanted her, she just simply decided to forget what she had done. After all her dream was about to come through.

In a way, as much as she hated Harold and laughed internally at him, she was also grateful to him in some ways. He reinvented her with his passion, reminded her of the purpose of life. But he never could conquer her entire mind and her whole concentration. She endeavored to reserve them for herself; but the outcome was not great, for she still wished to recreate herself.

Most of the time she was, herself, very surprised by her own two- faced. When she took care of Harold's household, cooked for him, cleaned his house, did his laundry, she put so much love in every detail of those works. Yet, at the same time, she hated him so deeply that she wanted to burst into flames. All she could think of was that she certainly had two faces, and both faces were true faces, like having split personality.

Harold used to tell her that she was like an cold wine, smooth, glistening, and delicious. He also told her that she made him feel adequate, bring him down to earth, make him forget his arrogance, for he was an arrogant man. He told her that she was like those hours of dim light in the evening before one put the lights on, those silent transitions between day and night. Of course, Thui would not understand if he complimented her or mocked her, but she assumed what ever Harold told her was compliment.

They used to sit in the balcony in the dusk, holding hands, no longer being able to see, just waiting and watching the appearance of the night. Neither was able to tell the other what she or he wanted, and waited for the other to say it. Harold was afraid that Thui would reject him because he was almost seventy years old, older than her grandfather; and Thui was afraid that he would reject her because he knew she truly did not love him. They were waiting... waiting.

To Be Continued

Secrets-{[}]{~} Chapter Five

Thui waited until only a day before Harold's return. On that day, a mild, rainy, fall day, she wrapped the baby in a piece of cloth, in a way that baby looked like a package of some sort, and walked to the field. She had walked that field so many times that she knew it by heart. She had experienced that if she walked about a quarter of a mile, she would get to a place which many trees would block the possible view of any passer-by, even though she had seldom seen anyone there on her previous walking. In the big bag on her shoulder, she had a shovel, which she had removed the handle of it at home. She walked with the baby in her arms and the bag on her shoulder, as though nothing was about to happen. When she reached to her designated destination, she put the baby down on the wet grass. It was dusk, enough light for her to see. She opened the wrap from the baby. The baby was completely naked; and then she opened the buttons of her shirt. She nursed the baby for the last time. As the baby sucked on her nipples, she suddenly felt ashamed. She had dreaded this baby like a great intrusion to her life. Now she feared her little girl even more. She looked into the baby's eyes and somehow saw that the baby knew what her mother was about to do. Her heart sank by seeing those entreating eyes. She felt almost nonfunctional. The strange knitting of baby's eyebrows, and the stranger puffiness of her eyes bewildered Thui. It seemed as though that little face and that little mouth wanted to say something to her, or understood her mother. But there was nothing about this evil mom then for the baby to see. Thui was pure blank. She was only a big fire of pain herself. She felt, looking in baby's dark eyes, a burden in her heart.

The baby lay in her arms for awhile. The sky was getting darker and darker just as her heart. The baby's deep, black eyes seemed looking up to her unblinking, seemed to draw her most internal thoughts and feelings out of her. That day the baby was three weeks old. She regretted that she had waited this long. She looked at the baby with great anxiety and suddenly felt that she no longer loved that thing. She had not wanted her. The bay was definitely unwanted, and now she had to go. She only wished that somehow she had had an abortion instead of this. But that was not possible. For doing that, she had to go to some back alley woman without any medical experience. She had heard many women had died having abortion that way. She loved life too much to endanger it.

Calmly she put her hand over the baby's mouth and nose and slowly began putting pressure. She felt the baby's struggle for breath. The exertion continued for a short while, and then she realized that the baby was dead. Her lame body remained on her lap for some minutes. She could not even cry. She wrapped the baby with the same muslin cloth that she had carried her, put her down on the wet grass and began digging the earth with the shovel without handle. She dug and dug without thinking. When she noticed that the hole was big enough, she put the baby in the hole and covered it with dirt. She cleaned up after herself; put some branches on the grave of her nameless baby; put her shovel in the bag, and started towards home.

Going back home, the only thing she felt, was relief and how to get rid of the milk in her breasts. At home she automatically washed the shovel, put the handle back in its place, and placed it in the storage room where it belonged. Then she cleaned up everything that showed any sign of her having a bay. She put them in paper sack and burned them in the back yard of the old man's house. It was passed midnight when she finished the cleaning, the vacuuming, the dusting. Everything was back to normal, and ready for the return of Harold, her ticket to America. She was again a free woman.

Sitting in the balcony that was connected to the bedroom, she began laughing, a hysterical, atrocious, and despairing laugh. She already knew what to tell her family about the baby. She just died, very simple. They better not to dare to pressure her for more details, or to tell anyone.

To Be Continued

Secrets- ***** Chapter Five

Thui had a critical understanding of the psychological effect that her plan might have on her; and she had even more comprehension that she could not deny her purpose of life; therefore, her plan was a done deal no matter how she would feel later. It was like a fictional book, a story, her story. Nonetheless, she was caught in a turbulence of emotions. The baby had this soft, placid, round face, just like Chean. She seemed so vulnerable, too dependent on her. Thui fought her emotions and feelings for the baby by convincing herself that her life was more important than the baby's life. After a week, she even did not apply for birth certificate for the baby. She told her mother that she was too weak to leave the home, and she would do it when she would feel stronger. But she was as strong as before. Her body became normal very fast. All the walking she was doing, helped her to lose the baby fat. She wrapped this long muslin cloth around her stomach very tight and for five, six rounds and walked. She sweat all the fat out. She hated to see all the stretch lines on her skin. She wanted her body back to the way it used to be as soon as possible. The old man had called. He was coming back in two weeks.

It was not, however, an adverse time, because if the internal commotion occasionally slapped her, then often times boosted her to an amazing light. she was patient, almost drudgingly patient, who knew how to plan under duress, who kept her eyes on her goals, undeviating goals, and who did not accept any interruption.

Nevertheless, she felt her body going through convulsion involuntarily at her own despicable thoughts. But she knew life would force her to go through this suffering and she would come out of it victorious at the end. On rare occasions, she looked at the baby's eyes. Those eyes seemed silently begging, looking into her mother's eyes to see if she was ashamed of herself.

Who was she? She wondered herself! She was a strong, wild creature, who breathed suffering in the darkness of her soul through the hours of days and nights. But the hours went by, the nights became days like a regular pulse; and the imminent return of Harold aggrandized itself in her heart.

Sometimes she went out to the filed, leaving the baby at home alone. She would watch the rosy clouds break into pieces and changed colors as they moved towards the very deepness of the dark sky. The glowing color of clouds, seemed to her, was caught in fire, a hot red, just like the pain in her heart which was in its brightest intensity.

Most of the time it rained. She did not mind to get wet. She wanted those huge rain drops to come on her, to wet her face and body. She would lie on the wet grass just to get wet all over. She felt at those moments that nothing mattered anymore; and her existence daubed into a power beyond her control. The night wondered, slept, and hushed; and she tried to feel how the death would be like. But the desire for living would return sooner than she could imagine, and she would get up from that muddy earth and return home. Then she would feel that her plan was to be her renewal and selfhood.

Her heart stayed heavy. She had never experienced this heaviness of heart before. When she was with Chean, her emotions had seemed to be effecting her, but they never destroyed her will for living; but now she felt lamed, heart- broken.

Now Harold was to return in three days. She did not want him to know that she had a baby. That would ruin her plan; and what was her plan? She just simply wanted to cling herself to him so he would take her to America. Then, there, she would think of what to do next.

To Be Continued

Secrets- #### Chapter Five

Sometimes Thui could hear the sound of traffic, the howling of cars. That tormented her; that sound somehow reminded her that she was not what she had dreamed to be but she was a disgraceful, pregnant girl of seventeen. The turbulence of her soul was shown in her ever angry eyes. Often times she was internally and outwardly was like a hard block of aversion with her face disfigured and her body condensed.

Harold's house was a two story building with living area in the first floor and two bedrooms in the second floor. The master bedroom window was opened to an open field which Thui liked to stand there for hours and to watch the day become night and the night become day. However, many things bothers her tremendously. Among them was the constant noise, the terrible wailing of mosquitoes, and the howling of wind which passed across the filed. Sometimes the wind's agonizing moaning drove her to madness.

She sat on a chair in front of the window for hours, indulging her ill- fated desire to be in America, and watching the passing wind among the grasses or trees. She thought of her condition, what it was, the way it was, without magnifying her vain desires; and she admitted to herself of a dangerous game she was about to play.

In her manner, she knew of this awful reality, her kind of skill for manipulation. It seemed as though at that young age, she knew that human being, each and every one of them, were capable to absorb what was necessary for survival, and to find the essence of life. However, she needed a sign, a symbol which would be greater than what she was, a sign which would tell her that what she had in mind was perfectly normal. She needed a susceptive warning of who she was and what she needed to do. Everything was like hell for her. It was almost like being ready for death watching the signs for having the baby. She felt like a wounded bird, who could not fly in that condition.

She said little to her mother, for the ideas and images she had were hateful; but she agreed to have her mother's friend, and old midwife to assist her with the child birth. She wanted to have the baby in the old man's house against her mother's wish.

She suffered the pangs and travails for two full days before calling on the midwife. She made it clear that she did not want her mother there. The spasm and sever twinges of pain were beyond her endurance; but she refused to cry or scream. She just lay there flat, and listened carefully to the old midwife's instruction. She pushed when she was asked and did not when she was told to stop and to breathe. The whole ordeal lasted three days. At one point the midwife told her that this was too impossible for her and she needed to go the hospital. She refused.

The baby girl finally came to this world, which at that moment made her a mother. Thui hated it. The midwife asked her what she wanted to name the baby. She answered that she had no name for the baby. So a nameless girl was born to this world of cruelty; not only the savageness of the entire world but also the brutality of her own mother, the one who was supposed to give her love and care! The strangest thing of all was that the baby was born on Thui's eighteen birthday. Perhaps the hand of God was at work that Thui's birthday each year from that time to the time of her death would remind her of the other birthday.

To Be Continued

Secrets- `~~`Chapter Five

By the time Thui came to the conclusion that she did not need any men, even Chean, she learned she was pregnant. That knowledge hurt her tremendously especially having in mind a plan to change her life. She was the house keeper of this American, the old man, who had a house in Vietnam because of a strange love, or something that Thui did not know about, for her country. She had already learned enough English to communicate with him. He also loved to teach her while always this teaching was combined with flirting and touching her. Thui called her dog. "All men, young, old, or ancient like this one , are like dogs, all they want from women is to get them to bed." She always told herself about this old man and all men in general. But this old man was her ticket to America. He was a retire military man that his wife had passed many years earlier. He had grown up children and grandchildren in America. He had been both in Korean War and Vietnam War. He spent six months of the year in Vietnam and the other six month in America. when he was in Vietnam, he did not mind to use young Vietnamese girls for his entertainment. He paid good money, and all those girls, who were poor, took advantage of it. However, he could not do the same with Thui. She was smarter than other girls and she had a plan. She would allow him to kiss her on the cheek or touch her hand but nothing more. She wanted to show him that she was not like other girls; she was decent and moral. Now being pregnant would interfere with her plan, her dream!

Very soon, her mother noticed her morning sickness, and confronted her. Thui told her the truth about being pregnant and her boyfriend Chean. Her mother almost ruined all her plans when she insisted on that they should get married.

Thui had no choice but to tell Chean about her pregnancy and about her mother's idea that they should get married. Secretly she wished Chean to deny her; and he did. Having no job, this seventeen years old boy did not know how to take care of a wife and a child, even if the wife continued working here and there. Thui pretended that she was very angry and sad. She told him nasty words. But in reality she thought about her dream: "If he agrees, I'll find a way out of it, If he doesn't, I'll be content." She never saw Chean again, except a few times in passing which they acted like two strangers.

Meanwhile the old American man, Harold, was in America and he was not due back for another six months. He never spent his Summers in Vietnam. Thui had the key to his house and was employed by him to keep up the house, specially considering the extreme humidity and population of insects. She knew how to do that. She had to air the house everyday so there would be no mold anywhere and she knew of this method of how to get rid of insects. She used gasoline on the front step of the house and in the back of each window. She would repeat that twice a month.

She estimated by the time the old man would return, the baby would be already born, and she would think about it then.

In that six month, she learned more English, studied American History and some even American Literature; and most especially a perception of the connection and cohesion of man and his boundless aptitude. Nevertheless, with all the dedication she had for her plan, she hated her growing body. Sometimes she looked at her rising stomach with an animal-like look in her eyes. Those occasions were among the very rare times that tears rolled down her angry face.

She was not very much aware that the basis of her life was changing. However for the little consciousness she had of this transformation, she contemplated how best she could allocate herself to this change. The hot and humid summer came, the insects returned, and she remained detached, fat, and mystified. She spent most of her time in the old man's house, even slept there.

Then one day in September, when the early sunset gave her the indication that Summer was about to end, she felt renewed again. she moved around the old man's house in a way as if she had come to a very important decision. The baby was due to be born in a month; and the old man was to return in a little over a month.

She liked to see how the grass turned yellow, how the leaves turn brown and fell to the ground. She walked far, ignoring her back pain, where she could see the boundless beauty of her country. Walking, she thought about how to bring the old man to marry her. This thought for her now was life itself. If she could make this man want him badly, she felt, then she would be able to escape from the poison of poverty. To be with Harold probably would be another slavery; but only for awhile, only up to the time she would get to America. For her, America was the complete vision of life; and to get there, anything, anything, even deception would be warranted. it seemed as though all the longing for being in America were concentrated on her graceful, pregnant body, and in her evil, dangerous mind.

To Be Continued

Secrets- Chapter Five

Never before anyone had heard such a cry combined with abyssal despair! Everyone realized that this was very serious.

???

Everything was falling apart. It was dark. Thui needed him; but she knew in her heart that he had used her. She did not consider leaving him; but there was this opportunity, this great chance. She had thought that her dream was not there or she had gotten to the end of it, like when you wake up in the morning and think you're still dreaming. But soon she realized that there was still hope. She wanted to hang on to that dream no matter how illusory it was.

She needed to part, to part from everyone and everything; and start anew. She was aware that every separation meant connecting somewhere else, and each connecting would be another slavery.

She always had the nature of being attached when she was very young, almost a child; for she had learned at a very early age of twelve that the only people who had the look of loneliness were the ones who were not able to be really together. Others like her just would adhere to the crowd. She was not part of anything or anyone; and definitely no one and nothing was part of her. She would stand withdrawn from people even Chean, feeling not so much part of him or herself. Everything was only part of her situation. Nevertheless, she was more tolerant than anybody she knew because she loved no one and if she did, it was just a little.

She always despised people who had a look of suffering and disconnection along with a certain kindness. She would not understand it. She showed no suffering and she lacked kindness. She did not want to waste her life, to spend her life without refreshing it. She was bored, discontented, and she blamed it on her circumstances. But when she looked around, she noticed that everyone was bored and dissatisfied. It just killed the audacity and energy that she needed.

Love, the great emotion which ordinary people understood, was just the same for the literary people. It had lost its meaning for her a long time ago. She remembered all that love, the young, unprotected love she had and learned at very early age, calm and lengthy, sensible and emotional; nonetheless, now she had no memory of it, as though it never happened. Now she was not sure if that had been love or lust.

She remembered the first time she had felt the desire for being with a man. she was only thirteen then. She had nor known any man, neither was introduced to the nature of intimacy between men and women. She was bathing when suddenly she felt this strange sensation. It was her first moment. She shuddered, almost slipped, it took only a half minute. but when it was over, she felt something that she had never known before. She twisted in pain, almost lost her breath. Even though the sensation was painful and unfamiliar, she tried to feel it again; but not every time it happened.

One year later, at age fourteen, she had the real thing for the first time in the alley behind her house with a local boy. It was not the same. It seemed all that boy thought about was to gratify himself. After he was done, Thui clung to his boyish body and with entreating eyes and without talking made him to go on. But the boy released himself, got up from the dirt and walked away from her. She allowed other boys to do the same to her. Almost everyday she find a boy to do that to her, and never she felt the way she had sensed when she was bathing. With boys, every time she was more disappointed than before. She became famous for letting boys to do it to her, she was called names; until she met Chean. She was then fifteen.

Chean's calm and oval face did not reveal any emotion as Thui's did. However his speech carried a sorrow more overpowering than Thui's usual ferment. The relationship of a man and a woman had never been an easy one; but perhaps it was the grandest and simplest in the world. And when it worked, it was certainly the most rewarding.

However for the very young, inexperienced couple it was full of battle along the joy. With him, Thui sometime felt the pleasure that she could only get while taking a bath. She mostly had the pleasure, like the very first one, on her own. She believed then that men mostly would not consider that women could be gratified, too. Therefore, the intimacy was only a thing for men.

To Be Continued

Secrets- #$#$# Chapter Four

Every one demanded an answer from Thui, a response. She was cut in a net like a fish. However before she began saying anything, Tim who seemed had made himself the director of this melodrama tonight, had every right to do so, got up from his seat, walked towards Thui, and stood in front of her to see her better. The light reflected half of her face; however, what Tim saw was the other half which was dark like a shadow. He lost himself in a reflection so deep that no longer it was hurtful. He said with a stern look, having his hands clasped on his back:

"Your husband is an evil man. Did you know that? Your eyes say yes, your tongue says no. You don't have to open your mouth. I can tell just by looking at you what you're thinking, how you're feeling. Your husband talks a different language than me and many others. His words are power words, and they all are evil. His God is the destroyer, devil. Tell me who is your God?"

"Tim, I know how you feel, believe me I understand; but you better leave her atone." Jacob said with a hesitating and unsteady voice. Being the host, he thought he need to intervene.

"No, Jacob, you don't know how I feel. Your child didn't kill himself for being innocent. I will not rest until I learn what I must. Then I tell you mine besides what you've already known."

Thui was at the verge of tears. She looked at Tim, then to Ed and others. Then with a hushed voice, she said:

"What do you want to know? Did I know it? No. Did I guess it? Yes. Are you satisfied now?"

"I can go with what you said. I believe you. My question is if you guessed it, why didn't you do anything about it? Are you as power hungry as he is?" Tim said while bringing his clasped hands to his waist.

"Tim, you insist on asking a stupid question." Jacob interrupted again. "Power is neutral. Power without us, human beings, has no worth. When we fear the power which surpass us, it's wicked; and when we use it, it's sacred. Don't we all, including you, Tim. You're using power one way or the other because you're a hurt man, and world has done injustice to you.. You're using the power you have over all of us, because we all feel sad and terrible for you and what happened to your son to get what you want."

"What do I want?" Tim, who now was back in his seat, said. His voice had passed its prime.

"Let's not fight please." Thui said with a trembling voice. "He won't rest until he condemn all of us tonight."

Sound of her accent humbled Tim.

"You're right, I won't rest. You said you guessed it but didn't do anything about it, how so?"

"I don't know. I never wanted to be bothered by what he was doing. Besides he would not tell me. I needed a home, security; and he provided for me."

"At least you're honest. Is that why you married him- home- security?" Tim cried, growing more animated.

A sudden ache grabbed Thui's heart. The longing for money had made her to do unspoken things, marrying Ed was one of them. Her heart seemed in fire; and she put her hands on her heart. She could feel a dark despair within her. This night was the end of all her desires. The hopelessness was like a black cave inside of her, in which she felt her soul and spirit, both, would be lost. Ed was the one, who was more impatient than Tim to hear what Thui's answer to Tim's question would be! Thui watched his face and the hatred she had for him , her husband, twisted her stomach. She tried to resist it, because if she didn't, it would be the loss of her to herself. But the more she tried, the more hatred moved her. Even she, herself had not been aware that how much she hated her husband, a man, whom she had made three children, a pair of twins, with.

She looked at Ed, at his impersonal eyes, suffering eyes, and a detachment shook her.

"I've spent my life to get where I'm now, and you all make me to hate myself for it." Her accent was deeper than ever. Then she continued: "I don't know what love is. I don't understand it. I've never learned it. What I've learned is to be a good pretender. That is who I am; That is what I am. Are you satisfied now?" She said, blinking her tears away.

"This isn't for my satisfaction, it's for revealing all these dreadful things your husband had done and you cooperated with him by doing nothing."

"You're right. I did nothing. I knew it. He didn't tell me, but I knew it and did nothing. Money was great. He loves me, he lets me spend money as much as I want. I confess I didn't care where the money came from. Now, leave me alone, please." Thui laid her head on the arm of the sofa and cried aloud.

"So you've never loved me, is that it?" Ed burst those words with extreme anger.

"I have a desire of my own. There is a person in me who is different than me, who planned everything when I didn't." Thui felt oppressed and stifled beneath the stare of the others; however, she continued:

"I've never loved you; I've never loved anyone; no, let me take it back, just once in my life, many years back. One can go on living by pretending. You told me yourself that you never loved Ruth, your first wife, but you lived with her for twenty seven years until she died. Why was that? What was your reason? Wasn't it for her support, her money? What you did to her now is back to haunt you. You did wrong to her, and now you must taste the same bitter medicine. I don't care anymore. I don't want to hide anymore."

Ed's face showed an extreme anger, but he knew that Thui was right. It was Ruth's spirit that was returned to torment him. Nevertheless, he could not believe what his wife just said. She always acted loving, caring!

"How can you be so cruel? How did you make me to fall in love with you?"

Thui reflected for a moment and then said without any emotion:

"I showed you a me that you could love because I wanted you to love me. I wanted to marry you; but not for the same reason that you wanted marry me. You know, all women are capable of doing this, pretending, showing something that they are not. I thought I could love you; I thought love would come later; but the trouble was that it didn't. I know many women are like me; when they know that they are loved, they can savagely show their hidden, dark side; and that is exactly what I did."

"But I thought we had something special." Ed stammered.

"Isn't that what Ruth thought, something special with you? I don't think so." Thui burst out those hateful words.

"But... but... our closeness, out intimacy..." Ed's voice was hardly audible.

"Now you're acting shy; what you mean is our sex, your sex. I've always known there must be something better, higher than what you call sex. Men are after sex like dogs. They chase women, tell them beautiful words, only for sex. My freedom is more wonderful than your sex. Men are like children, unhappy children. They can't be happy no matter what they are given. They want more... , always more. I want to do what I want but not what men want like hungry dogs."

Jacob and Diana had never seen Thui like this, to burst hateful words without consideration and shame. She had even fooled them.

"The truth is that all these years that we've been together," Thui began again: "I felt that I was under attack. It was no physical abuse, but anytime you kissed me, anytime you touched me, I felt I was under attack. I felt frightened and isolated. I wanted to be alone, as though loneliness was my husband or lover, and I could not find it anywhere except when I took a bath."

"Thui, stop it. You're hurting everybody." Diana said after a long silence.

"No, let her go on. I want to hear it. I'm just wondering how she's learned to be like this!" Tim said, but this time with a little more relaxed voice.

"This is an obscene and insincere thing you just said Tim!" Thui said. "Most of what I am, you may call it dark, sinful, I learned it by myself. I had to."

Thui felt she was caught in a storm, in a center of a turbulent ocean. To save herself, she was drowning deeper and deeper by saying things that she had never uttered even to herself.

Ed was very dismayed to realize that Thui, his wife, the mother of the twins and her son, had neither compassion for him, nor for anyone else; and no understanding of the anxiety he was feeling. He now looked like a criminal to every one's eyes,; he needed his wife now more than ever. But he remembered that he had seen her like this a few times, but then he had thought she was only homesick, or tired of the children. He looked pathetic and very old...

"I don't believe what I see." He murmured. "You're waiting for me to die, aren't you? So you can get what I have and do what you like to do?"

Thui reflected for a moment:

"Even the most awful life finds relief somewhere." She cried involuntarily.

"What is that you're hiding? you're talking with so much hatred!" Rosa said softly.

Thui seemed bewildered. Everyone waited impatiently to hear more of her hateful words. After all, don't human have morbid fascination?

"I have faced constant hardship in my life when I was trying to gain a life of peace and security. But I had never lost hope neither when it came to my goal, going to America, nor in the certainty of its final outcome."

"Well, you made it here. Why do you still have to be so hateful?" Diana asked Thui.

"I'm not hateful. You've been worse than me if you have done the things I have..." Suddenly she stopped talking. She was revealing so much already. She knew that her marriage was over. She knew with the things she had said, and Ed being a lawyer, she would not going to get anything from him even the children with all the witnesses he had in this party.

"What, what?" Tim inquired.

"Just leave me alone, all of you... please..., I cant,... I cant."

Thui covered her face with both hands and cried hysterically.

"Tell us what you've done; what are you hiding?" Rosa said with distaste.

Thui wiped her tears with the back of her hand. Her eyes were red, her face showed a deep depression. She gazed at the ceiling and suddenly whispered:

"I had a baby in Vietnam. I killed her."

To Be Continued

Secrets-^<>^<> Chapter Four

"My son killed himself ten days ago. He hanged himself."

A squeaky sound of the women's sigh and a heavy breathing of men followed the sudden revelation of Tim. No one could say anything. What would they say to ease the pain of a father, who felt that he had failed raising his son, and then had learned his son's capture for a crime he did not commit; and now this?!

Emotion is always created in tranquillity and is aggrandized in sorrow. However, that serenity would not come consciously and no one, any way, can recognize it. Therefore, when ardor comes, it appears as all sadness.

??

Everything In Ed now irritated Thui, his fat stomach, the way he dressed, ate, even his entire existence. She had not married him for love; she had done it for green card and then the path to Citizenship, which she had achieved both. Meanwhile she had a good deal going on being married to a man, lawyer, becoming a judge. She had thought at the beginning of her marriage: "I am not going to let what happened to me with that other old man, happen to me again. If I give him couple of children, my security for the rest of my life is sealed. It would not be like the other old man who died in six months and didn't give me anything." But now she thought about what her husband had done. Wasn't that a crime, too? It definitely was not a virtuous act! And the trace that was left of it, crushed away beneath the frenzied blast of her self happiness.

On the other hand, who was she to judge her husband wrong doing should anyone knew what she had done in her past life herself in order to come to America? But all human being would find a good reason for the same or equal immoral act! She was the same... She only wished in this dreadful night no one would ever discover who she really was, and what she had done. But she had a good reason. She had no choice. She was young, very young, wanted a dreamy future.

Now she only yearned to rely on something more solid than love, for love was an unmeaning feeling for her. She had not learned it from her parents, nor from her first man, neither the second or third... To her love was only an object for men to use women. she had allowed that to happen. Love was an affluence of imagination! Now nothing was left of something that never existed; nothing was left of home, nostalgia, parents, or... She was not even homesick anymore. she wanted to get rid of all things that reminded her from home in her mind, all consequential circumstances of her life, her teenage years, her affairs, her marriages, and her love, the first love, the first vicious love, and subsequently losing everything all the time, all her life.

Even in her highest happiness, she had lived lost in the foreseeable misery of her future happiness. Desire, rage, and hatred dominated all her life. She even did not know herself why she was that way! Was it for despondent childhood or the extreme poverty of her parents, or was it for wanting to change her life and did not know how? She had no clue how to do it!

The lust, the craving for money, and the pensiveness of her resentment for the kind of life she had had all were mixed together into one great torment. She did think about them constantly instead of running away from them. She clung to all those desires, forcing herself to the pain and suffering that were produced for not having them, and searched for them everywhere.

Now, she had no way out, marriage, children, being the wife of someone, being called Mrs. so and so, all intermingled in her soul's mind as a chain that its link was not breakable. All her life she wanted to change her life, and now that it was changed, she was still unhappy. As the intimacy and the special closeness between her and Ed had become deeper and more meaningful mostly for Ed, the abyss that separated her from him had also grown deeper and greater.

Now everything in her life seemed used up and her hopelessness seemed older and larger than a mountain. Her face showed frustration, and she was crying inside blindly for all her anguish and ruination. Nonetheless, her devastating expression could not be hidden from the people around her especially Ed, her husband, and Tim, their enemy. She was certain that Tim would try to get some secret out of her. She was not sure how strong she could be not to reveal her secrets to others in this inauspicious night. She was not troubled by her conscience in that matter. Her trouble was Ed, her husband, who could learn something about her that he had never known. She thought for a minute: "So what? I didn't know what he had done either; even though I was suspicious." But then she looked intensely withing herself and admitted in her speaking mind that even though Ed had never told her directly, she had known about it all along, and Ed knew that she knew.

To her, people with good conscience were mainly afraid of the society or themselves. That was why they had good moral sense. She was not afraid of herself; but she cared what other people thought of her.

She looked at Ed. He looked so old to her specially now. It seemed to her that his oldness had begun a long time ago, and would never end. She felt for him a little looking at his lonesome, childish, old face. Life now and always had been a dream for her, and now it was only a blow, layers and layers of madness.

Contemplating, she was certain that everyone was expecting her reaction of hearing her husband's greediness to the extent of ruining a life. If she would say that she knew about it, she be as doomed as he; if she would say she did not know about it, they all would laugh at her. She had no way out. She felt her existence would be melted in despondency at the thought of talking.

Things turned out to be devastating. The innocent man, Tim's son, who had become a thing for her husband's greediness, had killed himself. There was no return, no forgiveness. Inwardly she wanted everything to go away, but reality there, in that home was more bitter than poison.

She gazed at he empty space with her cloudy eyes. In fact, she was rejoicing in the hate that was filling her. Where had she learned this depravity, a vice which was without spirit in its existence? The more she recognized her wickedness, the more she tried to crush it down; but it was there!

To Be Continued

Secrets- ??????? Chapter Four

Thui was a patient listener throughout the evening. She never argued or provided Tim an opportunity to attack her credibility. Now that Ed stopped telling his shameful story, she was not sure how she could continue to be the same person, especially when it came to her husband. Her frustration spun in her mind.

Diana started a cigarette and blew a circle of smoke to the ceiling. She also seemed disgusted.

Jacob, also disturbed, thought that the world of the jurists was not a world of facts, it was a world of deception and mockery.

Rosa, feeling sorry for Tim, regretted her own action which had brought her to that house. She could see that the world was divided, at least in that house, between honesty and deception, existence and nonentity.

However, Tim waited to see the impression of the others. He let their impatience grew. Then suddenly he opened the two upper buttons of his shirt, began fanning herself, took off his shoes, and nodded his head in disgust. In his eyes immediately appeared a derisive smile, a certain complication and entanglement.

He remembered how he had stared with terrible intensity at the sun. He recalled that he could not take his eyes from those burning rays, as though he wanted to blind himself intentionally. It had seemed to him that those rays were his new God, nature. He even wanted to be melted beneath those burning rays. His doubt and hatred against this new knowledge which was certain was repulsive. He had said to himself then that nothing was more terrible than this- relentless thought, death of his son. Yes, he had thought about that, yes, he had pictured it, he even had seen it in his dream, he even had created it in his mind how it would happen. But then standing under those incessant sun rays, he had known that it had happened, that his son had taken his life by hanging himself in his cell. He thought what if it was all lies, what if life was given back to Christopher; what an existence it would be, and it all would be his!

Standing under those burning rays, only ten days ago, he had tried to be his son. If life would given back to him, he would make every minute of it an eternity. He would evaluate every passing moment. Nevertheless, those thoughts had filled him with extreme anger that he would want to die all the same and very quickly.

Tears dried out in his eyes. He wanted to cry but no tears were coming down from his dry eyes. He gazed at those rays, stared at them, just might be the extremity of their heat would make the tears to flow, but nothing happened. Then he thought about God, the God of creation, of power, the invisible god, the God of destruction, the God of energy and inspiration, the God of lightness and darkness, the God, he was told, that without him was like being in darkness. He screamed: "Oh, great God, lighten my darkness." Then rage filled him out. He laughed hysterically and became more unbelieving than ever.

The severity of his grief, however seemed incomplete since he had no one to share this fury with. He had this stupefaction which always happened after the death of a loved one; it was so unrealistic for him to seize this emptiness and to believe in this death. He even laughed, a frantic laughter, thinking that his son had seen the gruesome mask of the death which had stood in front of him with menace. Drunk with grief, he shivered under those hot rays.

Now thinking about that image, that desperate moment of learning about his son's death, he recalled those rays again. He became confused of remembering, as though his son's life and memory of his death spreading over each other.

Then, ten days ago, he had heard a music, like a prolonged, vague cry, a melody which lingered, and in the silence of his grief, he had heard that the music was merging with the palpitating of his heart. That day was a dispiriting one. Things seemed to him were engulfed in a dark horizon; and then swimming dizzily beneath the burning rays of the sun. Sorrow interwove with his soul. He gave this sense of abstraction to the things that would never return.

A feeling of laziness which normally would come after an excruciating pain took over him. He sensed an interference of every accustomed movement. It was a sudden ending of this extended shaking.

It was just all the same. These people, even Rosa, did not know that his son had taken his life. He had a plan which did not include even Rosa, his girlfriend. Now was the time, after Ed had confessed to his kind of crime. Now it was time to bring the real hammer down and strike his head with it.

To Be Continued

Secrets##### Chapter Four

"I knew it at the very beginning," Ed began with a muffled voice: "that John was guilty. He confessed to me and to the authorities, too. I told him that I couldn't defend him. He was guilty as sin. Then his father came and visited me. He offered me a million dollars first. I said I couldn't jeopardize my reputation for any money. Let me tell you this man, John's father, is a true politician. He knew how to bring me around. I finally agreed for five million dollars. I told him that a big portion of the money go to other people, whom I have to pay to help me, to destroy the evidence, to temper with the witnesses. But my answer didn't come very quickly. I did my research about finding another suspect. Christopher was the best candidate. To me, he was just a name then." Ed stopped, dropped his head into his chest and draped his hands behind his neck.

"What happened after?" Jacob demanded.

"I was able to prove that the night of the crime, John was with two friends, Christopher was not one of them. He had dined with them in a restaurant, and then spending the rest of the night playing pool. I demanded that they should throw the confession out, since they did not read his right and they took that confession without his lawyer's presence. I proved that confession was under duress after police had beaten him up. I manipulated the waiter in the restaurant, the people in the bar that John was there. At the end, those people really believed that John was there. I made them admit in the court that he was there. I actually didn't give them any money, as you may call bribery because then they would know that I was trying to make them lie. But I gave them nice gifts for their cooperation, for their help. I gave those gifts at the end of the trial when he was acquitted and pretended that they were from John's father. I told them that he is grateful that their testimony have saved his innocent son. I told them that John's father was thanking them to help his faultless son.

"The medical report was inconclusive. No finger print, no murder weapon were found anywhere. The only finger print was Christopher's at the woman's house. We knew that he was there earlier that evening. The medical report showed that condom was used by the rapist. There was no evidence found in her body or on her clothes.

"I taught John how to point his finger at Christopher when the police were doing their investigation. All these preparation took an entire year before we went to trail. Then It came selecting of Jury."

"You mean that you even tempered with Jurors!" Tim said angrily.

"Not exactly; but all lawyers, both defense and prosecutor use this technique..."

"We need to stop this. I don't want to hear anymore." Thui cut off Ed. She was at the verge of tears. This was the first time the others saw that she showed any emotion.

"You must listen."Tim said furiously. "You, too, are taking advantage of my son's misery, aren't you. I am sure that money are spent in your household."

"I didn't know, I didn't know." Thui sat back, and covered her face while crying aloud.

"What about jurors? What is the technique?" Jacob asked somberly.

Ed got up. The emotions agitating his heart would not be appeased easily. He began pacing the room, staring thoughtfully at his feet. He was particularly struck by his own confession.

"You think that I tempered the jurors? No, I didn't. But I used this method to pick them. Many defense lawyers that their clients can afford use this procedure. It is like, how should I say, like a service which is provided by this firm.

"What they do is to establish a profile of the defendant, all his back ground, his interests, his weakness, his religion, his disbelief, and his family. Then they make a profile of the crime, how it happened, why it happened; and then they try to match the profile of the defendant with the crime. The last part of their service is to sketch a profile of the prospective jurors who would be more compassionate to the defendant.

"The defense attorney tries to match the most of potential jurors to the psychological description is provided by that firm during Voir Dire. Finally they come up with the twelve jurors and even the alternates which can serve the best the defendant. After impalement, that firm really dig into the lives of those jurors. Such analysis contains many things about the jurors that are already selected, their habits, their prejudice, their jobs, the neighborhood they live in, their education, their religion, their nationality, their weakness and strength. Everything about them are included in their report.

"When the defense attorney knows so much about the jurors, he bases his defense, his manner, the way he is dressed, and everything else upon that. In the court room, the defense lawyer talks to them as though he is talking to their awareness. Since he knows their biases, fears, hopes, and even hidden desires, he touches them incredibly. That is the service I used to free John and it worked. He was acquitted of all charges."

To Be Continued

Secrets `~`~`~Chapter Four

##

Tim Rose and went to the kitchen. Without asking Diana or Jacob, he made a pot of coffee. He returned to the living room, leaning against the door. His shoulders were sunken. He stared in silence to an unknown place. No one could read anything from his lifeless eyes. His face was darkened by a sudden pain. Nobody knew if his obvious pain was physical or emotional. His gaze penetrated nothing; nonetheless, it was hard, straight, and inevitable.

"Are you okay?" Jacob murmured.

Tim dragged himself almost with difficulty to the closest chair and sat, but before doing this, he took a a piece of paper from his shirt pocket.

"This is a letter Christopher wrote me from prison." His voice was muffled. "I must read this to you all."

Everyone sank in their seat. However Diana got up and went to the kitchen to bring the coffee. She asked if anyone wanted the coffee. Everyone said yes except Thui. Rosa joined her in the kitchen. She helped Diana to put the pot in a tray with cups and saucers and two bowls of sugar and milk, just in case anyone wanted those. After the coffee was brought up, Tim put on his glasses, sipped his coffee, he had mixed it with milk, and began to read his son's letter to others:

"I hate this world. I don't know what love is, a painful wound, or an injured heart. I don' know and I never will. Here, I always think that I have only a few more hours or even minutes left to live. These few hours or minutes, however seem like eternity growing before me. One wonders how only a few minutes or hours seem like a great profusion of time. Sometimes I feel that in these only few minutes I have left, I can live and experience many endeavors, many existences. But I think of the last final moments of my life all the time. I lay and stare at the ceiling which is covered by spider's webs and see and imagine things in those webs. But ultimately what I see is cruelty, like when the other prisoners, even some guards that are stronger and bigger than me do unspeakable things to me.

"The words I speak in prison are all to unknown people, who are truly murderers, rapists, and true criminals. They all treat me like one of them, but I am not one of them. The strange thing is, dad, that I have this great fear that I am becoming like them. It is about survival, even though I want to die but not by the hand of this criminals. When I utter words to others, is mainly for the need to hear my own voice, to feel I am still alive. But am I alive?

"I have done many unspoken things in my life, but I'm not a murderer or rapist. I know that you believe me, dad. I saw it in your eyes..."

Tim folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. Then he took his glasses off and put them in their case. His eyes downcast, his face contracted in a grimace of an intolerable pain. A grave and heavy silence followed after the letter was read. No one moved, no one showed his or her emotion because they all knew nothing could match the pain Tim was going through.

It was Diana, who finally broke the silence by saying:

"It's three thirty in the morning, I thinks it's time to end this night."

Thui, who was trying to avoid the inevitable, grasped Diana's idea and said:

"That is a great idea. Ed, let's go."

Suddenly Tim got up from his chair, his strength back. His eyes discharged nothing but fire. He jabbed a forefinger at his audience:

"No one is leaving now. I want to know how Ed was able to pull this off, to do this dirty task, this switching; yes, I call it switching of the suspects. Besides a while ago Rosa was condemning me of being a terrible person. I admit, I am. But she needs to tell you all her dirty tricks, too."

Rosa crimsoned, and glared at him but said nothing.

"How did you do it, Ed?" Jacob's tone of voice was harsh.

"Do we have to go through details? I already admit of doing it." Ed said somberly, while thinking that even his long time friend, Jacob, was turning against him.

"Yes," Tim hisses at him.

To Be Continued

Secrets- <><><> Chapter Four

$$

Every one in the hosts' joined living room and dining room were waiting. The night was fading. The green drapery curtains with white lining were pushed aside. The soft wind were blowing out the white lace curtain behind them; however, even though they were lace, they were obscuring the orange sun, soon to come out.

Everything that was happening amongst the six people in that closed space were only words, the usual words that had so much emotion, so much pain, and so many secrets behind them. Words that for so long were prevented by some force stronger than the owners of those words to be uttered. Now, let them spill, spill what little hearts had been able to remember, to recall good and evil.

The moon was now turning, there, there, somewhere, on the other side of the universe, to give its beauty to the people who were just going through night. However, its light, as if with some kind of magic, was even better than day light. Love for so many things were floating in space.

"Love of living, when it is too much;

Hope and fear arise at such.

Taking for granted the gift of living;

What God has given us is not living.

Sometimes we forget that nothing is for ever.

We forget that our dead ones wake up never.

Even the toughest river, we forget,

Winds to the safety of a sea in its sunset."

The future for all these people was something to be loathed, favoring more, much more the past, not a far past, but even a day ago- the sweet, holly past. And all the reasons for animosity were not intended to subside, to dissipate like rain cloud in the sun.

Now there was only one thing to consider; all these people now should be attentive to each other, very much so. They all carried so much dirt on their shoulders. No one could say that he or she was clean. Conscious of analytical steadfastness they had achieved, they had to be cautious not to destroy it, to stay in an impartial zone on exchanged consideration; leaving out not only exaggerated aloofness but also amplified faith.

There was a strange kind of transient illusion in the room, which at the same time were both lively and deathly; it was both of passion and of abstract commiseration. The deep and endless cry of crickets filled the still room. And each one was awed by the inexplicable and awkward look of the others which darkened their faces. "Here we are. " They all thought. They did not know what to do. A feeling of unclear sense of worthlessness filled them up.

The past now was more precious than present, control was less important than memory of it. Mastery compared to awareness, seemed disenchanting, conventional, insufficient... They were all anxious for the present, that moment, to become past, not slowly, but very quickly. If the present was past, perhaps, just perhaps they could learn from it, or forget it, even love it with a peace of mind. Nevertheless, every second of present would become past, as though present never existed, the intensity would also become more severe and bitter.

##

To Be Continued

Secrets {~}{~} Chapter Four

$

"My nightmares, I was saying, have robbed me the tranquility I had felt in my life." Ed began, distorting his face in an intense expression of irritation.

"I'm a person, you may say, who didn't have a critical turning point in his life. But those climacteric moments began in my life after John's trial was over. They tend to come about when my style of life and what I had believed began increasingly to hinder and interrupt my most powerful and ample energy in the society. Fighting such a great distress, I came to conclusion that for me staying busy and active was the best answer. I must admit, I achieved a small success to fight back those emotional upheaval."

"Why don't you get to the story? It's hard to believe that you were affected by your own malicious action!" Diana said with a grimace of distaste after a very long silence. It was very unmistakable that how much she disliked Ed and whatever he stood for. Her remark, somewhat confused Ed, who had thought Diana, being Jacob's wife, was his friend.

"I'm not a malicious person!" Ed responded with a wave of his hand.

"That is not for you to judge even though you want to become a judge. It's interesting that you just said that your life style is affected by that awful act, yet what I've seen in you in the last five years indicates otherwise." Diana got up and began to walk about the room, gripping her elbows.

Jacob, who still had some royalty to his long time friend, did not like what his wife just said; nonetheless, he was not in a position at that moment to contradict his wife.

Meanwhile Diana, who again was drowned into her old habit, introspecting, recited a poem to herself that she had written in her last birthday, again without her daughter, Vickie. Her voice was hushed, but not hushed enough for herself to hear the depression she had felt at the time she wrote it; and the despondency she felt right now in her house with all these people.

"Amazed by quick passing of the days

The sun rays

Overwhelmingly is exalted with praise

To sever forever, to remain with blaze

Youthful birthdays gone, the new one is a phase.

~

Bewildered by the new end

Not many friend

The vague faces, fire less eyes which pretend

The meaninglessness of today, everyday, to the end

A warm hand I have to lend.

~

Cast the ambition with grace

A profound case

The dawn so much sighed for in absence

It finally shows its face

Like a passing phantom of an embrace.

~

All these I know are only shown

Intensely known

The dawn is gone now, the sun is blown

The past, sweet, saintly past is mine alone

What little heart remembers its own."

*

Ed's eyelids were lowered, his face condensed in a gesture of a painful endurance. He began. His voice was muffled:

"Don't hate me. I'm just a human being. Who hasn't made a mistake or two in his life?"

"What kind of mistakes are we talking about, yours or others?" Rosa said, popping open a can of coke.

"I don't know what to say. I'm very regretful, repentant, that much I can say. I don't know how to repair it. I know john can't have another trial. He was acquitted. They call it double jeopardy. It's a mess, isn't it?"

Tim hissed at Ed; his teeth clenched, as his enraged eyes pierced Ed with extreme disgust.

"Ed, the consequences of your act has been devastating for a young man and his family." Jacob began somberly. He could not believe that he was Ed's best friend for all these years, and not even once had suspected him. How was it that Diana, his wife, always told him that Ed was not trustworthy, and he thought that she just did not like Ed and his wife?

"However there is something to be learned and acquired from even the blackest and the most dreary journey in our lives. Nothing goes to waste." Jacob, it appeared, that still wanted to save his old friend.

"I don't believe you said that Jacob!" Tim said with a grimace of repulsion." You don't want to change this to a subject in philosophy, do you? I hope you're not among the majority that believe there is a secret concept that something unexpected will turn our lives around; therefore, there must be a reason for every event in our lives..."

"Not at all Tim. That is not what I meant. I'm sure you know what I convey. The lesson which Ed learns from all these, I'm sure will devastate him for the rest of his life, even though it's a little too late. I must admit that I'm very disappointed to learn this. My wife had her suspicion. She didn't know about you or your son, but she knew something was going on in Ed's life. But I've never thought Ed would be that kind of a person. Once again, as always Diana was right and I was wrong." It seemed as though Jacob wanted to do two things at the same time, to please his wife, and to show his irritation.

"What kind of writer are you that you couldn't even see your best friend's vanity for power and money? He is almost as criminal as John is! I thought writers are not only introspective but also observing, who could see beneath the surface, the truth behind all lies." Tim said with extreme sadness in his voice.

"Are you here to condemn me or Ed? I guess I knew it all along but didn't want to believe it."

"Before every disgraceful act, one must forget about his pride." Diana said huskily.

"Very good,"Tim laughed, a laughter that could be as well a cry. "I know Ed has no pride. To him everything is about control; and control is only achieved by money. Yes, that is all it has been all along. He even control his wife because he practically bought her. But control can't be maintained. So much essential energy would be destroyed to achieve control. And all these lost vigor, one day, would return to haunt you, wouldn't they?

"I know John can't have another trial; and I know it's too late to save my son. You may ask how so! He is so much deteriorated emotionally and physically that he can not be saved. I don't want him to be saved. He is not, one may say, a human anymore. I consider him dead already. I'm not here to save him. It's too late. I'm not desperate. I am talking the reality. I'm here to only hear a confession, and may be, just may be, I can force Ed, or he can force himself to deteriorate as well, just like my son.

"I want all of you to hear what he had done and how he had done it. I pretty much know it myself; but I want to hear it from his mouth. I want to see shame in his eyes; and I want him when he goes home, when he returns to his normal life, for ever and ever loses his tranquility and his sleep. I don't think that is too much for a price of a life." Tim finished, while sob rose in his throat.

$$

To Be Continued

Secrets- [][][] Chapter Four

However, the feeling of life and being alive soon changed Ed's attitude. After he was over mourning, so many affairs, he began dating. He even married this young woman from Venezuela. Their marriage lasted only one week. The woman's six years old son hated Ed. They got an annulment.

He met Thui at a friend's house, another lawyer, one evening. He was fifty eight then. Thui, who had married his lawyer's friend father in Vietnam only a year earlier, had come to America with him. Their marriage lasted only six months. The old man died of heart attack shortly after they were in America. The prenuptial agreement they had had, left Thui completely empty handed. She even did not have money to go back to Vietnam. The old man's son allowed her to stay with them temporary until they could arrange a return ticket to her home country for her. But she had to earn that money. She did their housekeeping; nonetheless, she did not want to go back. The reason she had married the old man was not love but was a ticket to America. All her life she wanted to come to U.S. Now she was here in America, her dream world.

That evening when Ed met Thui for the first time, he felt an instant chemistry towards this woman. She was standing in the kitchen, her black hair fell loose on her broad back. She was cutting lettuce in a very peculiar way to make salad. Ed asked his friend about her. After he heard about her life story, he asked his friend if he could have her. His friends, gladly agreed, but he wanted to be reimbursed for her expenses. After some back and forth, they came to agreement for $50,000.00. Ed wrote a check for that amount. His friend told Ed that now that she was his, she would be his responsibility. Ed agreed.

He took her home that night, but he did not sleep with her because at that time he had a living girlfriend in his house. In a week he got rid of the girlfriend and brought Thui to his bed. For the first time in his life, he was in love with this twenty years old Vietnamese woman. Two years later They married.

Thui's fragile body concealed a tough spirit and a perseverance which was almost consumed. She was a gifted user that seized every opportunity to get ahead; and her goal was to become a U.S. Citizen. Marriage was just the right thing for her at that time.

$

To Be Continued

Secrets- ~{~} Chapter Four

Ed had, in a very greatly developed shape, what others called contradictory aptitude, a flair to come into understanding, feeling, and mental outlook; and at times severe aversion to others. Nevertheless, he would not give up, he would not relinquish himself from what he called his service to people. Yes, for the last five years he was torn between the urge to sever completely, to disappear forever, and the others, the opposite urges, not to abandon himself of doing what he believed was his responsibility, not to renounce at any cost his position. Fundamentally speaking, he never felt anything for his first impulse.

His ambition, however, had always been security; and to him safety was only achieved by having money, a lot of money, and power which came with money. To him money and power were closely parallel things that they would never reach each other, yet one needed both so he could have each foot on both of them.

Coming from an Italian Immigrant family, he had had a very tough childhood. His parents worked very hard to feed their five children. He, being the first child, had learned at a very young age that either he had to live the same life as his parents', or do whatever it took to change it. His parents had met in America, therefore all their children were born in somewhere in State of New York. Being the first child of an immigrant family had caused his parents to expect more from him than their other children. School years were exhausting. Every afternoon, right after school, he was to be in his parents' shoe repair shop not only to learn the trade but also to help them out. They had been able after so many years of working for others to open that small shop for themselves.

Late in the evening, when Ed was in his room which he shared with his two younger brothers, he had gotten into the habit to stay up late and study. On the other hand he had no choice. That was the only time he had to study. His endeavor paid off and he finally graduated from high school as an honor student. He was given a full scholarship to go to college. That was how he was able to finish college and then he was accepted to law school. In his college years, he held many jobs, small or smaller to just pay for his living expenses. He had moved out from his parents' home at age twenty. They wanted him to stay so he would keep helping them. But he had to choose between his own future and the future of his siblings and parents. He chose the first. His parents were truly angry with him, but later on they came on board.

At age twenty three, he married this woman, ten years older than him, just for the financial support she could provide him. They had four children in six years, all girls. Ruth, his first wife, had come from a wealthy family. Her father, when he was alive, had given her and his other children what they were supposed to get after his death.

After marrying Ruth, they moved to the house that Ruth's father had given her. Finishing school now for Ed was very simple. He had the ambition, Ruth had the money. They stayed married in spite of their strange relationship. Ed truly never loved Ruth. For him it was a simple fact of convenience. For Ruth staying with Ed not only was a pure love she had for him, perhaps somewhat like a motherly love, but also was a strange dedication she felt for him. She also had this need to protect him. Simply she was an enabler, who even provided for her husband opportunities to do wrong things. She was aware of his affairs, unfaithfulness; nonetheless, she stood by his side, supported him, and remained his admirer. When Ed finished law school and passed the bar exam the first time he took it, Ruth bragged about Ed's intelligence even to her own parents. She threw a huge party for him in a very pricy hotel. She even hired a band to play music at the time of dinner and later for dancing. In the invitation, custom made, she told people that it was a formal event. She bought a beautiful, long gown for herself. She bought a tuxedo for Ed. The cost of that party perhaps would had fed a family of four for a year.

Who knows why some women, or generally speaking, some human beings act the way they do. Perhaps many women would not tolerate what Ruth endured in her joined life with Ed. She knew for fact of her husband's affairs, of his using her, and using her father's position and wealth, but somehow she did not care. She was or pretended to be happy when they were seen in society together. The way she looked at him, the way she smiled at him, the way her eyes admired him could not had been in any way false. There were many people, who questioned her simplicity, her being so naive. She heard all those; nevertheless, she did not respond, she did not care. She was there for him at all times, a true, real, dedicated wife.

She died at age sixty from a malignant lymphogranuloma. For three years, she had fought the battle with cancer. She lost a lot of weight, could not breathe without oxygen, and at the end lost the battle.

The death was a great shock to Ed. He, who truly never loved her, felt a great loss for losing his only true supporter. He definitely felt her loss from his life. He was devastated for a long time; but he got involved with women even more so. He did not date for five years, but he had many affairs. That was how he mourned his wife's death.

What more? He could not figure out why he did not care for his wife when she was alive; but after her death, he had his share of subdued tears, and that was all. It was like a weight on his heart he could share with no one in this world even with his children. Perhaps in a way, those tears which were real, were his way of showing repentance, a regret of the way he had treated her. This period was the only time in his life that he really was sad and regretful.

To Be Continued