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