Secrets- ~~~~~ Chapter Five

"You've been so mysterious tonight, Tim." Jacob cut him off. "Why don't you tell us what is going on with you and get it over with?"

"No, not yet." Tim answered, distorting his face in an expression of a depressed man.

"Just a minute ago, Rosa was criticizing Thui for what she had had done. Now it's her turn to tell you all who she truly is; something that I knew from the first time I saw her."

"Stop it Tim." Rosa almost screamed with a harsh distaste in her mouth.

"No, you must." Tim responded.

"Why do I have to talk about something that it doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't matter no more." Rosa retorted.

"You mean that you've changed tonight! a day ago you wanted to kill Jacob, now you say that you're a different person!"

All were shocked by what Tim said, but Jacob, whom the last statement was referred to him, was bewildered. He suddenly realized what Tim meant. Everything that night was a calculated scheme.

"Rosa, did you know that I was your father before you came here yesterday evening?" He asked Rosa in a very calm manner.

Rosa caught between the spite of Tim and the calm question of Jacob, wondered how she had allowed herself to fall into Tim's trap.

"All right, if I must, then I tell you all. But I must say before hand that I'm not the same person as I was before I came here. I, too, am a changed person. Jacob, you for me, for a long time were the shadow of someone that I had never met. But now that you're here, and I'm here, you're not a shadow anymore. You're a real person. My intention has changed now."

"Ha," Tim laughed. "now you're changed, how come?"

"Because I've learned the real truth, not the false one that I was fed all my life. Ask Diana, she was in the bedroom with me when I talked to my mother. She even talked to my mother herself. My mother admitted that she had been misleading me about my father all my life. She confessed to me and to Diana!"

Rosa felt faint. The surge of love she had felt earlier now was changed to an abyss of disillusion. In a small second of this brawl, she recognized the immensity of her own mistake. Everything was revealed to her now. She wondered, very aghast, how she had nurtured such a deceitful idea that her mother had planted in her for such a long time and with such an inhumanity!

Before, just a short time ago, before she had met Jacob and Diana officially, she had been a woman with no sense of prodding, someone whose nature had made her to wait without hopelessness; however, the events in this house since yesterday evening confirmed to be much powerful than her merit.

Only a day ago, she did not love her father. It was more than that; she hated him as a child that hates when she would not get what she wants. She hated Jacob a day ago with all her love; but now everything was different. Her heart, the feeling that occupied it for so long, had been an absoluteness of sinking into darkness. For so long, she hated the conventional marriage life, establishing family, having children. She had wondered about the cruelty that happened in her own life, the callousness of her own father; and she had come to the conclusion that in today's society children were afraid to be born because they would not know the kind of parents they would get. It was like a light switch- it was either on or off. Hers was off for so long.

Her first love, she had no first love, or love for the wrong person or right person; everything in her life was planned, a delicate, calculated plan to find a man, whom rejected his love from her, her father. That was what she was fed by her mother since she was a child, a teenager, and a grown up woman.

When she moved to Dallas, just to get away from her mother, she thought she could just forget everything and start anew. But even her choosing Dallas was her mother's plan, now that she thought about it, when she casually told her that she thinks her father is in Dallas. But she was never able to begin afresh. The thought of being abandoned by a man who was supposed to love her no matter what, was so overpowering that she kept following her mother's recommendation to find him for revenge. She had no idea that she was set up by her mother. She did not even know that being in Dallas was her mother's idea; she thought she was the one that had chosen it for the reasons that she had learned to count. Her mother knew exactly what Jacob was doing. She had made sure to follow Jacob's footstep throughout his life; and knew everything about him. She told all she knew to Rosa.

Among all the universities in Dallas, Rosa chose the one she knew Jacob was a professor there. She had seen him, followed him, known everything about him, and gradually found out that Tim and Jacob were friends.

She turned away from all things, all the beliefs she was fed. To find a source to give her a little solace, she turned to nature. Perhaps that decision had nothing to do with her being fed up with all other things should she known that her father was also a naturalist. For her it came on a trip she took with a girl friend to Niagara Falls.

Standing down bellow in the caves that rocks had created, the roaring flow of water filled her ears, her view, and her heart. It was like nothing she had experienced before. The great abundance of water clashing down from such a height overwhelmed her. It went on and on, for ever, always, on and on. She felt little, nothing, insignificant. She was awed in the silence of her bewilderment, listening to the roar of the water. That experience to her was the wordless power of nature. That day nature became her God.

At that moment she even thought about going back to the top just to sit on the white water and to experience the fall, the fall of human being with water. Niagara Falls, however, continued to do what it had always done, going its way, for ever, always...

When she returned to Dallas from that trip which was supposed to be a fun vacation, she was a different person. She thought how benevolent nature could have such an inauspicious power to place her where she was. She knew all animals always took care of their young, protected them from any danger. That was the nature of living things. Then she wondered about her own life. She made a decision that she would not rest until she would confront her father, just to embarrass him and spit on his face for turning his back against what nature created him to do. That became her mission in life.

To her all religion, sciences were metaphors for something she did not know. She chose the one that made sense to her, nature. Nature was God.

Now in this house, she had to confess to what she had become because of her mother's evilness. She rose and began walking around the room, gripping her elbows, ignoring the stare of the others, thinking with exasperation how could she tell her story, to prove it to others and mostly to herself the change that happened to her that night.

The numbness she had felt when change began in her, now was faded. In place of it, she felt an anger, a consuming anger that she feared it would make her to scream without being able to stop. She trembled, but that shaking was neither for her youthful vacillation, nor it was for the rancorous, captivating warning of the sudden assertion that possessed her. It was a fervor that overpowered her, it was a sincerity that filled her up, a painful and sweet eagerness, not an inflamed one, completely the opposite of it.

All the feeling of revenge she had had for many years towards Jacob, now had changed to a passion of not losing him again. She wondered if by telling the truth, she would possibly lose this second chance. But Tim was there; and he would not rest until everyone would hear her story. she quickly walked back to a different seat, next to Jacob, and sat down with her head down. She almost stuttered:

"I tell you my story." Then she faced Jacob: "But you got to believe me that I'm a different person now."

To Be Continued

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