Twilight Territory

by Andrew X. Pham

“No truth more convincing than the lies one tells oneself,”

“Weep for your father, son. We will mourn him one full moon, and then we will mourn him no more. If you love your mother, then be a virtuous man. That is all I ask.”

From her earliest memory, Tuyet knew what it was to be without family. She was unaware that she suffered the universal hunger of orphans, a profound yearning to be loved, to be wanted. It rendered her vulnerable.

“They feel their mortality.” “So do single mothers approaching their thirties!”

Every gossip was part storyteller, and a good storyteller never had qualms about stretching the truth a little if it improved the story. Sau was among the best. She crafted a thrilling tale, painting both Tuyet and herself as heroines against corrupt officials. Within a day, the story had traveled around town, growing more fanciful with each telling, and so, Le Tuyet, the Major’s Wife, instantly became a household name, beloved of the townsfolk.

As a precaution, she insisted that they use the baby’s shortened Viet name, Hoang, to confuse angry spirits that had been offended by the Japanese,

her husband was a man with divided loyalties. His worldly travels had made him unsettled from the start. The places and things he had seen had opened his eyes, making him ill-suited for military life.

“We’re only pawns.” “Pawns that haven’t suffered. If the war is to end, it will be decided elsewhere, with or without us fighting. I do not need to spill your blood now. Please, for the sake of your family, don’t force my hand.”

“I never blamed you for anything, but I wish you had listened to me and had left the past behind us. I wish you hadn’t attacked the garrison,” she said,

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” He flinched. The Confucian proverb stung. Then, slowly, the full horror of their loss, her double tragedy, struck him. He gulped to keep down the bile. He wanted to reach out to her, but he couldn’t. He felt unworthy.

“Men plan their lives, God their deaths.”

All along, he had known that he had sealed her fate, from the beginning, without her being aware of it. His karma had found him.

“Better a live coward than a dead fool,”

What mementos of hell would she take? The lice comb or the sharpened seashell they used to cut food? Someone could use her prayer beads. All that was worth keeping had been stored in her mind: faces, names, stories, poems scrawled on the walls, moments of kindness. She took only the pouch with the locks of hair of the thirteen women who had died on her watch as Speaker.