Goodbye, Vietnam by Gloria Whelan Read Free Book Online

my father was taken away. He taught at a university, but he would not teach what the government wanted him to, and he was sent to work in the fields. He wasn’t used to such work and he became very sick. They sent him home, but my mother’s medicines couldn’t help him and he died.” When Kim finished her story she took up her flute and played such sad music thateven Captain Muoi, who had come out to make one of his cheerful speeches, stood half bent over in the cabin door staring at Kim. When the music ended he went back into the cabin without saying a word.

7
    At the start of our voyage the grandmother had cast a horoscope for Dao’s baby, naming two auspicious days for its birth. When the first lucky day went by and the baby didn’t come, Quang shook his head in disappointment, but on the second auspicious day Dao started making sharp little grunting noises and Quang became hopeful. By late afternoon Dao’s little grunts became louder. Sweat poured down her face. She held on to her husband Tho’s hand, and Tho gave her little sips of water. My mother had borrowed clothing to make a curtained area around Dao. Everyone was excited at the thought of a baby being born on our boat. Everyone except Captain Muoi. The captain told Tho, “If I had known the baby was expected so soon, you would never have been allowed on board my ship.”
    It was suppertime before the baby decided to be born. I had been home with my mother when she had Anh and Thant. I had even helped my grandmother. I knew that Dao’s cries sounded scary, but that most of the noise was just to help bring the babyinto the world, like groaning and grunting when you carry a heavy pail of water up a hill. But Kim, who had never seen a baby being born, was frightened.
    It seemed strange to me that Kim, whose mother was a doctor, knew so little about babies. “But she delivered babies in the hospital, not at home,” Kim said. I thought that was a funny way to put it. If there was any “delivering,” it was the mother who did it, not the doctor.
    Kim’s mother had offered her help to Dao, and Dao had looked hopefully at Tho for his permission to accept the bac si’s offer, but old Quang with great dignity had refused. Instead he invited our grandmother to attend Dao. The grandmother’s harsh commands to Dao to “push” could be heard all over the boat. Tho was not allowed into the little enclosure with Dao and the grandmother. He sat miserably by himself, biting his lip and trying not to hear the jokes the men around him called out about the making of the baby.
    Suddenly there was another cry, but it was not Dao. It was the strong squall of a baby, and the grandmother shouted, “A boy!” All over the boat people cheered. I remembered when Thant was born howpleased my father was to have a boy after having two girls. Even though I understood how important it was to have a son to carry on the family name and to venerate our ancestors, I was jealous of the attention Thant got. I had noticed that Kim’s mother never seemed disappointed that Kim was not a boy.
    I stole a look at Kim’s mother to see if she was jealous because it was my grandmother and not her who helped Dao, but the bac si was grinning. “There is still hope,” she said to my mother in a voice so soft I could barely hear the words.
    The baby might have arrived on an auspicious day, but the day that followed brought bad luck. Early in the morning the boat sprung a leak and began to take on water. It was necessary to move some of the people in the hold to the deck, making things even more crowded than they had been before. We had to sit with our knees pressed against our chests and our arms clasped around our knees. A chain of men was organized to bail the boat out. Pails of water were passed up from the hold and dumped over the sides of the boat.
    The “hold” people were happy to be on the deck, even in the hot sun. There were rats below, they said.At night the rats came out and