Thoai didn’t remember which way she’d taken back to her home after that. She ran as if she were being chased by a ghost, and her body was completely numb. A terrifying emptiness occupied her heart. Days of longing accompanied this feeling. The wedding room she’d shared with Phuong seemed to grow bigger and bigger. Every night, Thoai cried as she fell asleep holding Phuong’s pillow. A month after the wedding, when Thoai still got her period, she cried even more than usual. Her dream hadn’t come true.
Every afternoon, after finishing her work in the rice paddies, Thoai would stop by the office of the People’s Committee to ask the mailman, Mr. Ta, if she’d received any mail. For months, Mr. Ta would simply shake his head and offer some encouraging words. “Your letters will probably be here in a few days,” he would say. “I heard that the fighting right now is very intense.”
Thoai finally received her first letter from Phuong on a rainy day. Her heart beat fast as she tore it open. The letter must have been transferred among several different people; it felt soft and was covered in sweat stains. She read it voraciously, as if she were starving for Phuong’s words. The letter wasn’t dated, but immediately she recognized his handwriting: I’m doing well and take part enthusiastically in the battles. But after each battle, I miss you even more than before. I wish we’d spent more nights together, sleeping side by side in the same bed.…
The next few paragraphs were illegible. But Thoai could read the closing lines of the letter clearly: Do you have any good news? Phuong wrote, which was his own shy way, Thoai knew, of asking if she was pregnant. Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon. Take care of Mother for me. Sending you thousands of kisses, my wonderful wife.
After that, letters from Phuong were even more rare. Thoai longed for them desperately. She tried to distract herself by being more social and found, to her surprise, that she was actually quite good at it. Local organizations and unions asked her to speak at their meetings. Thoai was considered a young cadre with a lot of potential and regularly attended evening meetings. My mother-in-law often would accompany her. She told me later that Thoai’s mother had asked her to do this in order to keep an eye on Thoai while Phuong was away. But my mother-in-law always fell asleep during the meetings. When they were over, Ms. Thoai shook her by the shoulder and said, “Dung, let’s go home.”
Thoai seemed to become even more attractive while her husband was away. She was as beautiful as a wild field flower. Young men in the village would stop and flirt with her as she walked along the road running out to the rice paddies. The boldest one was Lo. It seemed like he’d grown from a rambunctious buffalo-herding kid into a big, tall man in only a few months. He called out crudely to Thoai, “Hey, let me cop a feel!” Thoai responded, “Don’t be such a child.” Lo just laughed and wagged his rear end as she walked away.
Thoai’s life changed suddenly on the day she was selected to attend an exemplary cadre meeting in Hanoi. It was the first time she’d ever ridden in a car. Everything in the city looked unfamiliar. As a young woman from the countryside, Thoai found Hanoi big and beautiful. She felt so small among the elegant and sophisticated city people. At the banquet that evening, she drank a small glass of wine. She had no idea what kind of wine it was; all she knew was that it tasted kind of bitter and sour. There was a rainstorm that night, and water poured down from the gutters into the streets of the city. Back in her room, Thoai felt unusually hot and strangely uneasy. Against the sounds of heavy rain outside she heard a knock on the door, and as she hesitantly unlatched the lock she saw a man’s face in the dim light from a sudden flash of lightning. It took her moment to recognize the head of the delegation.
She couldn’t remember exactly what happened after that. Her mind went blank, her arms and legs felt numb. As his big, dark shadow enveloped her, Thoai felt her body take flight—she was flying above the road back in her village; it was her wedding day and she was wearing an aqua-colored ao dai decorated with light pink touch-me-not flowers. Below, she could see that Phuong was walking along the road, crying and calling her name. But he didn’t look up, even as Thoai heard a group of buffalo-herding boys chanting, “A husband and wife! A husband and wife!”
Once the man had finally left her room, Thoai wept all night long.
Two days after she returned from the meeting, Thoai received some news about her husband. Phuong had asked a friend to write to her on his behalf. The letter said that Phuong had gone up North and was now hospitalized in Infirmary E3. Immediately, Thoai packed a bag to go visit him. She woke up at midnight and went to the garden to pick a fresh areca leaf to prepare Phuong’s favorite food—sticky rice wrapped in areca leaf—but as she sat staring at the cooking fire, tears began streaming down her face. She felt empty inside and was tormented by a feeling of
