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By Root 291 0

walk all the way to Saigon's Notre-Dame Cathedral. The first time she attended Mass there, she was given a string of beads, maybe not gold on a pink silk cord, she thought, but at least there was a choice: blue with the man on a cross or pink with the woman who kept her head covered, like a perpetual bride. That morning, Notre-Dame's tolling bells told my mother that Mass was just ending and that she was still many boulevards away. She kept up her pace and arrived in time for the beginning of afternoon services. She slipped through the slowly closing doors and sat down in one of the polished pews. She gazed up at the chrysanthemums, gladioli, and Easter lilies that adorned the altar, stippled with gold. Beautiful, my mother thought. Even if Father Vincente's church could afford more than marigolds and cockscombs, she would never attend services there. To worship in the same house as the Old Man, she thought, would be sacrilege. That morning, my mother did not know that in the Catholic faith what she had done to her body after my birth was also a sin, mortal and irredeemable. By the time she found out, it was too late. Ignorance or a claim to it had already saved her.

Faith is the beginning of the story of my life. The Old Man believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He believed that if one Son was good, an entire brood was even better. He believed in bringing to life men who would forever be indebted to him. Why should I not have servants of my own? he thought. In order to proceed with his plan, he had to procure for himself a wife. He, otherwise, would have never wanted, would have never desired, a woman. The only woman he had loved had given him away, placed him in front of God's doors and told him to close his eyes and pray. He prayed for her smile to come back to her face. He prayed for rice in her bowl and not only in his. He prayed for her chest to heave fewer sighs, especially when she thought that he had fallen asleep for the night. He opened up his eyes and found himself alone. His prayers for her had been answered. Those were the last selfless thoughts that he would ever have. By the time the girl who would be my mother was brought to him, he saw in the despair of those around him only the promise of a steady income. In his long life, the Old Man surrounded himself with gamblers, desperate for good luck in any form. These were the kind of men who already believed in wearing the same pair of pants over and over again. Others ate only beef, when they could afford it, before each game. Many refrained from having sex before an especially important hand. These were men who were susceptible from the very beginning. Faithful fools for the flock was what the Old Man dealt in. One man's superstition is another man's religion, he knew. There were also women with bulging money belts and a willingness to embrace whatever gods necessary, to repeat whatever prayers needed, in order to win, but the Old Man could not stand the sight of them, the smell of them. One in the house was already too many, he thought. But as he was a man who believed in the proliferation of sons, he had to touch this girl who smelled like the only woman he had ever loved. It sickened him each time. He committed the act quickly and without ever closing his eyes. No woman would play that trick on me again, he thought.

My mother kept her eyes closed. She squeezed them shut, sealed them with the tight weave of her lashes. He can make me open my legs but never my eyes, she thought. When she felt herself ripping, she swam away into the darkness in search of her mother. She wanted to know whether her mother was certain. Was her mother absolutely sure that this was the man? In the darkness, her mother and her father, who came along for added authority, told her, "Yes, this is the man!" How could both of them be wrong, the girl thought, and she opened her eyes. Her husband was finished, and she got up to clean herself. She squatted over a washbowl filled with rainwater. She lowered her backside slowly into it. She had added a spoonful of salt