Blood Distance

I. Thi

There had been nights when they’d wished themselves twins. Twins, at least, could be expected to share a connection deeper than skin, wrought through some inexorable force of nature. Rural superstition might be willing to accept the peculiarities of twins. But alas they were related only by their parents’ marriage and not by blood, which was what really counted as far as any villager was concerned, and so they had always been considered unnatural, tainted.

Still they had each other. Even after Khoi was taken north, for theirs was not the kind of bond that distance could stretch thin.

Lying on her bare cot in the heavy moonlight, Thi watched the blood trickle idly from a puncture in her palm and wondered if that was such a blessing after all.

Three and a half years he’d been gone. They were both thirty-five, no longer flighty children barefoot in a muddy village, and yet she’d cried on that day when his fear shot through her chest like errant shrapnel that only dug in deeper with the realization that he had been taken. Though even in her horror she’d allowed herself no more than two minutes to grieve—for he’d be able to feel that too, and she would not burden him further.

The news had spread soon after Khoi had been rounded up and shipped north with all the other southern sympathizers: reeducation. The word very nearly broke her, because it meant he would not be returning, and that meant she was finally alone.

But no, not quite. The pain—physical on top of emotional—kept her company on nights like these when an accidental injury, a pinprick from his sewing duties perhaps, painted itself onto her skin. Thi wondered if they could send messages this way, carving crude words and diacritics into soft brown flesh. She was nearly desperate enough to try. The camps had opened up to limited family visitors last year, but she could barely afford her rent, never mind a cross-country train ticket, and he would not send letters for fear of incriminating her.

And now that she had left for good, any letter he might finally decide to mail would reach their old Saigon residence and rot atop the floor tiles for all eternity.

The Malaysian refugee camp was just as hot and humid as Saigon summers, even after sunset, but here the weather felt twice as oppressive—or perhaps that was just melancholy rearing its familiar horned head. All around her lay thousands upon thousands of people, shifting and restless and anxious, but Thi had never felt quite so lonely.

II. Nam

“It’s only twenty feet.”

“No.”

“They won’t let you fall!”

“Hmm. No.”

The boy huffed, “Goddamn chinks,” and went to find another partner for the ropes course. Nam watched him leave with some disappointment, but mostly relief. What was the boy’s name? Jason? Gabe?

Ah. Jabe. White people were so strange.

The first time Nam had met his uncle’s Chinese-American girlfriend, he’d thought she was white because he’d never met a white person before, and assumed anyone who didn’t speak Vietnamese was white. That was eight years ago. He was twelve now, and presently trapped in a summer camp that was crawling with white kids. He briefly wished he lived in a neighborhood not dominated by Asian people—maybe then he’d be a little cooler, speak these kids’ unspoken language a little better.

“Are you gonna do the ropes?”

Nam turned to find a girl, maybe a couple years younger, blinking at him with owlish green eyes. “No, are you?”

“Nah. I’m Sarabeth. Wanna paint?”

And just like that he made a friend. At camps like these everyone formed groups in rapid succession, eat or be eaten, the leftover kids allying in formations that would never exist outside of these pseudo-woodsy borders. He wondered what was wrong with Sarabeth, normal by all rights yet standing here talking to one of the leftovers.

In a few years navigating the social intricacies of teenage life would be a different kind of struggle, but of course he didn’t know that yet, didn’t savor the arid simplicity of summer camp while it lasted.