Dawn broke. The western coast of the Philippines caught the light first in its mountains.
The light swept gradually downward. Kim Ti Ngoan awoke, stretched, and remembered.
Did she remember, or was she moving toward something, something bright and alive, beyond the tunnel of darkness that was the camp? ―We'd Rather Die,‖ the sign on the building behind her read. But, she wondered, hadn't they died? ―We will never go back alive,‖ they all said.
Never go back to Saigon. There was no Saigon any more. Only Ho Chi Min City, and death. Ahead was the dream of America. They had been promised America. And now they were told they couldn't go on, they must go back. There was nothing to go back to.
―We'd Rather Die.‖
7
Then what was that bright reality she was moving toward? ―I want to go home,‖ she thought. But she had no home any more. No family, no country. And yet, she could almost reach that brightness. If she waited, it would come. It was a place in her, she thought, sitting up and looking at the choppy ocean. A way of being that she had not known since 1975. It was reality.
Her friends and neighbors were beginning to stir. Voices murmured. People moved about, getting water, greeting one another. It was reality, that vision. But where was it?
Not ahead of her, in America, and not behind her, in Saigon, Ho Chi Min City. And yet she could almost reach it. ―We'd Rather Die.‖ Two men had set themselves on fire and burned to death when they were told that they had to go to Ho Chi Min City. They thought that if they went to Ho Chi Min City, they would be killed as spies. That the government would think that they had spent all this time being trained as spies by the CIA. Ho Chi Min City was Death. Then what was that bright reality? She was going toward it, it was moving closer. She could almost reach it. Something she had known, that would come back. What would come back? Kim shifted position irritably, trying to figure it out. Her family was dead. They couldn't come back. Saigon was gone. The dream of America was gone. What was left? If she stayed in the camp long enough, she thought she might reach that place, that bright reality. It was getting closer.
And then Ta Thi Ba came running through the camp. He was shouting. ―They are going to make us leave!‖ he screamed. He threw himself on the ground. People began weeping.
Where would they go? Kim wondered. She had been moving forward. And now to be forced back. Not back. To some new world, or death, and there would be an immeasurable distance between her and the past and what she was trying to reach. To a cold place, a different place, and she would never go home again. The time in the camp had been like the birth canal, she thought, with reality at the end of it. Now to go back across the sea would be to be cut off from the vision that had nourished her. She would be disconnected from her world. ―We' d Rather Die.‖ What should she do?
Ho Chi Min City loomed on the far shore, remote, icy, beautiful, dazzling.