Dust Child

Dan and Linda go with Thiên to visit an orphanage for children who were harmed by Agent Orange. Dan is horror struck when he sees that the chemicals cause birth defects in Vietnamese children even after all these years. He feels a deep sense of guilt, not only because of the role that he played in the war but also because he had not returned since to help in any way. Thiên tells him that many veterans have returned and volunteered their time and effort; Dan is ashamed that he is not one of them.

After they leave the orphanage, Thiên gets a call from Phong’s wife, who says that she wants to talk to Dan and Linda. Thiên asks her to stop by their hotel later. The phone rings again almost immediately after Thiên hangs up. This time, it is a woman who claims to know Dan and knows that he is from Seattle. She doesn’t say that she is “Kim,” but she tells Thiên where she lives, saying she’d like to meet Dan in person. There was nothing about Seattle in the ad, so they wonder if the woman is “Kim” or someone she knew.

They go to the woman’s house and discover that she is Quỳnh, Trang’s sister. She looks at Dan with hatred in her eyes and tells him that he ruined Trang’s life. She tells him that Trang had his daughter and named the child Thu Hoa, which means “autumn flower.” Dan and Linda are moved. Dan realizes then that he had loved Trang, though he had not fully considered her humanity. He had not even bothered to learn her full name or ask if “Kim” was a pseudonym. Dan tells Quỳnh that he would like to see Trang, and she takes him to her family altar where a photo of Trang sits next to an incense burner. Dan realizes that Trang is dead.

Dan is moved to tears by the news of Trang’s death, and he has to go outside for some air. Quỳnh blames herself for the mortar hitting her sister, but she also blames Dan. She says that when she first saw his notice in the paper, she tore it into tiny pieces. Dan apologizes to Quỳnh, but she is angry and tells him that she hates him. The two then fall silent, both crying. Linda tries, through Thiên, to tell Quỳnh that she understands that Dan made life for her family very difficult.

Quỳnh then fills in more of the story. She explains that Trang died in a mortar attack while Quỳnh and Trang were on a motorcycle; Quỳnh says that she managed to save Thu Hoa, Trang and Dan’s daughter. Later, Quỳnh gave Hoa up to a woman she met at the clinic where she was treated for her injuries. At the time, Quỳnh had no means to raise a child, and she also resented the baby, blaming her for her sister’s death. The woman at the clinic was a caring soul who desperately wanted a daughter, so Quỳnh surrendered Hoa to her. Quỳnh tells Dan that it might be possible to find Hoa through a notice in the paper, but she says that he is not to use her name. She is a successful cloth merchant now, and no one knows about her past during the war.

Two years have passed. Phong has given up on searching for his parents and on trying to emigrate to the United States, and this makes him feel liberated. He realizes that he has managed thus far without his parents and feels capable of building a life for himself. With Dan and Linda’s financial help, he started a carpentry business in Bạc Liêu. He is still in touch with the couple, and their families video chat regularly. He finds out from Dan that Dan’s child had been given up for adoption and that the girl’s adoptive mother had died. One day, he receives a call saying that his own mother recently did a DNA test. She found Phong through the registry, and she wants to meet.

Quỳnh is Phong’s mother. The two meet at a café. Phong is wary of frauds and scams, and although DNA has confirmed their relationship, he does not trust her. When he sees her, he can tell from her clothing that she is wealthy, and he is angry that someone with means would have chosen to abandon their child. Although he is standoffish at first and wonders why she is not more emotional herself, the two confirm the few scant details of his abandonment and adoption. Quỳnh is able to tell him about a birthmark that no one other than Sister Nhã and his wife have seen. When they decide that she must be his mother, she begins to weep. She then begins to tell him the story of his birth.

Quỳnh says that she met his father, a Black American soldier named Tim, during the war. The two were deeply in love, and when he found out that she was pregnant with his child, he was ecstatic. He had no surviving family and wanted to take her and the child back with him to the United States. Tragically, he was killed by enemy fire, and she was left alone. She had no means to raise a baby, and her village was controlled by the Việt Cong, who would have killed an obviously Amerasian child. So, she gave her son up, although it broke her heart. She tells Phong that after a few months, she had second thoughts and returned to the orphanage to find it abandoned and crawling with Việt Cong soldiers. Quỳnh begs for Phong’s forgiveness, but Phong says that he does not believe her. Then, she says that there is someone he knows and trusts who can confirm her identity: Dan. She says that Dan was her sister’s boyfriend during the war.

A year has passed since Quỳnh first met Phong. Quỳnh is happy that he has forgiven her and that she gets to be a grandmother to his children. Her second son has refused to accept her past and his half-brother, Phong, but she hopes that he will come around eventually. Quỳnh still wonders about Hoa, but she hopes that the girl has had a happy life. Sometimes, Quỳnh still cries when she thinks about her difficult life during the war years and how so many young women like her and Trang were victims of sexual abuse.

Quỳnh thinks about how she lied to Phong, telling him that she and his father had been in love; she did this because she wants Phong to feel “pride in his father and in himself” (328), and she is convinced she was right to keep the truth a secret. In reality, Phong’s father was not a man whom she had loved and who had loved her but a nameless, faceless client in the brothel she was forced to work in when she left the Hollywood Bar. She thinks that none of those men “had shown her any tenderness. She had merely been an object to them” (329). However, she vows that Phong will never discover that he was born from this pain and humiliation. All his life, people have mocked Phong by calling him “a child of dust” (330). Quỳnh is determined to show him that he is “the child of love” (331). She has found a new family in Dan, Linda, Phong, Bình, and her grandchildren, and she is grateful for the opportunity to reconcile and move forward.