Em by Kim Thuy

Author:Kim Thuy [Fischman Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: world history, historical books, gifts for history buffs, history books, history, novels, fiction, fiction books, history gifts, history buff gifts, asian american, books fiction, asian, history teacher gifts, asian fiction, history lovers gifts, cooking, war, 20th century, cookbook, family, culture, school, literary fiction, drama, short stories, romance, classic, contemporary fiction, mystery, marriage, realistic fiction, indian, travel writing, coming of age, journalism, race, relationships, haiti, diary, adoption, adventure
ISBN: 9781644211168
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2021-08-19T18:00:00+00:00

Naomi and the Orphans

When Naomi had learned that President Ford was putting Operation Babylift into effect, she left her own five-day-old baby with her family in Montreal to return at once to Saigon. The children in the orphanage she’d founded were waiting for her to save them.

Naomi was able to rent a xe lam to transport a dozen children to the airport. The xe lam has three wheels, with a motor that permits it to pull an open cabin. It usually accommodates a dozen passengers, or twice the number reckoned on by the manufacturer, Lambretta. Since it is public transport, the vehicle stops on demand, long enough for the passengers to hop on and grab a handhold or sit on someone’s knees. On the way to the airport that day, people on the street jostled one another to get on board as well. They took the children into their arms, wanting to sit on one of the two benches positioned face to face. Naomi screamed, but no one paid heed to her. Each one tried to tell the driver their destination while holding out money, which lengthened the route and delayed Naomi’s arrival with the children.

The xe lam driver helped Naomi carry the children to the tarmac, and into the plane. He tucked one baby’s foot back into his box and reassured another infant, who yanked his old shirt so hard that she ripped it.

Naomi also had to find a place for herself on the plane, the first flight of Operation Babylift, which was to be greeted on its arrival in the United States by journalists and President Ford in person. On takeoff and landing, the orphans were surrounded by cameras and their blinding flashbulbs. While Naomi busied herself seating the children and securing them to the sides and floor of the plane, with or without their cardboard boxes, a volunteer informed her that another plane would be leaving the next day. Naomi decided to disembark and to go and collect the other children for the second flight.

Back on the tarmac beside the xe lam driver, she saw the plane explode, a ball of fire rising up in the rice fields at the end of the runway.

A photographer captured the reflection of the flames in her eyes—she who had crossed three continents, an ocean, and twelve time zones to battle fate. She was a mother who took herself for God, she who wanted to project her children into the future, like a parent saving a child by throwing her from the balcony of a house in flames. But here, wanting them to fly on the wings of a giant eagle, she had burned them alive. Naomi thought she was sparing her children a hell on earth. She didn’t imagine that hell could also be found in the sky. If she had spoken Vietnamese, she would have known that “Sky” is the seat of power of the supreme being, he who determines matters of life, of death, and the sentences to be served by those who have not known how to respect life.

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