The Color Orange by Bethany Smyth

Like many twins born in the poor farming villages in the foothills of Vietnam, only one usually survived birth. Lam was given to his aunt after his mother died during  childbirth. His Aunt Nai told him she could still remember his mother’s strength failing, the life vanishing from her face. His twin sister never made it from the womb.

“Better you lived than her,” she would console him when he asked for the story again.  “She would not be allowed to clean your mother’s bones, and then what would your ancestors do if your mother weren’t with them?”

When Ho Chi Minh had declared Vietnam’s independence, he said the more Vietnamese children, the stronger the country would become. But in the mid-1960s the government, not Ho Chi Minh, declared there were too many children to feed. For five years, Lam lived with Aunt Nai, her husband, seven children, and mother-in-law. The war had been going on long before Lam was born, but in this time Aunt Nai and her family suffered from the Communist greed that started to creep through the mountains. The more rice they planted, the more the government took from them, eventually only rationing enough rice to feed a family of three.

Soon after, Lam was dropped off at the gates of the Thuong Chieu Monastery. As he gawked at the tall clay wall, Aunt Nai grabbed his face with her rough, dirt crusted hands.

“Lam, I will come back for you. I promise you I will come back. Stay here, you’ll understand soon why this has to be.” Her eyes burned with anger, a sad anger. A wet anger, like the monsoons that washed away the rice paddies. Lam didn’t understand though, he was only five, and soon the only things he would learn to know were the quiet and peace of the monastery.

Lam had lived in the Thuong Chieu Monastery for most of his childhood. During the first few months, Lam’s only friend was Monk Geoku. Lam thought Geoku resembled a banyan tree. He craned his neck to see the monk’s face, standing above the rest of the people in the monastery. Despite his bony and tall build, he looked quite strong. Lam thought his long eyebrows and mustache were amusing, reminding him of the banyan’s scraggly roots hanging from the branches.

Although they scrubbed the bamboo floors together, washed the dishes in the stream nearby, and took part in other chores, they enjoyed playing games and taking long strolls around the monastery, which was separated into three parts: the men’s village, the women’s village, and the temple. A red clay wall surrounded it, taller than the buildings themselves with carved out holes every seven feet, like windows. The walls made the monastery safe. No war could penetrate the Thuong Chieu Villages, no violence could disturb the humble simplicity, only the rains and sun.

Prohibited from going outside the monastery alone, Lam often made trips beyond the wall with Monk Geoku. Together they fed and washed the beggars on the streets. One beggar, Lam noticed, was his age. The boy only had one foot and there was only a round stump where the other should have been. As Monk Geoku rinsed the dirt from his hands and arms, Lam noticed the boy only had three fingers on one hand and four on the other. It was funny. He was a funny looking boy and even more fun to talk to. They compared fingers and counted all of the boy’s toes.

“Are you missing anything else?” Lam asked curiously. The boy thought for a moment, and then gave him a toothless grin.

“Where are you from?” the boy asked as he pushed the wet hair from his face.

“We’re from the temple up the street with the red walls!” Lam replied. “How about you?” He gazed at him and started to regret asking as he saw the boy’s hesitation. The dirty streets, where else would this kid come from, Lam answered himself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.” He could feel his face burn with embarrassment and guilt but the boy just shrugged.

“Living on the streets isn’t too bad. I can go anywhere I want since I’m alone.” But there was sadness in his reply and Lam felt a twinge of anxiety. Was he really on his own with no one to care for him?

“Where is your family?” Lam asked.

Geoku, whom Lam had forgotten was still there, cleared his throat and gestured for a clean rag. He rinsed one and handed it to the monk.

“I don’t know. I woke up and they were gone but I understand why they left. It was hard enough to feed my mother and me and I’m already difficult to take care of. I can’t even take care of myself.” The boy looked as if he wanted to cry, and Lam understood the pain he felt. This boy was like him — parentless and abandoned.

Lam reached out and playfully punched him on the shoulder. “Me too, but I have a new home and family now. You’ll find a home too and I’ll come and visit as often as I can!” He smiled as the boy’s face brightened. As the two chatted on and playfully splashed water at each other, Monk Geoku couldn’t help but be entertained by their companionship.

 

As Monk Geoku and Lam laid on their mattresses that night, Lam thought about the boy on the streets. However much he enjoyed the peaceful and quiet life of the monks, he itched to have someone his age to play with. He remembered the days when he ran through the mud paddies with cousins. He often missed them, but it wasn’t until he met the strange kid that he truly noticed something was missing. He stifled a cry, rolling over on his side so his back faced the monk. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he remembered Aunt Nai stroking his face as he tried to fall asleep, and the feeling of being wanted. Here, he learned responsibility and separation from the outside world. Although he had grown used to this way of life, there were days he missed the companionship of other children. He muted his sobs as best he could under the covers and laid rigidly, listening for signs of movement beside him. He silently hoped the monk wouldn’t hear him, not wanting to come off childish, but he knew there was no secret Geoku didn’t know.

The next morning, he woke to find the monks had already begun their regular rounds of chores. He and Geoku always did their chores together. So unsure of what to do first, he dashed to the kitchens where he often started his day with the monk but Geoku wasn’t there. Lam sprinted around the halls, checking every room, every temple, and eventually the gardens. After a while of searching for his friend, he sat down alone on a rock. No one knew where the monk was, which worried Lam but the other monks just laughed and told him to go play. Instead, he sat in the shade scratching at the earth with a stick.

 

Lam thought he had suffered enough, worrying about his friend all morning. Although the other monks had assured Lam his friend was okay, it was not his character to leave the monastery unannounced. He had spent every day with the monk since his arrival to the monastery and had taken part in every activity alongside him. He nosed around Monk Geoku’s personal things, finding a tightly wrapped package of tea bound in burlap and stuffed inside a teapot. It smelled horrible. It was no wonder the tea was hidden so well. The monk would drink this tea 12 to 15 times a day and said  the herbs cleared his mind. He spoke highly of it, but Lam thought it tasted like a mixture of mud and vinegar.

As he steeped it, he thought back on the day Aunt Nai left him. He had cried for hours by himself under a pomelo tree, waiting for her to come back for him. Geoku was the first friend he made that day. He was picking fruit off of the tree and had found Lam ripping and tearing at the bark.

“The bitter skin of the pomelo protects the fruit, and within the fruit the seeds have a bitter shell.” Geoku had reached for one of the green globes. “Once the skin and shells have been removed, what is left is the good flesh. The fruit is sweet and the seeds are comforting in that we know they too will bring life. Our bitter skin will peel and rot away, and you will soon understand why your life is as it is.” He spent the entire day with Lam picking fruit off of the trees. Lam had never seen a garden of only trees before. Clusters of pomelo and other various citrus trees grew close to one another like old friends — among those trees jackfruit, coconut, banana, and durian. Later, they shared a meal of rice, steamed stuffed cabbage, and brined pears with the various fruits they had collected. Lam burped and drank his tea eagerly, gagging on the bitter taste. The monk broke his silence to laugh. It was the first time he had felt at home in the monastery and accepted Geoku as his new family.

 

Early afternoon, when the sun was at its hottest for the Southern part of Vietnam, an orange-clad figure entered the gates and behind him, a small limping boy leaning on a crutch. Lam felt confused, the only children in the monastery were himself and a couple of girls, who were all too busy doing female monk things. During Lam’s early days at the monastery he overheard a monk saying they could take in a few more girls. He said the girls would be safer from the hands of soldiers and American men. Lam wasn’t sure what this meant, but it explained why there were so many girls here. As Monk Geoku approached, the strange boy waved with his free arm, wiggling all seven fingers, and smiled his gummy grin.

The boy’s name was Bho and Monk Geoku had brought him into the monastery to be Lam’s companion. Geoku noticed how well the two got along the other day in the streets and that the monks were more than happy to give Bho a home. Lam was ecstatic, his muscles quivering with a warm happiness. He hadn’t had a friend his own age to play with since his first day there.

Lam didn’t see much of Monk Geoku afterwards. The two boys became inseparable and grew to have a bond of brotherhood. Bho enjoyed trying to catch fish in the stream with his hands, while Lam thought it rather amusing to toss rocks at them. He and Bho would occasionally help the monks scrub the floors, but from the moment he woke each day, the two boys played until the day’s end.

 

As the boys grew over the next six years, they gained more responsibilities. They completed harder chores, like mending holes in the walls and moving crates of fruit to sell. They now wore the traditional saffrons, the bright orange robes of the monks. Their heads were shaven, and they studied the traditional teachings of Buddha, basic mathematics, and English. Studying included meditation with the monks on a daily basis, separating earth from the heavens to find true Nirvana.

Bho took his studies seriously and had learned some time ago how to shut his ears off to the world, meditating in peace. Lam always fell asleep, the hot humid air wrapping him in a hug, the incense and burning herbs often making his breathing slow and heavy. He’d often wake up, still cross legged with his face on the floor. Bho and Monk Geoku often laughed at this over supper.

One day, while they quietly ate their meals, Bho and Geoku gave Lam somber stares. Lam remembered the last time he was given this look. It was the night before he was dropped off at Thuong Chieu. He rested his chopsticks on the table.

“Is there something on your mind?” he asked. Bho seized up with nervousness, taking a sudden interest in the fringe of the pillow he sat on. Geoku said nothing until he had finished his meal and drank his hot buttered tea.

“The war outside is worsening, and the North has invaded the South. It won’t be long until Saigon is under siege,” he said, clearing his throat.

“You always tell us not to dabble with violence,” Lam said , trying to find the relevance in Geoku’s comment.

Monks were discouraged from conversing deeply on the topic of violence and war. War took innocent lives for unnecessary power and greed. Lam remembered a story from his studies of a tragic day the monks seldom spoke of. In the outskirts of the city, there was  a gathering of monks who peacefully protested the persecution of Buddhists from Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic leader of The Republic of Vietnam. Along with a communist state, Diem wanted Vietnam to be a Catholic state as well. One monk in particular, Thich Quang Duc, was a close friend of Geoku’s. Geoku described the protest as a great day in Buddhist history, but also a day of great suffering. Thich Quang Duc sat in meditation amongst the people of the city and set himself on fire. The people said he never moved, and silently allowed the flames to consume his flesh until he passed. Several other monks followed his lead. As Lam thought of the image, he felt himself quiver and his heart started to race.

Geoku cleared his throat. “Yes, violence will take you from your humanity. Unfortunately, the Americans have released a toxin that burns through the jungle and kills everything.”

“Fire! But the soil will only come back and replenish the earth. The plants and animals will grow stronger because of it!” Lam said , remembering his brief studies on the volcanic soil in Japan. But he also knew it was dangerous. He imagined the burning bodies of monks who had let it engulf them like silent statues, their lives painfully and slowly taken away.

“This is not fire. It’s a chemical. The animals will come back deformed and weak, the plants decaying and contaminating the earth. The water in the streams are poisonous and the people have abandoned their farms. The chemical has spread to the Vung Tao Province.” Geoku carefully observed Lam as he wracked his brain for some familiarity with the name.

“Vung Tao… that’s where Aunt Nai is.”

Geoku poured them more tea. “The Americans used the chemical to burn down the jungle, to wipe out their enemies. Along with the jungle, her village has all but disappeared.  There are no bodies accounted for. No one cares enough about the lives of humble farmers and their children to count.”

Bho looked up from fiddling with the strings, tears spilling from his eyes. “I’m sorry Lam,” he said so quietly Lam could barely hear him.

Lam chewed his lip for a moment, then breathed in a sigh. It had been years since he last saw Aunt Nai, she never once came to visit. But every day he thought of her, hoping she would come for him. They would go back to her family’s farm and he would help his aunt and uncle in their old age. Although he embraced life in the monastery, there was always some hope he would go home. His heart seemed to stop for a moment before starting to thud heavily in his chest. He shut his eyes tightly, trying to grasp onto reality. Going home to his family was now impossible.

 

When 1971 came, Lam had just turned 12. It was a night of meditation for the entire monastery, female monks included. Everyone congregated into the temple, to pray to the ancestors and Buddha for safe reincarnation of the dead, for healing of the sick, and for the war to end.

The incense turned blue in the light of the lanterns. The smoke ascended as the light danced across the wooden walls. Shadows crept from the corners of the rooms and emerged from behind statues. Buddha’s grin embraced his mind as the full moon peeked its bald head over the purple mountains surrounding the bay. As the incense burned low, the temple remained silent. Lam joined his ancestors in complete remission of all earthly possessions as the monks began to circulate the rooms. Their low chanting becoming a memorable, unearthly hum.

This time, he did not fall asleep. This time, he prayed for his family and all who were dead, children especially, hoping they would find serenity in the darkness as they searched to join their ancestors, in search of their home.

 

As Lam slept beside Bho that night, he heard a loud humming sound outside the monastery he had never heard before. It was in the sky and all around, an unnatural growl. He heard the splatter of droplets on the brush, like rain but smelled of decay. He woke to find small wisps of air circulating the room, sparkling in the light of the moon. Lam stared in wonder at it, as it gently and slowly crept into the room from under the door and through the open window. It was like watching smoke, only more eerie and instead of rising to the heavens, it sank to the bottom of the floor. Lam blew at it and watched as it curled and dispersed against the walls.

The phenomena confused him, his curiosity forcing him to peek outside a window. The mist wasn’t rain, it smelled unclean, and it left Lam’s skin tingling. It wasn’t a good feeling, so Lam shook Bho awake. Together they went outside where the soil was damp. The walls of the temples were damp. Everything outside glistened. Some of the monks, including Geoku, came out.

“What is this? Is the earth so cold its started to perspire?” Bho asked.

At first Geoku did not respond. Lam had never seen such panic in his eyes.

“Go put your sandals on and do not touch anything,” he told them. He look up at the sky, but only the stars shown. “Go to your room and shut your windows, stay under the covers tonight until I wake you in the morning.”

They did as they were told, but the two boys could feel a nervousness in the air. As they crawled back into bed, Bho and Lam hid under their blankets and lay awake in the darkness, too afraid to talk. They both had an uncomfortable feeling in their chest, a mixture of weariness and sureness that they knew what was happening. They finally fell asleep under the covers until morning but Geoku never showed up to wake them.

Instead, a female monk named Na fetched for them. She didn’t answer their questions about the previous night, but silently took them to the vicinity where the female monks lived. She stripped them of their robes, bathed them, and dressed them in grey robes like the women.

“Where’s Geoku?” Lam asked, scratching at his neck while she sat them down for tea.

“It is Monk Geoku,” she snapped at him, bustling the pots around. “He has fallen ill.  You two are to stay here for the time being. Stay inside.”

Lam and Bho looked at one another, curiosity spreading in them like a disease, but they obeyed the female monks and participated in chores beside the girls. Through the week, things started to change in Thuong Chieu. The boys never went outside the buildings anymore, but peered through the windows. Behind the monastery grew a vast expanse of jungle. In the few days to come, the once lush, green plants started to decay, until by the end of the week all that was left was the skeleton of the earth.

A sickness spread throughout the monastery. The first symptoms were pain in the feet and muscles, then the breathing became restricted, and painful red sores erupted from beneath the skin. Sometimes though, there was no pain, and the monks would lay down to rest and never come back.

Lam’s head ached from the death of his friends and mentors. He often couldn’t sleep at night and lied awake trying to make sense of everything. As he was bathing one day, he noticed Bho had red burns on his body. Confused, he poked Bho in the chest where the burns were the worst. Bho laughed at him and playfully splashed water onto his face.

“Bho, your skin is shedding,” Lam said. “It looks painful.”

Bho looked down at his body. “It doesn’t hurt.”

As Monk Na came to fetch for the dirty robes, there was a dusting of crusted blood in Bho’s robes. Bho was instantly taken to the infirmary and Lam didn’t see him after that.

Brooding in his loneliness, Lam ignored the itch on his neck when it rubbed against the collar of his Saffrons. He itched to go outside and play with Bho, though wherever his friend was Lam knew Bho wasn’t coming back soon. He often asked Na where Geoku and a few of the other monks who went missing were, but she urged him not to worry. Lam hadn’t felt this kind of loneliness in a while.

A warm night in late April, Lam dreamed of sores and burns crawling over his body, like the animals of the jungle. They had teeth and claws, and they would bite and scratch at him as he slept. He tried to cleanse the wounds in the water, but as he peered into the stream, he screamed as flames consumed his face, his skin blackening into ash. He cried as he woke, grabbing for Bho’s arm but his friend still had not returned. He told Na of his dreams, asking her if they were significant.

She said nothing but looked him over and spotted the sore on his neck. She grabbed him by the hand and took him through an unknown passage to a part of the monastery he had never come across. It took them to a large room, bigger than the meditation hall. Bodies of sick monks rested on the floor, both gray- and orange-clad figures knelt tending to the sick.  Lam covered his ears. The moaning and sobbing of people in pain made his stomach churn.

Na sat him down on a free mattress, where he looked around, searching for the familiar faces he had grown up around. But all of the faces were grotesque, too mutilated by sores and blisters to look at. Tears of anger, angry like Aunt Nai’s when she left him all those years ago, pooled in his eyes. He understood her anger now, and the pain in his chest was tight and heavy. These Americans had taken away his friends, his family, just like the Communist government had taken him away from Aunt Nai.  He cried until Na came back.

Monk Cho, a male monk who often examined Bho when he was sick, gently ran his hand over Lam’s sore. He examined the rest of his skin, patiently pausing if Lam began to cry again.

“The red skin is from scratching himself at night. The sore,” he sighed, “this is most likely from exposure to the chemicals. We will have to remove it. Other than that, he is breathing fine. We will keep him here for a few days so I may observe his conditions.”

Lam raised his head and asked hopefully, “Can I sleep next to Bho? Or Monk Geoku?”

Cho inhaled heavily, looking away.

“Monk Geoku is gone, as is Bho. They both suffered through very little pain. Bho’s immune system and nerves had already suffered damage so he didn’t feel anything.  Monk Geoku died while he slept.”

Lam said nothing. He concentrated on his heartbeat and the quiver of anxiety in his leg. He didn’t know what to say, so instead he rested his head back on Monk Na’s chest and shut his eyes, wishing he were with Bho.