My Dear May

May was sitting on the floor by the grim fireplace. The day was half over - but the sun had not shown itself. November in Michigan was always dreary from east to west. I was occupied with my crossword puzzle as part of a valuable Saturday afternoon, but periodically, I looked up to make sure that the girl was still there. In fact, May has not moved since lunch. She sat there, looking into the crackling fire, with a book in her lap that she had forgotten about. 

I haven't known May for a long time. In fact, that day marked the third week since May came into our lives, dropped off by my brother Lloyd like a package delivered. I was perplexed at how concerned I was becoming for more or less a stranger. In a way, I was afraid that it was somewhat my responsibility to keep her from going insane with despair.  

 “Hey, May,” I awkwardly cleared my throat, “What are you doing?”   

“Reading,” she replied. 

“You haven’t looked at your book once though.”  

My remark was met with silence. I thought I would have felt annoyed that my quaint effort had been brushed off. I felt sorry instead. I could tell that there is something wrong in a child's solemness.  

"Do you miss Lloyd?" I ventured, my voice still dry, but a little more relaxed. “Do you miss your dad?” 

Instead of answering, May asked, "Do you know when he will be back? 

“No, I don’t..” 

And our conversation ended there. A conversation between two supposedly related by blood, but as bland as our affection for each other.

I suppose I have lied. I knew. Day after day, the radio went on and on about things no one wanted to hear. Not a day went by that anyone was spared the news about the East and the likes. Even though we were safe in America, the news troubled us all the same. 

"May," I sighed, and tried to coax, "Come talk to me."

She slowly rose, and with heavy steps she walked to me and stopped at about four feet away.

"Closer," I patted the chair next to mine. 

I thought I ought to be nicer to her, but I really knew nothing about girls - and I hardly knew this one even though she was my niece. I let her sit down next to me. I looked at her for a while, and realized that I would have to, again, be the first one to talk. In hindsight, it should not have been such a struggle. Sitting in front of me was my niece, whom I was told was my flesh and blood, and whom I was an absolute stranger to. I could have asked her about her childhood in Saigon, where she grew up with Lloyd, her father and my brother. I could ask about all of the places she has been to. She was more well-traveled than any of us because her father was an army man. I could have asked her about her mother, the Vietnamese woman Lloyd refused to mention in the short time he was here. 

Instead, I asked, “What does May mean in Vietnamese?”

May's eyebrows lifted. She stared at me and shook her head. And shrugged.

My stomach sank. This was not going well. 

“How do you like your room?” I tried one more time. 

May finally smiled, “I like it. Grandma said that my desk used to be your desk. Thank you for that!” 

I chuckled, “You’re very welcome. Actually, your room used to be my very first room in this house!” 

“You grew up in this house?” May asked. “This is your childhood home?”

I wanted to tell May that this would be her childhood home too, but those words could not come naturally to me, no matter how hard I tried. Suddenly, as if none of what we talked about mattered, May mindlessly asked, “So Daddy’s coming here soon to pick me up, yeah? When do you think he’ll be here?” 

I looked at her for a while without a response, and eventually, May turned away, knowing full well that I had no pleasing answer. There she was, my niece, with the sunlight shining directly into her dark almond eyes as if she was too anguished to look away – and I could not quite believe that things were happening this way. I stared at the way she hugged her knees, her toes wriggling and then pressing hard onto the wooden floor, and I wanted to look for my brother Lloyd in those dark strands of soft, silky hair. But I couldn’t. In fact, I never could. Lloyd was a perfect man, but he was never a father. I do believe that there were moments when he tried to be the good father he never had, but it was never in his nature to be a nurturer. But for the following years as May grew up by my side, there were moments when I caught glimpses of mischief and youth that resembled my and my siblings’ childhoods, but those onyx eyes stood against our bright blue ones as night and day, as apples and oranges, as marble and oak. 

Through May, we could tell that her mother was Oriental  with black hair, black eyes, and red lips. But Lloyd never spoke of her, and we never asked. Thus, each of us in the house saw very different things whenever we looked at our niece. Sometimes, those things intertwine, and sometimes they change by the day. Jesse believed that May was the result of a drunken stupor, and in a time of war, her pitiful mother, Lloyd’s one time lover, had surrendered her to the winning nation. My mother has always been secretly afraid that May was born to a village woman at the terrible hands of her soldier son, whose Christ-like conscience arose for long enough to urge him to come back for the crying infant. She has only told me what she thought a few years back. It worried me to hear that from her, because if there were two things she could ever be, it would be dramatic and right. I myself have often entertained the thought that May was born to a marriage in romantic secrecy between my brother Lloyd and a Vietcong nurse, who then died in labour. I liked my story, because it soothes me to think that my May was not a mistake, that she was born into this world purposefully, beautifully, and appreciated. 

However, on most days, she was not my brother’s daughter. She was not my niece. On those days, she was not related to us at all. On those days, her eyes would stare at me to lure me in, to drown my happiness in their very complicated sorrows, and I’d willingly let them.