Behind the Moon Read Online Free Page A

waiting for Gibbo and Tien. Survival brought its own guilt. He was still young enough to place himself at the centre of all that happened around him. Through his mind ran the refrain: ‘Dirty boy. It’s my fault. It should have been me. Dirty boy.’
    He vowed to himself that what happened was a oneoff lapse. It wouldn’t happen again. He would be a good boy. He would not grow up to be gay. He looked towards Tien, and wondered if she could save him.

A Surfeit of Mothers
    Within a stranger’s gate Kieu slaved and lived, confiding in her shadow or her heart . . .
    All heaven was one white expanse of clouds— she peered far into space: where was her home?

    Nguyen Du, The Tale of Kieu

    Tien Ho would never outgrow The Wizard of Oz . She saw it for the first time when Gillian Gibson took her and Gibbo to see a special screening at a community centre during the school holidays. Later, she asked Gibbo to videotape it when it was broadcast on television. They watched it over and over again. Even when she was a teenager, she was transfixed by it.
    Once, she was serving in Uncle Duc’s restaurant when, suddenly, on the small black television mounted above the cash register, she caught a glimpse of the familiar sepiastained barnyard a-clatter with activity, all the adults scurrying around doing important adult things while the little girl and her dog just got in the way. Tien simply stood there with a bowl of steaming pho bo in her hands, ignoring customers’ gestures for attention and Auntie Phi-Phuong’s annoyed hiss.
    She looked at Dorothy, and she knew just how she felt. She’d been that little girl. They told her to get out of their way, the adults; to find some place where she wouldn’t get into any trouble. She knew they loved her. Of course they did. But sometimes their love was so hardlacquered with impatience and obligation that maybe her heart was cracked with doubt because, after all, they were not really her parents. They were only Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, and the only one who truly belonged to her was Toto.
    Growing up, Tien had Auntie Ai-Van and Uncle Duong and their three daughters who formed a closed circle against her because they were already a family. They didn’t need another daughter, especially one whose different skin colour attested to dubious parentage and the sins of her missing mother. But Uncle Duong and Auntie Ai-Van took her in because they were obligated to, and because they were basically kind people. She was not mistreated; she had a well-cared-for childhood. She loved her Auntie Ai-Van and Uncle Duong. Dutifully.
    But whenever she watched The Wizard of Oz , her dark round eyes bored into the screen as though, by sheer willpower, she could thrust herself through the staticcharged pane into that vibrant Technicolor world. And she swore to herself that if, by some miracle, she should ever succeed, unlike Dorothy she would never click her red heels together to return to a land bleached brown and white. No. She would stay with her friends in Oz because however much your family might love you, they were not sufficient; they could not make you heart-whole and happy.
    All her life she felt as if there was a Tien-shaped treasure box inside her that she could never quite manage to prise open. But if she could, she would find whatever it was she needed to make life feel just right. As she grew older, however, she began to wonder whether there was anything inside this box but air. Or, even worse, perhaps there was just another, smaller Tien-shaped box nested inside the first, and yet another inside that. An infinite progression of Tien-shaped boxes locked inside each other like Russian matryoshka dolls.
    She looked at the television screen and whispered the words along with Dorothy. ‘Some place where there isn’t any trouble,’ she said. ‘Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It’s not a place you can get to by a boat or a train. It’s far, far away. Behind the moon.