The Unwanted Read Online Free Page A

some reason you can't take care of Loan at the airport, she will come back to me. At least this way, she can fetch some news about all of you for me. Understood?”
    “Yes, sir,” my mother reluctantly agreed. Before she could change her mind, Loan ran to the van and climbed inside to huddle in a corner. My mother got in last. She looked straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge the girl's presence.
    As Lam drove us away, I could see my grandparents' mournful faces pressed against the oval basement window, which was only a few inches above the ground. My mother sat stiffly, her face frozen in an icy mask. On the radio, the same female voice we had heard earlier that morning shakily announced the coming of the Communists. Their arrival was like an attack of locusts in a rice field, fast and uncontrollable.
    SAIGON WAS IN its last free hours. The smell of chaos filled the air, and confusion was written all over the faces of the people on the street. Groups of armed convicts were breaking into houses, screaming up and down the streets, and shooting into the sky. Furniture flew onto the street, blocking the traffic. Discarded items were set on fire, either by accident or purposely; the smoke and flames added to the terror. Soldiers ran in all directions, tossing their rifles into trash bins, and stripping off their uniforms as if they were on fire. Some children who had lost their parents huddled on a street corner, crying. Above their heads, fire was consuming a coconut tree, and sparks of flame rained down on them. From the car window, they looked as if they were being burned alive in some sacrificial ritual.
    We did not get far. The streets were blocked by hordes of desperate people, all with the same futile intention of getting to the airport. Just as we reached the freeway, a painful truth dawned on us: we weren't going anywhere. As far as we could see, the highway was clogged with civilian vehicles and military tanks. The hellish shriek of panic was dreadful in the hot air. People were abandoning their cars, running over each other, jumping on top of one another, climbing onto anything within their reach in order to move forward. Dead bodies lay in contorted positions, grinning horribly at the living. A few steps away from our van, a pregnant woman lay dead near the sidewalk. Her stomach had been ripped open by many hasty footsteps, and next to her lay her dying fetus, moving weakly under a dark mob of curious flies. A pool of dark blood beneath her dried slowly under the harsh sun. My mother quivered and recoiled in her seat, pulling us closer to her.
    All along the freeway, people flowed like water down a stream. The crying of lost children looking for their parents, the screams of people being robbed, the songs blaring from the radio, the gunshots, the wailing of the wounded victims all blended into an incoherent symphony of grief. And like the humidity evaporating in the air, this collective keening lifted higher and higher, mixing with the noxious tear gas in a dark cloud of suffering.
    Inside the car, my brother and I were too afraid to make a sound. Lam no longer looked relaxed. His long hair fell over his forehead, which was slick with sweat. His fingers, which held to the wheel tightly, were white at the knuckles. His head shook uncontrollably with each breath he took, and his eyes were opened wide, exaggerating the whiteness of his eyeballs.
    Lam let out a loud, frustrated scream, as he pounded the horn in a fury. He turned to face my mother. “We have to get the fuck out of the car,” he spat. “This is not going to work just sitting here. You take the children and move.”
    My mother's lips tightened into a straight line. She grasped my arm, and I felt her fingernails dig deeply into my flesh.
    “Are you insane?” she replied. “Look at these people! I am not leaving this car.”
    Lam leaned within an inch of my mother's face. I could see his jugular veins, engorged with blood like two swollen earthworms,