To the best of my knowledge, this story is entirely true. My grandmother stole her name from a dead girl. In 1927, my grandmother escaped the house of the wealthy family that had bought her from her impoverished family with the intention of having her marry their incompetent son. They had raised her from the time she was 10 and intended to have her marry the eldest son when she was 15 and he was 31. She lived on the family’s compound and was tutored and taught by an old spinster whose name she never cared to remember—Ms. Lim or Liu or Liang. She learned only the basics of classic literature, a few songs that she could sing to her future husband, and the recipes of dishes that he liked. The day she got her first period, she made up her mind to run away. It was four years since she had left her house and she knew her name was Qingxia (like the famous actress Bridgette Lin), but she didn’t remember her maiden name nor how to get back to her hometown. In the night, she carried a thermos of water and wore all her clothes—at least four layers—and snuck out of her room on the west-facing side of the second floor, carefully shutting the door so the latch wouldn’t click, and walked along the balcony to the end of the hall, where there was a window that opened onto a sloping roof that dipped low enough to a retaining wall where she could hop over to the wall and climb down to the outside of the compound. At the end of the hall, she swept aside the thin white curtain and climbed out of the window. How easy, she thought. Why didn’t I do this sooner? In the garden, she passed the peonies, jasmines, and gardenias, luxuries and beauty she had seen for the first time when she was brought to the compound four years earlier. I imagined her crushing the jasmine underfoot and sending its fragrance into the air. Her shirt became soaked with sweat but she didn’t take it off. She walked from 8:47pm to 4:08am. There were stretches of complete wooded darkness and times when the moonlight gave her guidance. She followed the main streets until she got to Fangcheng Harbor. There were three glowing boats in the harbor. She snuck across the port and boarded a boat named Angel when no one was watching. She heard two men talking in a cabin somewhere. They were discussing the battles fought in Guangzhou and how they hoped it wouldn’t be bad when they arrived there. She found a staircase and went under the deck. She heard more voices and she wished she had brought a knife with her. She was confident with a knife. She found the engine room and thought that the noise would drown out any movement she made. Under a rumbling machine, where she took off three layers of her clothes and created a makeshift bed, she slept until morning, when a young boy in nothing but shorts who was supposed to fix something in the engine room found her and brought the captain. When the captain came, Qingxia was still asleep. He crouched down near her, held his hand up to her forehead, and found that she was profusely sweating and feverishly trembling.  

The captain, a thin man in his thirties, tall for his generation with large eyes, in a white shirt and white pants, asked the boy to go find a wet cloth and bring it back to him. The captain placed the damp cloth gently on Qingxia’s forehead. She startled awake and got up, shivering despite the tropical heat. She looked at the thin captain, who seemed enormous to her.  

“Who are you?” asked the captain.  

My grandmother didn’t say anything.  

“How old are you?” he asked again. He looked at her for a few seconds. Then, he shook his head.  

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You need to leave. When we stop at the next port, you need to disembark there.”  

“No,” she said.  

“No?” he repeated.  

“No,” she said. “Let me stay.”  

“You can’t stay,” said the captain.  

“I can work. I’ll cook. I’ll clean.”  

“You can cook?” the captain asked. “And clean?”  

“Yes,” Qingxia replied.  

The captain paused. Then he asked, “Can you make a brisket noodle soup?”  

“Give me a knife, spoon, and the ingredients,” she replied.  

My grandmother was 14-years-old when she cooked brisket noodle soup on a ship named Angel in the middle of the South China Sea. She handled the knife and the flames. She put rice noodles at the bottom of a plain copper bowl along with bean sprouts. She ladled soup over the noodles and placed sliced brisket on top. She scattered a garnish of scallions on the finished work. The captain took a seat. She placed the bowl in front of him with a spoon. He ignored the spoon and lifted the bowl to his lips. He put the bowl back down. He gestured to his chief mate. The chief mate picked up the spoon and took a dainty sip. The captain cleared his throat and said, This is the best brisket I’ve had in my life. The chief mate said, I could eat this every day.  

*

Thus, my grandmother began her life on the water. She cooked twice a day, cleaned the deck and the bathrooms, and talked to the captain. She learned that he was Chinese but had been raised in Malaysia. He had sailed for the Chinese navy on one of the four Yongfeng-class gunboats to have ever been built and later quit the navy to run this smaller merchant ship that could transport both passengers and freight. I own this boat, he said. Her name is Angel because I have been shot at from a meter away and the bullet flew right by my ear so close I could hear its quiet whine, so I certainly must have a guardian angel. I chose to sneak onto this boat because of her name, said Qingxia. The captain seemed pleased. I’ve gone from the East China Sea to the Sulu Sea to the Gulf of Thailand, he said without a trace of pride. Have you seen sharks? she asked. Yes, he replied. Have you ever seen a white person? Yes. What was it like? Dangerous, he said, and he didn’t elaborate. What is the strangest thing you’ve ever seen? she asked. When I was still a young sailor, when it was completely dark, I was drinking with crewmates. We were anchored a few hundred meters from the shore. I took a break and went out onto the deck. The moon was out very big and very close and very white. On the deck all alone, I saw my mother, who I thought was still alive in my hometown. She was walking on the shore in gray luminescent clothes. She walked out into the ocean. No, she walked out onto the ocean. She walked on top of the water. She walked up to my boat. I asked her to come onto the boat and held my hand out to her, but she refused. She didn’t speak. She just waved to me and I knew that she was saying goodbye. When I returned home, I learned that she had died while I was at sea.  

Without papers, my grandmother could never step out onto any land. She was afraid that she would be captured and sent back to the wealthy family. The captain made sure that she had a space to sleep and that she was not bothered by the other sailors. She asked him what she should call him and he said, Captain. OK, she replied. When the ship made its first stop, it landed on the shores of Vietnam in Quy Nhon. My grandmother didn’t know what land it was. It was her first time experiencing a new country. She was seeing sand and palm trees for the first time. She stood at the railing and looked onto shore. She saw the passengers disembark with their luggage and then she watched the ship’s crew unloading cargo. The third engineer, a boy of 19 everyone called Tiger, came by to say goodbye as they headed onto land for an overnight stay. He smiled sheepishly and my grandmother nodded politely. Not a tiger, she thought. She was a little nervous about being the only person left on the boat. The captain was the last off the boat. He came to her and asked her to come into his cabin. He went to his bedside table and opened a drawer. There were a few books inside. He took one out and said, Here, this is pretty fun. It’s a love story about a student and her teacher. People wanted to judge them, but it was true love. She picked it up and looked at it. She touched the spine and she thumbed the pages.  

“Is something wrong?” the captain asked.  

“I can’t read,” she said.  

“You can’t read?” 

“I can’t read this,” she waved her hand.  

“This is Vietnamese. I will teach you when we leave in two days.”  

“I’m supposed to stay alone on the boat for two days?” 

You’ll be safe. Unless pirates come. Wait, come with me. In the kitchen, he took her to a pantry and showed her how to manipulate a set of latches to allow the pantry wall to side on wheels and reveal a hidden compartment, inside which up to ten people could fit, albeit uncomfortably. There was a metal bowl on the ground and what looked like rags. What is this used for? she asked. He shrugged and said, If you need it, come here. You can lock it from the inside. Then, he took her to his quarters. At the headboard of his bed, he showed her an empty compartment in which there was a Mauser C96, a pistol that was manufactured in Shanghai and the Port of Tianjin, where the captain had first bought the gun. He showed her how to cock the gun and how to aim and how to breathe. I think I will just carry my knife with me, she said. The knife she was talking about was a cleaver.  

*

On the boat alone that first night, with her cleaver tucked in her waistband in the small of her back, Qingxia thought of the captain’s story. She was afraid to look out at the shore, but she was also curious about what she might see. She saw a two-story ornamental gate, elaborate and shining. She saw a few figures near the gate. It was actually only two figures and they were chasing after each other. Then she saw that one was male and one female. All of a sudden, she felt extremely lonely. She thought of her family and she wondered if she had made a mistake and what life would have been like in the pretty house as the wife of a rich man.  

She went back under the deck to her room and wrote a letter to herself from her mother. I’m sorry, she began. 

Dear Qingxia, 

I am so sorry at the fact that I am so powerless. I am powerless by love, womanhood, and cowardice. Every day I walk into your room and see the bed you used to sleep inand I hate it. I hope that your new family is nice to you. I heard that their house is very pretty, with a garden full of flowers I have never seen, and that there are many books there and that you will never work. I heard your future husband is very wealthy and very generous. I wish I could be there with you. When you become rich, hire me to be your maid. I will do everything I can to make your life safe and comfortable.  

She stopped writing and realized she couldn’t remember her mother’s face nor her mother’s house very well. She had already been away from home for four years. Then she tried to write a letter to her younger brother, whom she still remembered.  

Dear Yuze, 

One day, you must promise to come find me. I will keep sending letters to our home, so make sure you check. Maybe I will be rich, but probably not. Come anyways. 

Then she got sad because she couldn’t actually remember the address of her family home. She only remembered the name of the village. Many years later, my grandmother did attemptto find her family. She discovered that her brother had joined Mao’s army and then defected after a battle in which he experienced something terrifying during a skirmish with Japanese soldiers. He had fled to Vietnam and was living in Ho Chi Minh City. She organized a trip to visit him, but he died of bowel cancer the year that she had planned to come. She also learned that her father had remained a gambler all his life and died without a cent to his name in 1995, and she was told that her mother had died of what her neighbor’s called a broken heart just six months after my grandmother boarded the boat named Angel and vanished at sea.  

*

Qingxia was happy to see the captain and the rest of the crew when they came back. There was a new manifest of passengers and she was happy to see them as well. One passenger, a small man with shiny waxed hair who was headed to Singapore to find work as a journalist, brought dried tamarind onto the boat and she tried it and she found that it made her less seasick. She was excited by the discovery that there were different things that she had never seen with powers that she had never imagined. She thought, Maybe I can collect something from everywhere I stop by and maybe one day I will become more powerful like a witch.  

The months turned into years in this way with only a little variation. Days at sea, a new port of call. She was never able to step onto firm ground. She waded in the shallow waters of the beach sometimes, but mostly stayed onboard. There were different passengers, different cargo, but life at sea was weirdly routine and busy. She met people speaking many different languages and wearing different clothes. She saw one of the early cameras, boxy and somehow frightening. In those long hours at sea, she practiced the art of pareidolia, searching for her mother’s face in the clouds, in the breaking waves or rippling water, at the very blurry edge of the horizon. She saw make-believe cities and people on the shore with strange clothing and varying skin colors.  

Three years passed in this manner. She learned basic Vietnamese. She didn’t even know when her birthday was anymore. She celebrated with the captain the day that she arrived on the boat which was June 7^th. On the first year she stayed on the boat, the captain had gotten her gifts from Hong Kong: three books about renegade Kungfu masters who were outcasts and misfits but who were also full of heroism and romance and sorrow. He also presented her with low-heeled pumps decorated with light embroidery and lipstick. She laughed and said, When will I use this? Some time, said the captain. Thank you for the books, Qingxia said. The crew of the boat named Angel got a little drunk that night. That was the night Tiger tried to force himself on Qingxia. She kicked him in the testicles as he was trying to make his way into her room. The captain came and saw what happened. He laughed and then took his belt off and whipped Tiger until his clothes were torn and he was crying. When they landed in the next port in Kuala Lumpur, they left Tiger at the dock and he was on his knees as the boat pulled away, again crying.  

*

The moment Qingxia’s life changed was when a Vietnamese man and his daughter boarded the boat in Shanghai, fleeing China because of increasing political instability of the mainland. The father was carrying a large suitcase and he had one arm draped around his daughter’s shoulders. The daughter carried a smaller piece of luggage with two hands. She was in a dark dress and she was no older than 14. My grandmother met the young girl because she was on the deck looking out from the front of the boat. When the father went to the captain to discuss something with him, my grandmother asked for the young girl’s name and she said, Thien. My grandmother told her she hadn’t met many girls her own age before. She asked where they were going and the girl said, Saigon. Why Saigon? My aunt lives there and there are some doctors there. Doctors? Why doctors? The girl’s father ran back up to his daughter and seemed to be very nervous. He asked, What are you two talking about? Just where you’re headed. It’s none of your business, OK? OK, said Qingxia. He turned to his daughter. Are you OK? he asked. And, in a quiet voice, she said, Yes, father. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked her over as if checking for something out of place. He asked her if she wanted to go rest, and she said, Yes, father.  

That night after dinner, Qingxia was looking for the girl but she was nowhere to be found. She asked the captain where Thien and her father were staying. She went to towards her room. When she was outside the door, she heard the girl’s father praying. She thought the girl was praying also but she wasn’t. She speaking words, but not a language Qingxia recognized. She was speaking very fast and intensely. With sinking heart, Qingxia realized that Thien was speaking gibberish. Thien’s father was praying louder and louder. And then he began to cry. Qingxia went back to her room without telling the captain what she had overheard.  

The next day, she saw Thien at the railing towards the back of the boat. She seemed to be in a good mood. They talked about mythical stories they had heard about oceans and Qingxiaasked her about Shanghai. All of a sudden, Thien clutched her stomach. She started to cry. She looked at Qingxia with gigantic fearful eyes. What’s the matter? I don’t know, said Thien. It hurts, she said. Again, as if her father was always only a few meters away and constantly watching her, he came and took Thien away. Qingxia went to the front of the boat, found the captainand asked him what was wrong with Thien and the captain told her that the family had had a small tea shop in Shanghai and it was attacked either by thugs or by soldiers. The father heard commotion in the street and reacted quickly. He closed the gate of the shop and told his wife and Thien to leave through the back and run to the bus station and take the first bus to the west. Leave the city? his wife asked. Yes, said the father. Everything is starting soon. War will start. His wife looked at him with hard eyes for a few seconds, then they kissed. He put his hand on his daughter’s cheek. Then he gently pushed her towards her mother. Go, he said. Then he grasped a broom and stood behind the counter. The thugs or soldiers came to the shop and found the gate closed. They shook the gate and yelled into the darkness of the shop. They shot the lock and worked their way in. One thug hit the father in the head with the butt of his rifle. He lay on the ground in a daze as other thugs kicked him in the stomach and ground their boots into his head. Then they ransacked his shop. When they left, he dragged himself into the back alley where he found his wife’s lifeless body, shot three times, and his daughter lying next to her with her eyes wide open and expressionless, her clothes torn. Her liver is rotting, the captain said. And she will probably die before we reach Vietnam.  

*

Two nights before they were supposed to arrive in Vietnam, somewhere in the South China Sea, Thien’s fever got much worse. She was shivering and mumbling about demons and clementines and blood-tipped bullets. Thien’s father had asked Qingxia to heap blankets on top of Thien and to wipe her with a wet cloth and to trickle water into her mouth. Then, together with the captain, they left the room to discuss something. Before they left, Thien seemed to regain consciousness for a second. Her eyes opened wide and she said, Father, don’t leave me. He assured her he would be back, and he walked out the door. Thien died early in the night before her father returned.  

The Vietnamese man stood by his daughter’s death bed and just looked at her. He didn’t touch her. The captain came up to the Vietnamese man and said, This changes things. Qingxiadidn’t know what had changed. The captain and the Vietnamese man returned to the captain’s quarters and discussed for hours. When they came out, it was almost sunrise and it was clear to Qingxia that the man had been crying. 

Thien’s body had been cleaned and laid neatly on the deck. Her father put a charm and a letter into her shirt. They spoke prayers over her body. Then they wrapped her in cloth, tied a small barrel filled with used engine parts to her ankles, and threw her overboard. The father cried weakly at the taffrail. He hit the rail with his fist a few times, but the rail barely rattled.  For the remaining time on the ocean, before arriving at Quy Nhon Port, the Vietnamese man was inconsolable and only either on deck or in his quarters. He didn’t speak to anyone. He kept returning to the back of the boat and looking back the way they had come.  

The day they were supposed to make land, the captain asked Qingxia to come into his office. He showed her Thien’s documents.  

He said, “These are yours now. You’re Thien. Remember her name, her birthday, her address, and make up some stories for yourself.”  

“What will I do?”  

“I don’t know, but you need to live.”  

“Where will you go?”  

“I will stay in the ocean.”  

“I can’t come with you?” 

“You need to live,” he said again.  

“Will I see you again?”  

“I don’t know,” said the captain, and my grandmother knew he couldn’t make any promises because it was wartime.  

The captain got up from his desk and walked to the door and opened it. Qingxia knew the conversation was over. They walked out to the deck together where a moist and warm breeze was blowing. Seagulls could be heard. Qingxia—no, Thien—wished that she would never forget this moment.  

“Can I ask you for something?” the captain asked.  

“Yes?”  

He wanted the recipe for the brisket soup.  

As the boat named Angel was brought to berth, my grandmother got nervous all of a sudden. The wind had turned cold and rough. The strong wind was coming from the ocean and she could feel it at her back. It would be the first time she stepped on land ever since running away three years earlier. She had cleaned up her sleeping quarters and found that all she now possessed were the gifts the captain had given her. She put the shoes and the lipstick into the center of a light blue square cloth and tied it together. She looked at the papers she was given. Her birth date was listed as August 17^th, 1930. Her full name was Tran Thi Thien. The captain cried when she was getting ready to leave. He made her take a copper bowl with her and also made her take the cleaver she had used to cook. The Vietnamese man walked up to them with a suitcase that carried his daughter’s belongings. He handed it to her and said, Here, this yours now.The suitcase was not heavy, but it wasn’t light either. She quickly hid the papers inside the suitcase under the watchful eyes of Thien’s father. The captain said thank you to the Vietnamese man. Tran Thi Thien and her legal father walked side by side down the plank onto firm land. Thien felt like she was leaving her last home. She paused when her feet touched the ground. Her body felt strangely light and heavy at the same time. She felt like she might fall over. Thien’s father said, We should keep walking. There were soldiers checking documents at the port. Maybe we should hold hands, Thien’s father said. I don’t think so, Thien replied.