Her adopted father had a calmness, too, not like a pond, or even a plant, not like Lin, but he had grown content with life. He alone noticed there were times when Lin was a restless pond underneath, not always a still one. He built things now. Especially he built birdhouses and he imagined them richly and elegantly. They were loved, pieced together by things he found thrown out on streets, pieces of cars, but somehow they always looked new and perfect. Lin loved him and remembered how he’d slipped her extra money when he could, money she used for books. He made a living room out in the back in a place that had been bare. Now they had enough, unlike before, and he grew flowers and ginger and he cared for the stone basin he kept filled with fresh water to attract the returning birds, and he even bought a TV.

“What would our ancestors think,” his wife said. “I won’t watch it. Ever.” She crossed her arms over herself the day he brought the square box home and turned it on.

She held out for three weeks and then one day she sat before it on the floor and watched so much he had to call her to her duties at work even in the daytime.

“Shh.” She waved him away with her narrow hand. “They are having a fight. She is sleeping with her doctor.”

“I had your future read by the woman who burns leaves on stones,” Mother told Lin one day.

“I heard she charges too much. Did she overcharge you?” Lin was a skeptic.

“Yes, of course she did. But I had to know.” She had a crease between her eyebrows which had disappeared. Then she kept silent, tempting Lin until her curiosity was too much for her. More silence. Until Lin couldn’t wait. “Okay, what did she say? What did you ask?”

“She said you would go a long ways. You would marry a man who was somehow an enemy, but the fights are over. You will grow even taller. How can you? I don’t know. She says you will always come home to flowers even if you go to school. You are meant for co-ro-fiu.”

Lin smiled without laughing. “And what about you?” She knew the woman would never ask only about the girl.

“Oh, I will live a long, long life and my hands will still be beautiful,” but she shook her head as if she had sad news she didn’t wish to tell. That was her way.

Lin wanted to go to a university. She didn’t need school, though. She already was finding her share of work. And she studied maps. The teacher, Dr. Thieu, over the years watched her with love that grew as Lin grew. Now he watched her grow into love with the young man who would become her husband.

Once, the two young people went to the park and, despite the others, they sang together. They knew all the same songs. Another time, they danced to the band that was playing there, a few men with instruments, a singing woman in a tight dress who lifted her arms like in a movie and sang in English. “You’re stiff,” he said, stepping back, looking at her gently.