It was easy to find information about her father’s location, since she works with the papers that help connect people to whoever and whatever they had lost, or to families in America or France. Sometimes it is as if she is restringing beads of a broken necklace, not the necklace of war, of skulls, but one of beauty, pearls, and as she does, she hears Song’s voice saying, “Okay,” that part always in English. Then he would say, as if it meant nothing, “The government has changed again.” She continues stringing the necklace until it is complete, the clasp in place. It is made of pearls with a dragon claw to hold it. She closes it so it will not come undone.

After the plane lands she is sent through customs, thinking, My father came to this very place. He walked here.

She walks through the long building, following the others. They take away her fruit. Purpose for visit: Personal. Then she picks up her bag and, looking around, finds the place to rent a car, feeling good to be able to do all this.

Driving, she sees that America is strange, the places all the same bright stores. Then she turns off and she drives into the mist curling about the hills, sometimes seeing the ocean, its waves and swells, the odor of the water not like the water at home, a different air. Not swampy so much as fishy. At home, water is the color of tea, yellow, almost brown. Here it is deep blue, green and gray. The waves remind her of life and history, enormous and without end. She stops the car and watches one wave come in after the other.

When she reaches the last coastal town, she turns into a shop in the last mall before the reservation and purchases a red goldfish in a plastic bag and a glass bowl. It is an offering to her father, to show him how much she remembers.

“You want food?” asks the woman with frizzy red hair who sells her the fish.

Lin looks at her, thinking she means to feed her. She had no idea they fed customers in America. She looks at her in amazement. How kind.

“You know. For the fish.” The woman’s voice is louder now, as if Lin is deaf or does not understand English, because it seems clear from her calm face, the way she moves, that Lin is not American. “Fish food.” The woman’s skin is thin and white. She wears a ruffled collar. She points at the container that holds the dried contents.

“Oh,” Lin puts the fish down. “Yes. Thank you.”

Lin purchases the food. Back at her car, she places the fish and bowl on the floor of the passenger side, but before she drives away she sings to it. She sits in the busy parking lot, cars moving behind her, and she remembers the old song. But it is more than just a song. It praises the golden scales and the red flowing tail, its beauty. “Oh, you swam the river of perfume, the river of my mother world in the current. You could hold still and not be swept away. That is why, for a while, you were strong and free.” The song praises the world it came from, the egg it once was with only an eye and a heart visible in it, the direction of water it followed. Then she feels sorry for it, wondering if it is lonely.