Out of the Dragon's Mouth by Joyce Burns Zeiss

cousins under the banana trees behind their house. She heard a voice shouting for help, and only then did she look across to the path that ran by the Mekong and see a boy running and waving his arms.
    â€œTrang,” he gasped. “She fell in the river. We can’t find her.”
    Mai had run inside for her grandfather, who alerted her father and Trang’s parents, and they’d all rushed to the water where Trang’s eldest brother was pointing to the spot he’d last seen her, but all they saw was the blue-gray water rushing by, its current swift and unforgiving.
    Mai remembered standing on the shore with Trang’s parents and her own mother and father, watching as the rescue boat plied the water for Trang’s body. She could still see the silhouettes of Trang’s parents, bareheaded on the river’s bank, standing in silence as they waited for some news of their daughter. Trang’s three brothers stood in a row next to them, their heads bowed, their arms clasped behind them.
    â€œYou have all been warned about the river in the rainy season,” Mai’s father chided at dinner that night.
    Mai’s mother wept as she sat beside them. “Only seven. I hope they can find her. Poor girl.”
    â€œShe might be caught in a deep hole. Who knows? This is what can happen if you do not obey your parents.” Mai’s father’s face was stern as he spoke the words, but his eyes were misted.
    The next afternoon when the unsuccessful search ended, Mai saw Trang’s mother slap each of the brothers in the face. “You are no-goods,” she cried, pounding the oldest son in the chest with her ball-like fists. “You do not watch your sister. Now she is gone forever and her spirit must wander.”
    The boys did not recoil. The nanny, a young girl of thirteen, stood by, trembling, her head bowed, her face covered by her hands.
    â€œAnd you, your only job is to watch my daughter. Go, you are a disgrace. You bring bad luck. Leave the village and never show your face again.” Trang’s father’s voice raged with grief and anger.
    The nanny, cowering, crept away, carrying her small bag of belongings, her wide face smeared with tears.
    Mai had come to know that anger was a part of grief, and that someone had to be blamed. She was afraid for Hiep. Small Auntie would not absolve him of her husband’s death, but would try to punish him, instead of intervening for him with her husband’s ghost. Why had he gone to see her?
    Sometimes Hiep could be so stubborn, like the time he’d insisted he knew the way to the zoo, refusing to ask for directions, and they had been lost for over an hour. She had sat quietly in the back seat of the car as he drove, with a cigarette butt between his fingers, one hand on the steering wheel, his other arm dangling out the window. After what seemed like all morning, the sun glaring on her through the side windows, the plastic seat covers sticking to the backs of her legs, he had turned to her and laughed.
    â€œI think we’re lost, Mai. Do you know where we are?”
    Mai, her back stiff from sitting so long and her mouth dry as the paddies in winter, had answered him sharply. “Uncle, I don’t know where we are. I’m only a kid. Ask someone for directions.”
    He arched his eyebrows in surprise at her retort, but he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped a young boy on a bicycle, asking him where the zoo was. She could see the boy, balancing a bundle of firewood on the back of his bicycle, point back down the road they had just travelled. Twenty minutes later, they parked at the zoo and Mai saw her first elephant, and when her new shoes hurt, her uncle had carried her piggyback. Would she ever have such fun again?
    Mai hurried to get dressed and eat so she could go to English class. Though Hiep had not returned, she was not going to miss it waiting for him. The class had already begun when she