Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  Phuong is twenty-four. Her looks are decidedly Western, her hair long and auburn, her skin fair. Like the majority of Amerasians in the PRPC, she is a “free case.” She has no relatives in the United States to sponsor her and does not know where she will be resettled.

  MY FATHER LEFT Vietnam in 1972, so I know very little about him. I was very young when he left. My mother told me that he had an eagle tattooed on his arm and that he was about twenty years old when they met. He worked in an office for the army, maybe like a secretary, I don’t know. He never really married my mother. They just lived together.

  He wanted to take me and my mother to America in ’72, but my mother’s parents didn’t want her to go, and she obeyed. He sent letters and money from 1972 to 1975, but after ’75 we never heard from him again.

  My mother was wounded. She was wounded by a grenade thrown into her house in 1968, that was before I was born. I don’t know if it was political, or because she had an American husband, or if it was a robbery attempt, but she was hurt badly and had a lot of shrapnel taken out of her head. She always suffered from headaches after that, but I don’t know if that was the only reason. She was a nervous woman.

  I was born in Quy Nhon and stayed there till I was about eight. I went to school, but when you have white skin, it’s hard. My classmates teased me, and even the teacher didn’t like me. She paid no attention to me. Even if I gave a good answer, it didn’t matter, she only liked the Vietnamese. You know, the teachers teach us that the Americans came to steal Vietnam, but they could not beat the Communists, that the Communists drove them away. Of course this was embarrassing for me. My brother and I were the only Amerasians in the school, and we didn’t have many friends. The children always called me “American.” I always wished that I could go to America.

  The government often made my mother attend meetings at night. I was just a little girl, so I don’t know what they were about, but I remember her going. The government confiscated her house, actually two houses. We had one in Quy Nhon and one in Pleiku. My father had bought them for her. People looked at my mother like she was a whore because she had had an American husband. Even our relatives were nasty to her, and when I was about ten, we moved out of Quy Nhon, to my aunt’s house in Pleiku.

  For me and my brother, Pleiku was easier that Quy Nhon. In Quy Nhon we lived in a village. In Pleiku we were in the city, there were many other Amerasians. I didn’t stand out so much, I didn’t feel so ashamed. We couldn’t afford school, we all did farm work. Even when I was small, I worked, digging holes for planting peanuts.

  My mother always suffered from tension. She was very nervous. She was always thinking about her misfortune and about the property that the Communists confiscated. She went through a period of severe headaches and died shortly after. She was only thirty-nine or forty.

  After my mother’s death, I remained at my aunt’s house in Pleiku, helping her in the fields and hiring out as a laborer for other people. But our relationship became strained. She had given birth to children of her own, and of course she preferred them to me and my brother. So when I was about 16, I went out on my own.

  Phuong

  I got a job washing dishes in a restaurant and saved a little bit of money. I met a friend of my mother’s. She owned a boat and was going to escape from Vietnam. She agreed to take me and my brother. We went down to Nha Trang beach and took a small boat taxi out to the big boat. We never made it to the boat. The police stopped the taxi and arrested us. They let my little brother go, but I went to jail for a month.

  In jail, I became friendly with some of the women prisoners, and they invited me to stay with them when I got out. One was the friend of the owner of a large restaurant called Thanh Thao [The Fragrant Herb]. The owner and I became tight friends, confidants. She told me that she had been the lover of an American colonel and had an Amerasian son from him. She also had adopted two other Amerasian children. I became the cook there at the restaurant, and she paid me a good salary. I can cook very well. You know Canh Chua, the Vietnamese soup we cook with pickle, and Ca Kho, fish cooked in fish sauce? These were my specialties, but we cooked all kind of Vietnamese food. I worked there for four years and lived in a room in the back of the restaurant. My brother had gone back to Quy Nhon to stay with my grandparents, and I sent him some money every month. But there were some problems between the owner and the police. I think they hated her because she had three American children. Eventually, she had to close the restaurant.

  When the restaurant closed, my boss gave me a third of a tael of gold in rings. I took that and some money I had saved and became a trader. I went to Buon Me Thuot and bought coffee and took it down to Saigon to sell. In Saigon I bought tobacco and rice noodles and sold that. In this way, I supported myself for several years.

  When I was twenty-three or twenty-four, I heard about the Amerasian program. I decided to register, but first, I wanted to go to Quy Nhon to visit my brother. On the way, I met an old woman. She was bringing many things to her son, who was in reeducation camp in Pleiku. We became friendly, and I went with her to the camp and helped her carry her load. After, I returned with her to Saigon, and she introduced me to many people who wanted to pay me to claim them as family so they could go to America with me.

  She took me to the sister of the woman I am living with now. This lady said, “Why don’t you come and stay with my family?” My own plan was to go and stay in Dam Sen Amerasian Center, but this woman scared me. She told me about all the problems in Dam Sen. She said, “If you go there, the other Amerasians will make trouble for you.” She also told me that I would have to pay bribes of two taels of gold to make all the papers, something that she would take care of if I stayed with her. I didn’t have that money. I felt very confused about it, so in the end I agreed to join her family and we registered for the Orderly Departure Program together. When I was interviewed by INS, I told them that she was my adopted mother and that we had been together a long time.

  There are six members in the family, her, her husband and four children. When we were in Vietnam being interviewed, they were very nice to me, sure. But now that we are here, they don’t need me anymore. They treat me like dirt. They even tell me, “We’re on our way to America already, we don’t need you anymore.” They insult me, berate me, the daughters even have attacked me. They loved the Amerasian when they needed to leave Vietnam, but now they despise me. I never got any money from this family when I helped them come here. They didn’t do anything for me. They just used me.

  I went to CFSI [Community Family Services International] for counseling about my problems with this family, to try to separate from them. I saw Mr. Dan, he is a Vietnamese counselor there, but he has lived in America for many years. He had bad words for me. He said, “Even an animal keeps loyal to those who feed him,” but I am not an animal. He says that I should be loyal to that family. They couldn’t be here without me. They used me, and now they mistreat me. Why must I be loyal to them?

  He told me that the Americans made a mess out of Vietnam, but they couldn’t defeat the Vietnamese. Now they feel guilty, so they are taking the Amerasians to. America. But when the Amerasians get there, nobody cares about them, nobody wants them, so I had better stay with this family. He talked to me in a very degrading manner. I told him, “You depend on the Amerasians for your job, and you are paid by the American government, so who are you to criticize? If there are no Amerasians, you will not have this job.”

  Dan wouldn’t help me, I asked Bob [an American working in the [PRPC] for help. He is helping me move to another billet, away from that family. I asked that I be permanently separated from that family. I don’t want to go to America with them.

  Before I came here, when I was living in Ho Chi Minh City, I got a job in a beauty shop. I curled the hair, you know . . . permanents. There I met a man, he cut hair, and we fell in love and got married. But I married him after I made the paper to come here. Once you make the paper it’s very hard to change it, to add another name. Th
e family I am with, they said it would cost three taels of gold [in bribes] to add my husband’s name, and we would have to wait longer to leave Vietnam. They didn’t want to do it. I did not press the issue. I was afraid for my husband, afraid that the family might do something to hurt him if I made a problem, maybe even kill him. You know, it’s very easy to hire a “hit man” in Vietnam, and very cheap, really.

  So I am here, and my husband is still in Vietnam. I feel very sad. I miss him, and the family I came here with abuses me. How can I study, how can I learn English?

  Postscript: Shortly after we spoke Phuong was given permission to transfer away from her “family” to a different billet. She immediately moved in with a friend, an Amerasian girl like herself. When I left the refugee camp in August of 1992, Phuong had not yet completed her studies, but was scheduled to be resettled in the United States in early 1993.

  Hieu

  “I don’t want any more trouble. I want to be a good guy.”

  I am sitting across from Hieu in the small waiting room at the monkey house, the detention center at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, where he is a detainee. Hieu, compact and muscular in cutoff jeans and a sleeveless “Fido Dido” T-shirt, has the light skin of his American father. He wears his brown hair long, and a key hangs from a hoop that dangles from his left earlobe, next to a pink post earring. On his left shoulder are some small tattoos of plus and minus signs and a colon. A skull and crossbones adorn the other shoulder, and a blue dragon crawls across his thigh. The scars on his arm are self-inflicted. [“These scars, I smoke and I burn myself . . . because I am very sad.”] A huge slice mark runs over the heart area of his chest. It is the souvenir of a knife wound he received at seventeen while breaking up a fight in Vietnam between a teenager and an older man.

  Hieu’s three years in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center have been spent much the same as his previous twenty in Vietnam, largely in detention. Hieu tends to “lose it” when he drinks, and he drinks frequently. As a result of his troubles, his departure from the refugee camp for resettlement in the United States has been indefinitely delayed, and the uncle who was to be his sponsor in Texas has decided not to accept him.

  Despite his total lack of schooling and his inability to read and write, Hieu has picked up quite a bit of English in the PRPC and Filipino detention centers, as well as a smattering of Tagalog. He forgoes the use of an interpreter, insisting on speaking to me directly in English. “I want to live with Americans,” Hieu explains. “I want to talk only English, I don’t want to talk Vietnamese anymore.”

  I DON’T KNOW where I was born, but I lived in Saigon City. I live with my mother and some members of my family, three young brothers and a sister. I am the only Amerasian. I never met my father. Even his photos, my mother threw them away when the Communists came. But sometime my mother tells me about him. She says that I’m like him, I look like him. My father was a soldier before, in the mountain. His name was Larry.

  I didn’t go to school in Vietnam. I want to go, but the children hurt me. They say, “You not like me, you American.” I remember that. I feel hurt, I never go back anymore. Anyway, I am very poor, I have no money for school. I never learn to read and write Vietnamese. I can’t read English either, only speak.

  Sometimes I live with my mother in Vietnam, but lots of times I just leave home. I have a problem with my family, and I go stay with a friend. When I feel okay, I’m not angry anymore, I go back home.

  I am very poor, I have no money. Some friends of mine they steal things, and they give them to me to sell. Then I start stealing myself. I snatch and run, chains, anything. I was young, fourteen or fifteen. I am not part of a gang, just me and my friend. He’s Amerasian also. I steal things all around Saigon City, but the police, they pick me up many times.

  Sometimes they put me in jail in Saigon, sometimes they send me to a camp outside of Saigon. There we have to work on the mountain, work very hard.

  My mother is very angry. When I come home, she says, “What’s wrong with you? Stay here, don’t go out.” But I say, “Mother, I’m very sorry, but I just got out of the monkey house, and I want to go out. I don’t want to stay home.”

  The Vietnamese hate American children, they always say, “Leave, go home,” and I want to. I don’t want any Vietnamese friends, I don’t care about the Vietnamese. They don’t like me, so I don’t like them.

  I came here to the refugee camp in 1989. I’m here almost three years, and I been in jail many times, like in Vietnam. Before, I have a friend here, I know him from Vietnam. We been in the monkey house together. He invites me to have some drinks in his house. When I am very drunk, he says to me, “Now, I will box [beat] you, and what will you do?” I say, “Leave me alone, let me sleep. I don’t want boxing, I don’t want trouble, because I want to go America.” He says to me, “You want to go to America? I make you die here in the Philippines. You never go to America, I kill you first.” I think he will get my knife and kill me, and I will die here . . . so I stab him, before he can kill me. He don’t die. He’s not hurt too bad, but they send me to the monkey house for three months.

  When I get out of the monkey house, I have another problem. You remember a few years ago there are Filipino and Vietnamese fighting in the market. That time I don’t have nothing to do with it, I was only watching. The police come to my house, and they say, “You were fighting with a Filipino.” I say, “No, I was only looking, not fighting.” They say, “We have a picture,” but they don’t let me see it. So they put me in jail six months, for nothing. I am in jail with two other people. They go to America already, but me, I’m still here.

  Hieu in the PRPC detention center, the “monkey house”

  So when I get out, I don’t have any trouble for a long time. I’m a good guy, because I want to go to America. But I wait for the list [for his name to appear on the departure list for the United States] and no name. I wait and wait, and I’m very sad. One day I am drinking, and I’m very noisy, but only in my home. The neighborhood leader comes in to talk to me. I say, “I am the same as you, Vietnamese.” He tells me, “No, you are not the same as me,” and we start fighting. I hit him only one time, but they send me back to the monkey house again.

  So I am in the monkey house, my brother comes to give me food. The police on duty, he don’t want to open the door to let my brother give it to me. I say to police, “Can you let me go over there to eat? When I’m finished, I go back in the cell.” He don’t let me, so I get angry. I break the door, I wreck the cell. About ten police grab me and put me in the car and send me to jail in Napot [a nearby detention facility] for seven months.

  Now I am in the monkey house again. You know here they keep me in the cell, they never let me out. Why, I don’t know. They let everybody go out but me. I say, “Excuse me sir, can I go out, work outside,” but he don’t let me out, he is angry at me. You know at New Year all prisoners go home. Only me stay here. I don’t know why.

  My mother says to me, “What happens in your life, you back in the monkey house again.” I say, “I know it’s no good, but it’s not my fault.” She says, “One time okay, two times okay, but you’re always in the monkey house. What is wrong with you?”

  My family is so angry at me. They say they don’t want to wait for me anymore. I promise, I don’t want any more trouble. I want to be a good guy.

  Postscript: Four months after Hieu and I had spoken at the detention center, I was visiting a Vietnamese friend in neighborhood four of the PRPC. Her daughter walked in with an Amerasian boy of about twenty. He was very pale, obviously distraught. My friend told me that he had just come from the hospital, where his stomach had been pumped. “He tried to kill himself,” my friend explained. “One Amerasian boy in neighborhood two, lives next door to him. He comes in and takes everything from his house and says he will kill him if he tells anybody. So my daughter’s friend, he feels very sad, and he takes too much medicine [sleeping pills].” “Who is the boy who stole his things?” I ask
ed. “His name is Hieu,” my friend told me. “He is very mean. They call him “Hieu Loco.”

  The next afternoon I went to visit Hieu in his billet, but he was not home. He had been arrested again and was once more doing time in the detention center.

  Charlie

  “Everywhere I went, people looked down on me.”

  I first met Charlie at the PRPC jail, commonly referred to as the “monkey house.” As we began to speak, a group of about twenty Amerasians arrived at the entrance, accompanying a new detainee, a white Amerasian being brought in for carrying a deadly weapon, “troublemaking,” and “fighting.” Charlie viewed the commotion dispassionately; he had seen it all before.

  Tall and lanky, his movements loose and almost laconic, there is little of Asia in Charlie’s appearance. His hair is brown, his complexion light; the genes of his white American father clearly predominate. He sports two gold studs in one ear and arms crisscrossed with burn scars self-inflicted with a cigarette during a fit of depression. “USA” is tattooed about six inches above his left wrist, and on one leg a tattooed hand brandishes a pistol. Another hand is coming up to grab it, as if to restrain the shooter or, possibly, to aim the gun. Beneath this image is a Vietnamese sentence, roughly translatable as “The rice bowl in prison will see me again.” The implication is that trouble is Charlie’s fate.

  Whether by destiny or design, the tatooed phrase is eerily apropos. Separated from his parents, terrorized by his aunt’s vindictive husband, and out on his own early in life, he entered an alternating cycle of petty crime and incarceration. This cycle remains unbroken in the PRPC. He was serving the tail end of a five-month sentence for fighting and troublemaking when we first spoke, just one in a continuing series of imprisonments since he entered the PRPC about three years ago.