The Girl in the Picture

by Denise Chong

  On the run again, while moving past a clutch of thatch houses, Phuc spied an offering of sweet green bananas on an outside altar. She broke from her siblings to run towards it.

  “Phuc!” her brother Tam yelled. “Keep going! Don’t pick that up!”

  “Why not? I’m hungry and I like it!” She had intended to take just one banana but instead picked up the entire bunch.

  Among the crowd at the mother temple were Grandmother Tao and Nu’s two sisters, with their children but without their husbands. In the next day and a half, so many villagers arrived that there wasn’t enough floor space for any to lie down. Families began to run out of food.

  On the second afternoon, a truck groaned to a stop outside. Leaving the motor running, the driver shouted into the doorway, “I’m driving to Tay Ninh. Does anybody want to come?” All day the steadily growing sounds of mortar fire and gunfire had suggested a coming clash. Tung and Nu decided to make for Tay Ninh, to the house that was intended for Ngoc upon marriage. The driver of the truck was a man named Lieu, who ran a business transporting wood from the forest. Tung and Nu took up Lieu’s offer, paying him in advance. They and their children climbed into the back of the truck, joining Lieu’s two wives and nine children inside.

  Cars and trucks, oxcarts, motorscooters, cars overloaded with people and belongings, and refugees on foot clogged the highway, fleeing in the direction of Saigon. Peasants who flagged down Lieu’s truck, which had a Caodai flag and a white ao dai tied to its front, bought their way aboard. Lieu made it clear: no belongings. People agreed. “Lives first,” they said. Incoming mortar fire caused Lieu to alternately slam on the brakes and step heavily on the gas. Several times, shrapnel rattled off the truck’s metal roof, sending Lieu into a swerve. Each time the truck slowed or stopped, desperate people jumped onto the outside; some were clinging to its roof, others to its sides.

  About halfway to the town of Tay Ninh, their trip was cut short. On both sides of the highway at an elevated bridge was a sea of South Vietnamese military trucks, tanks and armored personnel carriers. South Vietnamese soldiers advised Lieu that there was heavy fighting beyond. Lieu decided not to press on for several reasons: nightfall was approaching; his truck had no lights and was almost out of gas; and, with the exception of his family, most of his passengers had not eaten for days. If it came to making a run for it, neither they nor the vehicle would get far.

  Lieu turned the truck around and about half a mile back took a cutoff to the tiny hamlet of Gieng-gieng. Nu had a great uncle there who she thought could help with water and food, gas for the truck, and refuge for the night. She went to the house with a buck’s head mounted over its front door. The house had been built by her great uncle’s father, once a foreman on a French rubber plantation.

  Uncle Thieu agreed to share his family’s limited rice with her six children. Nu organized the women among the crowd to pick rau muong, a hollow-stemmed river spinach, which she boiled up with salt to feed everyone else. After a meal in the darkness of the garden, some thirty adults, including Nu and Tung, took shelter in two storage sheds. Some twenty children bedded down around the hearth in the back room of the house. Uncle Thieu, his wife and teenaged son slept behind a wall of sandbags in the main room.

  For the next three or four days and nights, the hamlet was a haven from war. While sporadic artillery fire echoed from distant skies, the children roamed Thieu’s lands, running freely between his house and the adjacent house of his married son. The adults themselves took much comfort in the impressive show of government strength half a mile down the highway towards Tay Ninh; never had they seen such a display in all the years of the war.

  Uncle Thieu kept his American-made Phillips transistor radio tuned to Radio Saigon. On April 28, he reported that South Vietnam had a new president. General Duong Van (“Big”) Minh, who had staged the 1963 coup against Diem that ended in his murder, was popular with peasants and was viewed as someone capable of negotiating conciliatory terms with the Communists.

  EVEN AS MINH TOOK POWER, FROM ALL directions came reports of the Communists’ advance on the capital. Their patrols had tested the city’s defenses at its outskirts and found them in disarray; any South Vietnamese commanders who might have provided leadership had either left the country or were scrambling to get out. The nights reverberated with the clanking of Communist tanks and the rumble of their truck convoys moving towards the capital.

  On the morning of April 29, off Route 1 outside Trang Bang, in the fields east of the Caodai temple, two South Vietnamese army tanks and several trucks were arranged in a defensive position against possible enemy fire from the direction of the town’s business district. A few dozen South Vietnamese soldiers were dug into foxholes. Some time before noon, an AP correspondent who had driven from Saigon up Route 1 stopped to talk to the one in command. As a couple of his soldiers cooked lunch in the shade of one of the vehicles, the major explained their final mission: “We will stand and die here,” he said. “This is the front line. There’s nobody farther than us and there is nobody else.”

  On that same day, the United States mission began its emergency pullout, staging the largest-ever helicopter evacuation on record. Hysterical and desperate South Vietnamese, claiming they had been promised an escape, begged, tried to bribe and fought to be included in evacuation plans. For eighteen hours, in worsening weather and rain, American helicopters shuttled continuously between a base near Tan Son Nhut airport and a flotilla of American ships and aircraft carriers sitting offshore. Bombing and shelling eventually forced them to evacuate instead from the seventh-floor rooftop of the American embassy. The last helicopter lifted off from the rooftop of the embassy in the early morning of April 30. Later that morning, the city’s sirens sounded three times, indicating that the city was under attack.

  AT FIRST LIGHT ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 30, Lieu decided to continue to the town of Tay Ninh. He siphoned enough gas from the Honda of one of Uncle Thieu’s neighbors to get his truck that far. Suddenly, incoming artillery fire pounded the hamlet. The crowd Lieu had brought, including Tung and his family, and the family of Uncle Thieu, piled into Lieu’s truck and the uncle’s own van. The two vehicles barreled down the road a mile or so, the uncle finally finding a place to shelter under the canopy of a large tree.

  Mid-morning, Uncle Thieu called for silence. He cupped his hands over his ears, already pressed against his transistor radio, in an effort to better make out the words of Big Minh’s broadcast. The general announced that he was surrendering power to the Communists and called on all South Vietnamese soldiers to lay down their weapons.

  “It’s over,” said Uncle Thieu. “The war is over.”

  The children started to cheer. Twelve-year-old Phuc was delirious at the thought that she no longer had to be afraid of dying and killing, that she could be free from the stranglehold of panic, from having to second-guess the reach of death. By day, in fleeing mortar fire, and by night, in her nightmares, she had exhausted herself running from war. In her mind, its end meant the family could live normally again, could rebuild the big house and their lives in it. As she lost herself in such reverie, many adults broke down. “We lost, we lost,” they said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HALF AN HOUR AFTER THE BROADCAST of surrender, Uncle Thieu and Lieu drove with their passengers back to the uncle’s hamlet. There they found villagers, young and old, spilling from their houses in celebration. Before Nu could object, her two teenagers, Dung and Tam, disappeared into the gathering crowd. At her insistence, the four younger children dutifully followed her and Tung, and Uncle Thieu and his wife, inside.

  A crescendo of excited shouts came from the highway. Someone burst through the door of Uncle Thieu’s house: “Come and see the Viet Cong! Come!” Thieu’s wife, ignoring his order to stay behind, dashed out.

  “I want to go! Please!” Phuc looked imploringly at Nu.

  “You cannot.”

  Nu steadfastly refused to believe that the war could end so easily. She
had seen not a single Communist soldier in the past few days, in contrast to the South Vietnamese military’s show of strength days earlier up the highway. This is a day like any other, she told herself. Not only did she refuse to give way to reckless celebration that the war might be over, she feared worse yet to come: what if the Viet Cong were behind the broadcast of surrender, their purpose to lure government soldiers and citizens onto the streets for a final bloodbath? No southerner could forget what had happened in Hue during the Tet Offensive.

  At the highway, people rushed to see a passing North Vietnamese military convoy. Trucks, tanks and armored cars, camouflaged with leaves, rolled by, flying the flag of the Viet Cong. Atop them rode uniformed soldiers in pith helmets and boots. Peasants standing roadside stared with their mouths open, their eyes widening. They were stunned to see the enemy in such numbers, in uniform, and with heavy military equipment. The enemy they had known was the lone Viet Cong clad in black, with a blackened face, moving stealthily on foot in the night. The northern soldier they had derogatorily envisaged was so scrawny that, as the saying went in the south, five would fit in a papaya tree. Instead, smiling down at them were sinewy men and teenaged boys. Protected from the sun by the cover of jungle, their skin was pale and unblemished.

  Phuc waited anxiously for second-hand news. Uncle Thieu’s wife, breathless from having run to and from the highway, countered rumor with observation: “The Viet Cong are not ugly at all! They’re handsome and strong. They’re so young and fair!”

  Phuc’s excitement was shot with adrenaline when her sister Dung came back to report that she had just seen two North Vietnamese soldiers die, killed by a grenade.

  “Wh-where did you go?!” Uncle Thieu almost choked on his own fear.

  Dung had followed a crowd as far as the bridge on the highway in the direction of Tay Ninh. Uncle Thieu claimed personal acquaintance with the government’s district commander and explained that he was a soldier who would die fighting before he would surrender. Even as warning of more fighting issued from his mouth, Dung was running back outside. Human nature is to associate with victory.

  The silence that suggested surrender lengthened. After lunch, Lieu announced his departure for Tay Ninh. Tung and Nu decided to continue as planned to Tay Ninh, and to shelter the family there until confirmation came that the fighting was truly over. They feared travel in the direction of Saigon to be unsafe, deciding that the Communists would most certainly meet pockets of resistance as they continued to converge on the capital.

  The landscape on the way to Tay Ninh was stained with blood. In the vicinity of the bridge, dozens of bodies of soldiers from both the south and the north lay askew in death. In the middle of the junction of Route 1 with the fork that branched north into the town of Tay Ninh sat an abandoned truck of the South Vietnamese military, stacked with bodies of government soldiers. The road there was strewn with southern military gear: uniforms, helmets, leather boots, M-16 rifles, canteens and unit badges, even cigarette lighters and watches. The image conjured up was of government troops shedding any and all military identification in an effort to melt back into the civilian population.

  From inside the covered back of Lieu’s truck, Phuc saw North Vietnamese army trucks passing in both directions. In them, she caught her first glimpses of northern soldiers. She decided to keep her eyes averted; the sight of uniforms brought back images of war. Rocked by the motion of the truck, mile after mile on its way to Tay Ninh, she kept repeating to herself: No more gunfire, no more bombs. No more gunfire, no more bombs.

  “RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. IF YOU DO NOT

  return to your home within three days, you will lose your home. Return to your homes. If you do not return to . . .”

  The loudspeaker crackling forth was atop a North Vietnamese military truck. It made several passes by Ngoc’s house on Future Road, the main road through the hamlet of Gate Seven, one of twelve numbered hamlets arranged concentrically around the Holy See and named for the corresponding gate in the wall that enclosed it.

  The previous afternoon, the Tung family had been among the throngs of refugees and convoys of North Vietnamese trucks carrying Communist soldiers streaming into the town and outlying hamlets of Tay Ninh. The army trucks discharged soldiers at public buildings, where they would live until their units were demobilized and they were sent back north. When those filled, the Communists knocked at the doors of private villas and spacious houses, asking occupants to “invite” the soldiers in. The family had found Ngoc’s house empty, the renters gone, only some broken furniture left behind. It had electricity service—one sure sign that the Caodai zone around Tay Ninh had been blissfully free of war damage.

  The family took stock of their situation. Nu would be the one to reclaim the house as well as the family-run business. The rest of the family would remain behind in Ngoc’s house and await word from Nu about the condition of the family home in Trang Bang. Should the necessary repairs be extensive, so that the family could not move back in immediately, they could live temporarily in Ngoc’s house. Nu, taking the youngest, who was still on the breast, left immediately for Trang Bang.

  In Gate Seven, the first days after the war’s end were tranquil, but novel. Two homes near Ngoc’s had room to spare for soldiers to bed down: a two-story white marble villa behind a high wall and locked gate immediately next door; and farther up the street, a grand villa belonging to the home of the family for whom Future Road was named. Heeding her mother’s warning—“You might get lost!”—Phuc did not venture beyond the house and lot.

  Phuc benefited, however, from Dung’s curiosity. Her sister brought back details of the ways of Communist soldiers. Even their eating habits fascinated: they ate but once daily, a meal they cooked themselves of rice and various dried foods that, by their labels, came from China. The soldiers saw luxuries in what southerners took for granted: water drawn from a well, and soap. They spoke only when spoken to and answered politely all questions from the curious. They had an odd manner of keeping their eyes fixed ahead, and their lines sounded rehearsed: “I was too young to be a Communist soldier, but after I applied five times, finally I was accepted.” Or, “My parents didn’t allow me to be a Communist soldier, so I had to run away from home to join.” No matter, the image conveyed was of young men with their sights fixed on glory. It would not take long for girls of the south to start flirting with them.

  IN TRANG BANG, NORTH VIETNAMESE ARMY trucks were parked end to end along the strip of food and drink shops. Nu could hardly see into her shop for the soldiers milling about. The final battles of the war had haphazardly left their mark, leaving some shops unscathed, others destroyed. She saw that her shop had lost part of a front wall; a stall next to hers was obliterated. As she approached, Communist soldiers waved her away. They were using the shops as their temporary barracks but were also there to prevent looting.

  Nu continued down the highway and turned off at the Caodai temple. It bore even more scars, inflicted by every weapon of war—napalm, bombs, mortar and gunfire—and yet it stood. She followed the footpath. Grandfather Kiem’s and Grandmother Tao’s house was serenely untouched. Auntie Anh’s was damaged, but reparable.

  A few steps farther on, Nu beheld a massive pile of rubble. The family home was no more. The walls and entire roof had collapsed.

  There was no noise. Not even flies.

  Nu saw that looters had been before her. Debris had been overturned, sorted and sifted.

  The sun burned overhead.

  How long she stood there weeping Nu did not know, but eventually, she became acutely aware of her clothes sticking to her back and her toes grasping at dirt. She had worn these trousers and blouse since she had fled Trang Bang. At some point during the last days on the run, she must have lost her sandals. She could not remember when she had last eaten.

  For the next two days, Nu, together with her youngest, announced her presence on the side of the road directly opposite her shop. She set up a makeshift stove of three bricks arranged s
o that there was room underneath to burn wood and filled her stomach on sweet potato leaves picked from abandoned gardens. She had the company of other shopkeepers, nervously awaiting what the Communists would do with the capitalist south under reunification.

  On the third day, a military officer acting in the name of “the people’s revolutionary government” interviewed each in turn. He registered each business and owner and assessed license fees that had to be paid in order to reclaim the storefront.

  “I don’t have so much money—” Nu didn’t see how she would pay the fee without first rebuilding and reopening her business. Panic rose in her. We need the shop to live, she thought.

  “—I just have land.”

  She explained, and several days later, the official produced a document. “Sign this,” he told Nu, “and you can have your shop back.” Being illiterate, she did not know that with her signature she had sold the official the family’s destroyed house and the land on which it sat for her license fee. And so, the family had no choice but to live apart, with the children and their father at Ngoc’s house in Tay Ninh, which was at least a roof over their heads, and Nu living and working at the noodle shop in Trang Bang. The family was resigned. “We have to eat,” they said.

  ON TUNG’S FIRST VISIT BACK TO TRANG BANG, he combed the rubble but was unable to find anything that looters might have overlooked. “There was not even one doll or toy left to bring to you,” he told Phuc. He had looked no further after he came across a fragment of a carving of a fan, from the bench before the altar table. Do not complain. Accept it, he told himself.

  Fortunately, in the last days of the war he had stashed some belongings at the noodle shop. Saved were the family’s white garments worn for Caodai festivals, his collection of prayer books and classic folktales and romances, and a suitcase of mementos of Phuc’s fame: an album with Nick Ut’s picture and her medical records from the Barsky.