The Girl in the Picture

by Denise Chong

  Her schedule for the next weeks would rival that of a campaigning politician. Using Moscow as her base, she traveled to many of the same cities she’d already been to, staying up to a week in each and visiting schools, factories and farms. Her hosts rewarded her with an interlude in late October of two weeks at one of Sochi’s more than two hundred medical and therapeutic clinics and spas. Elsewhere in the Soviet Union, the weather foreshadowed winter’s chill, but in Sochi, which lies protected from northerly winds by mountains hugging the Black Sea coast, daytime temperatures in the fall can reach into the low seventies (low twenties Celsius). The view from Phuc’s world-class luxury hotel was of palm trees and the beach. Twice daily, a driver ferried her to and from the clinic, where, under a doctor’s care, she would undergo a daily regimen of bathing, water massage and cream applications. Her scar tissue went from rigid to supple; her burned areas lost their patchy blackness and turned a translucent pink. Relaxed sleeps and long walks along the seaside and into the mountains revived her appetite. She put on much-needed pounds. One day when I have money, I will come back, she promised herself.

  Her return to Moscow in December, while she was between engagements, was a cold shock. The city was in winter’s snowy grip. Had she been home in Ho Chi Minh City, Phuc would have been enjoying December and January as the most pleasant months of the year, when the eighty-degree daily average temperature (about twenty-five degrees Celsius) is a couple of degrees off the peak of summer. Phuc’s hosts took her to the upmarket GUM department store off Red Square and outfitted her with a jacket, fur hat, boots and gloves. However, Phuc fell abruptly ill. She found it difficult to breathe and she was felled by excruciating, unrelenting headaches.

  Never was Phuc so fearful of the illness brought on by her burn wounds. Soviet authorities admitted her to a hospital outside Moscow, where top specialists took care of Party brass and foreign dignitaries. The woman minister from Vietnam was still there recovering from an eye operation. Doctors tried various methods of pain relief, including acupuncture, on Phuc. They were slow to take effect, as her body needed mainly to acclimatize to the extreme cold. Apart from her burned skin having left her body short of pores to regulate its temperature, her lungs had likely been damaged from the searing heat of the fires of napalm and were unused to drawing cold air. Shock may have left her internal organs permanently damaged or vulnerable to weakness. By the end of January, however, the rest and the comfort of well-heated rooms, excellent food, and attentive specialists and nurses had improved Phuc’s health to the point that she was ready to be discharged.

  Days before her final discharge, her weekly visitor, a minder from the Vietnamese embassy in Moscow, came to take her to a Soviet guest house for the evening. Prime Minister Pham Van Dong was staying there while on a trip to Moscow and had extended a dinner invitation. Among the twenty guests, some Vietnamese but mostly Soviet, Phuc had one of the seats of honor beside Dong. They chatted throughout dinner. When she told him of the headaches that had landed her in hospital, he asked questions that a doctor might have asked: where was the pain? how did it feel? It brought to mind for Phuc his grief over his wife. Once, while Phuc was strolling with Dong’s son Duong around the gardens of the villa in Ho Chi Minh City, they had come across his mother reading the day’s newspaper. Phuc had spoken to her, and by her reply, she’d seen that she had the mentality of a child.

  Dong addressed himself to Phuc’s minder, seeking details of her treatment at the hospital and of the opinion of doctors there. “I want you to get better,” he told Phuc.

  He turned the conversation to the resumption of her studies upon her return to Vietnam. Unexpectedly, he put forward a proposal: “Would you like to stay on in Moscow? Go to university here?” He spoke enthusiastically of the university’s high academic standards and of the privilege of receiving a degree from Moscow.

  Phuc smiled. The cold was the least of her dislikes of living in Moscow. She had the same prejudices against anything Russian that most Vietnamese had. In five months in the Soviet Union, she had made no effort to say anything more in Russian than “spasibo” to express thanks. From city to city, the Komsomol guide had bought newspapers and magazines with articles about her visit; Phuc had kept not a one. The only affinity she had for anything Russian was caviar, and only because she’d had time to acquire a taste for it in reception after reception.

  She fashioned her reply carefully. “I have not seen my mother and father since last summer. If I were to stay here to study, I would be away for five or six years. That is too long a time. I want to go back to Vietnam.”

  Dong smiled, heartened by her reason for returning.

  When the cheese course came, he helped himself generously. “You don’t eat cheese? Did you know that Pham Thy Hang eats a lot of cheese?” he asked her, naming a beautiful Vietnamese film star. “You should try to eat cheese,” he said. “It’s very good for the skin.”

  In late January, Phuc flew back to Hanoi. The cold there proved another unwelcome surprise. The same northern winds from Siberia that had brought snow and hail to Moscow had brought an ill-tempered, dark rain to Hanoi. Though the mercury in Hanoi climbed to about sixty degrees (about sixteen degrees Celsius), the air was damp. Phuc had to remain in Hanoi until she could secure the return of her identity papers, surrendered upon leaving the country.

  With the concurrence of the foreign ministry, Phuc stayed with Minh’s mother. On this week-long visit, Phuc was not in a congenial mood. The house was unheated. Its walls were flimsy and there was no glass in the windows. Phuc had none of the padded jackets and layers of clothing that others in Hanoi wore indoors; it occurred to her that she could now use the quilted purple robe that Phuong had kept for herself. Instead, Phuc huddled indoors in her Soviet winter gear.

  Phuc had seen Minh during the three weeks she’d spent in Hanoi being briefed for the youth festival, but their friendship did not pick up where it had left off. Then, he had been such a frequent presence at the dormitory that others referred to him as “Kim Phuc’s boyfriend.” Phuc was peeved to hear from others at the foreign ministry that he was broadcasting his intention to marry her. He did poorly against Phuc’s measure of a prospective husband. She thought him slovenly, he expected his mother to pick up after him, and he was petulant when he couldn’t get his way. One time he’d turned his reggae music to full, deafening volume; another time he’d roared off on his motorscooter. When Phuc left for Ho Chi Minh City, she was glad to leave behind not only her Soviet clothing, which Minh took off her hands, but Minh as well.

  PHUC’S FIRST PRIORITY WAS TO SEE HER academic supervisor. It was February and three weeks into the start of the second semester. She had to reinstate herself in school to once again receive her stipend from the foreign affairs office. She needed money urgently; after a year and a half, she had exhausted her German marks. “I hope I can return without any problems,” she said politely.

  The supervisor’s reply caught her by surprise. “The university should not accept your return at all.”

  “But, but—” she stammered. “I received an order from Hanoi to go to Moscow . . .” She was prepared to beg to be allowed to come back to school.

  “I saw the festival in Moscow on television and your activities there.” He made it clear that he was only grudgingly accepting her return. However, he had another surprise. “You cannot go into your second year,” he said. “You must go back into first year. If you were not so famous, we would not accept your return at all.”

  The near loss of her status as a student painted for Phuc the folly of her dual life. The pampered life while abroad had allowed her to forget the reality of the struggles of life at home. She was forced to admit that the university was being more than reasonable in allowing her back at all. As she rejoined classes, she thought dejectedly of her friends in the middle of their second year. She was twenty-three and in first year, back to where she had been, albeit studying medicine, when she was nineteen.

  Three months later, in Jun
e 1986, an aide from Ho Chi Minh City’s foreign affairs ministry let slip to Phuc what he thought to be exciting news: Hanoi had accepted a private invitation for Phuc to go on a speaking tour to the United States, and had ordered Tay Ninh to prepare her papers for travel.

  Weeks before this invitation, there had been hope of warming relations between Hanoi and Washington, until the Reagan administration dampened the mood by yet again asserting its policy on MIAs. Yet, eleven years after the end of the war, there was some desire in the United States to find closure for the painful past that was Vietnam for Americans, evidenced by the creation of grassroots groups there, such as the Indochina Reconciliation Project, whose aims were not so ambitious as to seek normalization, but only to prepare Americans for reconciliation. Such an objective would have held appeal for Hanoi.

  Phuc hid her profound dismay at yet another dictate from Hanoi. My health problems, my money situation, my interrupted schooling, Moscow, and now—this! She feared an absence of weeks, possibly months in the United States. And what if she fell ill again? She saw her academic setbacks replaying themselves. Phuc spoke firmly to herself: It’s time to get serious! No more fooling around, no more wasting time. I must focus my attention on finishing school.

  Late in the summer, a minder from Tay Ninh delivered a letter to Phuc from Thuong, the president of the province. It was a summons for her to see him. The midday scheduling of the appointment infuriated Phuc.

  Thuong was brusque: “Kim Phuc, we have an order from Hanoi to prepare your papers to go to the United States.” He launched into a lecture. “This trip is not for medical treatment, like your trip to Germany. This trip is not a holiday either, like your trip to Moscow. This time, you must work.”

  For years, Kim had been torn between what she was required to say and what she wanted to say. As a rule, she would have feigned happiness to hide unhappiness inside. Not this time. Her voice held firm. “I do not want to go.”

  His shock at her audacity quickly turned to anger: “What? WHY?”

  “Because I am worried about my studies. When I returned from Moscow, I was in trouble with my school. They did not want to accept me back. Had it been anyone other than me, they would not have been so lenient. I had to beg to be let back in!” Her voice betrayed exasperation. “And now? I have to go again? It is not fair! If I leave again, I will have to return again to my first year.”

  Her last card was desperation. “Please, leave me alone to study! When I finish my studies, I will do whatever you want. Or I will go after my studies. Whatever you ask then, I will say okay!”

  The president was adamant. “This trip to the United States is work! You have to go!”

  “Please, understand me.”

  “This is an order from Hanoi. You must obey!”

  “No.” Phuc’s refusal stunned Thuong. She continued. “I am in trouble with my school.”

  “It doesn’t matter!”

  “I cannot go. I have to finish my schooling first.”

  “You have to go! These are orders from the government. You are under the school; your school is under the government. It cannot make trouble! You will await orders about when to travel!”

  A dispirited Phuc boarded the bus back to Ho Chi Minh City. It bumped along the highway, the breeze and dust of hundreds of rides just like this one blowing through the open windows. Phuc thought of the accident of fate, of how Vietnam had many war victims who did not receive the attention of journalists, who did not travel abroad for the best of medical care, who did not get to go on all-expenses-paid vacations. Others resented her for being the beneficiary of what they saw as privileges. Phuc had overheard gossip. “Why choose her?” someone in the Vietnamese delegation had asked, resentfully, when authorities had singled her out to remain behind in Moscow for a vacation. Then, she had gloated. Now, she wanted to say: “Okay, let me change my position for yours. I am just the victim. I was just a child. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t want to be chosen. I don’t want it any more!!”

  THE CHURCH WAS THE ONLY RECOGNIZABLE signpost in Phuc’s confusion. She went there daily to pray: “Dear God, I have to finish my studies first. Please, help me, find a way to let me study.” She felt a need to confide her discouragement in someone and looked to Huong and Dai for sympathy. “I travel, but I still have to come home,” she said. “At home, I am still only a student, with no money and little rice.” They shrugged. Nobody cares, Phuc thought. I have to decide my life for myself.

  For three days and nights, she did not sleep. The worries about her future lengthened with the night and clung to her like the heat in the day. On the fourth morning, she had arrived at a decision: she would write to Dong in Hanoi and do as he might bid. She would put herself in his hands.

  Phuc did not trust the post, fearing that the letter would either not get into his hands or get there too late. She found a ride going north; a friend of Minh’s in Ho Chi Minh City knew of someone ferrying a foreign ministry car back to Hanoi.

  “I have business in Hanoi,” Phuc informed her supervisor, giving him warning that she might be late for registration for the coming university year.

  The drive north was slow. They were four in the car, including the driver and two others who were catching a ride like Phuc. The poor condition of the roads ruled out night driving, and the heat of the day drove them to cool off with swims at coastal beaches. None of them had any interest in historical sights of the distant or recent past, from the Hindu temples in Phan Rang, dating from the reign of a thirteenth-century monarch, to the battle-scarred highways of the Vietnam war. Phuc herself was cheered by the vistas near the nondescript coastal town of Ha Tinh in the former North Vietnam: hills carpeted in wildflowers, framed by clouds above and the sea below that reminded her of the backdrops of the romances she had read before they were banned.

  The further north they went, the more Phuc worried about stretching her dong, as the price of food and drink rose. A week after they set out, the travelers arrived in Hanoi. Phuc installed herself at the widow’s house. She delivered her letter to the prime minister’s aide. In it, she explained why she did not want to comply with the order to go to the United States. “I don’t want to waste time away from school. I have lost so much time already. I need peace and quiet to finish my studies.” She made a request of Dong: “Please, can you help keep life quiet for me? Do not bring so many people so often to meet me or see me. Please, keep the journalists away.”

  The last line raised an idea that she hoped she could discuss with Dong in person. “Let me study in Vietnam or abroad, just let me alone,” she wrote. She knew her marks might be an impediment to going abroad, as they were only average. However, she felt that she deserved to go. The government has made enough money off me, she told herself. Phuc thought the chances were good that Hanoi would send her abroad, if only because Dong himself had suggested Moscow. But Moscow was the last place she wanted to go; she counted on Hanoi being too embarrassed to ask Moscow to accept her as a student after she had cut short her tour there. Her hope was that she would have the opportunity to express to Dong her preference for going to study in the United States. This idea occurred to her after Ngoc’s excited mention of a Vietnamese newspaper reporting that, in the wake of her appearance at the festival in Moscow, three American universities had offered to have her as a student.

  On the day she delivered the letter, Phuc received an invitation to dine that evening with the prime minister and his son. Once she and Dong were alone, she waited for him to respond to her letter.

  Gently, he told her why she had to carry through with the invitation. “There are people in the United States waiting to hear when you will be coming. I have already agreed with our government that you should go.” He tried to give her comfort: “I always tell your hosts, ‘Take good care of Kim Phuc,’ and I make sure they do take very good care of you.” He addressed her disquiet over the unwanted public attention. “People learn that you are a famous victim of war. When they see you, they develop a con
nection between themselves and you,” he said. “The government cannot change that.” By his tone, she knew that he had concluded what he had to say.

  Phuc said softly, but firmly, “I have to finish my studies.”

  The prime minister smiled with pride. Her desire was sincere, her intentions were honorable.

  “We will decline the invitation to the United States and, as long as you are in school, we will keep journalists away from you.”

  Phuc took her chance. “I have seen a newspaper report in Ho Chi Minh City that three offers have come for me to study in America.”

  Dong’s reply came swiftly. “Forget that; don’t think about those offers.” What he said next to Phuc was victory enough: “We will find someplace else where there is security for you.”

  It was October, and in most countries the university year was well underway, so Hanoi had to make haste with its inquiries. Phuc waited in Hanoi to hear where she would be sent. During that time, every two or three days she joined Dong for dinner. He spoke as if he were her father, knowing he would not see his daughter for some time; these were parting words.

  “How is it between you and Minh?” he asked once.

  The truth was that she had closed her heart to the healer. Once in Hanoi, she had asked Minh to post a letter to her parents that told of her safe arrival there. One week later she saw it was still in his satchel. She pulled it out. “Ma! I asked your son to send a letter to my parents. Twice I asked if he did it. Twice he said yes.” She slapped the envelope on the table. “The letter is still here. Your son is irresponsible!”

  The widow broke down. “It is my fault. I spoil him. I want you to be my daughter-in-law, but I love you enough to tell you to be my adopted daughter only.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not so stupid as to marry your son,” Phuc said under her breath.

  Phuc realized that Dong must be hearing gossip. She spoke seriously, wanting to set the prime minister’s mind at ease. “I need a good man to love me,” she said. “Because of my health, I am not an ordinary girl. Minh has the immaturity of a boy. He is not the man of my dreams. Marrying him would not make for a happy marriage or family.”