We Are Here

by Cat Thao Nguyen

  One evening, I kneeled in front of the altar in our living room. I had in my hand two twenty-cent coins and a plate; I needed to pray and ask a question. One head and one tails meant yes. The Venetian blinds trembled as the house reverberated to the rumble of the semitrailers that roared along the main road outside. I lit an incense stick and asked my grandmother whether I should defer university or not. I climbed onto a chair and planted the incense stick in the cup of uncooked rice at the Virgin Mary’s feet. I tossed the coins onto the plate. One head and one tails. My grandmother had spoken. The next day I unenrolled from university.

  Soon after, I got a job with a Western Sydney local government as a project consultant. Over the next few years I would work as a project manager and consultant to various public and private sector organisations. I also continued my community work in youth development. That year, I saw an ad on a youth website for the position of National Youth Representative to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. I decided to apply, unaware of what it really entailed. There were applications from across Australia and several rounds of interviews. The United Nations Youth Association, in conjunction with the Department of Foreign Affairs, would select one person to represent Australia over several months at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The mandate was to work with the United Nations Secretariat, other country missions and delegates to advocate for the issues of young people in Australia and beyond.

  While I worked at my job as a project consultant, I continued to tutor in the evenings and work as a freelance artist. When I had saved enough money, I told my parents that I thought it was time for them and Vinh to go to Vietnam. Văn and I would cover all the costs, including the cartons of Eagle Brand medicated oil for all the relatives and neighbours. The last time Vinh had been to Vietnam he was two years old. Now he was fifteen. He felt no emotional connection to our extended family and the country of his parents’ birth. He only knew them through a skimpy collection of photos and memories from that maiden trip in 1991. He only remembered Vietnam as being dirty. It was thirteen years since my mother’s last visit and eleven years for my father. The trip was long overdue. Such time and distance was thinning their native fires and wilting their spirits. And so my parents and Vinh went to Vietnam while I stayed in Sydney.

  The night before they left, my mother was fretting over the luggage, packing and unpacking again. I felt her nervous anticipation. I knew they were grateful to go back, but I knew my father’s sense of shame. It was close to twenty-five years since they left Vietnam and their pockets weren’t deep. They had no wealth to speak of. The gifts for ageing relatives and old friends would be limited. The visit would be bittersweet. My mother weighed the last of the bags.

  ‘Are you almost done?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so. I’ve made plenty of food that’s now in the freezer.’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mum. Just have a good time. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘You’re a good girl. Dad and I never knew when we would go back again. I can’t look after you well enough and here you are, giving us the money to go back.’ She grew silent and I saw her tears building. Tears of relief, of pending joy, but also sadness.

  The next day I drove them to the airport. They lined up along with hundreds of other Vietnamese Australians, checking in box upon box of wrapped gifts for their relatives: discounted chocolate from Woolworths, Panadol, appliances and clothes. For many it would be their first time returning to Vietnam, unaware of how the country had developed while they had been gone. They would still recall the days of rations. In their bags would be humble gifts such as toothpaste, redundant in a rapidly modernising nation.

  The Vietnam Airlines flight was full. When it was my family’s turn to check in, we held our breath as the luggage was weighed. My mother’s efforts had paid off and the weight precisely met the limits. After our McDonald’s breakfast meal, a rare family treat that we only seemed to enjoy at Sydney airport, I escorted my parents and Vinh as far as the entrance for passengers to immigration. I fussed a final time.

  ‘Do you have medicine for asthma, indigestion, diarrhoea?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Mum replied.

  When I hugged her, she whispered, ‘Thank you.’ I squeezed her tightly as I felt my tears accumulate. I waved to them as they disappeared down the corridor.

  When my family arrived in Vietnam, they called me to tell me they had arrived safely. I heard the laughs and shouting of my relatives in the background. I smiled, aware of the jubilant reunion they were enjoying.

  Not long after they left one day, I was driving home from work on Milperra Road at Revesby, past the oversized dimpled golf ball of Putt Putt mini golf land on the left and wholesale fruit and vegetable grocers on the right, when my mobile phone rang. It was too early for a call from my parents in Vietnam. The number was unfamiliar.

  ‘Hello, Cat Thao speaking.’

  ‘Hi, Cat Thao, this is the president of the United Nations Youth Association of Australia calling. I wanted to let you know you have been selected to represent Australia at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.’

  I couldn’t speak. I pulled over as the person at the other end of the line told me about the next steps, which would involve the Department of Foreign Affairs. I couldn’t imagine what it all meant. I was twenty-four years old at the time and the first Australian from a refugee background and the first from Sydney University to take up the position.

  Before I left for New York for the fifty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly, I travelled around Australia to consult with organisations and young people who were involved with youth policy and development. I met with kids in juvenile detention in Sydney, the youth advisory council of Launceston and arts organisations in Alice Springs. I went to see projects in communities in Central Australia with no running water or electricity and where the Indigenous kids didn’t speak English. By the time I arrived in New York and met other representatives from as far afield as Fiji, Sweden and Norway, I realised that whatever the state of development of our respective nations, or the specific housing challenges facing various communities or addiction problems facing individuals, any development plan had to address the same issues of participation, representation and ownership. This was the common desire for all of us, wherever we came from in the world.

  By the time I left for New York, David and I had drifted apart. We had tried to reconnect but one fundamental obstacle stood in our way: I had changed. I had engaged in activism on all sorts of levels and the relationship between David and I felt stifling. I was going from human rights presentations in Canberra to watching his friends play the poker machines at Mounties. Our connection had frayed; we were no longer bound by common experiences. I yearned for our relationship to be restored somehow but I knew that love alone wasn’t enough. We would separate and then get back together again, alternating between irritable conversation and silence. I was fighting for my own sense of self and place. He struggled with trying to understand a girl masquerading as a woman, on the cusp of knowing herself. It was as though years of responsibility and nursing refugee parents with broken English and naivety about Australian society, had smothered my opportunity to develop through a conventional adolescence. Finally, it seemed that the teenage angst of confusion, questions of womanhood and anxious identity dawned upon a girl of twenty-four years of age. Through all my years of turbulence, David had remained steady, loving me with his strength and stoicism. But now I needed to leave.

  We said goodbye at the airport. I was going to a foreign place alone for the first time in my life. I was scared of the adventure ahead. Scared of being small and of being great. We held each other tightly through tears until it was time for me to board my flight. I let go of him, my protector, for the last time.

  I wanted to arrive in New York City a few weeks before starting work to settle in, but I knew no one and essentially had no money. My parents’ close friend was part of an alumni network of the National
Department of Administration of the Republic of South Vietnam. This department of elite and talented public servants maintained a robust global network, and my parents’ friend dutifully made enquiries. He found a man living in Queens with his wife and two grandchildren who would be prepared to host me. I found a cab at JFK airport and gave the driver the address. I gaped out the window as we drove. Everything around me seemed larger than life. The coffee cups were bigger, the people walked taller and the buildings were shinier.

  Although the family didn’t have much space, they were incredibly generous. One of the granddaughters, who was fourteen years old, was a superb dancer. No sooner had I dumped my luggage in one of their storerooms than I was requested to go to the basement for a performance. With her New York accent, she reminded me of a character from a Woody Allen movie. I watched her dance, dressed in tight white lycra, while her little sister and grandmother glowed with pride.

  Later, just before I officially started at the Australian Mission, I moved into an apartment near the corner of Fifty-first Street and First Avenue, just down the road from the Australian ambassador’s residence and not far from the United Nations headquarters. As I walked to the Australian Mission opposite the Chrysler building that first day, clutching a bagel I had bought from a street vendor, my spirits soared. (I had ordered a sultana bagel not knowing the Americans called them raisins and the vendor, confused by my Australian accent, had given me one with ‘salt-arn-it’.) The glittering grandeur of New York City unfolded before me. The pavements were crowded with New Yorkers power-walking down the street with a coffee in one hand and the paper in the other. Skyscrapers and yellow cabs dazzled me as I walked along. I felt so small in the enormity, diversity and wonder of the city. It was indeed an adventure.

  The United Nations building was buzzing with activity. Press conferences, Security Council meetings, negotiations. It was like a Hollywood set. The North Korean diplomat was always lodging formal protests at the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights when the country wasn’t addressed as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The spectacular cafeteria served delicious food from all over the world, and customers were charged by weight under subsidised arrangements. With my red diplomatic pass, I was able to get free tickets to plays, symphonies and stage shows in special concessions offered by the city to diplomats and United Nations staff.

  On behalf of Australia, I negotiated a resolution which was passed at the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly. I was the only youth representative at the UN who was allowed to directly negotiate a resolution on behalf of my country like a regular diplomat. I worked with the Portugal delegate and UN Secretariat through the duration of the General Assembly.

  The day came when the resolution was to be voted on. I saw the green, red and amber lights come on next to each country’s name on a large board. Eventually the resolution was passed and would be implemented in the following year. I was asked to deliver a statement to the General Assembly. From my position behind the Australia seat, I addressed the delegates and the chair. My speech was meant to be delivered after the US and before Cuba. But the US ambassador to the Economic and Social Council came in late and arrived during my speech. He wore a stylish blue suit and had a confident stride. I was to learn that he had come to America as a Cambodian refugee and started off driving taxis. Despite his being decades my senior, we both acknowledged our humble beginnings and celebrated our crossing of paths at this global interchange. Immediately after my speech, he congratulated me in his own statement to the General Assembly. When the session was over he invited me to a karaoke party at the US Mission which I had no hesitation in accepting. Later, we would develop a good rapport and he would invite me to events of interest like off-Broadway shows about refugees. I wondered whether he felt the same as I did at events such as lunch at the Australian Ambassador’s residence, where the only people who looked like me often were the serving staff. Still, his presence humbled and reassured me.

  I walked down the street towards the United States Mission to the United Nations to attend the karaoke party. The light was fading quickly together with the heat of the day. I passed through several security checkpoints before I was finally admitted to the party. There were about a hundred delegates from various countries. The cocktails had not yet flowed sufficiently when the ambassador grabbed the microphone and invited the Norwegian delegate to perform. She bellowed a version of ‘I Will Survive’ and we all applauded politely. Then the ambassador asked for the Australian delegate. My ears burned and I tried to hide behind a large European delegate, but it was too late, the ambassador had seen me. He pointed a finger in my direction And the gaze of the room shifted to me, the lights suddenly frying me. I moved towards the stage reluctantly and requested the first song that came into my head—Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’. Because I can’t sing very well, I then proceeded to rap the entire song, accompanying my rendition with pathetic moon-walking and crotch-grabbing motions. Moderate applause and chuckles followed as I tried to swiftly disappear into the audience. The US ambassador laughed out loud.

  After the performance, I went to the bar to get a much-needed drink. The bartender congratulated me on my performance. We got talking and he asked whether he could show me New York. I thought, ‘How lovely New Yorkers are!’ He was a former Armani model trying to get more gigs and meanwhile moonlighted as a waiter for a catering company.

  We made arrangements and one evening he took me first to a typical New York diner for dinner, and then to see Rent, my first-ever Broadway musical. There is no greater magic than the melodrama of people singing on stage with a live band. I couldn’t stop beaming and had to consciously prevent myself from squealing like a child. At the end of the evening, he walked me back to my apartment and asked to come in. He then produced a jar of Vegemite in case I was missing home. He also brought out a bottle of wine. I was so naive that I hadn’t even realised it was a date. It only occurred to me when he said, ‘You look really beautiful tonight.’

  ‘Really?’ I must have had a very confused look on my face.

  As I was pondering how to respond, he whispered, ‘I really want to kiss you.’

  ‘Really?’ I said again, baffled, followed by, ‘Um, no, sorry. I don’t think so. Thanks, though.’ I then ushered a very bewildered man out the door of my apartment.

  As I began to close the door, he said, ‘You really do look beautiful tonight.’

  ‘Um, yeah. Thanks. Good night.’ I stood there looking at the Vegemite jar, feeling very awkward. I had met David six years earlier straight out of high school and never really dated. I couldn’t even read the standard signs of dating. I was on my own and was in a whole new world that existed and went on without me. I thought about the subtext lining my adventure, a yearning for the comfort of familiarity. I missed David.

  New York was a time of learning and tantalising new experiences. That year I saw snow for the first time. I discovered bagels, went to the famed Hammerstein Ballroom and attended hip-hop shows and feminist poetry readings in the East Village. I went to Columbia University to hear lectures by great thinkers whose work I had studied at university, including Noam Chomsky, Milton Friedman and Nobel Prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen. I witnessed how big decisions were made—big decisions that affect little people, like me and my family. I discovered how truly interdependent everything is. I discovered that beyond my family, beyond Bankstown, there was just so much world. And it enchanted me.

  When I came back to Australia several months later, I craved the same sense of independence I’d had when I lived alone in New York. Close to the beginning of the academic year, I moved out. In my parents’ eyes, unmarried Vietnamese women who moved out of home were gangster girls, pregnant or those who had nothing left to hope for. But I sold the idea to them by asserting that since it was my final year of study, I had to concentrate very hard. Hoping that I would finally graduate from law after two deferments, they gave in. In normal circumstances this would have rendered me an unforgiva
ble sinner. So I was not to inform any of our relatives; they would assume that something was wrong.

  Clutching my collection of Hitchcock and Astro Boy DVDs, I moved into a share house in Enmore, a mere eight minutes by bus from Sydney University’s main campus. I lived with three other students—an international student from Nepal, a physics major who was a member of a Gregorian choir and a gay activist of Chinese-Cambodian descent. It was a classic student house, a time of cooking pad Thai, hanging out at the pub on the corner and waking up on Sunday mornings to find my mother downstairs with a box of spring rolls. I wore corduroy pants, bandanas and ate discounted pub meals. I walked up and down the streets of nearby Newtown, browsing through vintage furniture stores and checking out Mexican eateries. It was the student life I had seen on American TV shows and I relished it. However, I could not escape the feelings of guilt that I had abandoned Vinh and my parents. I was living a colourful life away from them. I felt that my freedom and new experiences were at their expense. They could certainly use the money I spent living away from home. Vinh was still in high school and I wasn’t there for him. Each day I tried to escape these thoughts, choosing instead to focus on café lattes, used books and live music. But they intruded every so often as I gazed at a schooner of beer or stared out my bedroom window.