The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

by Aimee Phan

  A few hours later, the telephone rang in the Vo household. Hien answered it, then covered the mouthpiece. “It’s the American.”

  “I don’t like to be humiliated,” Officer Anderson said, once Kim-Ly grabbed hold of the telephone.

  “Please accept my deepest apologies,” Kim-Ly said. “Tuyet is very ill, she cannot get out of bed. I sent Tri as a dinner companion, only as a dinner companion. Tuyet can see you tomorrow. Can you have dinner tomorrow?”

  “It was a mistake from the beginning,” he said. “I should have realized it before. I thought a Vietnamese wife would be less trouble, but clearly that is not true.”

  When did she collapse to the floor? “Please, Officer Anderson,” Kim-Ly said. “Tuyet can be very shy, I know this, I’m her mother. But her sister Tri, she’s younger, even prettier, not so shy. She wanted to have dinner with you tonight. She begged me to let her meet you and talk with you again. When a girl is that in love, how can a mother say no?”

  “Maybe this is the way you arrange marriages in Vietnam,” he said. “But it’s unacceptable to me. In fact, it’s revolting.”

  When Kim-Ly hung up the phone, she realized the living room was empty. The servants had left and the rest of the family had gone to bed. Kim-Ly walked around the house turning off lights and closing doors.

  She did not expect Tuyet to return home. Her daughter knew what she had done.

  Within a few days, Thang learned from his contacts that Tuyet had eloped with a man named Sanh Truong, her superior in the press ministry office. Kim-Ly didn’t believe the rumors that they’d been in love for a long time. Romantic fool’s fantasy. She knew her daughter. She would have known if she’d fallen in love. This Sanh Truong was convenient. Tuyet didn’t want to marry an old American, and so she found someone else. Someone who would do nothing for their family.

  That afternoon, Kim-Ly led the servants into Tuyet’s room and told them to take all the clothes, jewelry, perfumes, and cosmetics they wanted. “Make sure never to bring them back to this house,” Kim-Ly said.

  * * *

  The Miss Little Saigon beauty pageant had three titles to crown that afternoon: Little Miss Little Saigon (girls ages nine to twelve), Junior Miss Little Saigon (thirteen to sixteen), and Miss Little Saigon (seventeen to twenty). With new sponsors saturating the Vietnamese media, this year’s event boasted the biggest audience in the pageant’s short history. The competition took place every spring at the Asian Palace on an open-air stage in front of the food court, where the tables had been cleared out to make room for hundreds of folding chairs.

  The first pageant for Little Miss Little Saigon lasted only an hour, and most of the audience cooed at the younger girls in their sweet ruffled dresses. After the winner was crowned, audience members scattered around the food court. Kim-Ly and her dear friends Ba Liem and Ba Nhanh remained in their seats, studying the program, handicapping the upcoming contestants.

  Lum disappeared during intermission and returned with Quynh and an extra metal folding chair to wedge into their row. Ba Liem tapped Quynh on the back.

  “Dear Quynh,” Ba Liem said, smiling at the teenager. “Why are you not backstage getting ready? You’re just as pretty as any of them.”

  “Quynh thinks pageants are sexist,” Lum said, wrapping his arms around his girlfriend’s waist. “She’s not going to parade around in a bikini just for cash.”

  “Lum!” she cried, hitting his arm. She turned to the elder women. “Dear Ba Liem, I’m not the beauty-queen type, I’m too shy. But thank you for the compliment.”

  Kim-Ly glared at her grandson. “Is that what you think of your cousin? You think what she’s doing is demeaning? I’d like to see you try to apply yourself at something.”

  Lum rolled his eyes. “Relax, Grandma. I was only kidding. I’m very proud of Duyen.”

  “From what I hear,” Ba Nhanh said, tapping Kim-Ly’s knee, “Duyen’s serious competitors are Kelly Thuy Phu and that Amerasian Margo Lee. The judges have been very impressed with their photo shoots.”

  Kim-Ly glanced behind them at the judges’ table: two men, two women, all members of the Vietnamese American Community Association.

  “Margo won’t do better than second runner-up,” Kim-Ly said. “Her family doesn’t donate enough to the community fund.”

  “That leaves the Phu girl,” Ba Liem said.

  “What about that scene she created at the cosmetology school?” Kim-Ly asked.

  “She apologized,” Ba Liem said. “She baked cookies for the school to thank them. They think she’s an angel now.”

  The twenty-five young women paraded across the stage, dressed in identical white ao dais. Most of the girls chose to wear their hair down for their first appearance, which Kim-Ly certainly worked to her granddaughter’s advantage. Duyen’s updo made her appear taller, important since she was actually one of the shorter contestants.

  “Not all of those girls should be wearing white,” Ba Nhanh dryly noted as the contestants left the stage.

  “Ba Nhanh,” Kim-Ly said, leaning toward the woman so their faces almost touched. “What do you know?”

  “Well, I overheard one of my grandsons talking to his friends. Someone saw a group of the junior contestants at the karaoke café on Bristol last week. They were loud, they said, too loud, if you know what I mean.”

  “But some of these girls are barely sixteen! Who would serve them alcohol?”

  “These girls have boyfriends, older men. I’m not surprised at all how easy it is for them.”

  Next came the swimsuit competition, Kim-Ly’s least favorite. Vietnamese men could behave so repulsively, aping and hollering, imitating the Americans’ guttural grunts. These were teenagers! Couldn’t they save their leering for the Miss Little Saigon pageant later that evening? While most of the girls wore modest one-pieces, a few whores posed in bikinis, swinging their easy hips, naïvely assuming that showing more flesh would earn them more points from the judges. But when Kim-Ly spied one of the judges’ eyes, male of course, lingering a little too long on the Phu girl’s gold bikini, she elbowed Ba Nhanh in the waist.

  “Who were these girls at the karaoke café?” she asked.

  Ba Nhanh wrinkled her forehead, thinking. “I don’t think my grandson said any names.”

  The contestants lined up and turned for another pose for the judges and audience.

  “That Phu girl,” Kim-Ly said. “I heard from my grandson that she’s dating an older boy who attends college.”

  The twins’ eyes grew wide. “Really?” Ba Liem asked excitedly.

  “Yes,” Kim-Ly lied. “I think we know who helped those girls get that alcohol.”

  * * *

  Kim-Ly did not like to recall with much detail the years after the Fall, though she remembered the pain. These recollections were so crippling that she sometimes couldn’t get herself out of bed, afraid her body could not stand upright.

  She hadn’t done anything to deserve what she suffered. Absolutely nothing. Kim-Ly supposed many Vietnamese could say this about the Communist occupation—the dark years—but she felt sure her experience was far darker and traumatic than the average Vietnamese. The wealthy in Saigon were targeted for the most humiliating punishments. Of course, she couldn’t prove this. A contest of the greatest suffering was surely a silly notion, but she had no doubt that her misery, when accurately accounted, could devastate any judge.

  It wasn’t enough that she’d lost one stupid daughter. Fate had to rip her most precious child away, her oldest son, Thang. The government took him, along with all the other men associated with the South Vietnamese Army and the Americans. Thang and Hien’s husband, Chinh, received orders to report to a reeducation camp in the jungles north of Saigon. Her youngest son, Viet, only seventeen, with no record of government employment, was mercifully spared. She didn’t know what she would have done if both her sons had been taken away. Viet and Bao, Tri’s new husband, a former singer at a second-rate hotel in Saigon, were the only men left in the h
ouse to protect them. Bao could barely function, revealing himself to be an unemployable, simpering coward soon after the wedding, but Viet became a source of comfort for Kim-Ly during those dark years. He held her when she wept. He listened when she could no longer contain her rage. Unlike his sisters who had husbands of their own to worry about, Viet could devote all his love to her.

  The reeducation classes were supposed to deprogram the insidious propaganda the Americans had fed them over the years; to retrain them to take part in the new, unified government. But the men did not return after one month. They did not return after two months. Kim-Ly couldn’t believe she’d been so naïve. Of course, they wanted money. When rumors began stirring that officers accepted bribes for the release of the prisoners (that’s what they were, no need deluding themselves with more hopeful phrases), Kim-Ly and Hien immediately traveled to the camp to negotiate. The officers sneered at Kim-Ly’s initial offers, asking why their men were worth so little. By the time they could gather sufficient funds—the government had already seized their home, claiming unpaid taxes—it was too late for Thang. Reading from a faded sheet of paper, the officer briskly informed Hien and Kim-Ly that Thang Vo had died from gangrene in the foot. As Kim-Ly gripped her chest in shock, afraid if she let go her body would dissolve there on those infested muddy grounds of the camp, Chinh called out to them from behind the electric fence. He was twenty pounds lighter and wore thin brown clothes. Hien’s cries, both anguished and relieved, broke the hot air. Kim-Ly glanced up into her son-in-law’s tearful face, but she didn’t smile. She couldn’t help it. It was not the face she wanted to see.

  * * *

  Duyen’s crowning as Junior Miss Little Saigon ranked as one of the most satisfying moments of Kim-Ly’s new life in America. She remembered everyone leaping to their feet, hugging each other in joy, even the surly Lum, even Duyen’s likely very jealous cousins, Cherry and Linh. Chinh and Hien unabashedly wept for their daughter. Sharing this rare moment of pure, unselfish happiness with her family made it all worth it to Kim-Ly, persuading and prodding Ba Nhanh to corner the judge in the restroom during intermission, to tip the woman to very pertinent information of the Phu girl’s possibly illegal, undeniably unethical misdeeds.

  Only a week later, Kim-Ly was startled to hear the front door unlock as she exited the bath. She preferred to take a leisurely soak after the family had left for school and work, consuming as much hot water as she pleased.

  “Mother?” a voice downstairs called. It was Viet. “Are you awake?”

  She pulled on her bathrobe and walked down the hall. Viet stood on the stairs, an uncertain expression on his face.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked, and then noticed his sisters behind him. All three of them. “Who is watching the salon?”

  “We want to talk to you,” Tuyet said. “It’s important.”

  She should have gone back to her bedroom, at least to change out of her robe. Kim-Ly gripped the railing as she walked down the stairs. Sitting on the couch in the living room, a towel around her shoulders, she looked at her grown children, all still standing, peering down at her. Tuyet and Tri both had their arms crossed in front of their chests.

  Viet sunk onto the sofa next to her, face level with hers. “We need to ask you about the beauty pageant,” he said. “The Phus have made some public accusations.”

  Leaning back against the cushions, Kim-Ly tried to smile, ignoring the tightness in her chest. “What did those sore losers say?”

  “They’re accusing the judges of corruption,” Viet said. “They were on the Vietnamese radio this morning, demanding a recall of the crown.”

  “You didn’t have to do this,” Hien said. Why was she crying? “Duyen would have won without your influence. Everyone thought so.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Kim-Ly asked. “I agree that Duyen deserved to win. I wanted to make sure.”

  “Mother,” Tuyet said. “This is America, not Vietnam. Bribery is a serious offense.”

  Her face pinched in confusion. “What? I didn’t bribe anyone.”

  “There is money missing from the safe at the salon,” Viet said.

  Kim-Ly rubbed her hands against the soft, worn couch. She could not look up with all their gazes upon her, probing, judging. She was not accustomed to this kind of insulting scrutiny. Children should not behave this way to their parents.

  “Stop treating me like a criminal,” Kim-Ly said. “It’s my money. I can take it if I want.”

  “This is serious,” Tuyet said. “Someone saw your friend Ba Nhanh talking to a judge in the bathroom. They were in public, Mother; of course someone was going to see them.”

  “The Phus are accusing us of bribing the judges,” Viet said. “They are demanding to see the judges’ scoring sheets.”

  “You stupid children,” Kim-Ly said. “I did not bribe anyone.”

  “Mother, you just admitted you took the money from the safe,” Tri said.

  Kim-Ly stood, her strength returning with her indignation. “This is how you treat your mother?” she asked. “Like some thief? As if I haven’t taken care of all of you since birth?”

  “The pageant committee is launching an investigation,” Hien said as they all watched Kim-Ly stomp up the stairs. “I hope for everyone’s sake, you didn’t leave any evidence.”

  Kim-Ly slammed the door. She walked over to her closet, pulled out her green suitcase, and threw it on the bed. Opening drawers, she tossed her undergarments, stockings, blouses, and trousers into the suitcase, swearing at each of her children: Ungrateful Hien; Follower Tri; Vindictive Tuyet; and what galled her most of all, Ignorant, Hypocritical Viet. If only he knew. Then she stopped, staring at the growing pile of garments on the bed, realizing that she was packing to leave, but that there was no child’s house to go to. None of them believed her. They’d all betrayed her.

  * * *

  She didn’t know how Tuyet had found them. They lived in a different neighborhood, a ground-floor apartment with only two bedrooms. Kim-Ly shared her bed with her grandchildren Dat and Linh. Perhaps fate was punishing her for hiring nannies to sleep with her children so she could rest peacefully.

  To Kim-Ly’s pleasure, Tuyet did not look any better than they did. She, too, appeared skinny. Her eyes were equally vacant and defeated. So much of the beauty that she once flaunted had withered away. Being poor had that effect on people: she looked just like anyone else. She held an infant that Kim-Ly could only assume was hers. The child must have taken after his father.

  Four years had passed since Tuyet had abandoned their family, the war over, her beloved Thang buried in an impoverished city cemetery, the misery of the Communist occupation their reality. From old acquaintances, Kim-Ly knew the girl still lived in Saigon with her husband and in-laws, Catholics from Nha Trang. Kim-Ly heard the patriarch, Hung Truong, was a businessman who alienated potential partners with his religious ethics and a disdainful refusal to engage in backroom deals. Tragically naïve. Everyone knew that was the only way possible to do business in “Ho Chi Minh City” these days.

  “We’re only a fifteen-minute walk from this house,” Tuyet said. “Isn’t that a coincidence?”

  Kim-Ly said nothing. While her children hugged and kissed Tuyet and her infant, overlooking her past sins, Kim-Ly did not approach, and the girl was too smart to try to force a greeting.

  After a half hour, Tuyet whispered her purpose for visiting. “My father-in-law is getting a boat. He says there is room for all of us.”

  “America?” Kim-Ly asked, speaking for the first time since Tuyet arrived.

  Her daughter tentatively smiled at her. “Malaysia first, where we can apply for political refugee status. From there, anywhere we want to go.”

  Tuyet visited with her son, Lum, every other day at a different time, fearful of being followed, and wanting her trips to seem as casual and unplanned as possible. Every visit brought information and instructions. What items they could bring, what food was lightest to carry and took lo
ngest to spoil. Kim-Ly offered to ask around to buy canisters of gasoline, but Tuyet assured her mother that the Truongs were taking care of that. The departure date changed with every visit, but Kim-Ly didn’t care. As long as they had a departure date, she held hope for a life outside their dying country.

  “It is dangerous,” Tuyet warned her family on one of her discreet visits. “The police are watching for escapes. We could be caught and imprisoned.”

  “It’s worth the risk,” Kim-Ly said, holding her daughter’s hand. “We can start over in America.” She wanted to meet Tuyet’s in-laws, these generous people who were helping to save their entire family. But Tuyet feared the large gathering would generate too much attention in the neighborhood. They couldn’t have their neighbors suspecting anything.

  Kim-Ly could hardly sleep at night, her mind imagining all the possible versions of their escape, which would be arduous. She certainly had no delusions about that. She also knew their entry into a new world would be difficult. She’d never been out of the country before, which on international maps appeared so small and thin compared to the other countries of the world. What would the men do for jobs in America? So many things to think about, to arrange. Kim-Ly wished they could hurry up and leave. They had so much to do to make a new home for themselves. There was little they could do waiting around in Vietnam.

  Then one afternoon Tuyet and Lum did not come to the apartment. Kim-Ly became concerned when they did not show up the next day. She sent Viet out to look for Tuyet at the Truongs’ home, reminding him to stay watchful of the people around him. He returned a few hours later, frustrated and exhausted.

  “No one will say anything to me,” Viet said. “They pretended not to know who Tuyet or the Truongs were. I told them I was her brother but they would barely look at me. Even the couple staying in the Truongs’ home wouldn’t open the door to me.”

  For the next few days, Kim-Ly could not get out of bed. She knew what had happened even though her gullible children were not ready to believe. It sickened her to think how she had been duped once again, allowing that girl into her home, trusting her, loving her. Tuyet had lied, dangling America in their desperate faces, toying with them, only to abandon them all over again. Kim-Ly was usually much, much smarter than that. Her mistake had been underestimating her daughter. She’d proven to be even shrewder than her mother.