The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

by Aimee Phan

  1983

  Kim-Ly Vo

  Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

  … I know I have tried to explain to you why I believed I had to marry Sanh instead of Officer Anderson. You don’t ever address my excuses in your letters, and I understand you find it hard to believe me. I have no one to blame except myself. I keep trying to talk about it because I am still trying to understand it. How can you explain such a terrible mistake? Perhaps the only thing to do is seek forgiveness.

  When you told me Officer Anderson wanted to marry me, all I could see was his liver spots, his white hair, the way he breathed so loudly through his mouth at dinner. I couldn’t imagine us together. I still can’t. Do you think he is still alive? I doubted very much, at his age, he would ever want to be a father.

  Looking at my children now, I can’t imagine not being a mother. That afternoon, when you left me at work, I saw my future ahead of me and I became frightened. Despite all the harmless flirting my sisters and I engaged in, we had never really considered a man we wanted to marry. I’d thought about Thao, but you had never approved of him, and rightly so. After we separated, as everyone knows, he went off and married that whore Lanh. I couldn’t believe my only other option was Officer Anderson. It was a death sentence. I needed to find a way to save myself.

  Sanh was my boss. He was educated, well spoken, and his family was respected. Not the handsomest man, but is that really important? I did not love him, but I knew he loved me already, and having that without even trying for it is an advantage. I did not doubt that he would make a good husband and father.

  Of course, now I understand that even making a practical decision can have unimaginable consequences. I didn’t feel I had any other choice. Sanh and I may have our problems, but I still must believe he will be a good provider for my children, and for you when you finally join us.…

  Tuyet Truong

  Westminster, California, USA

  Chapter Eleven

  SANH

  PARIS, FRANCE, 1997

  As the white bandanna slipped from his forehead, Sanh was grateful for the distraction. He bowed his head to adjust the mourning cloth—wiping beads of sweat from his forehead, tucking the fabric behind his ears—as his family dutifully continued the rosary. Sanh hadn’t recited the prayer in years, but doubted if anyone noticed. All eyes focused on his father’s casket, lavishly adorned in yellow and red roses, while Sanh’s returned to his weeping, careless son.

  Sanh and Lum should have sat next to each other as the youngest son and grandson of the deceased. But the family had wisely separated father and son, with Sanh between his brothers, and his mother sitting with Lum on the opposite end of the pew. If anyone from the funeral had looked upon them now, they’d assume that Lum was the saddest mourner, the filial grandson; he must have cherished his grandpère so. Sanh knew the truth. His fingers involuntarily curled at the sound of every sob, every word Lum uttered in accordance with the prayers he knew nothing about.

  After two long flights, with several delays and a few hurried calls home to check on Cherry’s condition, Sanh had arrived on his parents’ doorstep. His mother had opened the door to their apartment with a tentative smile, then opened the door further to reveal Lum, sitting in his grandfather’s armchair. Stunned, Sanh allowed his mother to pull him inside, past his brothers and sisters-in-law who were naïvely chatting with Lum, into his father’s former bedroom, where the air felt thick and heavy with incense.

  Sanh had told his mother why he and Tuyet sent Lum to Vietnam. She clearly hadn’t shared the news with the others. He’d wanted to save his mother from the horrific details of Cherry’s attack, but Sanh now realized that had been a mistake. If she’d been privy to the traumatic specifics, the circumstances her grandson created that nearly killed her granddaughter, she never would have arranged for Lum to leave Vietnam after only a week, and without his parents’ permission, to attend Grandpère’s funeral.

  “He arrived yesterday,” his mother said, sitting on the bed beside him. She looked more tired and frailer than he remembered from his last visit, which admittedly, had been several years ago. “He has been very upset.”

  “About what?” Sanh asked.

  His mother looked at him disapprovingly. “He needs to say good-bye, too.”

  “You could have told me. You could have asked.”

  “There was no time. You had enough to worry about.”

  He stared at the closed door, imagining his son on the other side, his body unmarred, his mind, for the most part, intact. “Mother,” Sanh said, “he is the reason for all of my worries.”

  “Sanh,” his mother said, “your father would have wanted the two of you reunited today.”

  “It’s too soon,” Sanh said. “I’m not ready, and he isn’t, either—”

  “It is the perfect time,” his mother said. “I just want my family to be together. For this one day. Please? Let me take care of both you and Lum.”

  Sanh sighed. “And who’s going to take care of you?”

  Hoa reached over to hold his hand, squeezing it. “It has been too long since we were last together. Let us comfort each other.”

  After the service, Sanh wanted to rest his head for only a few minutes, but his father’s bedroom had become a regular stop on the mourning tour. With a polite knock and whispered apology, friends walked reverently around the small room, touching his father’s belongings, pretending they understood what Hung must have suffered. Sanh wished they could finish the formalities, deposit their bereavement gifts of food and flowers on the table, and leave him alone.

  Just as Sanh had fallen into a deep nap, another knock. His mother slipped in, closing the door behind her.

  “Monsieur and Madame Bourdain are here,” she whispered.

  “I thought Yen said they weren’t coming,” Sanh said.

  “I need a few minutes,” his mother said. “If I go out there too soon, I might say something regrettable.”

  “You’re the widow,” Sanh reminded her. “You can say anything you want.”

  His mother smiled for the first time since he arrived, and Sanh’s mood lifted at the sight of her familiar tiny, dark teeth. “Perhaps this is my opportunity? I can finally tell them what a careless son they raised? How we only invited them out of politeness?” She pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. “I wish you could stay longer.”

  “I do, too,” he said. “But I need to get back to Tuyet and Cherry.”

  “It would be a shame if you left without speaking to him.”

  “Mother,” Sanh said with a sigh.

  “Lum is suffering—”

  “He feels guilty,” Sanh said. “There’s nothing I can say to relieve him of that.”

  “You sent your son away.”

  “You sent Yen away,” Sanh reminded her, though he wished such fortunate options as law school existed for his son.

  “That was different. We were afraid he was going to get enlisted.”

  “Then it’s not different. Lum was in danger, too, if he stayed in America. He needs time away from us. From me.”

  “He needs his family,” his mother said.

  “I’m sorry,” Sanh said, shaking his head.

  “Lum made a terrible mistake. He knows that.”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet.”

  “Sanh,” his mother said, sitting back, her face pinched in reproach. “You are his father. What has happened to you?”

  LITTLE SAIGON, CALIFORNIA, 1980

  Until they moved to America, Sanh never realized how rarely he spent time alone with his son. Someone was always around who wanted to hold or tend to Lum: his mother, one of his sisters-in-law. So on their first flight out of Malaysia, Sanh was surprised when Tuyet plopped the child into his lap and excused herself. Sanh had held Lum before, but usually when the boy was asleep and pliable. On the hot and stuffy airplane, Lum squirmed in Sanh’s stiff arms, pulling away and kicking. Lifting his head up, the little boy released a frustrated wail, red-faced, ey
es dripping with tears.

  Tuyet returned from the lavatory scowling, and scooped the child up from Sanh’s feeble grasp. “I could hear him from the back of the plane,” she hissed. “Can’t you settle your own son?” And then, as if to prove the point, she rocked him against her chest until Lum fell asleep. “When the second child comes, I’m going to need your help. You can’t rely on your family doing everything for you anymore.”

  Sanh tried. During their orientation sessions, he and Tuyet took turns watching Lum while they attended English language classes and applied for jobs and housing assistance. But again, Vietnamese refugees surrounded them, only too happy to hold Lum whenever Sanh felt tired.

  The refugee services found them a one-bedroom apartment in the small town of Tustin. Sanh was astonished by how empty the place felt, even with the several “Welcome to Your First Home” boxes—blankets, pillows, toilet paper, some mismatched cookware and silverware, bowls and plates—and quiet. While Sanh inflated the air mattress in the bedroom, a volunteer from the Vietnamese Catholic Charities center arrived with two bags of groceries. Sanh paused, lingering by the bedroom door as the woman offered to have the charity truck bring over some donated secondhand furniture.

  “No, thank you,” Tuyet said. “I’m not Catholic.” Finally apart from her religious in-laws, she said this with relish, no longer having to pretend as she had when Sanh’s parents insisted Lum be baptized.

  “You don’t need to be Catholic,” the volunteer said.

  “We don’t intend to convert to Catholicism, so don’t expect that, either. Thank you for the food, but you don’t need to come again.”

  As Sanh walked out to the living room, Tuyet closed the front door.

  “She was trying to be nice,” he said.

  “I’m tired of handouts,” she said. “It’s demeaning.”

  Living on their own, without parents, Sanh finally understood how crucial practicality was in a wife and mother. Husbands and fathers were supposed to be the stubborn, unyielding ones. Yet in America, Tuyet revealed herself to be just as obstinate and proud as his father. When Tuyet and Lum fell asleep after a lunch of bologna sandwiches and sweetened rice milk, Sanh found the address for the Catholic charity on a flyer in one of the grocery bags and after consulting a map, made the twenty-minute walk.

  The volunteer he spoke with was kind and she arranged to have the charity truck drop off a used sofa and dining room set the next day when Sanh knew Tuyet would be away for a sewing class at the refugee resource center. He would tell her they were from another assistance agency.

  “Do you have a job yet?” the volunteer asked. Noticing Sanh’s embarrassment, she continued, “Because we have some open positions. Would you like to apply? It would help us out tremendously. If we don’t fill these jobs, they won’t continue to offer them to us.”

  “I had some interviews at the resource center,” Sanh said hesitantly. “But I haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “What did you do in Vietnam?” the volunteer said, sorting through a folder.

  “I worked in the foreign ministry,” Sanh said, sitting up. “Press relations. I can speak and translate in three other languages.”

  “You can speak English fluently?” The volunteer jotted a note on the yellow pad in front of her. “Would you be interested in working at a school?”

  SAIGON, VIETNAM, 1974

  He never expected more out of his job than what he received. Sanh edited and translated press releases for the Foreign Ministry, enjoying a decent salary, regular hours, and enough responsibility that it didn’t appear he had avoided enlistment. Even so, Sanh worked diligently. He took his assignments seriously, translating the ministry’s announcements into English, French, and Spanish, often staying behind at the office when his coworkers had left for a drink at one of the hotel bars.

  He’d received a promotion, of sorts, and an assistant to help with fact checking. Though she wore too much makeup and her perfume irritated his sinuses, especially on humid days, Tuyet performed capably. Every morning, he could expect to find the assignment sheets and contact lists collated on his desk. Though she couldn’t help with the translations, she showed an eagerness to acquire a working knowledge of the languages, taking home English or French dictionaries when she left the office.

  A naval officer picked her up every afternoon at four o’clock. Tuyet made sure to have her work finished by the time her boyfriend arrived because he did not like to wait. One time, Tuyet was on another floor, gathering a needed signature, and the officer stood by her desk in his stark white uniform. The officer refused the seat Sanh offered, barely looking at him.

  “He’s a jerk,” his colleague Cung said, after the pair had left one afternoon. “You should ask her to work late one night. Steal her away.” He grinned when Sanh frowned at him. “How else are you going to get a wife? We worry about you, Sanh.”

  He did not feel sure he loved Tuyet until the day her mother arrived, interrupting their morning debriefing to yank her out of his office. Until that moment, it never occurred to Sanh that she had a family, someone who could push her around. She had always seemed so independent, opinionated, unafraid to disagree with him or his colleagues during staff meetings. Sanh understood how Tuyet’s mother, an older, haughtier version of Tuyet, wearing a turquoise blue ao dai and large sunglasses, could make a person cower.

  When Tuyet returned, her eyes were swollen. She asked if she could speak to Sanh privately. He invited her into his office, closing the door. Her mother was trying to marry her off to some seventy-year-old American officer who leered at her and her sisters like they were prostitutes.

  “He is a terrible man,” Tuyet said, “but he doesn’t compare to my mother.” According to Tuyet, her mother ran an opium den, working primarily with Americans. Tuyet’s oldest brother, Thang, ran most of the operations, but her mother made all the decisions. With the Communists looming, she wanted to sell her daughter to one of her former clients to get out of Vietnam.

  “She kicked me out of our home,” Tuyet said. “I either marry this man or I have nowhere else to go.”

  “What about your boyfriend?” Sanh asked.

  “Thao?” she said, looking surprised. “He’s only a friend. His wife and I were classmates in primary school.” Tuyet wiped her eyes, looking slightly embarrassed. Sanh wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Walk around his desk and hold her hand? It seemed inappropriate, though he longed to comfort her.

  “Do you live with your family?” Tuyet asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “But you’re not married. You don’t have a girlfriend or fiancée.”

  “No.”

  Her eyes lifted, so beautiful, intelligent, admiring. They met his. “Do you want to marry me?”

  * * *

  The elementary school did not need to fill a teaching position, the vice principal explained. Teachers in America needed certification. Sanh would require several years of schooling for that. When Sanh explained he’d earned his university diploma with honors in Vietnam, the vice principal, Mr. Gaines, a normally unamused man, smiled.

  “This is an interview for a custodial position,” he reminded Sanh. “Carlos can train you. He is excellent with new hires.”

  The head custodian was a chubby Guatemalan with a laugh that carried across the schoolyard. He offered to share his sandwich and fruit when he realized Sanh hadn’t brought a lunch. He was delighted Sanh spoke fluent Spanish and teased his accent, promising to correct his European pronunciations. Carlos had arrived in the States twelve years earlier and had four children of his own, but they did not attend this school. “Not the same district,” he said. “Besides, I wouldn’t want my kids to see how these children act. Very spoiled. No manners.”

  During the seven-hour school session, Sanh covered the lower division east wing, mopping and stocking bathrooms and tidying hallways and corridors. After the three o’clock school bell, he was permitted to enter the classrooms, where he emptied the metal trash
cans, gathered crumpled paper and stray pencils from the coat closets, and pried off fresh chewing gum from underneath the desks. While restocking the boys’ bathroom, he smelled something rank, approached the fourth stall, and saw someone had missed the toilet while defecating. Glad that Carlos and the other custodians were cleaning the other wings, Sanh tensed his fingers around the stall door, slamming his forehead into it so he would not cry.

  When he arrived home, Tuyet was annoyed that he’d forgotten to pick up a package of vermicelli noodles at the Chinese grocery store near the school. “I guess we’ll just eat rice again tonight,” she said, throwing open the kitchen cabinets, searching for the rice cooker, “even though it took me hours to make the broth. But who cares what I do all day?”

  Sitting on the floor, Sanh watched as Lum turned the pages of his coloring book, pointing to the green and blue crayon markings on a pair of skunks. When his son tried to put an orange crayon into his mouth, Sanh gently pulled it away from his face and back toward the coloring book. He tried not to take Tuyet’s mood personally. All day, she’d been trying to sew a bag of blouses, some work she picked up from Mrs. Nguyen, another refugee who lived down the hall who convinced her it was easy money. Having never sewn much before, Tuyet had already ruined the stitching in two blouses, which would be deducted from her pay.

  “I don’t think I should stay at the school,” Sanh said. “I think I can find something better.”

  “It’s a starter job,” Tuyet said, measuring rice into the cooker. “After a few months, you can ask for a promotion to teach in the classroom.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Sanh said. “Carlos has been there for almost five years and he still cleans toilets.”

  “Carlos doesn’t have a college degree like you do,” Tuyet said. “We need to be patient. You prove yourself, they’ll reward you. Did you go to the refugee center to ask about the sponsorship forms?”