by CW Ullman
She went to the residence, found Di.u and brought her outside so they could speak privately.
“What do you know about what happened at the lake?” My Ling asked.
Di.u told her what she knew.
“Di.u, you have to listen to me, carefully. Even though we did the right thing, some people may not see it that way. Have you told anyone else?” My Ling wanted to know.
Di.u, now fifteen, understood My Ling’s anxiety and shook her head.
That night while they were eating at the residence with the deputy ambassador, the television played in the background, when the story about the murdered fisherman came on. No one was paying attention to it until little My Ling spoke.
“My mommy killed him. He was a bad man,” she blurted out.
My Ling and Dao both shot looks at little My Ling and then over at Di.u whose lowered head revealed she had told little My Ling.
The adult My Ling quickly recovered, laughing nervously, “What? Don’t tell stories. I did not.”
Little My Ling spoke a pigeon Cambodian/Vietnamese/Malayo-Polynesian that the deputy ambassador did not understand. However, the Vietnamese employee who had read the sanctuary protocol to My Ling and the others was present, and while she was not sure exactly what she had heard, the reaction of the three women alerted her that something was amiss.
This embassy employee was ethnic Vietnamese and did not care for My Ling and all the adoration showered upon her. She had a deep prejudice against Montagnards. That My Ling was the wife of the savage Colonel Cin, inspired her loathing. In her estimation My Ling and her family did not deserve preferential treatment and should wait in line with all the other asylum seekers who petitioned the embassy daily with requests to go to America.
My Ling sprang from her chair to grab little My Ling’s hand and take her away from the table while chiding her loudly.
“I’ve told you not to make up stories, young girl,” My Ling said as she led her out of the room. “You tell too many stories and you need to stop that.”
The embassy employer looked back at Trieu and Dao who studied their food..
The deputy ambassador asked Trieu and Dao, “What did little My Ling say?”
They both shrugged. Tu was about to speak when he caught his mother’s glare. The ambassador directed his Vietnamese assistant to tell them he had business to attend to and would take his leave. He and his assistant left leaving them alone in the dining room
“Are they gone?” My Ling asked coming back into the room. They nodded.
“Di.u?” My Ling accused.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to yell at me,” Di.u offered.
“Does Tu know?” My Ling inquired.
“Probably,” Di.u answered. “He and little My Ling share everything.”
“We’ve got a problem,” My Ling said. “Did you see the look on the assistant’s face. She doesn’t like us and I don’t want anything to delay our departure.”
She told Tu to sit on the couch and took Trieu, Dao and Di.u into a separate room. “Di.u, you’re going to tell little My Ling you made up the story. Then you’ll back me up on everything I tell her. She will ask why you made up the story in the first place and you’ll say you wanted to have fun at her expense. Then apologize to me.
“The assistant will try to question the two kids when we’re not around. It is very important that one of us stay with My Ling and Tu at all times.”
Di.u started to cry and apologized for the problems she caused.
“Di.u, look at me,” My Ling said holding the face. “This is the time to be strong. Nothing will happen if you just listen to me and don’t say anything to anyone else. We have survived worse and we’ll get through this.”
Di.u composed herself and nodded.
My Ling finished, “Now, is the time to be a fellow girl.”
My Ling was correct about the assistant pursuing the story. The assistant called the police in Bangkok to find out about the murders. They informed her they had no jurisdiction and that if she wanted to inquire further she would have to call the police in the district where the man was killed. It took her another day to contact the police department in Makham. District. They reported the man was a village leader who ran a jitney service. He had been murdered and robbed. They told her they found spent casings from a .45 caliber weapon. After she hung up she remembered that My Ling owned two guns. Two days before My Ling and the others were to leave for America, the deputy’s assistant asked My Ling if she could come to her office. My Ling said she would come the next day, because she was sick in bed with a flu bug.
Around noon the following day, outside the embassy, a small group of Mani gathered. By one o’clock there was over three thousand people. My Ling called the assistant and asked if now would be a convenient time for her interview. When she walked into the assistant’s office, My Ling’s guns were lying on the woman’s desk.
“I don’t think you’ll be leaving for America tomorrow,” the assistant stated.
“Because I killed that fisherman in Makham District?” My Ling responded flatly.
“You’re admitting it?” the assistant countered incredulously.
“You need to pack up those guns so I can take them with me tomorrow,” My Ling ordered. “They were gifts from my late husband and they have great sentimental value.”
“I don’t think you get the seriousness of your problem,” the assistant postured.
“No, I don’t think you get the seriousness of your problem.” My Ling retorted.
My Ling went to the window of the woman’s office and leaned out to wave at four thousand Mani gathered at the embassy fence. A huge cheer crescendoed as she waved.
My Ling turned back to the woman and spoke loudly to be heard over the ovation, “Did you notice they’re standing just outside your window. I informed the cleaning staff yesterday that I would be leaving tomorrow for America and told them I would love to bid farewell to the people of Thailand from this window…from your office. In an hour there’ll be ten thousand people here.”
“What does have to do with me?” the assistant inquired.
My Ling walked over to her desk and put a piece of paper down. “Is that your house address on Plum Grove Boulevard?”
“How’d did you get that?” asked the panicked assistant.
“You don’t have many friends around here. Come, look at the fence,” My Ling suggested.
The assistant warily walked to the window and saw Trieu, Dao and Di.u standing inside the fence holding stacks of paper.
“Your address is on five hundred sheets of paper and when I give the signal, the girls are going to hand them out,” My Ling threatened. “I don’t really want to do that because I’m pretty sure this peaceful crowd will turn into a mob and destroy the house at that address.”
My Ling’s expression turned flat and her voice cold, “I killed that man because he killed the fisherman on a boat who rescued me from the ocean. He raped me and killed Dao and Di.u’s parents. After I shot him, I took his money so we could take a bus to Bangkok, get on an airplane, and go to America,” My Ling explained. “I’ll be taking those guns with me. Please get me a box?”
The woman was frozen to the ground never having been threatened with such calm malice.
“Now,” My Ling ordered.
The woman ran to a closet, pulled out a box, and put the guns inside. My Ling picked up the box, walked to the door, and then turned toward the woman.
“I am Tiger Girl,” she said slowly for dramatic affect.
After the door closed behind her, she exhaled and chuckled at her own bravado. As she walked away, she whispered, “I’m Tiger Girl” and giggled.
Dao, Di.u and Trieu had been holding blank sheets of paper. As a cautionary move, after My Ling left the assistant’s office she gave the box of guns to one of the cleaning ladies to keep for her until her departure the following day.
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The next morning, the maid brought the box
ed weapons and packed them in the luggage that the ambassador had bought for My Ling. The entire group gathered in the portico of the embassy and left for the airport under the protection of the United States of America.
From the gates of the embassy to the entrance of the Don Muang Airport, the entire ten-mile route was lined with tens of thousands of Mani bidding farewell to a woman who, if she were to run for the top office in any of three countries, could have won. Though the leaders and politicians of Thailand had never heard of My Ling, the people who cleaned their houses, pick up their trash, worked in their sweat shops, and populated their countries had known about her and her husband for a decade. The ambassador riding along with her had never seen anything like it.
He jokingly asked, “Have you ever thought about politics?”
She mulled over his question and answered, “Eventually, they would kill me.”
Her face suddenly seemed mature to the ambassador and there was a wisdom in her eyes he had not seen since his days as an intern in the White House working for President Kennedy. While she could charm anyone, one suspected her will was formidable, and there was a keen mind behind her penetrating eyes.
The limousine arrived at her airport concourse and the chauffeur opened the door for the ambassador to get out. My Ling leaned forward to the assistant and said with a smile, “I hope your home on Plum Grove Boulevard will be safe.”
She stepped from the limousine to a throng of Mani and some tourists who thought either a politician or movie star was exiting the car. The ambassador escorted the group to the American Airlines lounge and stayed with them until it was time to board. When they left the building and walked to the airplane, thousands of Mani cheered from the balconies of the airport, calling Sua Dek pu-ying. She stood at the top of the steps of the plane, waved for the last time then entered the aircraft.
As the plane lifted off, she looked out the window at the jungles that hugged Bangkok, thinking not of Cin, but of Elvis. She had adapted to a harsh and difficult life. As a child she lived with the finest of things, yet a few years later lived in a cage with a dog and a fully-grown tiger. She had been shot at, hunted, beaten, and starved. She saw the nicest people do the worst things and the worst people do the nicest. Reflecting on life’s capriciousness, she felt comfortable leaving the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Cin once said of the jungle, “The reason I love it here is there is no pretense: when you’re in the jungle. You’re hunting prey or prey is hunting you; out of the jungle it’s harder to identify the prey.” She thought about America and wondered if she would know the predators.
Her fingers ran along the edges of Russell William Armstrong’s identification metals, eliciting a different feeling than before. She realized he was not trying to kill her, because she absolutely knew what it looked like when someone tried to do that. The sailor was not trying to hurt her either, because she knew what that felt like when Mr. Pok beat her. She thought of the look on the sailor’s face and realized it was not a smirk, because she had seen that on Huyen’s face. The sailor cared about her and for the first time she knew it. She knew what caring was because she had seen it in the faces of Tuyen, Thanh, and the hundreds of thousands that loved her husband. And more dearly, she had seen profound love in the eyes of her man when he held their child.
Cin had told her that strapping the life vest on her meant the sailor wanted her to live. She did not want to believe Cin at the time, but now she could not deny it. How must the sailor have felt with the man screaming at him? What was the sailor thinking when he stood looking out the sea door of the military ship and then back at her? In that instant something changed in her, making her wonder about Russell William Armstrong.
CHAPTER X
After landing in Los Angeles, they were booked into the Marriott Hotel on Century Boulevard. Trieu saw a large billboard advertising a show in Las Vegas starring an Elvis impersonator. She was the only one who knew rudimentary English and pointed it out to My Ling.
“That is the Elvis that father used to listen to.”
“I was closer to the right name for the cat than I realized. Look at his curled lip. Elvis used to do that,” My Ling enthused.
They took a cab to the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard and were escorted to the Immigration and Naturalization office. They received a book about America and were told their plane would be leaving in a few days for the Raleigh-Durham Airport in North Carolina. The Immigration Service also gave them money to live on for the next two months, along with a clothing and food allowance.
As teenagers, Dao and Di.u were the first to become acutely aware of how out of style they were, dressed in black pajama bottoms, white linen tunics and sandals. The group was taken to a shopping center in the South Bay where they bought blue jeans, blouses, boy’s clothing for Tu, and sneakers for all. It was hard finding shoes that fit, because they had worn sandals their entire lives, and their feet were wider as a result.
An employee at the clothing store was a Vietnamese woman familiar with the large Vietnamese community thirty minutes south in Westminster, Orange County. When they finished shopping, they took a cab south, and on the Twenty-two Freeway, Trieu pointed out a sign that read “Little Saigon.”
My Ling sat back in the cab and smiled, “I like it here already.”
The cab dropped them off on Bolsa Avenue where the six stood on a curb staring at a sign in Vietnamese which read “Pho Soup and Tea.” They looked to their left and right and saw more signs in Vietnamese. They were over 8,000 miles from their country but felt like they had come home.
They walked into the pho shop where the hostess greeted them in Vietnamese, Trieu burst out crying and hugged her elated to be in a civilized Vietnamese tea emporium, the kind she used to visit with her mother in Vietnam. Also, Trieu reveled in the cacophony of her native language being spoken by others in the shop. The hostess escorted them to a table and ordered tea and soup for all. Trieu began to tell their story to the hostess and owner, but was stopped by the restaurant owner when Trieu mentioned her father had been a colonel in the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam. He inquired about her father’s unit, and when Trieu responded that he was attached to the American 173rd Airborne Brigade; the owner reached for the telephone. A few minutes passed and four men her father’s age came to the shop and introduced themselves.
“We were in your father’s unit. He was a very brave man,” one of the men shared.
My Ling teared along with Trieu as the men sat and spoke of their military exploits, Vietnamese politics, the fall of Saigon, and the suffering that ensued. Then little My Ling blurted out that her father was Colonel Cin.
The smiles on the men’s faces left.
“Your father is legend. We heard about his death and we are very sorry for your loss. He was the last to make a stand against Ho Chi Minh,” the eldest man pronounced.
Then it dawned on one of the men that if little My Ling was Cin’s daughter, then My Ling must be Tiger Girl. When My Ling said she was, they all stood to salute her. My Ling was embarrassed by the show of respect and invited the men to sit.
“Is it true there were a million people at his funeral?” one of them asked.
As she said the funeral was smaller, she noticed the shop began filling with people. Some came to welcome the new immigrants, but most to be in the presence of the famous Tiger Girl.
As the hour grew late, Trieu took down phone numbers and addresses and promised to stay in touch.
Before they left, one woman in the group cautioned, “In this country, you need to learn English as fast as you can. You need to speak it correctly, flawlessly. If you don’t speak well, Americans will automatically think you are stupid regardless of how smart you are. Also, Americans are lazy and complain a lot about everything.” The entire room laughed.
She went on, “However, once they get to know you, they can be very nice. But, until they know you, they look at you like this.” She imitated the expressionless stare. She told Tu, “If wh
ere you are going in North Carolina is like here, there are gangs of boys your age. Do not get involved with them.”
One of the men in the group was an unassuming, but successful businessman. He was a veteran of the South Vietnamese army where he had been a sergeant who oversaw mess halls. He brought that knowledge to America and with a small loan, opened a few tea salons and pho shops. He also owned an upholstery shop and was a partner with his brother in a Louisiana shrimp boat. In Vietnam, his wife and children had been killed in the purge when Saigon fell. He fled to Thailand and was flown to the US ten years before My Ling’s arrival.
He watched her talk and was struck by her poise and deference to anyone who spoke to her. For someone as famous and revered as she was, he had never seen such élan and grace. He wanted to know her. He did not think he was up to her standards so he shyly watched, becoming mesmerized by her personality. When she said they had to get back to the Marriott, he offered to drive them.
On the trip back to the hotel, the girls were enthralled with the freeway traffic, the massive billboards lining the roads, and the many different races of people. The man asked My Ling about her impression of America.
She answered, “It’s so clean.”
He was tongue-tied in her presence, so he did not speak much. At the hotel, he wanted to give her his address, but was too shy. He was pleasantly surprised when she asked for his it. His heart almost ran out of his chest as he quickly scribbled it down. He thanked her, than ran around to her side of the car to open the door. As she departed, he watched her all the way into the hotel until she disappeared from sight
They were awakened the next morning when room service delivered breakfast ordered and paid for by their previous night’s driver. He left a note, “My Ling, it was very nice meeting you. I hope you and your family have a safe trip. Yours truly, Hao Ngo.”
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Flying from the Southern California desert to the lush green forests of North Carolina presented a stark contrast of more than just geography. While the landscape of the Pimento State was closer to the jungles My Ling had left in Southeast Asia, the sense of home that she felt on America’s west coast did not embrace her here. Neither she, Trieu, or the girls could put their finger on it.