Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

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  I was born in the middle of the French War, three years before the great battle of Dien Bien Phu. To celebrate my birth, my father acquired a baby coconut tree, which he planted in our back garden. Since I was born in early spring. I was named Xuan Huong, meaning “Scent of Spring”. However, my paternal grandmother, who came to live with us when I was little and became my closest friend, dubbed me Hoa Lai, or Jasmine. The nickname stayed with me all the way through school.

  My birth was described as boc dieu or coming out of the mother’s womb inside a “red sac”. This was commonly regarded as an auspicious birth, indicating that the child would have an extraordinary life. Not only was I the first in my family to have been born boc dieu, but the first in our village. Years later I would learn that the amniotic sac was a thin layer of red membrane that covered the baby’s body and had to be broken and removed immediately after the birth to prevent suffocation. The village midwife offered special congratulations to my parents for having a child born in a “red sac”.

  My father recorded the details of my birth; and he soon consulted a renowned astrologer in Can Tho and gave her this information, together with his and my mother’s birth signs. My father had the reading rolled up into a tiny tube and hid it away. Not till seventeen years later would I have the opportunity to unroll the tube that contained my foretold future.

  Although I was “transferred” from the red sac to the red flag immediately after birth, my mother didn’t use the flag for its symbolic value. It was simply out of necessity. There was nothing else available at the time. A month before my birth, French troops had raided our village and most of our belongings had been destroyed. The few surviving garments – a shirt, a blouse, a pair of trousers – had to be shared. One of my uncles and his wife, for example, were left with only one pair of trousers. Whenever he needed to go out, she would remain in their bedroom until he came back and vice versa.

  Then again, nine days after I was born, the French bombed us in reprisal for repeated Viet Minh attacks on the local French garrison. The French “solution,” foreshadowing what many Vietnamese villages were to experience in the decades ahead, was to obliterate the area. My father, I learned later, was with us until immediately before the massive destruction took place. Someone then appeared at the house unexpectedly and my father went with him in a hurry, without explaining the reason to my mother. When the bombing started, she took me to a makeshift shelter my father had dug for us behind the house, but it was filled with water. Not long afterwards she fled with me to the jungle swamp behind the village to shield us from the danger. For hours she held me in a cold wind coming off the sea, all the colder if you had almost no clothes. I was eventually brought home shivering and blue and my mother held me near the fire to revive me. I was still wrapped in the same red flag from my birth nine days earlier. Later my mother commented that I was “a little patriot” without ever knowing it. I suspect that the asthma I suffered from intermittently all during my childhood was the result of that early exposure.

  When the air raid was over, my father returned home to check if we were still alive. My mother was near-hysterical with anger, “Master, you must have decided that your own life was more impor- tant than ours.” Knowing this sensitive and kindly man as I later came to, I can picture his agonized expression, yet he was unable to tell her why he had abandoned us. I also learned later that among the victims of the mass killing that day was my mother’s best friend, Yen, who was blown to pieces before her eyes – a trauma that haunted her for years to come.

  My mother left the Viet Minh to marry my father in 1950. Her elder sister, Di Nam, continued to participate in the food supplies network of the growing Viet Minh army. She had taken part in the Southern Uprising of November 1940 – the Nam Ky Khoi Nghia. This ill-fated revolt, masterminded by the “Red Queen” Nguyen Thi Bay in Sai Gon, was widespread throughout the South. In the Mekong Delta, it was led by Madame Nguyen Thi Thap and ended with the execution of several leaders, including Thap’s husband. In her continued struggle to help liberate the country, she would work with my paternal granduncle, Cuong, and they became close friends and comrades. They shared much hardship throughout the French War.

  Aunt Di Nam was with the Viet Minh until the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. She then joined the National Liberation Front until the end of the American War in 1975. Her decision to remain with the Nationalist army had been reinforced by the death of Vo Thi Sau in 1952. Sau had been captured at age fourteen and kept in the Con Son Island’s high security prison until her sixteenth birthday, when she was executed by a firing squad. Under the colonial rule, children who took part in attacks on their regime could be sentenced to death, and they would be incarcerated until they reached sixteen and then executed. These deaths became focuses of nation-wide revulsion against the French. Their possible aim of making an example to other Vietnamese children had the opposite effect, and led thousands of youngsters to join the Nationalist movement in the years to come.

  My cousin Hinh, the son of my mother’s eldest sister, joined the Viet Minh army when he was fourteen. Hinh’s father had borne a deep and abiding hatred for the French and led an outlaw’s life, heading a gang of strong men in attacks on colonial banks and other foreign enterprises, then hiding out at sea like a pirate. My grandmother had wanted no part of him as a son-in-law, despite her daughter’s desire to marry the lawless man. She once shouted angrily to her daughter, “He is a ruffian. We want no ruffians in our household. But you, you stubborn girl, you always want to go your own way! Then go! Get up into your wedding carriage. I will go down to my grave.”

  Upon learning this, the ruffian arranged to kidnap the young woman – my aunt – and married her. Hinh’s mother died when he was a baby and it was my grandmother who raised him. Before the end of the colonial regime his father was caught and sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment. He was kept inside a ‘Tiger Cage’ on the Con Son Island’s prison, where young Vo Thi Sau had been incarcerated before her execution. The Tiger Cage system designed by the French was like that at a zoo – except that each cage was only one meter by two metres – and it would have to contain up to six men or six women. All inmates had to follow the harsh rules: “No Sitting, No Talking or Whispering, and No Toilet at Night.”

  Hinh had been a local spy for the Viet Minh. In 1960 he became an officer in the intelligence network of the National Liberation Front and from then on we saw him only at night, after he emerged from the jungle. He would come by sampan with his male and female comrades, all in black cotton uniforms, their heads camouflaged by water palm leaves. One of my aunts always provided hot meals for Hinh and his group and I often helped serve the meals. One time I offered him a green mango but he refused, “No, sweetheart! I can’t eat any un-ripe fruits.” While living in the jungle he never ate food from which he might get diarrhoea. Hinh and his colleagues endured extremely harsh conditions, especially during the rainy season. Often they went for days without a proper meal and had to survive on whatever wild plants they could find in the jungle, risking dysentery, malaria, and other tropical diseases. They were mobile at night and slept in the day. Each person, man or woman, carried a rifle, ammunition, some hand-grenades, and a backpack. The pack contained a mosquito net, a small blanket, some clothes, a hammock, a water bottle and some dried food.

  Strangely – for the war never really ended, and the defeated French were soon replaced by the military of the new Diem regime and their American “advisors” – I look back on my earliest years in the village with a fond nostalgia. In many ways, the delta was a children’s paradise, even for children who had little in the way of material possessions. Small streams meandered all around us and our flat green plains were criss-crossed with waterways, big and small. No family could get far without a boat of some kind. Like all my maternal relatives, my family owned a wooden sampan, which my mother used frequently to travel within the village and to the nearest town of Thanh Chau, about three hours away
by paddle boat. Motorized sampans were unheard of. All the houses were scattered along the banks of streams and rivers, and where two or three watercourses came together there was often a temple or a communal building. Wood, bamboo, and palm leaves were the normal building materials.

  Next to my maternal grandmother’s house, at the side of a long river, was a large poon tree. The trunk was huge and it carried thick green leaves and fragrant flowers like white cherry blossoms with yellow stamens at their centres. It bore fruit like chestnuts which we crushed to make oil for lamps. (I never saw an electric light until our visit to the city of Can Tho, when I was five.) The poon tree was good for climbing and a favourite playground for my cousins and me. My mother’s elder brother, Uncle Muoi, who lived with my grandmother, also loved the poon tree and its beautiful white blossoms. According to Uncle Muoi, such a tree grew only in the South, and when Emperor Gia Long took refuge in the region in the late 1700’s he named it “southern cherry”.

  Uncle Muoi was three years older than my mother. When he got married, it was decided that he would stay with my grandmother in her house. Like her, he raised a big family – thirteen children in all, adopted as well as biological. He was a solidly built man with a sturdy face, sharp eyes and curly hair, known for his mental as well as physical strength and endless energy. During the harvest seasons his crops typically brought in the highest yield among the family clan. He believed that the orphans of the village, especially those most victimized by a century of war, must be welcomed with open arms, and their innocence protected. His generosity toward them set an example that was widely esteemed.

  When my grandmother gave Uncle Muoi a sampan, he decided to paint it the colour of green leaves. Every day around six in the evening the sampan always turned gray as a thick cloud of mosquitoes settled on it. They were always in the air, moving in swarms and sounding like the wind in a flute. A person could never stand still for long. Arms and legs had to be constantly on the move in order to keep the mosquitoes from settling on the eyes, nose, ears, and inside shirt collars and sleeves. I once nearly swallowed a small swam of mosquitoes while laughing with my mouth open. In the waterways and the ditches the problems were leeches and many varieties of poisonous snakes.

  The tropical heat in the delta was relentless but relieved by sea breezes from beyond the horizon and by the regular cloudbursts of rain – heavy, brief, totally saturating, but never a threat except in a typhoon. On one occasion our house was destroyed by such a storm. The heavy rain poured down, in the suddenly cold, violently gusting wind, and the palm leaf roof swayed until it simply blew away. While the walls were about to collapse, my father shouted at us, “Heaven and Earth! It’s gone. Let’s get out of here! Quick! We have to run!”

  With the heavy rain now pouring directly onto us my father grabbed a blanket, wrapped me in it and we ran all the way to my grandmother’s house.

  One of my grandmother’s coconut trees had been uprooted in the same storm, and after it was over we sat in the dark on the fallen tree, waiting for my aunt to find wood for a fire to dry us. I was given some fresh clothes belonging to my cousin Hung, and the two of us rolled up our trousers and went looking for fish and crabs. They had been washed up from the nearby shores in the storm. We caught several sunfish and a dozen fresh water crabs. My aunt cut out the tender top of the coconut tree, considered a delicacy, and made a huge pot of delicious sweet and sour soup for us all.

  Like most people in the village, we wore the simplest clothing. Nobody wore shoes, slippers, or anything on their feet. Most of our clothes were hand sewn and then repaired and patched over until they fell apart. The washhouse was the river and clothes were taken there and beaten on stones. Men and young children bathed there too because the water was usually clean and fast flowing. When girls reached puberty they took their baths in their family bathhouse, a fenced area on the side of each house that contained at least one large barrel for catching rainwater. We used two kinds of soap and each family made its own. The method was to take wood ash from a fire and add it to a bucket of water. In time the ash would settle at the bottom of the container and the liquid above it would be clean and clear, like a thin liquid soap. It produced bubbles and was used for most washing. The ash residue was good for scouring utensils.

  We also made a special type of shampoo from the soap-berry, called bo ket. The berries were inside a pod that could be crushed to make the shampoo, but since they were hard to find, that soap was considered a luxury. To keep our teeth clean, we used the shell of the areca nut to make toothbrushes. Each shell could be cut into six or eight sections to reveal many layers of soft fibre, which functioned like a modern toothbrush. Each piece was used only once. Toothpaste was a special type of charcoal ash. Except for the elderly, nearly everyone in my village had perfect teeth, and I rarely heard anyone complaining about a toothache.

  Women kept their hair long. While they were still single, it was left flowing or clasped in a ponytail, but once married, women traditionally wore it tied up in a bun, for to do otherwise would attract attention, comment, and quite severe criticism. My cousin Hien, the eldest daughter of Uncle Phan, was scolded by my maternal grandmother after her marriage, “Unless you intend to flirt with other men and infuriate your husband, it’s high time that you tie up your hair.”

  Men and boys, on the other hand, wore their hair quite short. In my maternal clan it was Uncle Phan who gave haircuts to all my male cousins. My father had given him a French-made haircut kit with a sophisticated tondeuse, or clippers, and he cut Uncle Muoi’s hair too, while in return Uncle Muoi shaved Phan’s head entirely. In the village, you would occasionally see a little boy with a special haircut that left him with only three clumps of hair at the front and sides. This was a sure sign of ill health, intentionally designed to make the wearer look ugly so that the demons would leave him alone.

  There was no Western-trained doctor in our village, and no hospital within a reachable distance. If a person became seriously ill he or she just went quietly to bed at home. We had one qualified male nurse who was able to dispense basic advice and some Western medicines. People reached his clinic by boat. Because of my asthma, my mother took me to see him a few times on the recommendation of Granduncle Cuong, who was a doctor and who visited us from time to time. Most villagers used traditional herbal remedies to treat their symptoms.

  Nearly every day my mother worked in the rice field alongside my maternal relatives. Like all farmers in the village, they owned very simple farming equipment. My mother shared one of the two water buffaloes belonging to Uncle Muoi. She owned a ploughshare, a pair of shears, a shovel, and a special stake that was used to dig holes in the muddy ground before inserting the early sprouts of rice plants. Her tasks included planting seedlings and then transplanting them when the season arrived. During harvest time she did the work of a man. My father had tried to work in the rice fields right after their marriage but he had proven totally inept at farming and my maternal relatives ridiculed him for it. They still respected him, however, because he was a well-educated man.

  Occasionally my mother complained about his lack of participation, and he would tell her, “My dear! There is really no need for you to go on working in the rice field. I am earning enough money to support us. Why don’t you just give the land to your brother? He has a big family to look after.”

  Most of our village buffaloes were gone by the time I was born because they had been killed by French troops. My father recalled that, once the French War began in earnest in 1946, the French began killing buffaloes, justifying it publicly because it weakened the Viet Minh resistance. For every three buffalo killed, the French were reputed to believe, one Viet Minh member was as good as killed. But after the destruction of the buffaloes, it was Vietnamese women who took up the ploughing of the rice fields while their husbands, fathers and sons went to battlefields. By the time I came along, women constituted the majority of the agricultural work force.

  Harvesting took place in September and
March. My maternal relatives piled up their newly harvested rice stalks in their front yards. Two shared buffaloes were brought in to trample the piles until the rice husks separated from the stalks. On moonlit nights the un-husked rice shone with a rich golden colour. While the adults were pounding the golden rice in a giant stone mortar to separate the white grains from the husks, we children would play in the moonlight. If my paternal grandmother was present, we would gather around her and insist on a story. The first one that I remember sharing with my little cousins was about the buffaloes and the rice paddies:

  In Viet Nam the water buffalo has been used in the rice paddies for centuries. He looks very much like a cow with a hump on his back. His body is dark grey, and he has flat horns that curve backward along his neck. He always loves to immerse himself in muddy water. Since his job is to plough the rice field, a heavy wooden yoke with the plough is placed over his neck. He pulls the plough through the water without much effort. In ancient times, though, water buffaloes were wild animals living in the forests, and they were idle and greedy too. To feed themselves they invaded the territory of other animals to steal grass and water. Then after eating and drinking they would all fall asleep. They rarely bathed and during the rainy season they looked for shelter under large trees to stay out of the rain. Although they were physically large and good looking, other animals in the jungle stayed away from them because of their greediness, laziness, and offensive odour.