by Laura Lam
“Don’t worry about that,” my grandmother said. “We may end up having to move into the Strategic Hamlet again anyway. Just leave the house as it is. Muoi will know what to do.” She encouraged us to leave. She said that joining my father in Sai Gon would be a good thing for the whole family.
I returned from fishing with Dzung and heard the news. I couldn’t believe my ears. Sai Gon! This was my long-held dream. But I was wide-awake. My mother said that I was to quit school that afternoon but saw no reason to inform my teacher and classmates. “The fewer people who know about it, the better for all concerned,” she said.
In the evening, nonetheless, our house was filled with relatives and neighbours. The adults visited with my mother indoors and I took my friends, Lien and Cam into the back garden. We stood under the guava tree. We were chatting in the dark and they told me, “What a lucky girl you are, Hoa Lai! You have a father living in Sai Gon and your life will soon be so much better than ours.” Before saying goodbye they went inside to see my mother who told them, “All of you children please take care of yourselves. I will bring Hoa Lai back for visits whenever I can.” Standing on the stone steps, the farewell was painful, and we hugged and cried.
I went inside the house and saw Dzung, sitting quietly on the floor, his back to the kitchen wall. He was clearly in distress. Kerosene lamp in my hand, I led him to the side of the house where I kept all the live fish.
Will you please take most of them?” I asked him as we gazed down into the fish tank. “Mother won’t have time to cook them, and we can only take a few with us.”
Dzung didn’t answer. He turned his face away, tears running down his cheeks. I assured him that we would see each other again, that I would return for visits. He scarcely heard me. I took my basket and filled it with as many fish as I could. When I gave it to him he started to sob uncontrollably. I felt the pain inside my chest.
Dai arrived, running toward me with a forced smile on his face. He put his arms around my shoulders and started to cry. He released me and wiped away his tears, then said calmly, “It’s good for you to have a new life in Sai Gon, Little Sister! Will you write letters to us?”
“I will write to Grandma, but she won’t be able to read. Will you read my letters to her? And I will write to you too.”
Hung was the most upset among my cousins. He said little to me at the time. He uttered broken words to Mo Muoi, “ Mo…ther! I… don’t think I will… see… h… er … again.” I thought about his seizures and found myself unable to say anything. The words were locked inside my throat.
The one person I didn’t see was Hien. She had left home to join the NLF and her husband Than, and had begun one of the most lifethreatening missions in the underground tunnels. I missed Hinh too. I imagined him in the jungle, sleeping in the new hammock grandmother had made for him. She’d had it delivered to him about a week earlier, after he had told us that his old hammock had rotted through. One night, he’d tied each end of the old one to branches of a large mangrove tree, as usual, and curled himself in it. When he was sound asleep, the old hammock broke, dumping Hinh into the water below with a loud splash. His nearby comrades were violently awakened, convinced they were under enemy attack.
I went to bed, overwhelmed by both anxiety and excitement and unable to sleep. As it turned out, though, it took us another day before we were able to leave. First we had to pack. Suddenly a man from the NLF showed up at our house.
He accosted my mother.
“Is it true?” he asked harshly. “Are you leaving for Sai Gon?”
“The children really miss their father terribly,” she said. “It’s natural they want to be with him. I hope you will understand.”
“We know it’s not that,” he said, his voice growing hostile and accusatory.
“You’re going to join the enemy! You’re going to be one of them!”
She pleaded with him, “I assure you, I won’t do that. How could I become one of them? You know all my relatives are here. How could I do such a thing to them?”
“Are you certain you want to leave?”
“Yes.” she answered him, tears in her eyes.
“You realize you’re abandoning us,” the man growled, “Once you go, just make sure you never return to this village!”
He walked out of the house and my mother hurried us along in case he or his superiors changed their minds.
Mo Muoi had prepared a farewell dinner for us. Neither my mother nor I could eat a thing, but we stayed at my grandmother’s house until very late and came home one last time to sleep.
Mother woke me up at four in the morning to get ready. I dressed the way I did for school each day – white cotton blouse and black cotton trousers. Then Uncle Muoi and Dai came – Uncle Muoi was accompanying us on the first leg of the journey – and they both helped my mother load the sewing machine into the sampan. Trung and Nghia were still fast asleep. Dai carried them out to the sampan. We had one bag of clothes for all of us, the sewing machine, and a bucket of live fish. With my mother in tears, we all got into the sampan.
I waved goodbye to Dai, who was standing at the bank of the stream holding a kerosene lamp. His face was solemn. In the semidarkness, a gust of wind fluttered the collar of his badly faded cotton shirt. I felt pity for him – for the ongoing hardship of his life and the dangers that awaited him. Would I ever see him again?
“See you later today!” Uncle Muoi called out to Dai.
“Good bye, Auntie! Good bye, Little Sister!” Dai called, his voice trembling. He waved with one hand and with his other held out the kerosene lamp so that Uncle Muoi could see while paddling away from the riverbank.
The sampan moved away from the bank. Slowly – ever so slowly – Dai and the flickering light disappeared behind us. Goodbye to you, dear Brother Dai! Goodbye to my house, to the stone steps, to the flowery paths, to the lily pond, to the streams, to the river… Goodbye to you all.
Uncle Muoi paddled carefully and steadily. I couldn’t see his face under the conical hat in the dark but he had the usual white-and-black checked scarf around his neck. I sat behind mother, holding Nghia in my arms. I was numb – completely lost. Trung was asleep on a rice husk pillow next to me. My mind was a bundle of knotted threads – one of regret, one of grieving, one of anxiety, one of happiness…
The indigo sky grew lighter but the view ahead was still dark and misty. We heard the buzzing sound of mosquitoes and the steady splashing noise of the paddles in and out of the water. We saw another sampan going in the same direction, ahead of us – toward Thanh Chau. Uncle Muoi called out to them and they waved at us. The journey through the vast water-palm jungle was a long one. Slowly, the familiar scent of wilderness, the peaceful river, the rustling water palm leaves … disappeared behind us.
The sampan is moving upstream
The waves sing a mournful melody
Sadly, I watch the sky joining with the earth
Sadly, I watch the river flowing to the sea
Sadly, I watch the water palm waiving goodbye.
We arrived in Thanh Chau before sunrise. The morning market was as busy as ever. We had breakfast there, after which my mother asked Uncle Muoi to wait with us and our belongings while she went to the post office to send father a telegram. When she came back, Uncle Muoi took us to the houseboat of Mrs Truong, a widowed friend of my mother. There we said our farewells to our faithful Uncle Muoi.
Mrs Truong invited us to stay overnight in the houseboat before leaving for Can Tho. She had a daughter named Nha, born in Truong An five days after me. Nha had never known her father. He had been killed in an air raid, the same raid that had killed my mother’s best friend when I was nine days old. In the afternoon, while my brothers were taking their nap, Nha and I strolled along the riverbank. She introduced me to her neighbours, who also lived on houseboats. Several of them invited us in for snacks and a chat.
That evening, when Trung and Nghia had gone to sleep, Nha and I stayed awake. We lay side by side on a reed m
at, watching all the lights from the other boats along the river. It was warm and humid, with the odd cool breeze. We talked and giggled while my mother and Mrs Truong carried on a deep conversation at the other end of the boat. I loved the soft fresh air and the idea of sleeping on the water. The boat’s gentle movements reminded me of the time I was rocked in a hammock by my grandmother many years before.
We left Thanh Chau the next day, shortly after sunrise. My mother bought some sticky rice cakes and sugar cane juice for us. We boarded a small passenger bus for Can Tho, fifty kilometres away. It seemed like the other end of the earth. Can Tho is the largest city in the Mekong Delta, known as “the capital of the western region.” My father was to meet us at the bus station. Finally, suddenly, incredibly, gazing out of the window, I spotted him! There he was! I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest! Neither Trung nor Nghia recognized him – they’d seen so little of him. The second we got off the bus, I jumped up to greet him and flung my arms around his neck.
We took two cyclos to Uncle Nam’s house. My father and brothers went in one; my mother and I went in the other, taking the sewing machine with us. I was sitting between my mother’s knees and holding one leg of the sewing machine to stop it from sliding off. Short as the ride was, I must have strained a muscle in my arm as it was completely numb by the time we arrived.
My father and I entered the house first and were met by the maid, a chubby woman in her twenties with very pale skin. Nam’s wife, the maid informed us, wouldn’t be home until evening. She added that “Madame” – his mother-in-law – was in Sai Gon that week.
I stepped into the front garden. My bare feet felt the heat from the concrete floor. I stood behind the main gate, under the shade of a lantern tree loaded with beautiful red flowers. It was a sunny morning, bright, hot, and humid. I was again fascinated by the fast-moving traffic and the city people. My mind returned to 1956, when we had first visited Nam’s house – and my old dream of living in a city. Six years had passed. And now here we were. I was about to start a new life in the capital. And I was soon to be reunited with my grandmother.
A jeep arrived at the gate and pulled to a halt. There in the passenger seat was Nam in full army uniform. He stepped out and greeted me, “You have just arrived, little one!” I folded my arms and bowed to him, “Good morning, Uncle!” He took my hand, gave me a kiss on the forehead, and we walked straight into the house. The driver parked the jeep at the side of the house.
Nam was delighted with our move to Sai Gon. He invited us to stay in Can Tho for a few days. My mother, ill at ease in this house, said we couldn’t. Nam insisted we at least spend the night, and, until Nam’s wife appeared that afternoon, even my mother relaxed and enjoyed Nam’s jokes and good humour. He told her – she was obviously pregnant – that he was hoping for a baby girl. Then he said to me, “I’ll want a full report on your schooling, Little Hoa Lai, when I visit you in Sai Gon.” I was wondering what Nam did at his office every day but I did not dare ask him – what I had foremost in my mind were the dead and dying people in my home village.
That evening, after dinner, Nam offered to take my two brothers and me to a playground near the popular riverbank of Hau Giang – known by the French as the Bassac River. Nam’s wife had joined us by then, She said she wasn’t feeling well and excused herself. Before we left, I saw her standing near a sink outside her bedroom and brushing her teeth with a fancy toothbrush. An interesting scent emerged from a white paste she squeezed from a tube. When she placed the tube on the sink’s counter I could see the picture of a black man’s face on it, smiling and showing his own perfectly white teeth.
What went on between my mother and father that night I couldn’t say. They were always formal with each other, at least in front of us children. I knew that she had been angry with him before we left our village because of the “concubine.” I remember, on the bus the next day, my father making some joke about wanting to thank the sweetpotato man for us being there, and he was guffawing loudly. Embarrassed, my mother shouted at him, “Master! Will you shut up?”
For my part, I was thrilled to be reunited with him. He seemed happy too as he pointed out all the sights to us – the town of Rach Dao, for example, where my grandmother and granduncles had been born, and the Ben Luc Bridge, not far from the famous Nhat Tao River where the French warship, Espérance, had been set on fire by a local hero, Nguyen Trung Truc. It was Truc, my father quoted to us, who, before his execution by the French in 1868, had made the inspiring statement, “As long as grass still grows on this land, our people will continue to fight against foreign invaders.”
We entered Black Hill (Go Den), which was well known for its glutinous rice wine, called ruou de, and passed through Can Duoc province, which contained Rung Sac – the strategic jungle of the Nationalist forces during the two wars. Finally, we reached National Route 1, heading directly for Sai Gon.
Before we got to central Sai Gon itself, I was overwhelmed by the endless number of shops, businesses, and restaurants along both sides of a wide and long boulevard. Each had a large name sign over its entrance in both Vietnamese and Chinese. “This is Chinatown,” my father explained, “it’s called Cho Lon.” The closer we got to the centre of Sai Gon, the more imposing the buildings, all in the colonial style. The people I saw on the streets were fancily dressed, far more sophisticated than even those I’d seen in the city of Can Tho. I was in awe of them. How would I ever dare speak to people like that? How would I ever survive in this huge, noisy and incredibly dusty metropolis?
At the bus station we took two cyclos and headed toward Uncle Nghiem’s house. It was a thirty-minute ride, my father estimated. But as we moved off a giant truck bore down on us from the opposite direction. To this day, I don’t know how it avoided squashing us, My eyes were closed tight in sheer terror. When I opened them, the traffic was coming at us from all directions – side streets, behind us, ahead of us. I cringed every time a car or motorcycle raced past us. Then, just as we were clearing the heaviest traffic, our driver lost sight of the other cyclo and went off in the wrong direction, even though he had Uncle Nghiem’s address. Once again, I had to hold the leg of the sewing machine all the time to stop it from sliding, and once again my arm muscles went numb. By some stroke of luck, or divine intervention, my father and his cyclo driver found us again.
The two cyclos made a turn down a long and narrow road. We slowed, side by side, and my father called to us that we were almost there. I tried to calm down and not show any emotion or expression – that was my training – but I felt my throat start to constrict.
And then we were there, at Uncle Nghiem’s house, and another maid was greeting us at the entrance. She led us to the back of the house. I experienced a welling inside me, a sense that I was going to cry, or explode, or lose all control, or all of these together. Even before we reached the kitchen, I could feel grandmother’s presence. We went down a long hall lined with terra cotta tiles and I caught my first glimpse of her. There she was, standing at the kitchen counter, a large spoon in one hand.
“Grandma!” I cried out and ran toward her.
I felt her arms around me.
“My child!”
Both of us tried to suppress our tears but how could we? I could sense her special smell. A great lump welled inside my throat.
My parents and two brothers caught up with me. Everyone started talking at once. My grandmother was in the middle of preparing a special children’s fish dish, I always referred to as “fish flowers”. She said there was ample food in the house and would make us dinner. Mother offered to help and we all sat together at the table – the first time in six years!
And, ah, what a meal! My grandmother had prepared a memorable meat loaf of minced pork, beaten eggs, anchovies, onions, and spices. She served it with steamed rice, bowls of fresh vegetables. There was fresh fruit of all kinds for dessert.
We never ate with Uncle Nghiem and his wife. Their dinner was delivered by a catering service every d
ay around seven-thirty – a common practice at the time in Sai Gon for working couples. Grandmother cooked all the meals for Nghiem’s two children, herself, and the maid. She and the children always had dinner at six.
I remember hearing the sound of an engine outside that evening. It was Uncle Nghiem’s motor scooter – a light blue Vespa. Nghiem himself hurried in, with a big smile, followed by his wife. Nghiem was a slightly heavier version of Nam and was wearing a dark Western suit, with a very white shirt. His wife, a chubby woman with a bobbed haircut, wore a body-hugging Western-style dress and high heels. She was fashion conscious and I would never see her in the traditional Vietnamese ao dai. She greeted my mother, studied her from head to toe, then surveyed the rest of us. She obviously saw us as country bumpkins, beneath her own class. In fact from that point on, she rarely spoke to us.
It was only after dinner that I found myself alone with my grandmother. “Can I sleep with you tonight, Grandma?” I asked.
She smiled at me.
“Well,” she said, “if that’s what you want, I think you should get ready for bed now.”
Her bedroom was behind the living room. I was exhausted and fell asleep immediately on her bed. When I woke up it was pitch dark – about four in the morning. I began to cry softly – tears of relief which my grandmother heard. She turned, held me in her arms, and wept herself.
The next morning I took Trung outside to play with Uncle Nghiem’s two daughters. In the backyard I saw a cluster of iron pipes and asked the maid what it was. She said that it was to pump water from under the ground. I was amazed at the crystal clear water and wondered how deep the hidden well was. A few yards from the pipes was a golden bamboo hedge at least ten metres long, dividing the land between Nghiem’s house and a neighbour’s. On the sides of the house were wooden fences. Nghiem’s and most other houses in the area were made of stucco in the French style, with red tile roofs and French doors and windows. I wondered if my father could ever afford anything like this.