Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

  When all the children were playing in the back yard, I began to tell my grandmother about life in the village, about the Strategic Hamlet, the ARVN raids and how we’d nearly been killed. My mother had forbidden me to report any of this to my father because she was afraid that if he’d known what was really going on, he would either have forced her to leave or taken us children away from her. I had obeyed her. But now, for the first time, I had someone I could tell, someone I could trust, someone close to me who hadn’t been there. That day, and in the nights that followed, the stories came pouring out of me.

  She heard me out, mostly in silence, as I recounted the years, still unable to control the tears of relief, joy, and sorrow. The important thing, she now kept reassuring me, was that I would be perfectly safe in Sai Gon. I was no longer in a war zone. I should have no fear of death. And beyond that, she and I would not be separated again. And my dear father would be living with me every day from now on. And I would be going to a city school, a much better one.

  In her mind, she told me, she already imagined me becoming a wonderfully educated young woman.

  “You’re twelve and you’re beginning a totally new life, Hoa Lai!” she said.

  And I believed her. It was a dream come true – a dream beyond all expectation.

  CITY LIFE

  “For a young woman to really achieve self-rule and self-protection, she needs a careful educational regime, less she fall quickly into the pits of decay and subjugation”

  Pham Quynh

  When the French invaded Viet Nam to begin their century of domination, Sai Gon was known to them as Fôret des Kapokiers, or the Forest of the Kapok Trees. The kapok produced a silky down, known as silk-cotton, and was used as stuffing or insulation in the tropics. For centuries, Sai Gon simply meant “fields of silk-cotton trees”.

  When I arrived, Sai Gon no longer had the lovely stands of white silk-cotton trees I had imagined. It was filled with impressive colonial buildings, strange and sophisticated people, bustling traffic jams, and unremitting noise. There was no doubt in my mind that these people were rich and Uncle Nghiem was one of them.

  Nghiem’s house had a small flower garden in the front – with a huge hibiscus bush at one corner, laden with lustrous red blossoms. I was tempted to pick them but didn’t dare, imagining that Nghiem’s unfriendly wife would be angry. One morning, I stepped out into the garden, held a hibiscus blossom and smelled it. To my surprise, it had no fragrance and I lost interest. Later I told my grandmother about my disappointment and she said, “That is just like a girl without a proper education.”

  My father had been living in a small apartment located between the Joint-General Staff Headquarters and the US Army hospital. After a few days at Uncle Nghiem’s house, father found a house to rent for us. It was a tiny wooden house, built on stilts, immediately above a muddy swamp filled with beds of water-spinach, yellow lilies, waterweeds, and families of snails and frogs. There were fish and tiny silver shrimp. Poor children caught them in little nets while trudging through the mud. The muddy scent of the swamp reminded me of our water-lily pond in the village. The way to the stilt-houses neighbourhood from the main road was via a long, narrow, twisted dirt path. At the crossroads was a carpenter’s workshop where men in patched shirts and shorts toiled during the long day, sweating in the heat and dust. The smell of sawdust was reminiscent of Uncle Phan’s.

  Nghiem’s wife was happy when we moved out but when she realized that my grandmother was going with us she became very upset. Not that she deigned to speak a word of it to us. Grandmother had been looking after their two daughters exceptionally well. From now on Nghiem and his wife would have to do without her. Too bad. That day – the day my grandmother packed her belongings – I was quiet as a mouse yet my heart and mind were filled with great excitement and happiness.

  We moved into our new house and my father sorted out our sleeping arrangements. He bought an attractive camp-bed with green canvas for my grandmother and a big wooden bed for the rest of us. He also purchased a nice wooden cabinet with a lock and gave the key to my mother. On the same day, I went with him to his apartment to help pick up his belongings. We walked up to a two-and-a half storey building near a stretch of shops. He lived on the top floor and to reach it we had to enter a Buddhist meditation room – open for the public, he told me. His possessions were packed in two suitcases. He also had a small table, a short-wave radio and an electric fan.

  Not long after we moved into our new house my mother gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, whom my father named Hau, meaning Generous. He was the first one in our family to be born in a hospital.

  Uncle Nam offered to lend my parents enough money to buy a better house but they refused. Neither seemed much bothered about not having “a better house.” The stilt house, to them, for the time being, was not that bad. I myself was all too conscious of how poor it was, even more so when I began to make friends.

  Father sent me to a one-room school in the neighbourhood and when Nam learned about it he was most displeased. Didn’t my father intend to send me to a better school later in the year? My father assured him this was only a temporary arrangement and that he was planning to eventually send me to a proper district school.

  My classmates were very nice to me. They were from the same neighbourhood and all poor. I had textbooks for the first time. My teacher though was a strange and mean-spirited creature, whose eyes had a wicked gleam when he looked at little girls. He would call girls up to his desk and he would try to get his hands inside their clothing and fondle them. When he did this to me I told my grandmother. She flew into a fury and never allowed me to return there again.

  My father registered me at another school, a much bigger one next to Ba Chieu market, with multiple levels and a small, treeless yard. My class had a hundred students, boys and girls, with one teacher, Mrs Chau. She looked fragile and had a whispering voice. Often she had to shout at the students because of the noise they made. Mrs Chau had particular problems disciplining the boys in the back rows. I felt completely lost there and was afraid of the boys. I sat quietly and listened, but most of the time I could not hear or understand what the teacher was saying.

  I was fearful of everything on the hectic streets near the school and began to feel homesick for my village. I missed the country paths, the rivers, the paddy fields, the buffaloes, the water palms, the wilderness, and above all, the tranquility.

  My classmates talked about me behind my back and ridiculed the way I stumbled in shoes, not knowing I’d had a lifetime of going barefoot. They mocked my hairstyle, a basic ponytail typical in rural villages.

  I did poorly in school and told my grandmother that going to school made me ill. My mother said the solution was simple: there was no need for me to attend school at all. “Don’t you already know how to read and write?” she said disparagingly. One evening my grandmother took me aside and said, “My child, we are indeed very poor and we may have to eat the earth to survive. However, your father expects you to be at school. He believes education is the greatest gift of all and he wants you to have it. It will last you for life. Money won’t.”

  My father went to see his aunt, Di Ha, the principal of a prestigious high school for girls in central Sai Gon. Di Ha arranged for me to attend an elite elementary school for girls near our area. This school was named after the famous battle of Chi Lang, in which the Chinese had been defeated. It consisted of three separate one-storey buildings forming a U-shape, with a huge courtyard under shady phoenix trees bearing brilliant red blossoms. There was also plenty of open space to the sides and at the back of the buildings, with a long line of food stalls under a red tiled roof, with friendly hawkers.

  My teacher was an attractive lady in her late thirties. Her hair was braided and tucked neatly and elegantly at the back. Charming and pleasant as she may have appeared, she was also a tough teacher. All of the teachers were women, who wore the traditional ao dai. Students were required to wear a uniform of a white blouse and bla
ck trousers.

  I did well at the new school. My classmate, Cam Van, and I were the two top students, though I felt she was socially superior to me. Her family was well off and she had a happy home life. I went to her house but she never visited mine. The truth was that I never invited her or any of my classmates home because of my mother’s violent rages.

  Every month the teacher chose the six best in the class of 64 students and gave out honour cards, called bang danh du. Cam Van and I were invariably first and second. We were highly competitive, she being extremely good at mathematics while I often beat her at history, poetry and writing. Once I won the school’s writing contest with a story about my home village. My grandmother rewarded me with a small amount of cash and I bought a few books for myself. I kept them hidden in the attic. My mother considered reading a waste of time, only making an exception for textbooks.

  I met Uncle Nam during the Lunar New Year and he gave me a wad of bank notes – brand new bills, without folds or wrinkles. I saved it all and kept it locked away. Never before had I owned so much cash. But I didn’t realize then that the value of Vietnamese piasters would decrease rapidly due to a run-away inflation rate.

  Uncle Nam’s appointment in Tay Do province was coming to an end. He was to be transferred to Tay Ninh, closer to Sai Gon. He was to be the commander of an ARVN infantry division and would be living with his family at the Joint General Staff Headquarters in Tan Son Nhat. His wife continued to be distant toward us but I became increasingly attached to him. He was always interested in my education and my welfare. But it would be several years before I could bring myself to share with him the details of my home life and the miseries inflicted by my mother.

  In early 1964, the military regime in South Viet Nam changed its leadership again. In March that year the US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara visited Viet Nam to vow support for the new government of General Nguyen Khanh. However, in November, General Maxwell Taylor, the new ambassador to Sai Gon, urged Khanh to leave the country as the public had no confidence in him.

  The Women’s Union for the Liberation of South Viet Nam, set up in 1961 by Nguyen Thi Dinh, recruited thousands of women to join the Nationalist forces. The women used their persuasion skill to demoralize the ARVN forces. In 1964 more than forty thousand ARVN soldiers dropped their guns and deserted the army. Pleased with the outcome, Ho Chi Minh praised Dinh, “She is a heroine. There are no others in this world like her.” The Women’s Union began organizing English lessons for young women as part of their persuasion skill training. Their effort proved worthwhile, as illustrated in the following example.

  In early 1966, during the campaign “Pacification of the South”, the American military advisors in Sai Gon asked for a new army base to be built in Binh Duc, My Tho province. This was to accommodate the US Army’s Ninth Division. While the construction was under way, government troops were sent in to “flush out” Viet Cong elements. They raided the four villages twenty times, killing many civilians. Deeply angered, the villagers and the NLF planned their retaliation and quietly re-organized their local forces. In December that year, as new troops began to patrol, usually made up of both ARVN and US soldiers, they would meet minefields, booby traps and lines of pickets. The women’s army was trained to surround the harassed troops from hidden positions and to pour artillery fire into their ranks. The entrapped troops, able only to fire wildly at invisible targets, would often surrender.

  Away from the battlefield, in off-duty meetings with local women, ARVN soldiers would find themselves in subtle discussions about their loyalties. Many were persuaded to desert, or at least to avoid killing their own people. Americans were less directly susceptible, given the language barrier, but there is evidence that black American soldiers might have felt more sympathy for the cause of the local people.

  In one incident in Binh Duc, where thirty- eight Americans had been trapped, the woman NLF commander announced to the mixed group of American and ARVN prisoners, “All of you men can rest in village houses tonight. We and our men here will not harm you. In return for your own safety, you must honour this agreement and not carry out attacks on the four villages here ever again.”

  At this encounter, black soldiers had been the first ones to surrender, followed by the white soldiers. The next morning, before sunrise, all were assisted to leave the area, unarmed. The reluctant attitude of black soldiers was confirmed by Tran Van Giau, a veteran revolutionary, “On many occasions, the black soldiers refused to carry out the attacks. They would find a hidden place inside the peasant’s hut and stay there. Some even fell asleep, while the raid was going on.”

  In Tay Ninh, as soon as the presence of powerful artillery forces commanded by Uncle Nam was known, the NLF decided to strengthen their own artillery power. They appointed a second female artillery expert to the two special mobile companies in the Cao Dai temple area. Under the leadership of the two women, To Thi Hoa and Phan Thi Coi, they confronted Nam’s forces. Large numbers on both sides paid heavily with their lives. The US Army’s Junction City campaign – one of the largest campaigns during the war, would suffer heavy losses in Tay Ninh. This province had a small population but the area was strategically important to the Nationalists. Tay Ninh was the home base of the NLF throughout the American War.

  * * *

  We left the stilt house in early 1965 as my father had purchased a small house in Xom Gieng – a communal well neighbourhood. We befriended a middle-age couple who lived opposite our new house. The man sold mosquito nets, which came in various sizes and colours – white, off-white, blue, pink, lavender… One day I told him, “I’d love to have a lavender net, so when I have the money I will buy one from you.” When my grandmother heard about this, she went to him and asked, “Can we trade one of my china pieces for a net?” The man was thrilled. I loved the beautiful net, not realizing that the man had gotten a fantastic deal from my grandmother. Later he bought a few of her precious china bowls with cash. She had managed to take ten perfect pieces of the remaining china sets when she left the village in 1957. They all eventually ended up in the hands of the mosquito-net salesman.

  I recovered from asthma but started having digestion problems. My grandmother took me to a trustworthy doctor. Dr Phan Quang Dan, a Harvard trained medical doctor, who practiced in a humble clinic at Ba Chieu market. His clinic was situated on the same row as shops selling bicycles, leather goods, lighting, perfume and fine jewellery. I went to him for several years, and I was curious about his missing front teeth. Then one day he told me he had been imprisoned by the Diem regime.

  Nearby were a pharmacy, several hair salons and restaurants. The little Chinese restaurant of Mrs Troi was at the very far end, opposite the fish and meat stalls. Mrs Troi often brought home her unsold delicious steamed buns (cha siu bao) – filled with meat, egg, and vegetables – to give to my brothers and me.

  My mother did sewing for a woman who had a ready-to-wear garments stall. It was near a stretch of shops selling fabrics, bedding, lingerie, shoes, cosmetics and handicrafts.

  At the edge of the market, facing a busy street, there were six bars with decorative kiosks selling drinks to men at night. During the day the kiosks were closed. Around seven in the evening, when the rest of the market quieted down, at least a dozen young women, dressed to seduce, came on the scene and served behind the bars. Their cake-like faces with bright painted lips were glowing under neon lights. These were the bargirls.

  As the war escalated and with the arrival of American troops, the bargirls started serving American GIs, and Vietnamese men ceased to be their customers. American men spent generously at the bars. Our neighbour, Mrs Bay Ca, had a black market stall nearby, where she and her daughter, Duyen, operated late every evening. They sold American goods, which came indirectly from the commissary and the PX – electric fans, radios, televisions, cosmetics, various brands of beer, canned meat, instant coffee, shampoo, soap, paper tissues, etc. These were gifts from the GIs to local girls, who had traded them in for ca
sh.

  One rare evening I came to visit Duyen. We watched two American customers arriving at one of the kiosks. “Hi Mimi! How’s it going?” Shouted the younger soldier, as both dropped their army caps on the counter before sitting down on the high stools.

  “Bad yesterday, John, you didn’t come.” Complained the woman.

  “Oh! I am sorry. I was on duty.”

  “No sorry.” she responded, her eyes narrowing. “Drink?”

  “Sure!’ He answered eagerly.

  She turned to the other soldier, “You OK Dave? Drink?”

  Dave nodded his head. He looked sad, as if something was bothering him that evening. He wiped away the perspiration from his face and stared at the busy traffic. Before John finished his first drink, Dave had already ordered a second drink for himself. Moments later,

  John was busy flirting with Mimi. She had on a low neckline nylon blouse in red, neatly tucked inside a white miniskirt, and very high heels. She was sitting on John’s lap, winking her false eyelashes, while her hand was playing with his greasy-looking red hair. John looked up, squeezed her hip and kissed her. After he had several drinks, she whispered to him, “Stay with me tonight?” with her eyes half-closed.

  John nodded his head with a smile, “OK”. He looked tipsy. She looked happy.

  An older woman came out from the back of the kiosk and walked over to Dave. She had on more heavy makeup than the other woman, and a coarse voice,” You want young girl tonight? Honey!” Dave didn’t seem to pay attention to what she said. She bent down and said louder, “A young and beautiful girl. Look after you. Very clean.” She was the mamasan of the establishment.

  At the next kiosk, several soldiers were laughing out loud. One woman had her hand – with bright red long fingernails – on the shoulder of a very young soldier, “You Number One! Hey!” He responded with a half smile, rather reluctantly, and didn’t look up, didn’t speak. At the roadside, a group of Vietnamese soldiers travelling on motorcycles appeared, honking at the bargirls – perhaps with disapproval – as they went past.