Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

  My body ached all over, and though wretchedly tired, I was unable to sleep that night. Anger was boiling inside me.

  I never wore the purple dress again.

  * * *

  Life went on, cruelty or no cruelty. I had no choice but to work alongside my mother. One day, at her sewing machine with me squatting on the floor, trying to hand-stitch the hemline of a blouse, there came a moment when the sewing machine stopped. A voice outside was asking which was our house. I looked up and saw a fragile old man in dark clothes, his face partially covered by a conical straw hat. Behind him was a boy, looking amazingly like my cousin Thanh. Next to them was a cyclo driver.

  I went to the door.

  “Could that be you, Thanh?” I said.

  It was. He recognized me immediately. Holding the old man’s arm, he gently guided him toward our house. The poor man was limping and could barely walk. He glanced up, and for a shocking moment my mind registered the possibility that this was Uncle Muoi. But his eyes were protruding and he seemed to have lost his sight.

  “Father kept asking me to bring him to Sai Gon to see you,” Thanh said. “So here he is.”

  My mother was standing next to me. At his words, both of us went suddenly numb. Neither of us could speak. Thanh handed me two live chickens, then walked to the cyclo and lifted out a large bag of rice. All were gifts to us from Uncle Muoi.

  Thanh supported Uncle Muoi up the steps. I put my arm out to help him to the wooden divan near the sewing machine. Pushing the sewing to one corner. I invited Uncle Muoi to sit down. He hadn’t said a word.

  My mother’s eyes filled with tears. She asked Thanh, “What happened? What happened to your father?”

  Thanh looked down at his feet and said in a weak voice, “He has been badly tortured. He nearly died. Terrible.”

  Then I whispered, “Where?”

  “At Constance Garrison first, then at a torture centre, then in Thanh Chau prison.”

  My eyes were smarting, my head spinning. Uncle Muoi stayed mute. Our eyes flooded with tears, like silent rain. When I lifted my head and looked toward Uncle Muoi, he was still silent. By this time Thanh had removed his conical hat. I saw the face of an old man – a dying old man.

  “Uncle, would you like some tea?” He nodded.

  I said, “And then would you like to lie down for a rest?”

  He nodded again.

  My mother sat by him. I went into the kitchen to boil water for tea. I added some ginger candies on a tea tray and placed it on the divan. Thanh was sitting on the floor, legs folded. I sat next to him and asked him about his mother and other relatives in the village. He said that they were all “fine”.

  Thanh later told us ARVN soldiers had been in the middle of celebrating Tet, eating and drinking, when the NLF launched an attack. Assisted by villagers, the Nationalists encircled Constance Garrison, taking the ARVN totally by surprise. Fighting went on for four weeks. During this period my maternal relatives cooked hot meals around the clock and secretly organized emergency care for NLF soldiers.

  A local Phoenix Program’s agent had informed on Uncle Muoi and he was arrested and interrogated at Constance Garrison. Uncle Muoi was charged with spying for the Viet Cong while holding his position as hamlet chief. His captors held him in a cell at the Garrison and every night brought him to Constance School for interrogation and torture. Unable to get any information from him, they transferred him to a notorious torture centre in a village near Thanh Chau, where he was subjected to even more severe forms of torture. They hanged him upside down and forced liquid lime into his nose. They beat him until he was unconscious and blood spilled out from his mouth and nose. After a month in the torture centre they still couldn’t get a word out of him. He was then transferred to a prison in Thanh Chau where they applied electricity to both sides of his forehead and charged it until his eyes popped out of their sockets.

  The local authorities raided his house and threatened his family. Mo Muoi and the children escaped to another village. In hiding, she looked for ways to get Uncle Muoi out of prison. With help from relatives, she managed to come up with a large sum of money and bribed the town police. Uncle Muoi, now a pile of broken bones, was released. When his wife went to get him in Thanh Chau, she saw large numbers of inmates in the prison compound, both male and female. Some were awaiting execution. Uncle Muoi had been kept in a dark and tiny cell. His daily diet had consisted of two small bowls of rice dotted with slivers of dried fish. When she came to collect him, he was lying on the concrete floor, unconscious. His crushed hands were bleeding, his feet were bound with iron chains.

  We kept Uncle Muoi inside throughout his visit. We told no one. My mother and he had their deepest conversations at night, when everyone was asleep. Later she said to me, “Walls have ears.” My parents were afraid to send him for treatment at a hospital lest we too would be persecuted by the regime. The risk was too great. My mother swallowed resentment and bitterness as she nursed her brother and witnessed his suffering. My father came home from work in a sombre mood. He would find a corner, often in the tiny living room, where he sat alone and in silence for a long time. His eyes and his overall expression revealed his intense agony. He would lie in bed with his right arm across his forehead and in the night would get up and pace noiselessly around the room. One evening my brother Nhan crawled into the bed with him. He stretched out his arm blindly to hold him, without even looking at the child. There were tears in my father’s eyes and I knew he was in great pain. I had seen him weep only once before, back in the village, when my grandmother told him I had missed him terribly and how much I had suffered during his long periods of absence.

  Uncle Muoi stayed only three days. It was his first and last trip to the capital. Putting the conical straw hat on his head was a struggle for him. His trembling hands were just skin and bones. He was thirty-nine but looked more than double his age. He said goodbye to my mother and me, “Having seen you all, I am now happy to die.”

  These last words stayed lodged in our hearts and minds. And in truth he did die, shortly after returning to Truong An. Like my cousin Dzung, he was buried without a funeral, and in an unmarked grave.

  We went into profound grief and mourning. I returned to Ngoc Phuong temple to see the Mother Superior. My mother refused to go to any temple for help, though, and for months afterwards she wept in desolate silence.

  Meanwhile, the calm passivity of my father made me wonder about his political beliefs. The influence of my maternal relatives had stopped when I was twelve, on moving to Sai Gon. I was now a citizen of the ARVN regime and had absorbed its education and political viewpoints. All the media I had been exposed to was strictly controlled by the government. No conflicting views were allowed to get through. I was a long way from the world of Uncle Muoi. But he was my very dear uncle and we all loved him. The treatment of him in captivity and the continued suffering of people in my village now devastated me. I wasn’t able to sleep for weeks afterwards. Night after night I was torn between the two opposing forces. I was walking on a rough road and did not know which way to turn.

  * * *

  Dai informed us by letter that following the death of Uncle Muoi the authorities at Constance Garrison ordered his widow to cut down the poon tree. They said the tree had been a shelter for the Viet Cong, hiding them from helicopters. In an area so full of jungles, this order was clearly made out of spite, against a family they could not bring under control.

  UNCLE NAM’S HOUSE

  For secrets are edged tools,

  And must be kept from children

  And from fools.

  John Dryden

  While my family was secretly mourning the tragic death of Uncle Muoi, we appeared to fit in reasonably well with the current political system. We were in regular contact with my paternal relatives who were pro-American and who had successfully advanced within the Sai Gon regime. Meanwhile, my father had become a senior staff member in the Ministry of Transportation. He traveled regularly with th
e task of improving and maintaining waterways in the southern provinces.

  My mother’s violent outbursts made life increasingly miserable for all of us. But I had my paternal grandmother as my guide and confidante. It was she who comforted me in times of trouble and crisis. By the end of 1968 two significant events occurred. First, the beginning of my monthly period, and second, the revealing of the astrological chart my father had drawn for me at the time of my birth. Several of my friends, especially Nu, were intrigued that my period had started so late. They were equally intrigued by the forecast of my future.

  My paternal grandmother had kept the astrological scroll all those years. The analysis contained the first sixty-years of my life, divided into three stages, with a summary at the end. During the first stage, I was to suffer “a hellish time”. But, my mental strength would be “as tough as steel” in the second stage. And during the third, I would enjoy “prosperity and success, even honour”. It prophesied that I was not supposed to live in the household of my biological parents. It also predicted I would seek “wealth” far away from the country of birth. On the subject of love and marriage, it foretold, “a hard lot, a great tragedy” up to my third life stage, when I would marry a man of distinction. The reading concluded with the phrase, “This subject will blossom late.”

  I told my grandmother it was too late for me to be adopted by another family, and that the only way for me to get out of the family home would be through marriage. However, I wasn’t ready to get married. I certainly didn’t want to be married if I was going to have such a tragic time of it. The love-life aspect troubled me greatly. Why should it be a tragedy? Should I believe in it? What about the fact that I had been born in a red sac?

  I showed Uncle Nam the astrological reading. He studied it, then assured me I would have a great future, regardless of circumstances. He told me not to waste time worrying. On several occasions Nam had offered financial assistance to my parents, and to support me through school, but my mother had repeatedly refused.

  The previous year, when the Americans launched the Phoenix Program, Nam was transferred from Tay Ninh to the Mekong Delta. He was to command an infantry division in Bac Lieu and Ca Mau. The west side of the area he controlled faced the Jungle of Hell, and the east side was the South China Sea. He stayed in the delta until mid-1969.

  I saw Nam in Sai Gon every Lunar New Year and at other times during the year. In the summer of 1969 he invited me to live in his house while going to school. I didn’t know then that he had been heavily involved in the Phoenix Program or that his conduct of widespread terror in rural villages had earned him the label “the thug with a blood debt.” I had no idea that the NLF was determined to eliminate him.

  I continued living at my parents’ house. Once school had closed for the summer, I started preparing for the First Baccalaureate examination. The three-day comprehensive exams demanded a huge effort and a great deal of concentration. I continued selling bread at the same street corner with my brothers. Following the New Year attack on Sai Gon, the country had suffered a much higher inflation rate and my family’s financial situation had deteriorated even further. My mother was again pregnant. She told me that after the Baccalaureate examinations, whether I passed or failed, I would have to terminate all my studies. I resented the fact that she kept getting pregnant every few years. My grandmother noticed my reaction, and commented, “Every time she becomes pregnant, you become depressed.” A great many responsibilities fell on my shoulders. But my mother wanted more children to make sure that in her old age she would be well looked after. She even said to her friends, “Other families are endowed with wealth, we are endowed with children.”

  Her mood swings during the early stage of pregnancy were unbearable. I felt weighed down and imprisoned – month after month, year after year, without end. To keep going, I had to numb my feelings and turn deaf ears to her abusiveness and insults.

  While I was studying for the exams, father took some time off work to help with the care of my brothers and the household tasks. But my mother’s behaviour discouraged me to the extent that I felt like quitting and looking for a job. Nu was aware of my distress, and one day she offered to take me to an old Buddhist monk and astrologer, for advice on my education. I refused at first but in the end she succeeded in getting me there.

  The monk used an astrological text in Chinese characters. He never asked for any payment but would accept small donations if anyone wished to make one. He saw his work as a free form of counseling for the needy. Nu did not have a reading done. She feared it would influence her attitude while studying for the exam. I gave the monk my lunar birth date and family name. He studied my features, then became absorbed in meditation.

  Concerning the exams, he did some calculations, and said, “You will pass the exams with glory! So please continue with your studies as usual.” The monk asked if I had any further question and Nu answered on my behalf, “It’s wonderful that she will pass the exam, but what about her future, her marriage, dear Thay?” The monk did more calculations, and told me, “You will marry a foreigner.” I burst out laughing. “Will he be Chinese? or Cambodian? or Thai?”, I asked. He said that he couldn’t be specific. We bowed and bid him goodbye. I said if I passed the exam I would return with some flowers and joss sticks for his Buddhist shrine.

  On our way back I said to Nu, “When you asked him about marriage, he never mentioned ‘tragedy’. Maybe he didn’t want to tell me?”

  But Nu quickly explained, “It could mean that you will become a widow before you’re forty. That happened to my mother, a terrible tragedy.” Her father, I knew, had been an ARVN officer, killed in battle a few years earlier. After his death her widowed mother took her and her younger brother to live on the small farm of her maternal grandmother in a suburb near Cho Lon. ***

  All the examination rooms were closely supervised by teachers and assistants. We were searched thoroughly on entry each morning and each afternoon. Students were under tremendous pressure to achieve. Compelled to cheat, some of them wrote what they thought important on very small pieces of paper, which they hid somewhere in their belongings. If they were desperate, they would make an excuse to go to the toilet and look at their notes. If a student was caught cheating, he or she would be forbidden from retaking the examination for three years.

  For boys it was crucial to pass the First Baccalaureate. This allowed them either to enter the military academies of Thu Duc or Dalat, the sure route to becoming elite military officers, or to continue on to the Second Baccalaureate and apply to university. The strategy was to delay being drafted into the ARVN or, when they were eventually drafted, to obtain non-combat assignments. However, due to the difficulties of the exams and the extremely limited number of university places, most young men ended up being drafted directly into the ARVN.

  The three-day exams ended and we were all exhausted, physically and mentally. If I were lucky enough to pass, I would ask Uncle Nam to help me further my education. My dream was to obtain a university education eventually. But should I fail, I would look for work.

  My mother was pestering my father, “ What about introducing her to people at your work place? She may be lucky and find a secretarial job there.” My father reluctantly agreed. Another option was to do sewing full time. In her narrow view, sewing was a perfectly satisfactory way for me to earn a living, despite the fact that we were paid next to nothing for the work. I preferred to find a job somewhere else. It would not be with the Ministry of Transportation and it would never be with my mother. I said nothing about it.

  One evening my mother told me to remove all my books from the shelves on the wall, “I’ve already told you, whether you pass or fail, you will not be going to school again.”

  I stared back with a stony face.

  This angered her. “You decide now. Either you stay and the books go, or the books stay and you go.”

  My brothers started to take all the books down from the shelves. They asked me if we could sell them to
the paper-recycling woman. I managed to hide a few in the attic. The rest I carried to the house of a classmate, who later refused to return them, which ended our friendship. With the books gone, my mother found another use for the shelves. That night I entered in my diary:

  All becomes firewood, those dear shelves

  I am forbidden to read a book again

  My ears are filled with vicious cursing

  Arguing only invites more beatings

  I am a pickup truck, loaded with abuses and insults

  I no longer wanted to see the exam results. I no longer cared if I passed or failed. I lost the desire even to think about it. Meanwhile my mother insulted my grandmother for having rich and powerful relatives in the ARVN regime, again and again. The inhumane treatment of Uncle Muoi and his early death continued to enrage her, and she addressed all her anger at us. My grandmother said, “Angry at the fish, your mother strikes the cutting board.”

  Nu went to the school to find out the results but she couldn’t find me there. She saw both her name and mine on the list of those who had passed. She was overjoyed and ran all the way to my house to share the news.