Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

  On the way, she met my neighbours, Mrs Buoi and Mrs Troi. From the look on her face, they could tell what it was all about, before Nu could get her words out, “We’ve both passed!” They were so excited. My grandmother and I joined them in the celebrations. I may now have become the object of much resentment to my mother, but to the residents of Xom Gieng I was a star. Rare honour had just come to our poor neighbourhood.

  I wrote a long letter to Uncle Nam, now based in Sai Gon. We met. He was thrilled by my achievement. He suggested that I move into his house to live, the sooner the better. He talked to my parents the following day, saying he’d be happy to support me in the remaining year of high school and then at university.

  My mother didn’t show any strong reaction in front of Nam. My father said the decision would be entirely mine. Grandmother simply glanced at me quietly with a knowing smile.

  When Nam had gone, my mother refused to speak to me.

  That night, after packing, I was too excited to sleep. I contemplated going down to talk with my mother, but I was scared she’d find some way to stop me from leaving. My grandmother was as happy as she could be for me, and my father was too, because Nam was like a brother to him. My brothers were upset at my departure but I calmed them down, promising I’d come back every week to see them and they’d be given a reward if they didn’t cry. One more night, I kept thinking, only one more night and I would be out of the oppressive household that had imprisoned me for eighteen years. In bed that night, I listened to the sound of the bamboo leaves in the sighing wind and my heart filled with joy.

  After midnight, while everyone slept, I moved noiselessly around the attic room, making sure everything I was leaving behind was in its place and tidy. Like my grandmother, I had throughout my life been obsessed with cleanliness and tidiness. I was easily disturbed by a disordered room. I found myself standing at the little window saying goodbye to the dead soldiers – through the dark curtain of night. I went back to bed, closed my eyes, and listened to the rustling of the bamboo leaves. Thousands of soldiers on horseback appeared in my dreams, galloping up from the cemetery, marching and chanting behind Uncle Nam, the great warriors’ commander. As they galloped past, clouds of dust swirled in the wind and arrows of red flames shot into the murky sky. The fearless soldiers were advancing at twilight along the fading horizon. They were crossing a vast forest, ascending a high mountain trail, descending into the grassland, and plunging into the black sea… I woke up and wondered if that was a bad omen for my uncle and his military career.

  I arrived at Uncle Nam’s house. He introduced me to Mai, a fifteen-year old girl whom he and his wife had recently adopted. She came from the Mekong Delta. He told us we should treat each other as sisters. Mai had delicate features, with a round face, and lustrous long black hair. She would soon be starting a vocational program because, as she told me, regular school was beyond her. She was sweet and polite and always anxious to please Nam’s wife, who was a domineering force in the household. Their two sons had been sent overseas to further their education and they had no intention of returning to Viet Nam. My aunt-in-law ran a real estate business and did very well financially.

  I was driven to school each day by one of the drivers, who also took my aunt and her clients to various places in Sai Gon. Uncle Nam had a different driver who drove him to work in a jeep. In their house all telephone conversations were recorded. When I realized that one of my calls had been recorded, I never dared use it again. At the front entrance Nam kept a fully loaded gun in a small cabinet attached to the wall. He told Mai and me about this and other matters of house security but he never showed us how to use the gun.

  The prime minister and his family also lived in our compound, and our immediate neighbours were army generals and their families. As a result, access was strictly controlled. A general who lived next door was extremely wealthy. His wife resembled a giant plastic doll. They had several servants and half a dozen cars. Their children held noisy parties at least once a week. The spending habits and the food consumption in their household were to me unbelievable. Uncle Nam’s wife, by contrast, was more interested in acquiring money than spending it. She lived and dressed simply most of the time, and the household was habitually quiet except when she shouted at Mai or struck her with a broom stick.

  The house was French colonial, two storeys high. There was a flower garden in the front, and a fenced area in the back – where Nam’s wife raised a few chickens. Their bedroom and Nam’s large office were on the second floor. My bedroom was on the ground floor, a few steps away from the large dining room. The living room was furnished in the French style. The kitchen was also large. It had its own dining area. Mai’s bedroom was nearby. The floors, upstairs and downstairs, were covered in squares of colourful French tiles.

  My aunt-in-law had lent me her sewing machine and I made a pair of floral lavender curtains for my bedroom window. My bed quilt had patterns in pastel shades, lavender, green, and soft yellow, like sweet peas. I polished my desk and kept it quite tidy. The walls were white, like those in the rest of the house.

  The driver picked me up from school each afternoon and when I got home I helped Mai with housework and dinner preparation. One of us would make a big glass of fresh fruit juice and leave it in the refrigerator for Nam, when he returned from work. He rarely drank alcohol. His wife’s schedule was flexible and neither Mai nor I could predict her coming and going. At dinner, in her domineering way, she would tell us about the various money making schemes she had launched, using Nam’s power and influence in the government.

  According to Mai, her father had been an officer under Nam and had a serious drinking problem. Her mother had borrowed money from my aunt-in-law but found herself unable to repay the loan. Mai was sent to work for Nam and his wife to cancel the debt. Nam, however, cared for her like a blood relative. He changed her name and adopted her. She called him “Father” and his wife “Mother”. Although Mai felt intimidated by my aunt-in-law, she was devoted to Nam. Mai returned to her home village from time to time to visit her mother. But her life circumstances remained mysterious.

  Uncle Nam’s mother and siblings disliked his wife intensely, because she had done away with their investments. At the beginning I didn’t believe them but gradually I noticed that she had become alienated from most of them.

  One day, my aunt-in-law lost a bag containing a large amount of American dollars. That morning the driver had dropped me at school as usual, then driven her around Sai Gon to visit houses and apartments. She insisted she had left the bag inside the car. She questioned the driver again and again in an attempt to blame him. He maintained his innocence throughout. She was upset and went to see a fortuneteller but was still unable to identify the thief. Then one day I overheard her saying that my presence in the house had caused nothing but bad luck. Uncle Nam retorted that that was not an appropriate thing for her to say. She became angry with him, “You are taking sides with her again! I am so sick of all your relatives. We keep helping them but they never feel grateful to us, or for the fact that this house is their way, their only way, to heaven.” From that day on, the tension between her and me grew a thousand fold.

  Uncle Nam subsequently decided that his driver should bring me to and from school in the jeep. He and I would leave the house and I was dropped off first. When my classes finished I stayed behind to do homework until he and the driver arrived. Sometimes we would stop at a large bookstore and Nam would let me choose as many books as I wanted. Like my father, he was well read, and his tastes included military strategies, romantic novels, and humorous stories.

  Whenever my aunt was in an irritable mood, she would lash out at me, her husband, and Mai for no apparent reason. She would tell him again how much she hated his “parasitic” relatives. She punished Mai with a bamboo stick and on a few occasions she spoke ill of Mai’s mother as well. Mai would go to the backyard and weep. One day she told me that I would no longer be allowed to talk to Mai, “You two are evil girls who g
ossip behind my back.” We tried our best not to speak to each other, whether my aunt was present in the house or not. We feared that our conversations might also be recorded, like the telephone conversations.

  One morning my diary disappeared. I looked for Mai and we both stepped out to the backyard for our conversation. I asked her if she’d seen my diary. She said she hadn’t. Perhaps my aunt had taken it? But why? Mai and I went searching everywhere and finally gave up. When my aunt returned that night she was in such an unpleasant mood that I was afraid to say anything. I was upset all night and couldn’t sleep. The next evening, it was Friday, and she told me, “You should go home and see your parents this weekend.” This surprised me. She had so often discouraged me from doing just that, preferring me to stay and help Mai with the housework.

  Her driver took me home on Saturday morning. As soon as I walked in, my mother fell upon me viciously.

  “You idiot! You whore! You insulted me in your diary, didn’t you? Well, now I’m going to punish you!”

  With teeth clenched, she grabbed my hair with both hands and struck my head against the living room wall.

  “Get out! Get out of here and go live like a whore!” She screamed loud enough to make the neighbours come running. Mrs Troi and Mrs Buoi stepped between us and tried to calm my mother down. But she became all the more excited.

  “She can go and live in a whorehouse,” she shouted. “We don’t want her in this house any more! Whoring is all she’s good for!”

  I hated my mother. I hated her ugliness – ugly in every sense of the word.

  At the same time, I was so filled with resentment for my aunt. What had I done to her? She had insulted me (and Uncle Nam) and I had endured it all in silence. Why did she punish me in such a way?

  I wrote a letter to Uncle Nam, telling him I would not return. His wife wouldn’t want me there anyway. He did not abandon me. He came to see me every month and continued with his financial assistance until I started my first office job in 1971.

  I never told my relatives in the village about living at Uncle Nam’s house. I had no idea how much they knew about him. By now I had already drifted toward Nam’s political position. At school my classmates stopped mocking me. They no longer accused me of “being fed by the ARVN regime while worshipping the ghost of Communism” (An com Quoc Gia nhung tho ma Cong San). However, I felt a great deal of resentment toward the government and the treatment of its people.

  * * *

  Dai wrote and informed me that American troops had entered Truong An in July 1969. He described:

  They descended from the sky in their floral and brilliant white parachutes. As soon as they landed, one of them took out a map of the region and asked the villagers for names of all rivers and channels and where the waterways were leading to. When Mo Muoi heard news of the Americans, she was so scared and withdrew into her house, shutting the door for the entire day. Mother greeted them, however, and she asked my little brother to accompany them to the waterways and explained everything to them through their interpreter.

  Shortly after their reconnaissance trip, the combined US-ARVN troops conducted a series of raids. Two Americans who were part of the US military training team were killed during the campaign. In one of these raids, they left behind two American soldiers. The abandoned soldiers were completely lost. In their frantic effort to hide they managed to get under a huge pile of water palm leaves outside the house of Kim, the niece of Di Nam’s husband. They desperately hoped to be rescued by their fellow Americans or the ARVN force of Constance Garrison. But their hope was futile. Nobody knew about the Americans in hiding. The villagers were in deep mourning for their own losses.

  Two days after that raid, while the residents were burying their dead, some tried to return to a normal life. Kim, in her somber mood, decided to spread out the palm leaves for drying under the hot sun. While she was carefully taking each bunch of leaves out of the pile, suddenly two white human bodies emerged from underneath. Frightened, Kim dropped to her knees and landed next to the Americans. One of them tried to help her get up. While she gazed at them in terror, the Americans signaled to her not to be afraid. Each man pointed fingers at his mouth and stomach, showing his hunger. Still fearing the Americans, Kim retreated slowly and backward all the way to her kitchen hut, her eyes still staring at them. She came out of the hut with two bowls of rice and some salted fish, and purified rainwater in a large glass bottle. They were extremely thirsty and asked her for more water. So grateful to her that they bent their knees, with hands clasped in front of their chest. Kim bowed to them and made her way back to the house. Other people rushed to the scene to see the Americans. Members of the NLF arrived and quietly took them away.

  The destitute villagers tried to make the best out of every wreckage. A left-behind white parachute would be made into a mosquito net. Aunt Di Nam once commented, “The material is known for its durable quality.” Jungle green parachutes would be given to the Nationalists for camouflage purposes. US Army uniforms taken from deceased or captured Americans would also be used for deceiving the enemy during the war.

  * * *

  From the time I left Uncle Nam’s house, there was nothing I could possibly do to make peace with my mother. Punishing me and insulting my grandmother became a regular occurrence. She beat my brothers and provoked shouting matches with the wife of Bay Ca, Mrs Buoi, other neighbours, and the vendors at Ba Chieu market. They started calling her the madwoman of Xom Gieng and avoided her. One day my father, trying to calm her down, was punched up against the wall and she said awful things to him. He did not strike back. Instead, he said, “For the way you behave toward others, one day, in your old age, you will be confined to your deathbed and your mouth will rot.”

  We did not know to what extent my mother’s earlier head injury had affected her personality, and no one could explain her habitual use of obscene language. My two maternal aunts, despite their lack of formal education, had never spoken a profane word in their lives. Sadly, my mother’s pattern of behaviour persisted right through her life and alienated all her children from her.

  I thought about running away from home for good. I could not endure the home life any longer. Where would I go and where would I live? An obvious path at the time, one which a good number of young women had taken, was to become a bargirl, a prostitute. In a world in which people were committing horrendous crimes and atrocities every day, and when the war was tearing our whole society to shreds, there were worse things than living the life of a prostitute. Or so I told myself. The only danger, if I took up that path, would be to succumb to venereal disease. Granduncle Cuong had been a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases. My grandmother used to tell me that Cuong’s patients had included prostitutes catering to French soldiers. The same was happening now among the bargirls serving American soldiers. But wasn’t life full of risk and danger anyway?

  I started preparing myself emotionally and mentally to become a bargirl. I felt that in order to move on with my own life I would have to turn my back on the past, severing all old ties with those I loved. The prospect frightened me. I feared the new and the unknown. I thought of carrying a venereal disease for life and how I would suffer from it. I thought of my grandmother and her concern and distress over me. What of all the lessons she had taught me, all her efforts to educate me from our earliest days in the village? I loved her dearly. How could I bring myself to betray her?

  After many sleepless nights, I reluctantly decided to make one – just one – last attempt to resume my studies, less for my own sake than for those I loved and cared about – my grandmother, my father, my friend Nu, and Uncle Nam. The diary came up now and then and my mother always used it as an excuse to punish me. I questioned my own judgment for having written diaries, any diary at all, and decided to shred the remaining ones before burning them. But I would not forget the very last entry, which I had written during that anguished night in the attic.

  Late night alone, next to the dim kerosene light<
br />
  I try so hard to read, but my mind is not at peace

  Angry muttering curses are ringing in my ears

  I could not stop thinking about the life of bargirls. I imagined myself as one of them. More freedom. More independence. More danger.

  MEETING THE AMERICANS

  Next year we are to bring the soldiers home

  For lack of money, and it is all right

  Places they guarded, or kept orderly

  Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly

  Philip Larkin

  June 1970, Year of the Dog. We were busy studying for the Second Baccalaureate exams. One afternoon, while traveling in a cyclo, my classmate, Phuong, was hit by a US Army jeep. The lower half of her white ao dai was soaked in blood and she became unconscious. The Vietnamese police had been called to the scene, and they wrote down the name of the American driver – Steven H. Sullivan, and his jeep’s number. They let him go and took Phuong to the nearby Vietnamese hospital.

  I rushed to the hospital. Phuong was bundled up in white cloths, and looked as if she was in a coma. After three days, she was still in a deep sleep. I went with her family to see the head of the intensive care unit. The doctor, with a somber look, invited us to sit down, and he informed us, “Her bladder has been damaged. It’s a serious injury.” Phuong’s mother asked the doctor, “Is she going to live, doctor?”

  After a moment of reluctance, the doctor said, “We will do all we can, the best we can. But…we can’t guarantee that she is going to make it.”

  At that, Phuong’s mother burst into tears. And so did I. Although we had felt that Phuong’s condition might be very serious, we still hoped we had been wrong. Now the doctor’s statement confirmed our fear, leaving us with little hope for her recovery. After a night filled with anxiety, I got up at dawn and went to a telephone booth to call Uncle Nam. I described everything and he sounded worried. He advised me, “There is an American military hospital, just a short distance from here (the Joint-General Staff Headquarters). Do you still remember us passing by there; I pointed it out to you sometime ago?”