Late Blossom

by Laura Lam

  I carried one of the photo albums into the living room and sat on the couch. In front of me was the coffee table with my pair of shoes. I took both off the table and placed them underneath.

  He came over and handed me a soft drink. He complimented me on my white silk ao dai – the misty-white one Robert had chosen. We carried on a conversation during which he asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said “no”. He seemed surprised by my answer, saying that I was beautiful and ought to have a boyfriend. The conversation led to the subject of dating, sex, and marriage. I told him that the Vietnamese custom was for a bride to be a virgin. He laughed, Americans, he said no longer believed in such outdated ideas. He told me that his son had married a woman who had already had a child out of wedlock. I asked, “Did they have a wedding ceremony?” “Yes,” he replied. I told him that this would not have been possible in my country.

  “Well”, he said, “there’s no need for an American girl to remain a virgin before marriage. Girls are supposed to have a good time too.”

  I didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken, so I picked up the photo album. He leaned over, pointing out who was who. Then he put his hand on my shoulder, his other hand pointed at a photo of his son. I took his hand off my shoulder and moved slightly away from him.

  “Sorr -- ee!” he said, emphasizing the word as if to suggest that I was overreacting and that he was simply being friendly. “No,” I said awkwardly, as though I were the one who had been at fault. This was my superior after all, my big boss, not some doctor I’d run into in the hospital. Certainly George wouldn’t be so foolish as to harm me or to do anything against my wishes, especially when I’d just explained the Vietnamese custom to him.

  I still felt uneasy. I closed the album and stood up, saying to him, “It’s time to go to the restaurant!”

  He said he hadn’t yet drunk his beer.

  I sat down again on the edge of the couch to wait, while George was half-reclined now, and seemingly relaxed, he gazed up at me. I watched him down his beer. Then I stood up again.

  “We should go now,” I said to him politely. With a sudden movement he reached out and, grabbing me by the forearm, pulled me to him and tried to kiss me. I grabbed his head and banged it against the back of the couch. Then I made an effort to run out of the apartment.

  I beat him to the front door but he had locked it. I pulled at the doorknob, holding onto it as he tried to pull me free. “I won’t hurt you! I won’t hurt you!” He kept repeating. I started banging on the door, still holding onto the doorknob, praying that his neighbours would hear me. But there was no response.

  I ran past him, away from him, searching desperately for another escape route. I raced past his bedroom. The only window I could jump from was in his bathroom, directly above the front entrance hall to the building. I tried to climb up from the bathtub but he caught hold of me, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me down into the tub and tearing one side of my dress. I was screaming by then, but there was no one to hear me.

  He dragged me to the next room and threw me onto the bed. I kicked and fought, but my struggling only excited him even further.

  I found myself pinned by the weight of his body. The thing between his legs terrified me. I bit my lip and closed my eyes. A sharp pain suddenly pierced me like a sword. I burst into tears.

  Finished. Over.

  He had torn my dress away below the waist. In shock and halffainting, I called out Robert’s name.

  He lifted his body off the bed. I ached all over and could not get up. I opened my eyes and saw him sitting in a corner.

  He was holding his head in his hands.

  “God, I’m sorry,” he kept saying. But he also said, “How come there was no blood, baby?”

  What was he implying? That I wasn’t a virgin? I said nothing, then slowly made my way into the bathroom. I cleaned myself again and again with soap and water but the smell of his semen filled my nostrils. I felt nauseated. In a daze, I filled half of the tub with hot water and eased myself into it. I had never before used so much soap to wash myself as I did that night, but the smell still wouldn’t go away. I dried myself then looked for pins to hold my dress together at the waist. I walked back into the bedroom and gathered up my belongings. I couldn’t find one of my earrings.

  “Please let me take you home,” he said.

  “No thank you,” I replied. “If Robert were here, he would shoot you in the head.”

  “Who’s Robert?” he asked, puzzled.

  I opened the now unlocked door and walked out of the apartment.

  When I got home that night I went straight up to the attic. There I sat motionless until past two in the morning. Only then did I lie down, and only then did the tears flow onto my pillow. I was now dirty, useless, a piece of garbage. George may have announced triumphantly that there had been no blood, but I myself knew that I had been a virgin until that evening. Robert had never touched me there, nor so much as seen me naked. In my half-awake state, I cried out, “My dear Robert, my beloved, I am now destroyed.”

  My closest friend at work, Lan, tried her best to comfort me. Physically ill, I forced myself to go to the office every day, as there was no comfort to be found at home. I was only twenty-one but I believed that I had just endured the ultimate painful and humiliating experience and that all my aspirations had been shattered.

  * * *

  I folded the misty-white ao dai and trousers and wrapped them inside a piece of newspaper. It was a crescent moon night – shortly after midnight, when I slipped out of the back door and stole quietly into the silent cemetery. Kneeling on the ground between two graves, I carefully placed the package down and lit it with a match. Yellow flames burst out, rising, like a cry of defiance. The flickering flame withered and diminished. No trace of silk was left. A gust of wind blew the misty smoke and the grey ash away.

  Returning to bed that night, in my dreamlike state, I saw images of Robert again. Virginity, a traditional Vietnamese virtue, had been a central component of my identity. Strong cultural taboos and years of influence from people I loved and respected had made it sacrosanct, even in times of severe poverty and war, even under the powerful forces of real love. Forced to give it up for a crude and unworthy man, I now fell apart. I had lost a central defining aspect of who I was. My behaviour became erratic and totally contradictory.

  I still do not fully understand it, and remembering it now makes me shudder with shame, but my partial and deliberate reconciliation with the man who had violated me is an undeniable fact. Putting it in its simplest form, I needed help to keep my family from starvation, and who else did I know?

  About a week after the event, I received a package from George at my office, delivered by messenger. In it was a letter from him, apologizing for his behaviour, and a large bottle of Chanel No 5. I threw the box in my office drawer and later gave the perfume to Lan.

  A few days later, he arrived at the office for a meeting. At first his eyes avoided me, though from time to time I was aware of him glancing surreptitiously at me. Before leaving he handed me something.

  It was another letter, again apologizing.

  It was Lan who put the idea into my head that I should make George pay for it by becoming his mistress and demanding support from him. In our culture, if a girl is raped by someone the family knows, she would end up marrying him, as no one else would want her. Psychologically this would also help reduce the effect of the trauma. By becoming George’s mistress I would at least help my family. Lan and I agreed that, after first dating Robert and now having been raped by George, I had become a symbol of shame.

  Over the succeeding weeks my worries for my family overcame my rage. I decided to make him pay. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. There was a great deal more pain and misery elsewhere, I said to myself. My mind returned to an earlier sermon by Sister Huynh Lien, in which she reminded us, “Life is an ocean of suffering.” When I considered my own tragedy, I considered relatives risking brutal torture, having ser
ious wounds treated without anaesthetic, living on starvation diets in the steaming jungles, and being shot and left to die in the battlefield. I thought of the anguished mothers in the village not knowing the whereabouts of their children, and those grieving for the dying loved ones.

  My trauma looked trivial in comparison. I was still alive. Despite much anger, I had to move on, however limited my options were.

  George again asked me to dinner at the French restaurant we were supposed to have gone to previously. I made it clear to him that I would not eat with him there. And because I wanted him nowhere near my neighbourhood, I went to his apartment. He kept his distance, and we chatted coolly. He asked if he could take a photograph of me. That picture still speaks eloquently of my resentment.

  Perhaps it was inexperience at business matters that thwarted me but when I tried to explain that my family was in great need, there seemed to be no way in which I could turn his remorse into an agreement to help. He was evasive, deliberately not understanding. He even seemed to reject the idea that he had done anything wrong. There had been no blood, he argued, so what really was he guilty of?

  So, without commitment from him – other than claims that he was seriously interested in me and hints that he might divorce his wife – we drifted into a relationship of convenience. Love was out of the question and his part of the unspoken bargain was always a matter of hope on my part. During the two years I was with him he gave me a desk clock, some fancy underwear and two woolen blankets.

  And the apples.

  One day he gave me a bag of apples. I took them home for my brothers. They decided the apples were too precious to eat and sold them to the wife of Bay Ca, who then re-sold them at her black market stall. When I told George, he said that every month he would give me ten American dollars worth of apples as an allowance.

  I was contemptuous – even a former bargirl I knew got a substantial cash allowance each month from her American man. But George insisted that he wasn’t earning enough money to support a mistress in Sai Gon and a wife and a young daughter in Virginia. Abjectly, I took whatever he gave me.

  Trying to make sense of how I came eventually to move in with him, all I can say is that I found comfort, time, and space for myself in his spacious apartment. The contrast with living conditions at home was dramatic. He worked late most evenings and I had plenty of quiet time for myself. Dieu Thai and Phuong came to visit me often. In addition, whereas I had started in the accounting department at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month, after my transfer to the Advisory Board this was increased to fifty dollars a per month, of which I gave twenty to my family, as well as the ten dollars we got for the apples. It cost me virtually nothing to live with George. I was able to save most of what was left over each month. Some years later part of my savings would be added to my father’s to remodel our house in Xom Gieng.

  I could get along with George tolerably well but I never in any way connected to him emotionally. When he went back to America on leave to see his family, I began to look for a way out of the relationship. My sense of self-worth was slowly re-surfacing.

  * * *

  Wallace, a young American lawyer who lived next door to George and who didn’t like him, invited me to a dinner party at his place while George was away. I was introduced to his bachelor friend Jerry. Jerry was from New Jersey and at that time was working for the American Management Association. His assignment in Viet Nam was only for six months. He had about four months left. Jerry was very tall, with a handsome face and a happy personality. He told me that he had a girlfriend back home, but didn’t give the impression that he was passionately committed to her. I found myself attracted to him. We fell in love.

  I asked Jerry how he could love two women at the same time. He answered, “I’ve realized that I love her like a sister. It’s certainly not the same kind of love that I have for you.” He wrote a long letter to his mother, telling her about me, enclosing two large photographs of me that he had taken. He was waiting for her approval. I sent his mother a pair of lilac-blue hand-embroidered linen cushion covers and a short note. He wrote to the girlfriend and suggested ending the relationship. Not long after that Jerry showed me a letter from his American girlfriend. It was angry and explosive, threatening that she was going to burn down his apartment in New Jersey, where she was living while waiting for his return.

  Jerry’s mother advised him to maintain his relationship with the American girlfriend. She didn’t think it would be wise for him to marry a Vietnamese. Jerry, though, didn’t listen to either of them. He wanted to go ahead with an engagement to me. I introduced him to my parents and Uncle Nam and we talked about marriage. At Nam’s house, when we were invited for dinner, his wife said to Jerry she sold diamonds and jade and that he should consider ordering a diamond engagement ring for me. Giving a diamond ring was a Vietnamese custom for marriage. Most Vietnamese women, rich or poor, wear only real gold or precious stones if they wear any jewellery at all.

  Jerry paid Nam’s wife a deposit for a good-sized diamond. I would have preferred something much smaller. Marrying him was much more important than any ring itself. I felt that Nam’s wife was forcing him into it in order to make a sale.

  After our engagement Jerry took me to Dalat in the Central Highlands – also known as the City of Eternal Spring, for a week’s holiday. We went by plane – only an hour’s flight, but it was my first time traveling by air. Dalat is a favourite honeymooning spot. Under the French colonial regime it was called Le Petit Paris. Daily temperature ranges from fifteen to twenty-four degrees Celsius, offering a welcome respite from the extreme heat of Sai Gon and the Mekong Delta. The skies are sunny most of the year and the beautiful small city is set among evergreen forests dotted with lakes and waterfalls, including the legendary Lake of Sighs (Ho Than Tho), and the famous romantic valley known to the French earlier as Vallée d’Amour. During the American War there was mutual agreement between Ha Noi and Sai Gon to spare Dalat from the ravages of war.

  We came back to Sai Gon, The pressure from Jerry’s girl friend and his mother increased. The mother worried that Jerry would find ways to renew his assignment in Viet Nam. She feared for his life in what she called “a war zone”. The American girlfriend worried that he might simply show up in New Jersey with me. Jerry insisted that he wanted to marry me, but said he would have to go home first to sort things out.

  Before he left Sai Gon, he asked if I would go for a physical examination to determine whether I was pregnant. “If you are,” he said, “then I promise I will do everything I can to build our lives together.” I now realized that a pregnancy could win me a marriage and was afraid to see the doctor in case I wasn’t pregnant. I stalled until after he’d gone. I thought my belly was growing, but to my great disappointment, my period came two weeks late.

  I didn’t tell Jerry. I worried that he might change his mind because I wasn’t pregnant. I continued to receive letters from him. He said he was trying to return to Sai Gon and began sending me money through the Bank of America. I don’t know whether he thought I was pregnant when he decided to send the money, but in case he did, I left it untouched. Ironically, the Bank of America pulled out of Viet Nam before the end of the war and I was never able to touch the money. In the chaos of those days, the bank book remained in my office desk drawer.

  George returned to Sai Gon and learned that I was seeing another American and much younger. He was mad but tried to reconcile with me. I agreed to see him briefly and occasionally – a tactical as well as moral mistake on my part. One evening, while dining with George at a restaurant in the city centre, I ran into Humphrey, a friend of Jerry, who had agreed to keep an eye on me. Here I was with another man. And obviously I wasn’t pregnant. We didn’t say much but I sensed the disapproval in Humphrey’s eyes. Whether he wrote Jerry about this encounter or whether the pressure of his mother and girlfriend won out I can’t say. I never heard from Jerry again.

  I went to see Uncle Nam’s wife to ask her for the deposit o
n the ring. She refused. My father went to see her himself. She refunded a small fraction of a quite substantial deposit.

  To escape the level of discomfort at my parents’ house, I returned to George’s apartment. My apples allowance went up to twelve dollars a month. He decided to move into a different apartment and the new one came with a maid, a sixty-year-old woman, Mother Chin. At the previous apartment, George had had a maid who only came twice a week, but stingy as he was, he liked Mother Chin and agreed to hire her full time.

  When we were introduced, one of her first questions was blunt and direct, “Hoa Lai, you are an office girl. Why are you carrying on a relationship with this man?” I couldn’t answer but later when a good friendship developed between us, I was able to tell her the whole truth. From then on she became as protective of me as if she were my mother. She tried to get George to give me a proper monthly allowance but he just cut her off with a sarcastic laugh.

  In mid-1973 he informed me that his three-year contract had ended. He started packing up his belongings and gave me two woolen blankets (which he had rarely used) as a sort of bonus from our two-year relationship. He said he would try to find a new contract and hoped to return to Viet Nam the following year. I knew he was leaving Viet Nam for good. He was an obstacle to any other relationship I might have so I was pleased. For the last month of my allowance, he gave me nearly double the quantity of apples, worth about twenty American dollars. It was a rainy day when I left George’s apartment with my bag of clothing. He had already shipped all his belongings to Virginia weeks before. Neither of us shed any tears at that farewell. I

  was now absolutely certain that I would not have a future with a man from my own country. No Vietnamese man would have much respect for me and for what I had done.