Ngoại used to tell me horror stories about what happened to us if we were bad and ended up in hell. I remember lying under the covers with her at night as she recounted the scary tales of Hades. Why were these stories always told at night? My childhood home in Saigon was a large, three-story house. Its steep, dark stairs leading up to our bedrooms were never well lit due to restrictions on the use of electricity after the war. As I crept up the steps each night, I would imagine ghosts lurking in the shadows, waiting for me, and nightmares inevitably followed. I took to racing up the stairs as fast as I could to avoid the lost souls, then would run through the hallway and into the bedroom before diving under the covers. I was glad I shared my bedroom with Minh and my youngest aunt.
These horrifying stories were told to children to make them better behaved. In Grandma’s stories, people who lived vicious, nonpious, unkind lives were doomed to hell. These bad souls were cursed to live an eternity in endless hunger, pain and suffering. There were nine stages of hell and the ninth was the worst of all. Souls were tormented by the devil himself forever. One torturous game they played on the hungry souls was placing a delicious hot pot of food in front of them. Then they were given large and long spoons to scoop out the food, only to find the spoons were too long and they could not use them to shove food into their mouths. The devil had a sense of humor. If, however, they succeeded in bringing any morsels of food into their mouths, it would instantly turn into hot coals or lava and burn their throats and tongues.
Traditionally, when a person passed on we put gold or coins in their mouth before the body was cremated. When praying for their soul, we burned paper money, clothing, even houses and cars so they would have something to bribe the monsters of hell with and win better treatment. Bribery, it works everywhere!
During Hungry Ghost Festival, knowing that the gates of hell would open up for just one day to allow hungry spirits the opportunity to eat, we offered trays of rice, salt, water or candy, a process that began with burning incense. After the incense was burned, the trays were tossed onto the street for the spirits to catch, eat and enjoy. Unlike offerings placed on our ancestors’ shrines, it was deemed bad form to eat food meant for the hungry ghosts. Kids gathered all around to fight each other for the candies Grandma tossed onto the street. Minh and I were usually confined to our balcony on the second floor, where we would watch the neighborhood kids have fun, screaming, catching and scrambling around to pick up candies off the ground. Ngoại did not allow us to participate in these festivities as she deemed it inappropriate for us to scuffle around snatching up candies like common street kids. She also said the candies were touched by lost souls and would be unsafe for us to eat. Our nannies or maids slipped the candies to us on our own dishes instead. We missed out on much of the fun, but did enjoy watching other kids climb over each other for the treats. In the back of my mind, I was concerned about hurting other kids knowingly by giving them candies touched by dead spirits, but I never dared voice my worries.
We used the episode of Sliced and Diced as an excuse to create a small family reunion. After we left France in 1985, family reunions in the States were rare and always cherished by all of us. So as usual, all the women were in the kitchen together. Mom was the boss and we were all sous-chefs. Besides the usual American fare of chips and dip, we also made Rice From Hell, a dish from Hue, the imperial city of Vietnam. This dish was made famous more than eighty years ago by a restaurant called m Phủ (Hades). It was a rice dish delicately presented with seven different toppings to represent the first seven steps baby Buddha made. On the menu Mom also made Crab in Secret Sauce, Imperial Rolls, Feminine Salad, Sour Fish Soup, Fish in a Clay Pot, Beef and Potato Stir-Fry to commemorate today’s episode, and always flan for dessert. I was a little nervous to see how Mom would react to seeing me add tomatoes to the traditional dish stir-fry.
Though millions of Vietnamese had migrated to America since 1975, we continued to prepare our traditional foods without much ingenuity. I had never seen a newly invented Vietnamese dish until my recent visit to Ho Chi Minh City, and I was excited to see the new Vietnam, a country that was progressive, inventive and youthful. For those who refused to return because of the loss and hardship they had endured, I wished they would allow themselves a chance to see the positive changes that had infiltrated the country since President Bill Clinton dropped the ban on U.S. trade with Vietnam in 1994. Or perhaps I was more hopeful because I was not old enough to have experienced the huge loss of adults who left Vietnam during and after the Vietnam War.
I was shredding the cooked chicken for the salad when one of Mom’s stories popped into my head – about a funeral she witnessed when she was thirteen years old. Children were usually discouraged from attending funerals. It was believed that spirits were attracted to young souls and might steal or haunt the young person’s soul, bringing illness or bad luck. As the story goes, on the way home from school one day, Mom heard loud cries spilling out into the street. She could not help herself. She had to approach to see what the commotion was about. A funeral for a young soldier was being held inside the courtyard. She could tell the family members from the guests by the clothes they wore: Immediate family members wore white outfits and white head ties similar to Rambo’s bandana. These ties had to be torn, not cut, from the same cloth, since they symbolized family ties and cutting the cloth would have been deemed bad luck. The widow and female relatives cried and wailed as loudly as they could, and banged on the coffin each time they asked God why he had cursed the soldier with such a dreadful death.
“Why you, why my husband?” they continued as long as they could.
“You are too young, why are you leaving me with our children. What will we do now?”
Wealthy families hired actors to do the crying to save face for both the dead and the living. They hired “criers” to demonstrate to the world that the deceased would be greatly missed by the family. We asked these actors to say words we could never express directly ourselves to the ones we love. Mom hid behind a tree as she watched the family’s anguish.
I was born into a culture that encouraged silence and disdained public expressions of love toward the ones we care about while they are among us. Yet once they departed this earth, we fully embraced all forms of public expression, both physical and verbal, to demonstrate our anguish. During one of the widow’s passionate throws being witnessed by my mother, she accidentally tipped over the wooden coffin, causing the lid to fall open and spill out parts of the remains of the soldier, who had died in a bomb attack. Mom recalled the putrid smell and yellow, slimy flesh falling out of the coffin. For reasons unknown, Mom’s compassion for the family made her leap up and run toward the coffin as if the dead soldier were of her own flesh and blood. Everyone else, including the widow, watched in horror, paralyzed at the sight of loose pieces of decaying flesh falling to the ground, but Mom carefully picked up pieces of the soldier’s body and put them back into the coffin with her bare hands. When she retold the story years later, she said she could still recall the smell of decay and feel of the flesh as if it were yesterday. For months after this most bizarre incident, the odor of dead flesh emanated from her fingers and she was not able to eat her favorite dish, Xí Quách, leftover cooked meats and bones used to make beef or pork stock. In that moment Mom moved on impulse without thinking, but the act displayed her heroic tendencies in abundance.
Just before Sliced and Diced came on, my family gathered in front of the screen to watch a video I brought back from Paris. It was an old video of Lễ Cầu Siêu, the memorial service of Vietnam’s last emperor, Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thụy, whose imperial name was Bảo Đại, Keeper of Greatness. He passed away on July 30, 1997, in Paris. In Buddhist tradition, we prayed for the spirit of the deceased on the forty-ninth day after their passing. It was the estimated time for one’s spirit to reincarnate into a new life.
Ngoại was honored with the royal family’s invitation to recite a poem to honor and dedicate to our last emperor. I was al
ways fascinated with her life. Her father served the Imperial Court so long ago, yet his legacy carried on with her. I was not aware she was in touch with the royal family at all. While I was in Paris she handed me the video after her birthday party to remind me of my roots.
She made me sit down by her side on her bed and recounted tales of her father’s burial and also his reburial. The family believed his original burial plot carried with it bad omens. After a string of bad luck for many members of the family, they found a feng shui master who advised them to move his body to a better location to help change the fate that would be bestowed on all of the female descendants in our family. The curse was for us to have incomplete marriages, meaning divorce, no marriage, or worse, becoming someone’s concubine. This curse dropped down on a few of her siblings, including Grandma, so in later years she and her siblings had a ceremony to remove their father’s remains to a less cursed spot.
Ngoại wanted me to remember the family from which I came. She wanted to remind me that the values instilled in me could not be bought, bartered or recreated in just one lifetime. The strands that twisted our fates together were ordained by something of greater consequence. Despite financial hardships and a broken family life, we would always carry with us, across three continents, this intangible wealth amidst the hell of wars and revolution.
The time finally came for us to gather around the large flat-screen TV to watch Episode Six. This was also my first time seeing the episode. The lawyers reminded me not to reveal the results of the show to anyone, not even family, until after it aired nationally. I enjoyed watching my family’s reaction to Jay as he made red snapper with quinoa and tequila. I translated the ingredients to Mom and she made an exaggerated grimace.
“That’s disgusting!” she proclaimed.
“Quinoa is for poor folks in Vietnam when they can’t afford to buy rice.”
That made me chuckle. I also disliked this weirdly textured grain, celebrated by many in California as a “super food,” whatever that is, and I was glad she was on my side.
It was so strange to watch myself on TV. I seemed taller and thinner than I thought. The makeshift mask of confidence that I wore now struck me as comical – I knew how I was really feeling inside. I wondered if the audience could see through that mask as easily as I could. During the actual contest, in my mind’s eye I was controlled, quick and sharp with my movements. Watching on TV, it was like I was in slow motion. I was cooking next to Bacon Man, who moved quickly and tasted everything he made; he was clearly skilled and more than just an actor, as I had concluded during the taping of the show. He was also a giant standing next to a young-looking, skinny Asian girl with a tightly tied ponytail in a blue, floral chiffon dress. The concentration on my face displayed fearlessness, but when the camera was able to catch my eyes just right, I could see the panic that loomed within those dark irises.
After several commercial breaks and lots of funny commentaries from my aunties on everything from the way the contestants cooked to the way they wore their hair, the moment finally came. I stood to the left of Elvis. My hands were clasped together resting in front of my body, my eyes straight ahead as if I were a naughty school kid waiting to have my palms swatted by the ruler-wielding teacher. Elvis tipped back and forth on his heels and his lips moved slightly but no sound ever came.
“That young kid looks crazy, mumbling to himself,” my youngest aunt exclaimed with her thick Vietnamese accent.
“Was he saying something to you and we could not hear?” she continued. They showed lots of curiosity on how the show was filmed.
I honestly could not remember that moment and wished they would be quiet so I could watch myself fall off my horse in peace. I held up my hand to gesture silence so I could hear Marcus’ comment to me. Though I recalled it being critical, even cruel, it did not sound that way at all watching it now. Did they re-record the sound and dub the scene? Or did I only imagine it that way? It’s true what Horace Walpole said about perspective. “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”
Everyone was quiet waiting for the verdict. To the surprise of every person in the room except me, the show concluded with my elimination. I watched the faces of my family members as they slowly stole glances at me but kept quiet. I could tell they felt sorry for me but were afraid to say anything until I spoke up first.
I looked at them and could not help but smile, which just confused them. They all seemed perplexed that I was neither sad nor disappointed.
“That was a good show,” Minh said, breaking the silence. “You tried and that’s what matters.”
My brother, who has five children, was careful not to be overly critical, in the American way he had learned.
“It wasn’t fair,” my aunts told me. “We think your dish looked better.”
They rolled their eyes and shook their heads as they spoke to emphasize what an obvious and great injustice had been done to me. During the commercial break they took turns offering condolences and words of encouragement, and I appreciated their support.
But I heard nothing from my mother. She was slumped on the sofa in silence. I could only guess what she was thinking. Was she stunned that I publicly humiliated her? Was she disappointed that I could not even give her a heads-up beforehand so she could have prepared herself for shame and ignominy?
I was relieved for her when the commercial break ended and my face appeared on the screen again, this time smiling. I was wearing a bright yellow dress and, I had to admit, looked great.
“Hi everyone, I am your host, Kieu,” my face on the screen announced. “I am excited to be sharing with you the magic of my homeland as we travel through Vietnam to experience local dishes and learn unique cultural perspectives within each and every dish. Stay tuned on Sunday mornings at 11 a.m. this spring as we travel through Vietnam, the country of my birth! Xin chào!” The clip faded away with some Asian-inspired music in the background and me coyly waving at the camera with a Cheshire cat smile.
My aunties and everyone else in the room jumped out of their seats, clapped their hands together and took turns hugging and congratulating me. Their laughter erupted to replace the solemnity they had felt only moments earlier. They took turns asking me why I did not say something about getting my own show. Mom interrupted my hug with my nieces and shoved her way in to get closer to me.
“What happened?” she asked.
She had a tentative, perplexed smile. She was as confused as a lost child who missed the joke.
“Mom, I did not win the show, but I have my own weekly show instead,” I told her. “It is not called VietnamEazy. It’s called Xin Chao.”
Mom stayed silent and reached out to hug me, tears in the corners of her eyes. I used to have to reach up to try to hug her so long ago, yet now I had to stoop down a little so she could hug me more easily.
“Chúc Mừng Con – Congratulations little one,” she whispered into my ear.
Even John had not been aware of my new show. My contract required me to stay silent until the sixth episode aired and even if it would probably have been permissible to let my husband in on the secret, I liked the idea of holding off and letting him see for himself later when he watched the show. Maybe I was a little superstitious. Maybe I still didn’t believe it 100 percent either. John was confused about why I needed to go back to Los Angeles every other week after coming home from the competition. I told him we had to shoot more B-roll footage for Sliced and Diced, and rolled my eyes talking about the strange ways of reality television. That seemed to satisfy him. I’d thought that coming to a new understanding with Mom after all these years of anguish might have given me a sudden feeling that I no longer needed John, since his role for so long had been to provide the stability and unconditional love that I was deprived of as a girl, but that had not been the case so far. It’s a tricky business, trying to guess where your heart will take you. Maybe I did need John less, but in needing him less, I felt more freedom and strength, which in
turn gave me the feeling that I could see John in a new way. My life was pulling me forward to an exciting new chapter, and the invigoration of fresh life was either going to bring John and me closer, and revive something crucial between us, or fail to do that. What I knew about John for sure was that he would be truly happy for me, whatever my new life meant for us, and that he, like me, needed time to process what was happening, time to put old realities to rest and open up to the new.
I will never forget my surprise when I was asked to come to Gnarles’ brightly lit office after being eliminated. I wished I could go home, but was forced to sit there until he brought in those suited men. He introduced the men behind me as the producers of a new show. I was relieved I was not being sued by the producer of Sliced and Diced for violating some obscure rule.
“Kieu, this is Gary Walker and Thomas Caddow.”
I turned around and nodded. I thought it odd that they remained seated behind me and did not get up to shake my hand. Manners, something the new generation of men needed to learn. Perhaps I could create an app for it. “iManners.” For this scenario, they will search, “What to do when someone introduces you.”
“Hello!” was all I got out of them. Gnarles seemed irritated at them as well, but continued.
“Kieu, we know you must be disappointed to be eliminated from the show,” he said.
As I listened to his words, I quickly scanned around the room to see if there were any cameramen around. I thought I was done with the show. Was I still on camera?
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