by Lan Cao
For many years now, she has had a routine that she follows. Nothing, not the undisciplined, agitated air of this city, and certainly not even the work she loves, can explode the ordinary order of things. Sometimes she wonders if she has absorbed her father’s meditative serenity. She has managed, after all these years, to remain unbothered by desire or emotional static, to inhabit a realm of unremarkable calm. Yes she does know that in this country that state of being is considered unhealthy, a result not of equanimity but of denial.
But the truth is this: She is not easily beset or stretched or unfastened. At her age and according to the timetable one uses to gauge life’s progress, she can no longer think of her life as just beginning, with a world of possibilities still beckoning. She is not one who searches for happiness; she is content with the benign life she has managed to build in this country. Years after she first practiced it, she can still make the transition into geological calmness and repose at a moment’s flip. Even at work, especially if she is alone among her books, she can return to what she fundamentally is—a stone statue, imperturbable.
Very few things can pull her out of her quiet. I can, of course, when I release myself from these splintered shadows of our mutual existence and drag her along with me over a desolation of memory and fright. I am Bão, the storm, and she knows I roil inside her.
I can still, at a moment’s notice, with but a premonitory motion, send her scuttling against a wall, as if to be shot.
19
Exodus
MAI, 1975, 1977
In the morning light helicopters fly nonstop over the Saigon sky, lifting off from rooftops and then heading somewhere out to sea. I am with our father who whispers my name as if to comfort me. “Mai, Mai,” he says. It is April 1975. We are among the slumping, unstrung multitude waiting to leave for some faraway country. We are there, jostling with fists and teeth one minute, weeping softly the next. We are the fortunate ones who are within the enclosed walls guarded by American marines. Their guns are not pointed at us but at those like us who are outside the gates waiting to enter. They are not yet jittery or enraged. They still believe they can get in.
Inside, helplessness has set in. We are getting closer to the takeoff point but beginning to suspect with philosophical gravity the obvious, that the helicopters will not be able to take everyone. We have whatever papers are needed but that might not be enough.
We and thousands of others have learned of the American plan to evacuate Saigon. It is a coded message announced in a voice of feigned detachment, a huge looping ellipse of deliberate indifference designed to delude and mislead—“The temperature is 105 degrees and rising,” followed by eight bars of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” played on the American Armed Forces Radio. It is a tactile conjuring to be kept secret from the Vietnamese, this signal among the Americans that they are ready for the final liftoff out of the country. But of course this is Saigon and secrets are hard to keep during these long-overwrought and intense days.
Father has taken me here to this makeshift assembly point in front of a nondescript building in downtown Saigon that has housed the CIA station chief and his senior officers. Tan Son Nhut Air Base has been shelled for days and the runway bombarded which is why we are here. Father’s eyes are shielded behind dark sunglasses but I can see his tears. I can feel my own, not in my eyes but on the inside of my mouth. I taste a sharp saltiness against my tongue. I swallow, trying to suppress the churning of bile in my stomach.
After years of submitting his resignation and having it rejected, this time, to his great surprise, his request was accepted. President Thieu, the one who denied all his prior requests, has resigned. His vice president, Mr. Huong, was president for seven days and then he too resigned. But before leaving office, Mr. Huong signed the papers for Father. He understood Father’s personal circumstances. The new president replacing Mr. Huong is General Minh, the same general who orchestrated the Diem coup and ordered Father’s execution that November day in 1963. Of course Father had to resign. He was not allied to the new government nor it to him. Rumor had it that General Minh planned to capture Father and imprison or execute him. Even as it collapsed, the country continued to be defined by personal vengeance.
When Mr. Huong resigned, it was with the hope that a new president would have better luck. Even now, Saigon waits for the new savior who will arrive on a surge and pluck the country out of impending disaster. But of course the other side knows peace does not have to be negotiated. It will come soon enough, with the war’s end, with defeat.
Our father no longer has a paratrooper’s uniform to wear but somehow he managed to keep the red beret. He holds it in one hand and my hand in the other. Through the haze we see the phantasmal shape of black whirring skyward. Its metallic essence lingers in the sky. We keep our gaze lifted toward the flickering distance as if that were where magic can be found, as if that were where a translucent door will suddenly open and take us all into an alternate universe that is big and generous and self-sustaining.
I never got to say good-bye to our mother. Our father merely showed up at school and told me we had to go. “Where are we going?” I asked at the school gate, although I already suspected the answer. For weeks, classmates had vanished as family after family fled the country. I looked around. I could not see our mother. I pretended not to know where our father was taking me, as if feigned ignorance would exempt me from the terrible knowledge.
Our father must have caught the look on my face. “Your mother is not coming,” he said, adding a quick “not right now” to soften the blow. “I tried,” he whispered with a frown. “I really did. But your mother hasn’t been herself. She wasn’t ready to leave with us, but she insisted that I make sure you get out. We both want that.” My Chinese grandmother opted to stay as well and accept whatever fate might be planning for her at this stage of her life. “Of course we can also return to her later when the situation improves,” he whispered. His fingers splayed over mine as he ushered me away from the school quickly to the car. His hammer-blow pronouncements delivered ever so softly shook me.
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered firmly. And that was that.
Father dabs my tears with a handkerchief but makes it seem as if he were merely wiping sweat off my face. I feel his urgent sense of responsibility. Life has pulled me in two, one part with our father and the other with our mother and sister.
When I ask our father if Cliff will return, he shakes his head and tells me that people are leaving, not coming into the country. Still, I look around for him. There is a waxing and waning of hope. And Saigon falls, falls.
Another helicopter lands and leaves, as they have programmatically done all day. The crowd moves forward, wheels squeaking, neurons firing, nerves flaring. Father pulls me slightly to the side, as if to hold back, to delay, to restrain the forward movement of the tide. I know what he is doing. We are still at that place in time when other possibilities are not yet eliminated and consequences have yet to be dealt with. If we wait here, it is possible Mother might still arrive. If we wait here, we might still go back home because a miracle has occurred. If we wait here, we will have more time to weigh the options and calculate the possibility of other outcomes. I look into the depth of my father’s face for guidance. He wants to delay what is about to transpire because he knows it will alter the direction of our lives. We are at the departure point but we are still deciding whether to go through with it.
The sky slowly darkens, tilting toward sadness and threatening rain. Father sighs. Everything moves slowly. Crowds push but achieve no real forward motion.
Suddenly he sees an American man armed with binoculars waving at him from a compass point near the rooftop. Brusquely, frantically, the American waves his hand, then his entire arm. Father squints, as if by adjusting the relative distance between us and the man, a familiar face or shape would coalesce. Indeed, through the swift-moving, finger-jabb
ing, lapel-poking fragments of noses, eyes, cheeks, he is able to make out a face clearly. I know him, I do know him, he repeats with relief. It is a life-altering fact. And partly a matter of chance. I see the American in his fully elemental and boldfaced presence—boots and paratrooper fatigues, baton and pistol. He is mouthing something, Father’s name, perhaps. Father yells something back. Miraculously, through the patter and din that has risen to an unbearable pitch, jamming itself inside the space behind my eyes, they are able to understand each other somehow. Father jumps upward, waving his red paratrooper’s beret in the air. The man steadies his binoculars and adjusts the lenses to bring the distant pointillist landscape and the blurry dimness of us into focus.
A tiny cough and another tiny cough move through my heart. I wait for the man’s reaction. I rehearse our father’s promises. We are leaving but when Saigon is safe again we will return. Mother will stay for now with Uncle Number Two and his wife, Father assures. Or she can stay with Uncle Number Five, now that his side, the Communist side, has won. Why isn’t Uncle Number Two leaving, I ask. I don’t know, he says. They have no children, so maybe it matters less to them, he guesses.
The American waves and rests his binoculars in our appointed direction. We are there, among the calcified faces in the throng. A moment passes, then another. The American marches toward the rooftop’s edge where the ladder is and climbs down. He parts the crowd with his weight and heft and heads for us.
Come, come, he says to Father. His crew cut is so short I can see the shape of his skull. No words are exchanged between them. The man simply waves us forth through the clamorous but strangely submissive crowd. Father puts a protective arm around my shoulders and pulls me into the propulsive orbit of his very being, the way my sister used to. I feel the tug of her force field, the distinctive, undiluted strain of her nature inside my core, as if she were the one who is pulling me forward and sheltering me inside her sanctuary. I am sandwiched between him and the American inside a narrow path moving toward the ladder. Quick, quick, they both say.
The American mumbles something to his counterpart guard positioned by the ladder and we are allowed through. Father nods. I am sorry it has come to this, the American says. Do I know your name, Father asks. The man says something and Father nods. They shake hands. Good luck to you, the American says. This is all a shame, he adds, shaking his head sorrowfully.
Who is he, I ask Father. Father shakes his head and says he is not sure.
A helicopter hovers, stirs an updraft of wind, and finally lands on the roof with strange, epic resonance. Father touches the cement floor with his hand and brings his hand to his mouth. He keeps his hand there, as if to hold the kiss. We are on the rungs of the ladders and then we are inside the helicopter. Father turns away and looks downward. Perhaps he is thinking what I am thinking, that the two of us on board must mean some other girl and her father are not.
The helicopter takes off, cutting a poignant swath through the sky, leaving behind people still caught in the derelict fringes below. From above, the rooftop appears smooth and unpocked, a faintly melancholic surface of slate that shines in the sunlight. A lone figure stands guard on it, positioning himself directly above the ladder’s top rung. For some unknown reason, the crowd below suddenly surges and swells. The guard reaches down, throwing punches at those trying to get to the rooftop. A pair of arms passes a baby across the fence hoping it will be cast into the strange trajectory of a new country.
Father sighs and tells me we are heading toward the country that forced a disastrous peace treaty down our throat. We are going to America, the country that both betrays and redeems.
• • •
From that moment on, every image and impression occurs inside the elegy of ungrounded time, moving without the physicality of effort and musculature but with full-throttled speed and unsettling ambiguity. After a few days in an American army base in Guam, we are flown to Pennsylvania. This is Fort Indiantown Gap, someone whispers. We are told to call it by an endearing term—“Fig.” Fig is our hallowed haven, a refugee resettlement center, part of Operation New Life. I pull my lapels around my throat and look at Father. I ache for Mother. Where is she, I wonder, now that Communist tanks have crashed through the Presidential Palace and Saigon has been renamed Ho Chi Minh City? In front of us, a signboard near a giant building reads U.S. ARMY TASK FORCE NEW ARRIVALS RECEIVING STATION.
We are assigned to a tent, one among a long row of them, and given blankets, pillows, towels, toothpaste, and toothbrushes. There are forms that must be filled out. Meal cards are distributed. Name tags with identification numbers are assigned. For three months, there will be more of the same every day until at some point, the continuing emergency of it will slowly unravel into an unrelenting accumulation of eye-glazing minutes and hours. It is both the privilege and shortcoming of life defined by three meals in a makeshift city. We live inside a sense of dejection as well as hope. We take it day by day, drawing a line through each calendar page to mark the passage of time. In steady, quiet fashion, our days are accented by well-timed routines. Here we stand in lines for the bathroom and the shower. We are a loose armature of depleted selves, standing under row after row of showerheads, modest and fully clothed, as water gushes through our threadbare cotton pajamas. Authority has passed from us to someone else. Here we stand in line at the mess hall, asking for one more scoop of this or that. Several times a day, we carry an assortment of tinned meats and fruits and sliced white bread back to our unventilated tents. An American guard gives us a handful of Hershey’s Kisses, little puckers of chocolate candy like starlight wrapped in foil.
Day after day, we go through the motions, eager to leave the camp but afraid of the new life outside its doors. Doctors and medics examine us and give us an array of shots. People congregate in predictable spots, by the community bulletin board, searching for news of loved ones still missing, and around television sets, staring at a Saigon suddenly disfigured. On television, wide-angle cameras show it all—throngs of people left behind, reduced by the four corners of the screen to an undifferentiated mass. Now that it has finally occurred, now that the Communist flag with its generic star has replaced our yellow flag with three red stripes representing North, Central, and South, now that all other logarithmic perplexities have been peeled away to reveal this finality of a disaster, there is no other fate to behold or wonder about. It is now clear. The country has fallen. Peace has come but Saigon is lost.
Everywhere I look I see the vertiginous progression of blurred barracks. I want our mother. I think about Cliff. We are in his country. He can be a comfort for us, with his soldierly sense of honor and duty. But Father has developed an unfathomable reaction against his friend. There is undeflected silence when Cliff’s name is mentioned.
“Will we see Cliff sometime?” I ask him outright one day. “I miss Cliff.”
Father shakes his head, thereby answering my question while maintaining his customary silence on the subject. He looks into the distance, his eyes scanning the sky.
“You cannot decently just drop him,” I say, uncharacteristically bold. “Please, let’s look for him,” I plead. I wish to be anchored by the specificity of a mission, of finding a familiar face in an unfamiliar country.
“He left,” Father replies. He does not react to my provocation. I think he sees Cliff as a friend who drifted away, as most ordinary people do when they are unable or unwilling to help but have no heart to stay and witness collapse.
“He could not help that. He was reassigned.” The original configuration of Father, Mother, and Cliff, with me hovering about them, was thwarted by precipitate forces bigger than any one of us.
Father flashes me a reproving glance but says nothing. He rejects my assumption of an affinity with Cliff. He looks at me intently and then arches his brow, a gesture meant to convey skepticism.
Our new surroundings are startlingly alien. There are spirals of oak leaves blowing in t
he wind, a chill in the night air suggestive of the temperate zone, the sharp scent of pine, and mounds of needle-type leaves shed by coniferous trees. The world here is devoid of coconut palms, bougainvilleas, frangipani blooms. Even though it is late spring or early summer, there is a pronounced incompleteness that is surely different from the full-bodied pungency of Saigon at this time of the year.
The camp seems immeasurably separated from a world teeming beyond our vision and grasp. Somewhere in the distance, I imagine a world of normal lives—a man standing on a ladder, in an ordinary neighborhood, hammering one cedar shingle, then another, onto a roof. Children going to school and returning home. Cars blaring horns.
One day an elderly woman stumbles from her bed and a red gush of liquid pours from her mouth. Is it the redness of betel nut chewed and spat or is it the horrible immediacy of real blood? Another day I play soccer with other children my age on a field of grass not much different from the field that was near our house. Afterward, we drink salted lemonade. We sit on aluminum lawn chairs and watch the purple gloaming vanish behind the pitched-tent roofs that for now define the horizon. Through all this Father is almost always with me. He sticks to the activities, the routines, as if somehow they will help us cloak our shortcomings and inoculate us against this feeling of shame. He is exhausted but his body is straight. At night, on his army-issued bed next to mine, he sits, back erect, right foot over left thigh, left foot over right thigh, his entire body fitted and clasped as if it were one self-contained column inside the tight grip of meditation and sadness. He has changed. He wants to know where I am every minute even though I am almost seventeen.
He must sense that I am not really here. He must sense that nothing really catches and holds for me.
The only thing that sticks are the night walks I take by myself on the lighted trails that meander through the camp. I linger just enough to see beguiling movements and silhouettes through the lit openings of the tents. I discover that I like solitary evenings when the sun’s last glide takes it to some other corner of the earth and darkness slowly envelops us in its tinctured sheen and deep-colored light. It is as if a much beloved song were played, but in an altered pitch—in the minor key or dropped an octave. The notes are the same, but the mood is inverted.