“Vietnamese are so sweet. This country is so rustic. So beautiful,” Carolyn sighs, sunbathing on one of Vietnam’s most pristine beaches, bemoaning the fact that the country is changing so fast.
I tell her I think most of Vietnam looks in pretty bad shape, like every Third World country.
She disagrees. “We should help them preserve their culture.”
“We don’t preserve our own culture. We can’t. It is a changing thing.”
“It’s natural to want to preserve beautiful things. I think Vietnam is beautiful.”
“Perhaps,” I say, “that’s because your images are not wearing their rags.”
38
Chi-Minh
Chi survived fourteen years on the street. Once a battered teenage runaway, Chi came home at thirty-one, a post-operative transsexual. She was a man and his name was Minh. Everyone was surprised, but no one was shocked. Minh had called ahead and Mom arranged for all of us to be home for his reception. Huy came home from Berkeley, Tien from San Jose State University, Hien from UC San Diego, me from my crosstown studio, where I was living with my girlfriend, Trieu.
“I remember you bigger. Taller,” I said to Minh when he came home, our arms about each other trying unsuccessfully for a hug.
He laughed, a husky man-laugh, his voice deeper than mine. “The last time I saw you, An, you were a head shorter than me. Now you’re half a head taller than me.”
We duked, jived, joking, hiding the strangeness inside us. I tried looking him in the eyes, but it was hard. His maleness blocked my view. Talking around his void of history, which we were too willing to oblige, he seemed no more than a stout, easygoing guy with a real blue-collar aura about him that I liked. A potbelly in the making kept him adjusting his pants. His fleshy digits, labor callused, said he was very nervous, tapping rhythm, wiping the thighs of his slacks.
“Oh, God. It’s been so long,” I said, but meaning I missed you for so long I’d forgotten you existed.
“You’re a big engineer now, An,” he said with genuine admiration.
I searched his face for jealousy, but found nothing unkind. He harbored no grudge against me, who had stayed and benefited. I was an undeserving runner-up who won the trophy due to a technicality. He was the true winner, who conceded the prize with the greatest of grace.
“And you, Huy,” he said, grabbing him by the shoulder. “You’re going to be a lawyer. Tien and Hien are going to be doctors. What are you going to be, Kay?”
She smiled shyly, having no recollection of this stranger-sibling who had changed her diapers. “Don’t know. I’m only a freshman. Maybe advertising or something.”
I sat back watching, wondering why it sounded so corny—everything uttered. The awkward patting, friendly shoulder slugs exchanged in place of embraces. Why are we spieling these empty words? Where are the tears of joy? Isn’t there something important we’re leaving out? I can feel it and if we don’t say it now, it will never be said. We were filling all those vanished years with small talk.
Mom and Father were on the sofa, supervising. On the coffee table, a pot of tea and biscuits attended this halting family reunion, formalizing the role of each party. What is the proper etiquette for welcoming home a lost son-daughter?
Mom was smiling, and so was Father, except he had his puzzled, hurt look in his eyes. I thought I also saw a touch of pride in his demeanor. They were talking to Minh in Vietnamese. Although Minh was recently laid off in the massive aerospace and defense industry downsizing, Father must have been pleased that his runaway was now a professional welder with a home. Minh had told Mom over the phone that he was married and that his wife didn’t know about his sex change. Their marriage had been on the rocks since his layoff. It was inevitable: She wanted children. They were getting a divorce. Everyone seemed accepting if not entirely comfortable with Minh in place of Chi, but no one knew what to make of his troubled marriage and the secret at its heart.
“I’m glad I came home,” Minh said. But we all should have known that home was one place to which no one could return, not after so many empty years.
And now, with Minh gone from us, my greatest regret is our failure to make sense of those missing years. While he was with us, we left his personal history dormant, boxed in this new shell, this new being we didn’t comprehend. Minh didn’t like going into the details of his life as a runaway and a transient, and, only too gladly, we didn’t press him. The vague sketch of Minh’s life I gleaned during my brief time with him seems trivial, more a testament to my stony core than anything attributable to him.
After Chi escaped the juvenile detention center, she ran away to San Francisco and reverted to her true self. A man. He traveled as Minh, sleeping on the street and eating out of Dumpsters until a Chinese family took him in and fed him. They found him work in a Chinatown sweatshop among illegal Chinese aliens. Wages were dismal, and underground life was marginal and harsh. There was the constant fear of being caught. When Minh was eighteen, he hit the road, this time as a migrant worker. Seasons later, he arrived in Montana, where he earned a living as a ranch hand, doing whatever he could find. Moving among America’s illegal workforce, he learned to buy false papers and eventually bribed himself into an assembly-line job in Detroit’s auto industry.
After two years, he was laid off. Jobless and alone, he found himself pining for companionship, someone to whom he could relate. His halting English and double identity isolated him more than the color of his skin. He heard there was a place in California where many Vietnamese congregated, a mini-city where a Vietnamese could live and work without ever having to speak a single word of English. He packed up and migrated south to the smoggy sun of Orange County.
While working as a welder for an aerospace company in Long Beach, California, he fell in love with a Vietnamese-American woman. Minh introduced himself as a man. Soon a love blossomed and it became too precious for Minh, who knew loneliness all too well to risk telling her the truth. It was too late. Minh’s life, whether by necessity or circumstances, had been a chain of deception, and the truth could not emerge from him. With his well-paid job and loans, Minh bought a house and finally went under the knife for a sex-change operation—a secret that his soon-to-be bride never discovered. He was now, in all respects, a man. They got married—without the blessings of her family, who deemed Minh’s station, a welder, beneath their long line of physicians and degreed professionals. True to the in-laws’ dire predictions, Minh couldn’t find employment when he lost his job in the massive aerospace belly-up. Their new house rolled onto its second mortgage and the bills piled up on top of the secret Minh was hiding from his wife.
They sold the house, settled outstanding debts, and finalized their divorce. Minh came home to his lost family and plunked down five thousand dollars to enroll at a cosmetology school, seeking to make sense of his life. Six months later, Grandma Le leaked, “He’s not showing up in class. Every day, he goes to those Vietnamese cafes and spends all his money tipping pretty waitresses.”
Minh was lonely. The fanfare of his homecoming petered out quickly. Huy and Hien were away in college. Tien was living at home, overloaded with a full college courseload and work. I was across town, too engrossed in my own life to be any good to anyone. There was no one to help him patch the holes in his life.
“Minh’s a Tiger!” exclaimed Mom, as though it explained all the difficulties. “Her father is a Rat. I am a Dragon. Air, Water, and Fire in one house is bad. Her living here will bring trouble. It will be the undoing of our house. I cannot allow that. I cannot allow it.”
For the second time in his life, Minh went to live with Grandma Le, who had come to America with Uncle Hung and his wife, all sponsored by Auntie Dung. Grandma was living on the goodwill of her son and daughter-in-law Minh soon fell into disfavor with Uncle Hung and his wife. After a season, Minh moved into a boardinghouse. During these listless months, he called his ex-wife in an attempt to reconcile. He went on binges and flew down to Southern California to
find her, but she was through with him. Her family shielded her, boarding her with relatives whenever he came back in town.
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to get things together,” Mmh said in the weeks before Christmas. In retrospect, all the signs of his imminent suicide were there in front of us, but we chose to ignore them. He’ll weather this storm, we kept reassuring ourselves. He’s Vietnamese, a survivor. He must walk through this fire alone. It’ll make him a better person for it.
After receiving some money as Christmas presents, Minh took a taxi to San Jose Airport and flew to Orange County to find his ex-wife. He lingered until his money ran out. It was his last attempt and it failed. Broke and brokenhearted, he returned on New Year’s Eve to Grandma’s, where his uncle and aunt put him up temporarily in the spare room. Three days later, Minh took his life with a yellow nylon rope tied to the bedroom rafters. At thirty-two, he died the most Vietnamese of deaths, a brokenhearted suicide. His father cut him down from the ceiling while his mother and grandmother wept. And his family, who could not love him while he lived, grieved his passing. His ashes were scattered on the sea he never finished crossing.
39
Fever-Ride
Predawn. My stomach feels queasy, gray like fungus. I lie in bed drowning at the prospect of starting the longest ride of my life. The sheet is soaked with sweat, chilly in spots. I’m a little feverish. From what, I don’t know. Maybe I caught something here. This is the dirtiest, foulest dump I’ve ever seen.
Last night, I tossed the blanket, a cigarette-pocked rag, into the bathroom, a partitioned corner with a floor drain. I was cold, but the blanket reeked so badly I was tempted to burn it. Some drunk must have vomited on it. It was crusty like a dirty old sock. The ceiling fan, however, made certain that air circulated evenly throughout the room. At last, when I could no longer bear it, I threw the blanket and the pancaked pillow into the hallway. I lay down in two layers of clothes, my head on a jacket, and listened to the couple in the next room “thrashing rice stalks.” I could smell her sugary perfume. The dividing wall fell a foot short of the ceiling and air passed back and forth like breaths between mouths of lovers. I squashed an urge to stand on a chair and have a peek. In the middle of the night, my bowels started doing the tango. I raced down the hallway, flashlight in one hand, roll of toilet paper in the other. The latrine—an eight-inch hole in a slab of concrete—was hidden deep behind a series of corridors and two flights of stairs. This, after all, was Hotel No. 1 of Quang Ngai City.
It was a raw deal, considering last evening I was dead certain that I was to be an honored guest in a traditional Vietnamese home, my hosts two college students. It seemed very promising because, as usual, the grandest building I saw when I passed through town belonged to the Tax Bureau and the two students I met on the road told me their father was a tax official. As they motored alongside me, we struck up a lively conversation over fifteen miles and they insisted that I spend the night at their home. Hosting foreigners was a big hassle for Vietnamese. The host was required to take his guest’s identification to the nearest constable, who might not be very near. The registration process could take hours and might also need a little monetary lubrication. So I asked them if they were sure. They were, and we went seven miles beyond the city, most of it off-road. I earned the entire distance, miserably churning through red mud. It was a beautiful, rustic hamlet. We drank tea and waited until twilight when their father came home. During the formal chat required between host and guest, I had a feeling he didn’t want a Viet-kieu in his house because it might not look proper to his colleagues. It took him half an hour to say so, but he said it at last: “I’m sorry, but I think you will be happier in a hotel. It is much trouble—the paperwork, you see—for you to stay here.” To which I replied, through a cordial smile, “Ah, but, you see, Uncle, I’m not very happy riding ten kilometers back to town in the dark.” As I expected, he put on his official face, the stony eyes: “Really, Brother, I insist the hotels in town are better for you. There is no room here for you to sleep.”
And this was very rude because, customarily, Vietnamese are the greatest hosts. They would sell the family’s pig to feed a guest. The entire family would sooner sleep on the ground than let their guest go without a good blanket. This was not lost on the two young men, who sat silently, their gazes downcast in great shame, a deep flush burning their faces. Their father started to name the hotels in town. Hungry and tired, I felt an uncharitable urge to piss him off. I could have gone on, but for their sake I didn’t. I thanked their father and left. They trailed after me, begging pardon profusely under their breath. I clasped their shoulders. “It is all right, my friends. I understand. I know when you are older, when you become established, your world will be different. Thank you for the invitation. It was your kindness that counts. Maybe we will meet again.”
The ride back to town was tortuous and the night passed badly in this cheap hotel.
I get out of bed, stumble downstairs, order a bowl of noodles, a shot of Vietnamese dripped espresso, and four egg sandwiches. I buy sweet rice from a woman selling breakfast from a basket. Then I’m off in the metal-gray dawn, jazzed at the challenge of 110 miles of hilly roads to Qui Nhon.
In Oregon, I’d hauled 90 mountainous coastal miles against a 20 m.p.h. head wind with a fully loaded bike. In Japan, I’d climbed and descended mountains in freezing rain. The distance didn’t worry me; however, the combination of a sore crotch, roiling intestines, a mild fever, a hemorrhoid-in-the-making, and a quickly thinning pocketbook does wonders for my confidence.
I crunch through the morning, taking a ten-minute break every hour-and-a-half in the saddle. The scene zooms by without my taking much stock because the road, looping over rolling hills, is godawful with potholes. Scattered every few miles on the side of the road are thatched lean-tos, roughly the size of a desk propped up by two front legs. A boy, sometimes a man, curls up like a dog, out of the sun’s fury, selling live crabs tied up in bunches like bananas. Occasionally, he dips the crabs into the water of the rice paddies to keep them alive. In the most arid part of the country, where the soil is chalky, the peasants turn to tep farming, transforming the landscape into a surreal grid of rectangular ditches, a quarter of an acre each, maybe ten feet deep, filled with muddy gray water. Men drag fine nylon nets through these ponds for tiny, translucent shrimp no larger than newsprint. Women spread the catch out along the side of the road—the national highway—to dry in the sun and to mix freely with dirt, bugs, and dung. The masses of shrimp smell strangely sweet and briny, looking like giant sheets of lint from laundry dryers. Once dried, the shrimp are fermented into a paste with an unbelievably offensive odor. People use it for cooking. A powerfully pungent condiment, a tablespoon of this paste is sufficient to flavor a twogallon pot of soup.
It is a visually engaging country, but in my sorry state, I have little mind for sight-seeing. I merely hunch down and chug at the pedals. Around noon, a half-inch nail pops my thorn-resistant inner tube. I push the bike onto a three-foot-wide levy dividing two rice paddies and start patching the puncture when my stomach cramps up. Nearby a peasant woman, well into the third trimester of her pregnancy, is wading calf-deep in the paddy and fertilizing the young stalks by hand, a basket of manure wedged against one hip. She sees my pained, urgent look and the roll of toilet paper in my hand. She gestures at a clutch of bushes a hundred yards off. I wave thanks and hobble away. As I squat, a group of children materialize out of nowhere—something I encountered unfailingly the length of the country. They gather around me at a disrespectful distance and just watch. The expectant mother chases them off.
I try eating another egg sandwich, retch, and throw the rest of it to the birds. To stabilize my digestive tract, I’ve been averaging three egg sandwiches every day for the last week. At the next village, a bike mechanic burns a patch onto the tire while I eat fried rice his wife has cooked. For the rest of the afternoon, I alternate between hot and cold flashes, but the strange thing is, the harde
r I push, the better I feel.
The sun is straddling the mountains behind me by the time I squeak into Qui Nhon, dead tired. I’ve been eating road dirt so long, all these towns, big and small, look the same to me. Some smell worse than others, and they are all filthy. I crisscross Qui Nhon, going from hotel to hotel, looking for a reasonable deal. After an hour, I settle for Dong Hoi Hotel. It is built like a prison, no outfacing windows. Each room is a cell, with bars on the windows. All windows face inward to the hallway. There is a mess hall on the first floor. Sitting on the long benches, you can look up and see four stories of rails and barred windows.
On the way to my room, the woman fetches me my allotment of goodies: a moth-eaten blanket with a stain that might have been a copious amount of blood, a half roll of toilet paper, coarse and spongy like decoration party ribbons, and a tall thermos. She gives me a word of wisdom concerning the two liters of hot water: “Use some. water for bathing and save some for tea.”
“I biked almost two hundred kilometers today,” I mention casually, trying not to brag.
“Hmm,” she replies without opening her mouth. She puts the sheet and pillowcase on the bed without making them.
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