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 I remember many times at the dinner table
when we kids would start yapping about whatever in English and my aunt
would yell at us to speak in Vietnamese, “or else we will forget where
we came from”. And thus, the rest of dinner was finished in
silence. I always thought that she just wanted us to speak in
Vietnamese because she was nosy to
know what we were talking about rather than it being about remembering
our roots.Growing up, I can care less about where I came from. Arriving to the United States in 1975 after the fall of Saigon, there were very few Asians around and prejudice was rampant. I was a quiet skinny kid with buckteeth and coke bottle glasses that covered half of my face. The family was poor and my oversized clothes were either donated or came from Kmart. Back in those days, Kmart had a very bad reputation especially among school kids. And kids can be REAL cruel. I was teased and I was bullied. I was spit on and gum was stuck on me. My cousin would get into fights all the time but I would never fight back. I just ignored and took it. On the school bus, no one would ever make room for me to sit. Oftentimes, I would be sitting with just half an ass cheek on the seat. My legs would become so sore from straining not to fall off. And of course I suck in sports (Gee, I wonder “why?”). In P.E., I would always be the last one picked on any team. So my self-confidence didn’t fare so well back then. I hated myself for being weak. I hated myself for being poor. I hated myself for being ugly. I hated myself for being Asian. There were days after school where I would lock myself in the bathroom at home and stared into the mirror and cried. Then self-pity would turn to anger. I would fantasize that I had super power and electricity would flow out of my fingertips and shock the crap out of everyone who was ever mean to me. And then I would dry my eyes and wash my face and come out of the bathroom like nothing had ever happened. I hated high school. I was envious of all the beautiful popular rich kids with their trendy clothes and their activeness in student government and sports. I was even envious of the mysterious new wave Goths. They didn’t seem to belong but somehow they did. They were their own group and had their own identity. I did have a few friends in high school though. It was two Vietnamese girls and one Laotian boy. I was too embarrassed to receive free lunch at school so I skipped lunch and spent it doing homework in the library with my friends. I guess we may have been the Asian nerds of school. Though thinking back, I don’t think I was even a very bright student. I just did well in school because I focus on schoolwork rather than my self-image. And so it is so very fitting that I do not even exist in my senior yearbook. I never did take those expensive studio senior pictures and the school didn’t do those faceless silhouettes for students with no photos. The only existence of me if you look really hard is my name on the CSF (California Scholarship Federation) list, a club for students with high GPA, the geek club. Domestic life during my teenage years did not fare much better. My great uncle had a hot temper and was abusive to my aunt and all the kids living at home. He exploded at the smallest things, like dinner not cooked right or us watching too much MTV. He would shatter the bowl of rice on the floor and hurl the TV into the wall. It got worse and worse as each kid left home for college and there were less of us at home to share the blame. I often dreamed of running away but always too chicken to really do it. Plus I knew I would be out of the house once I am off to college. So I just put up with it like everything else. So one would think with all the boxed up anger and suppressed frustration that I would grow up to be one messed up freak. I think back on all that has happened and I am still thankful that I grew up in the United States. I was back in Vietnam twenty years after I have left it to the rural village that I grew up in. All the male cousins around my age were squid fishermen. They would be at sea for months at a time on a small fishing boat doing back breaking work. If I hadn’t escape Vietnam, I imagine that I will be in the same boat as them. Then I too would dream of the American paradise of free money and rich porcelain skinned people and how I would give to live there. People would tell me that I was so lucky to have left Vietnam in ’75 at fall of Saigon when they airlifted people out. After that, the government made it very difficult for people to leave. I was six years old at the time and my memories of the escape is a little hazy. But with pieces of stories here and there from memories of older people, I have a fair version of the escape. I lived with my Grandma and Grandpa in Tan Xuan, a rural village outside of Ben Tre, south of Saigon. Grandpa was a farmer and I remember begging to come along with him in the fields to play with the oxen and water-filled rice paddies. The rice paddies had greenness to it that I never saw again until I went back to Vietnam to my village years later. Of course all that land is now lost when the government took away land from families who did not fight for them and gave it to the ones that did. My father was a soldier in the southern army and died before I was born. Mom remarried and worked in another town to raise my two younger sisters. Unfortunately, she married another soldier who fell to the same fate as my father’s. War arrived to the countryside first. I remember huddling in the tiny mud bomb shelter in my grandparent’s backyard and hear all the bombing outside. At night, I remember seeing the sky lighted up so beautifully like fireworks as we scurried around like cockroaches. My mom feared that it was getting to dangerous for me in Tan Xuan, so she decided to bring me up to Saigon to stay with my great uncle on my father’s side of the family until the violence died down. As I cling onto mom on the back of her motor bike, I remember scenes of dead soldiers with half eaten rice bowls and grenades lying along the dirt roads through the rice paddies to Saigon. Once in Saigon, I forgot all about the war. My grand uncle had six children and the youngest ones were around my age. He would spoil the kids with money and food. There was so much to see and do in the big city. For a country kid, it was paradise. Eventually, the war arrived to Saigon. It seemed like my uncle had sold everything overnight to flee the city. As he could not just leave a six-year-old kid behind, he took me along. He said we were going on a vacation and I was all right with that. Later when my mom came to the city to pick me up, a neighbor told her the family has gone. I’m sure she was devastated.  I remember silhouettes of soldiers marching
in a line beneath red skies as we arrive in the coastal town of Vung
Tau. I remember the adults having secret meetings and planning
what to do next. I remember chaos running with thousands of other
families to the American military boats on the beach. Children
held tightly onto the hands of adults trying not to get separated or
lost. Our family did not get picked up. It got more and more
desperate for my uncle. With all the money he had, my uncle hired
a tiny banana boat to take the family up the coast. We were in
the bay the night when I saw the boat next to us getting bombed to
smithereens. It was the scariest scene and all the children were
horrified and cried. My uncle told us that there was a submarine
that would scoop that family up under the water and save them.
And then
we were all right again. Of course, the adults knew better and we
drifted out to sea. I remember being picked up by a large
freight ship. They
threw down a giant net and we were supposed to climb up it. I
remember looking down into the deep black swirling ocean water and
visualized
how I would fall in and drown. People would start tossing their
luggage in the water because it was impossible to haul it up the
net.
I remember sitting on the large rusty deck of the ship with hundred of
other families like we were having a picnic, except there was no
food.
I remember someone got a hold of some uncooked rice and we were so
grateful
and swallowed it all down because we were starving. I told my
uncle
that I did not like this vacation any more and wanted to go back home
to
Saigon. Time in refugee camp was a little blurry. Days blended into months. I remember sleeping in tents and on cots in Guam. I remember sitting on the ground watching projected movies outside on warm nights. I remember being on a plane to America. At the camp in Pennsylvania, white barracks housed several families each. We slept on bunk beds and lined up for meal rations. I remember loving the tiny cereal boxes and canned fruit cocktails. I remember hot nights catching fireflies and putting them into jars. I remember being intrigued with the camp’s craft center. I remember long boring church sermons. Through the Catholic Church, the family finally found a sponsor. It was time to start anew and live out in the real world. So I am an adult now. I am not a hermit shunned away from the evil world. I am comfortable with myself, proud of who I am and where I’ve been. My mother is here in the U.S. now, struggling for her own piece of the American dream. I think all that childhood anger has made me stronger. My great uncle is older and mellow now. He is the only father figure I know and I appreciate and love him for what he has done for me. Living in the U.S., it is easy to be spoiled and take life for granted. Occasionally, we need to remind ourselves to appreciate the life we have. I share my story here in hopes that it will motivate others to share theirs. I know there are stories in all of us that can empower, educate and help the whole community. The other day I was getting a haircut and the stylists there, two Vietnamese women, were trying to convince me to go back to Vietnam and marry a nice beautiful Vietnamese girl to take care of me. “The girls will swarm you like flies”. Of course I just smiled. Little do they know that I am gay. But that struggle is another story. |
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