Children of the Enemy Page 12

  I open the overleaf, and roaches pour out onto the table. They continue in a rude stream of various sizes and maturities. Empty brown casings of roach eggs hang on the plastic housings of the photos.

  In the neighborhoods, insects dominate. So many people live so close together, with no food storage facilities and inadequate trash disposal, that roaches are impossible to control. The evenings, especially, belong to them. They patrol the walls, the bed platform, boxes and bags, like an army.

  Thuy returns with a broom, laughing. She bangs the photo album on the table, and the exodus increases. The broom pushes the retreating army onto the floor and out the door of the billet.

  Thuy with her mother, son, and husband in Vietnam, 1991 (courtesy of Nguyen Thi Ngoc Thuy)

  Thuy selling at the PRPC market.

  Thuy, husband, and son at PRPC departure area on the day of their departure for the United States.

  Thuy is happiest at her buy and sell business. She pulls out a cardboard-display of ersatz gold rings, the latest movers in her market enterprise. “I buy three pesos [twelve cents],” she comments happily, “and sell five. I sell many.”

  Despite her natural optimism, she has the same jitters that every refugee experiences as their departure to the States moves closer. “What can I do?” she asks. “I don’t speak English. All I know is buy and sell.”

  I describe the nature of the American flea market and tell her that many immigrants open booths there. She visibly brightens. “I like that,” she repeats several times. “Yes that’s what I want.”

  Thuy and her family left the PRPC for Memphis, Tennessee, on July 8, 1992.

  Phan Vinh Phuc

  “In a social situation people might whisper to me discreetly, ‘Are you French Vietnamese or are you Amerasian?’ I would say, ‘No, I’m pure Vietnamese, it’s just the way I look.’”

  Phuc works as an assistant teacher. It’s basically an interpreter’s job given to refugees who “test out,” score at the top end of the English exam given to all new arrivals at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center. He is a twenty-four-year-old white Amerasian.

  In his face, American and Vietnamese gene pools blend smoothly. His hair and eyes are brown, rather than the black common to Vietnamese, but Vietnam is in the cut of his cheekbones and nose. In Vietnam, he was sometimes able to “pass for Vietnamese,” and sidestep the onus that American blood carries. In school however, his parentage was known. Phuc didn’t let the barbs of his classmates keep him from an education. “Many Amerasians drop out of school because of the taunts of the classmates,” Phuc says in fluid English. “When my classmates teased me, it motivated me to try harder, to do better than them . . . and I did.”

  I AM FROM Ho Chi Minh City. When I was young, I lived with my mother and Vietnamese stepfather. One of my earliest and most painful memories is of them quarreling and of my stepfather beating my mother. I must have been four or five. I remember that I was very upset. I couldn’t stand to see it, and I ran out of the house. At that time he left us, and he got another wife. He took my half-sister with him, and I rarely saw her after that.

  My mother told me that before 1975 my stepfather worked in a company, I think the name was MRC or MRK. That company makes the highways and sidewalks and bridges in Saigon. He had an American friend, and sometimes he brought his friend to come home. I don’t know what happened between that American man and my mother, but that man is my father.

  The idea of my mother is not the same as the idea of me. I want to know about my father, but I feel shy about it, because when I do ask, she says, “You don’t talk about that.” Sometimes we have a quarrel, and I go out. So all I know is that my father worked for the MRK company, and he wore a hardhat at work.

  My mother never remarried. We lived together, only the two of us. In ’75 the VC came, and she was scared. We heard the sound of guns and hid under the bed. We put bags of rice around to shield us, but we didn’t have any problem.

  When I was young I didn’t know I was American. One day I went to my aunt’s house to eat lunch, and one of my cousins said to me, “You have an American father.” It happened so quickly, and then her mother shut her mouth and told me, “No problem, no problem, don’t believe her.” But at that time I am old enough to understand what she says, and I feel sad. I go into the toilet, I look in the mirror, and I cry by myself.

  In my neighborhood, I didn’t experience much discrimination. Most of the people were of a higher class, and they didn’t insult me to my face. What they said behind my back, I don’t know.

  I went to school for sixteen years. In elementary school, some kids bothered me, but it wasn’t too serious. Sometimes they called me “Fox” after a character in an American movie or made some jokes about me. I didn’t stay with anybody so much. I just studied and went back home. In high school if there are some Soviet or Czech people come to visit the school, my classmates say, “Oh, there’s your father, that’s your father. Look, there’s Phuc’s father.” I just smile, I don’t say nothing.

  Many Amerasians drop out of school because of the taunts of their classmates. When my classmates teased me, it motivated me to try harder, to do better than them . . . and I did. I was a loner, but I did very well in school, and my teachers liked me. They would supply me with materials when I didn’t have any, and that made me feel good.

  Most of the hurt I felt came from my family. My aunts loved me, but their sons insulted me all the time. My second and third cousins were cruel. They tell me, “You’re a bastard, you don’t have any father” and things like that. I just say to them, “Who are you? You don’t pay for my life, so you have no right to criticize.” They would smile a sly, nasty smile and go away. I will never forget the look on their faces. Coming from my family, this hurt me very much, and many times when I was alone I would cry over this. I spent much time alone rather than face these difficulties.

  Since I don’t look American too much, I would try to pass as Vietnamese. Sometimes I would go somewhere, and in a social situation people might whisper to me discreetly, “Are you French Vietnamese or are you Amerasian? I would say, “No, I’m pure Vietnamese, it’s just the way I look,” and they would say “Oh, sorry, forget about that, no problem.” I was shy about being Amerasian, and that was one way I could avoid the problem.

  Phan Vinh Phuc

  My mother works as a clerk in a bank. She worked there before ’75, and she still works there now. Before ’75, the bank was called Tin Nghia Bank, but the Communist government renamed it Saigon Cong Tuong Bank [Industrial Trading Bank]. Sometimes if I visited her there, somebody might say, “Phuc, you look Amerasian. Are you?” I wouldn’t answer, and my mother would just smile, but not affirm it. Since I look almost Vietnamese, and I have the name of my Vietnamese stepfather, I sidestepped the issue.

  Before I came here, I was a student in the College of Architecture at the university in Ho Chi Minh City. In the university there are special dispensations given to sons and daughters of government officials. For example, say you need a score of twenty to get in. The Communist official’s children get three points extra automatically, so they only need to score seventeen. I think they even have separate classes, because I never saw any in my courses.

  The cost for the officials’ children is very low, but for the rest of us it is very expensive. For three years, my mother supported my studies. But in the third year of my studies, my mothered quarreled with me. She said she could no longer afford the high cost of sending me to school. Finally, she agreed to pay one more year, and then I would have to look for another way to get money. So I completed four years of the five-year course. My relatives knew that we needed money for me to finish school, but nobody wanted to help. Some even avoided my mother’s house so they wouldn’t be asked to chip in. My uncle, who is a teacher, passed my house every day to work and never stopped in.

  Anyway, even after finishing school, there is little work available, and what exists is given to the children of the government officials.
This is one of the reasons I left Vietnam.

  The Communists make your life very difficult. We had to get a permit to travel anywhere. This permit had to be stamped ten, even twelve times —a tremendous hassle. Until ’87, when the Communists loosened up a little, there were occasional house checks. They would come in the house and look around for people hiding, subversive materials, I don’t know what. Government officials could call you to their office for any reason, and you had to report immediately.

  Between ’78 and ’80, we prepared to leave Vietnam by boat, but the plans fell through and we didn’t go. I was very young, I don’t know what happened. After high school, I thought of escaping, but we were hearing terrible stories of people lost at sea, attacks by pirates, things like that. My mother said better to apply for the Orderly Departure Program and wait.

  I have a Vietnamese girlfriend in Vietnam, but her family doesn’t accept me. They are like all Vietnamese, they look down on the Amerasian. They don’t say nothing to me, but I see when a Vietnamese friend comes to their house, they treat him much better than me.

  They are afraid people will look down on them if their daughter marries an Amerasian. I asked my girlfriend, “Can I go to your family and tell them we want to marry?” She said, “No, they will not accept you.” Before I left Vietnam, I asked her to marry me and we would go America together. She said, “No, you go, and we will see. After a few years, if you can come back and we still feel the same, maybe we can marry.” But I think she will not wait for me.

  My girlfriend’s parents, I see how they look at Vietnamese who go to America and then come back to Vietnam. They look at them very high. I hope maybe when I come back to Vietnam they will look at me that way.

  Postscript: By the time he left the PRPC in July of ’92, Phuc had a new girlfriend, an Amerasian named Lan. Phuc was resettled in Rochester, New York. Within a month, Phuc moved to Chicago to join Lan, who had resettled there.

  Hung

  “I never had a father’s love, only a mother’s, and that was not enough for me.”

  On a bleak afternoon in July, I sat in a billet in neighborhood six, waiting for a break in the weather. It was not to come soon. The monsoon rains had locked into Bataan with a vengeance and would not relinquish their grip for several months.

  Outside in the downpour, a young black Amerasian navigated his way home. I caught a glimpse of him as he came in out of the weather and entered the billet next door, wearing only gym shorts and flip-flops. Self-inflicted burns and slashmarks are common among Amerasians, but never had I seen them to this extent. The young man’s torso, arms, and legs had been terribly mutilated. Raised lines of scar tissue overlay his body, one slash criss-crossing into the next. Tattooed ladies danced across his belly. I walked under the dripping overhang that runs the length of each row of billets and onto the tiny concrete slab fronting his living area. I introduced myself through my interpreter, and we shook hands, a bit awkwardly. Hung laughed; this may have been his first handshake. He had just arrived in the PRPC, and shaking hands is not a Vietnamese custom. His mood was light and upbeat, he smiled easily and frequently. We arranged to meet again the following afternoon.

  My interpreter and I arrived in his billet at 2 A.M. the next day. Hung was nowhere to be found. His mother sat cross-legged on her wooden bedframe, a row of cards spread out between her and another Vietnamese woman. Fortunes were being divined, Hung’s mother’s specialty. Judging from the number of clients waiting patiently in the cramped billet, business was good.

  Twenty minutes later Hung arrived, wearing a checked pair of pajamas, his feet covered with mud. He had been out playing soccer. When he saw us, he pounded his forehead with a fist. “I forgot,” he said sheepishly.

  A hint of the country of his upbringing rests in Hung’s cheekbones and eyes. Otherwise, his appearance is that of a young black man. Although in high spirits when we first met, Hung was subdued, even somber during our interviews. Like many in the PRPC , he has left family behind. He worries about his wife and child in Vietnam; foremost in his thoughts is how to bring them to America once he arrives there. When he mentions them, his eyes swell with tears.

  I AM FROM Ho Chi Minh city, from Nguyen Cong Tru Street, near the Thai Binh market. My mother was married to a Vietnamese husband and already had one baby when she met an American man. She was working at the Hung Dao hotel. That’s where it happened. She became pregnant with his baby. That’s me. I was born in 1968. I don’t know anything about my father except what I told you.

  My mother’s Vietnamese husband managed a troupe of performers called Tuoi Tre [young age]. They had magicians, singers, acrobats. My mother and him still kept on living together after I was born. They stayed together until 1980, when they divorced. They had three more kids but my Vietnamese stepfather didn’t want me around, the son of another man.

  My mother sent me to my maternal aunt for a few years and then she brought me back to her house. I was young, I didn’t understand anything but when I got back to my mother’s house I could see that my stepfather didn’t love me. He only loved his own children. . . . My skin is different from theirs.

  I only went to school up to second grade. The students don’t like black skin, they hate it. They like to play with the fair-skinned people. They never let me forget I was black and that I had no father. They always called me names and made me ashamed, so I stopped going.

  You ask me about my scars. All my life people despised me, they called me a “bastard,” a “nigger.” I didn’t care about myself. I wanted to die. So I took a razor and slashed myself all over. People see my scars and they think, “Oh, he’s a tough guy, he’s a troublemaker.” They judge me. But it’s not like that, I just wanted to die. I tried to kill myself four times. All my life has been sad. I never had a father’s love, only a mother’s, and that was not enough for me.

  It is very common that when a young man reaches seventeen or eighteen years, the government takes him into the military. The Amerasian and Chinese cannot carry arms, so they must do labor for the government instead.

  The authorities asked me to join with the fire prevention team and also a security team that helped in the arrest of illegal street vendors and confiscated their goods. I was against that. I refused to join in the harassment of vendors. I wouldn’t do it. One day the authorities came to my house and told me to go to the police station. When they call you, you have to go. I went down there, and they arrested me. When the authorities ask you to participate in their schemes, and you refuse, they send you to Duyen Hai district, to the “State Farm for Agricultural and Industrial Education and Labor” to do the “duty of building the defense economy.” What a joke. All those grand words are fancy lies. It is nothing but a forced labor camp. President Nguyen Van Thieu said, “Don’t listen to the words of the Communists, watch their actions.”

  Hung outside his billet in the PRPC

  Duyen Hai is on a kind of a peninsula. One side is facing the ocean, and one side has a river. It’s difficult to escape, but not impossible. Who do they send there? Young people they don’t like vendors, homeless people, prostitutes, criminals, people they suspect of committing a crime or anybody who opposes them.

  We are forced to labor there. We had to dig canals to channel the sea water into fields. These became shallow salt ponds, where we harvest the salt. The work is very hard, a lot of digging.

  I said it was not impossible to escape, and I did, after only about twenty days. I swam across the river at night. I made it back to my home in Ho Chi Minh City, but because I was sent to Duyen Hai, my name had been rubbed out of my household register. Without that, you cannot legally live in a place, so I was illegal in my own home, in my own family’s house. What could I do? I had nowhere else to go. I tried to lay low and keep away from the authorities. I got some work helping a fish merchant, carrying ice from the factory to the ice trucks. You see this? [Hung pulls a flap of skin on the right side of his neck, almost under his chin, and shows a long scar.] I fell down carry
ing a chunk of ice and a sliver went right into my neck.

  A year or so after I got out of Duyen Hai, I was drinking with some friends. I was feeling low, thinking about how miserable my life was, how the government hated Americans and children of Americans, like me. The more I drank, the more outraged I became, and then I did a stupid thing. I went with a friend to a place outside the police station. It was nighttime. We yelled out things like “Down with the Communists,” stuff like that, and ran away. About a week later the police came and picked me up. They said I had been identified as the one yelling counter-revolutionary slogans, and they arrested me. They sent me up to Buon Me Thuot, to Dak Minh prison camp. I was supposed to be there for forty-eight months.

  This camp is not for political prisoners. There are other ones for that, like Han Thanh. Dak Minh is a prison camp for criminals. I was the only Amerasian there at that time.

  The camp is surrounded by very thick forest, and the work there is mostly cutting wood, planting trees, and building some structures . . . like huts for us to sleep in. You can’t grow rice up there, only manioc or sweet potato. We got up at five, no breakfast, and went out to work. Sometimes we had to walk a kilometer to get to the worksite, sometimes six or seven. You better work. If you don’t, or if you tell them you’re sick and they don’t buy your story, they might make you stand in the stream up to your neck, sometimes all afternoon. Dak Minh is in the mountains, that water is cold.

  For lunch we get some rice and not much else, not even fish sauce or salt. Sometimes we try to find some leaves we can eat in the forest, but if the guards catch you, they’ll beat you. And we don’t get any tobacco. We try to scrounge the butts the guards throw away when they are not looking. When we get back to the camp, we have just a short time for dinner. We have to be in our huts by five-thirty. If you are not, you get punished. If you break their rules, they might put you in the metal box. [Often made from metal storage containers left by the Americans, the metal box can be burning hot in the day, freezing at night.]