Children of the Enemy Page 23

  Even up to the time we came here, Trung had trouble because of his American blood. Just before we left Vietnam, on the first day of Tet [Vietnamese New Year], my family was sitting down, eating dinner. My house is in front of the road, so when everyone walk by, the trucks roll by, everybody can see us. This man just comes by my house. I don’t know, maybe he’s drunk, and he calls to my son du ma My lai [mother fucker Amerasian] He stands outside the house yelling, and my son was inside the house. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true.

  So my son goes outside and says to the man, “Why you call me that? I don’t even know you.” And they start talking, and pretty soon it was an argument. Then I get nervous and I tell the man to get away from my house. Two days later he came back with another man, but my son and myself were not at home. My neighbor told him, “Get out of here or I will call the police.”

  A few days later they came back for the third time, during lunch hour. My Amerasian son was there, and my youngest son too. And the guy brought a man with him that is also my youngest son’s friend. My youngest son is stronger than his older brother, and he says to them, “Don’t bother my brother, he didn’t do anything to you. In fact, he doesn’t even know you, so get away from us if you want to stay my friend. If not, we will kill you.” But of course, we didn’t let him do that. So I stopped them, and I asked the neighbor to call the police, and the police came and took them away.

  When Trung was a young boy, he asked me why he is different, and I say to him, “You just be the way you are. You are a handsome boy, they be jealous. Don’t blame anyone about the way you look.”

  In school and on the street, my son had problems. If he went around with his friends, he had problems. But he kept everything inside, so I didn’t know much about it. You know until 1989, I could not get his name in my family book, so he had to stay with his grandmother in Phouc Long, though he come to visit me a lot. I know that in Phouc Long my son had problems because he is Amerasian, but he doesn’t tell me, he keeps it to himself. Only now is he telling me what went on.

  Trung: When I first started school, at about six or seven years old, I realized I was not Vietnamese because of the way others treated me. Vietnamese people always looked down on me. Even when I was young, I could feel it. They don’t look at me the way they look at the Vietnamese. One day some boys called me outside from my grandmother’s house, I didn’t know why. I went out and they just hit me in the mouth. You see the scar and the broken tooth? That guy had had a fight with a friend of mine, but not with me. But they remembered my face because I am Amerasian, so they came back to pick on me. They were afraid to fight with my friend because he had brothers, but I was alone except for my grandmother.

  In school the teacher and the children would talk bad to me. The students say that I am American, I should go back to America. I don’t like that. I had some Vietnamese friends, but most of my friends were other Amerasians.

  I hope I can work in the United States. I will accept any kind of job. I want to continue to study English, and I want to find my father.

  Lan: My Amerasian son, he really wants to see his real father. He says, “If I can just can see my father one time, that’s enough, then I can die.” You know that paper you gave me yesterday? [Lan is referring to a guide for Amerasian children searching for their fathers.] My son took it from me and went to the neighbor to have it translated, just to see if it had any information about his father. I know my son. He won’t bother his father if his father doesn’t want him. He just wants to see him, even just one time.

  The day before our ODP interview in Vietnam, Trung told me, “I hope that the first American I meet is my daddy.” You know, one time he said to me, “Mom, you must have been a lovely woman.” I said, “How do you know? Now I’m old and ugly.” He said, “But my father was so handsome, so you must have been lovely.”

  Postscript: On the day before our final conversation, Lan found out that she and her family would be heading for Fargo, North Dakota. After her initial disappointment at being sent to such a severe climate, she found a positive aspect and had this to say:

  “I don’t really want to live with Vietnamese in America because I heard that the Vietnamese that came in 1975, the ones who came early, look down on the new arrivals. In the beginning I was disappointed to be going to Fargo, North Dakota, because it’s so cold, but now I think maybe it’s good because there are not many Vietnamese there and maybe I can get a job easy. And this way, Vietnamese won’t look down on me, and I won’t feel jealous of them.”

  Linh and Thu

  “Maybe you get married to an American and have an easy life.”

  “You know, I live with Americans for ten years. How come I can’t speak English?” Linh chuckles, having spoken the sentence in English. Although we usually conversed with the aid of an interpreter, Linh would sometimes break into a jag of English, ending in a burst of laughter.

  She is Khmer Krom, an ethnic Cambodian from the Mekong delta region of Vietnam, which is referred to by Khmer as Kampuchea Krom, lower Cambodia. She is equally fluent in Vietnamese and Khmer, though she cannot read or write either language.

  At fifty, Linh’s hair is grey turning white, though her face is unlined. She has five grown Amerasian children by a succession of three black American “husbands.” Three of her children are here in the PRPC, along with three of Linh’s grandchildren. Thu, her twenty-three-year-old daughter, often was present when I talked to Linh and spoke briefly herself about her lot as a black Amer-asian in Vietnam.

  When we first met, Linh mentioned only four Amerasian children, and this is the number she gave the interviewers of the Orderly Departure Program when she applied to leave Vietnam. After we had spoken several times, she hesitantly confided that she had one more Amerasian son in Vietnam, whom she had “loaned” to her sister. This sister will apply to the Orderly Departure Program claiming to be the mother of Linh’s son. If ODP believes her story, her family will be allowed to immigrate to the United States under the provisions of the Amerasian Homecoming Act. In this way, Amerasians become tickets to the States for those who claim them as family. Linh explains, “If my son don’t go with them, they cannot go, because they have no Amerasian.”

  Linh: I was born in Tien Giang province, in Kampuchea Krom. My father died when I was still young, and I was raised by my mother and sisters. I don’t really remember too much about Tien Giang, but I can remember a lot of fighting, battles. These were between the French and the Viet Minh. Because of this, the French forced us to move to Hau Giang province.

  The French troops put us into small boats on the river, and they took us to Hau Giang. When I say French, I mean the officers were French. The soldiers were mostly Vietnamese or Khmer or Ma roc [Black African French Colonial troops]. I remember that we could not take our animals. All the farm animals were left behind. They moved us to a small hamlet inside the military camp, not only us, but people from many other villages were brought there. The villagers lived in the middle of the base, and the soldiers stayed towards the outer part of the base. The French gave each family land to work outside the base perimeter, so we lived inside and worked outside.

  At that time Ba Cut, the leader of the Hoa Hao religious sect, was opposing the French, and the Hoa Hao army sometimes attacked the base. There were also attacks sometimes by the Viet Minh. Sometimes villagers would be killed or injured by stray shells.

  The fields were just outside perimeter. When it was peaceful, we worked the fields. We had to give part of our harvest to the French for taxes, and the Viet Minh would also take rice when we were in the fields. So we had to pay two times, to the Viet Minh and the French, but we preferred the French. I remember that the Viet Minh would sometimes come and torch hamlets that they suspected of supporting the other side. They would give no notice, just set the place on flame immediately. That’s why I didn’t like the Viet Minh.

  There was a Buddhist temple in the hamlet. I went there to pray, but I didn’t study. Only my brothers studied t
here, so I never learned to read or write. It was the custom at the time that only the boys studied. Education was not considered necessary for girls. Girls were not permitted to go to school. Actually, there were a few girls in the village who did go, but it was not really proper. Most of the families were poor, so the girls would stay home and help in the house or outside. I always did farm work when I was young. I have no other skills.

  I got married at seventeen. My husband was a Khmer Krom, like me. He was a soldier for the French army stationed in the compound, and that’s how we met. We had two children, but both got sick and died, one at a month old. The other lived to three years old. We were married about five years when he was shot in a battle with the Viet Minh. You know, I had three brothers, and they are all dead too . . . soldiers. One was in the French army, and the Viet Minh killed him. The others were ARVN, killed by the VC. That was in the time of the Americans, not the French.

  So the Viet Minh killed my husband, and I was alone. I stayed in Vinh Binh, my husband’s town, and worked in the market selling vegetables. The French government, they gave me money, a pension, because my husband was killed in the French army. You know, I got that pension until the Communists came, then everything stopped. I had to destroy many documents because I was afraid of the VC. If they know you are connected with the French or the Americans, that’s very bad. So I don’t have the papers to prove that I was married to a French soldier anymore, to try to start collecting again.

  A few years after my husband was killed, I went up to Saigon and worked as a maid for some Vietnamese people. I had a friend, Khmer like me, who worked in the bars by Tan Son Nhut airport. She come to see me, and she said, “You come with me, you don’t work too hard. Maybe you get married with American and have an easy life.” So I went with my friend to work the bars.

  I didn’t dance in the bar, I was . . . like a hostess. My friend taught me titi [a little] English, how to say “hello,” “good evening,” things like that. If some Americans want to talk to me, my friend translates for me.

  Mostly black men were coming in that bar. There were some Vietnamese, and some white men, but not too many. I didn’t get salary, but I got money when the man drank Saigon tea. One tea cost about sixty dong, and I got half. Each night it was different. Some nights I would drink five or ten Saigon tea, sometimes only one or two, but the money was good, better than working as a housemaid.

  The bar gave me food, and if the police arrested me, the bar bailed me out. If someone wants to take me home or to go someplace, they pay the bar money, and the bar gives me half. The man would pay about twenty dollars for one night. The American customers, they are very nice. They don’t talk bad like the Vietnamese. But I didn’t go with many men, because after one month I met my “husband,” and I stopped working at the bar.

  His name was Bob. He was a black man from New York, a soldier in the army. When I lived with him, I didn’t work bar no more. When I get pregnant with his first baby, he went back to the United States and he left me a lot of money, so I could stay home and take care of his son. He wrote me many letters and always sent his son money. After about two years, he come back again. Bob had a wife in America, and I was very sad when he went to America, but I didn’t wait a long time. I got another husband, another black GI. He was also a very good man. His name was Terry. He was the friend of my girlfriend, and when he came to see my girlfriend, I met him.

  You know, Bob came back when his baby son was about two years old. He wanted me to go back with him, but I was already with Terry. Bob was very good, he didn’t get mad. He just told my second husband, “If you live with her, you must take care of her very kind.” When Bob come back, he was stationed in Can Tho, but he came to Saigon every month to visit his son and gave him money.

  I lived with Terry for four years, and we had two babies together. He didn’t have other girlfriends, he just stayed with me. He loved my children. One time he went back to America. He stayed a month and came back to Vietnam again. He came back around Mau Than [“the year of the monkey,” used here to refer to Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, of 1968, the time of the Tet offensive]. The Communists came to Saigon on that holiday and made plenty of trouble. My husband, he worked at Tan Son Nhut airport, and he had to stay there, he couldn’t go out. There was too much shooting, many died.

  In ’69 Terry went back to America. He made a paper for me to leave with him, but I didn’t go. I like Terry very much, he was very kind. I have had three American husbands, and he was the best one. But my mother was very old, and I had to take care of her. Terry, he was very sad. He wrote many letters, he said he missed me. He sent money, but I could not go with him.

  When he went back to America, he left me some cash. I used it to buy a house in Saigon, and I opened a small coffee shop right in the house.

  When Terry had gone, I met another black man, Clark. He was a civilian. I stayed with him more than two years, from ’70 to ’72. Then he went to the United States. Clark, he had many, many girlfriends. I had two babies with him. When he left, I was pregnant with the second. He didn’t even tell he was leaving. He said he was going to work, and he never came back. He didn’t leave me any money, he didn’t even say good-bye.

  You know, I lived with Americans for ten years. How come I can’t speak English? When I was married to Americans, I could speak, but it’s twenty years ago, and now I forgot, and I feel shy to try.

  When the VC came in ’75, I was in Saigon. The day before they came, my husband’s friend was still in Saigon. He told me that if I wanted to go to America, he could get me out, but how could I go? I had three babies in the province, with my mother near the town of Co Do. I could not leave my children.

  April 30, when the VC took Saigon, I was very afraid. People were saying that if you have Amerasian children, you must hide them, because the VC will cut off their heads. We were very scared, but they did not hurt my children.

  When the Communists came, they said that we cannot stay in Saigon, that we must leave and go where we can work as farmers. So I went to Co Do and worked on my mother’s farm. My mother had her own land, but the Communists took it and redistributed it. They gave us back a small plot to work. Anything we wanted to do, we had to ask permission. There was no freedom, no medicine, not enough rice. My kids went to school just a short time. Even before 1975, when my kids went to school in Saigon, the other kids bothered them because they were black. Vietnamese hate blacks, they hate American children . . . even before ’75. Black and white, they hate both. The other children, they say my kids are dirty, that all blacks are dirty, so my kids don’t want to go to study anymore. They just stay home and work in the fields, and they are like me, they cannot read and write.

  Thu: Nobody liked me in Vietnam. That’s why I want to go to America. Everywhere I went, in the town, at the market, people yelled at me, they insulted me. I never say anything, I don’t listen to them. But I didn’t like to go out and see other people. The Vietnamese hate Amerasians.

  Linh: My mother never said nothing bad about my Amerasian kids. She helped me take care of them. There were no problems in my family; but the villagers, they don’t like my babies. I don’t have trouble with the VC in Co Do, but the neighbors looked down on me because I have bu cu American children and no husband. I always felt afraid of my neighbors, that they would tell the VC something bad about me.

  In my town there were both Vietnamese and Khmer. Both hate American children. They hate it when one of them gets married to an American. They hate the husband, they hate the children, and they hate the women who marry the American husbands.

  Now one of my daughters is in America. She is twenty-six. She escaped by foot into Cambodia, then to Thailand, and then resettled in California. She married a Khmer man there, but she gave all her five children American names. She lives in Sacramento and will sponsor my family. Recently she sent me money, $100. Before, she sent me $50 but I never got it. The Philippine post office stole it.

  I have the name and address o
f my second husband. [Astonishingly, Linh produces the military ID of her second husband, Terry, five feet, eight inches, 158 lbs., born June 17, 1951. It is not a copy, but a laminated original, dated 1971.] You see, he is much younger than me [Linh is laughing]. I will not try to see him, he must be married again. I don’t want to make trouble for him, so we will go live with my daughter.

  There are many more things I can tell you about my life, many . . . but I don’t want to remember the past.

  I turn off my tape player and get ready to leave Linh’s billet. A grandchild, a girl of about four, munches on fried bananas, mesmerized by the cassette recorder. Another granddaughter, a baby, is sleeping peacefully in a tiny hammock fashioned out of blue plastic cord and a Kroma, the multipurpose sheet of checked material used by almost all Khmer. Linh gently rocks the hammock with her foot, and hesitantly, again begins to speak.

  SOMETHING I DIDN’T TELL you . . . When I was married to the Americans, I sold heroin and made a lot of money. Heroin, and opium for smoking. My customers were all GIs. I lived in a neighborhood with many Americans, and many people were selling drugs. My neighbors showed me how to get set up, and they supplied me. My husband, Terry, knew about this and didn’t like it. He wanted me to stop, but I didn’t. I couldn’t; the money was too good. I didn’t really think about what the stuff did. For me it was just a way to support my kids. But one time, one of my customers, a GI, came to the house. He was sick, shaking, looking for a fix. I saw then what it did, that people were dying from it, and I got out of that business.