Children of the Enemy Page 24

  In 1978, I was arrested and put in jail for dealing drugs. I had not sold any drugs since before the Americans left, and I don’t know for sure why I was arrested I think a neighbor probably turned me in. I was accused of selling heroin, arrested without a trial, and sent to prison in Long Thanh, near Vung Tau.

  They put me in a cell with about fifty people in a room about twice the size of this billet [the billet is about ten feet by twenty feet]. We each had two bricks of floor space to sleep in.

  In the day we had to go out and do labor, farm work. For food we got corn, very bad corn, full of worms. Sometimes they gave us some kind of cereal. Hard work and bad food . . . many people got sick, some died. The prison, they gave us some training too. They taught us to sew and how to make hats [the Vietnamese conical hats worn in the provinces by both men and women]. We make the inside of bamboo and the outside of coconut leaves.

  I spent five years in that jail. I got out in 1983. They never told me that they would let me go. They just came one day and told me to go home—and I did.

  Mai Lien and Diem

  “I no longer make offerings to the altar of my ancestors.”

  Diem is trouble-shooting his homemade fan. An ingenious contraption of scrap metal and bent spoons, it runs on five rechargeable D batteries. His mother, Mai Lien, only half jokingly calls it “An invention for the twenty-first century.” The machine sputters to life, sending a tiny wisp of a breeze through the dense heat of the billet, and abruptly peters out. The only air movement now comes from the arc of the hammock in which Anh, Diem’s wife, swings their ten-day-old son.

  Mai Lien, slim and graceful at fifty-five, was born a farm girl, and before coming to the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, she spent most of her life in her small village. During the war, she moved to Quy Nhon to find work at the U. S. base there. While working at the base, she met her American boyfriend, Willie Smith. Diem, now twenty-four, was born of this relationship.

  Mai Lien calls Diem over and asks him to put his foot up on the bench. She points to the long slim toe next to the big toe. The nail has grown in an unusual way. Rather than forming a single surface, there are two distinct nails, separated in the middle. “This is the same as Willie Smith,” she says. “He can know that Diem is his son, he just has to look at his toe.”

  We speak through interpreters, but Mai Lien’s command of English, though rusty, has not disappeared. When she is dissatisfied with a translation, she breaks into a brief torrent of English. Her point made, she lapses back into Vietnamese, deferring once again to the translators. Diem, American in appearance with his light complexion, brown hair, and wisp of a mustache, speaks only Vietnamese.

  Mai Lien: I was born fifty-five years ago in the Tan Chau district of Long Xuyen province. Now they call it An Giang, the government changed the name in 1975. There were seven brothers and sisters in my family, but only three of us are still alive. I am the only one to leave Vietnam. My village, Phu Lam, was a farming village, and like all the other children, I grew up working in the fields and helping raise the chickens and pigs. My family was very poor, they could not afford to send me to school. Most of the villagers followed the Hoa Hao religion, but we practiced ancestor worship. On an altar in the house, we burned joss sticks and offered fruit in honor of our dead ancestors. Here in the PRPC, the Baptists showed us a movie about Jesus. It was very convincing, and we decided to join their religion. Now I no longer make offerings to the altar of my ancestors.

  Diem’s split toe nail, inherited from his American father, Willie Smith

  When the rains came, we would bring out the buffalo to plow the fields, and we would sow the rice. This is called sa lua, the scattering of the rice seed. After the rains, when the rice was ripe, we harvested. Since the Communists took over in 1975, we’ve changed our methods. Now we plant the rice in a small field, and when the seedlings are big enough, in about eighteen to twenty-five days, we transplant them to a bigger field. We just make a hole with our finger or with a small stone and transplant by hand, seedling by seedling. I like the old way, but some villagers prefer the new method. Either way, if you care for your field, you can get a good harvest.

  When I was a girl, my favorite holiday was “Via Ba,” on April 25 of the lunar calendar. That’s when we went to Sam mountain in Chau Duc province. Once there was a rock on Sam Mountain in the shape of a lady. The rock grew magically till it was so big that twenty men could not lift it, but the villagers sent nine virgins up to the mountain, and they picked up the rock and carried it to the fields below. The rock is known as Ba [revered lady], and a temple was built around it. Many Vietnamese, and especially Chinese, believe that if you make a pilgrimage to her and light joss sticks, she will make you very lucky, so people come from all over the country to visit this magical rock. This was a wonderful time for me as a child. If you ever go to Vietnam, you can visit there and stay in my house. There is a boy living there now. I will tell him that you are coming.

  When I was eighteen, I married a Vietnamese soldier. We had a small wedding in the army compound, and only my father came from my family. My other relatives stayed at home because there was a bandit group operating in the area called Canh Buom Den [black sail], and people were afraid to leave their property unguarded. That husband was trouble. We had three baby sons, and then he got another wife. He actually brought his other wife home and wanted her to live together with us. I was bu cu mad. I said “no way,” and I took my children and went home to my mother and father. I left my children with them, and I went to Quy Nhon and got a job for the American army. That’s where I met Willie Smith.

  His name was really Kenny Rays [not a real name], but I couldn’t pronounce that name. Willie Smith is easy, so that’s what I called him. He was from Georgia, and he worked as an MP. I changed my name too. In Quy Nhon everybody called me Mai Lien, and that’s what I would like you to call me in your book.

  I loved him very much; he was a very good man. I took him to my parent’s house to see my children, and he treated them like they were his own. And you know, he loved to cook. He could cook very well, chicken, ham, pork, all very delicious. I had two babies with him. The first was Diem, his name is the same as the president of Vietnam. My second, Jacqueline, she died very young. She got sick at six months old. At first it wasn’t serious, but Willie went back to America already, and I had no money to pay for a doctor. Two months later she was dead.

  Willie, he used to tell me he wanted to take me back to America, but I said, “No, I cannot go.” I had a sick mother and three Vietnamese babies. How could I leave them? But now, I feel very sorry. He is the father of my baby, and I miss him very much. I would like to see him again, but I don’t want to make trouble for him. I don’t want to make his wife jealous.

  In 1968, during Tet, the Communists attacked. Willie Smith was driving to the base in a jeep, along with two friends. The Communists ambushed the jeep, and one of his friends was shot dead. Willie was very shook up over that, and he didn’t come home. When I didn’t see him, I went to the base to find him, but he had already gone back to America. I felt so sad. He was a good man, he took care of me. [Mai begins to weep, and cannot continue for several minutes.]

  Mai Lien in the 1960s (courtesy of Mai Lien)

  Diem: I want to meet my father, just see him. If he wants to help me, okay. If not, that’s okay too. I will tell him, “My mother told me all about you, and I’m very lucky now to meet you in person.”

  Mai Lien: On April 30, 1975, the VC came. We were in Long Xuyen. The rumor was that they would kill all the Amerasians, so naturally I was very scared. I was afraid to separate from Diem. I took him to the fields with me, I didn’t let him out of my sight. When the Communists came, they called over a loud speaker for all the officials of the former government to assemble, and they took them away—first the higher officials and later the lower ones. But they never hurt the Amerasians.

  Mai Lien

  We lived in a thatch hut. Because I had an American baby, I t
hought that the Communists would confiscate our house and land, so I dismantled part of the house and sold the materials. We stayed in the tiny remainder. Then I sold our land. Actually, I drew up a contract in which I leased the fields to another farmer for twenty years, because we couldn’t sell our land outright, but really it was a sale. So where before I had a house and land, I wound up living in a tiny hut and working for other people. My own actions, the things I did out of fear of the Communists, hurt me more than anything the Communists actually did. But it was difficult for Diem. When he went to school, the other children were mean to him.

  Mai Lien and Diem

  Diem: I only went to school for two years. All the children teased me, called me My lai [Amerasian] so I had many fights and got beat up a lot. So I didn’t want to go back, I just left and worked on the farm, taking care of the cows. I didn’t understand why people called me that, my mother had never told me that I had an American father. When I was about fifteen, the police came around the village with a list of Amerasians and they called on us. That’s when my mother said that, yes, I did have an American father.

  We applied to leave Vietnam in May 1991. A few months later, I was working in the fields when the Vietnamese official came with a slip of paper calling us for an interview. I said to myself, “Okay, this is the time to go, because here we are very poor.”

  Mai Lien: After 1975 there were two markets, the government market and the private market. The prices at the government market were very cheap, but to shop there you had to have a food card, and to get a food card you had to work for the government. I didn’t, so I had to buy at the public market. The vendors there are taxed heavily, so the prices are very high, and the food very expensive. So no matter how hard we worked, we were still poor.

  I tasted American rice when I worked on the base. The long grain is very tasty, but the short grain is tough and takes a long time to cook. I know that in America you use machines for planting, it is a different way. Do you think that when I go to America I can get a hundred hectares from the government to grow rice? I would like to do that. I have always worked in the fields.

  Dao Thi Mui and Thao

  (Patrick Henry Higgins)

  “My mother may not live long enough to see America.”

  The door and window of Mui’s billet are thrown open in a forlorn attempt to funnel any wisp of a breeze inside, but there is no movement of air. The March heat is almost hallucinogenic. Mui’s billet is bare but for a table and a single stool. A hammock fashioned of plastic string is tied back against the staircase. Magazine cutouts and ads decorate the asbestos walls. Their messages are in ironic contrast to the severity of the setting: “Fortune Magazine, the hottest 50 companies; Find out what has been good this year.” Below that, a duck-walking Chuck Berry declares, “Rock and Roll is back.” Nearby is an ad saying, “Bring your IRA together with the nation’s number one fund, Scudder,” and there are also blurbs for Fidelity and Dreyfus mutual fund companies.

  These plugs are lost on Mui and her son Thao, also known as Patrick Henry, the name bestowed upon him by his American father. They possess neither the English to comprehend the messages, nor the money to comply with them if they did. Although Mui and Thao inherited $40,000 between them in 1984 from the estate of Thao’s deceased father, Henry G. Higgins, they have yet to see a penny of it.

  We sit on the cement floor, trying futilely to get comfortable in the immense heat. Mui pulls a paper out of a sheaf of documents and hands it to my interpreter, who passes it over to me. The letterhead indicates it is from an attorney at law located in Miami Shores, Florida. The letter is dated August 16, 1984, and is addressed to Thao in Ho Chi Minh City. It is headed “Re: Estate of Henry G. Higgins, Deceased,” and it states:

  The court has directed and we have established a controlled savings account in your name with 330,000.00. This is your share of the inheritance. As you probably know, the United States Government does not allow the transfer of American funds to foreign countries and, therefore, it will be necessary for you to be in the United States to receive same.

  According to records that we have, your father carried you to the United States Embassy and recorded your birth as his son and, therefore, you are a United States citizen, which should make it very easy for you to leave Vietnam to come to the United States.

  Leaving Vietnam, however, was not easy. Eight years passed, numerous escape attempts failed, and Vietnamese officials were bribed before Mui, Thao and his wife, and two of their three children would depart Vietnam for the Philippines through the Orderly Departure Program.

  Despite the $30,000 inheritance and an additional $7,500 Veterans Administration government insurance benefit to Thao and $2,500 to Mui, the family remains without funds. Until they reach the United States, they have no access to the money. While his father’s bequest gathers interest in a Stateside bank, Thao has been reduced to selling his clothes to obtain money for food.

  Mui’s appearance is extremely aged, well beyond her sixty-six years. She had three eye operations in Vietnam and wears glasses with a left lens so thick it is almost opaque. Her hair is snow white, and the single tooth in the bottom front of her mouth seems preternaturally long, due to the lack of others around it. Her hands are unlined, however, and the fingers delicate and youthful.

  Mui has known loss. Her first husband and a daughter died in a car accident. Her American husband passed away from heart disease in 1983, fifteen years after he left Vietnam to return to the United States. Her oldest son, a bicycle rickshaw driver in Ho Chi Minh City, died of a liver ailment. And Minh, one of her two Amerasian sons, was evacuated from Vietnam just a few months before Saigon fell and placed with a foster family in the United States. Contact has been lost, and Mui doesn’t know how to locate him.

  As Mui tells her story, she often confers with Thao on details. There is a great rapport between mother and son. We speak for about an hour and a half, and Mui must then excuse herself. She is tired, her health is not good.

  Thao is a very soft-spoken young man, and his English is minimal. At twenty-five, he has his father’s light skin and brown hair. On his chin, a mole sprouts several long hairs, in a style favored by some Vietnamese. He worries that his mother may not live long enough to enjoy the inheritance they have waited so long to collect.

  Mui: I was born in a small village in Kien An province in North Vietnam, but when I was still very young, there was fighting in our area, and we left home. I remember that we walked about a half day to another village, and that is where we stayed. It was a farming village not too far from Haiphong. Most of the villagers grew rice and fruit trees, but my family didn’t farm, we were vendors. My sister sold soup in the market. My father died when I was young, and my mother entered the temple to become a Buddhist nun, so I was raised by my older sister.

  When I was twenty-one, I married a Vietnamese policeman. I was the prettiest girl in the village, that is why my husband chose me. I first saw him at my engagement party. I remember being struck by how young he looked. He was two years younger than me. But everything had been arranged by our families, I had no say in the choice of my husband.

  By custom, on the engagement date the husband’s family provides the head of a pig, a bottle of red wine, a bag of tea, some biscuits, and sticky rice, and presents them to the Buddha at the altar. After the presentation, the family can eat them. For the wedding the husband gives a gift of jewelry to the bride and offers eight trays of betel nut and leaf, each covered by a red cloth, to the wife’s family. That is the tradition, and that was how my wedding was. We got married in Haiphong, which was my husband’s hometown.

  My husband was a policeman, and his family worked in the office of the navy. A few months after my wedding came the great exodus to the south, including most Catholics, and also families who had worked for the old French regime. Since my husband’s family worked for the Department of the Navy, they arranged for us transportation on a navy boat to Saigon.

  In Saigon my husband
joined the air force. He became a sergeant. We had three children, two girls and a boy. But my younger daughter and my husband were killed in a traffic accident, and I was forced to go out and work to support my family.

  I got a cart, and I began selling fruit juice on the street. I worked in front of a bar, one of those bars that American servicemen like to go into. That’s where I met Henry Higgins. Every day, he would buy out my juice, give me twenty dollars and pass the juice to the people all around. That’s how we got to know each other. He was about forty-one, I guess, and I was about five years younger then him. I think that was 1964. He asked me, “You have husband?” I told him that my husband was dead. After about five months, he rented a house and we lived together. We stayed together for about three years, and we had two children, two boys. Henry, he worked in the communications section [for the army], then he went back to America for a while. When he came back to Vietnam, he worked as a teacher at the military hospital. He had a wife in America, he told me that, but they were separated.

  My two sons are Minh and Thao. Thao is here with me. His American name is Patrick Henry Higgins. Henry didn’t believe that Minh was his son, because the eyes, the hair, the nose, the mouth were all different from his. Minh had blonde hair, it wasn’t like Henry’s. When Minh was born, Henry was still in Vietnam, living with me, and he stayed with me until Thao, our second, was seven or eight months. He didn’t say anything about Minh, and he bought the same things for both babies, but he didn’t include Minh in his will. Minh is Henry’s baby, I told him that, but he didn’t believe me.