We displayed the new Bibles above the fireplace. Chi kept hers and read it using a dictionary. Dad, expecting church visitors, had us relocate Grandpa's shrine from the living room to the master bedroom. Mom put a fresh pot of tea and a bowl of fruit on the altar. Dad had us take turns praying to Grandpa so we could commune with his
spirit more intimately. I closed the door, lit my incense stick, and said to Grandpa that I hoped he wasn't too mad at our being baptized because it was the only polite thing we could do. I said I probably wouldn't see him in heaven since he was Vietnamese, but I hoped he didn't get reincarnated as a donkey. They say people who hit others too much will come back as donkeys so others can hit them back.
Deep in my gut, I knew a part of Grandpa lived on in Dad.
One day, not too long after our baptism, Dad took off his belt, bellowing, You lazy, disobedient child. I had lingered in front of the television too long when Dad summoned all us kids outside to help him bring in the groceries. My brothers and Chi went out. I was transfixed by Bugs Bunny fooling with Elmer Fudd. Dad came in howling, Where's An? Where's that disobedient boy? He found me in the den in front of the television. His hands strayed to his belt buckle. His arm rose and the belt snaked out of the loops. He started whipping me, shouting, I slave to feed you and you are too lazy to carry your own food into the house. The strip of leather chased heat across my arms, legs, chest, back, branding me. He lashed me from the den to the kitchen. I fell back from his onslaught, retreating, wanting to flee the house but too fearful of the consequences. His pale olive face bled with rage. The belt cut looping X's in the air, striking me, hitting the cabinets, the refrigerator, the dining table. He beat me into the laundry alcove. I balled into a corner between the washer and dryer. The blows fell like hot rain. The moment I thought I could not bear it anymore, something in the pit of my stomach found its pattern and came together, interlocking like a puzzle, creating a fortress. My legs straightened on their own, and I stood up, looking at him. Wind sounded in my ears. I did not cry. I just looked at him, taking the full brunt of his anger wherever it landed. I looked at him with eyes that had seen the phases of his inner beast beating us all. I saw the falsehood in his anger. I looked at him, pitting my mettle against his. My steel against his fire. His arms tired; the stroked slowed, then ceased. His face had gone purple as though he couldn't breathe. He huffed like a sprinter after a race. I looked him in the eyes. And he turned
and walked away, never to raise a hand against me again. Eleven years old, I walked out the back door and into the winter afternoon, realizing abruptly that I had clenched my jaw so hard I couldn't open my mouth.
Grandpa Pham was a fair man, Son. He beat my brothers and me because he loved us. He wanted us to succeed.
Your father is unstable in the head, An. His father made him kneel all day in the summer sun. The sunstroke changed him. Made him violent.
I am violent, Mom.
A curse in my father's line.
The rage was passed on to another generation. A monster in me, for I am violent. A few years down the road, I cane Hien with a spark of Father's fury. And Hien, barely ten, comes back at me with a knife.
Foreign-Asians
The morning following my return to Vung Tau from Mekong Delta, I aim myself north toward Hanoi and start pedaling. After Minh Luong Prison, I took a day ride down the Mekong River on a banana boat, caught an all-night bus back to Saigon, then shuttled back to Vung Tau. Yesterday evening was spent tuning my rickety bike for what will probably be its last journey.
As usual, I leave early, quietly fading into the dawn. Today I am going to Phan Thiet, the place of my birth. Out on the road, I feel vulnerable, especially when passing through villages. Vietnam seems full of villages, squalid gatherings of dwellings and shops every two miles along any road. The road is busy with peasants commuting up to ten miles daily on the saddest-looking bicycles on the planet. I slip into an easy rhythm, conversing with other riders. On the recommendation of a stranger, I take a fork in the road, opting for the more scenic coastal route to Phan Thiet.
Around noon, a white sun broils the land. Even the road dust feels baking hot. I fry inside my helmet. The sun-block cream is inadequate, milking down my face with my sweat. By one in the afternoon, the red-brown skin on my arms is covered with tiny blisters like fine sprays of sweat. They pop watery when I scratch them. The sun burns my
arms raw. I don't have any long-sleeve shirt except my sweatshirt and my rain jacket. I spot women sitting at sewing machines in thatched huts. They graciously cut up one of my Tâshirts to make sleeves for the one I am wearing. Within minutes, I am handsomely outfitted with sleeves. They refuse payment, saying it is a gift. I thank them and get back on the road in better spirits, still thinking I can make Phan Thiet by nightfall.
The countryside opens up with an endless patchwork of four- or five-acre farms, the houses hidden among the willowy trees and banana palms. In the lightly wooded areas, herders, rangy men with broad-brimmed hats, dusty clothes, and long bamboo staves, move quietly, watching their cattle grazing. The land is rich, green shooting up everywhereâout of the paddies, along the river, between the cracks in the road. The asphalt ends abruptly without road signs, and I find myself struggling on a red dirt road, sandy and full of children trudging home from school. Every five or six miles, there is an abandoned guardhouse with a boom-gate which is no longer levered across the road but raised like a flagpole. These are relics from the dark decade following the War, when the new Communist government kept a firm lid on civilian movement. People had to apply for interprovincial travel. Now children play in these guard stations and people pass through the gates without glancing at them. It seems as though, here in the backcountry, the government simply got bored and went back to the big cities. The only souls making a big racket out here are batches of twelve-year-olds riding two or three to a bicycle, going here and there, racing each other. I catch up with one large group. They are going to the local hot spring. They say they make the six-mile round-trip every other day. The way they twitter and yip, it sounds like the best way to bathe.
Although there are people everywhere, I am hesitant to ask for directions because everyone wants me to come in for tea. I manage to take several wrong turns. The hungry, curious way people gawk at me makes me feel spoiled, self-indulgent. I am also embarrassed to be “adventuring” through their homes, bedecked in outlandish gear they could never afford. At last, I summon enough courage to talk to a few poor peasants whose villages have only a handful of motorbikes
each. Many villagers haven't ventured farther than a day's bike distance from the place of their birth. No one seems to have a solid concept of the distance to the next town, Ham Tan. Dusk is falling and I know my shaky legs won't make it to Phan Thiet. My touring instinct urges me to look for a suitable place to strike camp, but as far as I can see in the weakening light, the land has been cut up into bite-sized lots, each one devoid of trees and surrounded by pigsties, gardens, and rice plots. The air is coarse with smoke from cooking fires.
Two hours after dark, I creak and bump to a commoner's inn in Ham Tan village. It is a clean but run-down place that houses merchants and traveling peasants. Bolted to the concrete floor, plywood partitions, three feet short of the ceiling, section the dormitory into individual cubicles. I pay my three-dollar fee and turn my travel papers over to the owner for processing with the local constable. Both natives and foreigners must register every night. Bureaucrats still keep a record of travelers.
Across from the inn is a corner diner, a corrugated-tin-and-plywood-scrap place, its concrete floor an inch higher than the mud. It has the looks of the shoddiest establishments in the old gold-rush towns, where streets eternally switched between whipped mud and dust fog. Dinner conversations die the moment I step inside, and the only things blaring are the TV and my sixth sense. Raw-faced men crowd four of the six tables, facing the television until I arrive. On the tables are nests of empty beer bottles.
A woman looks out from the kitchen. She approaches guardedly, twisting a rag in her hands. She eyes the men and asks me,
“What do you want?”
“Hello, Sister. Are you still serving dinner?”
I nod toward the inn across the street.
“I'm staying over there. The owner recommended your place.”
She hesitates, then flicks the rag at the back table near the kitchen. I sit obediently, wondering yet again why Vietnamese prefer kindergarten furniture. I haven't acquired the penchant to sit with my butt lower than my knees. With the tabletop so low, whenever I eat I feel as though I am licking myself like a dog. A string of black ants marches crumbs off the table. Houseflies buzz around my head. People stare openly at me, so I try to keep myself from batting the
flies and squashing the ants. I play stoic and take immense interest in the Vietnamese soap opera playing on television.
“Oy! You,” a man slurs in English. He sits up front and is obviously drunk and talking to me. I groan, pretending not to hear.
“OY! YOU!”
Oh, Lord. I show him my friendliest smile and nod, fingering my pocket for the tiny canister of pepper spray.
The speaker switches to Vietnamese, his English apparently at its limit.
“Brother, I want to ask you a question.”
“Please do.”
“How is it you speak Viet so well?”
I grin. This is easy.
“I'm Vietnamese
.”
He hitches up one corner of his mouth and blows out a note of disgust. His liquored eyes flicker over to his drinking partner, a shifty man with a knifish lookâa perfect killer right out of some bad Chinese mafia movie. He mutters privately to Killer, who smirks in agreement. Pointing a grubby finger in my direction, my antagonist raises his voice:
“You're not Vietnamese. Where's your birth-roots?”
“Phan Thiet.”
“Say it again.”
“Phan Thiet.”
“Liar. You're not from Phan Thiet. You didn't pronounce it like a man from Phan Thiet.”
“I've been in America a long time. My Viet isn't perfect.”
“Liar. You're Korean, aren't you?”
“Chinese,”
offers Killer.
“Japanese,”
counters another.
I am the tallest one present, my skin the palest. My wire-rimmed eyeglasses make me look foreign. Worse, I have a closely cropped crew cut. My hair is straight and spiky. Vietnamese call it “nail hair,” a style commonly seen on Korean expatriates working in Vietnam.
I should know better, but I insist,
“Really, I'm Vietnamese.”
The drunk bolts up in his seat, pounds the table, then points at his own nose with his index finger. He slur-screeches,
“Brother, you call me stupid?”
“Oh, no, Brother. No,”
I blurt, thinking, Oh, shit. Oh, shit.
He starts spieling his body of knowledge on the matter:
“I've been to the City
[Saigon].
I know what's going on in the world. All you foreigners come into the country to work. You go to the university, learning about ⦠about mathematics, history, books ⦠all that. You live in the City for a couple of years and you think you can pass as a Vietnamese. I know all about you foreign Asians. My brother-in-law lives in the City. I'm a poor villager, but I'm not dumb.”
He encompasses the room with a sweep of his hand.
“We're not stupid!”
Magically, his insult becomes theirs, and the whole rooms falls in behind him. A hostile grumble rises, amplified by the noisy television. Someone growls,
Motherfucker.
Another mumbles,
Bastard thinks he can come into our place and lie to our faces.
The whole affair has taken all of thirty seconds, and I realize with horrible dismay this is not how I want things to turn out at all. I'm here to learn about them, about my roots, about meâand they look like they want to cut me up. My pepper spray isn't going to handle this crowd. Damn! I haven't even eaten yet.
I raise an appeasing hand, smiling, making chuckling sounds.
“You're all right! I was just joking. Sorry. I am Korean. You're very sharp. Most people can't pick me out. I've been in the country three years. Studied Viet at the University. Pretty good, eh? So sorry. Beg your pardon.”
My tormentor seems happy at my concession to his intellect, but his friends appear even more riled. They cuss. I palm the canister beneath the table. A couple of mean-looking guys give me the eye as they mutter among themselves. This is definitely out of hand. I have seen three fights break out in Vietnamese bars over smaller issues than this. The last time, one drunk with a hatchet amputated a few fingers and hospitalized four men before he was subdued. I must get out quickly, but the exit is blocked by this hostile crowd.
BAM! I jump in my seat. The waitress is next to me, slamming down plates and bowls of food on my table so hard the whole room fixates on her. A huge plate of rice covered with stir-fried cabbage. A bowl of stewed pork and eggs. A bowl of squash soup. A saucer of pickled radish. A mug of hot tea. She glowers at them as she rearranges my meal.
I gape at the food I hadn't ordered.
She turns on the men, challenging them with her hot eyes. She speaks slowly, as though reprimanding boys who should know better:
“Let a man eat. Remember your manners.”
My foe says something under his breath. She whirls on him, fists cocked on hips, yelling:
“What, Lang?”
He turns to the television. She pans the room for dissenters. When no one says a word, she marches back into the kitchen without looking in my direction. I lower my eyes to the food and dig into it cyclo styleâchopsticks in one hand for picking up morsels, tablespoon in the other for shoveling rice. I eat
binh dan
âlike a commonerâfast and hungry, sipping soup with the spoon once every three mouthfuls. I am shocked that they actually leave me to my rice. This is the last place I expect the observance of that old custom my father had taught me when I was a boy.
Father stocked bamboo canes around the house so that whenever I was due for a whacking, he could lay his hand on a wand-of-discipline quicker than I could flee the room. My sister Chi and I must have been rotten kids because he caned us regularly. The only time he didn't was during mealtimes. If the food had been put on the table, he would postpone the punishment till well after the meal. My mother said that hitting a person when he is eating was the cruelest, most uncivilized thing anyone could do. And that if you caused a person to cry into his riceâ
souping rice with tears
, she saidâyou would be cursed with the bitterness he swallowed.
I figure I'm safe until the last bite. Lang and Killer are watching me, plotting something between themselves. The others argue over the pros and cons of Vietnam opening its market. Wondering if and when the waitress will return and bail me out again, I glance at the kitchen and notice a back door near where she washes dishes.
Halfway through my foodâI am still hungryâthe TV program switches over to news and everyone turns to the anchorman announcing the headline stories. In a blink, I breeze out of my chair, making for the kitchen. My mouth full, I hand the waitress a large bill and bolt through the back door, across the street.
The inn owner is sitting at the front door, smoking and chatting with a neighbor. He sees me running and asks if anything is wrong.
Abruptly, the waitress is at my elbow. I jump, startled. She hands me the change, unfamiliar with the custom of tipping. She briefs the old man on my dilemma. I stand by looking helpless. He cusses and hollers for his sons and the servants.
“Go inside. I'll take care of those dog-spawned. I'm sorry they bothered you. Go, go.
”His beatific face now thunderous with anger.
He doesn't need to tell me twice. Killer, Lang, and four men are coming toward the inn. By the time they cross the street, I am out of sight. Five of the inn's men run to the front with machetes. A shouting match ensues. Someone is dispatched to get the police. The bullies back off. I go back to my cubicle, lock the toy door, and crawl inside my mosquito netting.