Escape from Saigon (12 page)

When Matt visited Saigon in 1995, he found a city that is a striking blend of old and new

The midday sun can take a toll, and any spot in the shade is a good place for a nap. Today, Saigon street life looks much as it always has, with street markets and vendors supplying every need

In the countryside, they stopped at several villages. Matt could not identify the village where he had lived for a year and where his mother had taken her own life. But once again, forgotten memories were reawakened when he saw small children running around barefoot, just as he had, and boys tending the giant lumbering water buffaloes.

“I wanted to be a buffalo boy,” he told his mother. “That was my goal. Never in a million years would I have believed that one day I would live in America and become a doctor.”

Back in Saigon, he ate one of the meat sandwiches sold by sidewalk vendors—the same kind his grandmother had bought him several times. Memories of Ba flooded over him, and he could barely finish it.

Later that same afternoon he visited the former Holt Center, where he had lived for almost two years, now empty and scheduled to be torn down to make way for a new building. In his memory, everything was huge. In reality, the walled playground and the rooms of the center were modest in size. He remembered the wall where children stood to have their pictures taken, and he saw the old cafeteria. The coverings over the rooftop classroom were still in place, and he vividly recalled his days on that roof, learning English and wondering if there would ever be a family who would want him.

During the ten-day trip, whenever he was around children, Matt's heart went out to them. “Holt was expanding its presence in Vietnam, and a highlight for me was visiting the three centers they've set up to feed hungry children and care for orphans,” he says. “I was really pleased to learn that Holt is still helping orphans find adoptive homes, some of them in the United States.”

At visits to several orphanages Holt helps sponsor, Matt and his mother distributed toys and medicine they had brought along. Matt assisted with medical evaluations of ill children and advised staff on up-to-date treatments. He played games with some of the children. Often he choked back tears. “I saw myself in all of them. Like these children, I had once counted on the kindness and charity of others. I wished that I had more to give them.”

During his trip to Vietnam, Matt especially enjoyed time spent with children at orphanages

John Williams had been back to Saigon several times since the war. He had managed to locate some of the former Holt staff members and took Matt to visit one of the teachers who had worked with Miss Anh. The teacher did not know what had happened to Miss Anh or where she now lived, but she remembered Matt and reminisced with him about the classroom on the rooftop.

“I can't describe how wonderful it felt to meet someone who had known me twenty years before,” Matt says. “We talked about everything that happened at Holt, and laughed together about some of the silly things. I think she enjoyed it as much as I did.”

Then the teacher began to talk about how difficult things had been since the war. She told Matt how the lives of ordinary Vietnamese had been filled with hardship. They never had enough food. Everyone was very poor. But their greatest fear was the harsh government that sought to punish anyone who had not supported North Vietnam during the war. People suffered terribly, she said. Many had been arrested and sent off to “reeducation” camps. Many never returned, or only returned years later, bent and broken from their time in the camps. Amerasians like Matt were often singled out for special punishments. “It is better now,” she said, “but be glad you were not here then.”

She wanted to know how Matt had come to be at Holt. “I told her about my birth mother and about Ba,” Matt says. “Then I shared how my birth mother had once tried to give me away to a wealthy couple who lived on a plantation. She didn't seem surprised. Instead, she just nodded and said, ‘Your mother was seeking a better life for you.'”

Matt told her that Ba had taken him to the Holt Center and left him there, and how hard that was for him. “I missed her so much and I kept waiting for her to come and take me home with her,” he said.

The teacher was quiet for a moment. “Your grandmother must have loved you very, very much to give you up,” she said gently. “She could have kept you for her own, and what would have happened to you?”

Matt fought down the lump in his throat. “I always wished I could have stayed with her. I felt so alone without her.”

“But she saw a chance for you to have a future,” the teacher replied. She nodded approvingly at Mary Steiner, who sat nearby. “Your Ba's heart told her it would work out this way for you.”

Matt felt something inside him shift. There had been a hole in his heart ever since his mother's death. When Ba left him at Holt, it grew larger. He had tried for twenty years to ignore it, realizing how fortunate he was in his new life and how much he loved the Steiner family. But the ache was still there.

Sitting with the teacher in her tiny Saigon apartment, Matt finally understood why Ba and his mother had made the choices they did. He felt at peace with his past.

When it was time to leave, he embraced the teacher for a long, long moment, trying to find the words to thank her for what she had given him.

*   *   *

Today, when Matt thinks of his grandmother, he realizes that, like so many people in Vietnam, the war had cost her dearly. She had lost her daughter and other family members. She had struggled daily to survive, working hard into her old age. There must have been many times when she was afraid, many times when she was in danger. And then she had to make the awful decision to give up her grandson.

“I know now that it was an act of courage and love on her part,” Matt says. “My regret is that she never knew how well things worked out for me. I wish we could have stayed in touch after I left the country. I would have treasured that.

“I no longer feel that my birth mother abandoned me when she took her own life. As an adult and as a physician, I understand that she was probably severely depressed,” he says. “I have seen patients who feel so overwhelmed with life that they no longer want to live. Perhaps today my mother could get treatment. But that didn't exist then. I'll never really be over her suicide, but I have accepted it. Rather than blame her, I appreciate everything she did for me.”

Matt is a husband and father today and would like to take his children to Vietnam to visit. “I'd like them to feel pride in their Vietnamese roots. I'll tell them the story of my life and about my Vietnamese family. I'll tell them about my mother, and that once I had a grandmother just as wonderful as their grandma Mary, and because she loved me so much, she made a plan for me to be adopted so I could have a future.

“I want my children to know that war isn't just about guns and soldiers, that families get separated and many innocent people are killed. But even in the middle of war, sometimes good things happen. In this war, there were people trying to help kids like me. I'll tell them I was one of the lucky ones, because I was able to escape and I had a wonderful family waiting for me.

“I love my adopted country and I'm proud to be an American. But I will never forget that my American heart is half Vietnamese.”