The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (30 page)

We decided to have a huge engagement party. In Vietnam, as soon as you got engaged you started calling your in-laws Mum and Dad, so it’s a much bigger deal than in Aussie culture.

‘Let’s do a big traditional Vietnamese thing, the whole shebang,’ Suzie declared when I told her about its significance. I was over the moon.

‘What do my parents have to do?’ she asked.

‘They don’t have to do anything.’

‘My mum is desperate to do something,’ she persisted.

‘Okay. We’ll bring most of the food but you provide some food as well.’

In Vietnam it’s traditional for the groom’s family to bring a barbecued pig to the engagement party. The size of the pig is meant to be a reflection of the wealth and resources you can bring to the children’s marriage—so everyone goes all out, and we too wanted to make an impressive splash. The morning of the party, Mum, Tram and I went out and bought one of the biggest pigs we could find. It was over a metre long.

‘Wait till they see this,’ Mum said, as our family made the drive from Yagoona to Suzie’s house. The big grin was soon wiped off Mum’s face when we reached Wahroonga, an old-money area full of huge blocks, long driveways, beautiful gardens and majestic houses in the northern suburbs of Sydney. The streets were littered with BMWs, Porsches and Maseratis. I had been here many times but for my mother and her brothers and sisters, this was way outside their comfort zone. My family was awestruck.

There were forty people from my extended family attending the party. We parked our Camrys, Datsuns and Daewoos on the road and waited on the edge of the property until the rest turned up. When they did we all huddled together and I phoned Suzie.

‘You ready?’

‘Yep, we’re ready,’ she replied.

‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

The driveway was massive, about fifty metres long. We walked past the tennis court and onto a circular drive with manicured plants and a huge statue of a Roman goddess in the middle.

‘I saw something like this in a movie once,’ one of my uncles said. As we reached the end of the driveway, my mother spotted a stone fountain and lost it.

‘Why didn’t you tell me how rich they are?’

‘I told you they were wealthy. Five-bedroom house.’

‘Do you think we need a bigger pig?’ she whispered.

We turned the corner and Mum saw the swimming pool, and yet more fountains. It was just too much.

‘Oh my god… this pig’s nowhere near big enough!’

‘Shush up. Just keep walking.’

We were in full view of Suzie’s family by now. The pig, cooked and ready to eat, sat on a large wooden platter and was carried up the driveway by two grown men.

‘Where’s the closest pig shop?’ Mum whispered loudly, giving away her panic. ‘Let’s go get a giant pig. Huge.’ She turned to Uncle Khanh, her youngest brother, who owned a Toyota Celica, the fastest of all the family’s cars.

‘Khanh, can we go and get a bigger one? How far to shops?’ The stress was pouring out of her.

‘Mum, just calm down,’ I pleaded. By now, I was freakin’ out too. Mum was consumed by the fear that Suzie’s parents would think me and my family would not be rich enough to take care of their daughter in the manner they expected. She was becoming obsessed with the pig and she wasn’t the only one. As men often do, I had forgotten to tell Suzie’s family a few minor details about the party; among them, the fact that we would be bringing a metre-long pig with us.

Suzie’s mother’s eyes were popping out as she stared at this glazed, glistening carcass being carried up her driveway.

‘Oh my god, Suzie, what on earth is that?’

Eventually we arrived at the house. As we entered the double front doors I caught sight of Suzie and momentarily lost my breath. She had secretly organised with my mother to wear a traditional Vietnamese dress. She was dazzling.

The two clans faced up to each other and there was a lot of awkward smiling and nodding. It was incredibly nerve- racking, partly because my mother didn’t know Suzie’s parents. She had only met them once, briefly, at an informal afternoon tea a few weeks earlier. We had become engaged so quickly after we started dating. My mum was hiding behind Uncle Dung and in her panic she’d forgotten that she was the one who must speak first. Uncle Dung’s wife pushed Mum forward, and she stood there, stunned. The speech my sister had helped her prepare had escaped her mind and she stared blankly at the thirty pairs of eyes that were staring back at her. She decided to speak from the heart.

‘My son lup your dotter berry much. Anh tek care of Suzie like he tek care of us. He will lup her like he lup his family. Anh has very big lup. When he lup someone he mek sure dey happy forever.’

I looked across at my gorgeous fiancée and Suzie’s eyes were full of tears. Mum went on.

‘Today I berry happy too, because today I have a new dotter. I promise you, all my family will lup Suzie and look after her. Tank you.’

The whole place broke out in applause. There were sniffles, handshakes and backslaps all round. The ice was broken instantly and two families came together united by our lup. It was wonderful.

When it was time to eat, my aunty asked Suzie’s mother if our family could use her kitchen. With a quick nod from Frances, twenty Vietnamese women descended on the room. They opened up every cupboard, like police searching for drugs. They were looking for a meat cleaver but none was to be found.

‘What kind of people don’t have a meat cleaver?’ my aunty muttered, then turned to me. ‘Anh, ask them why they hide their meat cleaver in a secret place?’

All Asian households keep a large cleaver, like a butcher’s. Aussies don’t have them and my family wondered how they were going to chop up the freakin’ giant hog.

‘Can we use your knives?’ my mother asked Suzie’s mother. My mother-in-law stood there, amused and bemused, as all these Vietnamese women in colourful traditional dress turned into ninjas, weighing up whatever knives they could lay their hands on. None of them were big enough. Finally they found a large knife but it wouldn’t cut through the skin. They scavenged around for any large, heavy objects to use as an anvil to force the knife through.

‘Ah-ha,’ Aunty Huong shouted out. She’d found a frozen chicken.
Whack, whack, whack
. Nothing like the sound of frozen chook on knife on crackling to tell you you’re in for a feast.

All my other aunties had gathered around to prepare the soup and seafood in a huge whirl of activity. It was like a scene from a movie: frantic, noisy pandemonium in the kitchen, cut to elegant lounge room with people having polite conversation, cut back to the kitchen and, presto, all the food lies beautifully presented and ready to eat. It was a proper Vietnamese banquet: pork, dumplings, spring rolls, you name it. Suzie’s father joked afterwards, ‘I have two sons and I want them to marry Vietnamese girls. I want more of this delicious pork!’

On the other side of the serving table, the Aussie side, stood an array of barbecued chickens, salads, lamingtons and even a pavlova with passionfruit and cream. It was a truly multicultural meal. Everyone started eating and got into the spirit of the day. The house looked like both our families had known each other for years. Uncle Thanh had half of Suzie’s family gathered around him as he told them war stories.

‘Shoot, run, the plane come down.
Bang!
’ They were rapt.

Over on the other side of the room, my mother and aunts were giving Suzie’s mother and family tips about where to buy the best silk in Sydney and admiring each other’s clothes.

‘Where’d you get that lovely fur jacket?’ one of them asked Uncle Dung’s wife.

‘My husband buy for me… you like it? It’s antique… very expensive.’

Luckily Uncle Dung had remembered to remove the fifty-cent price tag.

My family loved Suzie, and every time they knew she was coming over they would prepare a different delicacy for her. After around three-dozen such dishes, they were running out of ideas and started getting into the really exotic stuff. One night we turned up at a family get-together and uncle Dung was very excited.

‘Suzie. I made special one for you. This one called Vietnamee Pizza!’

Oh my god, Uncle Dung, you didn’t
. I love Uncle Dung and most of the time his immaturity is charming, but sometimes you just want to strangle him. ‘Vietnamese Pizza’ is a nickname my family gave to a dish made up of duck’s blood. The blood settles like jelly, and you sprinkle nuts and herbs and duck meat on top, hence giving it the appearance of a pizza. It’s kind of like Scottish black pudding—slimy and soft with just a hint of that metallic taste you get when you accidentally bite your lip.

He lifted up the plate to show Suzie and she genuinely smiled, excited by this dish. I realised she had no idea what it was.

‘You have to try it! You have to try it!’

Uncle Dung was joined by my aunties and little cousins, they descended on her like a pack of wolves hungry for a laugh—Anh’s Aussie fiancée was about to try one of the yuckiest dishes in the culinary universe. My mum tried to save her.

‘Suzie… you don’t have to eat it. It’s duck’s blood.’

Suzie turned pale.

‘You’ve got to be kidding. Is that really duck’s blood?’ she whispered to me. I nodded.

‘Do I have to eat it?’

‘Nah. They’re just kidding around, they’re teasing you.’

She straightened up.

‘I’ll eat it.’

My family giggled like five-year-olds as she put it in her mouth.

‘It’s delicious,’ she declared.

‘Oh my god! Suzie ate it!’ My aunties were howling with laughter. ‘Even we don’t eat that strange crap!’

Over the coming months Suzie endured wave after wave of ‘strange crap’: chicken embryos, pig intestines and ox tongue. She put it all down with a smile on her face.

‘This girl’s a champion!’ my grandma declared. ‘She’s more Vietnamese than you lot!’

Family dinners at our place always get a little crazy. Uncle Huy, the priest with the large bottom, was at one time a resident chaplain in the Australian Army and he had been training regularly with his soldiers. Half way through dinner he asked me: ‘What are you leg pressing at the moment?’

I usually leg press around a hundred and twenty kilograms, depending on whether I’ve been going to the gym or not.

‘A hundred or thereabouts,’ I replied. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m doing a hundred and forty,’ he said.

This is the kind of situation where I play the good nephew. You see, I knew he was talking pounds, not kilograms. One hundred and forty pounds is only about sixty kilograms. I could have easily pointed this out and won the game, but I didn’t because he’s my uncle, and he is everyone’s favourite priest because he does your standard metric one-hour mass in around thirty-five minutes. Many a hot Sunday morning he’d blessed the parish with a short sermon, a quick service and an early mark home. I owed him for this.

‘A hundred and forty! Wow, that’s fantastic!’ I’d say.

A couple of Christmases ago, he got overly excited.

‘Anh, you and me, see who’s got the harder thighs. C’mon, World Championship Thigh-off!’ It was Christmas and we were a little drunk, so we both got up and twenty-five or so members of our family started feeling the hardness of a priest and a comedian’s quadriceps.

‘Suzie, touch it!’ my mum said to her, pointing to the two sets of thighs flexed while precariously balancing on the dining room chairs. It was up to Suzie to decide the winner.

‘So who won?’

‘Umm… Uncle Huy by far!’ she declared. The whole family were hysterical.

I couldn’t believe it so I reached across and flicked Uncle Huy’s thigh. Solid as a rock. I had gritted my teeth, screwed up my eyes—and flexed as hard as I could, and got beat fair and square. I thought years and years of playing rugby league and training twice a week was going to get me across the line. I guess I forgot he had just as many years hiking up and down the mountainous jungles of Vietnam carrying a commando’s rations on his back.