The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (9 page)

One day at school the deputy principal knocked on my classroom door.

‘Can I have a word with Anh when you have a moment?’ he asked my teacher.

Stand back people, class captain business
.

A couple of weeks earlier I had been voted class captain and even though I didn’t know much about what it meant, my family made a huge deal of it and I was loving this new-found importance. I stood up and swaggered over to him like a Vegas nightclub singer.
Hey, thanks for coming, I’m here all week
.

Then, in front of the whole classroom, the deputy principal said to me, ‘We’re going to have to send you home because we’ve found nits on your cousin.’

C’mon man. You didn’t have to say it in front of the whole classroom.
I looked around and everyone had heard.

‘Let’s go, we’ve got to make sure it doesn’t spread to the rest of the class. Grab your stuff.’

I made my way back to my desk and I’ve never seen ten-year-old kids move so fast. The thirty little rascals parted like the Red Sea, and there was me, little Vietnamese Moses with my head down and my cheeks bright red, walking through the middle, leading the nits to the Promised Land. I looked across and watched the girl I’d had a crush on for three years, little Alexandra, sliding behind Smelly Ross, using him like a human shield.

As I walked out I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d announced over the school PA system: ‘Stand back children, poor immigrant coming through, make way for the lice-infested …’

Mum picked us up and bought the most toxic anti-nit lotion she could find. It stank, and hurt your eyes just to be near it. That afternoon six naked little Vietnamese boys were scrubbed with merciless brutality, like prisoners of war in a Da Nang concentration camp.

Our main living area in the factory was a space rather than a room, with dodgy furniture and a television in the corner. My father dumped a bed down to be used as a lounge and the six of us would lie on the bed, watch movies or World Championship Wrestling, and fall asleep on top of each other. Years later Mum would tell me she’d look at us and smile at the irony, here we were in Australia living in an enormously large warehouse, and still there’s six kids sharing one bed—just like she did with her siblings back in Saigon.

Even though there were so many boys around all the time, my sister Tram was always looked after and never left out. My cousins, to their credit, gave her the first choice of lollies, or mangoes, or chocolates, even though she wasn’t their sister. And in turn she looked after us. When you had six young boys running loose in a factory, there were always lots of bandaids to be put on.

One day, after we had gone to bed buzzing with adrenaline having watched
WrestleMania V
the night before, we were jumping around, acting like we were part of the Battle Royale. After eliminating Joe, Manh and Tri from the bed, I pinned down Khoa and was waiting for Tram—she was always the ref—to do the three counts. But, just like the real WWF refs, she was deliberately being cheeky and stalling on the third count. I thought the only way I was going to win was to toss Khoa off the bed. I’m pumped up and, not thinking straight, picked him up for an Ultimate Warrior throw. Then I chucked my younger brother straight onto a glass coffee table.

Amazingly the glass didn’t break but two things were damaged: one of the table’s wooden legs and Khoa’s wrist. He let out a gigantic wail and we all freaked out, looking around to see if any adults were coming. In through the door walked my mum and we all breathed a sigh of relief—she was exactly the person you wanted to dish out the punishment.

One of the best things about my mum is her almost instant forgiveness. She never saw the point of punishment and as soon as she thought you saw the wrong in what you did, all was fine in her books. Whenever we got into trouble, even in a room full of adults, all us kids would turn straight to my mum and try and get her to be the person to punish us.

‘Auntie Hien… we’re so sorry, what must we do to make things better?’

Mum would say, ‘Okay clean up your rooms’. When another parent tried to punish us more we’d protest: ‘Auntie Hien has already punished us.’

We became very close to our cousins, they were like friends on tap. It was a charmed life for two years so we had no idea that it was going to end badly.

One day our cousins’ mum came in screaming loudly, ‘Which kid has taken my money!’ She was missing a few hundred dollars from her purse and was incensed. Her kids weren’t home, and so she turned on Khoa and me.

‘Anh, was it you?’ she accused aggressively. Then she turned to my brother.

‘Khoa?’ We both shook our heads.

‘You better not lie! Who else could it have been?’ She was really shouting now.

My mum heard the commotion and rushed in. She exploded at my auntie.

‘Don’t talk to my boys like that. They’ve never done anything like that and they never will.’

It was a clash of parenting styles, and was always going to lead to a blow-up. My mum is very much of the forgive-forgive-forgive, let-them-learn-from-their-mistakes school. Our cousins’ mum was the keep-them-on-a-tight-leash type. As it turned out, there was no thief; one of her boys had taken the money and put it elsewhere for her husband.

There’s always a big risk when you go into business with family or friends, and this is made even more intense when you all live together as well. A number of other events happened, one thing piling on top of another, and soon the two families went their separate ways. We did manage to salvage the relationship, however, and remained on speaking terms, seeing each other once in a blue moon, at Christmas and New Year’s, but I missed my cousins very much.

Not long after Dad’s brother Two moved out, his brother Three arrived from America and shacked up with us as well. Then a few months later, Dad’s mum and little sister arrived from Vietnam and soon it was like that kid’s song, but bigger: ‘There were twenty-three in the bed, and the little Anh said “Roll over, roll over”. So they all rolled over and Uncle Two moved out.’

Most of my childhood was like this; when Uncle Three returned to the United States, some of Mum’s brothers lived with us, at other times there were distant relatives, or just people who needed a place to stay. Mum, especially, loved taking in people who were needy. I guess the one-time nun-to-be never shook off her charity streak. Many of these people we would never see again once they moved on, but occasionally I am reminded of just how fascinating our childhood was.

About four years ago I was walking down the street when an old Vietnamese woman came up and hugged me.

‘I haven’t seen you for so long!’ she squealed.

Who the hell is this?
I asked myself during the sweaty bear hug.

‘Your mum and dad took me in fifteen years ago. I cook for you, you love my fried rice, remember?’ I smiled and nodded politely but I didn’t have a clue. She could have been one of so many different people.

A lot of Vietnamese came out to Australia hopeful, but found themselves living in tough situations. Mum and Dad naturally seemed to attract these people. They radiated welcoming and compassionate warmth and people sensed it. My mother’s active life within the Catholic Church also played a part. Word got around. My mother would hear about people with nowhere to go and simply say, ‘Send them to me.’ In turn, people would also talk about our family: ‘Go to her, she will help you.’

In what was rapidly approaching a poker full-house, Uncle Six also lived with us for a while. Uncle Six was a big part of my childhood and what I remember about him most is that he had an enormous amount of empathy. Some might say this was because he was adopted and knew what it felt like to be an outsider, but I’d say he was just born this way.

I learned gentleness from Uncle Six. My father can be gentle when he wants to be, but mostly he doesn’t. When I was nervous about my first-ever school camp in Year 3, Dad was away drinking, and it was Uncle Six who took me to buy a jacket—my first footy jacket; a Balmain Tigers beauty. I wore it like a black and orange safety blanket. Uncle Six showed me all the features of the jacket—pull-out hood, lots of pockets, even on the inside… like secret hiding spots. It had stuff to pull and tighten; all this was incredibly exciting for an eight-year-old boy. Having this wonderful new jacket with all its secrets somehow took away my fear, with my little brain thinking that if anything were to happen on this camp, my hood and six pockets were going to save the whole class. Well, as it turned out, my little classmates were soon going to have to save me.

All through my primary school years I had a thick Vietnamese accent: ‘Fipteen minat twell equal tree.’ Even though my English was getting better year by year, it was still definitely not as good as an Aussie kid’s. It didn’t seem to matter too much as I did well enough academically and socially, becoming a candidate for school captain at the end of Year 5.