A Wedding Invitation (8 page)

September 1985

W
hen my new class started at the end of August, Huy’s sister, Lien, arrived the first morning wearing dark sunglasses, a white T-shirt with
Hello Kitty
printed in pink across the chest, a pair of gray pants that were loose on her slim hips, and a red ball cap that read
Saint Louis Cardinals
. Her orange hair stuck out from the brim.

We knew each other because of Huy and Carson. I often saw Lien inside Carson’s classroom just a few doors down, talking with him in Vietnamese. Her boisterous laughter rang through the thin walls when he’d mispronounce a word or phrase. Many times from my wood-slatted window I’d see her traipsing from the marketplace with a bottle of Sprite or Coca-Cola in her hand. I always knew it was for her favorite teacher, the one she called “Mr. Borra.”

But neither Carson nor I had ever had Lien as a student. Then in August her name showed up on my class roster. I asked our director if perhaps she could be assigned to another class, and he said, “Samantha, we cannot pick and choose.”

Even after the class started, Lien spent more time with Carson. She literally clung to him, placing her arms around his waist and talking in her native tongue. I knew that the Amerasians in the camp had a tendency to be a bit unusual, and in our staff meetings we commented on how they drew attention to themselves with their behavior.

One afternoon, Lien, her sunglasses on the top of her head, seated herself on one of the benches next to the slatted window. After I told her to get rid of her gum, she swallowed it, opened her mouth so that her tonsils showed, and announced to the class that the gum was gone.

As I stood in front of the class teaching, she kept her gaze aimed out the window. When she saw Carson walking toward his classroom, she jumped up and ran out, calling, “Mr. Borra! Hello!”

The third time she did this, I reprimanded her. “Tell her,” I said to my teacher’s assistant after she returned to the classroom, “she can’t act like this in America.”

The TA looked at Lien, sighed, and then said to me, “She is Amerasian.” His nose twitched as he said the term. “Amerasian is noisy. No good.”

“She go to Monkey House,” one of the boys seated on a bench in the back of my room chirped. The Monkey House was the camp’s house of detention.

Lien heard this comment, and pulling back a clenched fist, rammed it into the boy’s arm.

His reflex was to reach toward the wall to steady himself. Then he muttered in Vietnamese, threatening to hit her.

“Stop now!” I made my voice harsh. Walking toward the culprits, I commanded, “Sit down. Everyone. Now.”

Lien gave me a hug. “Teacha, I no go Monkey House.” Sticking out her tongue at the boy, she called him a liar.
“Sao!”

“Enough!” I glared at her. “And it’s Mr.
Brylie
, not Borra. Mr. Ba-rye-lee.” I pronounced Carson’s last name slowly but in a loud tone.

“He my friend,” said Lien as she sat by herself on a bench.

“He is a teacher, and you need to respect him.” I nodded to the teacher’s assistant to translate.

He said something, but I had no indication whether or not he was interpreting the way I wanted him to. He was not Bao; Bao had seen his name on The List, the sheet of paper periodically hung in the camp, announcing the people or families soon to be released from the camp to travel to their new country. This new TA liked to talk, and I think he also liked to embellish whatever I needed him to translate.

Marching to the blackboard, I picked up the only piece of white chalk and wrote RESPECT, using all capital letters just like Mr. Brylie did.

The teacher’s assistant said a few words that got the students to listen. I told them what it meant to respect another person, but as I looked at Lien, who was squirming in her seat and picking at a scab on her elbow, I doubted any part of it was getting through.

Later that night, Carson and I went out to dinner at the sandwich place in Vietnamese Neighborhood Nine. All of the neighborhoods carried a number from one to ten. Some neighborhoods housed only Laotians, others only Cambodians, but the majority of the neighborhoods were populated by Vietnamese.

Low tables were strung together, with a few chairs surrounding them. We ordered two bottles of Sprite and two French-bread sandwiches. The baguettes were baked on-site and then slit open and spread with some unidentifiable meat paste, sliced cucumbers, and seasoned carrot strips. This meal was a welcome change from the food in the mess hall.

“Why does Lien have to be so unruly?” I asked as I slid onto a wobbly chair around a small table that shifted whenever I did.

Carson’s long legs bent awkwardly as he tried to fit them underneath the table. Giving up, he stretched them out, away from the table. “Considering how she was treated in Vietnam, I think she’s doing well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she was thought of as
bui doi
.”

I desperately wanted to appear that I knew the meaning of those words, that I was as fluent in Vietnamese as he was. I’d had a couple of lessons from a young woman named Song, a name I liked because it was easy for me to pronounce, but usually after half an hour of teaching, she’d revert to English and say, “Tell me all about America,” and I’d do just that. She’d come to the Philippines via the United Nations Orderly Departure Program, which meant her family had been able to legally and safely make their way out of Vietnam. She had no horror stories of being at sea and tormented by pirates during a rocky voyage.

I looked into Carson’s eyes and said, “Explain what those words mean in English.”

“
Bui doi
means ‘dust of life.’”

“That’s horrible! Why would they call them that?”

“Anger.”

“At what?”

Our sandwiches were brought to us, wrapped in paper. Hungry, we began to eat.

After a few bites, Carson took a sip of his Sprite and then said, “The Vietnamese Communists were mad that the American soldiers slept with their women and then left behind a whole bunch of kids who didn’t fit in. Kids that are mixed blood like Lien are unhappy reminders of the past.”

Sympathy rose in my chest as I took in Carson’s explanation. “But it wasn’t the children’s fault.”

“No, it’s never the fault of children. But they usually suffer the worst. I’ve heard from many of the Vietnamese here that kids like Lien are often raped and forced into prostitution.”

I silently prayed that I would be more kind to Lien and asked God to coat me with a double dose of patience for her. I glanced over at Carson, thinking about how nice he was. He got along with everyone, even Lien.

A few of Carson’s students came over to our table to talk, and as he broke into their native tongue, I quietly nibbled at my food. I hoped after we ate we’d go back to the dorms, play a few games of Ping-Pong, sit close and watch a video together. Perhaps he would recant the words he’d written in his letter to Mindy and whisper in my ear, “Sam, I was wrong about you.”

My anticipation was destroyed when he finished his sandwich and said, “I need to get back to my room. I owe Mindy a letter.”

I watched the way the light from a bare fluorescent bulb lit up Carson’s hair and wished that he did not affect me the way he did. He’s just a man, my head told me. Just a mere man.

Carson helped me to my feet and paid for our meal.

We walked past the market, closed for business until the next morning and, using the main road that ran behind the billets instead of the path that went past the living quarters, made our way into the next neighborhood. A young boy, distinctly Amerasian with a mass of white-blond hair, waved to us, calling, “Good evening! Hello! How are you today?” as though he was practicing his English.

In one of the Cambodian neighborhoods, we watched the women wash their clothes at the community faucets, located behind the row of wooden billets. Seated on their haunches, they scrubbed, their long colorful skirts hiked up to expose their calves. The water gushed out, spewing over their plastic flip-flops. Nearby, small boys and girls wearing only pants played with empty tin cans and string. A few bubbles from the suds floated into the air, and a girl chased one, crying out in Cambodian something that sounded like a musical chant. A thin woman in a rust-colored skirt stood to pin some wet clothes to a clothesline strung out between two bamboo poles. I’d taken pictures of scenes like this, fascinated by the way the refugees were able to function in the midst of these adverse conditions.

As Carson and I approached our staff dorms, I knew that he would soon enter his room and sit at his desk to compose a letter to Mindy. I remembered something Avery and my other friends at James Madison used to say about guys we found attractive:
“The good ones are usually unavailable.”

Carson’s unfavorable assessment of me still caused me heartache, but I also believed that he had to care about me. His eyes often looked my way from across the room at staff meetings, or over the heads of others when the bus took us to our classrooms to teach. I wanted to believe that I meant something to him, regardless of my lack of intellect.

eleven

B
eanie says she’ll go with me. She listens as I retell the story of Huy and how hospitable his family was to me in the refugee camp. But perhaps she can hear something in my voice or see a dab of worry in my eyes. Mom tells me that I’ve never been good about hiding my emotions. And of course those who know me best know that when I cough twice, this is a sign that I’m feeling out of my range.

Beanie announces that the potato sausage casserole is ready to bake, but she’ll wait until we get home to place it in the oven.

I try to dissuade her. “You’re busy. I don’t want to impose on your evening.”

“Don’t be a stack of hay. No imposing.” She finds room for the casserole on a shelf in the fridge. “How well you know these people? Could kill you if you go alone.”

“They were my friends,” I say.

She just ushers me out the door. “You’ve already been to a wrong wedding this weekend. You don’t need any more trouble.”

In my hand I have the address. Shortly after getting home, I realized I could not fall asleep for a nap, so I checked the Yellow Pages for the location of Saigon Bistro. I scribbled it on a piece of memo paper from the pad Dovie keeps by the kitchen phone.

As we drive in my Honda, I breathe in, aware of the tobacco smell that permeates the air as we drive near the R.J. Reynolds factory. Although the odors were different in the camp, something about this night sends me into visions of rickety billets sprawled over the neighborhoods, women in sarongs, men in trousers coming out of the community bathhouse, children playing with bottle caps and string, and an occasional stray dog or chicken roaming through the marketplace. Fondly, I recall how much I enjoyed Vietnamese food—crispy spring rolls and bowls of thin, white noodles.

Beanie settles in the passenger seat once she finds the station on the radio she likes. As we thread through town, someone requests a song and wants it dedicated to his girlfriend. Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” fills my car. “Ahh,” says Beanie. “This is the one song every woman wants sung to her.”

“Really?”

“By the right man, of course.”

I say, “Of course,” and then wonder why. I’ve never cared much for Billy Joel, although I suppose I wouldn’t mind if someone could love me just the way I am.

Beanie is in a thoughtful mood. “Sometimes we get so involved in our lives—you know, the tedious day to day. We lose our sight and push away what we want.”

“You mean like our hopes and dreams?”

“Sort of.” She scratches her neck and then chews on a fingernail. “It gets pushed underneath all our living.”

I start to ask Beanie what she would like in her life when I notice we’re almost there. I brake to make a sharp right turn into a parking lot. With my tires screeching I just miss an RV on its way out.

“Careful, Sammie Girl.”

Pulling into a space by a tow truck and an apple red Mustang, I feel my stomach sink toward my knees.