The Unwanted (34 page)
No more than two seconds later, she pushed their door open and stormed out angrily. She raised her fists above her head in frustration as she screamed out, “Daddy, where are you?”
My grandfather poked his head out of his room with a look of bewilderment on his face. His tangled hair stuck out from his head like porcupine quills. “What is going on?” he asked.
My mother stomped through the kitchen door. She kicked the stool out of her way and yelled, “Daddy, there is something I need you to settle for us. Would you please come with me?” She turned to my brother and me and ordered us in the same voice, “You two, get dressed, and follow me.”
Before we could finish putting on our clothes, my mother grabbed Jimmy and me and strode back to my aunt's living room. My grandfather followed us a few steps behind. Waiting for us at the coffee table, my uncle sat with his back to the Buddha's altar. His arms were folded against his chest. Through his thick glasses, his eyes glared at us with a look that spelled trouble. Behind him, like a platoon of soldiers ready for combat, his eight sons stood still, echoing their father's unyielding expression. On the small section of the wall behind the Buddha hung Moonlight's picture, mounted neatly in a black frame, and next to it my grandmother's. Clouds of incense from the altar permeated the tense atmosphere. In the electric silence we could hear the relentless ticking of the clock.
My mother raised her voice, addressing no one in particular. “Where is that awful sister of mine?”
My uncle replied, using the same tactic to counterattack. “My wife can't attend the meeting. Something came up unexpectedly.”
“What can possibly be more important than this? Is she afraid to face me?”
“My wife is not important in this matter,” my uncle said. “You made us meet you here for a reason. Why don't you just say what you need to say and leave?”
My grandfather spoke up. “Aren't you going to invite us to sit down?”
“Forgive us,” he said. Turning to Le, his oldest son, my uncle ordered, “Pull out a chair for your grandfather.”
Le moved out of his rank like a robot, but my mother waved her hands to stop him. “Forget the phony formality,” she said. “This is going to take only a minute. I want you all to know that I am planning to sell my house.”
“I'm sorry,” my uncle said, “but you can't do that.”
My mother raised an eyebrow. “Why not? It's my house, isn't it? I hold the title deed.”
My uncle turned to his oldest son and signaled to him with his eyes. Le opened a small door behind the Buddha's altar and pulled out a stack of folders, giving it to his father.
“Well?” my mother prodded him.
“Miss Khuon,” my uncle began, turning the pages before him, “you are right about the ownership of your house. However, you can't sell your property, because I am the owner of the land that your house is standing on. It is documented in here. When you calm down, you may examine the papers if you don't believe me.”
Anger darkened my mother's face. “I bought that land from you years ago,” she said. “Your first son just turned fifteen years old the day you brought him to my mansion. I remember giving him his first bicycle, and I gave you the money to pay for the estate and the renovation. My parents and your son witnessed the deal between us. How dare you change the story now? Besides, I practically bought this entire compound for the price that I've paid you through the years.”
My grandfather nodded pensively. “I am not senile yet. I remember that day clearly. Do you remember, Le?”
Le avoided my grandfather's stare. My mother drew a hand to her chest in her struggle for composure. Then she said to my uncle, “What am I supposed to do now? I need to raise money for our trip. Do you have any suggestion as to what we should do?”
My uncle pounded his fist on the glass surface of his coffee table, enunciating each word as though he were talking to a stubborn fiveyear-old child. “I don't care what you do. You are not selling my land. That is my final answer.” He slammed the file shut, making a loud snap with his hands.
Silence returned to the room.
Finally, my mother tossed her hair out of her face. “Very well, you damnable thief. In fact, you are all thieves. If I can't sell my house, I am going to break it apart, brick by brick. You will never get that house, not while I am alive. This is not over yet.” She stormed out, beckoning with her hand for Jimmy and me to follow. My cousins' laughter chased us through the garden.
FIVE MINUTES LATER
, Tin showed up at the entrance of our kitchen. The sun peeked through the openings of my bedroom wall, shining on his pimpled face. His crossed eyes blinked apprehensively.
My mother walked out of her room and snapped at him, “What in hell do you want now?”
Tin stammered, “I am here to take back the rice sacks. My father needs them for storage.”
“Take my bed away?” Jimmy protested. “Where will we sleep?”
“Don't argue, Jimmy,” my mother said. She turned to Tin and said in a hoarse voice, “Take them away. Get those godforsaken things out of my house.”
“Mommy, the cement is cold,” BeTi cried.
My mother held her face in her hands, sobbing. “Then get some newspapers, lots of them. We don't need those stinking rice sacks.”
Saigon, January 2, 1985
W
ith the money we got from selling Loan's necklace, my mother took us to Saigon one week prior to our appointment with the American interviewers. We took refuge at the home of the late Mrs. Dang's parents. The older couple lived within walking distance of the infamous Doc Lap Palace in a small shack that once had been their kitchen. The big house next door, where we had met with Mrs. Dang ten years ago on our way to the helicopter, had been subdivided several times and sold to different people. The kitchen and a tiny bathroom were all that they had left. The cabin was extremely small, even for two elderly people; nevertheless, Mr. and Mrs. Hom welcomed us in with open arms.
Saigon had changed a great deal since the end of the civil war. Like most of its disgruntled, tired citizens, the city showed signs of a difficult course of living. Once-fine houses were crumbling, gnawed by termites. Paint had peeled from walls and been replaced with moss. Through the holes that previously held windows, dirty faces of children peeked out at passersby with blank looks. Bicycles and rickshaws filled the narrow streets, contributing to a constant and deafening noise. In fact, the loud cacophony was difficult for us to get used to in this ever-zealous hive of activity.
I walked numbly through the unfamiliar streets, preoccupied with the complicated departure procedures. I was afraid to face my fears. I did not know where fate would lead my family and me. Our future was a mystery. Whether I was going to leave or stay was being determined by faceless strangers I would never know.
Saigon in 1985 was cramped, congested, and swamped with filth. In the blazing temperature, dirt particles floated in the air and trickled down onto everything like an endless stream of black snow. I quickly learned not to wear anything light in color outside. Things got dirty fast, especially around the center of Saigon, where everybody scrambled to get from one polluted place to the next.
The letter that accompanied our passports gave the address of the emigration office as 4 Duy Tan Boulevard, a street well known for its tall, healthy, and lustrous tamarind trees. These were familiar tropical fruit trees with branches that had whorls of fish-scale leaves and jointed stems entwining together to roof the road like a canopy. Doc Lap Palace and the former U.S. Embassy were just a few blocks away, hidden behind those green curtains of leaves. At six-thirty in the morning, my family and I gathered outside the emigration office's gate with twenty other Amerasian children and their families. All were waiting for a bus that would take us to the interview site, an hour away.
At that time, the embargo between the U.S. and Vietnam was strictly enforced. In order for the American Council of Voluntary Agencies to work in Vietnam, its staff had to fly in from Bangkok every morning to a secluded town outside of Saigon, and leave before night fell. We came by bus to meet with the representatives during those designated hours.
Their place of work was located inside a mansion that had probably belonged to a rich entrepreneur in the past. Remnants of the former owners' expensive taste were still visible. The house sat on one side of a hill, overlooking a forest of rubber trees. Two enormous wings joined together with a much bigger central house in a U shape, embracing a wide, red marble veranda. Large rooms with oversized glass windows on the second and third floors had been turned into offices.
Through the sheer glass, I could see foreign people moving back and forth with folders and pens in their hands. Any of them could have been the one who typed the first correspondence to me. And they now would determine my fate. From a short distance, their faces looked so beautiful, so bright, and yet so alien. How I wanted to be one of them. And for the first time in many years, I was not ashamed of my American features. Watching them made me realize where I came from, and where I should belong. Their presence stirred up in me a surge of anxiety.
As if reading my thoughts, my mother pulled at my arm. “Look, Kien,” she said, pointing at the Americans. “Do you know what that means? The eagle has come for her young.”
Waiting for our names to be called, we gathered around a large rectangular table on one side of the veranda. Each of us was dressed in the nicest outfit that he or she could afford, according to the latest fashion of the city—blue jeans and silk blouses or striped shirts. Most of the Amerasian children in my group ranged in age from twelve to nineteen. They stared at one another, straining to conceal their curiosity with a mask of polite indifference.
Standing apart from the group was a family of sixteen, clad in beautiful clothing and expensive jewelry, and shining like a flock of peacocks. They huddled under a casuarina tree, eating green bean cakes from a picnic basket. A young girl of about fourteen, with straight blond hair and blue eyes, stood shyly among them. In her hands, she held a big pitcher of iced tea made from condensed milk and black tea. The oldest woman in the group, who was so fat that she seemed to swallow the chair underneath her, called out for the girl in a clear, exultant voice, “Give me something to drink, my petite daughter.” She repeated the phrase over and over again, laughing as if at some private joke. A thick coat of powder cracked at the corner of her eyes. Her family recoiled each time she called the girl her daughter. They grunted with disgust, hiding their discomfort in their overly enthusiastic conversations.
When my family's name was called, we ran to meet our interviewer at the foot of a staircase. She was a black woman, dressed in a dark blue business suit, as beautiful and alien as a colored porcelain doll. Her perfume hung in the air like the smell of a black rose in my uncle's garden after the rain. A Vietnamese translator stayed a few steps behind her. After a simple greeting and handshakes, they took us upstairs.
As soon as she opened the door to her office and invited us in, a blast of cold wind from the air conditioner swallowed me in its gentle, westernized embrace. I took in a deep breath, and suddenly, America was inside my lungs. Next to me, my mother began to cry.
SOON AFTER THE INTERVIEW
, we left Saigon in a hurry. There was no chance for us to enjoy the view. The city was so expensive that we could not afford to stay too long. Besides, the place of Mr. and Mrs. Hom was too small to accommodate a large family such as mine. My mother assigned Jimmy to stay behind at Mr. and Mrs. Hom's place to monitor the airplane schedule and the list of departing refugees, which was posted every week at the emigration office. After we returned to Nhatrang, we communicated with him mainly through telegrams. My duty was to take care of the paperwork. According to the Vietnamese government, before anyone could leave the country, three essential documents were required: a signature from the Department of Real Estate, a debt-free statement from the Central Bank of Vietnam, and a certification from the Department of Taxation. The purpose was to prove to the government that those departing owned and owed nothing. For us, time was running out.
Rumors about my family's meeting with the American interviewers arrived in Nhatrang before we did. Greeting us in front of our door was a line of Amerasians. Most of these children were homeless. Their filthy clothes were torn, their skin was dull, and their faces had no traces of baby fat. They looked at us, their eyes sparkling with hope. Many of the children had brought along the application they had picked up at the local emigration center. I walked in side by side with my mother and BeTi, reaching for the latch of the front gate.
Two black girls, the first in line, grinned at me. One of them said shyly, “Mr. Kien, would you please help my sister and me? We need to fill out these papers, but we can't read or write.”
Her sister added, “We saved up some money to pay for your services.” She opened her hand to show me a wrinkled twenty-dong note. She must have held on to it so long and so tightly that the bill was nearly decomposed from the perspiration of her palm. Carefully, she laid it in my hand. Both girls were about the same age, thirteen or fourteen. Their hairstyles were enormous, like two thick pine topiaries.
I pushed the money back to her. “Keep it,” I told them. “I can't take your money. But don't worry, I will help you fill out those forms.”
My mother spoke up. “Where do I know you girls? Was it from the noodle shop at Le Chan Street?”
“Yes, madam,” they said simultaneously.
“Dear heaven, all those years, you are still on the street?” she asked. “Where is your mother?”
One of the sisters answered, “She died last year. The doctors said it was from syphilis. We have been on our own since.”
I took the applications from their hands. Curiosity overtook me, and I asked them, “How did you know that we were coming home today?”
The same innocent smile brightened their faces. “We heard about your lucky news at the market on Monday. And since then we have been waiting here for the past three days.”