Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  They always say, “Oh, Raymond, he’s a contrary person,” always. That’s how come many Amerasians who know me there respect me, because I’m tough, but not tough by fighting or troublemaking. I’m tough because I don’t listen to the VC politics. I just say it’s not true. My adopted father used to train me a lot about the slaves in the States, about the white and black people, and I got all that in my mind when I was young. Most time when I hang around with GI’s they say about me, “This is a smart guy.” Sometimes I write in English, “Peace,” “Make love not war,” “Black power,” You know, I learned it before with the American GI’s when I was young. When they was doin’ somethin’, I just look at them, and I act like them. A group of guys be by the stereo, sittin’ there talkin’, I be sittin’ there listenin’, and I go home and act just like them. It’s always like that. So when I get to the prison camp, I still act just like that. Just like now. I’m not walkin’ slow just like Vietnamese walkin’, I’m walkin’ fast. ’When I’m talkin’, I’m just like an American black, talkin’, movin’ a lot. This is my way, I cannot forget it; but in Vietnam it kind of shocked them. I shocked many Vietnamese children, you know, when I was talkin’ to them, touchin’ them. If it’s a girl, in Vietnam you don’t touch them, but when I talk, tryin’ to analyze or explain something, I move my hands a lot. They say if you talk, don’t point your finger like that. They don’t like that. But I always have a problem, because I cannot talk like this [Raymond hugs his arms to his sides].

  In the prison camp, if you die, you die. They don’t even report to your parents. Until around ‘86 or ‘87, you couldn’t even have any visitors. At that time it became a little easier. Before then, you could not even write a letter. I could not contact my mother.

  Every morning before you go to work you have to line up in the big square. They call your number, and you go out to get your head count. One morning I think, “Why we go out late today? Maybe something happened, maybe somebody be released.” But to myself, I say, “No, Raymond, it’s not you.” I lost my hope to be released, but not to survive. I always think, “I will go out somehow, but not in the legal way. They never gonna let me out after twelve years, yeah, twelve years.” But that one day, June 20, 1987, I’m just sittin’ there, and I’m the one that they call first. I don’t even hear it, because I don’t listen. When they call my name, I just . . . I was not ready to hear that. After they call my name twice, people in the front line, they just look at me and they say, “Raymond, your name.” I think they was joking, but I hear many guys saying, “Raymond, it’s you, they gonna let you out.” And I stand up, and they say, “Don’t you want to go out?” And I just sit down quietly, and I hear them calling another name, and another. I was having a deep breath, and thinking, “I survived, oh, I survived.”

  I got back to Saigon seven o’clock in the evening. I was lookin’, I was walkin’ around. I went back to my neighborhood, my locale, and they tell me, “Your mama, she’s dead,” and I suffer. I say, “Oh, now I live on the street again.” And then the neighbors, they give me clothes, they give me food, and they say, “If you were out here you be in America already, because now they have the policy to let the Amerasian out. You come late, you know.” I had heard about that in the prison camp, about the “Homecoming Act,” but I just didn’t believe it. “America has no relations with Vietnam,” I think, “How they gonna let all the Amerasians go to America?” But it was true. I say, “If I knew that, I would have escaped [from prison camp] already.”

  I went out to the central city, Nguyen Hue, the main road. I was lookin’ for Americans. I was thinkin’, “How can I get in touch with Robert Handler, with anybody I knew so that they can help me to get out?” And then I saw this one guy with a mustache, he looked Spanish, and a girl with blonde hair. I looked at the way they dressed, and I think, “They’re not Russian, I can tell. They don’t look French, they must be American.” So I walked over and talked to them. They had a tape recorder, and they recorded everything I said. I was talking about how difficult the life is for the Amerasian, and I say, “If you are a journalist, I will give you a letter, so you can talk to the people in America and try to help Amerasians, get us all out. We cannot stay here with the Communist regime. We don’t have any education, and we are not able to work anywhere. The employer won’t hire us.” So I gave him the letter, and he promised that he would give it to the government, talk about my story.

  Then I met one nice Vietnamese prisoner friend who was released before I was, after maybe seven years in the camp. He had a motorcycle repair shop. He say, “Raymond, what you doin’?” And I say, “I have no job, my mother’s dead, I’m homeless.” He says, “I know you don’t know how to repair motors, but I can teach you.” So I come stay with him for about two months, and I get paid maybe two hundred piasters for a day.

  I smoke, that costs money. I like to drink milk, but it’s expensive to drink milk in Vietnam. Tea, ice, and coffee are cheap, but milk is expensive. But I don’t like coffee, I can’t drink tea. I just like milk, ‘cause I used to drink it when I was on the base. But I can’t afford it. Two hundred piasters is not enough for a day, I have no breakfast. So I think, “I’m workin’ and still the money’s not enough,” and I look for another job down at the market. I find a job as a porter, but I’m too weak. I been twelve years in the prison camp, and I been locked up. My legs are weak. To be a porter you got to be strong, like a farmer. But I’m not a farmer. I never worked that hard, even in the camp. I cannot carry that stuff, about sixty or eighty kilos of onions.

  So I started sellin’, standin’ and sellin’, it’s okay for me. But then I get sick, ‘cause when you work in the onion stockroom, that smell is so powerful, many people are allergic. So I cough a lot, and I think, “How much do I make a month . . if I get sick and I got to pay for a doctor, for medicine? Don’t even talk about a doctor, just for medicine, it’s not enough. How can I work for this little bit of money just to get some lung disease?” So I had to stop workin’.

  I started hanging around behind the Catholic church, they call it “Amerasian Park.” You can make your application there, to apply for America, if you want to leave Vietnam. I can write, I got a good handwriting, so I became an application writer. I write for the Vietnamese who have Amerasian children and are trying to get to America.

  Many don’t have the money to make the document, so I’m the one helpin’ them. I do it for free, or they offer me fifty or a hundred piasters. If they go to someone else, sometimes it costs them five thousand, but for me, no price, I don’t demand nothin’. So the people come and crowd around me, and when they go back to their town, and they see the local Amerasian who is jobless, they tell him, “You should go out and see Raymond, tell Raymond to make the application for you.” So they came from all over. From the country, from the province, and in Saigon. They come behind the Catholic church, lookin’ for Raymond. They come to me, and they say, “Are you Raymond?” I say, “Yeah.” They say, “I have no mother, I have no father, I want to leave this country, can you help me?” I say, “yeah,” and I write everything down for them on the application.

  I met a lot of Amerasians who been robbin’ at the market, stealin’, pickpocketing. If they get caught, they get beat up. I think, “Hey, if they were in my shoes, if they been twelve years in prison camp, they wouldn’t be doin’ this. It’s no fun in there, because I’m an Amerasian, I been there, and I know.” But they say, “I have no job. Nobody will hire me, so how can I survive?”

  I was tryin’ to think about how to get them together and have them sleep in one place. Because I see a lot of beggars sleepin’ on the side of the street. Many of them are hooked on drugs, droppin’ pills and things like that. You see a lot of Amerasians, they got scars on their arms. They do drugs, and then they cut themselves up. They learn this from the Vietnamese. They want to prove they tough, not scared of anything. Girls do it too. They might be prostitutes, or a drug user, or just a wild girl.

  But, I also saw many Amerasians
who are street vendors, sellin’ postcards, makin’ a livin’ that way. Some are doin’ bicycle repair on the sidewalk, drivin’ pedicabs, sellin’ bread, and I’m thinkin’ about why the other Amerasians don’t do like these. I met this one black Amerasian, and I say, “Why don’t you go out and repair bicycles, something like that?” And he say, “Nah, I don’t like to do that, because people always pay me low wages and treat me bad. They use me like a slave.”

  The Amerasians feel upset about this. They don’t want to work for the Vietnamese. These people don’t call you by name. They call you con lai—that mean mixed blood, Amerasian. That sounds bad, it hurts an Amer-asian, and they don’t want to work. So they group up with some Vietnamese street kids, who already been in jail many times, you know, and they get hooked into that group. Soon they will be doin’ the bad things.

  I gathered a small group of these Amerasian children, and we sleep in the park. One night the police came by. They say, “Hey, where’s your home? Go home.” I say, “We have no home, sir.” “Well,” they say, “Just go somewhere else. You know, this is a public place, in front of the administration office. You cannot sleep here, it makes it look bad.” I say, “Well, we want to sleep here to let people know that we need help.” Many American people were around there also. Orderly Departure Program people, they worked right by there.

  I was trying to think of how to support this group. If you want to avoid crime, you have to support them, you have to feed them. So I just walk around town, just looking for Americans and askin’ them to help. I met John R., who is a Vietnam veteran. He left his Amerasian daughter behind, and he came back and found her. He brought her back to Hawaii, where he lives. He is married to a Vietnamese woman, and he speaks Vietnamese fluently.

  I tell him we need help, and I brought him to the park where we sleepin’. He says, “Okay, I’m goin’ back to America in three days, but I will come back, and I will help.” We asked him for money to buy some rice, and he gave us some, but at that time it’s not enough.

  Meanwhile, more and more Amerasians are coming to the park. I begin teaching them English. You know the Vietnamese are kind of nosy. They see somethin’ strange, they just come and look. So they come and crowd around, and then a police car comes. The police say, “Raymond, we want you to come down to the police station.” And I went down there, and crowds of Amerasians follow me, and they wait for me there in front of the police station. And the investigator, he tells me, “Don’t gather up these Amerasians again, if you do, we put you back in the prison.” And I’m scared. I already been in twelve years, and they gonna put me back again.

  So I went back out and I told the Amerasians, “Okay, you sleep here. Don’t go nowhere tonight, you stay here in the area. Stay together. I’m not gonna sleep here with you, but I’m gonna be watchin’ out for you.” And I go sleep in a small alley near the park.

  At this time the Amerasians were all living in the park without any shelter. I would feed them with money I made from writing applications. Sometimes the people whose applications I made have Amerasian children themselves, and they feel pity for the street children, so they donate some rice or a cooking pot. So the Amerasians are happy because they are together. Before, they don’t look friendly at each other. Even if I am Amer-asian, when I meet another Amerasian I kinda feel ashamed, a stranger, because we grow up in the Vietnamese community. So, I always put in their mind, “He’s your brother, she’s your sister. We should love each other, help each other.” Some of these Amerasians they are tough guys, they be in gangs. They listen to the Vietnamese and beat up the other Amerasians.

  So the police, they arrest me again, for grouping the Amerasians. They don’t charge me with anything, they just say that I’m a troublemaker. And so, just a few months after I get released from twelve years of reeducation camp, they sentence me to twenty-four months in a labor training camp for youth. It’s not supposed to be a jail. It’s a place where they send people who don’t want to work, people who drink too much, people like that, for training. It’s on a small island, where they have some salt fields to produce salt. Water all around you, very difficult to escape. You have to swim good to escape.

  I arrived there, and I saw Tuan Den, this black Amerasian. He is here in the PRPC now. Anyway, he was a detainee, but he been there in that labor camp so long that they had made him like a guard, except he didn’t have a rifle, he only had a stick. He’s like one of those Amerasians I told you about, that listen to the Vietnamese and beat up other Amerasians. He was always around, with that stick in his hand, like he was God, or something. I look at him, it’s my first day there, and I say to myself, “This is absurd. I want to know how is this different from the place I been for twelve years, because it was hell there, and if this is another place like that, I’m gonna escape even if they kill me.” He look at me also, and I know why. He wants to know whether I’m tough or not. If I’m a tough guy, he’s the one who will face me. That’s what they use him for.

  My first night there, they make like a long bed. Everybody sleep in a line. One student, they call them students, he’s movin’ in his sleep. He’s knocking into another guy, ‘cause there is no room, and the other guy gets angry and starts hittin’ and cursing him. Tuan Den, he’s the guard, he’s the team leader. He comes in and he got a long whip, not a leather whip. It’s steel, like a bicycle chain, and he whips that guy so bad. I stand up and I look at Tuan Den, and I say, “In jail, it’s the Communists treat us like that. But this is not a jail, not prison. It’s a training center. Why you treat the people like this?”

  I stand up. At that time it’s curfew, you cannot even nod your head up, but I stand up. He look at me, I look at him, and he walks out.

  The next morning, they say we have to get dressed and line up for the toilet. I tell them, “I don’t line up because I’m not a criminal.” So I feel very, very angry, and I say no, and I just walk out.

  They try to put you at their mercy. I’m a newcomer, and usually as a newcomer you cannot be in a private place by yourself. After you there one or two months, they trust you. But your first few months, they always follow you. You always must be with your team. If you in a line, and one person violates [a rule], the whole team will pay with punishment. They be runnin’ in a circle at noontime, and no one can eat, all day like that. So I tell them, “I’m not involved with the team, if I’m in trouble, it’s me. If the team violates, that’s the team. If I do wrong, punish me. I don’t want to get involved with any people around here.”

  Most of the Amerasians I met there were treated real bad. They make them work like a slave, carry water for them to take a bath, cook, wash their clothes, sometimes even massage them at night.

  Tuan Den in front of his billet

  There are girls out there too, Vietnamese girls, Amerasian girls, picked up for prostitution. One time at noontime, one girl dropped a block. She’s hungry and tired, she been working since six or eight in the morning. So they give her a punishment, she has to kneel down and look at the sun. But I don’t like that kind of thing, and I say, “Hey,” to the girl that runs the team, and she says, “You talkin’ to the team leader.” I say “Hey, you hear me?” And she says, “It’s none of your business. You ain’t been workin’ all this morning, why you interrupt my business?” I say, “I just want to ask you if you’re a human. If you a human, you don’t treat people like that. If you get out of your uniform and you go down and do the same work, you will drop that block too.”

  That woman is the nurse, and she is so corrupt. Sometimes you get sick. You got a headache, or you got a stomachache, and you need an excuse slip for the day, you want to be absent. She will not allow you. You got to give her some food, some gift, or she won’t sign your paper. It’s unfair. She thinks nobody knows what she’s doin’, but I observe, I find it out, what they have done in this place. All the employees abusing drugs, they all shootin’, all drinkin’ alcohol. That nurse was working there ten years, and she has so many enemies that she can’t go back on t
he outside. She has to stay there to be safe. They say the camp is for training young people, but it’s a punishment camp. It doesn’t help anybody.

  I refused to follow their rules. I refused to work. I say, “I am not a prisoner. This is a training center, not a prison, but this is not training, it’s forced labor.” So they just let me be. They cannot do nothin’ to me cause I don’t talk nasty words. If you talk nasty words, they beat you. If you think you’re tough, they beat you. That’s why I don’t use that kind of behavior. It’s here in my heart.

  Before they release me, I talk to that black Amerasian, the one with the stick. I ask him, “Why you be in here?” and he start talkin’, “I been stealin’, robbin’, like that. I got no job, and they put me in here.” And I ask, “What your mother and father say?” And he says, “I have no mother or father.” And I say, “Okay, I been hearin’ about you a lot. A lot of people been tryin’ to escape and you caught them and beat them up. You work for the Vietnamese, but they don’t treat you like Vietnamese. They make you hurt people. They don’t give you no rights. I ask him, “Do they pay you any salary here?” He says, “No.” I say to him, “They just usin’ you here. Those people you caught when they tryin’ to escape. If they see you when you get back to society, what’s gonna happen to you? They’re going to want to kill you. I tell you what, your country is not here. Why don’t you get out of here and try and go to America?” And you know, he did. He is here in the PRPC now, and he got here before I did.

  When they release me, I went back to Saigon. The local police station gave me a warning to stay out of the Amerasian Park. They tell me, “Don’t ever hang out there any more, if you want to leave the country. If you don’t listen to us, you gonna have big trouble. You will go in [prison] for a long time.” Then I ask, “Okay, what do I need to apply to leave the country?” So they told me you got to have your birth certificate and your household register. But I don’t even have a birth certificate, because I come from the orphanage I only have my release document from reeducation camp. They tell me to go back to my local [neighborhood] and look for the old people that’s been residing there long enough to know my background, who can give information about me.