Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  Before, in Vietnam, I stay in my house, I be all by myself. I feel bad, angry, I do anything. I drink whiskey and take a razor and cut myself on the arms. That’s how I got these scars. You think I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy. I do it to forget, but sometimes I can’t forget.

  My mother die when I be about ten years old. I miss her very much, so I make this tattoo. [On Mai Linh’s arm tattooed in English is “I love Kan.”] Kan, that’s my mother. When my mother die, I go live with my grandmother. There one Vietnamese, he stay next door. Before the VC come, he be lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army. So I go to that house, and he teaches me English. He wants me to go to school, to learn Vietnamese. I say no, I don’t want to go because they call me “black,” they make me feel bad inside. When people teach me something, I feel so good, but when I go out, people talk no good to me, I feel so bad. That’s why I don’t like to go out.

  My grandmother, she treat me okay, and I stay there for a few years. She got children live with her, they call me sister. But this one boy there, he be about nineteen, he don’t call me sister. He talk bad to me because I be black. He say bad things about my mother. He make me so mad, I slap him and I leave that house. I go down to the bus station, and five in the morning I take a bus to Saigon. I didn’t say nothing, nobody knows where I go. Right now they don’t know where I am, they don’t know if I live or die.

  Before, when my mother work the E.M. club, she have one friend. That woman live in Saigon. I go to her house and stay there about three weeks. That woman have one friend who live nearby. She sees me, and she asks me where my mother is. I don’t let her know that my mother die. I tell her I don’t know where my mother be. She say, “Come stay with me, we make paper and go to America together.” So I say, “Okay,” and I go stay with her family, and we make paper to come here.

  We tell the Orderly Departure Program that she is my mother. That’s why I use her family name. But I am not her child, she not born me, understand. Sometime she make me feel bad, but I keep cool, I don’t say nothin’. I think, “I don’t have a mother, no father, no sister, no brother. Where am I gonna go? Who will take care of me?”

  So right now, okay, she take care of me, and I help her go to America. But when I get to America, I don’t stay with her. When we get off the plane, she go that way, I go the other way, that’s all. I can’t tell you no more, because if I do, later she come in and make trouble.

  Here in the PRPC I like to study, to learn to speak English very well, so when I go to America it be easier. Some girls be no good. They like to go around, to make trouble. I don’t like that. I like to go study one o’clock, six o’clock go home. I study at home, then nine o’clock go to sleep.

  Mai Linh

  I don’t have many friends. I have one girl, she be good friend, she black like me. She come to my house, she sit down, we talk, “Okay, where you go to school, what you do, how long till you go to America?” We talk, we laugh.

  I like to be friends with girls, many men be no good for sure. I see black girl, white girl, they go around too much. One girl she get pregnant, the boy don’t say nothin’, and she feel very sad. Maybe when I go to America, I find a man who be good, but here in the PRPC, the men are no good, there is trouble every night. Just last night, in neighborhood four and neighborhood three there were big fights. I think I better wait till I go to America, maybe find an American man.

  When I get to America, first thing, I want to find my father but I don’t know how. If I had a picture, maybe, but I don’t. I don’t know anything, even his [last] name, because my mother don’t let me know [Mai Linh is in tears]. Maybe he die already.

  What I wanna do in America? What I do? I go America, I have to study. Daytime I study, nighttime I get a job and go to work. That’s all, what else can I do?

  In America I don’t want to stay with Vietnamese. I don’t want no Vietnamese to be my mother, my father. If I can’t find no American to be my mother or father, I stay by myself.

  Postscript: Mai Linh left the PRPC for Des Moines, Iowa, in April 1992.

  Vu

  “I have never said to anyone what I said here.”

  Vu and I sit in a tiny kiosk at the edge of the Philippine Refugee Processing Center. The tail end of Typhoon Dinting is with us, and occasional bursts of rain punctuate our conversation. Below the kiosk lies lush paddy, smooth as the felt of a billiard table. The mountains beyond sit swathed in fog. A fringe of banana trees, cultivated by Aeta tribesmen on the lower slopes, pokes through the cloud cover.

  Vu is a soft-spoken, articulate man of thirty-eight. We converse without the aid of an interpreter. When an English word eludes him, he pursues it in his Vietnamese-English dictionary. He is in the PRPC with the daughter of his adoptive parents and a nun from his church group. He listed them as his wife and mother respectively on his documents to enable them to emigrate to the United States with him.

  “Looking like an American” is generally qualification enough for acceptance to America under the auspices of the Amerasian Homecoming Act. At five feet nine inches, his skin dark, his hair close cropped and curly, it was easy for Vu to meet this criterion. His father, however, was not American. As we begin our conversation, Vu hesitates when I ask what he knows of his father. His voice breaks as he tells me that his mother was raped by a “black French,” a North African soldier in the French colonial army.

  I WAS BORN in Thai Binh, in the north. My family moved to Da Nang in 1954, that year many Catholics went south.

  I don’t know if my father was French or American. I think maybe he was French. French or American, I never mind about that because my mother and my stepfather were very kind to me. I never asked my mother about that. One time, I remember my mother told me that my father was a black French, and I stopped my mother, because I couldn’t take this. Because . . . I cannot tell you why, it’s private [Vu’s voice begins to quiver]. My mother said that she was raped by a black French. He was my father.

  In 1973, I passed my examination for my high school diploma. There was a small party, my stepfather was absent at that time. It was then that my mother said to me that she had been raped, raped by a black French, and I . . . I felt very angry. I stopped my mother, and I walked out.

  My Vietnamese stepfather was in the army, so we moved a lot. From Thai Binh we moved to Da Nang, then to Nha Trang, then to a mountain town in Buon Me Thuot province. I remember it just a little. There was a small market, and from my house if I went to the market I had to go to the south, and the market was on the left. From there, we moved back to Nha Trang.

  In 1963, after President Ngo Dinh Diem was killed, we moved to Saigon. From 1964 to 1975 my family lived in Saigon, in Ba Queo. We were very close. My father was a warrant officer first class in the South Vietnamese Army, he has died already. My mother is still in Vietnam. She didn’t want to come with me, she said she was old to leave her country. My two half sisters in Vietnam are married, and they also don’t want to leave the homeland. Their father was born in Vietnam, and I don’t know how to explain their feeling. They love the motherland. I am here with my adopted sister. She is listed as my wife on my documents, but we are not really married. I also came with a sister from my church. She was a friend of my adopted mother, but here she is listed as my mother. You see, in Vietnam, I have my real parents, but I also have adopted parents. The name of my adopted father is Dinh Duc Viem, and my adopted mother is Le Thi Sao. In the beginning, I was a friend of their son. We studied in the same class in high school. They are like foster parents to me. In the Vietnamese way, when you have great respect for someone who is like your father and mother, if you agree, they can become your foster father and mother. In Vietnam, sometime I live with my own family, and sometime I stay with my foster father and mother.

  In my neighborhood, the people look at me badly, they look down on me. I was the only Amerasian living there. When I was young, I used to go around alone, play alone. I had no friends. I never spoke to my mother about my problems because I afraid
she would be sad.

  In the school I attend in Saigon, there were only three students like me. I am one of three. They were all black, there were no white Amerasians. Even though we were the only Amerasians, we did not stay together.

  For the other two blacks, I don’t know how about them, but for me, in the class, I often got something like discrimination. The classmates look at me like I am a low type of person. I was very sad, but I think I must study, study until . . . if you compare between me and them, I will be higher than they are.

  In my last three years of high school, I did very well, but in the first year I could not, because the students forced me to sit in the corner of the class and taunted me. I was alone, I could not go against them. I did not dare to complain to the teacher, because when I finish the class they would beat me up.

  But, the last three years of high school I have three friends. One is the son of my foster parents and the others are my classmates. They always stick up for me. They are very close with me. They always help me how to study, they always come to my house for studying, playing. This was my happiest time.

  In Vietnam before 1975, I just finish my high school and went to attend college at Van Hanh University. It is the same name as the temple here in the camp, Van Hanh. It means all things are very lucky. In the university, the discrimination wasn’t as bad. Of course, it was there, but I didn’t think about it because I must study. All of the students have to study hard, because if you fail your class, you have to become a soldier, so there is no time for discrimination. I studied reporter [journalism] for about a year and three months. Then the Communists came.

  When the VC come in Saigon, I remember exactly—in the morning of April 29, 1975. At that time I stayed home alone. My father and mother and younger sisters had left my house and stayed in Long Thanh. Before the VC came to Saigon, my stepfather left the army. He became a civilian. He took my mother and my sister to Long Thanh to become farmers, and I stayed in Saigon to continue my studies in college.

  At the time the VC came, I thought it was all over, and I was very sad. I sat in front of my house, and I saw the VC pass my house.

  In the beginning I was afraid, I feel afraid. But a few hours after I don’t feel anything, because I think all is over, maybe I come to the end of my life. Because at that time I live in a compound that is used for the family of the [South Vietnamese] soldier only. So I thought that if the VC come in, they will cut off my head. [Vu is laughing.] A few days after the day the VC came into Saigon, I stop my studies. I think that they will not allow a young adult like me to go to school. They make us go to a meeting, and they tell us that the Communist way is the best in the world, and we must replace our way of life with Communism.

  I just attend for three months some meeting like that, and on January 6, 1976, I become a prisoner of the Viet Cong. They arrest me because I keep in my house three grenades and two guns.

  I got those weapons because I fight them at night. I, with my friend in the compound where I live, we fight with them. I use a branch of a tree and like that, and we attack them four times.

  In the compound, there is a gate and it has no street light. It is very dark by night. I, and some friends who were in the marine corps of the South Vietnamese government before, we hide behind the wall and wait for the VC. Sometimes they walk along the wall, sometimes two men and sometime one man. They are so proud, they believe nobody can hurt them, nobody can knock them out. But when they pass through the gate we follow them and whack them on the back of the head, like that [Vu swings his arms as if chopping wood].

  They didn’t know that we were there. They think that they are un-touchable. So I use a branch of wood and I knock them out. One time I did it by myself, and my friend was in back of me, and three times my friend did it. They never fought with us, all the four times they fell down, and we get their weapons. So I got two A. K., my friend took one B-40, you know that one? It is a gun like a bazooka, but smaller. We also got some grenades.

  One kid in the area, he was fighting with his friend. He knew that I had a grenade in my house. He came to my house and ask me to give him one grenade. I didn’t give, so he told the VC government that I had their weapons.

  When the VC came to my house, my mother had just come back from Long Thanh three days before. While we have our lunch, they come in and they catch me. Two of them went straight upstairs and took out the wooden box which had the guns and the grenades inside. They took me to Chi Hoa prison. From that time till February 1977, they lock me up.

  I had no trial, no judge. For the first three months in Chi Hoa, they beat me. They tell me that I am the son of an American, they call me a reactionary element. They beat me with their hands and the handle of the gun. Sometimes they beat me Monday, and not Tuesday, then maybe Wednesday they beat me, and again Friday or Saturday. They hit me with the gun over here and over here, and they broke this one [Vu points to his collarbone]. They want to know the names of my friends, but I don’t tell them anything, so they beat me more. After three months they left me alone. I was very weak at that time and could no longer walk. My legs were paralyzed from the beatings and the food. The diet in jail is very poor.

  We stayed about forty to a cell, nothing to do all day but to think about home. The only time they let us out is to go to take a bath. Two times only, I had problems, once with a prisoner and once with a guard. Once the sauce of another prisoner’s bottle spilled on my blanket, and I shouted at him. The dai bang [chief prisoner, usually the toughest in the cell] kicked me two times, once in the chest and once in the back. I couldn’t do anything because he is very big. The other time we were going to the bath. My legs were very bad, and so I walked very slowly. So the Communist guard, he gets angry and he beat me. I fell on the ground and I lie for a while. I don’t remember so well, but some of the prisoners helped me stand up and took me back to the cell.

  They never told my family where I was. My father was looking for me from Long Thanh to Saigon. He even came to Chi Hoa, but they told him that I was not there. I wrote letters, but they never received them.

  I never knew when they would release me. They didn’t tell me anything. Suddenly they called me down to the office and said, “Now you are free.” I wonder why I am free. I am very happy, but I don’t believe it. But in the afternoon they let me out.

  I got out of Chi Hoa in 1977, February. I left with my two friends who were in prison like me, and they were freed together with me. We went on the bus, and I returned to my foster mother’s house. I could walk by myself, but I was still very weak at that time. I got to my foster mother’s house at night, about seven o’clock in the evening. She was very surprised, she thought that maybe I was dead. She cried and she took me in and fed me. I stay in my foster mother’s house about one week, and then I went to Long Thanh to the house of my stepfather and my mother.

  I remained in Long Thanh with my mother and stepfather, and when my health was better I helped them to earn money. I cut wood in the forest and made charcoal. I and some friends in my neighborhood work together. In the morning we go to the forest and cut wood, and two or three P.M., we come back in the house. My stepfather at that time was old and weak. Sometimes he would go together with me, but seldom.

  In a week if I earn money for two or three days, I help my father the other days. He had a garden. It was in the forest, about seven kilometers from my house. We grew corn and some kind of bean. We also planted rice, but it was not rice paddy, not flooded. We grew dry rice. My father had got the land in the old plan of the Saigon government. They gave retired soldiers land in the country. It was the policy of the government to encourage people to leave the city. The Communists didn’t bother him about that land because they also liked people to leave the city and go to New Economic Zones. Since we were in the country already, we didn’t have to go.

  My father was forced to attend a class called Tay Nao [Brainwashing]. The Communists want to throw all the old ideas out of his head. The class was about three months, and afte
r that, my father came back home and lived like anybody else, but without civil rights. Once you are a student in the brainwashing class, you don’t have the same rights as other people.

  After the class finished, in a month he must come one time to the Communist village office, usually on Saturday night. I don’t remember exactly. I think it was for about nine or ten months, and after that the Communist man give a piece of paper of release that they could go home. Every week the Communist made the old soldier work something like labor, planting rice, corn, something like that.

  My father didn’t talk about those classes. He was a quiet man. Even before 1975, he was like that. I have rarely seen him laugh. I remember when I passed my examination and got my diploma, the first diploma, I saw he was very happy, but he laughed just a little because he was very quiet. But he loved me very much. He died in 1985.

  In 1978, my family became like many other families in South Vietnam, very hungry. There was no rice. I don’t know, maybe the Communist government took all the rice from the south and brought it to the north. I heard that, but I don’t know. We have no rice, we must eat the corn and manioc. Sometime you eat a little and you think it tastes good, but if you use it daily, all the time, it’s very bad.

  From ’78 to ’80 we had little rice. But in the end, ’79 or ’80, my family had some food because we planted rice and corn.