Children of the Enemy

by Steven DeBonis

  Carefully dressed and impeccably coiffed, Lien appears much younger than her fifty-four years. She is the mother of five children, including a twenty-four-year-old Amerasian daughter named Sophie and two children by a Korean husband. The latter three children, along with Sophie’s daughter Linda, are in the PRPC together with Lien.

  Lien acted as my interpreter in a tutorial class for Amerasians. When she learned that I was collecting the stories of women who had Amerasian children, she volunteered to tell her own. Much of what Lien speaks about centers on the difficult relationship between herself and her American “husband,” Floyd Derault. Most of their problems, she believes, had their roots in differences between their respective cultures. Lien puts it succinctly, “I don’t understand him too much, and he don’t understand me either.”

  Lam Thu Cam Lien: I was born in Saigon and lived with my parents, three brothers, and three sisters. We lived in a middle-class house, not so big, not so small. My father was a clerk for Air Vietnam. My mother stayed at home, she was a housewife. She is still in Vietnam, but my father, he died already. I went to school nine years, I studied Vietnamese and French.

  When I was young, my house burned down. My family lost everything, and we became poor. My birth certificate burned, too. I have to make new birth certificate, and we make my date of birth 1935 instead of 1939, so it is easier for me to get a job. After I finished school, I went to work for the Vietnamese army. At this time Ngo Dinh Diem was the president. There were no Americans, the French stay in Vietnam.

  I am so young when I start working for the army, only fifteen years old, but my birth certificate says I am eighteen, so I can work. I did social work. I worked as a nurse, clerk, psychologist. I did everything, I helped the wives, too. Often when someone from out of the country comes to Vietnam, I am the first one in Vietnam to meet them. I go to the airport, greet them, and give them a flower.

  Many Vietnamese officers, they like me very much. I have one boyfriend. He says he loves me so much, but when I ask him about getting married, he says no. His family don’t want him to get married with a poor girl, with no house, not “high class.” I feel very sad about that.

  After a few years I meet a captain, and I live with him four years. We don’t make the marriage document, we just stay like boyfriend and girlfriend in the same house. I have two sons from him, they still live in Saigon. After I born my two sons, I find out he’s already married. You know, the first time we meet he likes me, so he says he’s single, and he never told me he had a wife.

  I went back with my mother, and I look for a place to make money to take care of my two sons. I start to work as a cashier in my brother’s nightclub. It’s called “Twenty-Five” because it’s at 25 Tu Do street. Many Americans come there to have a drink, listen to music, and talk to the girls. After I worked there about a year, I met one American, this was maybe 1965 or 1966. The first time he meets me he asks me some things about my family, and then, about two or three months later he says, “You want to be my girlfriend?” I think, “I have two Vietnamese sons, but I am very unlucky, because my Vietnamese husband he is already married. I think maybe, if I stay to work in the bar, maybe people look at me no good. Maybe I stay with him better than work in bar.” So I stop work with my brother, this man rents a house, and I go live with him. He was a civilian, he worked for Air America. I was about twenty-six or twenty-seven, he was about forty-five. His name was Floyd Derault [not a real name].

  He treats me sometime very good, but sometime not so good. What I mean is that sometime I don’t understand him too much, and he don’t understand me either. Like, you know, he has friends come to the house, and he says to them, “This is my girlfriend.” I already have one daughter with him, and he calls me “girlfriend.” I don’t like that, it hurts me. I say, “Why you don’t call me your wife, why you call me girlfriend?” He says, “You not my wife, you my girlfriend.” I ask him why, he says because we don’t have certificate of marriage, the American way is like that. He says if we stay together, but don’t have certificate of marriage, we cannot call ourselves husband and wife. Many Vietnamese women living with American men have trouble like this.

  I stay with him four or five years, but we have many problems. I have some trouble because of the birth certificate I changed when I was younger. When I meet him, he asks me where I was born. I say, “I was born in Saigon.” After we stay together one or two years, he sees my birth certificate. It says that I’m born An Hoi, Binh Trung. He gets very mad, he says, “Lien, why you not be honest with me?” I say, “Why you say that? I don’t understand.” He says, “Even your birthday, your birthplace, you don’t tell the truth. If you be honest with me, I can give you a house, a car, anything you want. But now I don’t do anything for you because you a liar woman.”

  But you know, I’m not liar woman, but I don’t understand American people. When he first come to my brother’s nightclub, I tell him I was born in Saigon, but that time I don’t speak English so well, so I don’t explain him everything. I don’t tell him that when I be young my house burned down and when I make new birth certificate I change date from 1939 to 1935, so I seem older, so I can get a job. When I do this, the lawyer also tells me to change my place of birth, so we write An Hoi, Binh Trung.

  Because of the problem with my birth certificate, my American husband don’t trust me. When I born my daughter, he don’t believe it’s his. When I go to hospital, he don’t come to see me, and I’m hurt. I ask him when I come back home, “Why you don’t come to the hospital to see me?” And he say, “I’m afraid you born one Vietnamese boy or Vietnamese girl, and when people look at me, what will they think? They will think I am stupid or something, that’s what.” He don’t trust me. He thinks he is not the father, that I have another boyfriend. But when he sees my daughter, and he looks in her eyes, her face, he sees that she looks like him too much. At that time he cries, and he says, “Oh Lien, I’m sorry because I didn’t trust you. I thought that you stay with me because of money, and after that you get another boyfriend. I don’t go to hospital to see you, now I feel sorry. Because now, I know this girl is my daughter.”

  When my daughter was born, I don’t call her Sophie. . . . Tran Dai, that’s the name I give her. And I don’t write the father’s name on the birth certificate, I put down the last name “Lam,” same as my last name. When he looks at that certificate, he says, “No, I don’t want this, you must find out how much it costs, I don’t care. You must change her last name, she must have my last name.” And I did. I have two birth certificates here. On one her last name is mine, and one it’s her father’s. And Floyd, he likes the name Sophie, so that’s what we call her.

  After I born my daughter, he gave me one new car, and he said “I am sorry, maybe I make you feel bad.” And I say, “Thank you,” and I forget all.

  Floyd, he drink one month about ten bottles of vodka, but he only could get six bottles from the PX. One day I just joking with him, I say, “Honey, this afternoon I go buy for you more four bottles of vodka.” And he say, “Sure, thank you, that’s very good,” and he go to work. I stay home, I feel tired, I don’t buy the vodka for him. When he come home, he say, “Where’s my vodka?” I say, “Oh honey, I’m sorry, I don’t feel so good. I will buy some other day.” He get angry and he say, “No, I don’t like that, when you say something to me you must do.” Because when he say something he mean it. He don’t want me to do after a few days, he don’t like that.

  I see he loves my daughter very much. Every time he finishes work, he comes home, he see my daughter, and he’s very happy. But between him and me, it’s not good. I know we don’t love each other.

  After Sophie was born, I stay with Floyd about two more years. Every year he has one month vacation, and he go back to the United States. When he go, I go back to work at the nightclub with my brother. One time he come back, he get angry. He say, “Why you go back to work? I tell you to stay home.” He’s furious. I say I feel very sad, very lonely. I want to go work a
t the club, no problem. He say, “No, I don’t want you to.” I say sorry, but he tells me, “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to stay with a woman who don’t listen to me, who don’t do what I want.”

  After a few months he starts again, “Why you go work? I told you not to go there.” I say, “We talk already, why you make trouble?” He say, “I think maybe you have another boyfriend.” I say, “No, why you don’t believe me?” So I tell him, “If all the time we fight like this, maybe I have to go back with my mother.” He say, “Okay, you can go back with your mother, but you let Sophie stay here, and I take care of her.” But I tell him, “No, I born her and I have to take care of her.” He says, “You not a rich woman, you cannot take care of her.” I say, “I don’t care. I can work, take care of her. I don’t need you.” Finally he agreed that I take care of Sophie, and he say that he give Sophie a hundred dollars a month, for her, not for me. So I go back to my mother, and every month my maid goes over there, and he puts a hundred dollars on the table, and she brings it home to me.

  I send Sophie to see him once or twice a week. I see him sometime, but when I see him we just talk about Sophie. He went back to America in 1969 or 1970, I don’t remember. After he left, I opened an account in the Man Nhat Tan [Manhattan] Bank. He say, “One month, one hundred dollars,” but now that he go back to the States, he give one year, maybe two, three times, not like before. We got that money for about two or three years. In 1975 the VC came, and then it stopped, and I don’t have any more news from him.

  American and Vietnamese husband very different. The American, when they want something, they just speak straight to you. They don’t go from this side to that side, they don’t beat around the bush. But Vietnamese speak far and then come close.

  Lien and Sophie in Vietnam, late sixties or early seventies (courtesy Lam Thu Cam Lien)

  My American husband, sometime he hurt me like this. Sometime he say, “Lien, I want you to look for me one girl have long hair and be young, younger than you.” First time I think he’s joking. I just smile, don’t say anything. But after he speaks again, I get mad, I say, “Why? If you want to look for girlfriend, go look yourself. You can tell me, ‘Oh Lien, I’m busy, I want to meet some friends at home.’ You go back to your mother’s house and stay there.’ I don’t want you to say I look for you for a girl, I don’t want you to say that.”

  After Floyd go back to the States, I get married again, with one Korean. He work for RMK company as an engineer. This time I make the paper, I have a marriage certificate. I have two children with him, one boy and one daughter.

  I stayed with him four years. In 1972 or 1973, all Americans must go back to America. At that time he’s out of a job, and he don’t want to go back to Korea, but he says he must find a place to work, to make money.

  In March of 1973, he went to Australia alone. At the time he left, he didn’t have a job for almost one year, so we didn’t have the money for me and my family to go with him. We owed money, we had debts, and we had to pay them off. After two or three months, he starts to send me money, two hundred dollars every week. After about six months, he started to make the papers for all my family to go to Australia, except for my two Vietnamese sons, my two oldest children. They always stayed with my mother, she always took care of them. So, I think we will go to Australia in March 1975, but when VC come, everything stopped.

  In 1974 my husband wrote me one letter from Australia. He says, “Oh, Lien, you must hurry to get out of VN because the VC come.” You don’t have to take anything with you, only take care of your three babies, go with them. Just you hurry to go.”

  And that time I ask my brother, “Will the VC come?” My brother, he works in the army, he says, “The VC can’t come here, never, because we take care of Saigon very good.” So I wait for my passport to come, and I think I will go to Australia by airplane. I never thought the VC would come, so I didn’t hurry. But, you know, my brother was wrong, and when VC come they put him in jail because he work for the ARVN. I can’t get out of Vietnam, and I never heard from my Korean husband again.

  Years later, when my brother got out of jail, he asked my daughter Sophie, “You know your father’s address?” And she says she knows, and she gives it to him. And my brother wrote a letter in Vietnamese for Sophie and sent to Sophie’s father in America. But Floyd, Sophie’s father, cannot speak Vietnamese, he cannot understand anything. After about two or three months, he send me a letter. He say, “I read, but I don’t understand nothing. I have to go around and around to Vietnamese people, they read for me.” You know, that time there are not too many Vietnamese people in the States, so it took some time for him to get a translation. He sent a money order, four hundred dollars, for Sophie, but we could not exchange it. We went many places, but they would not accept it. Finally we find a way to change it, but at a very cheap rate.

  He and his sister wrote me a letter. His sister wrote, “The VC came, but you are still okay, and I’m very happy about that.” And he asks in the letter, “Sophie, you want to go to the United States?” And my daughter, she don’t know how to write English, I teach her, and I ask my friend to help me find the English words to write. My daughter write her father that she wants to go to America, but she will not leave without her mother and her family. This was about 1983, and we don’t hear from Floyd again.

  You know, all my life I stay in Saigon City. I never really knew much about the war, I only read in the newspaper. Only in the country, have many trouble about VC. In Saigon, we don’t know nothing, but we have trouble in 1968, the VC came into the city. At this time it was Tet, and I hear many bombs. I stay with my mother one day, and maybe seven o’clock next day, I go back home. Floyd, he was home, and he was very glad when I came in. He tell me, “One day I stay home wait for you. I think you have trouble, I worry much, but I’m very happy to see you come back.”

  I never thought the VC could take Saigon. In 1975, when finally I knew that the VC were coming, I was very afraid. At that time I had many nice clothes, I threw them out. The first time they came, they don’t know nothing about me, that I have foreign husbands. But then, they come around the neighborhood, and somebody tells them, “Oh, this girl, she get married to American, or, she get married to Korean.” Then they don’t like me. But Koreans, they have black hair, black eyes, just like the Vietnamese, so they can’t tell my babies are Korean. But Sophie they can tell. She has brown hair, she looks like an American. They know that she is American, not Vietnamese. Then they say, “Oh, this woman, she got married with the rich foreigners. Now she must do something very dirty, like go out and clean the garbage. She must do that because before she’s rich, she have everything, and we didn’t have nothing.” So they made me go around and collect garbage in Saigon, one week maybe two or three times.

  One week before the VC come, the Man Nhat Than Bank, where I put my money . . . it closed. So I cannot get my money, and I have nothing. I have to sell everything in my house. That time was very bad, I cannot tell you. I sell everything to buy some food. I don’t work. They don’t let me, they don’t need me. I sell my clothes, I go outside and buy something and then I sell that. I buy maybe two cans, I sell two hundred and fifty dong, something like that. I sell sometimes clothes, sometimes rice, sometimes oil, anything.

  The VC said whoever got married with American people must go out of the city, far from Saigon. The VC wanted me to go to the New Economic Zone. I didn’t want to go. I never planted rice or did farm work in my life. I don’t know how, and I have to take care of my babies, so my mother says she will go in my place. My mother tells the VC, “My daughter don’t want to go, I go for her.” She took my older son and my youngest brother with her. She was too old to work, so she just stayed home and cooked, but my son and my brother had to work very hard.

  My daughter Sophie went to school five or six years. She looks like an American. When she go out, many people look at her and laugh, they say something bad, My Lai muoi hai lo dit, dit lo nay xi lo kia. That means Ame
rasian have twelve asses, when you shit you shit twelve times, and then twelve times come more.” [More literally, Amerasians have 12 assholes, if they fart from one, gas comes out the others.] I don’t know why they say that. It’s just a rhyme they say to tease the Amerasian. My daughter come home, she cry. She say, “Why you born me American? Why you no born me Vietnamese, because they always laugh at me. I don’t like that.” So she didn’t want to stay in Vietnam.

  Sophie, sometime she listen to me, but sometimes, I say, “Sophie do this,” and she don’t listen. She must do what she do. My Korean babies don’t make me any trouble. They look like Vietnamese and they act like Vietnamese. When I say something, they do. But Sophie, she say, “I want to do something, let me do. . . . You don’t have to tell me to do this or do that.” If she want to do something, she just go ahead.

  Left to right: Lam Thu Cam Lien, Linda and Sophie in the PRPC.

  Sophie has a baby girl from her Vietnamese boyfriend. They lived together in Vietnam. Now he went to America already, but they are finished. She don’t want to see him no more. Her daughter Linda she is here with us.

  We are going to Long Beach, California. My sponsor is my young sister. She went there nine years ago, and now she works as a manicurist. I will take any job in America, but I think I cannot speak very well English, so I don’t know what job I can find. Maybe when I study in W.O. [Work Orientation course in the PRPC] I know better about the job.

  You know I made the paper to go to America in 1983. I wait seven years till they call me. I never pay no bribe. I don’t know how, I don’t know who to pay. When we make the paper, there is a sign on the wall, “No bribes,” so I am afraid. But many people did pay bribe, and they leave Vietnam fast.