The Ugly Daughter: A Thrilling Real Life Journey to Self Discovery, Riches and Spirituality

by Julia Legian

  “Grandma, I have been working really hard all day. All the pots are full. Are you happy now?” I asked.

  “Very good, my little princess,” she replied.

  “What about your promise, Grandma?”

  “Okay, my love, come with me. Let’s go for a walk.”

  We took a long walk along the water and Grandma started her story.

  Present day Bay Gia during low tide

  “I feel like I’m reliving my nightmares all over again,” she said with teary eyes. “I was twenty years old when my parents forced me to marry your grandfather. He was older than me, a coach driver who had a face only his mother could love. Coach-driving was an elite, highly paid job in those days.

  “I didn’t want to marry anyone, all along I wanted to become a nun and dedicate my life to Buddha, following in my Grandmother’s footsteps, but my parents insisted. Although it was an arranged marriage, over time I grew to love and trust him. Together we had three daughters; your mother Be, Aunty Cuc and Aunty Thuy. Your Mother and Aunty Cuc were two beautiful girls; Thuy was the spitting image of your Grandfather. After Thuy’s birth your Grandfather refused to accept her as his daughter. He accused me of having an affair. He threw me and my daughters out onto the street. I had four mouths to feed, only pennies in my pockets and no one to turn to.”

  “Grandma, what about your mum and dad? Why didn't you ask them for help?”

  Grandma sighed. “In those days in Vietnam, it was a disgrace and shame on you and your family to come back as a single mother if you were not a widow.”

  “So where did you go?” I asked.

  “I took my three innocent girls to a small province called Ben Tre. I managed to make a few dollars here and there to buy food for the children but barely enough to keep them full, let alone feed myself.”

  My Grandma bowed her head. “It broke my heart to watch your Aunty Thuy screaming and crying and distraught with hunger. I was unable to produce enough breast milk to feed her. Your Mummy and Aunty Cuc were constantly begging me for food. I couldn’t watch my poor children gradually starve to death so I buried my pride. I took the girls door-to-door, begging for food.

  Suddenly as we walked along the street, Be - that’s your mother, grabbed my hand and said, “Mummy let’s go to that mansion across the road to ask for food. The big tall gate is open.”

  “We ran across the road and rang the doorbell. A lady dressed in elegant floral clothes came out and asked how she could help us.

  “I said to the woman, Dear sister, would you be kind enough to give me some of your leftover food to feed my hungry girls?”

  “The lady took one look at us and burst into tears. She wanted to know how we had ended up on the street. I bared my soul to her, and she felt sorry for me and the girls. She offered to let us stay in her hay shed. She was a kind and generous woman, a new mother herself. She had plenty of breast milk; she gave me enough to feed your Aunty Thuy. She allowed me to clean her house and look after her animals in exchange for food.”

  “What happened after that Grandma?”

  “One day I asked the lady if she would lend me some money so that I could start my own business and she agreed. I spent many years working days and nights trading dried shrimp and fish, travelling by bus and on foot to numerous small fishing villages while dragging my three young daughters with me. I saved enough money to pay back the loan. Shortly after that I got the news from my older sister that my mother had died and my father was too old to look after himself. I decided to go back to Cau Di to my birthplace and take care of my father.”

  “Why didn’t your sister take care of him?” I thought for a moment - there was a lot I didn’t know. “Did you have only one sister?”

  “No, my little princess, I had five sisters and one brother. There are four older sisters, then me, and one more sister who was born after that. My brother is the last of the seven children.”

  “Wow!” I was amazed to hear we had so many relatives. I didn’t know them and had not seen any of them before. “Then why didn’t they look after your Dad?”

  “They were all busy looking after their own families.”

  “So where are they now? Why don’t they ever come to visit us?”

  Grandma smiled and shrugged without answering.

  “What about Grandpa, what happened to him?”

  “You cannot call him Grandpa,” Grandma said.

  She was quite angry and I was shocked. This was the first time I had seen my Grandma lose her temper.

  “I found out some years later that he was having an affair with a fifteen year old girl when we were together. His accusations against me were to disguise and justify his actions. He needed me and my daughters out of the house so he could bring his teenage girlfriend home.”

  Grandma paused, composed herself then went back to her story.

  “In the summer of 1967, the driver of an overcrowded bus fell asleep at the wheel. He lost control of the bus and it rolled down the mountain cliff. I was on that bus. More than half of the passengers died. I was lucky to survive but I had severe head injuries and lay in a coma for days. When I regained consciousness I was too weak to take the five hour bus trip to My Long for a profitable business deal so I sent your mother instead.”

  Grandma frowned. “Be’s simple task was to close a deal I had already arranged and bring home a large profit. Instead she met Inh. Your father was the fourth son of a wealthy widow, Xinh. Inh was a very popular young man and Be was instantly struck by celebrity fever, captivated by his charm and his angelic voice.

  “She fell head over heels for Inh, ignoring the fact she had a kind and loving boyfriend back home. She ran away with him. She was sixteen at the time. This forced me from my sick bed to go and look for her. I took a painfully long bus ride to My Long to look for her. Once there, I quickly learned what happened. Rumours had spread. I went to Xinh’s house looking for Be. When I knocked on the door Xinh answered it.”

  “Hello, dear sister. I’m looking for Be, is she here? May I please speak with her?”

  “Xinh was very rude to me and very dishonourable about your mother. She said, “Your daughter is a gold digger and I will never allow my son to marry her. She is uneducated and has a foul mouth. She is not good for my son. I forbade Inh to bring her home but he didn’t listen so I threw him out. I’ve disowned him. I don’t know where they are. Now get off my property.”

  “As I left, Xinh shouted after me. By the way, if you happen to find that son of mine tell him that I will never forgive him for what he’s done. He has ruined us all.”

  “I searched high and low for Inh and Be, and was very relieved when I finally found them in this horrid village.”

  “What did you do after you found them?” I asked.

  “I was not happy with your mother and was against their love affair for a very different reason. During the time I searched for your mother I had learned of Inh’s reputation. He was very well known, spent most of his time at cock fighting. He was a heavy drinker and a playboy. He had countless lovers, some even from the same family, who fell for his looks and his smooth talk. But I loved your mother and even though I was not happy with the relationship, I gave your Dad a chance. I moved in with your parents. I borrowed a large sum of money from the neighbours and from my older sisters and started a business for your parents.

  “We worked tirelessly, putting our hearts and souls to help Be and Inh set up a thriving business selling cutlery and cigarettes.

  “The first year was good. Inh seemed respectful and caring towards your mother and the rest of our family. But after a year he returned to his old habits, and when Be complained he beat her like an animal. When your two aunties tried to stop him, he broke Thuy’s arm. He drank, slept with countless women and gambled away every cent the family had worked for. He confirmed my worst fears. I told your mother to leave him but she wouldn’t, so I packed my things and went back to Cau Di with your aunties to rebuild our lives.”

  “What happ
ened to my Mum and Dad?”

  “Your parents’ lives descended into a degrading existence because of your father’s behaviour.”

  My Grandmother had tears in her eyes. “One day I heard a knock on my door. As it swung open I saw Be, the daughter I hadn’t seen for years. She carried an infant and a small grubby girl stood by her side. Be dropped off the two babies then left. I discovered that the girls were gravely ill.”

  “Who were the girls, Grandma?”

  “The older girl was your sister Phuong and you were the infant. I think you were two months old. You both had measles and were severely malnourished. You wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t taken you in. I spent many months nursing you back to health. Your mother handed you over just in time.

  “Although I loved your mother, Be’s obsession with Inh plus her hunger for revenge were beyond the point of no return. Be’s only desire was to marry into an affluent, powerful family to show the world how important and influential she was, but sadly her plan didn’t work. Instead of cutting her losses and moving back home, Be wanted to stay with Inh to punish his mother.

  “She vowed to Xinh that she would never let Inh go, that she would make his life a living hell. Be not only did a marvellous job at punishing Inh and his mother, she dragged my precious young grandchildren into her hellhole.”

  I saw tears rolling down Grandma’s cheeks and hugged her tight. “I’m sorry Grandma. I didn’t mean to upset you. I love you.”

  Grandma smoothed my hair as we held each other. “I know you do, my precious princess,” she said. “I’m glad to have you girls in my life. You bring me joy and make life worth living. Come on, hop on my back and I’ll carry you home.”

  I rode home on my Grandma’s back.

  Mum, who had left the house after a big fight with Dad a few days before, came home that night. She was still in a foul mood and she made our lives hell. She called us all sorts of names and karate chopped us when the mood struck her. Once she was through with us she turned on God and gave Him her two cents’ worth. She went on and on like a broken record.

  Chapter 11

  The bay had become a floating graveyard. According to village gossip, a number of men, two of them Bai and Ty, had been involved in killing people. Rumour had it that they had permission from the local authorities to do so. Their mission was to kill anyone who tried to leave Vietnam.

  Late in 1979, scores of people were attempting to escape from Saigon and other cities. They had crossed into the waters surrounding our village trying to get away from the communists. Most of them were from well-educated or high-ranking officers’ families who had fought with the Americans and the South Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam War. Among them were wealthy Chinese families trying to leave the country, now that we were at war with China.

  In their desperation to find freedom, they paid people who lived and worked on the Mekong River for their riverboats, barges, tugboats, river ferries and even for boats that were only slightly larger than a dinghy as they looked for a way to get out. What these people didn’t know was that none of these river boats could cope with ocean currents. More than half of the vessels capsized and sank once they encountered turbulent seas. The boat owners were happy to take the money and let the people drown, fully aware they did not stand a chance.

  The house of the murderer Bai was right at the edge of the water, the very first house from the shore. It was on the other side of the river, where the rich people lived. Almost every day he would wait outside the house with his machine gun, waiting for boats of escapees to go past. The moment he caught sight of a boat he would mow down the escapees. The people who had not been killed by the bullets drowned in their effort to escape.

  One afternoon my family and I sat in our front yard eating our lunch. We watched an overloaded riverboat crowded with hundreds of people pass by. Just after it disappeared from sight, we heard the familiar sound of machine gun fire. A short time later Bai motored toward the dock and pulled up in his boat with the boat that had gone past us earlier, tied to his. I quickly dropped the bowl of rice to the ground and ran to the pier. I was a curious and naïve young girl.

  I slipped onto the boat. It was riddled with bullet holes and half-full of water with many bodies lying on top of each other. As I stepped among the bodies, my legs sank into the water until the lower half of my body was submerged in the red-brown water.

  “Dear little girl, please help me.”

  A man reached out his bloody hand to me. At that moment, Bai saw me.

  “Get lost, you little brat! Get out of here or I’ll blow your head off.”

  I tried to get off the boat before he had a chance to carry out his threat, making my way to where some of the survivors lay huddled together. Although they were wounded and bloodied they were lucky to have escaped death. They waited for the soldiers to come and take them to prison, or a concentration camp.

  Bai took pleasure in tormenting and beating these people with the butt of his gun, shouting abuse.

  “Why are you mongrels trying to escape this magnificent country?” he would demand.

  I stood out of Bai’s sight near where a beautiful, gentle and pale young girl of sixteen or so sat. She had long shiny hair down to her waist. Next to her was another girl about twelve, clutching the older girl’s arms. The older girl addressed Bai in this manner.

  “Dear Uncle, we were being punished by the North Vietnamese. They took all our possessions and they sent our parents to death camps. My sister and I had no choice but to leave. This has been going on around the country. Have you been living under a rock all this time?”

  “Please don’t make him angry. I’m scared,” the younger girl said and hugged her sister tight.

  Bai’s reply came in the form of three rapid deafening gunshots from his gun as he shot the girls at close range. I watched in shock as part of the older girl’s bloodied head landed on my feet. The two girls’ dark hair was matted with blood as they died in each other’s arms.

  Distraught, I wiped the blood off my feet. I felt tears rolling down my face. I sprinted home, running as fast as I could from the horror.

  Dad came home every night with injured people. I often watched Grandma clean and bandage their wounds. Sometimes Dad brought home some who had been lucky enough not to be harmed. In the dead of the night, he risked his own life by taking strangers to the bus stop at Ben Nha Tho and sending them back to their hometowns.

  The strangers pointed to the large scars on their limbs.

  “Dear Grandma and Uncle,” one man said. “ We are forever thankful to you for saving our lives. To show you our deepest gratitude and to repay your kindness please help us cut open our arms and legs as we have some gold and diamonds hidden there.”

  Dad was shocked. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?” he asked.

  “It is the safest way to hide our possessions, so that if we were caught by the VC or pirates, our fortunes wouldn’t be found,” a woman replied.

  Grandma would not hear of taking their possessions.

  “No need to thank us,” she said. “You don’t owe us anything. We are brothers and sisters, we’re all God’s children after all.”

  The communists would have killed my Dad without blinking an eye if they ever caught him helping what they called ‘traitors’.

  My Dad spent most of his time rescuing people. He no longer went out fishing. He took his boat out pretending to fish while he was looking for people in need. Some of the villagers did the opposite, preying on survivors like vultures. They stripped them of their valuables and threw them back into the water, dead or alive. Others walked along the shore, searching for anything that washed up that they could sell.

  Some months later, Ty’s conscience finally caught up with him. He was found wandering along the shore like a lost soul.

  “Please dear uncles, aunties, sisters and little brothers please forgive me. I didn’t have a choice but to kill you. I shouldn’t have robbed you. Please forgive me. I beg of you. I want to be
left alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone!” Ty screamed and got on his knees, crying and talking to invisible people.

  “Grandma can’t anyone help him? It’s very sad to watch him suffer,” I said.

  Grandma was not moved.

  “It’s karma, my love. What goes around comes around. He has finally got what he deserves. Promise me that when you grow up you’ll always take care of others, especially the underprivileged. Life is unpredictable, you never know which side of the fence you’ll end up on.”

  She kissed me on my conspicuous forehead, ran her gentle hands through my hair and gave me a serene smile.

  I kept asking Grandma to let me go swimming.

  “Grandma, can I please go for a swim?”

  “No, Princess, you can only swim when there are no more dead bodies in the water.”

  “But Grandma, they’ll never go away. It has been many weeks now and they keep coming. I don’t want to wait any more!” I wailed.

  Eventually I grew tired of waiting. I was desperate for relief from the humidity and swimming was my favourite pastime. I was not going to let anything stop me. I went to a different part of the village with some friends, a place where Grandma and my parents couldn’t see me swimming with the dead. When the bodies came too close, we pushed them away, taking care of the badly decomposed corpses so that we didn’t accidentally rip the bodies apart.

  Given my parents’ generosity and kindness, it was hard to understand that someone would turn them in. The soldiers often came to interrogate Dad. Each time, they threatened to take our boat and throw Dad into jail. The rumour was that Tuan the devil once again nursed a deep hatred for Dad. He couldn’t stand Dad’s ego and his way of showing off his windfall, so he had dobbed him in to the authorities. Turning on Dad was no small thing. It was a treacherous act, considering the punishment the communists would inflict on us should they find proof that he helped the people who had tried to escape from our country.

  In what I now know was fear of retribution, in the middle of the night Dad fled with the family boat. In his pocket was a set of bogus identification papers he’d obtained from a high-ranking Viet Cong officer in exchange for a large sum of money. He left his family behind.