by Julia Legian
I slowly became conscious of the damage I’d inflicted on myself and I tried to pull the bloody, broken glass from my feet. I limped back to Ba Tu’s house, weeping all the way.
Ba Tu was waiting for me. It was as if she knew the reason for my sorrow.
“What took you so long, you little wretch? Get to work. They didn’t want you after all. You won’t be able to run to them for help any more.”
I looked at her cruel face and didn’t answer. Nothing I could say would help. I knew any answer I gave would be met with venom. I went back to work as if my heart hadn’t been broken. The searing pain from my swollen, infected feet was nothing compared with the emotional pain I carried around with me every second of every day.
From that day onward I refused to take the abuse from Ba Tu. Every day was a bloody battle but my body grew stronger and my skin grew much thicker to the point where I was no longer able to feel the physical pain from her cane.
Chapter 16
My next experience with faith came when I least expected it. It took place when I felt I could no longer take the callous treatment from Ba Tu. I’d been there too long, suffered too much, slowly starving to death, both from lack of nutrition and love.
Once I had a taste of Ba Nam and her family’s love and kindness, even though it was only for a brief time, I had no desire to go back to living without it all over again.
Despite my resentment at Grandma for abandoning me, I desperately wanted her back. I prayed every day for her return, promising God all sorts of things if He would make it possible.
Dad’s fifth brother, Vinh, turned up. A while back Dad told me Vinh was a nut case; that he was unpredictable and did weird things. I was intrigued. I heard he was at the Bay so I went to look for him, hoping he could tell me where my parents were. But he didn’t have a clue. He sat on the ground next to the water, banging a human skull with a dry, mud-coated mangrove branch.
“Here,” he said in a guttural slow voice, “this is a present for you.” He hit the branch against the skull with short whacks, adding to the hollow thumping sound with an eerie song that sent shivers down my spine. “You can play it like a drum,” he said, handing it to me. Then he got on his motorbike, balancing on one leg while the other was pointing to the sky. I watched him pulling all sorts of stunts as he rode off.
“That was weird,” I thought.
As I stood alone recovering from the strange encounter with my crazy uncle I became conscious I was holding a human skull. I turned it over and the empty eye sockets stared at me, while the mouth with some teeth still intact mocked me with its deathly grin. Shivers racked my body as I realised that Vinh’s assault on the skull could have disturbed the spirit of the dead person. I tossed the skull into the water and bolted home.
As I walked in the door I heard Ba Tu’s kids making plans to go to the prison in Ben Nha Tho to watch executions. This was common in Vietnam at that time, with the Regime trying to set an example to the people. According to my cousins two men were to be shot by firing squad after being found guilty of raping and killing a young girl.
I asked if I could go with them. Expecting an outright refusal, I was surprised when they agreed. The walk to the prison passed quickly with lots of excited chatter about what would happen. Because we arrived early, we had a perfect place right in front from which to view the executions.
The minutes ticked by slowly and we had to wait a long time before soldiers brought two bony men into the small stadium. They pushed the prisoners against a red brick wall. The pitiful men wore dark uniforms and black rags covered their eyes.
The soldiers lined up, lifted their rifles and pointed them at the men, level with their hearts.
“One, two, three ... fire!” came the command. The deafening crack of the rifles hurt my ears and the two men fell to the ground, blood pouring from them. The blood drenched their clothing and spilled on the ground as the soldiers dragged their bodies away.
On the way home, we laughed together at how cool the execution had been and couldn’t wait for the next one. I was just over twelve years old and had descended to the depths of hell. I’d lost the humaneness and the love my Grandma had worked so hard to instil in me. I’d become insensitive, oblivious to the pain and the suffering of those who died or were tortured. My pain had been too hard to bear. I took comfort that someone else had been punished more than I had been.
Day after day I longed for my Grandma. I prayed for her to come back, every night.
“Grandma where are you? Please come back for me.”
A voice spoke inside my head. ‘She’s not coming for you, you’re a bad little girl. She’s going to let you die here.’ I started to argue with the voice in my head. “Go away, stupid witch, I don’t want to talk to you.”
The stupid voice mocked me. ‘Don’t you realise you’re a curse to everyone who ever loved you? Look at what happened to them; Uc lost his leg, Chinh tried to kill himself, Tam’s family got destroyed, A Shen - the only best friend you have ever - had died, your beloved Grandma left you, Ba Nam’s family has gone, too, and your favourite Uncle Pheo is nowhere to be found. It’s all your fault. Don’t you get it? Nobody wants you. Can’t you see?’
“Stop it, Stop. Don’t talk to me. It’s not my fault. I love them!” I cried.
‘It’s all your fault, all of it. They suffer because of you. You drove them away, you’re a bad, bad person. You don’t deserve to be loved.’
I clasped my hands over my ears and refused to listen. I swore I’d not allow anyone to hurt me from that day on. I built an unbreakable wall around me and decided that crying was a thing of the past. I had no more tears left to cry. I became cold and hard like a stone.
Although I had made up my mind that I would not love anyone or allow anyone to hurt me I could not stop myself from loving Grandma. My love for her grew stronger as time went by. I was hungry for her love, her gentle touch, her serene smile, her warm hugs and I longed to be kissed and held by her.
“Dear God, Quan Công and Quan m, please give me back my Grandma. Please take me away from this horrible place. I promise when I grow up I will do you proud. I promise I will spend the rest of my life serving others less fortunate than me. Please, please give me one more chance.”
I repeated the same prayer every night until I fell asleep. One evening as I lay in bed dozing in and out of sleep, I saw two white figures floating on the wall.
I was terrified so I kept my eyes tightly shut. Moments later I heard a lady with a gentle voice whisper in my ear. “Loan, my darling child, soon your suffering will be over. You will go far, far away from this place to a foreign land and life will treat you kindly there … I promise. Quan Công and I will be with you every step of the way.”
I felt her hands on my shoulders.
“Nam Mo A Di Da Phat. Nam Mo A Di Da Phat. Please, please Goddess Quan m, please go away,” I cried.
I pulled the blanket over my head and kept on chanting until I was exhausted. Every night after that I went to bed with an eerie feeling that someone or something constantly stood next to my right shoulder.
Grandma came to our rescue some weeks after. I was happy to see her, but not ecstatic as I’d been before. I had become cold and bitter. I told Grandma about the encounter I had with Quan m and Quan Công.
“You’re gifted, my princess. I knew that the first moment I saw you. I’m not surprised that you can communicate and see the other world. You’re blessed to have this gift. Promise you won’t be afraid to use your gift to talk to the spirits.” She smiled from ear to ear. I had never seen Grandma in such a happy mood before.
Grandma took Phuong and me to My Tho to live with my two aunts, my Mum’s sisters. Before I had a chance to settle in or ask Grandma where she had been all these years, she left again, this time taking Phuong with her, leaving me alone with my aunts. I waited for her for weeks but she didn’t return.
Aunty Cuc, a caring, compassionate but tough entrepreneur showered me with gifts, nice clothes, poc
ket money and candies. She taught me how to love life again. I fell in love with her and everything I had lost when Ba Nam and her family vanished settled back into place for a while.
I didn’t like my Aunty Thuy much because she allowed her boyfriend to treat her like trash. I watched him slap her across the face, demand money and call her vile names. She never fought back. She reminded me of my Mum.
Cuc was well respected by her neighbours and business associates. She was a wealthy, generous, intelligent woman. She gave me an insight into the type of person I wanted to be when I grew up.
As time went on I started to wonder what had happened to Phuong. Why had we been separated? Why had Grandma taken Phuong and not me? I thought I was her favourite grandchild. What had changed? I had questions that only my Grandma could answer. To find those answers, I had to find her. But I had no idea where she had gone.
Chapter 17
One day Aunty Cuc told me she would take me back to my parents. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to see my sisters because I had not seen them for years. It took two days by bus and another eight hours in a boat with people crammed in against one another, to get to the remote scrubland of Muoi Rach Tau where my parents now lived.
“Aunty Cuc, I want to go to the toilet. Can you tell me where it is?”
“Come with me,” Cuc said. She took me to one side of the boat.
“Hold tight to the side of the window, my darling. Now stick your bottom outside the boat.”
“Aunty, I don’t like this, I’ll fall off. I don’t like people looking at me.”
Aunty Cuc smiled. “Don’t worry, darling, there’s no toilet on this boat so it’s normal. Everyone does it.”
Muoi Rach Tau huddled in the jungle with millions of fireflies that lit up the town at night and billions of mosquitoes that hung off you like a second skin. It is isolated from other settlements. It had been carved out of the undergrowth by desperate people with nothing to lose. People came and went from Muoi Rach Tau by canoe through muddy swamps and a maze of waterways.
Unless you knew where to go, you would become hopelessly lost. Water-logged palm and mangrove trees made navigation treacherous in such an overgrown place.
“Aunty, look! All the houses are on stilts and they have no doors. You can see everything. The people hang their cooking pots all over the house. I have never seen so many boats before! Look, Aunty, the boats keep bumping into each other. This is amazing, Aunty.”
The house my parents lived in was perched precariously on the edge of, and over, the river, held up by mangrove branches that seemed to have only a tenuous hold on the murky ground.
The filth of the home hit me first, then the smell from Ngoc’s badly mosquito-infected body. I couldn’t come close to her without being disgusted. The rest of the girls seemed skinny, untidy and pale. I was surprised to see Phuong and Grandma here. Grandma looked much older and thinner than when I last saw her.
The one person who stood out was an adorable baby boy with big round eyes, chubby cheeks and thick black hair. He was as clean as a whistle. My parents finally had Tai, the ‘golden son’ they had longed for. They treated him like a king. He was two years old. Dad had already taught him to drink coffee and to boss the girls around.
Grandma and the girls shared one bed. Grandma covered it with netting to keep the mosquitoes out, but they got through somehow. She would sit up all night fending off the wretched mosquitoes that buzzed incessantly around our bodies, wanting to eat us alive.
Despite the way we lived, my parents weren’t short of money. Aunty Cuc had given them a lot of cash. They seemed to be happy together.
During the day, Hanh, Tien and I spent most of our time swimming in the maggot-infested water that wriggled with rotten and dead seafood. At the same time we dodged human excrement. We had no school to go to and Phuong spent all her time doing house chores and looking after Tai.
We hunted for sea cucumbers to sell to a Chinese trader for pocket money. When we tired of looking for them, we swam under people’s houses and sneaked up on them when they were looking for privacy.
The toilets were partitioned-off parts of the verandahs with a broad hole cut into the decking where the people’s waste dropped directly into the water, narrowly missing our heads.
The result of spending so much time in the putrid inlet was that Tien ended up with an ear infection. She cried every day, complaining about having something in her ear. Dad didn’t believe her. He said she was just looking for attention and he whacked her with a bamboo stick for whining.
Grandma searched high and low but could not find anything in her ear. One day while we were eating lunch, I noticed something moving in and out of Tien’s ear.
“Grandma,” I said, “something is crawling in Tien’s ear.”
“You’re right. Loan, get me the tweezers quickly.”
I watched in terror as Grandma struggled to catch hold of the thing. It kept slipping out of the tweezers. Frustrated, Grandma tipped Tien on the side, screamed, then hit Tien hard on her opposite ear.
“Get out of my granddaughter, you demon!” she shouted.
There it was. A well fed maggot with a distended belly full of pus and blood fell from Tien’s ear. Grandma turned to Dad and gave him a mouthful for beating Tien all this time. Tien has limited hearing to this day.
Chapter 18
Our happy times lasted until Mum found out that Dad was back to his old tricks. He was sleeping around. Chucky the demon found his way back from the grave to press Dad’s self-destruct button again. Dad spent money like water on prostitutes and booze but the most damaging thing to our family was his current affair with our one-eyed North Vietnamese part-time helper.
Her left eye had been injured during the war and she could only see with her right eye, so we used to call her ‘the one-eyed woman’. Dad planned to escape Vietnam with her along with her relatives, using our family boat and taking Tai with him while leaving the rest of us behind.
Would the nightmare ever end? I could see defeat and terror on my sisters’ faces as Mum berated him with her usual abuse. In exchange Dad beat Mum to the point where she could no longer yell. Mum was seven months pregnant at this stage.
When he could no longer get a response from Mum, he turned on us.
“Get out of my face, you bitches! Stop crying or I’ll slaughter you all!” Dad shouted.
“Leave my daughter and the children alone,” Grandma shouted back.
“She is pregnant with your child! Don’t you dare lay a finger on my innocent grandchildren! They didn’t ask for this wretched life.”
Dad lunged at Grandma but we girls got in between her and Dad to protect her.
Grandma turned to Mum. “How could you allow this animal to hurt you and my precious grandchildren like this? How much longer are you planning to stay with him?” She drew a big breath. “I want you to pack your things. We’re leaving with the children when the ferry arrives tomorrow morning.”
I cringed at the look on my Mum’s face.
“Shut up, you stupid old witch,” she shouted in fury. “Who do you think you are? He’s my husband. How dare you talk about him that way? Get out of my face. Get out of here!”
Grandma’s shoulders slumped as she realised that nothing she could say or do would change her daughter’s mind, or her life.
Between them, my parents bundled Grandma’s belongings into a bag and threw it out of the house.
“Go away, you troublesome old witch!” Dad shouted as he pushed her out. “And don’t ever come back. Don’t let me see that disgusting dumb face of yours again or I’ll break your legs.”
We ran after Grandma like little ducklings.
“Grandma, please don’t leave us! Don’t go without us Grandma!” we cried. “Please take us with you!”
“Shhh,” she whispered. “I won’t be too far away. I’ll be watching over you.”
Grandma hugged us and kissed us through her tears, then she left.
My parents’ f
ighting ritual went on for many days and nights. Mum blamed everyone but herself for her misfortune. The fighting intensified and Mum no longer cared whether we lived or died. Too wrapped up in her own self-absorption, she neglected us, not bothering to feed us.
Mum turned to gambling to bury her misery. She spent endless hours using the little money we had playing a card game called bai tu sac with neighbours.
Not taking care of us was normal but I couldn’t believe she also neglected Tai, our little brother. He often screamed with hunger but she ignored him, too busy playing cards.
She didn’t feed him properly, pulling her breasts out to one side and letting Tai suck on them as best he could. Sometimes I saw Tai eating his own waste because he was starving.
Once again the jungle became my salvation. I went there before the sun rose and returned home after the sun set. One afternoon I convinced Hanh to take our family dinghy out for an adventure. Hanh used this boat to go around town, buy food and collect fresh water from the well. She was the boss of it and the only one who knew how to control it.
“Hanh, do you want to collect some pipis? I heard from Sister Number 2 that there were a lot of them buried in the sands out there.”
“I don’t know, Loan. I wouldn’t listen to Sister Number 2. Dad said he’s a fairy. Can’t you see nobody’s hanging around him or listening to him? The kids around here used to beat him up because he’s different from us. You’re the only kid who will play with him.”
“Yeah, so what if he is a fairy? What’s the big deal? He’s a nice kid, much nicer than most of the kids in this stupid place. I know he wouldn’t lie to me.”
“No, I won’t do what you want - it’s dangerous out there. We could get killed by the big waves or worse we could be mowed down by fishing boats. Mum will kill us if we damage the only dinghy we have. I guarantee you she would cane us to death. Why don’t you go on your own if you want, or ask Sister Number 2 to go with you?”
