by CW Ullman
“Di.u and I both noticed it, and do you know what we think?” Dao paused, “He likes you.”
“Now, you’re being crazy. How do you like it here?” My Ling changed the subject.
“I know you, My Ling, and I know you like him,” Dao insisted.
My Ling told her to go play with her sister. After she left, My Ling thought about what Dao had said. Her thoughts were confused regarding Cin. He helped the girls escape a horrible situation, but he did not understand them. Besides, he could have his pick of any woman, she thought, and he would not want to be with a “tiger girl” who had been a prostitute.
Cin and his men stayed in the area for ten days more, going up and down the mountain to secure supplies and accept clothing donations for the home from nearby villages. Before setting out to conduct more raids, he told Tuyen Mam that he would stop back in a few weeks with more supplies.
On his last night at Lotus Blossom, Cin asked My Ling for a favor. Dao and Di.u collected all the girls from the orphanage and led them to sit in a circle with Cin’s men. Tuyen Mam asked Colonel Cin to stand up and address the girls.
“Most of you don’t know that we have a very talented girl who has a little surprise for you,” he pointed to one of the huts and My Ling stepped out with the violin. She walked to the opening of the circle and briefly tuned the strings.
She said, “This is Mozart’s Adagio.” She tucked the violin under her chin, bowed the strings, and created a sound the girls had never before heard. She swayed back and forth, enveloping the transfixed girls in the soaring melodies. They followed her fingers on the fingerboard and watched her facial expressions change to the shifting nuances of the music. They watched the bow glide over the strings from the low sound of E to the higher lilting sound of G. Her elbow would be near her chest and fly up to reach the D, and then whip down over the A. The Mozart solo lasted seven minutes and at the end, the girls clapped wildly.
When the applause quieted, My Ling surprised Colonel Cin when she played Adoration. She kept her gaze on the girls, because she feared she would cry if she looked at Cin. His eyes, however, brimmed with tears knowing he would not hear this violin again, or see this maddening girl of wisdom, strength, and grace beyond her years. The melody brought Elvis from a tree to the circle where he lay down next to Cin. She continued to play and the colonel’s tears rolled down his cheeks, making Di.u and Dao cry with him. When My Ling finished, the men’s eyes reddened and the orphaned girls clapped for My Ling as Dao and Di.u leaned into Colonel Cin, who put his arms around them.
Tuyen stood, “Girls, let’s thank My Ling for that beautiful concert and Colonel Cin for bringing us wonderful new friends.”
The girls clapped again, while Cin and the men conferred about tomorrow’s trip. My Ling, Dao and Di.u went to their hut with Elvis and Long to bed down for the night. The following morning, the soldiers strapped on their gear and prepared to leave. Dao and Di.u hugged the men as they were about to depart. After all had said goodbye, the last to say farewell to each other were Cin and My Ling.
“Keep up with your playing and one day you’ll get good,” Cin kidded.
My Ling would not look at him because she knew she would cry.
“Tuyen is going to need your help around here, so you need to be…what do you call it?” he asked.
“A fellow girl,” she said with her head bowed.
“I’m going to miss Elvis, Long and the girls. Keep them safe.” He gently picked her chin up and looked into her face and said, “Tiger Girl, I am really going to miss you.”
She could not speak; she could only grab him and bury her head in his chest. He embraced her and they held each other. He caressed her head and kissed her hair. She hugged him tighter, not wanting him to leave, knowing she might never see him again. He was the only man she had known since her father who embraced her with kindness and love.
They reluctantly let go of one another. He swung up onto his horse, and gave the order to the men to start down the mountain. He longed to turn for a last glimpse of My Ling with whom he had fallen deeply in love, but knew it would have been impossible for him to leave had he seen her face one more time. He raised his hand and waved, never looking back.
CHAPTER VI
Elvis was now three years old, Dao twelve, Di.u nine, and My Ling sixteen. Long birthed a litter of mutts. Lotus Blossom had fallen on hard times, but still housed eleven girls. Thirteen-year-old Huyen’s resentment of My Ling had intensified and she still held the belief that My Ling was responsible for her mother’s death. Colonel Cin usually returned to the home every six months, but had not come back, causing Tuyen to fear he may have been captured or worse. Thanh had appeared only once with supplies. The sisters begged Thanh to tell them about Cin and the soldiers and urged him to tell the colonel to come visit them. My Ling would listen, pretending disinterest as Thanh shared news of the army and the outside world.
Colonel Cin’s army was hunted relentlessly by the People’s Army of Vietnam. The People’s Army had no soldiers from the former South Vietnam Army, (ARVN). ARVN officers were summarily executed, locked up, or at the very least publicly vilified. Cin and his raiders had successfully eluded the country’s military and remained the last ARVN unit not captured by the People’s Army. Cin hid out in caves, tunnels, jungles, Cambodia, Laos, and as a last resort, Thailand. Once, when they escaped into Thailand, the Vietnam military followed them all the way across Cambodia into Thailand and made a cross-border pursuit, initiating battles with Thai forces.
Cin had witnessed the decimation of the native populations in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. While the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the majority of these deaths in Cambodia, many died at the hands of Hanoi. Virtually, the entire population of Cambodian Cham were wiped out. Cin and his troops needed native peoples for protection and it was becoming harder to find allies in any of the Southeast Asian countries. However, the abuse suffered at the hands of Hanoi’s army created a recruiting tool for Cin. Hanoi’s harassment of the remaining Montagnards inspired many of the young mountain men to become conscripts in Cin’s force. Cin had achieved legendary status amongst the native populations of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.
My Ling stayed at the orphanage for three more years for the girl’s sake. The two sisters and Huyen had decided they liked it there and did not want to leave. While Huyen remained an annoyance, the two sisters felt they would not find a person better than Tuyen to care for them.
Elvis grew to full size. Though he was four hundred plus pounds, he still behaved like a cub. My Ling tried to reintegrate him to the jungle and to mix with other tigers, but he would always follow her back home. His problem was that other cats his size scared him.
When a tigress tried to entice Elvis to mate with her, she was too rough. When other males came around and growled, furrowed their brows, or bared their teeth he would hide behind My Ling. She would fire the M16 Cin had left with her to run them off. Then she would turn her frustration on Elvis who cowered with his head hanging. These incidents always ended with an exasperated My Ling yelling, “What am I going to do with you?”
Elvis was a fearsome hunter, as long as his prey was no bigger than a squirrel. When My Ling pushed him to run down a forest deer, he did not understand. After all, if he was hungry, he would go to her and she would give him food; the same thing she had been doing since he was born. Once she took him miles away from Lotus Blossom, climbed a tree, and hid from him for a week. She reasoned if Elvis got hungry enough he would kill prey and eat it. After a week of him sitting at the tree’s base or getting beat up by other tigers, she came down. He had lost ten percent of his body weight when she finally bagged a dear for him to eat.
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With the girls settled, My Ling told Tuyen Mam it was time for her to find her family. Tuyen gave My Ling money for the four-hundred-mile bus trip from the Central Highlands to Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City. Before My Ling left, one of the people in town counseled My Ling about how the count
ry had changed, both culturally and politically.
She learned that one to two million people had been imprisoned in re-education camps where hundreds of thousands of them had died. Others were sent to labor camps where My Ling was told hundreds of thousands more had died. The news that struck her the hardest was most of the officers with the rank of captain or higher in the South’s Army were executed. She prayed that her father had been spared. She was given forged documents in case she was stopped and told it was important to remember to call Saigon “Ho Chi Minh City” or she could be arrested. Lastly, she was instructed to always praise the country’s new leader, Ho Chi Min.
The next morning when she tried to board a very crowded bus for the south, a minor panic ensued when Elvis tried to climb onboard with her. The bus driver was half way out his window, when My Ling turned to see Elvis on the steps behind her. She pushed him down the steps and ordered him home, but he would not leave. He sat on his haunches and stared at her inquisitively. She commanded him not to move and then boarded the bus. She was surprised to see the first five rows vacant. Everyone had piled on top of one another in the back. The bus driver crawled back inside the window, closed the door, took My Ling’s money, and drove off.
The sad, enduring image for My Ling was seeing her Elvis, sitting on the side of the road watching the bus depart. It was the same feeling she had five years before on the helicopter ride from the military base when she wanted to wave to her father but could not. Again, she could not wave, because Elvis would run after the bus. Watching him through her tears, sitting so forlornly, broke her heart. She had taught Dao to use the M16 to bag deer for his food. Knowing he would eat was My Ling’s only solace as she watched him grow smaller in the distance.
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The journey to Ho Chi Minh City lasted two days. The city was vastly different than she remembered. Something she noticed right away was the presence of soldiers everywhere and the absence of sidewalk cafes anywhere. There were many people in Ho Chi Minh City, but not in the numbers she remembered. When she exited the bus, she headed for her aunt’s house in the southern part of the city. She was never stopped by any of the soldiers, but she received chilling stares from many of them. When she arrived at the house, she knocked on the door and a four-year-old boy greeted her. She could hear a woman’s voice in the background asking who it was. The woman came to the door and My Ling said she was looking for her aunt.
“My name is My Ling Nguyen,” she offered.
The woman looked behind her, then up and down the street, and told her to come in the house. She left My Ling in the front room and walked to the back of the house where she brought another woman into the room, who gaped slack-jawed at My Ling before rushing to embrace her. It was her sister, Trieu, and the five-year-old boy was Trieu’s son, Tu. The last time My Ling had seen them was from the helicopter as she flew away from a besieged military compound, while Trieu and Tu were stranded on a road leading to it. My Ling did not recognize her. When the woman finally composed herself, she realized My Ling did not know who she was.
“My Ling, it’s me, Trieu,” she said.
My Ling gasped, dropped her belongings, and hugged her sister while they both sobbed. Trieu was six years older than My Ling, but the last five had aged her significantly. Because she thought My Ling was in America, Trieu was waiting on official papers so she could go to Thailand and then book passage to America where she hoped to locate her little sister.
Trieu took in the young woman standing before her, barely recognizing My Ling. Except for My Ling’s eyes, she was not the same girl. If the last four years had aged Trieu, they had transformed My Ling. Trieu no longer looked down to see her sister, because they were now the same height. Gone was her baby fat since My Ling had grown lean, muscular, and took a stance that felt to Trieu like… she could not put her finger on it, but like an animal.
“You are so different. I mean, even the way you stand and move,” Trieu shared.
“I guess it comes from living with a tiger. It rubs off on you,” My Ling chuckled. As Trieu was not sure she heard her sister correctly.
My Ling chronicled the saga of her last five years and had not noticed that the room now included eight other women who were enraptured by her amazing story. They thought nothing could top My Ling’s year of living in a cage with a fully grown tiger, until she mentioned the name “Colonel Cin,” which caused a unified gasp.
Tales of the elusive colonel, who continued to vex Hanoi’s army had circulated throughout the country. In fact, every time a misfortune befell the army or anyone in authority, it was attributed to the phantom Colonel Cin. That My Ling had seen him, been with his army, and lived amongst the last holdouts against the communists, conferred exalted status upon her. After they heard the account from the girl deemed “Tiger Girl” by the Colonel himself, it confirmed the existence of what most had considered lore. My Ling’s story would eventually become the talk of the entire city and province.
It was at the end of the story that she mentioned Quang had been killed in the helicopter crash with the U.S. military ship. The room of women slowly dispersed, letting the two sisters share this grief in private. My Ling took a deep breath and looked at Trieu.
“I dread telling Mother and Father,” she finished.
The long pause before Trieu answered and the look on Trieu’s face telegraphed the grim fate of her parents. My Ling emotionally absorbed Trieu’s expression prior to the words reaching her ears. He mother and father were both dead. The facts of their deaths, that her father had been executed in the initial days following the communists’ takeover, and her mother worked to death in a labor camp, was almost incidental to the fact that they were gone.
My Ling was dumbstruck. All that was important in her life, all that drove her to endure the worst, and all that was of any value was gone. Her mother and father, whose approval motivated everything she did, were no longer. What was life to mean? What was the point of it all now? There was the loss of their voices, their looks and their smiles. It was a universe minus the sun: vast, cold and meaningless. How would she move on, where would she go? Holding on to what her parents’ expectations for her was now dashed. Unrecognizable and alien was life now, and at sixteen she was not equipped to forge ahead. She wanted her father to tell her what to do, and she wanted to tell him all that she had done. She wanted to see his look of pride when she related her life as a “fellow girl.”
There was no longer air she wanted to breathe. A deafening tone muffled sound and a lack of desire took her voice. The ground on which she stood was as fragile as icing. She was drained and tired of living, yet her body drew breath. It was that sound of breathing that brought her to reality and the unbidden expansion of her lungs that prevented her desire to die. Why would her lungs continue to work when life had no purpose? Another breath was forced upon her and as annoying as it was, she had to take another. Her wish to die was willed aside by the body she inhabited. She followed its rhythm that had a purpose of its own. She was not breathing, life was breathing at her.
Then she saw Tu staring at her. He let go of his mother’s hand and grabbed My Ling’s and she recognized that feeling. She knew he wanted help and direction and he expected people taller than him to provide it. He expected her to provide it. She had to respond and this connection to the innocence of expectation drafted her again into being responsible.
She felt alien in this house, in this city; and she had to leave, and Trieu had to leave with her.
“Grab Tu and your stuff. Let’s go,” she ordered.
Trieu hesitated wanting to know why they had to leave now and where they were headed, but was silenced by the intensity of My Ling’s command. While My Ling was younger, Trieu immediately felt My Ling’s authority. Something had changed My Ling in the five-year interlude since Trieu had seen her. She was imbued with a confidence and knowing. Trieu surrendered to the resolute force that My Ling had become and she abided in its strength. My Ling was something and Trieu trusted it.
Since the chaos that started in April 1975, there was capriciousness to life that had drained confidence from Trieu. Now, she felt My Ling was a person rooted in purpose and Trieu wanted to be an adherent. It was immediate and primal, and it was enough to stir the mother to grab her son and follow her little sister.
My Ling wanted to get back to Lotus Blossom, instinctively knowing Trieu and Tu would be better off there. Her immediate feeling was to leave this pool of inertia and fear. Within Ho Chi Minh City was the pervasive weight of dread, heavy enough to suffocate and cloak everyone in a pall of futility. My Ling’s intent was to get back to the Central Highlands and she was mildly surprised when Trieu agreed to go.
Life’s instructive cruelty informed My Ling that life was now to be made by her or it would be made for her. She had experienced enforced servitude and recognized how that environment looked. Ho Chi Minh City had become that. Something had taken the life out of this town and she felt it would be taken from her if she were to stay much longer. When one lives for a year in a cage, one knows what a cage without bars looks like; Ho Chi Minh City was a prison and she was not going to be one of its inmates.
When they left the house, My Ling turned to Trieu, “We are going on a long, difficult journey. It will not be easy and it will take days to get there. You need to do what I tell you.” My Ling paused, waiting for Trieu’s answer and before she could, Tu surprised them.
“We will,” Tu affirmed.
Trieu grabbed a few things, stuffed them in a tote, and then walked out of the house. They walked for twenty minutes, then found an alley in which to hide. At nightfall, My Ling told them to wait there and she would be back in a few hours. When she returned, she was behind the wheel of a van like the one she drove on her parent’s estate and similar to Mr. Pok’s. Before Trieu could ask where it came from, My Ling told them to get in. Tu entered first and pulled his mother inside. He nodded to My Ling and they drove off into the dark. My Ling was focused, Trieu was anxious, and Tu was enthralled.
