Postcards From Nam

by Uyen Nicole Duong

  My mind was numb, and all I could see was the heavy smoke coming out of David Daugherty’s beard. Maybe the office would soon be on fire. Burning away the story David was telling me.

  “Mimi, maybe he had a crush on you when you kids were in Vietnam, but he sure has gone the other way. Forget about trying to get him out of Thailand. He’s a doomed kid. It’s his choice, Mimi. The way he’s destroying his body, he might be dying very young. Take your one thousand dollars back and stop thinking about him. Are you all right? I know you may be shocked. Shamed, even? That save-face Eastern value, I wish you…”

  I got up and ran. The pictures of the Ginger Head dancers would be burned in the fire.

  The forever-cynical David Daugherty would continue smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, but he never set his office on fire.

  Instead, I went home that night and set my own fire. I opened my cosmetics box, struck a match, and picked up Nam’s postcards, one by one. The hands, the house, the young faces behind a fence, the sea, the piano, the old woman with a cone hat, all lit in flame.

  In 1991, I left the East Coast to move to Houston, Texas, where my family had settled. In 1993, I returned to Southeast Asia to work as an international lawyer, partly in preparation for the Clinton Administration’s lifting of the trade embargo against Vietnam. During my stay in Asia, I never thought of trying to find Nam.

  In my heart, Nam was dead.

  In 1998, after the Asia currency crisis, I left my international law practice in Asia to return to Houston, with the intent of writing full time. During the process, I faced my own writer’s block and the journey back into the past. Into a childhood in which Nam existed.

  5. AN ESCAPE ROUTE

  In my apartment in Houston, I close my eyes for a second and recall the flame of the day when I burned all of Nam’s postcards. For ten years since that day, I did not hear from him. My life rolled on during those ten years with all the ups and downs of the law practice and a turbulent, unfulfilled romantic life. This year, I will turn forty, burned out and disillusioned by the very American dream that has kept me going for more than two decades. The emptiness hit me when I got up one day and realized the idea of going to my law office made me sick in my stomach. I would rather stay home and play the piano. I wanted badly to start all over.

  That day, I decided to take an extended leave without pay from work and thought perhaps I should begin writing a memoir. All of my friends thought it was midlife crisis. I stopped talking to those friends. I sold my Victorian house at a loss and moved into the Parc Royale apartment hotel facing Westheimer Street. I chose an apartment building that reminded me of the southern coast of France. I thought, there, I could find peace and inspiration.

  Until the same postcard arrived. Somewhere in the world, Nam had decided to resume his habit.

  I open my eyes and stare at Nam’s latest postcard. Thoughts rush through my mind. I can let it stay in my cosmetics box, as I used to do ten years ago, or I can do something else.

  I pick up the phone to call my mother to talk about Nam.

  “Whatever makes Nam act strange, we all know it must have started with that journey by boat,” my mother says. “Remember how he was in Vietnam. Always a nice kid.”

  “Nam is not a kid anymore, Mom. He is a grown man,” I say ruefully. “Now that I have regained my memory, I remember that Nam and I are the same age. We both turn forty this year.”

  I tell my mother I would like to find someone who was on the same boat with Nam when they escaped Vietnam years ago. My timid mother is resourceful enough to help me keep track of the close-knit network of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants in the United States. She becomes the link between me and a culture in exile.

  I start by calling Nam’s parents, who left Vietnam in the late 1990s, and have since settled in California. On the phone, Nam’s aging father, Uncle Pham, repeats his gentle apologies.

  “Please ignore the postcards, miss. Two decades have passed, yet my son hasn’t been himself since the escape.”

  I assure him I am not disturbed by the postcards. I explain I am writing a book and would like to know about Nam’s escape from Vietnam by boat, even though the event is stale.

  Finally, with some hesitation, Uncle Pham tells me to call Nam’s younger brother, Tiep. The two brothers escaped Vietnam together, by boat, in 1980, one of the hardest years of South Vietnam’s transition to Communism. The early eighties was a time when Nam’s family, typical working-class South Vietnamese, did not have enough to eat. Tiep was just a child then.

  In their escape plan, the boat would leave Vietnam, pass the island of Phu Quoc in the South China Sea, and reach Singapore. From there, the brothers would apply to immigrate to America as refugees. They planned to work in America and sponsor their family out of Vietnam later, but only after their father had been released from the “reeducation camp.”

  In Saigon, besides driving a taxi, Uncle Pham was a low-ranked soldier on reserve, assigned to the “psychological warfare” division of the South Vietnamese army. To the North Vietnamese, psychological warfare meant the grave crime of undercover work and spying for the enemy. In Uncle Pham’s case, all it meant was a noncombat, menial job. He worked in a government print shop printing propaganda material, which he never had time to read. To supplement his income, he drove a taxi after work hours. When Saigon fell, the party’s neighborhood comrades made their accusations—Uncle Pham had allegedly been transporting American spies and their puppets, delivering counterrevolutionary information harmful to the cause of the People’s National Liberation Front. After days of questioning, Uncle Pham signed a confession in the People’s neighborhood police headquarters, admitting to all kinds of crimes he had never dreamed of committing. For the following ten years, from 1975 to 1985, he spent his time in a “reeducation camp” repenting his crimes against the people of Vietnam.

  Uncle Pham summarizes the story of his life and his sons’ escape slowly, with concentrated effort. I do not want to interrupt him. I listen with the attentiveness and passivity of a stenographer.

  Although the boat ran into pirates and never made it to Singapore, the two brothers survived. Somehow, during the trip, Tiep got separated from Nam. Tiep ended up in America, and Nam settled in Thailand to work. For years, Nam sent money back home to Vietnam to support his parents. He steadfastly refused to join Tiep in America.

  Ten years later, in 1995, Uncle Pham was released from the “reeducation camp.” As part of the US’s humanitarian program to enable family reunification and resettle former political prisoners, eventually Uncle Pham, Auntie Hoai, and the rest of the children left Vietnam for California to join Tiep. Still, Nam preferred staying on in Thailand, never expressing any desire to join his family in America. Recently, he wrote to inform them that he had met a Franciscan priest, who would bring Nam out of Thailand and help him settle in Australia to begin his new life as a priest. Nam also pleaded for my present address.

  I read between the lines as Uncle Pham speaks of his oldest son. The priesthood does not thrill Nam’s Buddhist parents, who know nothing about the Catholic Church, their son’s religious calling, or the reason why Nam wants to stay away from his family. The parents understand something must have happened to their firstborn son. For years, the sadness and confusion have eaten at them.

  “It’s been years since those days we were neighbors in District Eight, Saigon.” Uncle Pham sounds pensive. I detect the faint choking effect of swallowed tears in his voice.

  “I never thought things would turn out this way,” Uncle Pham adds sorrowfully. “My oldest son, soon to become a priest. And you, Miss, I still remember how pretty you were those days in Saigon. You wore a cotton, pleated skirt, with shining braided hair. Twenty-five years have passed, and we are all here, in America, except my son Nam. He has chosen to be away from us.”

  I call Tiep the next day, asking him about the 1980 escape by boat. He has earned a college degree and works in computer technology in San Jose, California.
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  “My brother…I owe everything to him. I just don’t know what happened to him. About the escape by boat, I can’t remember much,” Tiep stammers at the other end of the line.

  “Surely you must remember something,” I plead.

  He stammers on to fill me in with details, all about the preparation that went into the escape—how the two brothers traveled to the province of Rach Gia, and then further south to the bay area of Ca Mau, all the way to a small seaport town at the farthest tip of the peninsula, where they were introduced to a seaman who organized the escape. Their mother had sold the last of family heirlooms to secure enough gold taels, which the two brothers turned over to the seaman for two spaces on a fishing boat.

  Finally, I have to cut him off. “Skip all that. I want to know what happened on the boat.”

  “Not much. We ran into Thai pirates. Many Boat People did.” Tiep lowers his voice.

  “Did they do anything to you or your brother?” I can’t help being impatient and direct.

  “Nothing.” Tiep hurries his words.

  “Did they rob you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they rape women?”

  “There were no women on the boat. The pirates just separated us. They took all of our food. They left me with other people on our boat and destroyed our engine. An American boat—an oil rig crew—found us later.”

  “What happened to your brother?”

  “The pirates took him and sailed away. A year later I heard from him from a refugee camp in Thailand.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s it.” Tiep pauses. “It was a bad experience.” The note of finality in his voice confirms the end of the conversation. I know I am hitting a raw nerve. It is insensitive to continue the line of inquiry.

  “Why do you want to know all of this?” Tiep asks. “Boat People are old stories. It’s been two decades.”

  “Because…” I hesitate momentarily and then decide to tell Tiep. “For a long time, your brother kept sending me postcards.”

  “What? Postcards? Oh no.” Tiep begins to ramble in Vietnamese. This time, I detect an alarming tone in his voice.

  “What about postcards?” I ask.

  “Just before the pirates took him, my brother turned around and shouted to me. I remember this quite well. In fact, it’s the only thing that I remember well to this day. My brother said not to worry. He knew I would arrive safely in America, and wherever he would be, he would send me postcards. Plenty of postcards.”

  I hang up the phone and want badly to cry. Somewhere, I can hear Nam’s voice, an agitated teenager’s voice as I remember it, echoing against the sounds of the wind and waves: “Postcards. Arrive safely in America. Wherever I am, I will manage to send you postcards. Plenty of postcards.”

  At night, I dream of dancing on a pathway full of spider webs. The sound of the harp-like Dan Tranh—the Vietnamese version of the Japanese koto—fills the air like the tapping sounds of the falling rain. My hands form shapes of lotus buds. My waist folds in half for my hair to cascade down with the sounds. I mix tiny steps with broader strides. At times, I feel the sensation of flying against a tender breeze.

  I dance my way homeward into my grandmother’s awaiting arms. Her eyes are following my dancing steps.

  But the pathway never ends, and no matter how much I try, I can never reach her arms. Standing between my grandmother and me are young faces looking out behind fences. The angles of the cheeks and chins turn into brutal strokes of black and red ink.

  I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. All I can think about is Nam’s latest postcard.

  I turn on the light and rummage through boxes of old files stacked up in my closet. I search and search until I find my old Rolodex from my previous law practice in Washington, DC.

  I begin looking for David Daugherty’s number.

  The next day must be my lucky day. When I dial David Daugherty’s phone number, I get him on the first try.

  He still smokes like a chimney and compares the risk of lung cancer to the odds of being hit by a car in suburban Maryland. The old network of public interest lawyers, United Nations workers, and human rights activists are still intact and under his belt, he says.

  “Remember the doomed kid in Thailand, whom your Samaritan crew found at the Ginger Head?” I clear my throat and tell David I want the final chapter to a story.

  6. RASHOMON* AND A QUESTION OF HONOR

  * And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

  John 8:32

  *The most brilliant exploration of truth and human weakness, and the question of honor, at times, are condensed into a few hours of leisurely talks…

  Mua vui cung duoc mot vai trong canh.

  Nguyen Du (Vietnamese poet, eighteenth century)

  The older Vietnamese man in a green T-shirt and a faded smock is cutting bushes with a pair of gardeners’ scissors, his head jerking lightly with the movement of the blades in an unintended rhythm, his diminutive body stooping over the bordering shrubs. The attentive look on his swarthy brown face shows the same care a mother would give to her child.

  I call his name. “Mr. Dien.”

  He does not hear me, and his footsteps continue to rhyme with the sound of the scissors nipping at leaves and branches. The neighborhood is stark and plain, except for his front yard, full of plants and flowers growing in no particular order, indicating clearly that the owner of the house cares about plant growth, but not about aesthetic landscaping. The disarray of the yard contradicts the sight of an old man meticulously cutting and shaping his shrubs, carefully moving along, slowly making his way among blooming spring and summer flowers of all shapes and kinds, tracing the winding path of the red-tipped shrubs that circle the gray brick house.

  It is the typical Vietnamese homemade garden, where greens sprout at random.

  When I call his name, “Mr. Dien,” the second time, he stops the motion of the scissors temporarily to turn to where I stand, near the mailbox. He is one of those people blessed with a perpetual air of innocence and eagerness, such that despite their old age, their faces are old and young at the same time. His squinting eyes flicker the surprise message that he does not know me, yet he flashes a courteous smile, showing his long, yellow, crooked teeth that denote old age in contrast to the childlike innocence of his face:

  “Hello there, Emile’s friend? She is not here. Gone downtown shopping already.”

  I move toward him, encouraged by the friendly smile.

  “The yard looks…beautiful.” I point at the blooming azaleas. “These flowers do very nice in Texas weather…Aren’t they the state flowers of Texas? No? Oh well, we don’t have them in Vietnam, do we?” I am speaking in Vietnamese.

  He beams broadly and starts talking about the various types of plants, using both Vietnamese and English words:

  “Here we can plant lots of things, like mint and herbs. But can’t have all those flowers we used to have back home. For example, the Vietnamese Hoa Ngoc Lan typifying our homeland, those sweet-smelling white blooms on tall, strong trees often haunted by ghosts,” he rambles on.

  “Ghosts?” I bend to pick up a strand of fern crawling onto the doorway.

  “Ah, there were many ghosts back home. The war, you see, killed too many people. Two many homeless, lost souls without any relatives to worship them. At times, spirits occupy trees as their residence.”

  “I believe you.” I scrutinize the brown face of the old man.

  “Want to come in and wait for Emile?

  “Actually, I don’t know Emile. I came by to see you.” I tell him my name, and he pauses at the door, turning his head toward me, his eyes blinking, wanting to focus, signaling a brief state of confusion.

  “From the Center for Vietnamese Senior Citizens?” He beams again.

  “I…I actually know people at the Center. But no, I am not a social worker. I came on my own will. I want to…interview you.”

  “Yeah?” He sounds p
leased, placing his scissors onto a pressed wood shelf stacked with dirty pots. He takes off his smock and shoes and steps inside the house. I follow him.

  “From the newspaper Ngay Nay?” He points at a chair, signaling for me to sit.

  “No newspapers. I am writing a book about…heroes,” I explain with the same sincerity as his, although I can’t match his enthusiasm as his eyes sparkle at images of the South Vietnamese regime, which obviously are returning to his head. He talks on and on. Apparently, those images of the past have quickly replaced his mental encyclopedia of vegetation. I decide to throw in more Vietnamese complimentary words about a defunct South Vietnam to build his trust. I succeed, and he begins to call me “niece.”

  “Want some soybean milk, niece?” he offers.

  I get iced homemade soybean milk. Made by his granddaughter Emile, he says. My eyes begin to circle the room. The interior of his house is like his yard—without any planning or design. A cozy place furnished with, again, a disarray, this time, of cheap Hong Kong–made furniture blended with expensive electronic equipment: large-screen TV, deluxe stereo and speakers, and two DVD players. The walls are full of Vietnamese calendars and mass-produced lacquer paintings depicting Chinese and Vietnamese landscapes. The house smells of fish sauce and cooking oil, which must have perpetually stuck to the flowery polyester draperies that have turned old, losing their bright colors—the typical sight and smell of a Vietnamese living room inhabited by working people who have carried to America the way of life imported from their former home, with little care for aesthetics.