A Flash of Hope

Hồ Chí Minh City, 2016

Outside the American Consulate, the sunlight felt like a blazing fire. Phong walked to the shadow of a tree, but at the sight of two policemen standing guard on the pavement, he quickened his footsteps.

Bình, Tài, and Diễm were behind him. Their sobs were as quiet as soft rain but ravaged him like a storm.

“Đồ vô dụng,” Phong scorned himself as useless for disappointing his family.

He headed for the bus station. They had several buses to catch. If they were lucky, they’d be home before midnight. On the spacious Lê Duẩn Boulevard, cars and motorbikes raced past, horns beeping. They crossed the street in the direction of towering buildings, so tall Phong felt as small as an ant.

“That arrogant woman in the consulate ruined our chance,” Bình said. “If she’d let me come into the interview . . .”

“Then you’d have gotten us the visa? Are you saying you could’ve done better than me?” Phong sensed the blame in his wife’s voice and felt terrible. He wished she would console him, tell him they’d be fine eventually. She had known about his troubles with visa applications and should understand how difficult this was for him.

“I told you how important this was, yet you didn’t prepare enough—”

“Hey, how did it go?” Quang the visa agent shouted from across the road. He navigated the traffic, scurrying toward them, a cigarette between his lips. “Did you get the visa?”

Phong dropped the folder of documents. He gripped Quang’s collar. “You told me there would be no problem. You took twelve million đồng from us. That’s nearly six hundred American dollars.”

“Don’t.” Bình tore him away from Quang.

“Calm the hell down.” Quang spat out the cigarette. “You want them to see you start a fight?” He gestured toward the policemen.

Phong clenched his fists. “I want my money back. At least half of it.”

“Are you fucking stupid? Don’t you fucking know how difficult it was for me to get an interview for you? They wouldn’t have seen you without my help. No refund. Now go home. Once you’ve saved enough money, call me. We can put together another application. We’ll try again.”

“You rotten rat. I’ll tell the Americans how you cheated me.”

“Go on. Do it then.” Quang ground the words between his teeth. “I can promise you this much: bring me any trouble and you’ll never be able to set foot on American soil.”

“Don’t you dare threaten us.” Tài stepped in between the men. He glared at Quang. “Like my father said, return us half the money!”

“I won’t return shit!” Quang spit out his words and walked away.

Bình and Diễm squatted down, gathering their papers. Phong’s hands trembled with fury. Quang had taken all of their money. Worse, the man had planted ideas into his head, that a better life was waiting for him and his family.

“You okay, Ba?” Tài reached for his shoulder. “I would’ve kicked that crook’s ass if it wasn’t for them.” He eyed the policemen.

“I shouldn’t have lost my temper.” Phong shook his head. His experiences had taught him that street fights would almost always make matters worse. “You shouldn’t be like me, Son.”

“I’m proud you stood up against that cheater, Ba. Otherwise people like him would keep bullying us.”

Tài reminded Phong that there were too many nasty people out there. Just last week at the market, Phong had seen a Vietnamese woman dressed in high heels and a silk dress kick a Khmer street vendor’s baskets, sending her vegetables tumbling across the muddy ground. While Phong told the woman off and she yelled back at him, the seller had just bent her head, frantically collecting her water spinach, cucumbers, and tomatoes. She hadn’t responded to the Vietnamese woman’s accusations that she’d blocked the pathway. In their hometown, too many Khmer were looked down upon because of their darker skin. Having fair skin elevated one’s position in Vietnamese society as it signified education and money; the rich and educated didn’t have to labor under the sun. Phong understood the frustration of his Khmer friends; they’d told him many tales about the Khmer Empire, which was once prosperous and had encompassed many parts of the Mekong Delta, parts that were taken over by the Vietnamese several centuries ago.

They walked. Phong eyed the long road ahead, his feet heavy, his throat dry, his head aching.

“Nghỉ uống nước chú ơi,” from the pavement, a woman called out to him. She was standing next to a steel cart that displayed fresh coconuts and different types of drinks.

“Do you have iced tea, Auntie?” Bình asked the seller.

“Yes, only two thousand đồng per glass.”

“Let’s take a break, anh,” Bình called out to Phong.

Phong sat down on a low plastic chair next to his wife and children.

“Two glasses, please, Auntie,” Bình said. “That’s four thousand đồng, right?”

“Yeah, as cheap as water ferns.”

Bình took out her wallet and paid for the tea. She was the one who saved every penny they earned. Phong didn’t remember the last time his wife bought herself new clothes or makeup. If he got to go to America, he’d use his first monthly allowance to buy a good facial cream for Bình, a cream that would soothe the sunburn on her cheeks.

The seller took an ice block from her styrofoam cooler and shattered it with a piece of flat metal. Under her conical hat, her crooked smile revealed several missing teeth. Freckles dotted her wrinkled cheeks. She must have been around sixty-five years old. Old enough to be Phong’s mother. Did his mother ever come back to the orphanage to try and find him? Could this woman be his mother?

“You aren’t from here, are you?” The woman asked, dropping pieces of ice into two large glasses. Phong hoped for some light of recognition in her gaze, but she didn’t even look twice at him.

“We’re from Bạc Liêu.” Bình fanned herself with a hat she’d taken out of their backpack.

“Ah, the legend of the Bạc Liêu Prince, I remember . . . Was he so rich that when a girlfriend dropped a coin, he burnt ten banknotes to light the dark to look for it?” The woman laughed, pouring tea into the glasses.

“Yes, he did many stupid things like that,” Tài said.

“Extravagant spending and his family has almost nothing now.” Diễm stole glances at the pack of peanut candies the seller had placed on the small table in front of them. “His mansion now belongs to the government. And one of his sons had to work as a cyclo driver to earn a living.”

“Oh dear. But that’s life. Đời là lên voi xuống chó.”

Phong nodded at the wisdom of the proverb. Life is riding high on an elephant, then low on a dog.

Bình and Diễm reached out for the full glasses. They drank.

The woman wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “The man you were arguing with, he promised to help get you to America?” she asked Phong.

“You know him, Auntie?”

“Everyone around here does.” The woman shook her head. “Don’t trust him. He makes money from mixed-race people like you, especially those from the countryside.”

“He charged us twelve million đồng.” Bình sighed. “And the Americans . . . they just said no to our visa application.”

“Trời đất ơi! You should have applied by yourself. You didn’t need an intermediary. But . . . to be honest, it’s very difficult to get to America now without an outsider’s help.”

“Outsiders?” Phong was sure the woman was talking about some other type of agents, people who’d charge much more than Quang.

“Well . . . there’re American men who come back looking for their children. They might be able to help you.”

Phong put down the tea. “Men who were here during the war?”

“Yes . . . they were young boys then. They’re old now.”

“They’re coming back?” Tài and Diễm asked in one voice.

“A few of them are. Very few.” The woman lit a cigarette and inhaled. Phong studied her through the shifting layers of smoke. Women didn’t usually smoke.

Bình gripped Phong’s hand. “Anh Phong, your father might be back looking for you.”

Phong swallowed. As he grew older, his wish to know his father didn’t fade, it intensified. He stared at the glass of tea in his hand. His identity was as murky as the drink. He didn’t even know whether his mother had registered a birth certificate for him and what name she’d given him. If he found her, would she tell him the truth about his father? Would she explain the real reasons she’d abandoned him? When Bình decided to marry him, her father had said, “Phong’s mother must be a prostitute and his father a killer, why marry him? Family members relate if not in feathers then in wings.”

He had to find his parents, to prove his father-in-law wrong, so that Bình would be accepted into her family again.

The drink seller fanned herself with her conical hat. “Now, now . . . I didn’t mean to give you hope. As I said, very few American veterans are coming back to look for their lost families. It’s a recent thing. I think these veterans . . . they’re getting old. They have regrets and want to fix their past mistakes.”

“You met them, Auntie?” Bình asked.

“Don’t you read the papers?” With the cigarette in her mouth, the woman combed through a stack of papers at the lower level of her cart, pulled out a page from a newspaper, giving it to Bình. “See it for yourself.”

Phong leaned over. Avoiding the written words, his eyes stayed fixed on a picture; so faded, it must have been taken a long time ago. A white man, dressed in a military uniform, and a Vietnamese woman, dressed in an áo dài, beamed up at him. They looked young and as glamourous as movie stars.

“The man is searching for his lady friend,” Bình said. “It’s an advertisement.”

“Yes . . . American veterans, if they really want to find their ex-girlfriends or the children they’d had with those girlfriends, they place notices on newspapers and TVs,” the drink seller said, blowing smoke from her nose.

Phong smacked his palm against his forehead. He couldn’t afford to buy newspapers regularly and had no TV. Still, he should have known. His father could have been back looking for his mother and him.

“The advertisement, what does it say?” he asked his wife.

Bình smiled in embarrassment. She gave the newspaper to their son. “Tài, you read it. I have no idea how to pronounce those foreign words.”

“Sure.” Tài sat up, clearing his throat. “Tôm Sờ-Mít looks for his lady friend Lan Lan. Lan Lan used to work at Nguyễn Văn Thoại Street. Tôm Sờ-Mít met Lan Lan in 1972 when he was a mechanic at Tân Sơn Nhứt Airbase. Anyone with news about Lan Lan, please call Mr. Thiên.” Tài continued by reading a mobile number.

Phong looked at Tài, expecting to hear more, but Tài had put the paper down. “That’s it?” Phong asked.

“Yes, Ba.”

“It’s expensive to place such a notice so one needs to be brief,” the drink seller said. “Trà đá, thuốc lá, chú ơi,” she called out to a man who stopped to buy a couple of loose cigarettes from her.

Phong studied the picture. He saw joy and love in the couple’s eyes. He hoped they would be united with each other soon.

He turned to his son. “Tài . . . tell me the contact number printed in this ad again.” The drink seller had said returning Americans might be able to help. Phong had to talk to Tom Smith, whose name, when pronounced by Tài, sounded like Tôm Sờ-Mít, which was memorable, as it meant “a shrimp touches a jackfruit.”

“I can tell you,” said Diễm, picking up the paper, reading Mr. Thiên’s number aloud.

Thiên meant “Heaven,” and perhaps Heaven was sending Phong light. Phong repeated the phone number, memorizing it. His family often praised Phong for how good he was with numbers. He could memorize and calculate in his head as smoothly as a silkworm could thread silk.

“This drink seller . . . she knows a lot,” Bình whispered. “Let’s stay and talk to her.”

Phong nodded and wrapped his arm around Bình’s shoulder, appreciating how determined she was. She always knew how to pick herself and their family up whenever they were let down. He pulled his kids into his other arm. When the ground seemed to have crumbled under him, Tài and Diễm reminded him that they were his strength.

Phong paid for three peanut candies and gave them to his wife and children. He gestured at the newspaper. “Why do you think the American man is looking for his lady friend, Auntie?”

The drink seller extinguished her cigarette. “They must have had a child together. I’m quite sure Lan Lan was a bar girl. . . . Nguyễn Văn Thoại, that’s the old name of the current Lý Thường Kiệt Street. There were lots of bars there, serving American soldiers during the war.”

Phong studied the woman in the photo. He’d been wrong about her, but her face looked pure and innocent. “What do you think about the chance of him finding her?”

“Hmm, it’s been more than forty years. The woman might be dead. Or she has a family and doesn’t want to be contacted. And Lan Lan, you know anyone by that name?”

Phong shook his head.

“Exactly. Lan Lan doesn’t sound right. Perhaps Mai Lan, or Thanh Lan? It’s been so long that the American can’t even remember.”

After they finished their tea, Phong walked a short distance with his wife and children then told them to go home first. He needed to have his DNA test done. The drink seller had given him the business card of a Mr. Lương, saying that the man provided free tests, thanks to the help of Amerasians in the U.S.

“I want to stay!” Diễm said, her eyes fixed on a clothing store across the street.

“I want to know how they do this test on you. It’s so exciting!” Tài insisted.

“You can’t miss another day of school.” Bình shook her head.

“Your mother is right, Phong said. “Your exams are coming up. You’re very smart, but you’ve still got to study.” Phong looked at Diễm, whose eyes were brightened with curiosity, and Tài, whose face was filled with resolve, and felt pride gushing through his body. While he couldn’t finish grade one, Tài was in eighth grade and Diễm in sixth. He would do everything he could to ensure that they finished high school, and perhaps even enter university.

Bình pulled Phong away from the children so they could talk privately. “You really want to stay a couple of days, anh?” she asked.

“The drink seller said we need help from outsiders, I have to find them.” Phong didn’t tell Bình, but after the DNA test, he’d go back to the consulate and get some money back from Quang the visa agent. There was no way that crook could walk away like that. And he’d like to talk to the drink seller again. After she’d told him about the DNA test, a group of youngsters had arrived, ordering fresh coconuts and chattering noisily.

“But you don’t have enough money to stay on,” Bình insisted.

“I’ll manage. You know me . . . don’t worry.”

“Don’t do anything illegal, anh Phong—and be careful with your wallet. We have nothing left to help get you out of prison.”

“Stop being my mother!” Phong snapped. He had lived in Sài Gòn long enough to know how dangerous this city could be. Still, he wished he had returned earlier. He might have heard about the DNA tests, and about the returning American veterans. His home was 300 kilometers away, half a day by bus, but he felt like it belonged to another world. There, the only news he listened to was from a public radio perched on top of a neighborhood tree. Each morning, a broadcast woke him up exactly at five o’clock. Most news had to do with government leaders visiting this city, that province, or another country.

Tài stepped in between Phong and Bình. “Please . . . don’t fight.” He shook his head. “I’m so tired of this. Of waiting, of begging others for a chance.” The teenager’s shoulders sagged as if he was an old man. “I’ve been thinking . . . that perhaps it’s time we stop dreaming about immigrating to America. America has created this illusion that it can rescue everyone, but it has its own problems. It’s not like Black people have it so easy there. I’m not sure we would be accepted.”

“Ha, trứng mà đòi khôn hơn vịt hả? How can eggs be smarter than ducks?” said Phong. “You haven’t seen life, Son. And you can’t tell me that all these people inside the consulate waiting for their visas are stupid.”

“But they might be applying for business or tourist visas . . .”

“Don’t you remember the relatives of our neighbors who came back from America? They are so well-off, so educated. I just want to give you and your sister the same chance,” Phong insisted. He’d believed in the American dream all his life, he wasn’t ready to let his own son crush it.

“Yes I know . . . and I appreciate it, Ba,” Tài sighed. “But I hate to see how trying is affecting you.”

“Without trying, we’ll never succeed,” Bình said.

“You are the egg who wants to be smarter than his parents, the ducks,” Diễm told Tài, laughing. “The egg can’t be smarter than the ducks, la là lá la la,” she sang, running away as Tài tried to catch her.

Phong stood outside the Sài Gòn Post Office. He’d just used a public phone to call Mr. Lương, who told him to come for a DNA test the next morning.

On the phone, Phong had reconfirmed that the test was really free. Too many people had tried to cheat him, and too many more had made him empty promises. He needed to be careful, like he should have been with Quang. Just thinking about the visa agent made it hard to breathe.

He had three hundred fifty thousand đồng with him. Bình, Tài and Diễm needed the rest to get home. He pulled his hat lower. He had planned to go home right after the interview and had brought next to nothing with him. He wished he had a long-sleeved shirt to cover his arms, and his razor to shred off the stupid beard. He needed a place to lie down and sleep, but hunger dug its sharp claws into his stomach, and the sun hammered its heat onto his head. The money he had would buy him a good meal and a bus ticket home, but not a room in a cheap hostel. Where would he sleep tonight?

The Sài Gòn Cathedral stood in front of him, its redbrick walls and high domes as majestic as they’d always been. On the stone steps of the entrance, he could still see the body of his twelve-year-old self. The body that knelt, shivering beneath merciful hands. The body that wandered the streets of Sài Gòn, looking for things that could fill his stomach.

Near the cathedral was a café packed with customers who spilled out onto the sidewalk, sitting side by side, sipping their drinks. A man was struggling to unload crates of soft drinks from a parked mini-truck.

Phong approached the man. “Brother, may I help you? Shall I bring these into the shop?” He hoped to earn a tip, or a bottle of drink.

Before the man could answer, a woman rushed out from the café. “My customers are looking . . . Don’t let him touch anything. He looks dirty . . . And who knows, he might be a drug addict. A thief.”

“Go away,” the man said, heaving a crate onto his shoulders and staggering into the café.

The eyes of those people on the sidewalk were fires that burned their marks into Phong, and he felt mortified. He walked away with his nails dug into his palms. If he punched somebody, then he’d still be a man. But Bình was right, it wouldn’t be worth it. They wouldn’t have the money to get him out of prison.

He should have prepared better for this trip. When the letter from the consulate arrived asking him and his family to come for a visa interview, he was so excited that he forgot what it was like in this city. Bình had suggested that they drain their pond, sell the fish, and bring the money. But he insisted that in a few more months, the fish would be big enough to fetch a good price, sufficient for them to buy new tin sheets for their leaking roof.

He made his way to the cathedral, where the sound of singing voices rose like birds toward the sky. He paced alongside the cathedral’s high wall, his hands tracing the rough, red bricks. He’d prayed to God as well as his Vietnamese and American ancestors. If they heard him, they hadn’t answered. Still, he said the Hail Mary prayer and thought about the kindness of Sister Nhã.

In front of the church’s entrance, a woman sat, a baby in her arms, a small box in front of her. The woman’s face was gaunt but unwrinkled. She was too young to be his mother, but he still stared at her, his eyes lingering on the sickly-looking baby. He could have suffered like this baby if his mother hadn’t given him away; he could have spent his earliest years on the street instead of in Sister Nhã’s care and warmth.

“Má, where are you? Do you ever think about me?” Words escaped from deep within him, soft as a whisper, bitter like tears.