A Bird Finding Its Nest
Lâm Đồng–Hồ Chí Minh City, 1984–1993
Phong was on his knees, digging a patch of elephant grass. His twelve-year-old arms were as thin as firewood sticks. The sun punished him with its boiling heat but he didn’t care. He swore he’d just seen the shiny head of a large cricket. Holding a twig, he dug furiously. Kids in the neighborhood were staging a cricket-fighting contest that night. They wouldn’t let him participate, but his crickets would fight among themselves.
Behind him was a sagging hut where he and Sister Nhã lived. When they were driven out of the orphanage a few years earlier and up into this village in the mountainous province of Lâm Đồng, Sister Nhã had hired local men with whom she worked, cutting down tree branches, bamboos, and rattan leaves to build the hut. It sat far away from the other huts that had been erected by the men, women, and children who had been chased out of their homes. Considered “bad elements of the society” by the Communist government, they were meant to settle here in the New Economic Zone to cultivate new land, to grow their own food.
“Phong ơi,” Sister Nhã called from inside the hut.
He ignored her. She’d been ill for a few weeks. She’d stopped going to the field, and he was secretly glad because it meant he didn’t have to work either.
“Phong ơi, come inside. We need to talk.”
“You want me to brew your herbal medicine again, Dì?” he called back, calling the Catholic nun “Auntie” the way he’d been taught. “Later!”
“Please . . . Dì xin con.”
Sister Nhã rarely begged him. He shook his head but dropped the twig and wiped his hands against his shorts.
The hut was cool, darkish, and pungent with the bittersweet smell of medicine. Sister Nhã was a thin shadow on the bamboo bed. Her hands were clutching her stomach the way she’d been doing frequently in the past months. She’d lost a great deal of weight. It annoyed him that she wasn’t sleeping much at night and instead stayed up holding her rosary and praying.
“I only have a minute.” He put the paper box that caged his crickets on the floor. He counted the brown insects again. Only three. He needed a few more. As he straightened his back, his eyes adjusted to the dimness. Sister Nhã was as pale as a hovering spirit.
He felt her forehead with the back of his hand. She didn’t have a fever; she was cold and sweaty.
“Does your stomach hurt, Dì?” He gazed at her hollowed face. She hadn’t been eating much. She’d cooked sweet potatoes that morning but just sat watching as he devoured them.
She reached for his arm. “You’ve been a good boy, Phong. You’re my beautiful son.”
No one had ever told him he was beautiful, except for Sister Nhã.
He walked to the back of the hut. Next to the stove, which was just a hole dug into the ground, he knelt down, lifted a pot blackened with soot, and poured water into a cup. There had been days when he and Sister Nhã played cards and whoever won would get to decorate the loser’s face with soot. He’d laughed so hard as he gave Sister Nhã different types of mustaches. Sister Nhã almost always let him win. Her laughter had risen up alongside his, high and free, filling the belly of their hut as the soot filled the wrinkles on her face.
He wished he could make her laugh again. For months Sister Nhã had been drinking the stewed liquid of roots and tree bark sold by a blind man at their neighborhood market, but it didn’t seem to help. Perhaps if they had money to go to a doctor, she’d get better.
He gulped down the water, filled the cup again, and helped Sister Nhã sit up. She drank a few sips, shook her head, and lay down again. He was about to go outside when she clutched his hand.
“Phong . . . I hope that you’ll have more than a few minutes for me today. I’m going to tell you a story . . . You have to remember the details, to be able to find your parents.”
His parents? He’d often asked about them but Sister Nhã had always said she didn’t know them. She never talked about her own life, either, as if she harbored some terrible secrets. Why did she decide to tell him now?
He chose the sturdier of their two rickety bamboo stools and sat next to the bed.
Sister Nhã smiled at him. “I’ll tell you the story part by part. Can you then repeat it for me?”
A “no” was forming in his mouth. Was she trying to teach him how to read words? He hated words. Kids who knew how to read and write were monstrous; they hit him and called him all types of names. There had been evenings when Sister Nhã gave him a notebook and a pen. He’d thrown the pen against the wall and the notebook onto the floor. His body ached from the day’s work on the field and all he wanted to do was sleep or play outside. Once, frustrated, Sister Nhã had shouted at him. He screamed back, kicked the notebook. Her slap landed on his cheek so hard his vision filled with fireflies. When he burst out crying, she held him tight, sobbing, apologizing, saying that he needed a proper teacher. She didn’t know that the idea of a school made him shudder; his bullies would be there, waiting for him.
Sister Nhã untangled a dry leaf from his hair. She placed it gently next to her pillow, as if not wanting to break the already brittle leaf.
She held on to his arm. “Darling, without your parents’ names and pictures, your story is all you have. And your story begins with me.”
He nodded. Finally she was going to tell him about herself. He’d always wanted to know why she loved him even though other people despised him.
“I was born a Catholic,” Sister Nhã began. “As a young girl, I wanted to serve God. So instead of getting married, I became a nun and worked at Phú Long Orphanage. In Hóc Môn. On the outskirts of Sài Gòn.” She looked at him. “Now . . . what’s the orphanage’s name and where is it?”
“Phú Long Orphanage. In Hóc Môn,” he said.
“Yes, you clever boy! At the orphanage, together with two other nuns, I took care of Amerasians like you as well as Vietnamese children. Some were orphans. Some still had parents but they were too poor to raise them. Some children had been separated from their parents during bombing raids.”
He nodded. He hoped his parents hadn’t died.
“At the orphanage, there were many things to do but I was happy. My life had a purpose. One spring night after I’d gone to bed and slept for a few hours, I heard a baby crying. The sound was weak, and not from inside the orphanage. I rose from my bed and got my flashlight.
“It was a pitch-black night. There was no moon, no stars, just the wind howling above my head. I shivered in the cool air and shone my light toward the orphanage gate, where the crying came from. Occasionally mothers would leave their babies there.” She looked at him.
He repeated what she had just told him.
She nodded, clutched her stomach. She winced but continued. “As I got closer to the gate, the crying became louder and more desperate. I unlatched the bolt. The metal door creaked as I pulled it open. I stepped outside. I looked around but didn’t see any sign of a baby. I paused and listened more carefully. The sound was coming from somewhere in midair. Oa, oa, oa.”
Hair stood up on his arms and on the back of his neck. “The baby was crying from midair?”
“Yes . . . In front of the orphanage stood an ancient Bodhi tree, with hundreds of hanging roots. This tree is a symbol of Buddhism and even though the founder of our orphanage was Catholic, she insisted that we take care of it to show that people of all religions can live in harmony. That night, I saw a bag dangling from one of the Bodhi’s branches. A sedge bag! The crying was coming from there. I rushed to the bag and lowered it. Reaching inside, I felt a baby. Wrapped in a blue blanket, it was as small as a cat, and trembling.”
Phong trembled, too, as he recounted the details, reminding himself he had to remember them, to be able to find his parents.
“Inside the orphanage, I unwrapped the baby,” Sister Nhã continued. “A beautiful boy! There was a big birthmark on the right side of his chest. The mother had left nothing else in the bag. No clothes, no address, no name, no birth certificate.”
Sister Nhã lifted Phong’s shirt. Twice the size of his palm, his birthmark was dark as burnt firewood. He’d tried to rub it off, but it was getting even darker.
“Remember, my child, your birthmark will help you find your mother. Your mother will remember it. When someone claims that you are her son, you must ask . . . you must ask if there’s any birthmark on your body.”
Phong nodded, his face tingling at the thought of his mother looking for him. When he found his parents, kids in the village would stop taunting him. They’d no longer sing made-up songs about a bastard named Phong born to a prostitute.
Sister Nhã caressed his face. “You arrived at the gate of Phú Long Orphanage in February 1972 as a newborn. Please . . . never forget.” She fumbled inside her pillow and gave him an envelope. “Keep this safe. It has two letters. One with your life story. The other . . . is for your mother. I’ve described what a wonderful person you are, and thanked her for entrusting you to me.”
“Don’t you think she might be dead?” The words escaped his mouth before he could catch them and hold them back.
“I know she’s alive. I can feel it.”
“But why a letter, Dì? Can’t you tell her yourself when we find her?”
“Phong . . .” Sister Nhã wiped beads of sweat from her upper lip with her trembling hand.
“Nothing is going to happen to you, is it?” He stared at her. Half her hair had gone white, her cheekbones protruded. He hoped she wouldn’t be put into a coffin. He’d seen coffins, carried by men and followed by women and children who wore white banners on their heads, wailing.
“Phong . . .” Sister Nhã pushed herself up. “Mr. Thông the healer said that I have a large lump inside my stomach and it’s growing.”
“He means you’ll have a baby?”
“No, it’s not like that.” She chuckled and ruffled his hair. “Oh, I adore your innocence, your everything.”
He beamed at her laughter. “I won’t forget, Dì. . . . Phú Long Orphanage. A sedge bag. Branch of a Bodhi tree. You found me in February 1972 and gave me the name Phong.” He paused. “Dì, did anyone ever come looking for me?”
Sadness flickered across Sister Nhã’s face, then disappeared, almost too quickly for Phong to catch it. “I’m sorry, Son. But wherever your parents are, they must be thinking about you.”
“They don’t want me. They threw me away, Dì!”
“Please . . . don’t think like that. The fact that you were put inside a bag and hung on the tree branch showed that the person who’d brought you to me cared about you very much. And the war . . . it was terrible.”
“My father . . . you think he’s American? People called me Mỹ đen all the time. I hate it.”
“Your father must be a beautiful man. You have his skin, his hair.” She untangled his curls. “When I sold postcards in Sài Gòn . . . to raise money for our orphanage, quite a few Black soldiers bought from me. Some told me to keep the change. Your father could have been one of them, Phong.”
“They were that nice? What did they look like?”
“Most of them were very young. Some had the same skin color as you, some were much darker. Some were friendly toward me, but others suspected that I was a Communist in disguise and that I could be hiding a hand grenade under my clothing. They pointed their guns at me or told me to go away. They were just boys, you know . . . Boys who were scared of the war as much as I was.”
He tried to imagine his father, but any image that came to his mind was blurry, as if concealed by layers of mist. He’d been hoping that his father was a nice man but he wasn’t sure now.
Sister Nhã opened another envelope and gave him two pictures. One showed a large Bodhi tree and the gate of Phú Long Orphanage. In the second photo, three women and a group of children stood, beaming at him. “That’s you,” she said, pointing at a tiny boy. Phong studied the picture. How happy he’d looked. Sister Nhã, too. Dressed in her headscarf and long robe, she appeared so young and full of life. He wished they would all come back to the orphanage and be a family again.
He spotted Miềng in the photo and wondered whether she would ever come back. Sister Nhã had brought Miềng along from the orphanage too. When she was fifteen, Miềng ran away with a married man, taking all of the savings Sister Nhã had buried under the bed.
“Do you know where they are now?” He pointed at the people in the picture, squinting as he tried to recall a face or a name, but nothing. He’d just been a three-year-old baby when he was ripped away from the safe cocoon of the orphanage.
“Some of the children should be with their relatives,” Sister Nhã said. “Before Sài Gòn collapsed, we didn’t have any money left so I wrote to mothers who had left their children with us. We also put up notices for adoptions.”
As young as Phong was, he understood that Sister Nhã had no way of contacting his relatives, and Vietnamese families didn’t want to adopt Black children anyway. He and Miềng were two Black kids from the orphanage.
“The other nuns went back to their families, but I came here so the three of us could stay together.” Sister Nhã’s eyes were distant. “I hadn’t done any farming before in my life, so I had a lot to learn.”
“I am sorry you are stuck with me, Dì.”
“Don’t ever say that.” Sister Nhã’s voice was stern. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You’re God’s gift.”
Phong wiped a tear from his eye. God must be real for someone as kind as Sister Nhã to exist.
He filled the cup again and insisted that Sister Nhã finish it. He told himself he had to take care of her better.
“Dì . . .” he cleared his throat. “There’s something I don’t understand . . . I get it that everyone around us here is having a hard time, but why do so many people hate us?”
“Oh, they don’t hate us, Son.” Sister Nhã looked at the pictures again, her eyes lit up with nostalgia. Then she carefully returned the pictures to the envelope. “The authorities associate us with the enemy, so people who are not Christian stay away from us to avoid trouble. If our neighbors get upset at us, it’s because they need to take their anger out on someone. Some of them used to have privileged lives, living in villas, owning cars. All of a sudden everything they had was taken away, they were branded capitalists, and had to leave their homes.” She explained that the war had ended nine years earlier, but the fighting hadn’t stopped: the government had been sending people to reeducation camps and New Economic Zones, to turn remnants of the old regime into good citizens. The terrible embargo imposed by the U.S. made life extra-difficult and people resentful.
Phong didn’t understand everything his guardian was saying but he recalled how loud their closest neighbors—a mother and her two daughters—had screeched when they found leeches clinging to their calves after returning from the field. He would never forget those women’s sullen faces later that night as they squatted on the ground in the common hall alongside Sister Nhã and everyone else to sing songs praising the new government. During such meetings, while he was being bitten by mosquitoes, government officials passionately preached about everyone’s responsibility to rebuild the country through their labor, how they had to fight Việt Nam’s food shortage by farming empty lands, how evil the American imperialists were. Such speeches, together with daily radio broadcasts about the American transgressions, instilled in Phong a sense of guilt, a constant reminder that he was born out of a wrongful act. He was sure that such speeches and broadcasts made his neighbors avoid him more.
Sister Nhã sighed. “You see, we should always look past people’s actions and try to understand their reasons. Your parents . . . they must have had reasons to be apart from you. I hope their circumstances have changed, and they can now take care of you.”
“But how will I find them, Dì?”
“God will show you the way.” The nun lifted her rosary off her head and placed it around his neck. “Put yourself in God’s love.”
He touched the shiny wooden beads, his guardian’s most precious belonging. He could lose the chain or break it when climbing trees. “I can’t, Dì . . .”
“From now on, you wear it. God will protect you. Don’t forget to pray every day, my son.”
Phong had always thought that Sister Nhã loved him too much to leave him alone in the world, so when she died he hung on to her so tight his neighbors had to disentangle them and pull him away. “Dì,” he screamed as the nun’s body—wrapped in a straw mat—was being lowered into a freshly dug rectangular hole. He launched himself toward her as the neighbors held him back. He did not want to let the ground swallow his Dì and take her away from him. She would be too cold under the dark earth; they hadn’t been able to afford a coffin.
It rained hard and long after Sister Nhã’s burial. As Phong howled, thunder rumbled in the distance. As he beat his fists against the bed that he and his guardian once shared, lightning flashed, tearing the dark sky into a million pieces.
Once Phong’s tears had dried and everything became quiet, he learned the weight and depth of sorrow. He understood the true meaning of loneliness; it ate at his core the way termites ground away their meager furniture.
He set up an altar for Sister Nhã, lit a small candle, prayed to God to bring her soul to heaven, and to keep him safe on earth. He asked if he should try to escape; he had nothing left, his only hope was to find his parents. His neighbors had given him some food but he knew they would soon return to their own struggles. Several days later, Sister Nhã appeared in his dream. “Go back to the orphanage,” she told him. “Perhaps your mother has returned to look for you.”
He thought he wouldn’t be able to leave, but he managed. Perhaps the guards took pity on him and ignored it when they saw him slip away. He saw no pity, though, on the faces of the people at a bustling market he ventured into after a day of walking. Some ruffled his curly hair and pulled his ear. Some laughed at him, chanting, “Mỹ lai, Mỹ lai, mười hai lỗ đít,” calling him an Amerasian with twelve assholes. One man kicked him for no reason and told him, “Hey you, Black American. You lost the war, why don’t you fucking go home?”
People had said these things to him before, but Sister Nhã had always been there to shield him from their venomous words. Without her, those insults felt like knives that slashed him open. A deep anger within him grew, like a flame that burned strong, its heat making him fearless. He started stealing: some peanuts, an apple, an orange, an egg—which he ate raw. That night, as he sank his tired body into a pile of dry rice straw a seller had left behind, he recalled how Sister Nhã had made animals out of straw for him to play, how she’d woven a straw hat for him, and the many meals she’d cooked with straws. His tears mingled with the faint scent of the rice harvest, and he promised Sister Nhã he would survive, for both himself, and for her. He brought her rosary chain and letters to his face, inhaled her love, and repeated in his head the story she’d told him.
The next day, he succeeded at pickpocketing. He held the money tight in his palm and ran from the market, his victim—the man who’d kicked him—chasing. Phong’s sandals had been broken and he was barefoot. As pebbles dug into his skin, the pain made him more determined. He ran faster.
After a long while, he slowed down. No soul was in sight. Only trees and birds that sang for him their comforting words. He let their songs lead him forward. He found a highway where a truck driver gave him a lift to Hóc Môn. As he stood in front of the Phú Long Orphanage, he gazed at the Bodhi tree, at its many branches and hanging roots. He imagined his mother reaching up, tying a sedge bag onto a branch. He heard his own cries as his mother walked away, not looking back.
The orphanage had been taken over by the army and the sight of soldiers made him shrink back like a snail withdrawing into its shell. But he gathered his courage and lingered outside, hoping he might run into his mother. It took him nearly a week to realize how ridiculous he was: he didn’t even know what his mother looked like.
He wandered to Sài Gòn and became a bụi đời, the dust of life. He hated the term, for it referred to all homeless people, as if to erase them of their own identities. Many bụi đời he knew were Amerasians. Like them, Phong slept on the street, fought for food, and stole. He joined a gang. After years of living wild like this, he broke into a house and took a bicycle. He was caught and sent to a reeducation camp high up in the mountains of Lâm Đồng.
On his first day at the camp, he was told that he was cặn bã xã hội—dreg of society that had to be reeducated by hard labor. Several Amerasians were in the camp with him, and others were criminals or former soldiers who had fought against the Communists. There were harsh rules they all had to follow. Anyone who tried to escape would be shot.
By now, at fifteen, he no longer looked like a child. His skin had been roasted even darker by the sun, his arms were muscled, his hair thick and curly. He was expected to work as much as an adult. Together with the others, he cut down trees, hoed, and dug, turning dry and rocky areas into cultivable fields able to grow manioc and sweet potatoes. His stomach constantly moaned for food, too greedy for the single bowl of rice and the few strings of vegetables that he received at each meal. Around him, people collapsed, dying from the different illnesses that swept through the camp. He caught malaria a few times and was lucky to survive.
Working on the land made him miss Sister Nhã even more. He felt he’d failed her by living life the way he had. He no longer prayed and had lost her rosary chain, her letters, as well as the pictures she’d given him. Gone were the beacons that would lead him to his parents. He swore that if he was given another chance, he would lead a good life, a life worthy of his guardian’s love and faith in him; he would try harder to blend into the Vietnamese society; he would stay away from gangs and troublemakers.
Released from the reeducation camp at seventeen, he walked to the closest city, Đà Lạt, and chose its streets to be his home. The cooler weather here suited him, as well as the lonely lakes and rolling hills covered in pine trees. He felt closer to his father staying here, as Đà Lạt used to be the holiday resort for the French and the Americans. He honored his promise to Sister Nhã’s soul by earning his meals instead of stealing them. He shined people’s shoes, collected recyclable garbage to sell, sold cigarettes and soft drinks, and worked as a porter and laborer. He slept in parks and on pavements until a year later, when a long-distance bus driver recruited him as a helper. At last he earned enough money to move into a small room that he shared with four other men.
He spent the next two years dangling his body out of the racing bus, calling out to potential customers, pulling them on board. Two years fighting against thieves who blended in with travelers. Two years helping the driver and his customers smuggle goods by hiding them above, under, and inside the bus. Two years carrying bags of rice, corn, manioc, and sweet potatoes heavier than his own body. He didn’t mind the hard work, but watching families travel together tore at his heart. In their union, he saw himself as a solitary bird without feathers or a nest, unable to fly and having nowhere to return to. He observed the mothers around him, wondering what it would take for them to abandon their own child. He watched the women who were old enough to be his mother, asking silently if he had been a part of their life.
His buses made frequent trips to the Mekong Delta and occasionally to other cities. One morning, he was leaving the bus station in Hồ Chí Minh City, heading for his favorite coffee shop, his twenty-year-old body exhausted, when he heard a voice, “Phong ơi, Phong.” He swirled around, stunned at the sound of his name. He’d grown used to being nameless. He was no longer a bụi đời—the dust of life—for he could rent a room; but his boss and his roommates all called him Mỹ đen—Black American. The only people who called him by his name were other Amerasians, but he hadn’t seen any of them for a long while. Some of them were still gangsters, and he’d been staying away from them to avoid trouble, and to focus on his plan. He had decided that once he had enough money, he’d buy a patch of land, and grow his own food. During his years with Sister Nhã, he’d realized that plants and nature always offered him comfort, and were in fact kinder than most people.
“Phong ơi!” The sound of his name swam to him again through the clinking bells of cyclos and the rumblings of buses that were making their way into the station. He blinked, shielded his eyes against sunlight with his palm. The person who called was a middle-aged woman. She avoided a bicycle and hurried toward him.
“Phong . . .” She continued to call, her voice pitched, as if she was breathless.
“How do you know my name?” He stared at her as she got closer. Her skin was fair, her hair permed, and a pair of gold earrings dangled from her ears. She looked too glamorous to be hanging out at a bus station.
She grabbed him by the arm. “My son . . .” She pulled him into her and buried her face into his chest. “Má xin lỗi con, Phong ơi,” her voice trembled. She’d called herself Mother, offered her apologies. When she looked up at him, tears had filled her eyes. “I . . . I gave you away when you were a baby. I am so, so sorry.”
Her words sounded as if they had traveled from another world, so far away that they’d lost their meaning when they reached him. “Cô . . . cô vừa nói gì?” He asked what she’d just said, addressing her as Auntie. He stepped away from her, looking her up and down. She was around forty years old. Old enough to be his mother.
“Too many people here.” She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and gestured toward those who were staring at them from the sidewalk and eateries. “Come with me and I’ll show you something. Then you’ll believe me.” She turned, waved for a cyclo.
“You just said you’re my mother?” He wanted to shake her until she told him the truth.
“Yes. That’s right, Son.” She pulled his arm and climbed onto the cyclo. He clambered in after her.
She gave an address to the cyclo driver who craned forward and peddled them along.
“If you’re my mother, where did you leave me? In front of what orphanage?” He asked, breathless. If she answered Phú Long, he’d ask about his birthmark. He wondered how she’d known his bus schedule. Had she been waiting at the station for a long time, to be able to talk to him?
“Shhh.” She cried again, blowing her nose into her handkerchief. “Wait until you see the things I want to show you, Son. Then you’ll understand.”
He was impatient but the woman buried her face into her palm. Her shoulders shook. Her suppressed cries stirred something deep inside of Phong. The high walls that he’d erected to protect himself started crumbling, leaving him bare. The woman reached for his hand and her warmth permeated his fingers; the warmth he’d dreamt of during the countless nights these past eight years, cold wind his only company. The tremors of the woman’s body traveled to his, and he shuddered. Something buckled, and the tears he’d held back for years broke. They rolled down his face, stinging his eyes, blurring his vision. He had thought he would never forgive his mother, but at that moment he decided if the woman could prove that she was his Má, he would help her overcome the ghosts of her past, so that they could build a future together.
The cyclo screeched to a stop. They’d arrived in front of a two-story house. A middle-aged man opened the gate, beaming, inviting him inside. As he sat on a wooden sofa, the man whispered to the woman and gave her a thick envelope. Phong stood up when she turned and hurried out to the street.
“Má . . .” Without thinking, the word “Mother” tumbled out of his mouth.
The woman disappeared behind the gate.
The man smiled at him. “Sit down, Phong. I know your favorite drink and I’ve prepared it for you.” He stirred a glass and the smell of coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk filled Phong with an intense thirst.
He stepped away. “Who’s that woman and who the hell are you?”
“Relax, Son. My name is Khuất. Welcome to our home.” The man gestured toward the high walls decorated with large paintings, the solid wooden furniture, the motorbike. Phong’s eyes lingered on a grand altar with the statue of Jesus Christ.
The man poured tea into his egg-shaped cup. “That woman, forget about her . . . She has no relation to you. Whatever she said was just her way to convince you to come here. You want to hear the truth? I’m not related to you, either. But my wife and I, we want you to be our son. We asked that woman to find you and bring you here.”
The muscles in Phong’s stomach clenched. How foolish of him to let the woman trick him with her reptilian cá sấu tears. Oh, he wanted to find her, shake her, and shout at her. She must have spied on him as he visited the coffee shop near the bus station. How cruel of her to have played on his deep yearning for his mother’s love.
Phong headed for the door. If he hurried, he would make it back before his bus returned to Đà Lạt.
During the next many years, Phong would often reflect on this moment and wish he had walked away. What happened next would change his entire life.
“Can’t you just stop and listen to what I have to say first?” The man stepped toward Phong and gave him a faded photograph. “My friend . . . His name was Phi-lịp, but I called him Thằng Khờ because he was so naïve about the war.”
Phong stared at the foreign man in the photo. A Black soldier who stood on the bank of a rice field, a metal helmet on his head, a gun in his hand.
“He was very kind to me.” Mr. Khuất’s voice trembled. “He saved my life, but the fucking war killed him. . . . That’s why I need to help a Black person, to honor him. I know about the discrimination people like you have been facing and I detest it.” Mr. Khuất lowered his voice. “Phong . . . I’ve asked many people about you. You’ve been through a lot, and you work hard. I like that. You see . . . I’m looking for a young man to adopt. My wife and I . . . we tried for years, but she could only bear us two daughters. And you know what our old proverb says. Nhất nam viết hữu, thập nữ viết vô—a son is a child, ten daughters equal none. Our daughters will belong to their husbands’ families once they marry . . .”
“You want to adopt me?” It was the most ridiculous thing Phong had heard; he had to laugh. “And how do you even know my name?”
“Haven’t you heard the saying ‘Có tiền mua tiên cũng được’? We can buy everything with money, even fairies.” Mr. Khuất winked. “I have eyes and ears at the bus station and around town. I’ve looked into many cases of boys like you and know you’ll be a good fit for our family. Now, it’s up to you to decide, but once you walk out that door, I won’t ever want to see you again. I have several people on my list and any one of them would die to have a chance to live with us. The chosen person will have his own room upstairs. A bedroom of your own, imagine that. You could eat all your meals with us. There would be no need for you to work anymore.”
“But có đi có lại. What would I need to do in return? Clean your house, be your servant?”
“No . . . nothing like that.” Mr. Khuất chuckled. “Just be good company, that’s all I ask. As for the cooking and cleaning, you won’t even have to lift your little finger. My wife is excellent at it. So what do you say, eh? Don’t you want to give this a try? Stay for a couple of days, enjoy our home and hospitality. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
Phong wanted to leave right then. He didn’t believe Mr. Khuất’s story about his Black friend, but he wasn’t sure he even cared. The idea of a bed, and his own room, was too tempting. He couldn’t help comparing this spacious house to the stuffiness of his shared room, so small that he and his roommates had to roll up their sleeping straw mats during the day to make space for them to move around. Their toilet was a hole dug in the small backyard. Whenever Phong lay down to sleep, he would smell the stench of shit and hear the buzzing of flies.
He looked at the iced coffee which Mr. Khuất had placed on the table in front of him, and his thirst begged him to take a sip. When he was still debating what to do, a middle-aged woman descended the staircase, smiling broadly. As she told him how happy she was to meet him, he noticed that she was wearing a rosary chain around her neck. Like Sister Nhã.
The rosary chain and the altar made him stay. He felt he had come to the home of God and God would help protect him.
That night, Mrs. Khuất welcomed Phong with a sumptuous dinner. Her two daughters, one older than Phong and the other younger, didn’t say much, even though Mr. Khuất kept urging them to talk. Phong was given a room on the second floor, furnished with a wooden bed three times the size of his straw mat. It was the first time he had ever slept on a mattress. He wasn’t used to its softness, though, so during the night he got a pillow and moved down to the floor, where the cool tiles felt like home against his naked back. In the morning, he grinned from ear to ear as he practiced aiming his pee at the gleaming belly of the white Western toilet. Later, he stood in the shower, his eyes closed as the warm droplets poured down on him. For the first time in his life, he didn’t have to scoop up water from a bucket to wash himself.
Phong thought he would stay only one day or two—to find out more about the Khuấts and their real reasons for bringing him here—but the comfort of their home felt like the embrace of the mother he’d always wanted. The ways Mrs. Khuất took care of him reminded him of Sister Nhã. She cooked for him every day and bought him new clothes. She washed and ironed his pants and shirts. As he admired himself—a well-dressed young man—in the mirror, he felt grateful. He tried to help with household chores but she told him he only needed to clean his room.
Mr. Khuất went to work during the day and his daughters to school, and Phong felt as if the house belonged to him. There was a video cassette player in his room, together with more than twenty movies. These movies took Phong to America—a country of magnificent landscapes, modern cities, horse-galloping cowboys, and girls so beautiful that they visited him while he slept. He longed to set foot in America, if only once in his life.
On the fifth night of Phong’s stay, when he was contemplating going back to the bus station to send a message to his boss, Mr. Khuất came into his room, waving sheets of papers in his hand. “Phong, guess what? By pure chance, I’ve just discovered your luck! Amerasians like you can now immigrate to America.”
Phong sat up in his bed. The night before, he’d dreamt about kissing an American girl. Her neck smelled of roses, unlike the sweat of the girls he’d been with.
“It’s complicated and expensive to put together your paperwork, but I’ll help you take care of it.” Mr. Khuất explained that to be able to leave, Phong needed to apply first for a passport and an exit permit from the Vietnamese authorities, then an entry visa into the U.S. He patted Phong’s shoulder. “Life in America is good, but it won’t be easy at first. You’ll need a family to take care of you. You’ll need someone who is fluent in English, like me, to help you.” He smiled at Phong. “If you want, we can all go, as a family. American people are kind, you see? They sympathize with people like you. Their government approved something called the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which allows Amerasians to bring families along.”
“But we aren’t family.” Phong walked away from the bed. He’d been dazzled by the chance to immigrate to America, but now his mind was clear, like the sky after a hard rain: this family had brought him here to use him as their ticket to go to America. They’d let him watch American films to tempt him. He knew plenty of people who were desperate to leave; some had fled in fishing boats, entrusting their lives to the rolling waves of the big oceans. He’d once thought about joining them, but had no gold to pay for such a trip.
“Don’t you worry,” said Mr. Khuất. “The truth is that some Vietnamese families adopted Amerasians years ago, and they have been able to go to America under the Amerasian Homecoming Act. And I know people who have just gotten together with con lai like you and left together. We won’t be the first.”
Phong couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How could he go along with such serious lies that this family had adopted him? He’d had enough troubles with the authorities. Besides, he’d promised Sister Nhã that he would live an honest life.
Mr. Khuất pushed a small silk bag into Phong’s hand. “Three rings. That’s one and a half gold tael! For you to buy whatever you need to prepare for our trip to America. When we get there, I’ll give you more.”
Phong looked into the bag. The gold rings met his eyes. Sister Nhã had saved all her life and everything she had was worth less than two rings.
“See how well I take care of you?” Mr. Khuất beamed. “As I said, the paperwork won’t be easy, but I know people. . . They can help register you, backdated, into our family book, so it looks like you were adopted into our family a long time ago.”
Phong shook his head. He would need to lie to the authorities who might beat him and imprison him. He opened his mouth. “But—”
“There’s no ‘but,’ Phong. Remember, you’re entitled to bring family members along. You are a child of America and Americans want you home.” Mr. Khuất gestured around the room. “Look at this beautiful house. I earned it with my clever mind. I work as a private English teacher now, but during the war I made my fortune by supplying sandbags to the American army. I know how Americans think. I walk with my wooden sandals in their stomachs, as our proverb says. I know them inside out. I’ve studied their rules, and I wouldn’t propose for us to go to America if it wasn’t feasible.” He squeezed Phong’s shoulders. “Aren’t you excited that we’ll all have a new beginning in America? That we can officially be a family? That I can help you there with my English?”
“But you have everything here. Why leave?”
“I can’t begin to tell you what the Communists did to us since the fall of Sài Gòn.” A frown deepened on Mr. Khuất’s forehead. “They took away our savings in the banks. They nationalized our factory and stole our other houses. Things are going to get worse, and I can’t let my daughters live under such oppression. All we want is to live in freedom. Would you help us, Son?” Mr. Khuất started calling Phong “Son,” as if it was the most natural thing.
When Phong didn’t answer, the man sighed. “Just hold on to the gold while you think about it. And don’t forget, in America we’ll help you find your father. We’ll continue to be your family. You don’t have to be alone ever again.”
That night, instead of sleeping, Phong stood next to the window, looking up to the black sky, the gold in the nest of his palm. If he’d had such fortune before, he could have saved Sister Nhã.
He couldn’t believe that from a child of dust he had been turned into a person of gold. “You are a child of America and Americans want you home.” The words of Mr. Khuất rang in his ears. Even if the man had lied time and time again, Phong wanted to believe in these words.
The next morning, Phong headed to the 30/4 Reunification Park, where many Amerasians hung out. He hadn’t been there for years and the park was emptier than he remembered. It took him a while to find several trẻ lai. They told him that it was true: trẻ lai could now go to America based on their non-Vietnamese features. As many mothers of trẻ lai had abandoned them or destroyed their papers out of fear of punishment from the Communists, trẻ lai could claim anyone as their family and bring them along.
Two of Phong’s friends, who were older than him, had already been approached by rich families who wanted them to marry their daughters and bring the whole family to America. Those his age or younger had received offers to be adopted by families. The people he talked to warned Phong that even though it was possible for them to leave, the paperwork could take years. Procedures were complicated, fees expensive, bribes had to be paid, and too many people were applying. For an illiterate, penniless person like Phong, it would almost be impossible, unless he found those who could help.
His friends told him that the gold offered by Mr. Khuất was too little, and that he should ask for more or find a different family. Five taels of gold in advance would be the market price.
Walking back to the Khuấts’ house, Phong saw people sleeping on the streets, beggars stretching their palms, pleading to passersby. Boys his age bent their backs low in the sun, shining shoes for rich men. He didn’t want to be homeless ever again. Here was his chance to leave for a better future and he had to grab it. He couldn’t do it on his own, and Mr. Khuất seemed to know how to get him to America.
That night, Phong told Mr. Khuất his friends were getting five taels of gold. The man said “I’ll give you another ring, for two taels in advance, then three taels when we get there,” and Phong nodded.
During the next months, Mr. Khuất worked hard in preparing Phong and his family for the exit permit interview and entry visa interview. He staged scenes for their family photos which he brought to Chợ Lớn Market in the Chinese Quarters. A week later, he showed Phong the same photos, now faded, as if they had been taken years ago.
Mr. Khuất also wrote down many possible questions and answers about them being a family and demanded everyone to learn them by heart. He ran practice sessions with Phong. The man was determined not to fail and his confidence calmed Phong’s anxiety.
Once their exit permit applications had been submitted, Phong kept himself busy with new exercise routines: he ran up and down the staircase and did pushups; he lifted weights, using blocks of bricks. And he found himself a job: stringing bamboo curtains for a cooperative. As he squatted on the floor of his room, piercing the cut-up bamboo pieces with thin metal wire then connecting them into long strings, he imagined the homes where his curtains would travel to. Homes filled with good conversations and laughter. He was determined to build a home like that for himself. He’d started calling Mrs. Khuất and Mr. Khuất “Mother” and “Father” so that he would pretend better in the interviews, but didn’t feel comfortable with it. As much as he yearned to have parents, parenthood couldn’t be bought with money. It had to be earned and proven over time, and it certainly couldn’t be based on lies.
But he lied and passed the exit permit interview.
On the day of their American visa interviews, Phong was called in first, then Mr. Khuất, and finally Mrs. Khuất. The visa officer was friendly toward Phong, and he thought he did very well.
That night, loud noises woke Phong up. He tiptoed downstairs toward Mr. and Mrs. Khuất’s room. They were arguing. By eavesdropping, he learned that when the visa officer had challenged some answers from Mrs. Khuất, she got frightened and broke down.
“You’re a foolish woman,” shouted Mr. Khuất.
“All of his questions, they made me feel like a criminal.” Mrs. Khuất wailed.
“Now you’ll make us rot in this hellhole. Damn you!”
“How can you commit to such a serious lie when you are a Catholic? Don’t you think God will judge you?”
“God knows that I need to get us and our daughters out of this shithole. He will not judge.”
The shouting got louder. Phong covered his ears. Back in his bed, he lay awake until the morning. He hoped they’d stop fighting. He felt sorry for Mrs. Khuất.
He thought Mrs. Khuất cared for him, too, but the day they learned that their visa applications failed, she told him to return the gold rings, pack his things and leave. Her eyes were as cold as those of the fish she’d often brought home and butchered for dinner.
“It’s not my fault, I did my best,” Phong told Mr. Khuất, who was sitting at the table, reading a newspaper.
The man turned the page and kept reading.
Phong trembled with rage. His dream of going to America had just been shattered. He went upstairs to collect his clothes. Standing next to the window, he looked into the silk bag. The four gold rings gleamed their promise under sunlight. He’d taken them to a gold shop to check if they were real; he knew the Khuấts were cheaters. “It’s pure gold, twenty-four karat,” the goldsmith had announced, then asked, “Where did you steal these? Want to sell them to me? Best price in town.”
Now, Phong dropped the silk bag into the chest pocket of his T-shirt. The Khuấts had paid him so that he’d lie on their behalf, which he had done to his best ability. He’d fulfilled his part of the deal.
Downstairs, he headed for the door, only to see it blocked. Mr. Khuất stood there, a large wooden stick in his hands. “Return us the gold,” the man pointed his weapon at Phong. “You only had one task to do, to convince those American people, but you failed. Yes, you did! ”
“You destroyed my chance for a better life, and now you blame me?” Phong slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder and rolled up the sleeves of his T-shirt to show off his muscular upper arms. “You said you had asked many people about me, yes? So you must know that I love to teach those I hate some lessons.”