Chapter 1 -

LIFE IS BUT A PLAY

It’s a long, long way from Vietnam to middle-America if measured in miles. If measured in heartbeats - of pleasure and pain, of love and hate, of hope and despair, of laughter shared and tears fallen - it’s much, much farther. I hadn’t thought back to my past much at all, not for many years. Well, maybe in those quiet moments between wakefulness and sleep when I am weakest, when my thoughts have a will of their own. Otherwise, I have avoided the pain of dwelling on what seems now to have been another life.

...So, as the curtain of time opens on my past, there is my life: Beatings at home with my ‘real’ family in Saigon, on the one hand, and neglect, indifference and torment with my aunts and grandmother in the country, on the other hand. It’s really not much of a choice for a child. And it will only get worse before it gets better.

Though there is no way to understand it as a young girl, I simply have to accept the fact with melancholy resignation that I am stuck in some bizarre game of ping-pong - and I am the ball...

...Aunt Xu waits for me, her form silhouetted in the road just ahead. Even in the fading light, I can make out the look of unspent fury on her face, hands behind her back as though to surprise me with what lay concealed there.
But I won’t be surprised. I’ve been here before...

As I approach within striking distance, the stick suddenly appears, and aunt Xu lays into me with all the energy that her unspent fury can muster.
“This is what you deserve,” she spits, as the stick descends again and again. And again, tears will not change my fate. “I’ll give you something to remember, you little...”

It would appear to any onlooker that this little seven year old girl has done something terribly, terribly wrong and somehow brought shame and disgrace upon the family. But each stinging blow is only meant to remind me that I have gotten dirty once again playing in the forest - a heinous crime that must not be overlooked.
***

... Sometimes we got along well enough, but other times Eliza would become very demanding, and fully expected the ‘new kid’ in the house to comply with her wishes. If I refused to give in to her will, which, stubbornly, was often the case, Eliza would show her nasty side, and make threats.
“If you don’t do what I say, Phin, you’ll be sorry. I’ll tell my grandma that you...” she would go on, inventing some misdeed that she would report to my great aunt - her grandmother - and that was sure to bring me trouble.
But trouble and I were no strangers to one another. I had had enough trouble already in my young life to know exactly what it was. And I was just stubborn enough to ask for more.

Chapter 3 - THE DRAGON AWAKES

At the age of thirteen, there were stirrings within me. It wasn't just the physical changes that a young girl experiences - I began to think for myself, and, in spite of my circumstances and upbringing, I was beginning to find within me the will and the strength to assert myself. The dragon was beginning to awaken.

In spite of the strain and emotional distance that I continually struggled with, I decided at that point that my heart really was with my family. I made a decision for myself: I was going home!

And nobody was going to talk me out of it...

***

"Yes, sir, I can do it," I confidently announced to the construction boss.
"I'm used to hard work, and I'm reliable. You won't regret hiring me."

It was a bold move for a thirteen-year-old girl to get work with a construction company in Saigon, but they hired me as a helper on the construction of a hotel on Tran Hung Dao, carrying lumber and cleaning up paint on windows and trim-work. But that wasn't nearly enough to meet the financial needs of either myself or my family. I also took part-time work babysitting for a neighbor.

Yes, I was home again. But I learned that home isn't only where your heart is - it's where your money is, too.

As a thirteen-year-old girl, I was already beginning to feel the real weight of financial responsibility for my family, along with anger, frustration, resentment and disappointment. Had the first major decision of my life - to come home again - been the right decision? And what is 'right' in a situation like mine? I didn't know. All I knew is that, for once, the decision had been mine alone, and now I would make the best of it.

The money I made did help keep things together for my broken family, and I was just able to sew some clothes and acquire a few personal things. I was growing up fast in a harsh reality, and I was forging an inner strength that I would need to draw on many times in my life - but it was a country and a time and a circumstance that demanded nothing less of me.

Chapter 5 - LOVE IS A MINEFIELD

I suppose it was only a matter of time, working in the bar and meeting so many different men, that I would find myself being attracted to one man in particular. I suppose it could have been a Vietnamese man. But I had gotten used to the 'hairy' American GI's. No more crossing the street to avoid one, not now. So, the inevitable finally did happen.

His name was Richard K.. He was a nice guy, a handsome Airforce man, and my heart would flutter whenever he came to sit with me. Of course there were a lot of other girls who liked Richard - a fact that was certainly not lost on him - and I have to admit to feeling some jealousy when other girls were around him. When he was too busy to come to the bar and see me, I actually missed him. My disappointment would be so painfully obvious that Richard's friends would sometimes buy me drinks to console me.

Was I in love? I thought so at the time. Up to that time in my life, I had no experience with love and romance - what did I know? Romance, love, infatuation... they were all just words attached to feelings that I hadn't experienced yet - I had no way to distinguish between them. No, this was not love. It would be a while, in fact, before I really felt love - that deep,
abiding love that we all hope for...

Chapter 6 -

WAR COMES TO SAIGON

(1968 - The Tet Offensive)

New Year’s celebration is supposed to be a happy time. Though my country was at war with the North, and had been for some time, it was only the presence of military uniforms in Saigon that actually brought the war home to many of us. To us, though, they were still mostly just ‘uniforms’. For the most part, actual war seemed a distant thing to us there in Saigon. It was something that was happening there - not here.

Many had expected a thirty-six hour cease-fire to be in effect between North and South. But that wasn’t to be.

...“Phin,” my mother was saying, in a panicked, anxious voice, “the Communists are bombing Saigon!”It took a moment for me to register what she was telling me. I shook my head to clear the fog. “No,” I said, in disbelief. “This can’t be right.” I couldn’t comprehend the reality of what I was being told, and my mind rebelled. Saigon was my home... This couldn’t be happening...I shook my head again in the ominous silence, hoping that it was just a bad dream and that I would wake up soon... But what I had heard wasn’t a dream. No. It was a nightmare, but I was not asleep.

... Now that the gruesome war was literally exploding in our faces, it seemed that the VC were everywhere. Naturally, that realization brought with it the fear that the Americans themselves would feel a need to bomb our own neighborhoods, to clear out ‘Charlie’ - their name for the VC enemy. It was a terrible, sobering reality. Any of us could become a target. Where could we possibly go now in this nightmare to find refuge or to feel safe?...

The Communists had not yet taken over the city, but the aftermath of destruction was evident everywhere, as many buildings and homes lay in ruins. The smell of death hung in the air with the ever present smoke and ash.

With dread we walked towards our home that day, losing hope as our steps took us past smoldering piles of rubble that had once been homes and businesses. Few homes were left standing in our old neighborhood, and as we turned the corner onto our street, we could see that no houses remained, only piles of stone, smoldering wood, and ashes that had once been the possessions and treasures of those who had lived there. Our worst fears were soon realized as we saw that our house, too, had been all but obliterated.

Our dog was there - dead - now a charred sentry who had bravely, though in futility, stood guard to the end.

Together - in silence, as there were no words adequate to describe what we felt - we began to move stones and sift through the ruins of what had just days earlier been our home, our lives. Our clothes, our furniture, everything, had been destroyed. The only legacy to our lives there that was left intact was a couple of blackened but still usable metal pans...

We left the site, finally, and walked somberly to the houseboat - or to where we hoped we would find it. It, too, was gone. Only small scraps of wood were left to prove that we had ever had a boat. We had indeed lost everything!

***

I had been in the habit of bringing food to my father at the police station under the Y Bridge, but, on this trip, it was no longer the same familiar scene that greeted me there. The station had been spared, and stood there still, but now American soldiers were camped just a few hundred feet away. This was but one of many changes that seemed to have occurred in so little time, as the war had been brought right to my doorstep.

I didn’t know it then, but the strategic Y Bridge, gateway to the downtown core of South Saigon, would itself be the focus of a fierce second attack on May 7 of that year, and many neighborhoods would not be spared that second wave of death and destruction...

Nearing that camp then, I suddenly began to comprehend the reality and the ugliness of the war that had finally found me - how it had taken its toll, not only for us, but also for the American soldiers who had witnessed the death of so many of their comrades. I thought about how terrible it must have been for many of them, living with the horrific, indelible images of their own buddies wounded and dying around them. And now their blood had been spilled in Saigon, and in defense of the nearby Tan Son Nhut airbase itself.

Many of them were so young - too young to die in a conflict that was so far from their own shores. I began to have a whole new appreciation for those American GIs. They weren’t the ‘strange, hairy men’, just customers in a bar, anymore. They were brave, frightened young men who were literally giving their lives for me. It was a sobering and heart-breaking realization.
***