Goodbye, Vietnam (5 page)

“Perhaps we should go down below,” my mother suggested. I knew she wanted to be close to my father. I agreed. I didn’t want to look at all that sea. My grandmother began to move toward the small cabin but Kim’s mother stopped her.

“No, the air in the hold will be stale and close. There are sure to be rats, perhaps carrying disease. Should anything happen to the boat, we would be trapped. The best place to be is where the food is prepared. That way we will be among the first to be served. Kim, you and Mai see if you can help me find the stove.”

I followed Kim, not really wanting to go. I kept looking back over my shoulder so I could make out the shapes of my mother and grandmother. It was dark and we had to move slowly, feeling our way as we went. I had never been on a boat, and the rolling motion felt funny. You put a foot where you thought something solid was but nothing was there to meet you. I could hear the sound of the small waves slapping against the boat, letting us know the water was out there. I tripped over a broken plank in the deck and bumped my head.

“Mai,” Kim called to me, “look.”

When I found her, Kim placed my hands on a large metal can. It was warm to the touch. We could see a grill on top and red embers inside. We called out to the others that we had found the stove.

Kim’s mother was pleased. “Good, we will make a place for ourselves here.”

There was a sound of sputterings and deep coughs from the engine. “Hurry,” Kim’s mother called. “Spread out your things to mark your place. Once the engine starts they will herd everyone aboard and cast off so as not to waste fuel.”

My mother seemed unsure. “It will be better to wait for my husband to choose a place for us.”

But Kim’s mother had already begun to settle into the spot she had chosen. I had never heard a woman give orders except my grandmother, and those were always given in a whining voice, not as a man gives orders. Still, everything Kim’s mother said made sense. I decided to arrange our things as well.

The sounds of the engine grew stronger, stopped, started again, wheezed, stopped. A long silence and then the whole boat shook with the sound of the engine. There were cheers from the shore and excited shouts from the crowd as they all tried to rush up the narrow gangplank at once. As people poured onto the deck, they were herded into the hold.

“Why are they making them go down there?” my
mother asked, worrying that we had made the wrong choice.

“If everyone stays on deck the boat will be unstable,” Kim’s mother said. “People are needed in the hold as ballast. Besides, all the people would not fit on the deck. Now we must be very quiet so we are not made to go below. Once the hold is full, we will be safe.”

The people onshore were desperate to get on deck and would not stop pushing. Suddenly there was a splash, followed by shouts. “My husband!” someone was screaming. “My husband has fallen into the water!” For a moment there was silence, and the movement of the crowd seemed to come to a halt. Then it began again and the woman’s screams were lost in the rush of people crowding onto the boat.

Although I could no longer hear the screams, they echoed back and forth inside my head. I would have run from the boat, but people were pushing in against us from all sides, trying to find a bit of space. Our own space became smaller and smaller. “Lie down,” Kim’s mother told us. We lay down on the deck, hoping to keep enough room so we could stretch out
at night and sleep, but it was no use. There were too many people. I felt someone sitting on my legs and quickly drew them up, losing the little extra space I had. Someone stepped on Thant. He cried out, and when my mother picked him up to comfort him, Thant’s space was lost to us. Soon we were huddled together with barely enough room to move our arms. Still the people came. I felt the breath and smelled the smell of strangers all around me.

The boat had been rocking gently. Now the engine gave a great wheeze, and I felt a lurch as the boat moved away from the wharf and made its way out into the harbor. There were terrible cries from those on the wharf left behind. Once the boat began to move, the jostling for space stopped. The movement of the small ship out into the darkness of the sea silenced everyone. We all held our breath, waiting.

Anh said, “Will the sea stop after a while? Will we fall over the edge?”

“No,” I told her. “There is land on the other side of the sea.” I tried to recall the picture on the postcard the Tien family had sent from the silver city. I heard my grandmother whispering to the duck, trying
to quiet it. I knew from Thant’s light breathing that he was already asleep. The sound of the engine told me my father was watching over the boat. I felt my eyes close.

PART THREE
The Voyage

6

When I opened my eyes it was morning. My legs were cramped from being drawn up all night into so small a space. My hair and clothes felt damp and clammy. It was only a morning sun, but the light danced on the water and the heat felt like the middle of the afternoon. I looked around me. The boat was crowded with awakening people: old people, families with children, young men, people who were traveling alone, people who looked as if they came from the country, as we had, and city people like Kim and
Bac si
Hong. The boat was like a small, crowded village coming to life. In a few places where someone had edged into someone else’s space, polite arguments were going on. People were tying their straw hats on against the sun. Some had little tins of water and were washing themselves. A man was going about collecting from each passenger some rice to be boiled. Babies were crying. Some were being nursed. My grandmother and an old man were standing side by side watching the outline of the land grow fainter and fainter. I tried
to guess at the number of passengers. Forty or fifty, I decided. It was hard to believe that with so many passengers the small boat could stay afloat.

Our father was trying to make his way toward us. With every step he took people had to pull in their legs or shift their body to make room for him to get by. My mother was standing up waiting for him. He took her hand. I had never seen my parents touch in public. My father rested his hand for a moment on each of us—Thant first, then Anh and me, and even our grandmother—as though he could not believe we were actually there in the boat until he had touched us. He nodded politely to Kim and her mother, embarrassed that they should see him show so much emotion. “It will be a wonder if the engine continues to run,” he grumbled. “It must be the first engine that was ever made, and the boat timbers are rotted and waterlogged. What’s more, the man who owns the boat, Captain Muoi, is a fool. This is the only map he has.” Father showed us a page torn from a book. I recognized our country and the South China Sea, even though their names were written in a strange language.

“It must be from an English geography book,” Kim said. “My mother taught me English.”

My grandmother looked at the strange printing, then at Kim as though she were a witch.

A voice boomed out over our heads. Looming above us was the biggest man I had ever seen in my life. He was like a great thick banyan tree. He wore an old cap pushed back on his head with bits of tarnished gold braid stuck here and there. Beneath his cap I could see his head had been shaved. Although he did not appear old, his tanned face was cross-hatched with wrinkles. He looked happy, as though he had something pleasant to tell us. “You are the most fortunate people on earth!” he shouted. “You are under the care of Captain Muoi and you are sailing on the finest ship in the China Sea. You must remember that I am your father while you are on my ship. We will all be one happy family. What belongs to one of us belongs to all. If you hoard food and do not turn it over to our cook, Le Hung, you will be a bad child and your father Captain Muoi will have to punish you.” He pointed an accusing finger at a woman who was washing her baby’s face and hands with a
rag dipped in a small bowl of water. “There will be no washing with the drinking water. Our journey is a thousand miles, and water will be more precious to us than gold. It is only for drinking. A small ration will be given out in the morning to each family. If you are good and obedient children you will find me the kindest father in the world. If not, we feed you to the fishes!” His shoulders heaved as he laughed at his wit. Then he stooped low to clear the cabin door and disappeared inside.

“Has he made the trip to Hong Kong before?” Kim’s mother asked my father.

“I don’t think he’s ever done anything in this boat but carry black market goods up and down the coast. I think he knows nothing about navigating on the sea.” My father saw our worried faces. “Never mind,” he assured us. “We’ll get there safely in spite of Muoi. Now I must go back. The engine needs constant watching.”

The passengers busied themselves with arranging their tiny living space. Mats were unrolled and laid on the deck. Other mats and bits of clothing were supported on sticks to make sun shades. My grandmother was secretly feeding a bit of rice to the duck.
She had already argued with Le Hung, when he had come to collect our food. He was eager to take the duck. “Before I was put in prison for talking too much I was a cook in a restaurant in a town that would swallow ten of your villages,” he said. “I know how a duck should be cooked.”

The grandmother insisted the duck must be saved for the celebration of Tet, which was still many days away. “Can’t you see? The duck is a member of our family,” she told him.

Le Hung laughed loudly at that. He danced lightly across the sprawled bodies on the deck, joking with everyone. He was happy to have escaped.

Bac si
Hong saw that our mother was shy in the presence of so many strangers and tried to make her more comfortable by asking her about our village. At first our mother was embarrassed to be speaking with a
bac si
, who was educated, but after a while she forgot her embarrassment in the pleasure of speaking about our village. Speaking of it brought it closer.

I did not want to talk of the village. I was eager to learn from Kim what Ho Chi Minh City was like. “What did you do in the city?” I asked her. “Are there movies there?” I had heard of such things.

“Yes,” Kim said. “Sometimes we would go to the movies or to a restaurant for dinner. Or we would just walk along the boulevards. But that was before my father died.” She looked away. I saw that there were as many sorrows in the city as there were in the country.

The motion of the boat changed. Instead of the gentle roll that had lulled me to sleep the night before, now the boat pitched and tossed as though it were climbing a hill only to fall down the other side. Anh began to whimper. “My stomach feels funny,” she told our mother. She was not the only one.

An old man who sat on the other side of my mother had bowed to us and introduced himself as Pham Van Quang. “This is my son, Pham Van Tho, and Dao, the wife of my son,” he said. Dao sat quietly with all their possessions heaped around her as though she were eager to hide a fact that could not be hidden. She was soon going to have a baby.

Quang was looking anxiously at his daughter-in-law Dao, whose face was pale and whose arms were wrapped tightly about her body. From time to time she made little moaning noises. The old man apologized to us. “It is the rolling of the boat now that we
are out at sea.” He added softly, “And her condition.”

Late in the afternoon we watched Le Hung start a fire in the oil drum that he used as a stove. A big pot of rice was put on to boil. Cheers went up. Most of the passengers had not eaten in more than a day.

But when Hung threw large handfuls of green kale into a pan and the strong smell of the kale spread over the deck, the passengers began stumbling over one another on their way to lean over the sides of the boat. The sound of their retching sickened others and soon half the passengers were crowded at the railing.

Captain Muoi shouted, “Hung, they haven’t even tasted your dinner and already they are ill. You will save us a lot of food.” His loud laughter only made the sick passengers feel worse.

Dao made two trips to the boat’s railing. Anh had gone once with our mother. I found that if I sat very still and thought hard about something besides food I could keep myself from being sick. Kim’s mother was handing out pills. She offered one to my mother and to Anh. “This will take away the sickness,” she explained. Our grandmother snatched the pill from Mother and held it in her hand, studying it. I knew
she was embarrassed not to have her own remedy to offer. But our village was far from the sea and there had been no need for the grandmother to cure such an illness.