The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (19 page)

“The Phus are accusing us of bribing the judges,” Viet said. “They are demanding to see the judges' scoring sheets.”

“You stupid children,” Kim-Ly said. “I did not bribe anyone.”

“Mother, you just admitted you took the money from the safe,” Tri said.

Kim-Ly stood, her strength returning with her indignation. “This is how you treat your mother?” she asked. “Like some thief? As if I haven't taken care of all of you since birth?”

“The pageant committee is launching an investigation,” Hien said as they all watched Kim-Ly stomp up the stairs. “I hope for everyone's sake, you didn't leave any evidence.”

Kim-Ly slammed the door. She walked over to her closet, pulled out her green suitcase, and threw it on the bed. Opening drawers, she tossed her undergarments, stockings, blouses, and trousers into the suitcase, swearing at each of her children: Ungrateful Hien; Follower Tri; Vindictive Tuyet; and what galled her most of all, Ignorant, Hypocritical Viet. If only he knew. Then she stopped, staring at the growing pile of garments on the bed, realizing that she was packing to leave, but that there was no child's house to go to. None of them believed her. They'd all betrayed her.

*   *   *

She didn't know how Tuyet had found them. They lived in a different neighborhood, a ground-floor apartment with only two bedrooms. Kim-Ly shared her bed with her grandchildren Dat and Linh. Perhaps fate was punishing her for hiring nannies to sleep with her children so she could rest peacefully.

To Kim-Ly's pleasure, Tuyet did not look any better than they did. She, too, appeared skinny. Her eyes were equally vacant and defeated. So much of the beauty that she once flaunted had withered away. Being poor had that effect on people: she looked just like anyone else. She held an infant that Kim-Ly could only assume was hers. The child must have taken after his father.

Four years had passed since Tuyet had abandoned their family, the war over, her beloved Thang buried in an impoverished city cemetery, the misery of the Communist occupation their reality. From old acquaintances, Kim-Ly knew the girl still lived in Saigon with her husband and in-laws, Catholics from Nha Trang. Kim-Ly heard the patriarch, Hung Truong, was a businessman who alienated potential partners with his religious ethics and a disdainful refusal to engage in backroom deals. Tragically naïve. Everyone knew that was the only way possible to do business in “Ho Chi Minh City” these days.

“We're only a fifteen-minute walk from this house,” Tuyet said. “Isn't that a coincidence?”

Kim-Ly said nothing. While her children hugged and kissed Tuyet and her infant, overlooking her past sins, Kim-Ly did not approach, and the girl was too smart to try to force a greeting.

After a half hour, Tuyet whispered her purpose for visiting. “My father-in-law is getting a boat. He says there is room for all of us.”

“America?” Kim-Ly asked, speaking for the first time since Tuyet arrived.

Her daughter tentatively smiled at her. “Malaysia first, where we can apply for political refugee status. From there, anywhere we want to go.”

Tuyet visited with her son, Lum, every other day at a different time, fearful of being followed, and wanting her trips to seem as casual and unplanned as possible. Every visit brought information and instructions. What items they could bring, what food was lightest to carry and took longest to spoil. Kim-Ly offered to ask around to buy canisters of gasoline, but Tuyet assured her mother that the Truongs were taking care of that. The departure date changed with every visit, but Kim-Ly didn't care. As long as they had a departure date, she held hope for a life outside their dying country.

“It is dangerous,” Tuyet warned her family on one of her discreet visits. “The police are watching for escapes. We could be caught and imprisoned.”

“It's worth the risk,” Kim-Ly said, holding her daughter's hand. “We can start over in America.” She wanted to meet Tuyet's in-laws, these generous people who were helping to save their entire family. But Tuyet feared the large gathering would generate too much attention in the neighborhood. They couldn't have their neighbors suspecting anything.

Kim-Ly could hardly sleep at night, her mind imagining all the possible versions of their escape, which would be arduous. She certainly had no delusions about that. She also knew their entry into a new world would be difficult. She'd never been out of the country before, which on international maps appeared so small and thin compared to the other countries of the world. What would the men do for jobs in America? So many things to think about, to arrange. Kim-Ly wished they could hurry up and leave. They had so much to do to make a new home for themselves. There was little they could do waiting around in Vietnam.

Then one afternoon Tuyet and Lum did not come to the apartment. Kim-Ly became concerned when they did not show up the next day. She sent Viet out to look for Tuyet at the Truongs' home, reminding him to stay watchful of the people around him. He returned a few hours later, frustrated and exhausted.

“No one will say anything to me,” Viet said. “They pretended not to know who Tuyet or the Truongs were. I told them I was her brother but they would barely look at me. Even the couple staying in the Truongs' home wouldn't open the door to me.”

For the next few days, Kim-Ly could not get out of bed. She knew what had happened even though her gullible children were not ready to believe. It sickened her to think how she had been duped once again, allowing that girl into her home, trusting her, loving her. Tuyet had lied, dangling America in their desperate faces, toying with them, only to abandon them all over again. Kim-Ly was usually much, much smarter than that. Her mistake had been underestimating her daughter. She'd proven to be even shrewder than her mother.

The next week, a young boy came to the apartment with a letter from Tuyet. His family lived next door to the Truongs. He was instructed to give Kim-Ly Vo the letter on this day. He seemed relieved handing it off to Hien.

The children took turns reading the letter since Kim-Ly neither wanted to read or hear it. Then they burned the letter in the kitchen stove, according to Tuyet's instructions.

When Viet found Kim-Ly hunched in the bathroom weeping, he pulled her off the damp, grimy floor and gathered her in his arms, ignoring the stench of fresh vomit in the toilet.

“There was no more room on the boat,” Viet said. “But once she's safe, she said she can still help us.”

Such a good boy, so unwilling to see selfishness or evil in people. Just like his father that way. Kim-Ly didn't have the energy to tell him he was wrong. Who was she to take this only hope away from her children? If they needed to believe there was still a way to escape their lives here, if this fantasy helped them to endure, Kim-Ly would keep her mouth shut.

But she wouldn't be deluded. While she and her loyal children and grandchildren suffered, year after year, while they scrapped for demeaning jobs and sold off heirloom belongings for food and medicine for an ailing Chinh (he'd developed a congestion in his chest from the camps), the hate she felt in her heart stirred her to stay alive, determined not to allow one narcissistic, spiteful brat to destroy her family.

*   *   *

The investigation turned up nothing. The committee could not verify that any money had changed hands. Still, the discussions in the Vietnamese newspaper editorials and radio shows and between gossipers in the community soured much of the beauty pageant's joyful afterglow. Duyen packed her crown and the glittering
ao dais
in her bedroom closet, and seemed embarrassed whenever someone mentioned anything to do with the pageant.

“It's over,” she said at a family dinner after Linh had teasingly called Duyen by her title. “I'm sick of it.”

Her mother said Duyen was finished with the pageant circuit, which frustrated Kim-Ly, because she knew her granddaughter could win the senior title of Miss Little Saigon. She blamed Ba Nhanh's lack of discretion the day of the pageant. If only the old woman weren't so obvious, none of this suspicion and misunderstanding ever would have occurred. Duyen could have been proud of her accomplishment instead of ashamed.

Kim-Ly had not moved out of Tuyet's home. She didn't feel comfortable moving into her other children's homes just yet, though they'd made the obligatory offers. The twins lived with their own children, so she couldn't move in with either of them. She did have enough money for her own apartment, but the thought of living alone frightened Kim-Ly. She didn't speak English fluently (her language lessons when she first arrived to America had been miserable, condescending, and she quit after two weeks). She couldn't drive. After hearing horror stories from the twins about where Americans sent their elderly, she didn't want to move into a senior citizens' home and sit around, waiting to die.

She'd have to determine which child she felt deserved her company, and unfortunately none immediately came to mind. Following the humiliating confrontation in her bathrobe, they hadn't spoken about the missing money or the pageant again. The children probably whispered about it among themselves, but after the investigation closed, the hushed conversations faded as well.

One night after dinner, Tuyet cornered Kim-Ly in the kitchen as she prepared some tea to take upstairs to her room.

“What do you want to accuse me of now?” Kim-Ly asked while she steeped the press into the loose jasmine leaves and boiling water.

Tuyet held up a thick envelope in Kim-Ly's handwriting that was addressed to Viet's ex-girlfriend. Kim-Ly wiped her hands on her pants, squinting. The post office had stamped something red across the envelope and stamps.

“Cherry found this in the mailbox this afternoon,” Tuyet said. “There wasn't enough postage on it.”

Kim-Ly snatched it from her daughter's hands. “Then why didn't she give it back to me? This is my private mail.” Kim-Ly flipped over the envelope and saw it had been opened.

“She thought it felt strange,” Tuyet said. “I'm glad she gave it to me.”

Kim-Ly opened the envelope and saw that the letter had been refolded and lay outside of the wad of cash. She suddenly remembered her granddaughter at dinner, looking sulkier than usual. She scanned the house, fuming. Sanh and the grandchildren were upstairs, likely hiding in their rooms. This was an ambush.

“Is this what you were doing with the salon's money?” Tuyet asked. “Paying off one of Viet's ex-girlfriends? Is another one pregnant again?”

Instead of answering, Kim-Ly turned and began walking toward the stairs. When her daughter pulled at her arm to stop her, Kim-Ly spun around, enraged. “What do you want from me?” she screamed. “You know everything now, why aren't you happy with that?”

“Why didn't you confide in me?” Tuyet asked, eyes shimmering—a manipulation that perhaps worked on her husband and the Truong family, but not Kim-Ly.

“Why would I want your help?” Kim-Ly asked. “The child who has betrayed me again and again?”

Tuyet shook her head, that imperious expression from her childhood once again spoiling her face. “Who brought you here? Who has always given you a place to live?” she asked. “Who has taken care of you since you've been in America?”

“That's not love,” Kim-Ly said. “That's guilt. I trust the child who cared for me in Vietnam, when I really needed it. You chose to leave me there.”

Tuyet raised her hands and dropped them, always the dramatic. “I never wanted to leave you, Mother. But you forced me, didn't you? You've made mistakes, too.”

“I certainly have,” Kim-Ly agreed, glaring at her.

“I can only hope one day you realize which children have truly been loyal to you.”

“And the same for you,” Kim-Ly said. “If your daughter can betray her own grandmother, she will do it to you any day now.”

Walking past the grandchildren's bedrooms in the hallway, she couldn't contain the rage tickling her throat, itching at her fists.

“Are you happy?” she shrieked at their silent, closed bedroom doors. “Your unwanted grandmother is leaving. You finally get your wish.”

In her room, Kim-Ly sat on her bed, her spine tall, and tried to breathe. She'd been through worse humiliations than this. There was no question she would survive this one. She picked up the telephone on her bedside table and dialed Tri's phone number. When her granddaughter Linh answered, she asked the child to hand the telephone to her uncle.

“Viet?” she whispered, in a tone so quiet and different from a few minutes before, but familiar, correct, because this was her real voice, her true voice. “Viet, this is your mother.”

 

1984

Cuc Bui
Paris, France

… No son should have to grow up without his father, especially as a young boy. I feel lucky for the opportunity to have been with my boys since their births, to have raised them personally. They have grown up understanding the values every Truong should live by.

Daughters are fine to be left alone with the women. Ngoan was a good mother to Cam while Phung was away. She taught her all the necessary skills a woman should know. Cam can be willful at times, but that can help her in this new country. Whatever happens to her now, she will always have her decent upbringing to guide her in making wise decisions.

I worry for Xuan. I did the best I could for Yen's boy. But his mother is so frustrating, so stupid. You remember how she behaved on the boat, refusing to let anyone else hold him? She coddled the boy, and the other women condoned this. Too much female influence. Sometimes he listened to me, but most of the time, he would run behind his mother's legs. They complained that I was too harsh. A boy needs that.

I have warned Yen about this. Xuan needs to see his father as a man. But Yen feels too guilty. You can see it in the way he caters to Trinh's every complaint, every tear she sheds. A father should be stronger for his son. If Yen believes it was a mistake to leave Xuan for the first years of his life, then the boy will believe it, too. He must have faith in his choices. He must make the boy understand that the decision was the correct one, the only one.…