Thao

She sat across from me on the moss-covered rock, the sun behind her, filtering through the oak leaves. Her lips glistened with gloss and I marveled at the full softness of the skin above them. She had a silver post through the pierce under her bottom lip and her eyebrows lifted in the most provocative way. Her beauty was haunting, it had taken me several meetings before I felt worthy of seeing it…. now I couldn’t turn away.
She was telling me her story.
I had mentioned that my son would soon be traveling to Thailand and Vietnam and her eyes had drifted into a far away, reminiscent gaze.
‘Have you ever been there?’ I had asked.
‘Oh yes. I was recently there to honor my grandfather in his death and visit my relatives. I hadn’t been back since I was a little girl on the boat.’
‘The boat? What do you mean?’

‘My family left Vietnam like melting snowflakes, like vanishing ghosts we escaped on the boat.’

‘We began our journey in the middle of the night, disappearing into the darkness like the receding tide. My aunt had carefully dried and packaged our food for the journey, but it was all stolen the second day. I was two years old. We were on the open sea for twenty-one days before the Indian ship. Three weeks without food, that’s a long time. My mom said she nursed me some. We collected rainwater to drink, my father would lay out towels to soak it up and then squeezed it into jars. My young uncle was so hungry, his mind would constantly be thinking of food. He would talk non-stop about the most delicious dishes he could think of. With his head in my fathers lap he would dream out loud, until my father couldn’t stand it and told him if he didn’t shut up he would throw him overboard.’ She smiled at the thought.
My uncle was only twelve. He wasn’t really supposed to be there but he had awakened that night and couldn’t be left behind. He could have given us away. My aunt was a only few years younger that my mom. When my father had snuck into the bedroom that night to get her, their little brother woke up. There was nothing else we could have done, he had to come along. The boat held twenty people, but there were forty of us on board. Many others had come because they had found out and wouldn’t be left behind.
‘My father said I was so quite on the boat, I would even tell the other children to hush. He said I was such a good little one. Our food had been stolen on board, but there was nothing he could do about it. If a fight broke out on the boat everyone would be in jeopardy, the boat was in such delicate balance.
Once a French ship passed us, but it didn’t stop. They had colonized our island but they didn’t stop, they didn’t want anything to do with us. They left us floating in the open sea. Well that’s OK…I didn’t want to go to France anyway.
We finally came across a ship from Indian, it had broken down. We just started climbing on board. They thought we were pirates. My mom knew some English and tried to explain, but they said they must examine our boat for weapons before they could accept us on board. Well, of course we had weapons on our little boat, but as the last person exited a giant wave threw it against the ship’s side crushing it and leaving no return. It was a miracle, after the last person had gotten out! They had to take us and when they unloaded their cargo in Japan they unloaded us.
We stayed in Japan for two years. They were so good to us. It was a small fishing village and they just took us in. We became a part of their families, we worked and lived among them. But we were refugees, we would have to immigrate to have a real home.
My mother never stopped dreaming of America, the land of opportunity. She knew that to become a US citizen meant freedom to move around the world, to be able to return to Vietnam. The US offers so many freedoms that other governments withhold.
Finally our distant cousin sponsored us into the US. My mother, father and I moved to Memphis. We arrived with nothing and lived in destitute there. The catholic priests helped us. They gave us clothes and household item. My mother and father worked all the time, sometimes three jobs. I don’t know how we made it.’

Thao is now in her late twenties and a successful businesswoman and artist in California. She graduated from the university of Memphis and knows three different languages. Another precious drop in the melting pot of America.