The Unwanted (25 page)
“I am not the man of your family, Mother.” My voice shook as though it were ten degrees below zero in the room. “I am not even fourteen. They can't lock me and throw away the key. But, even if they do, I don't care. I can't live like this anymore. I want to go, please.”
She dug her nails into my skin, the familiar punishment for misbehavior. “Listen to me,” she enunciated. “You don't like to live this way? Who does? Since you both were kids, I've always favored you over your brother. You always got better toys, a bigger slice of cake, more love, and more attention than he did. For once in your life, let him get preferential treatment. I need you here with me. Go back to bed.”
From behind my mother, Jimmy spoke up. “Is it true that I am going to escape, Mother?”
“Yes, Jimmy. She's letting you escape with Aunt Dang. Tonight is your lucky night,” I answered him bitterly.
“No,” he shook his head with apprehension. “I want to switch places with Kien. Let him go. He needs to get out of here more than I do.”
Hope returned to me. I turned to my mother. “I can help you much better if I am in America. Please, if I stay here, I will kill myself.”
My mother's eyes shifted between my brother and me. Seizing the opportunity, I pressed my case.
“I mean it, Mother. If you keep me here, I will die. You might risk losing both of us. Ask Aunt Dang how she felt when she lost her children. Besides, Jimmy doesn't want to go. Why force him?”
My mother uttered a small cry. “Go.” She waved her hand to dismiss me. “Aunt Dang is waiting outside by the gates.”
I ran out the door, fearing that she might change her mind.
“Hold on a second!” my mother called. Her voice froze me on my track. “Please, wait. I'll take you outside.” Turning to my brother, she looked into his face intensely. “You understand that you are taking over his responsibilities, taking care of your sister, and helping me with everything? From now on, you are my eldest son. Do you understand me?”
Jimmy nodded.
“Good, go to bed. I'll be back in about fifteen minutes to tuck you in.”
Jimmy ran to me. He put his arms around my waist to hug me with all his might. “Good luck, Kien. I love you.”
I turned away from his touch. My cheeks were hot with shame.
We left the house together. Across the street, Mrs. Dang was waiting behind a coconut tree. Her expression changed from excitement to surprise once she saw me.
“You decided to send Kien instead?” she asked.
My mother nodded. “The other kid didn't want to go. Take care of him for me, Dang. Make sure he doesn't get hurt. I trust you with his life.” She touched my head as she spoke.
“Of course,” her friend answered. “I will adopt him the moment we get to America. I'll make sure he has a good education, and I will remind him every day about you, so that he won't forget his roots.”
My mother broke into tears. Under the pale streetlight, I noticed the crow's feet at the corner of her eyes, the strands of gray hair around her temples. Still, the passion in her eyes was bewitching.
“Look how much you've grown,” she whispered to me. “You are already taller than I am. From now on, you belong to Auntie Dang. She is going to take care of you. So listen to her, and pay her all the respect that you've given me. I love you, Kien. Take care of yourself.”
She pushed me into the bosom of Mrs. Dang, who was crying.
“Tell Grandpa good-bye for me,” I said. “Tell him I love him.”
“Go, may the gods bless you,” my mother murmured.
B
y two o'clock in the morning, we reached the beach. The docks where I worked during the day delivering fish to the market were now vacant. At the end of a narrow and secluded wharf, a small wooden rowboat waited for us. We ran across the shore. With every step I took, the sand became wetter and softer, until salty water seeped into my flip-flops. A dark figure of a man jumped from the boat and waved to Mrs. Dang. She waved back.
“Good evening, you are on time.” His bare chest, where the light hit, was contoured with oily sweat and rippling muscles. His thin lips didn't quite cover his large buck teeth, which glowed in the dark like a fluorescent light.
Mrs. Dang and I huddled together on a bench near the aft of the boat. The man rowed skillfully, checking his compass now and again for the direction. His ferry headed east past a clump of dark islands, which were almost invisible in the mist.
Above us, the sky flickered with a million stars. The round moon reflected the ocean's waves into silver coins, spilling over the water's surface. The salty air's soft touch caressed my skin. Like a tiny leaf in a pond, the boat skimmed the surface in silent rhythm.
“Where are we going, Auntie? Where are other people?” I asked Mrs. Dang.
“Quiet,” the man answered. “Kid, the less you know, the better off you are. So, shut up.”
“We are going to Turtle Island,” Mrs. Dang said to me. “There, we'll wait for another, bigger boat.”
The ocean seemed to expand around us. On the side of the boat, the waves made a steady murmur.
“Here we are,” the man finally said. Facing the stern, I was unaware we had reached the island until the bottom of our boat came into contact with the rocky ground.
“Listen to me,” the man said as he searched for a place to dock. “This is Turtle Island. Like the name, it is shaped like a turtle. The island is off-limits to civilians. The turtle's body is the mountain. The beaches are its legs. The mountain has three layers. We are going to the middle part. If we go too high up, terrorists and leftover guerrillas of the old government will kill us. If we get too close to the beach, we'll be in the hands of the Communists. They like to shoot first and ask questions later. Be extremely careful. Sometimes we run into illegal lumberjacks. Avoid them, too, if possible. The big boat will come tomorrow night. Now, let's get out of here before the brown dogs smell us.” He was referring to the Communist police, who wore dark brown uniforms.
Turtle Island was a lush jungle filled with tropical trees and thick clumps of wild berries. Bushes grew past the shore and reached out into the water, making it an ideal place to hide out. We walked deeper into the forest on a narrow path across the swampy ground. Each time we moved, clouds of flies and mosquitoes swirled up, breaking the quiet with their buzzing.
The man handed us each a knapsack. “Take this,” he said. “It contains your portions and some blankets for tonight. Watch out for the quicksand. Keep your feet steady on the rocks. And don't forget to keep an eye out for snakes.”
We ran in single file through the wet and tortuous road leading to the middle part of the turtle's hump. Under our feet, the muddy ground was covered with dead leaves that sloshed as we marched further uphill.
The rest of the escapees were waiting for us in a large open area not far from the trail. There must have been about thirty people, all women and children; not one was younger than ten years old. Their plastic mats were scattered on the ground, held down by rocks. Some of the women huddled under the blankets against the cold wind. The only men in the group were the two leaders. The young man who brought us to the camp was Can Junior. The older man was his father, Can Senior. He had just been released from a death camp a few months earlier. As I learned later, the old man had been an army sergeant under the old government. He, too, was barechested and barefoot. A pair of faded, cutoff khaki shorts covered the lower half of his body, and in his thin waistband I could see the steel handle of a pistol. A large, ugly scar on his left cheek sprang to life like an animated lizard every time he spoke. His black eyes glared as he introduced us to everybody else.
We were told to share a space under a wild tamarind tree with two other people—a teenage girl and her younger brother.
Mrs. Dang sat on a rock, worn out from the long hike. She beckoned to me, wiping the perspiration off her forehead. “Come here, Kien. You can rest next to me.”
“Welcome to Turtle Island,” the boy said to me. He was about fifteen years old, his face covered with freckles and his eyes slanted like those of a puppet character from a Chinese opera. He and I were the oldest boys among the children.
His sister, who was a few years older, had beautiful hands and feet. I helped her clear the dead leaves from our rest area. She looked up to smile at me. Her face, with its high cheekbones, appeared pale in contrast to her red lips. She, too, reminded me of a character in the opera playhouse—a marionette princess.
Far beyond the trees, the sun peeked its carroty face over the dark blue water, sweeping away the silvery darkness. Some of the children ate breakfast out of their knapsacks. Soon, the shells of hardboiled eggs and banana skins littered the ground. The women watched their children and daydreamed about their new lives in America.
“Come here, darling,” Mrs. Dang said from behind me. “Let me comb your hair for you.”
I sat down in front of her, feeling the soft touch of her fingers on my scalp.
She said softly above me, “Isn't this exciting? Tonight, we'll be boarding the boat. Who knows, in a short week we might get to Hong Kong, or the Philippines, or Malaysia, and then to America. I definitely would like to settle in California and look for my children. Together you and me, we'll get a small house by the sea, like Nhatrang almost. And when my kids come to join us, you'll be their big brother. You'll go to school and study anything you like. Then you can sponsor your family to America. Is this a nice dream?”
Instead of answering, I snuggled closer to her body.
That evening, we ate the caramel chicken that had been packed in our knapsacks, while Can Junior left the camp to wait for the boat signal by the shore. We huddled in the dark, covered with the thin blankets, cold but full of hope. Some of the children fell asleep, while others stirred restlessly. An old woman squatted down on the ground to urinate. Somebody tried to muffle a cough. Around us, the jungle hid inside a dense fog. Curled up against the tree, I slipped into a deep sleep in Mrs. Dang's warm embrace.
When I awoke, the morning sky was as white as milk. The fog had lifted from the tall trees, except for a few tendrils that lingered in the blue shadow of the forest. In front of me, Mrs. Dang and a few other women were talking with Can Junior. I clutched the blanket around my shoulders and walked over to join them. An air of sadness hung over everyone.
“I am sorry, I don't know anything else. We just have to wait,” Can Junior said to the women.
“Wait for what, and for how long?” someone asked him.
He walked away. “I don't know, but we may be here for a couple more days.”
“What is happening?” I asked Mrs. Dang.
She noticed me for the first time. Her eyes wore the frightened look of a trapped animal. “Someone stole the boat last night,” she said.
“Oh, God. The big boat that takes us to America?” I uttered in shock.
“No.” She shook her head. “The small ferry. About the ship, we couldn't get any signal from them, so we are stranded here, with no way out.”
“What do we do?”
“We wait,” she said mechanically, echoing Can Junior's answer.
THE SECOND DAY
went by uneventfully. We huddled next to each other to keep warm. Mrs. Dang watched me eat the cold food without touching her own. Above us, dark clouds started to form.
On the third day, it rained. I ran out on the soggy ground, joining the other children to take a shower, while at the same time, storing rain water in the empty bottles for future use. The adults hid under the surrounding trees to keep from getting wet. Hope had dwindled along with our food supplies. Below us, the ocean moved like a giant dish of blue Jell-O under the sweeping winds.
ON THE FIFTH DAY
, the women scattered into the jungle in groups to search for wild mushrooms, berries, and greens, while the two men fished at a nearby stream. The island offered little in the way of food. Sea spinach and wild berries were among the meager vegetables we harvested near the swamp. Despite the elders' warning, we ate the cooked vegetables and became violently ill that night. The next morning, when the cold rain revisited the island, we washed the vomit off our clothes. As hungry as we were, the incident instilled a fear in all of us, and everyone gave up the food search. The children sucked on the last of the rock candies while the adults slept their starvation away.
On the afternoon of the sixth day, Mrs. Dang pulled me deep into the woods, away from the other escapees. Not until we were at least thirty feet away from the camp did she unwrap her shawl and show me the contents. Three hard-boiled eggs appeared like props in a magic trick.
“Here, darling,” she whispered to me. “Eat them quickly before someone sees us.”
Unable to tear my eyes away from the food in her hands, I asked her, “Where did you get these?”
“I saved them for you,” she answered.
I swallowed loudly. “What about you, Auntie? Aren't you hungry?”
“No, darling.” She smiled and shook her head. “They are yours. Go ahead, eat them.”
BACK AT THE CAMP
, Can Senior was holding an emergency meeting. Mrs. Dang and I joined the rest of the runaways on the dirty ground. He stood on a rock in front of us, licking his lips nervously. Like everyone else, he had lost a lot of weight in the last six days. His chest caved inward, and his rib cage stuck out from his torso.
“Let's talk about our alternatives.” He asked the crowd, “Who among us want to surrender to the brown dogs?”
A wave of dissent swept the group. People cursed the boat that never came, blamed their own bad luck and each other, jumped up and down, and shouted at one another. Can Senior waved his hands to quiet them down.
“Be quiet,” he yelled. “There is still hope.”
The group froze.
“There is a way out,” he continued. “We have a gun. We can steal a motorboat from the illegal lumberjacks and escape. Who wants to take this risk? Let me see a show of hands.”
“Don't those woodsmen have weapons with them?” a woman asked. “What if we lose?”
Can Senior shrugged. “We don't have much choice, madam. If we lose, we'll die, but if we surrender or do nothing, we'll also die.”