Missing Home
A "Stories of Vietnam" guest essay by Mai Banh
Mai Banh was born in Vietnam and left her home as a boat refugee in December of 1978 and stayed in a transit refugee camp on the island of Pulau Tengah, Malaysia for 10 months. She is now settled in Upstate New York, working in the high-tech industry. She enjoys gardening and plants geraniums every year as a centerpiece for her balcony flower pots.
I woke slowly, feeling so relieved and thinking that I was back in Vietnam, back with my dad, mom, and my five siblings. That wondrous, reassuring feeling of being the favorite child in the family enveloped me. In that half-awakened state, I was telling myself soothingly, that everything would be ok now, that I did not leave Vietnam, I did not make the boat on time, and it had left without me.
Then my eyes opened. I saw the makeshift shower stall on the far corner and the wood pile hugging one side of the platform where we were all sleeping. I groaned. It was still very early, not yet 5 a.m. Since the hut had no wall--only the thatched roof--the interior was as light as the outdoors. Whatever objects were in my view while lying in bed, I could see their details clearly.
Lying next to me was Cousin Toi. She was sleeping soundly on her back, her mouth slightly open and a tiny wheezing sound coming out with each of her breaths. Her right hand was on her stomach and her other hand was under her hip. On my other side was three-year-old Cousin Xin. Her back was facing me and both of her legs were planted over her mother’s stomach. There was hardly room for me to move. I wanted to get up, but doing so would wake the others. There were at least 10 of us sharing this 8’ x 15’ platform which also doubled as an eating table during the day.
So it was true. I was in the refugee camp, not back in Vietnam as I had dreamt. I felt deflated. A wave of regret descended and covered me like a blanket. For a long while, it lingered on and would not let me go.
The day was getting brighter by the minute. I moved my arm, and let my left forearm rest over my eyes to block out the light. I would stay put in bed for a while. No one on our platform had moved so far. One of my uncles was snoring soundly a few bodies away. The other families, on other platforms surrounding ours, were also deep in their sleep.
During the day, I kept myself busy with chores and exploring the island--swimming and fishing--so I did not have time to miss my family as much. But at night just before falling to sleep, or in the early morning waking up like just now, my thoughts were always of my family back in Vietnam, and of my old life back there. I missed my dad and my youngest one-year-old brother the most.
In my memories, I saw Dad hunching over his work cabinet in our watch repair shop, his left hand holding a watch and his right hand holding a pair of tweezers. He was carefully placing a tiny gear into a small cavity of the watch. His left eye was covered with a black, horn-shaped magnifying eeyepiece, which helped him see the tiny watch mechanism better than with his naked eye. My dad worked very hard to provide for our large extended multi-generation family.
His watch repair and retail shop was in Ben Tre, a small town 60 miles south of Saigon. Dad was always working; I could not recall if he had ever taken a vacation with our family, taken us swimming, or taken us to the park. Life in Vietnam was hard. Making a living meant a seven-day job. We did not have the concept of a "long" weekend. Also, in our culture around that time, parents did not play with their kids. Kids would go to school or be out playing with their neighbors or schoolmates all day long, even little five-year-olds. Parents were not "helicopter" parents like they are nowadays.
Sometimes I thought of my youngest brother. He was barely a year old the last time I saw him, and was just starting to walk. All the neighbors kept saying, “What a cute little boy!” whenever they saw me walking down the street with him on my hip. He was always silent, not prone to crying or mumbling. He would look at me with his very dark, round eyes, and then burst into a brilliant smile when I "goo-goo, ga-ga" baby talked to him.
Everyone in my family loved my youngest brother. We marveled at each of his developments, from rolling over on his side, to crawling, to taking tentative wobbly steps. We watched him closely and clapped our hands when he mastered a new change. My sisters and I always proudly carried him around the neighborhood; we liked to show him off.
One of our neighbors living two doors away, who was a young girl in her twenties, would frequently ask my younger sister to bring my brother over and she would babysit him for hours on end, while my sister played there in the neighbor’s house.
Sometimes I thought of another sibling, my now five-year-old second youngest brother. Instead of being irritated as he usually made me feel, I now recalled, fondly and indulgently, how hard it was to get him to sleep when he was less than a year old.
I would hold him with his head on my right shoulder. I would rock him back and forth and pat his back. It was hours since he had been sleeping and yet I still had to hold him. Whenever I thought he was sound asleep, I tried to put him down on the bed. As soon as his head touched the pillow, he would wail and shriek. I had to pick him up and hold him again. As I paced the floor, walking past the row of clocks against the wall, I heard the chiming announce the quarter, the half, and the full hours. So many rounds of chiming already, and still he was not willing to be put down on the bed.
Of all my siblings, this second youngest brother was the most finicky to babysit. Over his childhood years, he threw the most and the longest tantrums of all the kids in the family. We were always afraid to upset him, lest he set off on another hour’s long tantrum.
This memory of lulling my second youngest brother to sleep always led me back to images within my father’s shop. Two walls were covered with clocks. These were clocks from customers, awaiting repair or to be picked up. And so I grew up with these wonderful sounds of the clocks chiming. They each looked and sounded so different from each other.
On the hour, they all went “Ding-dong, ding-dong …” together, some high, some low, and some with deep, long drawn-out sonorous tones. Sometimes, we also heard short bursts of “Coog-coo! Coog-coo!” among the ding-dongs from a cuckoo clock at the far corner.
When we had visitors staying overnight, they were unnerved by these clock chimes. They found it chaotic. But I grew up with these sounds and anticipated them. So at the refugee camp, I missed these dependable chimes. These regular sounds of clocks counting the hours were replaced by the rhythms of waves hitting the sandy beach or rocky shorelines.
I would come out to the beach at night, sit on the sand, and just listen and imagine that I could hear the sound of chaotic clock-chiming hidden within the powerful pounding of surf.
From Kat Fitzpatrick: Many thanks to Mai for sharing this essay. I met her in a writing class many years ago and have heard her read her stories aloud. I am thrilled to be able to feature just one of the many here.
If you or someone you know has a “Story of Vietnam” to share,
please do not hesitate to get in touch.
What a wonderful story if what must have been such a painful time - I'd love to know if she ever reconnected with her family
Thanks for sharing Mai's story, Kat. What a harrowing experience it must have been to be separated from her family. I wonder how they fared, and if she ever saw them again.