The refugee’s quest for solace
A family’s return to Vietnam brings reflection
Like all bad news concerning my family, it began with a call from my mother.
My bà nôi had died. She was 96. She could’ve been 97 or 98, though — our ages were never certain; birth dates were changed during war and migration. She was my last surviving grandparent and she took with her 96 (or 97 or 98) years of history, countless stories and memories that I will never know. I didn’t want to forget her. Every time I visited her, I promised myself that we would spend more time together, record our conversations, record her life. I am a liar.
Already her face was fading. By the time I got to my childhood home in Cape Cod, my parents were already packed, their passports ready. My parents are efficient travelers, but only for Vietnam. They know no other country.
I spent part of my childhood in a Vietnamese refugee camp in the Philippines, where my father had a hu tiê u nam vang stand, where my parents would save their change to buy an apple and feed it to me before eating what was left of it themselves. I won a children’s beauty pageant there, a refugee queen if you will. The missionary judges must have been charmed by my odd answers when I told them my favorite food was sucking on chicken bones. (Some things don’t change — I still love chicken bones.)
Every year or two, my parents made the voyage back to Vietnam, a place they left behind a lifetime ago. They would share a small carry-on bag while maxing out their check-ins with candy, cigarettes, Spam, Vienna sausages, medicine and Tiger Balm for relatives. Whether it was generosity or guilt, it didn’t matter. This is what you do when you’re the ones who make it out.
In the 24 hours following my bà nôi’s death, I retraced the steps of my migration — from Cape Cod, where I was visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, to my current home in San Francisco, where I collect my passport, and then across the vast Pacific to Saigon. I will never call it by any other name. After my parents picked me up from the airport, I took them to a prominent Saigon food stall for lunch on our way to the village where my bà nôi was to be buried.
That day, Cô Thành was serving bún môc, a pork and mushroom-based noodle soup with cha lua and pork-paste balls. My parents proclaimed it “good,” but once we drove away the “good” turned into “OK” and even the driver said he’d had a richer broth elsewhere. My dad continued to throw shade, claiming that he was a better cook. I choked on my next words. I only know how to speak to my parents in criticisms because that’s all I knew growing up: “Ba, you could’ve been successful if you didn’t have a bad menu,” I retorted.
Our food banter was a reminder of my dad’s failed take-out joint in America. Ben’s Asian Cuisine served Cape Cod’s first bowl of pho — a belief I’m going to keep repeating until someone proves me wrong. There, he also served egg rolls, fried rice, crab rangoons, lo mein and eventually Japanese teriyaki, co-opting the Akita Express brand, a chain of restaurants in the South. Once, a young boy came up to me and said righteously, “I know what an Akita is. They’re dogs. You guys serve dogs here.” That was right before he screamed “They sell dog meat!” throughout the food court. Afterward I anxiously looked up “akita” on our AOL Web browser. A year later, the restaurant folded as my father’s health deteriorated from the stress and disappointment.
We were refugees in America, but we never found refuge here. We did, however, find coping mechanisms.
My mother obsessively cleans our house, because it’s the only one she’ll ever own. My father found the ocean and fishing has become his lifeline. These days, he follows no other schedule but the tides.
And I found distance, until I am brought back. In Vietnam, I stood at my grandmother’s grave as they lowered her body into the ground. I thought about the mornings my father would spend with bà nôi, encouraging and sometimes forcing her to eat. When he was with her, he would prepare elaborate meals, from traditional Vietnamese — cá kho tô, canh chua, bún riêu, bò kho — to adapted dishes like clam chowder, stuffed crabs, sauteed ginger lobster, even spaghetti. When he was away, he would send instructions to my aunties and money to buy ingredients. “Make sure she eats,” he’d say.
My father loved us the way he loved my bà nôi. “Make sure she eats” — it was the only way he knew how; it was the only way we learned how.
Weeks later, I’m standing knee deep in a chilly tributary of the Atlantic, alongside my father and mother. He’s raking the rocky bottom for oysters. He cracks open a shell, rinses it and hands it to my mother. She squeezes a lemon and Sriracha over the exposed body.
“Eat,” they say, and I obediently oblige.
We were refugees in America, but we never found refuge here. We did, however, find coping mechanisms.