I dreamed of living in America before I even arrived here on that small boat.  When my husband and I were escaping, people told so many stories.  They said things like, “In America, you will be rich beyond belief!  In America, you are free to be and do whatever you want!  In America, you will always be happy!”  I did not believe them because their stories sounded so flashy.  They had dreams that were beyond reality and reason.

            But when I arrived, I felt silly.  I should have believed their crazy stories because they were true, and more.  In America, I had dreams that I did not have in Vietnam.  In America, I saw a place that welcomed foreigners like my husband and me.  I saw my future happiness.  But more important, I saw my family.

―

            When I was a young girl living in Vietnam, I lived in Hue, the countryside of Vietnam, along with my family on both my mother’s and father’s families.  But we later moved to Saigon in hopes of making more money than we did in Hue.  Even still, we were poor, and we did not have enough money to support ourselves.  So, I was forced to work at early hours in the morning to help my family.  I sliced loaves of bread and made sandwiches to sell to people passing by on the streets of Saigon.  I was the eldest child in my family, so I had to take care of my family as much as I could.  But I never felt forced to do these things.  No, I chose to do them because my family is my center, my life.

            But that was how I met my husband.  I saw him while I was selling sandwiches.  I was twenty-one, and he was twenty-five.  When I first saw him, I knew immediately that he would be the father of my children.  When he saw me, he gazed.  The following days, he always returned, making small talk and lingering around like a dog that waited for food scraps.  But we were completely opposites.

            I was born in the year of the Chicken, so I knew what to say and how to walk with elegance enough to make other women cover their faces in shame and enough grace to captivate boys.  But he was born in the year of the Horse.  He ran around the city always looking for women to court.  He was born into money, and I was not.  He was outgoing and loud when I was reserved and meek.

            But we looked passed those things and saw things that we loved about each other.  He was sociable, generous, and modest when I was shy, watchful, and proud.  We were opposites, but we loved each other all the same.  I made his flaws more perfect, and he made my virtues more noticeable.

            I charmed him with my words, making subtle hints at my affections toward him, and he always came back for more.  My words made him confident, and his love made me beautiful.  I tamed his wild heart, and he strengthened me.  And things continued like that for a long, long time.

In 1975, Saigon fell to the North, and my husband wanted to leave like everyone else.  But we did not leave immediately because the Viet Cong were expecting people to flee.  If we had left at that time, then my husband and I would probably be dead by now.  Four years later, I married him in 1979.  That was when we decided to leave Vietnam.  We needed to live somewhere that gave us a secure future.  So, my husband told me that we were going to go to America.

            “Thanh, we have to go to America,” he said to me one night.

            “Anh!  We can’t survive the way!”

            “It’s better to try to find our new selves there than to stay here.  It’s too dangerous for our family, em!”

            “But we know nothing of America.  Vietnam is the only thing we know!”

            “Don’t worry, em.  Once we live there for a long time, America will be a friend.  Like meeting a new person.”

            I agreed to go with him.  What choice did I have?  I wanted to choose my fate, and I wanted my children to choose their happiness.  Living in Vietnam at that time was worse than death.  If I had chosen to stay in Vietnam, then my children would be alive to see their lives be defined by poverty and hardship.  I wanted my children to see that their lives were worth something.

            And my husband was a man of great character.  He knew how much my family meant to me, so he asked them before even his own.  My family agreed to go, but his family declined.  They did not want to be a burden on him while on the way to America.  They did not want him to worry about taking too many people along because that would have exposed us.

We failed the first time in 1979 because the Viet Cong sunk our boat.  When they captured us, they put my husband and me in different prisons. They kept me there only for five months because I was ready to give birth to my first son, Huy, in July of 1980.  They released me from prison to go to the hospital to give birth to my son, but they were foolish to have done that.

Early the next morning, I woke up, grabbed my son, and left the hospital to return to Trung’s home in Saigon.  My husband escaped the prison three months after I gave birth to Huy.  It was at that moment when we decided that we had to leave for good.  Vietnam was no place for a family.

The second time we tried to flee, our boat did not have any more fuel, and we drifted along the seas until we reached the Philippines as refugees.  They put us in shelters that were worse than the ones in Hue.  When I looked at Huy, I felt my motherly duties, and when I saw that I was pregnant with my second son, Quoc, I felt scared.  I was concerned for their future, and I pushed my husband to try and find a way to America. 

“Anh,” I said to him.

            “Hmm? What is it, em?”

            “Anh, we need to get out.”

            “There isn’t anything I can do yet.”

            “Anh.  We need to get out.”  I looked at Huy to show him what we were risking our lives for.

            “I’ll see what I can do.”

            After three months, my husband found a man that was willing to take us to America, but he was fool.  He could not navigate himself on the sea, and he took us to Malaysia instead of America. That is where I gave birth to my second son, Quoc.  The conditions in Malaysia were worse than even those in the Philippines.  Animals could not even live in them.  We were housed in worn down huts that were made out of tin and metal, and there was no flooring.  The floor was dirt, mud, and straw, and there was no furniture in the house other than wooden beds that were too small for us.

My family and I stayed in Malaysia for ten months, and we left once again to America.  We hung on to the hope that we held in our briefcases.  I prayed to God that he would help us on our way to America.  I prayed that we would reach America so that our children’s futures would be better than ours, free of the hardships that my husband and I were forced to go through for a new life.

            Huy and Quoc cried so much while we were on the boat trip to America.  To comfort them, I told them stories of Vietnam.  I told them of our painful past and the efforts we were taking to do better for ourselves and for them.  I told them about their futures in America, the one place where they can be whatever they want to be—where they will always be worth something to someone.

            “Vietnam was where your father and I were born.  It is a beautiful country, but it is not so good right now.  Everyone wants to leave Vietnam right now, and those that have chosen to stay are too scared to leave.  Your father and I do not want you to live in those conditions.  We have gone through a lot of hardships for you and your future, and when we look at our past, the only thing we see is pain and misery.  We do not want you to see that same pain.  We will protect you from it no matter what happens.  We are no longer happy living in Vietnam because it offers us nothing but sadness.

            “But when we arrive on America, you will be happy.  You will not look at your life with shame and disgust like us because you can become anything you want there.  And no matter what, your happiness will always make me happy, too.  Over there, there are men and women of many different colors and sizes who have gone through the same hardships as your father and me.  But we all are in search for the same thing in America.  We are all searching for a home that we can call our own.  We all want a future for our children that we could not have for ourselves when we left.”

I dreamed of my life in America, too.  When I dreamed of my life in America, I found comfort while we were on the painfully long trip to get here.  I dreamed of an infinite wealth and happiness that would magically appear in my life.  I dreamed of one day speaking perfect English and wearing American clothes so that I could be an American.

            I could have been at sea for months on end, and yet I did not know.  I did not know how to tell the days any longer.  But I was not just losing track of time.  I was losing my faith in God.  I felt that my prayers were not going to be answered.  And when you lose faith, there is nothing left to hold on to.  It does not have to be a religious faith.  If you have no faith in yourself, then there is no way you can become strong.  If you do not have faith in anything, then you have no hope for it to be better.

One day there was a thunderous storm at sea.  The waters roared like lions, and the wind howled like ghosts.  The waters pushed and pulled at our boat, and some people threw themselves off.  My husband and I feared for our lives and the lives of Huy and Quoc.

We thought that our boat was going to be sunken by the ruthless ocean.  Our efforts were going to be lost, and we were going to meet our deaths.  But in the distance, we saw a glowing woman with long, silken black hair, wearing a long white robe.  It was not just my husband and I that saw her.  Everyone on the boat saw this woman, and when they saw her, they shouted, “Who is that woman over there!?”

“Is that a ghost that has come to take us to our deaths?”

“It is the sea goddess!  She has come to swallow our boat whole!”

“No, she is guiding us!  Look at her!  She is moving her hands as if she wants us to come toward her!”

“Follow her!”

The man who was steering the boat sailed in the direction of this mysterious woman.  Wherever she walked, the storm seemed to have calmed.  When I saw her, I knew that she was a gift from God.  She came to save our lives, to rescue us from our deaths, and it was at that moment when I realized that God was always watching over us.  God sent her to guide us through the dangers of the storm and the crushing waves to land and safety.

And when my husband and I safely stepped off of the boat with Huy and Quoc in one arm and our briefcases in the other, my faith in God was restored.  And we saw this strange, new place.  We saw our new home.  America.

―

            Huy was my first-born son, who, like my husband and me, was born in Vietnam.  But he was still different from us.  He grew up in America and learned their culture more than the Vietnamese one.  He drank more soda than tea and ate more steak than rice.

When he was a little boy, he spoke only Vietnamese, even in school.  I remember one day he came home crying because the other children at school made fun of him for not speaking English.  It hurt me so much to see him cry that way, so I let him learn and speak English at home.

I asked him in Vietnamese, “Con, do you really want to learn English?”

            He nodded his head while crying, “Yes, ma.”

            “Okay, then.  Speak only in English, then.”

            But he did not say anything because he did not know how to say anything in English.

“I will buy you books, con.  Don’t worry, you’ll know how to speak English.”

So, I bought him those books, but he learned English through the TV.  At the dining table, he began to speak to us in English more than Vietnamese.  I noticed that I had two different sons in Huy.  A Vietnamese one, and an American one.  He was Vietnamese only by appearance, but underneath, he was one-hundred percent American-made. 

We wanted him to stay close to his Vietnamese roots because he had to set an example for his siblings.  If he ever failed, then they would follow.  If he succeeded, they would be likely to succeed as well.  But he was not mindful of his duties toward his family.  He listened to his own thoughts, and he did things his own way.

            And that is why he left us.  That is why he disappeared from our lives.  His family became such a burden on him that he ran away from them.  When I discovered that he ran off in the middle of the night, I felt as if a piece of me was lost forever.  He left no note, no letter, and he did not even say goodbye.  The only thing he left was an envelope that had $350.00 inside, which I put away in a box and never used.  My son disappeared from my life.  And that was when I knew I failed myself.

He was so unhappy that he could not even tell his own mother.  I let him run off when I knew I could have prevented it.  When he left, I did not leave my bed for two weeks.  I did not speak to anyone, not even my husband.  I refused to eat.  The only thing I thought about was Huy.

I was scared for his safety because I did not know where he could have gone.  And he was still too young—only eighteen!—to have been out like that.  I was his mother, and I was supposed to protect him from those kinds of dangers.  I was supposed to shield him from pain, but I failed.  And in between the time I was bed-ridden, my mother, my father, and my siblings were told that Huy had run away.

            At family parties, my siblings looked down at me with their sharp eyes.  They held their noses high as if I gave off a foul scent.  That is why their noses droop down.  But they were so busy looking at my failures that they ignored their own.  They did not see what was happening in their own lives.  Ngoc’s first son, Jason, was failing in his classes and was held back, and Hao was going through a disastrous divorce with a spiteful woman.  But my failure became something to glare at.  It gave my siblings something to take the attention away from their own mistakes.   It was something to talk about.

            When my mother found out about Huy, she asked me, “Thanh.  What has happened to Huy?”

            “Ma, he ran away.”

            “Why?”

            “I don’t know, ma.”

            “Did he leave anything?  A note?”

            “He didn’t leave a letter or note.  But he left an envelope of $350.00.”

            “Why did he do that?”

            “He might have wanted us to use the money he has been saving up.”

            “He will come back,” she said firmly.
            “How do you know, ma?”

            “I know he will.  He still thought of you even when he ran away.  If he wanted to truly run away from his family, then he would not have left anything at all.”

            “But ma, I know he wanted to get away from us.  He didn’t even say goodbye!”

            “Who says goodbye when they run away?  I know he will come back.”  Her face seemed serious, and her voice sounded assured.  “Have faith.”

            My mother had faith in Huy’s return, but I did not know the reason.  My mother saw things that I could not, so I trusted her.  But my siblings—they did not believe in his return.  They tried to cut me with their jagged tongues and poison me with their venomous words, but I did not let them the pleasure of making me feel ashamed or hopeless.

            I held my ground like a Vietnamese person and my head high like an American.  I found the same strength that my children used.  Like them, I reinforced myself with both Vietnamese and American armor, and that is why my children saw themselves as both American and Vietnamese.  They are strong because they use one to support the other, and that is how they are able to survive in this new country.