My Father, the Panda Killer, page 12
“You don’t want any?”
“No, it’s all you.”
Paul walks away, and before I can tell him not to eat them too quickly, the conversation from outside pulls me back in.
“Such a waste of a life. To jump off the boat that way,” one of the uncles says with a regretful tsk at the end of his sentence. They’re speaking in Vietnamese. It’s Bác Chuyên. I can tell by the way he slurs his words. Back in Vietnam, he was a deacon, but I’ve always just known him as a drunk. Divorce is still pretty taboo in Vietnamese culture, so he’s still married with five kids, but his wife kicks him to the curb so often that he’s more of a couch surfer than anything else. He bounces between houses until they tire of him and he goes somewhere else. He’s never stayed with us, though. Thank god, because I find him to be obnoxious.
“No one living on a boat that long escapes insanity,” Bác Luy says. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Floating freely in the open ocean sounds like heaven to me compared to this place. I like Bác Luy; he’s the closest uncle we have—except he’s not actually related to us. I asked about that once, but I don’t remember the answer, which means it was either vague or dismissive. What I do know is he’s the only uncle who gives us red envelopes for Christmas and Tết, the Vietnamese New Year. And obviously he took us to Disneyland.
“If those Thai fuckers hadn’t robbed and beaten us…Take money and jewelry, fine. Why break our bones and cut off our fingers? Our bodies were just a game to them,” Bác Chuyên spits. No one is more bitter than Bác Chuyên. One Thai boat crossed him and now all Thai people are monsters.
“You got off easy. What they did to some people is too heinous to even speak about,” my dad says, and the sentence lingers in the air like ash from a fire only recently extinguished.
“Let it go,” Bác Luy nudges. “This story has already passed.”
But Bác Chuyên digs in. “What do you know? You saw one shark and fainted like a dead person.” He finishes the last half of his beer in one swig and then stands up, asking, “Who wants another round?” And suddenly he’s right in front of me.
“Chào Bác Chuyên,” I say, jumping backward.
“Chan—e.” He’s never bothered trying to pronounce my name correctly. “Con lại đây.” He sways slightly. I don’t want to approach him, but I have no choice, and he laughs as I scrunch my nose in anticipation of what I know is coming. I stand two arm lengths away, but he steps toward me, brings his hand to my face and grabs my nose between his index and middle finger knuckles before twisting it and howling with laughter. While his hand is attached to my nose, I can’t help but stare at the nub where his pinky finger used to be. “This face of yours is so easy to hate. I could just slap it,” he says in Vietnamese. Believe it or not, this phrase is a compliment according to my dad. It’s the equivalent of “Oh, you’re so cute I just want to pinch your cheeks!” Both are equally awful. I prefer no one touch my face—like any part of it. This is mean, but I take great comfort in knowing that a Thai pirate chopped off his pinky finger during the war. I like to imagine that they did it to wipe the smug look he constantly has right off his face.
I scrunch my nose, which I’m sure is red, and step aside as he heads to the beer fridge, helping himself to some beef jerky along the way. That he’s able to carry four Heineken bottles plus the jerky without dropping any of it is probably his only real talent in life.
My dad is neutral about most people, but he despises Bác Chuyên as much as I do, so Bác Chuyên only comes to the shop as a guest of Chú Thịnh, who is my dad’s brother-in-law and the complete opposite of him. Where Bác Chuyên walks into the shop like he owns the place, picks the most expensive beer, and offers what isn’t even his to the rest of the guys, Chú Thịnh is overly polite. He never helps himself to anything even though my dad obviously wouldn’t mind and offers. He’s the only uncle I have who doesn’t have kids. His wife, my dad’s sister O Uyên, is still in Vietnam. I think she’s waiting for him to sponsor her coming to America. I’m not sure how you can be married to someone you only see once a year, but they’ve done it for over ten years. I suspect my dad keeps him around to make sure he doesn’t cheat on my aunt and find himself a new wife.
Chú Thịnh’s voice is frayed, and he’s self-conscious about it. That he was left scarred from the war and Bác Chuyên seems relatively unscathed—minus a pinky, but it’s not even a useful finger really—is proof that there is no karmic justice in the world. The war paralyzed Chú Thịnh’s vocal cords. I have no idea how. Everyone thought he was going to be mute for the rest of his life, but some doctors injected medicine into his throat, and now he can talk but can’t yell. It’s impossible to tell if he’s angry or ecstatic.
“I would take the ocean over being stuck on volatile land. If it wasn’t the mines exploding from below, then it was bullets raining from above. It’s a wonder any of us survived,” Bác Luy says. “Where were all the doctors? I still can’t believe your dad is the one who fixed my arm. It is true that Việt Năm is a small country.”
“I don’t miss the ocean. Sharks aren’t native to Việt Năm but during that time they lurked in the water. I’ll never forget the feeling of its skin. I looked down and it was licking me with its body! This shark, big like this,” my dad says, gesturing at the length of the room. “I thought for sure it would eat me, but it just pushed me back and forth like a ball.” He laughs as though this moment is funny, instead of horrifyingly scary. “If it wasn’t for Thầy Lâm, I would’ve drowned, and then he went and jumped off the boat anyway.” He doesn’t laugh this time, and that’s how I know this Thầy Lâm guy is dead.
No one says anything for a long, awkward moment, until Bác Chuyên leans forward and resumes making the conversation all about himself. No one seems to mind this time. As I press against the door listening, I wonder why Bác Chuyên was on this boat with my dad instead of any of his siblings.
My dad’s older brother and his younger sister still live in Vietnam with my grandparents. I’ve never met them. His older sister, O Linh, lives in Connecticut and I only remember meeting her once before Paul was born. While Mom watched the store, Dad and I drove from San Jose all the way to San Francisco to pick her up at the airport. She had a long layover on her way to visit Vietnam, so we ate bánh mì in the car for four hours and then dropped her back off at the airport. Chú Thịnh and Bác Chuyên were from the same village of đà Nẵng, and Bác Luy is chosen family, I guess. Because many from my dad’s generation resettled in America, they took to calling each other more familial names as a means of building community. Chú Thịnh and Bác Luy are the only two “friends” my dad has (Bác Chuyên doesn’t count for many of the aforementioned reasons) despite the many acquaintances who greet him with “My brotha” or “Mi amigo” at the store. They are not his friends. We don’t have friends. We have family, that’s it.
When the uncles are around, my dad is usually too preoccupied to pay much attention to what Paul and I are doing. Vietnamese men are odd. They’re friendly with one another, but not overtly. I never see them hug; they just kind of arrive and take their seats. The lack of affection isn’t machismo, though. It feels more awkward than masculine, like when I’ve met the same person too many times to not know their name, and I have to clumsily sidestep a half-greeting.
Only with my dad, it’s been like this my whole life. When I was a kid, I used to crawl over to the door and listen to their stories, but sometimes they were so graphic they’d give me nightmares, and I’d wake up screaming that I’m drowning. I think my dad knew then, like he probably knows now, that I was listening, but we’ve never acknowledged it.
This past January, Little Saigon, in Orange County, was on the news because some video store owner decided to hang the Communist flag next to a picture of Ho Chi Minh in his shop. My dad, Paul, and I sat glued to the television, watching it unfold.
Huge yellow banners read Ho Chi Minh = Mass Murderer and Ho Chi Minh = Hitler. I saw a lady waving a paper doll cutout of Ho Chi Minh with a noose around his neck. One poster in particular, though, is seared in my mind. It was white with the words: You Ask Why We’re Angry? these are how our loved ones were executed by ho chi minh. Below the handwritten letters were black-and-white photos depicting the murders. My eyes lifted in shock, and I turned to my dad, who was completely stoic. We’ve never discussed it.
“Why is four bad luck?” Paul asks.
“I just said I don’t know why.”
“But then how do you know it’s bad?”
“Because Dad told me. Anyway, why are you distracting me? Don’t you want to hear about the shark?”
Paul makes a motion of zipping his lips and falls back into his pillows.
* * *
Sandpaper rubbed against Phúc’s underside, scratching his bare skin as he hit the bottom of the ocean floor. And yet, there was pressure above him, like hundreds of pounds of water were pressing into him. Phúc hadn’t reached the bottom of the ocean. He was actually almost near the surface, but he wasn’t swimming. He was being pushed. The giant, toothy shark had caught Phúc on its back and was thrusting his frail and bony body upward. His ears throbbed with the quick ascent. Above water, the shark tossed him upward like one might flip a pancake, and Phúc flew through the air. He floated amid an endless blue sky—until he started to fall.
When he dropped back onto the shark, the impact forced the water inside his lungs to return to Mother Earth’s giant pool. Then he was out, as in passed out. The world went completely dark. There was no light, no heaven, just nothingness for seconds, minutes, hours, days maybe? In the oblivion, time became fluid.
When he came to, it was to a fit of lung-scratching, torturous coughing—death by a thousand grains of sand. His lungs burned hot with pain until, finally, the convulsions and bloody mucus subsided, and he found that he had somehow gotten himself thrown back onto the deck of the boat. Hoisting himself upright, he checked his body for bite marks and missing limbs. As far as he could tell, every physical part of him was accounted for.
“Mập ơi!” he called, his voice emanating in a whisper. An enemy would have eaten him, whereas Shark, aptly named Mập, which meant both fat and shark, had been playing with him. No answer. He would find his friend later. Tired, Phúc sat back down.
First, he shivered, then the fever dreams kicked in, and he slipped in and out of consciousness. One moment the sun shone high in the sky, its rays warming him to his core. Next, he lay on his back in the dark, his mouth dry, his lips chapped, and his skin burnt. At some point, a pounding headache sent sharp, searing pains across his scalp, making him dizzy. During his recurring blackouts, he could hear the men and women screaming. But his busted eardrums dampened the cries, causing the screams to sound distant despite the hard kicks and physical trampling of his limp body.
Calm, black oblivion.
Blink.
Black.
Sharp cry. Silence.
Blue.
Eyes open.
The normally vertical world was now horizontal—a purgatory of sorts. A gruff, half-naked man with mean eyes and dark, burnt skin crudely pressed his body into an unblinking woman, the one Phúc had taken the fruit from, who was either dead or stiff with fear.
Silence.
Darkness.
Hushed sounds.
Screaming.
Vibrations.
Silence.
Nothing.
Then a new sound: metal hitting wood, over and over again, dampened only by the occasional metal hitting flesh. Metal, wood. Metal, flesh. Metal, wood. Like a butcher chopping meat.
More quiet. Longer this time. Eternal.
Phúc’s eyelids pressed into his sockets like cinder blocks resting on his face.
* * *
When Phúc was finally able to peel one eye open, all he could see was blue.
The completely cloudless blue sky.
His chest rose with great effort.
Air.
Breath meant he was alive.
His mouth was dry. He was stuck. Not his whole body, just below the knees. He tried to wiggle free, but his legs could barely twist, and his ears vibrated with static. Phúc attempted to sit up and was met with a piercing pain in his skull that forced him into a fetal position as his teeth gnashed together so hard that his jaw locked.
As a result, when Phúc’s jaw loosened and he could finally move his head, he found that his legs were now detangled from the mass of bodies piled next to him. Quickly realizing that not only were they all dead but he was also completely soaked in blood, he scooted as far away from them as possible before curling into himself. Forcing his mind back into darkness, he prayed for a different reality, but the nightmare was real.
Blood crusted all along the side of his body.
At first, Phúc thought he had been spared the details of what transpired while he lay unconscious, but the images he hoped were lost would soon start to find their way back to him. Phúc’s first realization was that he wasn’t wrong. His shipmates had abandoned him in the water, but they weren’t being malicious. While Phúc dove for the school of fish, pirates had appeared on the horizon, and with no fuel, the passengers tried to paddle away from their line of sight. They were no match for these thieves of the sea, though.
More recollections came.
Barbaric. Unflinching. Relentless.
Th`ây Lâm’s pregnant wife lay flat on the floor, her head thumping against the dry wood as a large, brutish man pressed onto her. Twisting her long, jet-black hair in the palm of his hand, he whipped her head backward while thrusting forward—her hair held like the reins on a horse.
For a woman of delicate features, her forehead was strong. It took several blows before he drew blood. This torture seemed to go on for a long time, until the sun glinted off a shiny piece of jewelry in her left earlobe, and, without breaking his rhythm, the man ripped the tiny diamond-studded earring from her piercing, causing it to bleed profusely. Her tired eyes met Phúc’s before closing one final time.
When a lion strikes its prey, it pounces and immediately lunges for the jugular; a quick, swift death is the goal. But war makes people coldhearted. And the Thai pirates, well, their blood ran ice blue.
Blackout. Phúc couldn’t handle any more memories. He didn’t want to remember.
A day passed, maybe three. No one, including Phúc, knew how long he drifted unconscious on that boat—how he could have survived the mass murder. The lack of water, followed by days in the burning hot sun, should have killed him. Maybe it rained, and the droplets of water seeped into his mouth, saving his life. Maybe he really was the embodiment of luck. Or maybe it was just the opposite.
When he regained consciousness, he couldn’t move. His eyes were open, but the bright sun made it impossible to see. His brain told his hand to shield his eyes, but nothing happened. His brain told his hand to wiggle his fingertips, but he couldn’t see his fingers. As his breathing slowed and he waited for death, a hand reached across his face shielding it from the sun. A few minutes after that, the fingertips began to wiggle. He realized they were his own fingers. His body reacted so slowly that sunlight and darkness traded places in the sky several times before Phúc could fully sit up.
If his view of the deck floor had been horrifying before, the massacre he now saw was infinitely more abysmal. Blood splashed across the deck. Thick liquid dripped through the floorboards, coating the ship in death.
One by one, Phúc checked the bodies for signs of life. If they looked pale, he left them, but if their skin was blotchy and blue, he lugged them up to the side of the boat using buckets, planks, and other bodies as leverage until he could roll them overboard and watch them float in the water, stubbornly refusing to sink.
With eighteen of the passengers buried at sea, Phúc counted seven left on the ship.
Thirty-three people had boarded, so where were the rest? He ran through a mental checklist of people but kept getting them confused, never sure if he had counted them already, and when he started confusing the bodies he had just hauled overboard, he stopped trying to remember.
Remembering wouldn’t bring them back. Perhaps anyone still alive feared the boat—now full of bad karma—and they chose to take their chances floating in the open water.
Phúc looked at the seven people he hoped were still alive and tried to remember good things about them. If he conjured up good thoughts, their spirits might choose to stay on earth—to stay with him. None of them had a detectable pulse, but their bodies were warm—they still felt alive. Th`ây Lâm, whose arms he’d had to extract from their firm grip around his pregnant wife’s bruised and bloodied head, had taught Phúc’s arithmetic class. Phúc hadn’t known he was married or that he had a child. His daughter, whose name Phúc didn’t know, lay next to him, weak and just as pale as the rest. As he studied her downcast eyes, a memory surfaced. She was younger but had the same large, curious eyes and sunken-in cheeks, and she came stumbling awkwardly into the schoolyard as students were released. Completely oblivious to the hundreds of students rushing past her, she made her way inside, rebalancing herself with every other step until she found her dad.
And then Phúc remembered—her name was Thúy. The little girl’s name was Thúy.
“Please don’t leave me here alone.” Please don’t make me throw you overboard, he added in his head.
Across from the father-daughter duo was the deacon. Back home, Phúc hadn’t liked him much. He was bigheaded and self-important, and he didn’t know shit about fishing, but all of that seemed trivial in light of their new circumstances. The pinky finger on his right hand was gone, and infection ate away at the unsterilized, open wound. Now that he had been forsaken, would he see the wisdom in God’s plan?
