Vietnam In Remembrance: A Journal

By Betty Bassett

My childhood in Vietnam...

We slept in a bed together, Nga and I. The floor inside was like sidewalk cement. Was there a game we played? I do not recall. The rooms were lit by hurricane lamps and natural light. There was a large hole in the ceiling over the drain. I remember the smell of peach candy.

I deeply yearned for a future in which I could conform to what my mother expected. There was so much to learn. With the Vietnam War raging a sense of instability was in the air. It threatened the out there, the things beyond our door portal. We slept in the same bed, clung to each other and tried to sleep. Nga was my nanny. I was five years old. There was always just her and me mostly. The light from the hurricane lamp was low and it flickered.  

I didn't hear the sounds of gunfire. Silence and the serenity of chirping crickets filled the night. There was no threat of violence from without that threatened to invade our home and hearth. The town held no hostility. It was not overrun with soldiers. I had only one fear. And that one fear was the mountainous, dark, ruthless person that I called mom. I recited my Our Father in my Vietnamese language and Nga and I attended church.  

I learned to leave my mother alone and only spoke to her when I was spoken to. My mother broadcasted boundaries that were miles in diameter. It's just smart to leave her alone. In the spaces of my recollection, there were few happy memories.

The walls were barren of art. Our furnishings were sparse. There were no curtains upon the windows. The air blew in. Afternoon sunlight comes in the open door and falls on the cement floor. What should I have valued? Survival? There was a hazy cloud confusion and unspoken rules.

Though there were other houses in which other people lived, I never once imagined them. Only the things that transpired in my world made for my reality. Empathy was never a thing that I pondered.  

A bed, single mattress is wet again with urine and it is this way every morning. My mother would beat me. Sometimes after I urinated, I awakened to the warmth and wetness and I lay still in my shame. I didn't know why my life didn't make sense. I only know that there were landmines. I try not to think. I try to be empty. I try to be numb and not engage with the world. Thinking or feeling something might be wrong and it would be punished. If I could just walk the narrow path of unthinking and maybe not existing, maybe life would be better. In fear I shrank into myself and grew smaller and smaller. Numbness beats feeling. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to go. Who would feed me? Who would take care of me? There was no place to run to.

Dirt road, sunlight, red flowers along my path, prison, freedom, is life always a privilege? I can hear, see. I have all my fingers and toes. I have never truly known deprivation or hunger. I live and breathe. I have a bed and a home.

My uncle said that great-grandfather was lying on his bed when the communist soldiers came. They killed him where he lay. They went door to door and room to room. The carpet bend down the staircase of the immense mansion. A mirror hung at the end of the hall. Great-grandfather's home was surrounded by endless fields of tilled farmland that was his. There wasn't yet a declaration of war. Ho Chi Minh was gathering his army and needed to pay his soldiers with land. It makes sense to take first, then to give. It's called redistribution.  

Nga stood by the stove preparing Chè Chuối (banana soup dessert with coconut milk). She is wearing a dull orange Ao Dai. The silk dress is like mine in shape, a long tunic worn over pants. The long sleeves go to her wrist and shows an elaborate colorful embroidery of a dragon. She puts on a white conical hat to go outside. It shields her from the sun. Her pale, unweathered face is unlike that of a farm laborer who works the rice paddies. There is a distinction. Today we celebrate the First Morning of the First Day, forgetting troubles of the past year and hoping for a better year to come. She looks at me with tenderness and smiles. Today must be perfect so that we can have good luck in the coming year. Rickshaws pass us on the street.  

Uncle said the Viet Cong after killing both of his brothers continued to pursue grandfather, his wife and children through the jungles of Vietnam for three days and three nights. Finally they made it to the coast and were rescued by an American Red Cross vessel. All the privilege and choice that was given by being born of wealth was in an instant, gone. New life in the South would be fishing. Grandfather constructed a house made of bamboo for the family. With seven children life was busy. Grandma taught the girls to cook and sew.  

Night time brought out terrors of rats that were brazen and carnivorous.