Flamboyant Flowers, Bloom No More [Hoa phượng đừng đỏ nữa] Free

Translated by Quan Tue Tran

News about the principal’s “early retirement” stirred the entire school. A laughable matter. The Phượng Hồng News Agency first broke the story. Then she pursed her lips. “A trivial matter. Not a big deal.”

After her comment, Phượng Hồng sprang to her feet. Her body stiffened, her face grew cold, her eyes wide open, staring at the treetop. Immediately, Sơn Trà grabbed Kim Trang’s shoulders, Thuyền Nguyệt fell onto Huyền, and the Five Dragons broke into a maddening laughter, ignoring those around them.

It wasn’t funny, Huyền thought. But the group continued to laugh. Since their lives upended, so much has happened. Yet everything still managed to surprise people. C’est la vie. It’s exactly like what Trang often mused. How brilliant, life.

The principal, for example, was still simply Teacher Tú, who taught literature during the old regime. Soon after the revolution, she quickly got promoted. Her overnight rise to principal led everyone to believe that she must have had some powerful connections with the new regime. Since she had held on to that position three years in a row, she must have had powerful backers. If not a robust base of supporters, then maybe she had some notable achievements or contributions, or maybe she was a covert agent. In Huyền’s neighborhood, in the early days of Liberation, covert agent stories were abundant.

Just look at Mrs. Béo, the innards porridge vendor.⁴ She and her children had a wooden stall, right at the alley’s entrance, to the left of Aunty Hai’s coffee stand. The war between Mrs. Béo the Porridge Vendor and Aunty Hai the Coffee Seller, had sometimes simmered in guerilla style, other times bubbling up in volleys of artilleries and direct attacks, dragging on for just as long as the Vietnam War.

Out of nowhere, on the evening of April 30th, Mrs. Béo the Porridge Vendor strode confidently through the neighborhood, calling loudly on the neighbors to hang the red flag with the yellow star. Where would one find such a flag? No worries, it was already organized.

Mrs. Béo’s teeny-tiny house, located deep in a narrow branch of the alley, immediately turned into a red-flag-yellow-star shop to serve the community. The first customers were Aunty Hai the Coffee Seller and her children. Red and yellow fabrics were everywhere, on the bed, the table, the cement ground; some even covered her grandkids’ pee puddles. Sister Thúy sweated through the crowd to secure a flag for mom. She told Huyền, “Poor thing. Mrs. Béo’s home was all red, but Aunty Hai’s face was green like a banana leaf. She enthusiastically bought three or four flags, who knows what for. She paid with a wad of one thousand đồng bills and was too afraid to ask for change.”

No one knew how the innards porridge–coffee war would end. Then the ward authorities implemented the Tidy Home and Clean Street Campaign. At the communal meeting, the leader of the women’s union excitedly introduced the campaign, “Neighborhood vendors who occupy the alley will have to restore the cleanliness of the alley and make room for traffic. Mrs. Béo will be a role model, beginning tomorrow. We women should give her a round of applause. Here’s to Mrs. Béo’s absolute revolutionary spirit!”

Mrs. Béo received the applause with pride. The innards porridge stall disappeared.⁵ Still, Aunty Hai Coffee couldn’t sleep well. She heard that her old enemy continued to go to the ward office daily. But then a short while later, Mrs. Béo unexpectedly resurfaced with her innards porridge, which was transported on a bamboo pole hung across her shoulders. The war ended gloriously. The wooden stall lost its place. Mrs. Béo became a street hawker with her mobile innards porridge setup. It was only then that Aunty Hai Coffee gave a sigh of relief, joking with the neighborhood ladies, “Thank goodness, three souls, and nine senses! That woman wasn’t a covert agent. She was just lying under a bed cover.”

But Teacher Tú must have been a real covert agent. In the latest round of the Anti-Capitalist Campaign, every single class heard her cold, steely words loud and clear: “The government was very correct to pass the resolution for the Anti-Capitalist Campaign. The compradors sucked the blood of the working people. You must be absolute in your thoughts and firmly hold your stance against them. You must fight hard, even against yourself and against your family. Among you, if you unfortunately have parents who belong to the capitalist class, you must encourage your parents to come forward and report themselves and follow the government’s correct policy to the letter. The revolution is always humane, forgiving, kind, and rational.”⁶

Then she lectured about a second-year student, a model student, who had been all over the newspapers and television, “You must follow Sister Nhàn’s example. You must all know Sister Nhàn by now. She is an excellent example of a youth who has been awakened by the revolution. Her parents were capitalists. She encouraged her parents many times not to hold on to their ill-gotten property and turn it all over to the government. Her parents stubbornly wouldn’t listen to her and even uttered reactionary words that defamed the revolution. Although she couldn’t convince them, Sister Nhàn didn’t give up. She went on television, reported her parents’ wrongful deeds, and became a shining example for the city youths. She received recognitions and awards and was admitted to the Hồ Chí Minh Communist Youth Union. She is working hard to become a member of the Communist Party. Her future is extremely bright.”

The principal ended her lecture on that note. But the messy aftermath of that story was left to gossips on the streets. Rumor had it that the parents had committed suicide. Their house and estate naturally became the property of the people, managed by the state. Sister Nhàn’s future was bright for sure.

Just like that, the principal’s encouragements and propaganda were constantly drummed into the students’ ears, such as the story of how the youths in Ward 9’s Inspection Group discovered in the house of Mr. Triệu, a capitalist tailor, two boxes of Kim Thành brand biscuits full of gold leaves. Even more terrible was the house of a shrewd capitalist woman who sold fine jewelry in Ward 10. So much of the bones and blood of the people were stuffed into two Guigoz cans brimming with diamonds.⁷ The flowerpots were full of gold. Even worse, some capitalists hid their possessions in a hole in the latrine. But nothing escaped the eyes and ears of the people.

The capitalists hid their money, buried their gold in hundreds of ways. But they could never fool the working-class people. Under the leadership of the vanguard party, the heroic working people became invincible, claiming victories over the capitalists and helping the government confiscate many ill-gotten properties.

Money was dirty. Teacher Tú disdained money openly. The older girls in the school whispered, “She has to disdain money. There’s no other way. Even if she saved up all her life, fought to the last drop of blood, she still couldn’t escape the jaws of an evil capitalist. That formidable capitalist is her very own husband.”

To balance out her past inattentiveness and her current revolutionary enlightenment, her husband consistently frequented the casinos. Thanks to him, through the two regimes, she maintained a propertyless status, an achievement that she took pride in.

Every Monday at the start of the week, the school held a flag-saluting ceremony.

“Be careful. This is serious.”

Phượng Hồng looked at the group and wrinkled her nose.

It was indeed serious. The new red flag with the yellow star must have been four times larger than the old yellow flag with three red stripes. Always standing in the front of the teachers’ line, how serious and heartfelt Teacher Tú looked. Her body stiffened, her face grew cold, her eyes opened wide, and, staring ahead, she gazed intently at the fluttering red flag. Her mouth contorted from side to side. Her spirit was soaring with the national anthem. But this anthem already had two or three different additional sets of lyrics that were fun and easy to remember, courtesy of the children playing on the street. Looking at Teacher Tú’s contorting mouth, her bloodshot eyes wide open in the direction of the flag, while overhearing the boys faintly singing the revised version of the song made Huyền want to laugh aloud until her belly burst. But none among the Five Dragons dared to smile.

So, she waited, until finally one time, just before the flag saluting ceremony, instead of wrinkling her nose and saying, “be careful, this is serious,” Phượng Hồng suddenly stood up, stiffened her body, her face growing cold, eyes wide open and rolled upward, staring at the treetop, contorting her mouth back and forth.

Oh, how the group cracked up, so hard they were rolling back and forth. They laughed until tears came out. It was a good thing because by the time the flag saluting ceremony came around, they no longer had the strength to laugh.

The pantomime of Teacher Tú saluting the flag invented by Phượng Hồng quickly spread across the school. Even the older students copied her. Everywhere, the students were rolling in laughter.

One time, while they were pantomiming Teacher Tú, Teacher Tám walked by and threw them a side glance. He tried to be serious and walked straight past them. But after that, Kim Trang nudged Huyền’s shoulder, “I bet you ten to one that he also wanted to roll around and laugh with us, but he didn’t dare. Looking at his glance, I could tell.”

Teacher Tám taught history and geography and was a person of whom the principal was most wary. Not because he came from an influential background, but because he was better versed in revolutionary matters than she was. Whenever the occasion arose, he fluently recited them, such as what Uncle Hồ said on such-and-such a date in such-and-such a place, the Politburo’s resolutions, the Central Committee of the Communist Party’s resolutions, the secretariat’s decisions, the government’s laws and policies. He even knew their dates, the documents’ numbers, what the basics were, and who signed them. Just like that, he recited them. And based on those documents, things had to be this way or that way. He would go on for a long while, and sometimes the principal was so mad her face darkened, but she couldn’t figure out how to counterattack because every which way she turned, there were recitations of Uncle Hồ, party edicts, and decrees. In class, Teacher Tám’s face was always serious. Whenever he mentioned the Party and Uncle Hồ, his voice was always solemn, respectful. But for some unknown reasons, the entire class would occasionally fall over laughing. The students liked Teacher Tám, especially the devilishly mischievous boys.

Ah, yes. Speaking of the boys. Huyền’s school had another earth-shattering change. Before the revolution, this was an all-girls school. Now it was coed. In Huyền’s class, there were more boys than girls. To explain this change, the principal lectured, “You all must know that our people have had to endure three types of oppression: the colonial and imperial oppression, the oppression of the feudal kings and mandarins, and the oppression of the capitalists and land-owning class. Women and girls had to endure a fourth oppression.⁸ That was the inequality and discrimination between men and women, offsprings of the exploitative feudal class. The evidence of that gender discrimination was this very school. Why did female students have to study separately, and why weren’t they allowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts? Thanks to the leadership of the Glorious Party, our people have been liberated. Women and girls have been liberated. The female students in our school have also been liberated. Male and female are equal. Before, the American puppets corrupted our society and used that as an excuse to separate male and female students. From now on, male and female students stand shoulder to shoulder, studying and practicing the revolutionary virtues…”

The part about males and females standing shoulder to shoulder seemed very exciting. The class became noisier; the boys slyly said, “Teacher, male and female ecstatically rub bodies together.”

“What? Say it louder.”

“Yes. ‘Male and female should never be close together.’ The puppets said that. The revolution said male and female rub…oh wait…will be close together. All are equal…”⁹

The class burst into laughter. They expected trouble. But the principal didn’t react, she looked at the sly student, “Yes. The revolution has brought a wind of change strong enough to wipe out any remnants of the American puppets. The new cultural lifestyle will wash clean the dirtiness of the old, depraved culture.”

The principal continued her winning streak. But there came a time when even she would need to confide in others, in her students, and in her colleagues. It was unclear how words got out, but the school whispered about it.

It was said that Teacher Tú had once been full of dreams. An orphan, a victim of war, she was adopted by an aunt in Sài Gòn so that she could go to school but also help around the house. She tried to be a good student, climbing each step of life until she sat atop the principal’s seat.

It was said that, long ago, she loved the royal purple color of Huế, she adored the long and flowy áo dài.¹⁰ She was once in love and was romantic in so many ways. She had been determined to find a significant other who matched her humanistic soul. Who would have thought that the counterpart she chose would be an around the clock alcoholic and gambler. Even though she knew he was fallen and dissolute, she stayed with him anyway because she understood that he was a victim of the old regime.

Among Huyền’s Five Dragons group, Kim Trang had the sassiest mouth. She described the principal’s beauty, “In her youth, she held her court. It was life under the cruel American puppets that made her suffer and anxious. That’s why her forehead is wrinkled like that. Also, she had to give birth multiple times, all seven children; no wonder those elegant curves of yesteryear disappeared. The places that aren’t supposed to shrink shrank, the places that aren’t supposed to sag sagged. The old regime exploited women to their bones through producing children. Sadly, the revolution came to her a little too late. ‘If you haven’t yet, don’t fall in love. If you’re already in love, don’t marry yet. If you are married, don’t have children yet.’¹¹ Had the revolution arrived ten years earlier with this ‘Three Don’ts’ slogan, it wouldn’t have been so bad for her. At most, she’d only have one child. And if she had only one kid, you all would know it: ‘A woman with one child is even more beautiful.’”¹²

Phượng Hồng laughed. Kim Trang pointed to Huyền, “What are you laughing at? Don’t you remember the time Sister Thúy went to the office to address Huyền’s disciplinary note and called the principal ‘Madame Principal,’ and she got a memorable lecture?”

Indeed, that did happen. Sister Thúy told Huyền herself. Teacher Tú really hated the word “madame.” “The revolution has arrived. There is no this or that madame. Madame is the linguistic remnant of the American puppets, the vocabulary imposed by the capitalists to insult the propertyless class. Just calling me principal is enough,” Teacher Tú lectured Sister Thúy.

Phượng Hồng was one of the members of the Five Dragons. The origin of Huyền’s group began before Liberation, when they studied at the Regina Pacis School. There were eight of them in total. Every time she saw the eight girls, Sister Thúy pinched her nose and laughed, “In old Chinese stories there are eight heavenly bodies called the Eight Immortals.¹³ Since you snot-nosed kids are trying to be something, I’ll call you the eight little vamps.”

At first, they didn’t think much of it and thought it was a cool moniker. But then when they understood it, they were spitting mad at Sister Thúy. But that was an old grudge, under the current circumstances, had the eight remained eight vamps or demons, they would have been happy.

The eight of them included Phượng Hồng, Sơn Trà, Kim Trang, Thuyền Nguyệt, Trọng Phước, Quí Anh, Ngọc Mai, plus Huyền. After their lives upended, there remained five. Trọng Phước emigrated; there was news that she resettled in America with her family. Quí Anh disappeared, and they lost touch with her. Ngọc Mai dropped out of school since the beginning. Mai’s father, a South Vietnamese marine, drowned with his ship during the evacuation from the central region. Mai tried to escape by sea several times but wasn’t successful. Each time she got released she went to find each of her remaining friends, told them about her failed escapes and subsequent arrests. Most recently, she came back to see each one of them, “This time, there’s a seventy percent chance.”

“Are you sure it’s seventy?”

“Yeah, as sure as the sun rises,” she smiled wryly. Trang was impressed by her friend and committed herself to a vegetarian diet for two days to pray for her.

Huyền and Kim Trang shared the same fate, as they both had fathers imprisoned in reeducation camps.¹⁴ With fewer people in her family, Huyền’s mom had to work more. Trang had many siblings, and her mom was chronically ill, so the entire family had to rely on the income from selling cigarettes out of a wooden box on the street. Trang said, “Suddenly, cigarette boxes sprang up like mushrooms after the rain. Why? Because the people had all grown cold, and they like to fire up a little to remind themselves that they still have some smoke left.”

Ah, but poetry was still in her blood. Huyền and her friends admired Trang even more. Still, there was more. Trang’s mom’s cigarette box was near a movie theater. Trang and her siblings took on a new profession as scalpers. Trang adapted to the new situation very quickly. She encountered all sorts of people, from the upper crust to the dregs of society, so she spoke carelessly and loosely. Whatever the story was, it became a joke in Trang’s mouth.

Sơn Trà, who had slightly brown skin and beautiful eyes, lived with her mom and two brothers. Her father and two older brothers were able to evacuate. Whenever she spoke of them, Sơn Trà was full of hope. In contrast, Thuyền Nguyệt lived with her father because her mother had gone to Japan for medical treatment before 1975 and was stuck there. Their rooster-caring-for-the-chick scenario was full of comedic and tragic stories. But still, it wasn’t as tragic as Phượng Hồng’s case. Her name sounded so splendid, but since her father returned home from the revolution, and the family reunited, the girl sometimes went crazy because of her parents’ fights.¹⁵

Back then, the first drama that came on TV was a story about a man who joined the revolution and reunited with his wife at home victoriously. In one scene, the wife opened the door and stood about 1.5 meters from her husband. The returnee tried to keep his distance and opened his eyes wide. The wife still stood there, “Tú, honey, is that you?”

The husband responded as if he was reciting a lesson, “Yes, it’s me.”

The wife, “Tú, honey, you have returned.”

The husband, “Yes, it’s me, I have returned.”

The wife, who had probably forgotten her line, “Tú, honey, is that you?”

The husband, “Yes, it’s me.”

And they kept at it for a while. Phượng Hồng reunited with her father right around the time of the play and went straight to Huyền’s house for a whole afternoon. She was crying, and then remembered the play on TV, and laughed heartily when she compared it to her family’s situation.

Phượng Hồng had two brothers. Brother Tuấn was a talker and four years older than her. It was unclear when she came up with the idea to pair Huyền with him. Whenever she was losing an argument to Huyền, she would cross her arms in front of her chest and politely intone in a northern accent, “Yes, dear Older Sister.” Then the entire group would crack up while Huyền’s face grew red and flustered. Kim Trang and Thuyền Nguyệt sometimes chimed in, “We caught you red-handed. Yesterday, you two were winking at each other.” Or, “See! He gave the excuse of picking up his younger sister at school so that he can show off his Honda to Huyền.”¹⁶ It was unclear whether these teasing words reached his ears, but sometimes he looked at Huyền and smiled. So annoying.

According to Phượng Hồng, Tuấn was a great actor on the stage of his family’s play. While the dishes and bowls were smashed, he laughed aloud and said bitterly, “Pa, Mom. In my body, the paternal half is communist, the maternal half is republican. Pa and Mom, you don’t have to fight each other, just look at me, and that’s enough.”

Funny. Pa referred to the fathers who regrouped to the north.¹⁷ Mom referred to the southern mothers. Phượng Hồng explained so. Immediately, Kim Trang interrupted, “What about you, Phượng Hồng, do you share those two things equally?”

Sơn Trà was even harsher, “You’d have to ask her mom. Do you dare to ask?”

Their joking around didn’t go further than that. But behind Phượng Hồng’s back, the four of them had more questions. The North and South were divided for so many years. Tuấn was 21 years old, Phượng Hồng was only 17. It seemed the new moon was a bit lopsided; something didn’t add up. It was rather complicated to explain the family’s background. The father regrouped to the North and was sent back to the South and operated in the marshy guerilla zone.¹⁸ His wife was contacted, and she joined him in the maquis area. After five or six years of coming and going, her accomplishment as a liaison agent was two pregnancies. She had certainly earned the title Heroine of the Bronze Fortress.¹⁹ And then, abruptly and inexplicably, she brought the two children to Sài Gòn and ended everything. Up until now, since her husband returned home, the nationalist-communist war was still going in the family.

None of them dared to bring up these queries to Phượng Hồng, but once Kim Trang whispered in Huyền’s ears, “I know. There’s lots of drama with Phượng Hồng’s parents.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s why I’m good. You already know Phượng Hồng’s mom is from Bến Tre. When she was young, she was drop-dead gorgeous. Her father was a liar. He never regrouped anywhere. He was ordered to stay behind as an undercover agent and secretly ran financial operations for the Việt Cộng. Tons of money. Hồng’s mom didn’t know any better, she fell in love with him. She had two brothers who were officers in the South Vietnamese military. One of them is still in a reeducation camp.”

That, in a nutshell, was Huyền’s Five Dragons group. Only Five Dragons, they didn’t dare to use the full “Five Dragon Princesses” phrase.²⁰ All of them were still developing. Their shapes and facial features hadn’t settled yet. Each was skinny, representing the toothpicks and bamboo stalks of the North and South. Especially in the last two years, they had to constantly supplement their diets with cassava root and barley, and such a diet had stunted their growth. Only Phượng Hồng, whose father was a high-ranking cadre, fared better. Occasionally, she managed to get her hands on Russian butter, which was a part of her dad’s rations, and divided it among her friends, just enough to spread on their bread. In the beginning, Trang complained, but Phượng Hồng joked irreverently, “Whatever, you guys should be proud that you have a friend like me. With my father’s connection to the revolution, we have a little bit of Russian butter to lick up. Russian butter is very rare, not as abundant as American butter. Just have a taste to know the flavor of communist butter and milk.”

Then the entire group happily gobbled away.

Whenever they met, the five had to be loud and mischievous. Why? Because the warmth in their homes had grown cold, each of their households harbored a disappointment, an internal pain. They each sighed, “It’s so sad at home.”

Home was sad, and there were plenty of tensions at school too. Even in Huyền’s class, the assorted boys and girls divided into groups and cliques. This group hated, distrusted, and discriminated against the other group. After a year or two, the classes were filled with new faces with bona fide northern dialects. The children from the New Social Class. At least the southern students remained in the majority, and the new kids eventually assimilated, more or less.

For example, in Huyền’s class, Huỳnh Anh was the top student. Her father had passed away, and Huỳnh Anh lived with her mom and her four younger brothers; the youngest was in second grade this year. Huỳnh Anh liked to talk about her maternal uncle, who had studied to become a pilot and was living in America, and with whom she was trying to make contact. When this got to the principal’s ears, she called Huỳnh Anh to the office to admonish and threaten her, “Do you want to be able to sit for the exam? You must remember, in this regime, you must completely sever ties with the old elements that still owe a blood debt to the people.”

Huỳnh Anh answered frankly, “But, dear principal, my father died because of artillery explosion. How can I erase my background of having a father who was a Republican soldier?²¹ And my maternal uncle went for training in America and got stuck there, everyone knows that. I bragged about it because I was mad at Ngọc. He threatened me. He said that my background is not good, that my maternal uncle is the enemy and lives in America, so I needn’t study because it’s useless.”

The principal’s eyes widened, “Let me call Ngọc here and make him write a self-criticism. He maligned the policy just like the reactionaries. According to the revolution, whoever committed the crime pays. There is no such thing as your background affecting how you do on the exam. You shouldn’t listen to the reactionaries who poison innocent children with their propaganda.”

After that, Ngọc was called to the office. When he returned to the classroom, he spoke loudly in his Nghệ Tĩnh dialect, “I have nothing to be scared of, that old hag can’t expel me. When she knows which office my dad works for, her balls will shrivel up. If she hears about my background, she’s gonna lower her voice and sound as sweet as ground cane sugar stuffed inside a lotus seed coated with cinnamon oil.”

Huỳnh Anh had ranked first in two consecutive years, while Ngọc was at the bottom. Of course, Ngọc still had to be promoted to the next grade. It was easy enough to understand: When it was time to buy food or household things, the principal was able to purchase her own mosquito net, while, according to the standard ration, two or three teachers could buy a single mosquito net between them. The students whispered among each other about the teachers receiving purchasing coupons, like it was a comedy, and laughed until they forgot about everything around them.

“Teacher Năm along with Teacher Bân and Teacher Tám received coupons to buy two pairs of boxers.”²²

“So, they’ll take turns, each one wearing a pair for a day.”

“Oh, really? What about Teacher Mẫn, Teacher Hạnh, and Teacher Xuyến getting a single coupon for a mosquito net to share?”

“They couldn’t buy a blanket?”

“Just the net.”

“No problem. Teacher Mẫn can sleep in the middle, no need for a blanket.”

“Last month, Teacher Năm and Teacher Mẫn swapped several meters of fabric, did you know that?”

“Why did they have to exchange?”

“I heard Teacher Năm said that she received a coupon to buy fabric to make pants. The coupon said two meters by eighty centimeters. But when she got to the store, she was given a meter of yellow fabric and a meter of red. She needed pants for work, but she was afraid that sewing a pair of pants with one yellow leg and one red leg would land her in jail.”

“Oh, I get it, that was the leftover fabric from the flag sewing campaign, and now the store is selling to cadres and employees.”

Kim Trang commented, “If I were Teacher Năm, I would wear those anyway, no need to exchange anything. If that’s what the store sold, then that’s all she had to work with.”

“Trang, you are just hopeless. Would you dare use flag fabrics for pants? You’ll be put in jail forever and ever.”

Trang continued her nonsense, “No wonder Teacher Mẫn has been so happy in the past few days. The three of them bought a net, and Teacher Mẫn gets to sleep in the middle, so he must have been ecstatic!”²³

Trang used all sorts of slang, and the group had slowly grown used to it. More recently, during recess, when the principal walked by, Trang sang underneath her breath:

“…Teacher Tú

From now on you can’t flex your power

From now on you lost a tail…”

Thanks to Trang’s daily routines, the Five Dragons occasionally had their names posted on the disciplinary blackboard. One time, the principal dragged Huyền to the office and warned that the five girls were considered “special.” That was a long time ago, the wound had become a scar inside Huyền. From the special status, to admonishing and dissecting Huyền in every way, the principal now turned to the question of her background, “Did you lie on your report? Was your father really just a lieutenant? You said that in your report so that he wouldn’t be sent to the North, right? Your father was only a lieutenant, but your mother dressed as if she was a wife of a general? You’re still not being truthful.”

It was unclear when the principal would have seen Huyền’s mom. After Liberation Day, her mom always let Sister Thúy take her place at official meetings in the ward or at school. Huyền’s mom was just over 40 and her hair had turned salt-and-pepper some time ago. She had no time for anything outside of her diligent work as a vendor, buying and selling things. For the last half year, she had gone on long-distance trading trips that sometimes took up to a whole week. She was so exhausted by the time she got home with the goods. Looking at the photos of her mom while her father was still around and comparing them to her mom now, the change defied Huyền’s imagination. Without makeup and her hair unkempt, her mom had grown old so quickly. Huyền and her siblings often reminisced about their mom’s sweet, graceful appearance back then. The bà ba shirt and simple black pants had become her style in recent years. In her closet, Huyền’s mom still had ten or so áo dài and several dozen outfits for the different special occasions in the past.²⁴ She neither touched nor sold them. Almost everything in the house that could be sold had already been sold, except for the closet, the contents of which she never wore again, so strange. Every time she opened the closet to look, she would sigh, “Your father bought all of these for me.”

The principal was already wrong about one thing, and now she was wrong about another, “With that lifestyle, your family must have a lot of gold saved up. It’d probably take more than three decades until your family finishes using up all that gold.”

“My mom has had to take up trading to support my dad in the reeducation camp and my siblings and me.”

“Humph. Those women are making things up. Back then, ladies like them had nothing to do but to sit there and have their fingernails filed and their toenails painted. They sat there and pointed their five fingers and had many soldiers serving them. The only stuff they ever bought or sold were diamonds and gold, all the things that our government forbids.”

“Please tell me, Principal, is this a school or a police station?” Huyền asked and then stood up, bringing her devilish face back to the classroom, waiting to be called back to the office for her expulsion notice. But strangely, one week, and then two weeks, went by, and nothing happened. Could it be that every vixen has a little bit of conscience? Not really. Huyền’s mom received an invitation to come to the school. She loved her daughter, so she begged the principal, but begging was ineffective without knowing one’s way. Two meters of white fabric for a shirt and a pair of pants made of black French synthetic silk fabric—she had to search very hard to find this rare fabric. Folding them neatly, she complained, “Why bother talking back to the principal? Clearly, you don’t love your mom or care about your dad.”

Love her mother, care about her father? My god, Huyền loved them immeasurably. She thought about her father imprisoned in the reeducation camp, exiled to the deep and dangerous jungle. It was not like Huyền had not seen that hell on earth before. Just after Liberation, when Huyền was 13 years old, her eyes were not yet mature enough to discern everything, but she could understand plenty. Huyền remembered well the first full moon of the seventh lunar month during the first year of liberation.²⁵ Sài Gòn inhabitants were still frightened by the new detention centers that popped up everywhere like mushrooms, news of arrests, assassinations, and currency exchange. One set of news hardly settled in before the next came—namely, the full moon of the seventh month and the offerings to the wandering spirits. Each family offered a tray of goods. The ones that could afford more added a chicken; the ones financially drained offered crackers, corn, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, and boiled peanuts. On that day, the streets filled up with incense smoke. Trang whispered, “I’m sick and tired of this! My old lady already sold her very last French synthetic silk pants, and, still, she wanted to make offerings to the wandering spirits. Her friends told her that we must do it properly this year because the ancestors had already predicted that the seventh month would be the month to appease spirits of all ‘Parties.’²⁶ Now, people realized the truth of that prediction, so they enthusiastically participated in the offerings.” Then she whispered to Huyền, “The ‘Parties’ here means the Communist Party. Is your family making an offering? Make an offering to ‘the Parties’ and the dads will be released early.”

How is that possible? Since Liberation, every time Huyền’s mom returned from the ward meeting, after she had heard some sort of explanation about the policies, agendas, and directions of the state, she became slightly hopeful. She told Huyền and her siblings, “The cadres said that how soon a reeducation camp detainee gets to go home has to do with their families’ attitudes at home—if they properly fulfill their neighborhood duties, if they participate enthusiastically in local tasks. Remember that and watch your mouth, but it’s so hard, especially with Thúy’s mouth. Don’t you kids want your father to return home soon?”

Huyền’s poor mother. She wanted to be the only one to bear the hardship and the resentment. Huyền and her siblings were still children. Children don’t have the right to bear pain and shame. Only Sister Thúy, who after hearing how the principal interrogated Huyền, said angrily, “If it were me, I wouldn’t have been as gentle as Huyền. No matter the consequences.”

“How much worse is it going to be? Isn’t this already enough to deal with, my child?”

“And why did you give that shrewd woman so many things? Now that she’s gotten a taste, she will continue to demand more. Let me go there and ask her…those April 30th turncoats…”²⁷

“I beg you, Thúy. You love your imprisoned father. Don’t you want your father to survive and return?”

Sister Thúy grabbed her head with both hands, disheveling her hair.

“I just want to leave. I can’t stay…I can’t. If Huyền can’t study then she can drop out, there’s no need to…”

“How could she possibly leave school? They will send her to hard labor, to civil conscription projects. You have already done a round of irrigation work. Don’t you love your sister?”²⁸

Sister Thúy had had a full taste of irrigation work, so full that it went to her heart, lungs, and intestines, giving her a chronic cough for over a year now. Coughing until she developed pneumonia. Coughing until she almost spent all of mom’s savings. There was a shortage of medicine, and Sister Thúy had to help care for other sick people while she was herself sick. It was thanks to the prescription slip from Hồng Bàng Hospital that she had been spared from irrigation work for almost a year.

“Oh no, I’d rather die from tuberculosis, that’d be better than falling back into that nightmarish hell. Mentioning it gives me goosebumps.”

She complained like that to her best friend, Sister Xuân. Right after Liberation, Sister Xuân erected a coffee stand at the law school. Once she ran out of money, she switched to selling steamed rice rolls. After the rice rolls, she turned to crab noodle soup. When it was time to clean up the street [of itinerant vendors], Sister Xuân became a trader, buying and reselling unused rations from communist soldiers and government employees. Sister Xuân carried the burden of a big happy family, including her great grandmother and grandmother, her two brothers in reeducation camps, and practically a small squadron of nieces and nephews. Sister Xuân was also a close relative of Brother Tâm, Sister Thúy’s fiancé. The two of them had had an engagement ceremony a while back. But they kept putting off the wedding. They hadn’t broken up yet, but their relationship wasn’t moving forward either. Brother Tâm was contemplating escaping by sea. Sister Thúy had many times put down her bowl during dinner and sobbed,²⁹ “I want to leave. I don’t want to be here anymore.” Her words hit Huyền’s mom like hitting a wall. “Have you forgotten about those two lungs of yours? You have to get well first.”

Mom’s handling [of the principal] enabled Huyền to return to school, and she kept things quiet, both for her and the Five Dragons. Hopefully it would also quiet the storm, in case the news that the principal had “flown” from the school was true.

The principal hadn’t flown, but the wind and storms didn’t let up. The victim this time was Teacher Hiền. Like her name, Teacher Hiền wasn’t beautiful, but likeable and gentle.³⁰ It wasn’t clear how she became the principal’s enemy.

First to break the news was Huỳnh Anh, “Have you heard how the principal harmed Teacher Hiền?”

Trang jumped in, “Of course. Who hasn’t?” She dragged the group to a corner of the schoolyard. “Come out here to avoid the school informers. Sorry, but you’re so careless. That clump of bamboo has ears, you know.” She winked at Huỳnh Anh.

Sơn Trà impatiently demanded, “What’s the scoop? Hurry up and say it, I’m dying to know.”

“Last Friday at a committee meeting, she thought that everyone had heard the news that she would be ‘uneducated,’ so she made all sorts of threats.³¹ Suddenly, she singled out Teacher Hiền and launched a fiery denunciation campaign right then and there. She said that someone accused Teacher Hiền of falsifying her background, that Teacher Hiền had not fully reported many secrets about her family and herself. She claimed that Teacher Hiền had a brother who was trying to avoid going to reeducation camp, that Teacher Hiền had a boyfriend who was in a reeducation camp, that Teacher Hiền’s father was a Vietnamese traitor who was killed by the revolution…”³²

“Nonsense. When was Teacher Hiền’s father ever killed? Last month, he came up from his home village to visit his daughter and brought her ten kilos of rice and dried fish. He cursed nonstop, saying that he brought his daughter ten kilos of rice because he heard that there was a shortage in the city, so he hid the rice carefully, passing several inspection points, and he was so anxious to the point that his heart wanted to jump out of his chest.”

“Ten kilos of rice, that’s nothing. My old man came back from an assignment carrying two or three bags.”

“As if that’s true. Your father is a cadre, he uses the government’s vehicle, who can inspect him? Teacher Hiền’s father said that some people tried to smuggle just five kilos, got discovered by the tax authorities, and they begged to death, but the rice still got confiscated.”

“Never mind the rice story. It makes me hungry. There’s more to Teacher Hiền’s case. The principal told who knows how many stories. They were as dramatic as Hồ Quảng operas.³³ She said that she had evidence that Teacher Hiền went to the local public security agency and applied for permission to travel. There were two reasons to ask for travel permission. One was to visit reeducation camp detainees. Two was to go to the coast or the highlands. And going to those areas basically means you’re trying to escape across the border.”

“How cruel! Everyone likes Teacher Hiền. She has never hurt anyone.”

“Well, just because she’s never hurt anyone, does that mean other people can’t harm her? Silly. It’s only because she is gentle. It would be a different story if the principal tried to poke Teacher Tám. He’s an ace at memorizing all sorts of slogans and can recite them smoother than officials from the North. When he talks about the government’s directives and policies, you’ll laugh until you fall over. He was the one who told Teacher Hiền’s story so that the whole school knew, when no other teachers dared to do that. And his way of speaking is bullet proof, she couldn’t fault him or twist the facts…”

Trang stopped to laugh and continued, “Are you guys listening? After she denounced Teacher Hiền, she threatened to report to the higher-ups so that the leadership could investigate and deal with the situation appropriately. Just hearing it secondhand was enough to make me…so, so angry. I just want to…”

That was how Trang talked. Thuyền Nguyệt frowned. It was strange that every time Huyền looked at Thuyền Nguyệt’s frowning face, she caught a glimpse of sadness and pain. Thuyền Nguyệt was Huyền’s best friend. Thuyền Nguyệt had had to grow up without her mother. Living with her father was like living by herself.

Every time Huyền visited her friend, she saw Thuyền Nguyệt cleaning up the war zone that her dad had left behind after his drunken rounds. Among the five of them, Thuyền Nguyệt was the most beautiful. But she kept a frown on her face. Every time she frowned, she looked older and lost all of the innocence of her adolescence. Trang was the opposite. She had been forced to struggle, to scramble, and to tussle her way through life. She was swarthy and bitter, but when Trang smiled, her smile erased all the melancholy, toil, and dissatisfaction.

And like that, after seeing Thuyền Nguyệt’s frowning face, Trang smiled widely, “Nothing to frown about, you old lady. I tell you, I heard her words and I wanted to…for real. I swear. At this rate, the city’s Public Security will have to lay off a lot of people because of her.”

Even the city’s Public Security uttered from her mouth sounded cheerful and light. Phượng Hồng punched Trang’s shoulder, “Don’t bring that lion’s den up. It’s pretty sacred, girls.”

“Nothing sacred about it. Agreed, the city’s Public Security is occasionally sacred, but each public security agent is…You know, when my mom started selling cigarettes, she was constantly on the run with her cigarette box. Occasionally, she got caught and escorted back to the public security station, got ‘educated,’ then begged, and did self-criticism and paid her fines. Back then, she didn’t know how to do it. But now she’s sailing smoothly because she knows how to make ‘offerings’ at the right time and place. Hah…”

She suddenly bent over with laughter leaving the group waiting anxiously. “What are you laughing at?”

“Hah…I am going to laugh to death. Hah…hah…One day, a Public Security agent came and stood there staring at my mom’s cigarette box, ‘Hey, this cigarette box only has foreign stuff?’

“My mom said, ‘No, those are just empty boxes to make a more attractive display, sir.’

“‘Empty cases, but if anyone asks, you’d hand them the illicit contents hidden underneath, right? I know you ladies too well.’

“‘Oh my god, where would I get the money to sell foreign cigarettes, sir?’

“He smiled, ‘Don’t call me sir, forget that feudalistic way of address. Public Security agents are the people’s servants. You are the people. We are your servants.’

“Before my mom even had a chance to feel satisfied by his explanation, he asked, ‘Do you have matches?’ She innocently gave him the match box. The ‘servant’ yelled, ‘Using a match to burn your cigarette box? Take this wooden box of cigarettes to the station.’

“At that point, my mother finally understood and took out five 555 cigarettes, the fancy kind; the servant immediately put away his evil face and smiled happily. In the beginning, my mom didn’t know the rules of making an ‘offering,’ so she gave them Hoa Mai cigarettes, even the whole box. They would yell at her and tell her to give those to the reeducation camp prisoners. Now that they have accumulated a lot of cigarettes, they smoke the loose ones, and they force the cigarette ladies to buy the full boxes. But if the cigarette ladies buy from the Public Security agents and don’t hide the boxes carefully, the agents tell each other and come to search for foreign cigarettes and confiscate them.”

Just like that. One story rolled into the next. Lately, Huyền and her friends would tell stories without beginning or end. At school, the teachers were bewildered, worrying about meetings, inspections, denunciations, and survival. The students were struggling with smaller projects, such as how to save a few đồng from their breakfast money. Smaller projects such as collecting scrap paper from every household [to resell], glasses and jars, too, and even bricks and roof tiles when the school needed repairs.

But sometimes, Huyền and her friends also had their glorious moments. These occasions were usually made possible by Phượng Hồng or Trang. Trang had her tricks with selling black market tickets. On days when she managed to get her hands on invitation [theater] tickets reserved for high-ranking cadres, those were the good ones. Everybody liked this type of ticket because they were for the best seats, and when she sold them, she got a kickback from both the theater and the ticket seller. The money that she earned each day exceeded her mom’s expectations. With the leftover money, the group would go to Tân Định Market and eat dessert pudding. They never had a satisfying dessert. It was a very small amount of money, but all five had to be there. And the dessert pitifully contained only beans cooked in black sugar. Two parts sugar, one part salt. The dessert seller was happy to see the Five Dragons. When the group came by, the cups and spoons didn’t even need washing, just a simple lightening wipe with a towel, and the cup was ready for the next person.

Poor as dirt. But luckily, each of them still had their bicycles; even though they were old, the bikes were still their “personal property.” Five crippled horses, Trang called them. Every day, the five of them would ride on the streets after school. Trang’s horse was always struggling. Her bike was in the worst shape and had all sorts of locks and chains tied in the back.

“Just to be safe,” Trang answered when Phượng Hồng made fun of her.

At this point, the group passed by a pharmacy. A large sign covering half of the storefront read, “Beware of bike theft. Even if you have locks.”

“That won’t be the case with me. Your bikes are better than mine. My horse’s two legs will soon be crippled.”

“Goodness. Please try to fix your iron horse a little bit. Christmas is almost here, and then the Lunar New Year. It’s just depressing to look at it as well as you.”

“Nope. Let God know that I’m poor. So that he will love me.”

Trang strained to peddle to catch up with the group. But then she fell behind. She jumped off her bike. Everyone turned around to see what had happened.

“A technical problem, Trang?”

“Yeah, my horse is too weak. It’s starving and lost its innards.”

Trang’s bike chain slipped. She tried to fix it.

“Do you need help?”

“No, I got it.”

In a brief moment, Trang fixed it. She sat back on the bike. “Done. Let’s continue.”

There was no continuing. They were already at Notre Dame Cathedral. After each school day, or a casual meetup, whenever the Five Dragons reached this point, their farewell location, it was time to say goodbye. Each looked at the others, winked, and said, “’til next time.” Trang waved her hands. The five of them waved at each other. They waved to the gleaming white Mother Mary standing in the middle of the grassy area. She always looked after them. Gentle. Soft.

The white mother. She would not forget them. Just like they would always remember her. At every twist and turn of their lives, there would be dreams and storms, desire and madness, and separation and death waiting for each of them.