Chapter 1: Part Two: That Was Not Me

That was not me. That bitter monologue spitting out my--well, bitterness. I am not an angry person. Proud definitely, so my wrath at that time came from another source. For me, the two vices that run least in my blood are anger and envy. That’s why it would have been sad that a person, who was born happy, had a happy childhood, and remained happy through her adult years, could sink into such anger and depression. Over a wedding no less, but it happened. I will not say that it was mostly others. Perhaps I should have been stronger. I know I was not strong enough. I don’t think anyone could have been.

The only other choice was to step away. But if any of you recall the question in tenth grade lit class, on whether you thought your life was guided by choice or by fatalistic events, marrying my sis made me believe in fate that could not be evaded. As much as I chose to avoid it, fate came at me from all sides tackling me down like a tiny squirming bait on a fishhook. And yet as fatalistic as my life seemed then, I could not help but recall Dante and his refusal to repent because he thought that he was past redemption, for I chose a path that for its entire expanse was irreversible, including the decision to take it, the way love is irreversible, for nothing could have made me do what I did except love, and when there is only one decision you can make that is driven by love, I say that is pretty fatalistic. Or call it choice. Because no one can make you love something, not even god.

Whatever it was, it kicked my butt and recuperating was a struggle up the peaks of Denali. I would like to say the way down was easier with the help of gravity, but the rocks I tumbled upon came at me with the faces of my clan, vices and virtue on the same face, the same vices on different faces, and the same faces of different clansmen commingled together like a happy and very warped soup, for I had never known until then that weddings brought out a person’s true nature. I did know that the only real important things in life were: births, baptisms, marriages, divorces, and death. I had read that somewhere when young. But I had no idea that the full extent of a person’s misery could be brought out during the preparation for what was to be the best day of a couple’s new life together. And I don’t mean mine either. Not my life together, I wasn’t getting married, my misery I mean. I had no idea the misery of others would be an obstacle I had to overcome in marrying sis. And oh, there were many obstacles. If misery likes company, then I became great company for my clansman.

But let me step back a moment. You need to be introduced to my clansman. Basically, two brothers married two sisters. The older brother had twelve children because it was cheaper by the dozen and the younger brother had only eleven. That’s why he was the younger one. The oldest of the twelve (of the older brother) went to the seminary when he was fourteen. Of his own volition. His parents were at first not for it. Because he was the firstborn son. Let me remind you of a saying in our traditional native country, that “to have a son is to have, to have a daughter is to have not.”

That left the second of twelve in charge. Albeit female, she was the only one old enough during the war to manage and the only one with the steely will to march her siblings along the treacherous road to the South. Her father had already gone down to Saigon to work at the U.S. embassy, and her mother wondered when he would be coming back. When it became evident that any capitalist lover living in the North would be killed, the second oldest of twelve children, my mother, gathered up her ten younger siblings with packs and suitcases of ao dai, her mother and grandmother, and started the journey south.

It was a road of bombings and battles. Who could sleep when the nighttime air raids came like whistling messengers of death that ended in a crash boom on your neighbors hut. My aunt, child number three and my mother’s immediate younger sister, could. Evidently, she could sleep through anything, that’s why she was a big beautiful woman. My mother, she worried, and planned and improvised a new plan day to day to maneuver her family down South. She was maybe thirteen-years old at the time. Sharp as a tack and deadly with intent. The enemy soldiers were everywhere, the friendlies less so. And my mother had to find a way across river, bridge, road, field, forest, jungle, machine gun fire, missiles, bombs, and her crying siblings that were too young to even remember. But this she did because this is what she had to do. And that kind of gumption worked its way into me, vested me with the power to get my sis married and if you think that is a poor comparison and more appropriately contrasted, I agree. Navigating one’s family through a war zone should not be compared to planning a wedding. Yet planning my sisters wedding almost did kill a few of us; if not permanently, disabled us for life. Don’t laugh. I didn’t, if I did at times, it was with a rueful consciousness that recognized its impending death. For if the enemy in us is the greatest of all enemies, then the wounds it can inflict all the more grievous. But sadly, death from friendly fire comprised the majority of near casualties. Sometimes, I wished they would just end it. The friendlies, they believed in slow death. The torture, it was like a picadero jabbing you with a knife, maiming you only enough to leech your strength but leaving enough for you to nurse back to almost health. Over and over again, until you wished for a quick stab through the heart, or better yet, through the mind, so that you would not need to think about all the absurdities the world could throw at you through the guise of institution called family, a clan no less, that professed its closeness, which made it all the more needlessly absurd.