I’m not here
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 15: Divided Nation
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Dominique Wilson
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Dominique Wilson's biography and other articles by this writer
If she hurries she may still eat today. She shuffles down the empty street, a small Vietnamese woman dressed in a floral polyester dress and a man's grey cardigan with a long ladder up one arm where the wool has unravelled, held closed by a piece of rope at the waist. On her legs a sagging pair of football socks hand-knitted in bright red and white stripes, on her feet a pair of men's black lace-up shoes without laces. A burn scar, brown and wrinkled and tight, runs on the left side of her face from her lip to her ear and down her neck, pulling the skin downwards so that little white puffs of moisture punctuate each of her breaths as air escapes the permanent gap that exposes broken and rotting teeth. She clings to two white supermarket bags that bulge with her treasures, and as she shuffles she mutters: "I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here."
She hurries, crossing Queen Street diagonally, anxious to get to the market. She's late. The sky is just beginning to lighten and she knows the market-gardeners' trucks have started to arrive, their drivers loud and boisterous, cheerfully unloading their crates of produce in readiness for the day ahead. As she crosses the car park, the lights of Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market come on. She's too late. For a moment, she stands still in the dark, watching. She hears a truck coming up behind her and turns, blinded by its headlights. The truck swerves and she hears the driver's curse but doesn't understand his words. She watches it enter the market. There is still a chance.
Bent at the waist so as to better see under the empty stalls she zigzags across the market, occasionally picking up a wilted cabbage leaf, a half-rotten apple. Under one stall she finds an onion, whole and glossy and fresh, and she holds it in both hands for a moment, gently stroking its brown papery skin before placing it carefully at the bottom of one of her bags.
"Hey Tony, get a load of this!"
"Leave 'er, mate. She comes here sometimes. Doesn't do any harm."
She looks at the men, alarmed. She hadn't heard them arrive. I'm not here.
I'm not here.
"Shit! What happened to her face?"
"Don't know, mate. Reckon she's been in an accident or something." He turns, takes an orange from his truck and holds it out, but she dares not approach. "It's okay love, you can have it ..." and he gently rolls it towards her. She watches it until it stops at her feet, picks it up and scurries out of the market into the dawn.
A fine drizzle falls as she uses side streets and laneways to avoid roaming patrol cars, but today she doesn't mind the rain. She has food. And she has the onion and the orange. She will keep the onion for a day when she has nothing else but the orange she will share tonight with Ted. She sidesteps a drunk curled up in a doorway, watched by a black and white cat. The city is beginning to awaken. Cars swoosh across tram tracks. Eager office workers, their grey suits echoing the grey buildings they hurry towards, pass her by, oblivious to her presence. A young woman runs toward her, umbrella held high, the tight skirt of her business suit hindering her steps, high heels click-clicking on the footpath.
"Michael! Michael, wait!"
Michael? Is Michael here? She turns, her gaze following the young woman. Michael? She watches the woman rise on tiptoes to kiss the man, watches them link arms and walk away, umbrella shielding both. Michael?
THUY STIRRED RICE NOODLES INTO THE POT of pho, breathing in the fragrance of ginger and onions. Soon Father and Younger Brother Quan would return with their catch, and would expect their breakfast while she helped her mother sort the fish. She removed the pot from the fire and looked out over the rice paddies that spread out to the hills. The rains had come early to Phuoc Tuy Province and the rice crop promised to be abundant – if it was given a chance to grow, and was not destroyed by Nature or Man.
She thought of the soldiers who had come through her village since she was a little girl – the Viet Cong mostly at night, the South Vietnamese during the day. Then, when she was about eleven, a new type of soldier had come from a country for which they had no name, and so they had called them Ucda-loi, which meant "Men from the South". More and more had come each day, and they had frightened her with their uniforms and guns and helicopters that swept low over her village. But her father had comforted her and said he would not let them hurt her, because although she was only a girl she was his treasure and he would always protect her. More than four years had passed and now she had grown used to them, as had everyone in the village. They knew their country was at war, but their lives and thoughts centred on growing enough food and catching enough fish to feed the village, and the constant stream of hungry soldiers.
The morning was already hot and the air smelt of wet earth, smoke and spices. Thuy could hear gunfire in the distant hills, but this too had become normal. She saw a jeep speeding towards her village, the soldiers shouting and shooting into the air, and she ran behind the woodpile, ready to slip into the tunnel it hid. The jeep skidded to a stop. A Viet Cong jumped out, still yelling and shooting, and Thuy knew this visit would be different. She saw Father and Younger Brother enter the village carrying a basket of fish between them, and she wanted to call to them to stay away. The soldier saw them and ordered Father to him, made him kneel and kicked him in the groin, demanding to know where the Uc-da-loi were hidden. Her father shook his head, mumbling that there were none in this village, but the soldier did not believe him. Thuy saw him place the muzzle of his gun against her father's temple and she knew she could not let him die. She ran from her hiding place, pointing down the road and yelling: "That way! That way!" The soldier pulled back the hammer of the gun but another called out something from the jeep, so he pistol-whipped her father instead, the crunch of metal against bone punctuating the seconds until at last the soldier climbed back into his jeep and drove away. She watched the jeep until it disappeared, only then becoming aware of the total silence behind her. She turned and saw her mother and Younger Brother Quan helping her father. She ran to him, but he pushed her away, the blood on his hand staining her ouida.
"Father?" But her father would not meet her gaze – would not answer. "Father?" she asked again, and this time it was her mother who pushed her away. "But what have I done?"
Her mother signalled Younger Brother Quan to help her father, then turned to face Thuy. "You have shamed him," she said.
"I saved him!"
"No! You have shamed him, and this village. You did not allow him to die like a man." Her mother turned and walked away.
Thuy looked at the villagers as each turned away without a word. Even the children refused to meet her gaze, and Thuy realised she could no longer stay in this village.