I’m not here - Page 4
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 15: Divided Nation
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Dominique Wilson
FOR THREE DAYS THE BATTLE RAGED. Fires burned, planes flew overhead and a layer of smoke dulled the sun. Quan returned and said the American Embassy had been broken into. Thuy didn't care. All she wanted was to leave Vietnam.
She awoke on the fourth day to silence. Out in the street the town seemed deserted. Only the chirping of birds. Quan left early. Was back by midday with news – they would leave that night.
They made their way via back streets to the riverbanks and hid amongst the grass. They waited. Half an hour. An hour. A light quickly flicked on and off on the river and Quan responded with a torch. Thuy heard the whisper of oars in water and a small fishing boat glided up.
Thirteen other adults plus infants were already on board. Thuy and Quan found a spot to sit on the crowded deck, their backs against the engine compartment. The engine started, its sound muffled with rags and canvas. No one spoke as they passed various checkpoints. As they made their way slowly down the river Thuy saw that many towns and villages had been attacked. It seemed the whole of South Vietnam was destroyed.
The boat continued slowly through the night. The drone of the engine lulled Thuy, and when she woke they had made it out to sea and it was day but no one was celebrating. All were aware of the dangers ahead, and all they had left behind. Tan woke and Thuy fed him then cooked a bowl of rice for Quan with slivers of dried pork from their provisions. They had brought enough food for five days. More than enough for the three-day trip to Malaysia.
For the first two days, the weather was perfect, the sea calm. The men kept watch for patrol boats. There were rumours of pirates from Thailand. Sometimes dolphins would play close to the boat as it made its way slowly towards land.
On the evening of the second day, the sky darkened with great rolling clouds and lightening forked down to meet the sea. A wind sprung up. Great waves tossed the small wooden boat. People vomited and a woman cried that they would all drown. Rain fell and the boat rose and plunged down columns of waves. The engine stalled. The boat filled with water but the small pump would not work and the men bailed by hand. All night the boat tossed and creaked and Thuy was sure they would drown.
Daylight came and the storm abated. The boat smelled of vomit and fear and engine fuel. They spotted a ship and everyone cheered and waved clothing to attract attention, but it just sailed past. The engine could not be started. The captain ordered a stocktake of all food and water, and it was then they all realised much of it had been lost in the storm. They cleaned themselves and the boat as well as they could and settled down to wait.
They drifted for three more days. Occasionally they would see a ship and burn clothes to signal, but no ship signalled back. They knew now that they were being ignored. The sun burned down and the smell of fuel grew stronger each day. Quan spent his time with the men, while Thuy tended Tan and was ignored by the women who would look at Tan then turn away. Bui Doi – the dust of life.
On the afternoon of the eighth day, a boat came towards them at high speed. It pulled smoothly beside them and five men with machetes jumped aboard. One produced a large automatic pistol that he waved about as he shouted orders and another busied himself securing the two vessels together. They held knives to everyone's throats, demanding money and jewellery, then announced this bounty was not enough and went from person to person looking into mouths until they found an old man with gold teeth. They twisted a rope around his ankles and wrists and up around his neck then used a hammer to try to dislodge the teeth. Thuy watched in horror and the old man screamed and bled, but still the teeth would not come out until one of the pirates found a pair of pincers and successfully harvested the teeth.
Once more the pirates walked along the line, pulling out the youngest women, Thuy included. They tore at the women's clothes, the material weak from seawater and sun. Thuy still held on to Tan, and one of the pirates ripped him out of her arms and threw him on to the deck then, with one sweep of the machete, beheaded him, the momentum of his swing sending the small head skidding across the deck into the ocean. People cried out and the small body twitched for an instant as a fountain of blood gushed from his body spraying those on deck in gruesome, ever-reducing arcs until the small heart had no more to pump. Thuy felt her sanity escape this surreal hell and she was transported back to the corpse-filled hills, but only for an instant and then she was back staring at the small lifeless body of her child. Time unravelled in slow motion. She watched in horror as the pirate picked the small body up by a foot and tossed it overboard. She welcomed the oblivion that enveloped her consciousness, her knees giving way under her, but a pirate grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her up again. I'm not here, she screamed silently. I'm not here I'm not here I'm not here I'm not here! Her gaze frantically swept the faces on deck and she saw Quan slowly withdraw the small fishing knife he kept strapped to his leg. But a pirate saw him too and without warning put his gun to Quan's temple and pulled the trigger. Blood and fragments of bone and brain tissue splattered onto the men near him and on to the naked bodies of the women. Thuy's moan was silenced by a fist.
Then the pirates threw the women on to the deck – now a mixture of blood and vomit and urine and bone – and raped them while the boat rocked gently with the movement of the sea, and beside the boat dolphins dived and played and whistled. Thuy's tormented gaze sought that of the men, begging for their help, but the only help they could give was to avert their gaze so as not to witness her shame.
Once more they drifted. They had been robbed of food and water, all except one small container in the engine room that had been overlooked, and this was restricted to just a small sip a day. One morning they found a couple missing – they had preferred drowning to this hell. The sun blistered their skins, the glare of the ocean blinded them, and at night they shivered from cold and shock. They woke one day to see land on the horizon, but the current was pulling them away. A man ran to the engine room and tried to start the engine. An explosion. A flash of flames and Thuy screamed as her hair caught fire. Another explosion.
"CAN'T TELL IF IT'S ALIVE OR DEAD. Bring 'er around a bit more." "Must be dead, Sir. Badly burned. Hang on, I've got it. Bloody hell, it's a woman ... Oh God! Her skin's come off in my hand!"
Thuy did not regain consciousness when they lifted her on to the Australian ship out on manoeuvres, when they inserted a drip and pumped her full of antibiotics. Nor did she regain consciousness when they transferred her to a helicopter and flew her to Darwin. She came to in a strange bed. Tubes entered her body, some attached to bottles, others to machines. Her gaze darted around the room, taking in other beds, other machines, other tubes, and she became frightened by the strangeness of it. Two men in white stood by her bed and she knew that white was for funerals and therefore she must be dying. Once more she lost consciousness.
When she came to again, the sun shone outside her window and a young woman stood beside her bed, holding Thuy's wrist and looking at a watch.
"Hello, you're with us then?" And Thuy recognised the language of the Uc-da-loi. The woman took a glass of water from the locker beside the bed and gently put the straw to Thuy's lips. "Just a sip, or you'll throw up." Thuy sipped the water. It tasted fresh and sweet on her swollen tongue. She kept her gaze on the woman. "I'll just get the doctor," she said, and left Thuy's side.
Thuy knew the word "doctor". She was in hospital, then. She raised her hand to her face and felt a bandage. There were bandages on her body as well. A man in a white coat came and she thought he was Michael, but when he sat on the edge of her bed she saw it was a stranger and she cowered back into her pillow.
"It's all right. I'm Doctor Nelson. You're in Australia. Darwin. Do you understand? Australia." Thuy stared at him expressionless. "Australia. Yes?" He sighed. "You don't understand a word I'm saying, do you?" He rose and left the room. Thuy had understood him but her instincts warned of unknown dangers, and that it was wiser to pretend not to understand. Her head pounded and her tongue felt dry and tasted foul and she wished she could have more of the sweet water, but thinking tired her out and she slept.
When she woke again, the woman was beside her with men in a uniform she didn't recognise and she panicked at the sight of them, begging the woman not to let them take her, in a mixture of English and Vietnamese, and the woman understood her fear and reassured her.
"You're been transferred, dear. To Melbourne. They're really good with burns there. They'll be able to fix your face up." They lifted Thuy on to a barouche and she struggled, but the woman patted her hand, saying: "It's okay, it's okay", and those words Thuy understood so she laid back and let them move her into an ambulance. But when they drove up to a military aircraft, Thuy panicked, because planes meant war and soldiers and bombs and were not for girls like her, and she screamed "No! No! I'm not here! Please, I'm not here!" until she felt a pinprick in her leg and lost consciousness.
Thuy opened her eyes, rising from a nightmare of bodiless babies sucking her breast and soldiers drowning in a sea of blood. Rain beat a tattoo on the window. She tried to sit up, but quickly lay back feeling faint. She was in hospital once more. But hospitals cost money ... lots of money. And she had none. Only the rich and the foreigners could afford them. Once more she tried to sit but she was so weak. She closed her eyes and slept some more.
It took five weeks before Thuy was strong enough to walk around the ward. The staff were kind to her and she could understand what they said, although she pretended not to, preferring to find sanctuary behind a facade of incomprehension. They brought in an interpreter and Thuy noticed the young woman constantly glancing at her watch, so she answered a few questions then pretended to sleep and the woman left.
Several times in her wanderings, she would see a man in the distance she thought was Michael, but it never was. And as each day passed she worried more and more about what she would do when they asked her to pay for her hospital stay. Then one day during visiting hours she found a room temporarily without its patient and she stole the dressing gown left on a bed and walked out of the hospital and into the cold.
SHE SPENT HER FIRST NIGHT SHIVERING IN A DOORWAY surrounded by others without homes. In the morning, one of the men looked her over, taking in her damp clothing and bare feet, her features bluish with cold, her scars, and told her his name was Ted and that he had fought in Vietnam. She looked into his eyes and saw there the same hurt she had seen in Michael's eyes, and an instant bond developed between them. He took her to a place where they were given porridge and tea with milk and sugar, which made her gag but warmed her inside. When shops and offices opened, Ted took her to a place where he spoke to a man who took them to a room filled with second-hand clothes. Ted told her she could pick out some clothes for herself and so she chose a dress with a floral pattern and a grey cardigan. Then, out of a basket, Ted pulled a pair of woollen red and white striped socks, and she smiled for the first time in months. But Ted insisted they were just the thing for Melbourne and so she put them on, and they were so thick her feet could only fit in the black shoes with no laces.
From Ted she learned where it was safe to go and where to stay away from. She learned not to go to the same soup kitchen too often or the people there would ask too many questions, and to look out for patrol cars and how to avoid them. Once she found herself amongst a mob of people with placards and signs marching and shouting and she had run to her alley and cowered until Ted told her they were fighting for peace and would not harm her.
Then one day Ted said he knew of a place looking for workers, so she had gone there and found a room full of women like herself, who would not look anyone in the eye and spent their days sewing sheepskin souvenirs on big industrial machines. The man in charge would yell and swear at them, but Thuy was glad of the money. She rented a room in a building Ted called a "people's palace", which had cockroaches and bedbugs, but at least it was indoors. Sometimes she would sneak Ted in and they would both curl up on the floor to avoid the bedbugs, and Ted would make jokes about the man in the next room who urinated into bottles each night, lining them up on the window sill till morning, and they would sleep till daylight, warm and safe. But one day at work Thuy was thinking of Michael and lost her concentration until she felt the needle of the machine pierce the flesh of her finger and break against the bone. The pain and the blood oozing on to the sheepskin flashed her mind back to the bodies of her son and brother, and she curled on her chair trembling and mewing until the man in charge screamed at her and pushed her out the door, telling her not to come back and refusing to pay her because she had spoiled the sheepskin with her blood and sheepskins cost money.
SHE SHUFFLES DOWN THE EMPTY STREET, a small Vietnamese woman dressed in a floral polyester dress and a man's grey cardigan held closed by a piece of rope at the waist. On her legs a sagging pair of football socks, on her feet a pair of man's black lace-up shoes without laces. A burn scar, brown and wrinkled and tight, runs on the left side of her face, pulling the skin downwards so that little white puffs of moisture punctuate each of her breaths. 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." ♦
I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die by Country Joe & The Fish, was originally released by Vanguard in November 1967; Uc-da-loi Cheap Charlie was a song popular during the Vietnam War, author unknown sung to the tune of Nick, Nack, Paddywack, Give a Dog a Bone.