on the street,
and if everybody took their belongings,
it would overload the boat.
Ma helps Dee Dee wrap a small bag
around his waist.
It contains saltines,
beef jerky,
pork jerky,
dried banana chips,
a thin towel, a toothbrush,
and a folded plastic sheet.
Ma also helps Dee Dee put on three more cotton shirts
and three more pairs of pants with elastic waists.
On top of them, she adds a raincoat
because it is raining.
Dee Dee jokes,
“I can’t walk!
I look like a clumsy elephant!”
But no one laughs.
Ma simply instructs, “Be careful not to lose your shirts.”
“I won’t,” Dee Dee promises.
Daigo has copied Baba’s address in America
on the underside of Dee Dee’s shirt.
While Daigo wraps up his own food and dresses himself,
Ma helps me tie my bag.
When she lowers her head,
I breathe in the scent of her favorite jasmine hair oil.
My eyes flood with tears
at that moment.
I wipe them away without anybody noticing.
After putting on three shirts,
three pairs of pants, and a raincoat,
I look like a pregnant woman.
7 | THE JADE KWUN YUM PENDANT
Ah Mah comes in, unusually quiet.
She is keeping an eye on the door
in case the police come.
While Ma is taking a turn watching the door,
Ah Mah ties a jade Kwun Yum pendant
on a red string around my neck
to keep me safe on my journey.
I can’t help but thrust my hands out to her
and weep
as her bony fingers touch my flesh.
Like an epidemic,
we all weep,
with tears
like water being released from a dam.
I wish I could just stay home.
I wish I could just forget the police.
I wish I could just forget taking care of my brothers.
I wish I could just forget Baba
and stay
with Ma and Ah Mah.
But I can’t.
My distant cousin,
who is driving us to the countryside
in his cargo scooter,
is waiting
about two blocks away.
8 | DEPARTURE
Fearing the police on the street might discover our secret,
Daigo and Dee Dee leave the house first.
I follow ten minutes later
without looking back to wave at Ma and Ah Mah.
We pretend we’re going to visit
our pau pau in the countryside.
We all memorize
Pau Pau’s address
in case we get stopped on the street
and are asked where we are going.
I dash into the scooter.
None of us talk,
not even Dee Dee.
My brain feels like a sheet of blank white paper
as the three-wheeled scooter,
with us sitting in the cargo compartment
behind the driver,
bumps and twists
and sends my city,
my hometown,
retreating backward
until we get to the wide-open country fields.
The scooter bounces up and down
hour after hour.
It lulls us to sleep.
Then, suddenly, a bump
and it stops.
We get out of the scooter.
Cousin points to a shed far from the road
where we have to go.
He wishes us luck
and drives off quickly.
The rain stopped long ago.
We stumble along a narrow path,
with our sandals and feet sinking into the soft mud,
for what seems like half an hour
toward a shed
in the middle of the wilderness,
outside of the city of My Tho.
Many people are already there,
milling around in the shed.
Some sleep;
some smoke;
some talk,
while babies cry
and children play hide-and-seek.
A man checks our names
and tells us to sit down and wait.
We sit on the ground at a dry spot in the shed
The next day
we eat our food and wait
all day.
9 | THE RAID
On the night of the next day, May 11, 1979,
the same man announces quietly,
“Time to board the boat.
Be quiet, but quick.”
Daigo holds Dee Dee’s hand
and I walk next to them,
pressed on all sides by many people,
all rushing,
tramping through the weeds
without worrying about snakes.
We pass the dark bushes around us
and move toward the open sea
without making a sound,
except for
the shuffle of hasty footsteps.
Someone suddenly shouts, “Police!”
People start to run,
like birds
fleeing
from a cage that is suddenly opened.
People scream.
People cry.
I hear Dee Dee cry.
I hear Dee Dee call “Daigo!” from behind me.
I turn for him,
but the crowd stands like a wall:
so tall,
so thick,
so powerful.
It pushes me back all the way
into something that
wobbles.
10 | WANTING TO GO HOME
I find myself in a sampan
with about ten shadows sitting in it.
I call out to my brothers,
but do not hear them respond.
I want to get out of the boat.
The person next to me pushes me down.
The boatman curses me
as he starts rowing
desperately along the shore.
I am frightened
without Daigo and Dee Dee.
I want the boat to stop.
I want to go back home.
The boatman ignores me.
The boat slips into the thick reeds.
The boatman orders,
“All of you duck your heads down and
don’t make a sound.
There are patrol boats everywhere.”
A baby starts to cry.
The mother shoves her nipple into the baby’s mouth,
and the baby quiets down.
A man in front of me keeps looking back.
Then I see the shadows of two sampans
also hiding among the reeds.
Are my brothers in these sampans?
I wonder.
11 | PATROL BOAT?
I hear a muffled sound
from the shadow of a big boat that
cruises close to the shore.
My heart tightens.
Is it a patrol boat?
The boatman holds up lighted incense sticks.
He waves them up and down
several times
toward the big shadow that has no lights.
What does that mean? I wonder until
our boatman quickly paddles toward the big shadow,
which has responded with tiny dots of light
waving up and down
a few times.
“I don’t want to go!” I protest.
“Shut up!” the boatman demand
s.
Our boat reaches the big shadow.
“Hurry, board the boat,” the boatman commands.
Someone from the big boat pulls people up,
while the boatman boosts them up from behind.
Our boat wobbles
like a metal plate
dropped onto a tile floor.
I push his hand away
as the boatman tries to raise me up.
I cry, “I can’t find my brothers!
I’m not going!”
The man in the big boat says in a low voice,
“They might be in the sampans behind.”
So I let him pull me up into the boat.
Another man stuffs something into my hand and says,
“If you want to throw up,
do it in the bag.
Go down below.”
I follow the one in front of me
down narrow steps
to the cabin beneath the deck.
Another man orders the newcomers,
“Squeeze to the back. Quick!”
12 | THE CABIN
The cabin,
the lowest place in the boat,
has no windows.
It is hot and smells of sweat,
mud,
and vomit.
I feel suffocated as soon as I step in.
There are two dim lights
hanging from the low ceiling.
Many people have already squeezed into the cabin
without making a sound.
There is not enough space.
I sit on the floor
with my knees touching my chin,
with no room to stretch my legs.
I can’t see clearly if the persons
who sit around me
are men or women.
The lights in this low cabin finally go off.
The sound of the boat that is beginning to head out
is muffled.
Someone has covered the engine
to avoid being heard
by a patrol boat.
For me,
there is no way back.
I am scared.
I am alone,
like a kite
that has broken away from its string and
doesn’t know
where it will
land.
I weep
with my hand covering my mouth.
13 | I AM SO SICK
The boat bobs up and down,
like a fishing cork on the surface of the water
when a fish nibbles the bait.
The sound of people vomiting
breaks the quiet night
now and then,
and the nauseating smell
makes me want to stop breathing.
I throw up, too.
The force of my vomit explosion
soils the back of the person who sits in front of me.
He curses.
Liquid drips on top of my head
from someone who has urinated
on the upper deck
without bothering to go to the toilet.
But I am too sick to scold whoever did it.
14 | LOOKING FOR LOVED ONES
I am awakened by the sound of mumbling.
It is dawn.
Tiny light beams filter through cracks from above.
Many flashlights shine on every face,
and names are called out everywhere.
More than ten families are looking
for their missing loved ones.
I call out for Dee Dee and Daigo
while some people loudly recount
their stories of being raided by the police.
Babies are crying;
small kids are scared and restless.
The whole cabin is as noisy as
a market.
15 | BREAKFAST
A sailor hands us
a big bowl of plain rice porridge
for breakfast.
He tells us to sip it and then
give it to the one sitting next to us.
The porridge is so bitter that
I take only one sip.
Many spit it out, complaining,
“This heartless sailor
used sea water to make porridge.”
16 | UNITED
We can go to the toilet,
but we are not allowed to go up to the deck.
The Vietnamese patrol boats can stop us
if they spot us.
When they leave their seats,
people ask those next to them to save their seats.
I don’t care about my seat.
Finding my brothers is more important
than saving my seat.
I call out my brothers’ names while
squeezing through the crowd
toward the toilet.
I hear a tiny whimper
as I come back.
My heart accelerates, and
I follow the cry,
which comes from underneath the steps.
I am about to trip over an old lady
who sits near the steps when I call,
“Dee Dee!”
I throw myself onto him.
We both break into loud wails,
as if we have been apart for a long time.
“Where is Daigo?” I ask him.
“I don’t know.”
“Wasn’t Daigo holding your hand
when we walked toward the boat?”
“He was. But someone grabbed him from nowhere.
He let go of my hand and told me to find you.
But people pushed me.
I fell down.
I grabbed someone’s leg and didn’t let go.”
At this moment,
I don’t feel sorry for myself.
I don’t have any fear
of going to a place that is unknown,
alone.
At this moment,
I am Dee Dee’s daigo;
I am Dee Dee’s baba;
I am Dee Dee’s ma and ah mah;
I am Dee Dee’s sister;
I am Dee Dee’s everything.
At this moment,
I swear
I accept responsibility for my brother,
even though I am only eleven.
I say to him,
“Don’t be scared.
You have me.
I have you.
We are together.
We are okay.”
17 | DAIGO’S FATE
“Why did the police grab Daigo?” Dee Dee asks.
“Why didn’t they grab me?’
“I don’t know.
I heard they grabbed others, too.”
“Will he be okay?”
“Yes. They will send him to jail,
like others they have arrested.
Ma and Ah Mah will bail him out.
He will be okay.
He is strong.”
“How do you know he will be okay?”
“I didn’t have a bad dream about him.
Did you?”
Dee Dee shakes his head.
“That means he is okay,” I assure him.
He whispers,
“I peed in my pants.”
I would have laughed at him back home.
But I squeeze his hand and say,
“Who cares? Someone peed on my head last night.”
I help him take off his extra clothing
and tie all of it into a pouch.
I abandon my own seat.
Together
we squeeze underneath the steps.
I can breathe in the fresh air.
I can see a patch of sky.
And I know
we are going to be okay.
18 | THEY BREAK THEIR PROMISE
No meal is served for the rest of the day—
just water
and the salty, watery porridge.
People complain,
for they were promised
there would be three meals a day
when they paid the steep fee.
Dee Dee is hungry.
He drinks the water
and eats the food we brought with us.
I drink a couple of sips of water
but eat only one cracker.
I am afraid that
I will throw up if I eat any more.
19 | SOUTH CHINA SEA
On the morning of the third day,
the small Vietnamese captain tells us that
we have finally reached international waters.
We are now in the South China Sea.
We cheer the welcome news.
“We are free now!” someone shouts.
“The Communists have no right to arrest us
anymore!” another remarks.
“We can breathe easily now!” an old man says.
Dee Dee and I follow some people going up on deck,
while many older people remain where they are,
afraid they will lose their seats.
It is so good to stretch out my legs.
It is so good to breathe the fresh air.
It is so good to see the dome-like blue sky.
It is so good to see the dark blue water—
so calm, so beautiful.
And it is so good
to finally feel free.
20 | SEARCHING
We all gaze far away,
where the water kisses the end of the sky,
to search for the location of Vietnam,
hoping to have a last glimpse of our homeland.
Some say it is there,
and some say it’s in the opposite direction.
But the ocean looks like a round table,
and our homeland could be in any direction.
Then
we all fall into silence.
Perhaps
we all have mixed feelings.
I am sad, as I look far, far away
beyond the edge of the sky.
I still remember how
Ma held tightly on to my hands
and wasn’t willing to let me go.
Ah Mah tried to hurry me to go,
but she was still clinging to me
and giving me last-minute instructions on
how to keep myself healthy.
Now,
I haven’t gone far away,