Only the Heart (10 page)

You'd have to have been blind not to know.

He was good-looking and quite tall, but that wasn't it.

I guess, if I had to put it in words, this long after the event, I'd have to say it was his confidence. That, and the way the group formed around him, like pilgrims around the Buddha. Of course, I didn't think about it in those terms at the time. I just
knew
.

He was putting whatever the man had just handed to him into one of his pockets, and as if she had made a noise, or called him, he suddenly looked across at Phuong. It wasn't the caged look of someone who was scared of being discovered, or a threatening glance to warn us off. He just looked up.

And smiled.

Then my mum called and I moved on. But Phuong's attention was still back in the alley …

*

25 March 1977
Pulau Bisa, Malaysia

HOA

Phuong stands staring at something in the alley a few metres behind them. It is the first time since they left Janganoon that Hoa has allowed more than an arm's-length to separate them.

Hoa pauses and watches the girl for a moment, before calling out, “Phuong, come. We don't want to get split up.”

The girl hesitates, staring at whatever it is that has caught her attention. Then she moves on. But it is a few seconds before she looks up to find where they are.

“What were you looking at?”

The girl says nothing. She looks preoccupied.

So much is strange, the smells, the faces, the sounds of inactivity. Hoa watches her husband's back. He walks with his head erect, steeling himself for the weeks and months ahead.

Does he regret their decision? His decision. Has the loss of his sister torn the dream beyond repair, or reinforced his determination?

He is so loving; the most caring man … She remembers her mother's unreasoning opposition, and smiles sadly. She lived and died without ever understanding how a daughter could choose love over duty. The sacrifices that a woman makes for a man. The risks he will bear in the name of love.

For her sake … for the children's … he has brought them this far, chasing the dream.

For his sake … and for the children's … she has remained strong, forcing down the panic which threatens at times to overwhelm her. Like now, when she looks around her uncertainly, at the price that so many seem willing to pay for a chance to grasp at the mythical prize.

Regret?

The memory slips in uninvited. ‘Tuyet, Minh's mother, sitting with her in the small kitchen behind the shop, drinking ginseng tea and staring at the picture of Minh that lies on the table between them. Minh who has sent no word in the six endless weeks since they took him away to Long Xuyen.

“Regret?”
she says
. “Regret is a coin without value. The past is bought and paid for; no refund, no exchange … Spend your hope instead. Try to buy a better future. He is safe. I know it.”

“But
how
do you know?”
The words are whispered with the force of a shout, but her husband's mother just smiles and sips her tea.

“I know it …”
she says, and looks at the picture on the table between them …

The memory fades.

Inside one of the shanties a baby cries and there is a rustling sound from just below the surface of a nearby pile of rubbish which waits beside the alley to be taken and buried. An old man sits in his tiny doorway smoking a pipe. The smoke is white and sickly-sweet. His eyes stare through her as she passes.

Overhead, the sun beats down, but there is no comfort in the warmth. She watches her husband's back for a moment, then moves on.

10

CANG

LINH'S STORY

You hear a lot about the gangs. I guess it makes good copy for the papers on a slow-news day, or for
Sixty Minutes
when they get tired of chasing child-molesters and escaped business tycoons. But the stories are always so damned simplified.

And there's nothing simple about a gang. It's at least as complex as your average dysfunctional family, and every gang-member has a difnt reason for joining, just as every gang has a different reason for existing in the first place. But the stories always focus on the results — the drugs, the violence, the stand-over tactics. It's such an easy target for a story; a steady stream of victim-interviews, a hidden-camera's-eye-view of a teenage drug-deal, panshots of a street full of Asian faces.

More ammunition for the bigots.

But nothing at all about what the gang
is
. Why it exists. How something so potentially damaging can draw in the innocent, as well as the street-hardened troublemakers. Nothing about what it can appear to be offering them.

After everything that's happened, I certainly have no reason to defend the gangs. Or anyone in them. And I wouldn't dream of doing it. But they exist, and somewhere at the back of my mind, even when I think of Miro and what happened to him — and to
me
— I can't help wondering if hating them is really the answer.

Now if there was ever anyone you'd bet would never get mixed up in any way with a gang, it would have to be Phuong. But she did, and for a while it looked like the family might lose her completely.

If you're not quite fourteen and you've been through everything that she'd been through, I suppose it could have an effect on the way you viewed things, but you'd have to wonder just what she was looking for, to become so fascinated with a bunch of teenage thugs, standing over their own people and making a bad situation just a bit worse for everyone.

Cang was the leader of the gang on Pulau Bisa. And I guess someone like Cang isn't too hard to understand. Eighteen years old, living alone on the streets of Saigon from the age of thirteen, you'd learn to survive — any way you had to. And you wouldn't have a whole lot of respect for the generation that put you there.

Then you find yourself in the camp, with a whole bunch of kids who find themselves in the same situation.

My uncle always reckoned a lot of it has to do with families. Or rather, what happens when families cease to exist. For the Vietnamese — and the Chinese — family was everything. Two, sometimes three generations in the same house, all teaching the kids what to do, how to behave. Passing on the culture, you might say. But then comes the war-and the peace-and a lot of the families are broken up. And those that manage to escape as a family might not all make it to the camp.

The lucky ones, like Phuong and me, might score an aunt and an uncle or some other relative to love them and look after them, but what if there was no one?

For some of the kids the gang was … family, I guess. And family makes the rules.

Only, the old ways are dead and the new rules are street-rules …

*

30 May 1977
Pulau Bisa

PHUONG

She is there again. Standing in the shadows, watching.

Cang leans against the flimsy wall and studies her without appearing to look in her direction at all. It is a trick he perfected half a decade ago on the streets of the capital, when speed and surprise were the greatest weapons, and it didn't pay to let your victim know you were watching.

She is very beautiful, even though she never smiles. Beautiful, but just too young to consider …

It crosses his mind to wonder why she would come so often just to stand and watch. He has seen her family; how close they are. How respectable. She just doesn't fit the usual pattern.

Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he moves towards her. For a moment it seems as if she will turn and run, but she resists the fear, and remains, watching as he approaches. She is like a wild animal caught in the light.

“I don't think your father would like you hanging around here.” He smiles as he speaks. She does not smile back. “He's my uncle, not my father. My father died in the war.” He nods, and she continues, “And she's my aunt. My mother is …”

The words run out, but she stares at him defiantly.

“It's not for them to decide.” She turns away and looks across at the other members of the gang sitting on the ground or lounging against a couple of the makeshift walls.

“What's your name?” he asks.

“What's yours?” she replies …

*

TOAN'S STORY

The thing is, there really isn't any explanation.

You can love someone like they're one of your own children, care for them, hold them when the demons come in the night. Tell them things aregoingto be alright. But you can't change what's happened to them and you can't know how it's affecting them deep inside where the words don't reach. And when you're stuck in are fugee camp, with barely enough food and water, you can't just call up achild psychologist or a qualified trauma-counsellor. All you can do is give them your love and hope for the best.

Which may not be good enough.

Phuong began to change soon after we arrived at Pulau Bisa. Before that, from the moment her mother disappeared, she'd been like a wind-up doll. Point her in the right direction and she'd walk, ask her a question and she'd talk, but there was nothing there. It was like the life had drained right out of her, out there in the middle of the ocean. Linh was quiet too sometimes-lots of times but not like that.

With Phuong, it started with little things.

She took to carg around one of her mother's shirts. She took it everywhere with her, and at night she slept with it clutched in her hand. My mother made the mistake of trying to talk to her about it.

It was over the evening meal one night, and Phuong was sitting with the shirt on her lap. Mum suggested that she might put it down, at least while she was eating.

That was the first time Phuong snapped.

“You're not my
mother
,” she shouted. “You can't tell me what to do!”

It took my mother by surprise. I don't think she could remember Phuong ever raising her voice. Maybe that was why she followed up with an even bigger mistake.

“I know I'm not,” she said, gently. “But your mother is gone, and we-”

She never got any further.

“We don't know that! She might have …”

The words trailed off and she froze, as if voicing her secret hope might have doomed it. I think that was the first time anyone realised that she was still holding on to the dream that somehow her mother might survive; might come and find her.

I was watching my father's face. He was as shocked as my mother.

“Phuong —” he began, but she turned on him, and the look she shot across the room was like … hatred.

“It's
your
fault!” she shouted. “If it wasn't for you, we'd still be safe in Rach Gia. She wouldn't have come without you. And you're not my father, so don't think you can take his place. He was a hero.
He
didn't hide away in an office in Saigon …”

I guess the look on my father 's face stopped her. She stood up and walked out of the hut, still clutching her mother 's shirt. And without looking back.

From that day on I never saw her with the shirt again. But she changed.

Every day was an armed truce. She'd stay away for hours at a stretch. Nothing my parents did or said was right. The boys were in trouble if they breathed wrong; even Linh and I knew to stay clear of her most of the time. It scared me. She was so totally different from the Phuong I'd grown up with.

That was when she developed her fascination with Cang and the pack of alley-trash he controlled.

Looking back, I think there might have been an element of guilt in the whole drama. I mean, think about it, Aunt Mai sacrificed herself to save her daughter from the pirates. Phuong was thirteen, and old enough to know what that meant, and why it had happened. So she blamed herself.

Sure, she could deflect it onto my parents — even onto us — but in the end she saw herself as the cause of what had happened to her mother. If the monster had taken
her
instead …

I guess Cang and the mob were the nearest thing the camp had to a boatload of pirates, and something deep down inside her tortured mind made the connection.

I discussed it with Linh once, much later, but she said I was talking through my ear; that I wasn't a psychologist and I didn't know squat. And besides, nothing was ever that simple. That was when she suggested I stick to finger painting and leave the thinking to those who were equipped for it Linh has a way with words, and she often uses them to hide what she doesn't want to face.

But I guess she's right. Nothing is as simple as we'd like to kid ourselves it is.

Still, it was a nice theory, and no one has come up with anything better to explain Phuong's actions. Certainly not Phuong herself.

*

14 June 1977
Pulau Bisa

PHUONG

The girl is an enigma. Hai leans over her, watching her eyes, but he cannot read them. She is young and she is scared, but she will not look away, will not retreat from him. He leans closer.

“Hai!”

Cang's voice. He tears his eyes from the girl and looks across at the gang-leader, warned by something in the older youth's tone.

“Come here … Now.”

He feels the girl's breath on his chek as she sighs, perhaps with relief, but his eyes are fixed on Cang. There is nothing difficult about reading him. Slowly he straightens up and obeys.

“No one touches the girl,” Cang speaks the words in a whisper, watching her in his usual oblique manner. She has slipped down into a crouching position against the wall, a few metres from the main group, her gaze focused somewhere in the middle distance.

“I thought you preferred them older.” Hai masks the sarcasm with a knowing smile, but finds himself staring into the dark spaces behind Cang's eyes, and the smile dies on his lips.

“I said
no
one.”

He watches as Hai rejoins the group, then switches his attention back to the girl. There is something in her eyes that captivates him. She is drawn to the group, to him, by something she cannot fight, but there is no respect there — at least not the unquestioning kind that he sees so often in the eyes of the others. She is young and yet she is older than them all. She is beautiful and yet she is untouchable. Unreachable.

She has sought out the wild-side, but refuses to discard the shield of her innocence.

And when he looks into those eyes, he sees reflected something of himself, the way he was before …

He drives the thought away. There is no profit in remembering; he has built a wall around those areas of his emotions. But still, the girl disturbs him and he cannot say why.