“Dai, do you know what your name means?”
“Yes, Ba. It means great.”
“And why do I call you Dai Duong sometimes?”
“Because nothing is greater than the ocean.”
Ba smiled. “You’re not wrong, son. The ocean sustains us, our family, our village. It is so vast that it took people thousands of years to discover lands across the seas. There is nothing on this planet greater than the ocean. But what does the ocean represent? To you, to me?”
“Um. Life?” I said hopefully. We were sitting by the docks where Ba’s fishing boat was moored. The sky was clear, but a storm was said to be brewing in the east.
“What kind of life?” When no answer was forthcoming, Ba continued, “Freedom. A life of freedom. Freedom to dream. When a man looks out at the ocean, he can’t help but imagine what must lie out there. The possibilities are as endless as the ocean itself.”
I swung my feet in the dancing ocean spray and squinted at the horizon. I tried to understand what Ba meant, but I could only imagine more villages that looked like ours. A small cluster of bamboo huts, nestled between the mountains and the ocean.
But Ba looked like he could see worlds beyond me. “Only the free man can be great, do you understand? A man who has the freedom to speak up, to have dreams, and to pursue those dreams. A chained man has no freedom, no rights, no chance for greatness.”
––
There is a memory that torments me. A memory that I have turned over and over in my mind. Searching again and again for a missed clue, a lost detail. It is a memory I want to treasure; it is a memory I want to erase.
I was eight the year Ba decided to board the ship that would take him from our small fishing village in South Vietnam to the refugee camp in Hong Kong. The war was finally over, but our country was far from reconciliation.
A few days before he left, I overheard a conversation between Ba and Ma. Our home had three rooms – a communal living space separated my parents’ sleeping quarters from mine. They were arguing in their room, but that night, their voices were so loud that I could hear Ba’s low voice rumbling through the walls.
“The North toppled the government in Saigon. They have no interest in sharing power. This will be a communist nation, Linh. We cannot stay.”
“And what do you want us to do? Where do you want me to go?” Ma was expecting at the time. Her belly looked like a ripe melon – taut and shiny, ready to burst any day.
“The Hoangs – their nephew knows someone in the city. They have papers, and they said they could get us some too.”
“Someone – who? The American? Danh, how do we know we can trust him?” Ma did not like the Americans, even though we were from the South, and we were supposed to believe their capitalist and democratic ideals.
“They backed us in the war. They’re on our side.” Ba, on the other hand, wanted so badly to believe in Western values.
“What happened in My Lai?” Ma’s voice had risen precipitously. “You’ve heard the stories, but you still want to believe they’re on our side. They killed our people. The Americans killed our people.”
“Those weren’t our people. Those were Northerners. Communists.” Ba had insisted.
“No, those were villagers. Not people fighting in this war. Women, children. They murdered children, Danh. Children.”
“Be reasonable, Linh. We’re in a civil war. People die. We fight for what we believe. And the Americans believe what we believe.”
There was a silence, and I had pressed my face against the earthen wall.
“We can start new lives – in America! The boat will take us to Hong Kong first, but from there, we can decide where to go. Imagine that, Linh. Our children can be educated in the West.” Ba spoke quickly, urgently, trying to convince Ma before her mind was made up.
“Vietnam is our homeland. We belong here.” Ma spoke calmly but firmly. Both were trying their best to reason with the other. “You are a fisherman, like your father and grandfather before you. What new lives can there be for us? Will we sell fish in America?”
“We can do whatever we want! That’s the beauty of the American dream! Freedom, opportunity. You can open that flower shop you’ve always wanted. I-I can go to school. Study and get a degree. And Dai… Dai can be a mechanic. That boy can already–”
“Open shop? Go to school? How? The Hoangs have money now, but what do we have? We have nothing but this hut and a beat-up fishing boat. Where will we even live in America?”
“The Americans, I’m sure their government provides assistance–”
“No. Listen to yourself. You learn a few English words from the Hoang nephew, and you think you are American already? For people like us, the American dream is just that – a dream. They will never accept us. This war has always been about spreading their values, their ideologies, their power.” Ma’s voice had begun to shake. “And you, all you care about is pursuing your dream. Have you ever considered this family?”
“Linh, please–”
“No, I will not go. Let the North take over. I would rather take my chances with like-skinned countrymen than with the blue-eyed devils.” Ma spoke with finality.
The silence stretched on, and I was about to slip back under the covers when I heard Ba’s voice again. Much quieter now.
“Then I will go alone.”
I froze. I held my breath so that I could hear his next words.
“I will go first. To prepare the way for you, Dai, and our unborn child. Secure us the money we need in Hong Kong, and then I will come back for you. I will come bearing a shipload of gifts, Linh, and you will know that my dreams are worth pursuing.”
I strained hard against the wall, afraid that I would not catch Ma’s response. But Ma did not speak. Please, please, stop him, or just go with him, Ma, I had prayed. I did not understand their ideological differences, so I did not care who won, as long as we all stayed together.
“Go, then. I hope you will get to see your second child.”
That was all Ma said.
––
Ba never came back. He left in the middle of the night to board a smuggler’s ship because the Hoangs could not get him real papers, and that was the last we heard of him.
The day before he left, we went to the docks together to test the miniature sailboat that we had built out of wood and bamboo. Ma had helped make the tiny sails out of woven cloth. I was very proud of the adjustable mainsail that we could control from the docks with a small spool of string because it had been my idea.
Ba sat down next to me and watched as I tugged on the string, adjusting the sails to the ocean breeze. He asked me if I knew why he called me “Dai Duong,” which means ocean in our language. I felt uncomfortable when he began to talk about freedom. He didn’t know that I had heard their argument. It had been a few days since that night, and Ba had not left yet. I was starting to hope that I had imagined everything.
But that day, Ba did not go out in the fishing boat. It was not a rest day, yet he offered to take me to the docks. I listened to Ba talk until I couldn’t bear it anymore. He could yell at me for eavesdropping, but I had to know if he was serious about leaving.
I confessed everything, and Ba did not look at me. He kept his gaze on the horizon, his expression vacant. I had never wished for a scolding or beating before, but I did then. When Ba took out his pocketknife, I flinched back, but he merely reached over and cut the string that I was holding.
“Look, Dai. Now your boat is free. No longer tied down, it can experience all that the ocean is. What did I say about the free man? He can pursue greatness. And I promise you, one day, you will look to the horizon, and you will see a great ship – a thousand times the size of this miniature – and I will be waiting for you there.”
Ba said this with so much conviction that I believed him. I believed, as a child would, naively, that Ba could do anything, and if he said he was coming back in a great ship, then he most certainly would.
This is the memory that haunts me. That I have revisited so many times since that I’m not even sure if Ba ever made such promises or if I had constructed them myself. Had Ba been lying? Should I have known and tried to stop him from leaving? I wish I could erase the memory so that the questions would stop.
But it is also my last memory of Ba. And it is an image I want to remember. Ba sitting next to me as we watched the sailboat drift further and further out to sea.
––
As I walk through the fish market, I see a small boy running down the dock with a wooden sailboat, and my mind automatically flashes to Ba again. We heard the stories of the boat people – the thousands upon thousands of refugees who left Vietnam. We heard about people who died from lack of food and water, whose boats were shoved away when they reached the shores they sought asylum from.
Why didn’t you come back, Ba? Ma stopped talking about you. Little sister will never know what her Ba was like. Her name is Hoa by the way, and she’s almost ten.
We were lucky. After you left, Ma sold the fishing boat, and we managed for a while until Hoa was born. Then Ma and I both took on odd jobs. The new Socialist Republic of Vietnam has left us alone for the most part. We have no ties to the old government or the Americans since you left, and we own little to nothing without the fishing business. But we have each other.
Every time I’m by the docks, I look out to the horizon, and I imagine the possibilities. Did you make it to America? Do you have a new life, a new family there? Have you forgotten us? Did you even make it to Hong Kong? Sometimes, when I see Ma gazing blankly at the ocean or when Hoa asks why we don’t have a father, I find myself hoping that you are dead. Because why else would you not come back as you promised?
Every time I’m by the docks, I look out to the horizon, and I imagine a great ship, with tall masts and billowing sails. And I imagine you at the helm, beaming, because here you are finally, with the shipload of gifts you had promised.
Every time I’m by the docks, I find myself scanning the faces of the people disembarking from their fishing boats. Searching, checking, hoping that you might appear.
You said a chained man could never be great. Were we the chains that held you back? And now that you are free, are you great?
––
Learn more about the My Lai massacre and post-war Vietnam.
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About the Creator
Lilia
dreamer of fantasy worlds. lover of glutinous desserts.
twitter @linesbylilia
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