Vanna's Sow

Vanna’s Sow

John Hanson

There is nothing as remote as recent history

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© 2012 by John Hanson. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 08/17/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-4030-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-4029-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-4028-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012912244

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Contents

CHAPTER 1 THE GATE

CHAPTER 2 THE WORLD

CHAPTER 3 THE SECOND RETURNING

CHAPTER 4 TRUCKSTOPS

CHAPTER 5 CHAOS AND CALM

CHAPTER 6 FLIGHT

CHAPTER 7 BEGINNING

AFTERWARDS

For my sons, Eric and Chris, who have

patiently shared their father’s obsession.

CHAPTER 1

THE GATE

There is nothing as remote as recent history

CAMBODIA AND VIETNAM

THE IRON GATE OPENED SLOWLY. THIS RUSTY crea-

ture protected the large courtyard and big house next door. Its hinges made a slight squeaky sound and a slow clang-clang-clang as it was cautiously opened. This foreign sound woke Vanna abruptly from her comfortable spot in the pavilion next door where she slept and found comfort. The neighbor’s dog wasn’t barking because no unfamiliar person was entering.

Phnom Phenh’s night sky was shrouded by low flying monsoon clouds that rushed overhead. An occasional gap in the clouds allowed a glimpse of the bright moon and stars far behind them. Shadows danced for a moment across the grounds and over the glistening water where puddles were still full from yesterday’s rain. Then the clouds closed in, all was black again and, the night seemed more silent than before.

The electric generators of this section of the city were turned off and the streets were emptied by the curfew. Vanna could hear only Sang’s soft breathing as she lay asleep next to her on a mat.

The restrained revving of a motorcycle in the courtyard next door mixed with the sounds of the gate. The motorcycle then quietly eased through that gate, into the street, and sputtered as it crept past the small wooden door protecting Vanna’s home from the open street. She listened intently to the sound of the slow moving motorcycle drifting off into the thick night.

She lay wandering around the border of sleep as her thoughts were scrambled by the memory of powers, beyond her comprehension, that were about to destroy her world again. Only her daughter Kim, herself, and her Vietnamese friend Sang, remained for dying.

Vanna now lived in what was once a pavilion, a large gazebo for elegant outside entertaining. It was part of a villa in what was an elegant suburb of Phnom Penh built during French colonial times. She and Kim lived there in peace, uninterrupted by the Khmer Rouge government or the Viet Nam supported regime that followed during the 1980’s.

Vanna’s pavilion home and the main house shared a long continuous wall facing the street. She and little Kim built a partitioning wall between the main house and her new home.

She waited, five years since they first occupied the pavilion, to begin building that wall separating the pavilion from the big house. No one indicted any interest in the villa or the pavilion. She and Kim lived quietly and were left alone as their lives grew with the neighborhood.

She built the wall without a husband or official consent and laid no claim to the big house. Her only help in this construction was her daughter Kim who was then 12 years old, bright of mind and strong enough to help. When the wall was complete, she felt this place was hers, at last. It was her own after a life of being cast about by historical events which she had nothing to do with.

Their new home rested on a street that had become a major thoroughfare due to the erection of retail outlets, a small hospital, and a junk yard where dead vehicles of all sizes shapes and origins were repaired or dissected and recycled.

A new car dealership and many small shops had just opened nearby. The United Nations Transitional Authority, UNTAC, had just come to Phnom Penh to enforce the end of the civil war in Cambodia in 1992. One recent activity was the building of a jail at the end of a short alley behind a newly refurbished villa which now served as a branch bank.

During the 1980s, her street evolved from a relic of a sedate colonial suburb into a typical Asian urban busy thoroughfare where everyday work was done on the street and everyone’s occupation was commonly known.

Vanna sells petrol from old French wine bottles. Cigarettes were sold by the pack, carton, or separately. Her store is a small stand under a colorful umbrella in front of her home and directly across the street from the new jail and branch bank.

A few weeks ago, two big old brightly decorated and mud splattered Benz trucks with Thai license plates arrived, and parked near Vanna’s petrol and cigarette stand directly in front of the gate to the big house. These colorful trucks were randomly stacked high with boxes, file cabinets, and furniture tied down by twine and ropes lashed every which way.

Vanna had not seen people like those on the truck for a long time. They were darker then Khmers of Phnom Penh and wore more multi-colored large plaid Khmer scarves around their heads and waists. Many were shirtless and some had elaborate tattoos on the necks and forearms. They chatted loudly and laughed heartily as people do when returning homeward into a sometimes hostile homeland.

They were refugees from the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979 who took refuge in Thailand. Many had been engaged in the civil war during the 1980s as part of a loose alliance called the Non-Communist Resistance (NCR). The Paris Peace Accord abolished this alliance and changed U.S. assistance. Each was now an independent faction of the new interim government while waiting for the election.

A neatly uniformed gentleman sat in the front seat of the lead big old Benz truck. He emerged from the truck walked, alone and with dignity, to the slightly opened big front gate to the big house. He entered through the small metal door in the big iron gate. The small door was not locked or guarded. All was quiet.

Within a short time he returned with the quiet squatter who lived invisibly in the big house. The squatter smiled widely at the crowd of newcomers and opened wide the big iron gate; clang-a-clang clang.

The unloading of the trucks began. Vanna watched this activity from under the bright umbrella covering her petrol and cigarette stand. A small group of neighbors gathered near Vanna’s little perch. Questions rattled about the new arrivals. The rumor was that they were from the resistance coalition that had been fighting the government in Phnom Penh; the government that was left behind by the Vietnamese occupiers.

Most people in the neighborhood were worried that there might be trouble between the former enemies despite the UN coming to town. Few could comprehend peace, ever.

MEMORY

Sleep persisted in evading Vanna who laid waiting for the return of the motorcycle that slowly edged through the gate into the dark empty street. Memories rushed through her of her exodus from Saigon with her infant child Kim, escaping war and personal isolation; of her search for the family she had not seen in many years. Instead she found the unexpected furious and random American bombings in Cambodia.

She tried not to toss and turn on her mat so as not to wake Sang. She thought about how her love and friendship with Sang began; after her Saigon husband Lank left her:

When Lank left Vanna in Saigon to return to what he called the world, she was frightened and alone again. She did have Kim, her beautiful Eurasian baby. Lank did leave her some money so the rent was covered for some time. The landlord knew the generous American would leave funds for her and was slow in reducing the rent despite Vanna’s persistent requests.

Sang’s friend, Bronson, left Viet Nam with Lank. She no longer had a place in town to stay if she couldn’t make it home before the curfew. After Bronson’s went back to the world Sang needed a place closer to the center of Saigon where she worked. She moved into Vanna’s comfortable small house up the narrow alley lined by drying clothes and occupied mostly by playing children.

Vanna and Sang provided care, nurturing, and a warm body to carry the new baby around. Babies were usually totted about on the hip of older brothers or sisters, but Kim was an only child and Sang filled this role. Carrying and caressing the baby comforted Sang, whose nights at work were near turmoil as the Americans were spending less money as they felt it was almost over for them in Viet Nam.

The seed of a new family formed and prosperity increased through Vanna’s working during days in the laundry and Sang working nights in her hostess role. One less child was kept from the streets of Saigon and life began to stabilize for this small family. In 1973, as the war wore down to an ugly conclusion, fewer and nastier Americans spent less and less money in Saigon.

Xenophobia began to take hold in their neighborhoods as jobs and cash flow decreased. Sang was often required to defend her new family against the barbed remarks and intimidation of their Vietnamese neighbors who became increasingly hostile toward Vanna, the Khmer, with a Eurasian child.

The neighborhood’s acceptance of her when she was living with Lank dwindled; Vanna’s yearning to go home grew into an obsession. Her need to find her Khmer family in her homeland consumed her. Being forever an outsider was alien to the Cambodian. She sought out Cambodians wherever she went and asked questions about her family’s whereabouts whenever she would find Khmers on the streets and shops of Saigon.

She waited for Kim to grow a little older and strong enough for a difficult journey into Cambodia during the war that she felt would never end. They found their way to Phnom Penh while Sang remained in her home town, Saigon, and stayed in Vanna’s comfortable house.

Vanna escaped these memories of her exodus from Saigon by the slow breathing which finally helped her slide into sleep. In a half-state of sleep, a vivid dream descended where she poured water into a large pot filled with the hard red-gray lateritic soil of Cambodia. The soil would not absorb the water which oozed over the pot’s rim and crawled over her feet etching a path across a cool red tile floor toward a small wooden door.

She abruptly awoke, frozen, eyes staring and lids rigid. The dogs next door began barking and the clang-clang of the iron gate opening rapidly announced the return of the slow moving motorcycle from its mysterious mission into a rainless dark cloud clad night.

THE SOW AND ROOSTER

A weak snort of her awakening pig caused Vanna to be aware of morning’s presence.

In the past few years her pig had grown tremendously from the good life, and Vanna began shrinking from age. She would rub the big pigs back gently as he snorted his way through the wooden gate of her courtyard to go forth into the street to do his morning garbage collection. As he would pass, she’d brush the short hairs on his back. The pig perked up to her touch. He’d pause, shiver with simple pleasure, and then plod through the opening where Vanna stood to one side holding the door ajar.

When the pig slowly ambled by her, she would give him a gentle kick under his squiggly tail. He’d pause again for this loving gesture and then go out into the street and the cleaning chores he loved so much; never wandering far from Vanna’s stand.

She remembered when, not so long ago, she had to bend to rub his back. Now, when he passed her at the gate, she would rub his back with her hand and arm stretched straight out from her shoulder.

Vanna sighed deeply in her restless sleep, recalling how sweet his breath smelled and how it made her feel warm when she was soaked by a cold rain.

Specks of light shown through the mat-like drape that divided Vanna’s and Sang’s room from the outside.

Oodle-do… . oodle-do nervously crowed Vanna’s insecure rooster. He never learned the entire waking call of a good rooster, and Vanna didn’t get many eggs from her chickens. There were just enough for Kim and herself with only a few left to hard boil and to sell each day at her stand.

Sang stirred, flipped on her back and briskly rubbed her eyes with her pudgy fists. From deep within her lungs she emitted the sweet sigh of someone that feels safe, a breath that turned into an abrupt soft cough.

Vanna was lighting the charcoal and preparing a pot of hot tea as Sang stirred on the mat. Good morning, she whispered. The fire took hold and Vanna returned to the mat and plopped down next to Sang to wait for the sound of the water boiling.

Last night I had a bad or good dream, whispered Vanna. Khmer dreams were predictions, omens of things to come in the near term. They relished discussing these dreams with the morning tea.

Sang recalled that Bronson talked of his dreams which usually unfolded dark personal mysteries of the past. Sang puzzled a moment about why Vietnamese dreams were usually about something that had to be done that day; how strange it was that three nationalities viewed dreams so differently; as messages from the past, predictions of the future and, reminders of the present things to be done.

Vanna laid on her back, took Sang’s hand, stared at the ceiling, and painted the verbal backdrop to her dream. She sucked in a sigh between her teeth and scratched her forehead to scrub out a memory.

Sang said nothing, respecting Vanna’s private thoughts. She shuffled her legs under her, rose up in one motion and went to the stove for the quietly bubbling tea. She put sweet canned milk on the bottom of the cup and carefully stirred the tea into the milk as she poured.

The sun was brightening the room now. Sang sat on the floor next to her friend and assumed the tone of the sympathetic boss. She had learned to be a good listener as the night-club hostess, restaurant manager and now supervisor of the girls that came from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh because of the new opportunities provided by the U.N. troops. Her bosses trusted her and she immediately agreed to go to Phnom Penh where she could rejoin Vanna and Kim; after being separated for almost twenty years by conflict in Cambodia, this warm little family could be reunited.

What about your dream Vanna? Keep talking, get it out; was it a good dream or bad dream?

Vanna was still quietly looking at the ceiling with its strong and sturdy hard wood rafters. A gecko first slid and then darted across the ceiling snatching early-bird insects as the heat of the coming day slipped into the room.

Kim was preparing to go to work as she walked passed them. She interrupted Vanna and Sang’s conversation. Tell me about my father, she abruptly interceded while rubbing her face with the back of her hands. Her question was directed to Sang.

Sang and Vanna looked at each other, startled. Neither of them had talked, or thought very much, about Lank or Bronson for many years. What could they say about an almost irrelevant memory?

Sang sipped her tea to suppress a slight cough and said, Kim, his name was Lank, he was very handsome, a tall man with beautiful hair like yours. He was very intelligent just like you.

I want to know more about him, mother doesn’t talk about him very much. What kind of work did he do, did he go to college, what did he like to eat. You know, things like that, Kim asked.

She quickly changed her tone saying, Eh, oh, I’m late, have to wash my hair.

Kim slipped into her sandals which rested at the top of the steps and hurried outside to the spigot and wash bowl where she would clean her long black hair and comb, and comb it until it was dry and shined with luster that only Asian hair can radiate.

Sang was spared from making further fabrications about Lank.