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Part 1: Sài Gòn 1990s
Chapter 1
You could learn a lot about a person by their hands. People who labored under the sun for hours upon hours acquired pus-filled blisters or peeling skin resembling overripe mangoes; it showed physical work, whether it be in the fields, ocean, or with machines and construction—perhaps even war. Soft hands were brandished by soft people—people unfortunate enough to never experience the harshness of what made Vĩnh's father, his father’s father, and his grandfather’s father, men.
Vĩnh's father, Ngô Kiệt or as referred to by his son, Ba Kiệt, told him not everyone believed in those values. Unfortunately for those people, they would never build character; they would never find true success, nor would they understand the suffering of the diligent and impoverished. Ba Kiệt fought in the American War starting seventeen years of age, lost his parents and younger brother in the Fall of Sài Gòn twelve years later, then found partnership with a woman who was over a decade his junior. Vĩnh’s mother, Ngô Ngọc, originally fell in love to a man with strong, scarred hands that could move mountains and lift her off the ground.
The two of them married at their local Catholic church where Kiệt’s parents and brother witnessed through their ashen remains. It took years to conceive a child. And they were lucky enough for it to happen once; Kiệt named his child Vĩnh—glory.
When Vĩnh turned six, his father haggled at the night market for the cheapest unbranded, rusty kid's bike which featured a front wheel that clicked whenever it completed a cycle.
The young boy fell and scraped his left knee the first time he rode it. The second time he rode it, he fell and bruised his shoulder. The boy’s father would rub a little water to remove the gravel, before pushing the boy to keep practicing.
His father pressured him to learn quickly. Before the scab on his knees fully healed, Vĩnh was weaving through the crowd and between buildings, delivering miscellaneous items and alcohol from his father's shop to customers all over downtown Sài Gòn and the northern Gò Vấp district.
One day, Vĩnh complained that the bike's front basket and ill-taped moldy box on the back threw off the balance and made it hard to ride long distances. So for the boy’s ninth birthday, his father strapped a large orange crate onto the back of the bike, big enough to hold four half-dozen cases of Tiger or other beer with additional space for household items like kitchen utensils (chopsticks, spoons, or the occasional Western fork), door handles, toys, school materials, and anything else that could be sold.
The boy asked if his father also bought him a basketball, which he had been requesting for over a year. This was met with a resounding no.
Throughout the years, Vĩnh felt lucky that most deliveries were within Gò Vấp; he memorized the drop-off sites based on their closeness to important features such as his favorite phở shops, least favorite phở shops, and their local church, the only well-kept European architecture in the district.
However, his family could never afford expensive ingredients such as beef or fish, let alone eat out even somewhat often. Vĩnh was a walking skeleton, whose only impressiveness were his defined thighs and calves. His undershirt birthed a weird tan that luckily was hidden under his (technically medium-size) school polo, which appeared too wide on him. In contrast, his filled soft cheeks and short, clean hairstyle gave the impression he descended from a higher-income family.
His mother was good with scissors.
She also had soft cheeks like him, which helped bring about a youthful facade. Vĩnh’s only male primary school teacher, at a parent conference once, queried if Vĩnh’s older sister was seeing someone. To which, she responded with a nervous yes and a reaffirmation that she was in fact, married.
Vĩnh’s father, on the other hand, let himself go after the war, now sporting a comb-over and a beer belly, rarely finding himself outside. The few times he stepped out were to retrieve unlabeled boxes for restocking—or perhaps to smoke in the alleyway.
Vĩnh was once ordered to carry a few boxes in, but the weight of them forced the task to take minutes longer than his father expected. So his father hit him with a bamboo stick. Nowadays, he was tasked only with deliveries, mandated to only speak in transactions and compliments.
Most customers who needed drive-by beers were elderly veterans, whose eyes were glued onto their T.V.s and butts were glued onto their wood-framed couches—or workaholics, who resorted to cheap beers and takeout because they were unable to go home for dinner most nights.
Ongoing construction of high rises littered the sky while cramped shops and houses populated the ground level. Family-owned shops of street food and cheap consumer products conducted business under the plethora of billboards and loose electrical wiring.
The rocky, littered pavement of the city continued for two kilometers before transitioning to the smoother roads of central Sài Gòn, which was experiencing an upsurge of the urban lifestyle. Although remnants of the American War poked through like weeds creeping through the cement: desolated houses too expensive to fix and dirt ground too soft to build upon. Nevertheless, the city boasted brand-new supermarkets, apartment buildings, and western-inspired, modern restaurants (modern as in shiny flooring and bi-monthly mopping); unfortunately, the congestion of motorbikes, taxis, and walkers—all of whom had more important things to do than worry about the safety of a delivery boy—increased as well.
The first drop-off was a two half-dozen packs of German beer to a regular who lived on the third floor above a two-story clothing center and an avant-garde Chinese-Thai fusion place known for skimping on seafood. Thirty-six thousand đồng for twelve beer cans…reminiscent of Vĩnh's weekly wage if his father felt nice.
The second location looped back to the edge of Gò Vấp where an elderly couple was celebrating their anniversary with a rushed bottle of imported whiskey. They tipped Vĩnh with an egg tart; he savored the sweet custard and salty, dry crust.
Dusk came and went in a blink as more deliveries saturated the next hour. Warm streetlights and mosquitos filled the atmosphere. Because of traffic, Vĩnh paused in front of his school, which aside from its large gates and dedication pledge to a local politician, was shrouded in darkness. A minute passed and he finally waddled his bike past the school. The final delivery was closer to his home area; however, still in the rural zone north of the district.
After ten minutes of biking, Vĩnh turned into an alley lit with Christmas lights…a myriad of rainbow dots patterned the houses, their roofs, balconies, and connecting high beams. It was March.
At the end laid a cement courtyard decorated with more Christmas lights climbing up support columns of a small church; a few benches and potted plants scattered the entrance. Incense and cigarette smoke permeated from connecting alleyways.
Behind the church laid an even narrower alley. Vacant of Christmas lights, the alley turned into sand, pebbles, and litter—it didn't help that the towering buildings blocked the dusk light.
Once the road opened up to a wider street, he biked faster, yelling for people to move while weaving past pedestrians, cars, and shops. "Tránh đường! Tránh đường!"
Vĩnh's bike chain rattled. His wheels whistled and clicked. Indistinguishable conversation played around him like white noise. Stray dogs barked. Engines roared and cars honked.
It was lovely—familiar. Couldn’t pause to take it in though. Customers were waiting.
Anticipating a large traffic jam from homebound workers at the next roundabout, Vĩnh took a hard right, then pedaled like hell when he saw the beautiful, emptiness of the wide alley with unnecessarily smooth pavement. Lucky! Vĩnh exclaimed in English. Just another ten minutes—perhaps five if he could beat his record speeding through the alley. Unlike the risk of other routes, where the unevenly-laid tiles of stone atop dirt and gravel could send him tumbling. The danger of this one was the foot traffic, but it looked like it would go that night.
He took a deep breath, then accelerated down the path, trying to pedal as fast as his thin legs would go. He felt the beers bouncing behind him, held down onto by fabric tied to his rear fender. The chilling wind sneaking into his jacket sleeves, it was the only time that Sài Gòn didn’t feel like wet hot air.
He opened his mouth so the wind could fill his cheeks—finally closing when his throat dried up. The teenager savored it all.
Almost to the end of the alley. He could go faster.
He leaned his head forward and over the front of his wheel, lifting his butt off the seat and accelerating even more.
A loud wooshing sound muted everything around him.
Suddenly, a man carrying one end of a small couch appeared in front of him. He pulled on the brakes and turned the handle hard while his heart was still pumping heavily from the adrenaline. The bike glided for a split-second too long before the brakes fully activated. Vĩnh crashed.
The couch fell backwards and Vĩnh’s weight bore a large chasm through the floral fabric, exposing a wooden skeleton stuffed with springs and cotton. However, Vĩnh only worried about the alcohol—his father would kill him if any customer complained. Luckily, the couch cushioned the glass bottles.
Vĩnh lifted his bike from the couch, quickly inspecting for any bruising or loose parts before turning to the middle-aged man, whose slacks were ripped at the right knee from falling onto the concrete. Apparently his legs were scraped and bloodied. "Aiya Chú. You didn't check to see if anyone was coming down the alley? Look you fell and now you’re bleeding."
“Nom de Dieu…,” the man uttered. The foreign exclamation confused Vĩnh for a moment; however, western languages such as English and French were utilized commonly between older veterans or higher-educated men.
"Son of a…" From the side, a woman with furrowed eyebrows through a piercing glare into Vĩnh's soul. "You're blaming us? You injured my husband with your recklessness." Her accent was sharper than anyone he'd ever met—each consonant stood out, lingering longer than the slurring of Sài Gòn locals. She consoled her husband then sent her youngest daughter to fetch them a first aid kit.
They were rich, Vĩnh thought. His family didn’t have a first aid kit, whenever he bled, it would be washed out with the neighborhood water faucet outside and cleaned with fabric scraps from decades-old clothing.
Her husband put his arm between her and Vĩnh. She continued mumbling under her breath, "First day back in Sài Gòn and this boy…"
"Are you injured?" asked the man—his consonants were sharp as well, but the vowels were softer.
Vĩnh hopped, then moved his body in waves to check for sharp pains or an unexpected lack of flexibility, grunting loudly whilst doing so. Then he turned to the family, “Why are you in the middle of the path? My bike could be broken because of you!”
"Kids these days. No respect. He just cares about his bike—are you going to apologize?" the woman interjected.
Vĩnh rolled his eyes. "Busy night!" he yelled nonchalantly, then climbed back onto his bike; the chains fluttered unusually, but the guilt crawled up his fingers and arms until it pierced his spine. He couldn’t show it though, his pride wouldn’t let him. “Aiya, now there’s a weird sound. If my bike is broken, I’m coming back!” He shook his head to cover half his face with his black oily hair, then just as he started pedaling, a girl jumped in front of him.
"Stop!" she yelled, arms spread.
“Out of the way—,” he looked her up and down.
The girl grabbed his bike handle and he yelled “Fat pig!” before jerking the handle side-to-side until her grip loosened. Then taking advantage, he slipped passed her left, his back wheel splashing grimy water onto her calf as she lost her balance.
Her face red and shaking with energy, she spit in Vĩnh’s face and yelled “Bitch!”
The boy looked flabbergasted, but only for a split second before brushing it off and twisting his bike handle away from the girl. “You’re—.”
“Stupid boy! Coward! Mutt!” She continued throwing insults like she was at war.
Vĩnh lifted his butt from the seat to get more leverage for pedaling, then jerked his bike handle the other direction, surprising the girl enough for her to release her grip and stumble backwards. She was on the ground, her butt soaked by a dirty puddle. Vĩnh couldn’t help but smirk as he rode off.
“Watch your mouth! Stupid pig!” He yelled, his face as red as hers.
She refuted, then threw another insult; however, he had already ridden too far to understand.
Although it was in the moment, he did feel regret for being rough enough for her to fall. She was in his way though—her whole family was. Who knew what they would have done if they trapped him. That family was a tiger’s cave and their daughter was the snake venom.
She had no right—none—to have called him a mutt.
The word rang in his mind, then ran down his spine.
#
The neighborhood consisted of many derelict buildings created from broken wood and torn metal sheets. Vĩnh rode into a plot of empty land cluttered with dirt-filled tinned cans labeled in English: pears, butter, pork and juices; and military vehicle scraps—too the broken and burnt to be scavenged and sold. Faint lamplights emanated from the condensed housing units. His attention went to a small shop with a broken billboard lifted and slanted to be used as patio roofing—a large caricature of a Chinese lady sipping on an illegibly-branded orange beer bottle stared daggers at the young boy.
Red plastic chairs and tables loitered beneath, one of which was taken up by an old man laughing, cursing, and downing cans of beer while watching reruns of Paris by Night on an outdated tube TV. Then for a split second, when the program transitioned to black, Vĩnh met the man's one eye in the TV reflection.
Adorning an ear-to-ear grin along with a thinning hairline and a Southern army field jacket, the old man turned his head. "Welcome boy."
Vĩnh froze, staring at the old man's left face—the empty eye-socket. The old man snorted, then coughed, blinking twice. Vĩnh saw it move as if it still had a reason to.
Annoyed, the old man raised his voice. "Where's the beer?"
"Chào Trung tá. I was just…" Vĩnh searched for an excuse that wasn't just infringing on the old man's eye.
"Trời ơi, come in Tiger boy," he said, waving in Vĩnh like a lost pup. A small Buddha shrine, accented with incense, sat comfortably in the nearby corner of the table alongside a shiny new pack of Marlboro. Behind him, the old man's ancestors stare down at them from the shrine behind the phone, where their pictures hung above incense. Then atop an ornate wooden chair his former military garb—trousers neatly folded on the seat while a dark green jacket with varying badges and medals surrounding the heart and shoulder boards sporting two silver plum blossoms each, draped across the wide cresting rail. Trung tá—or Lieutenant colonel. That was his preferred honorific and name—in fact, Vĩnh didn’t even remember the old man’s given name.
He noticed Vĩnh's wandering eyes. "Real brand. Not the fake kind that you see aunties sell in the street."
Vĩnh picked the 6-pack of Tiger beer up from his crate, finally noticing its unusually light weight and wet cardboard. Shit.
He set it on the old man's beer-stained red plastic table, which teetered on the edge of death. "Someone got in my way earlier and I crashed. I didn't know it was broken."
The boy watched as the old man inspected the pack, caressing each bottle out one-by-one then running his wrinkly fingers across, tapping for stickiness. "These four are good. However, the last two…"
"I know. I can refund you for those two."
"Just those two?"
"Uhh." Vĩnh furrowed his eyebrows. "The others—"
"Could be cracked!" The old man snorted, then cracked a small smirk. "Micro-cracks. Our fingers can't see or feel them, but they're there. Imagine I put this in the fridge, then take it out after a week. When I open the lid…pop!" He jumped in his seat until his back sat straight—his oil-tainted hands flashed open, exposing deep wrinkles and healed scars. "Who knows how many beers will go to waste that way?"
"I can ride back to the shop and grab you another pack."
"No…too much effort, and it’s night. Since I paid early, you can give me a refund right now.” He snorted, coughed, then spit the clumpiest, green liquid that Vĩnh had ever had the displeasure of seeing into a cement crack next to Vĩnh’s foot. “Give me my refund, and I won't call your father."
Vĩnh felt his spine shiver. "I don't have that much money on hand."
"I know I'm your last delivery today…which means you have money from other—"
"But that's father's—"
"Don't interrupt me! I'm talking. When an elder is talking, you…" The old man raised his eyebrows and paused.
Vĩnh clenched his teeth. "Listen."
With a softened look, the old man opened his palm and gestured to a red plastic chair. "Sit."
"I can stand."
"Eighteen-thousand." He slurred his offer as if speaking to an idiot.
"I'm sorry, Trung tá. I can't."
"Boy, I can call your father and tell him that you stole all six bottles. And—and that you were being disrespectful, not even offering to replace them or refund them." The old man looked in Vĩnh's eyes, and seeing them waver only slightly, intensified his tactics. He slapped himself. "Kiệt! How did your wife raise the boy? He hit me!" The old man slapped himself again. "He hit me twice! Haha!" His breathy voice turned nasally as he burst into laughter.
Vĩnh broke. "Trung tá!" After a deep breath, Vĩnh lowered his voice, "My father won't believe that."
"I was his superior in the American War, cháu. We might not be blood, but we bled together. Imagine, cháu, how your father would react when he hears me." The old man's oily, wrinkled hands hovered over his phone, each eight of his fingernails scarred black.
"Yes. Here's eighteen thou—"
"Thirty. Extra for the pain you caused this old man."
Vĩnh hesitated…that would be weeks worth of food…but he knew that his father would rather listen to this old man, a former veteran like him, than his son. The young boy relented and counted out thirty-thousand đồng.
#
Ba Kiệt’s shop usually closed at ten; however, Vĩnh came fifteen minutes past to find it still open. The whirring LED sign and flickering ceiling lights painted an uncomfortable atmosphere when Vĩnh entered.
"Vĩnh?" Ba Kiệt's voice echoed as his silhouette slowly approached Vĩnh from the back of the store.
"Dạ. Chào Ba Kiệt."
Ba Kiệt cleared his throat, hacking severely as if expelling a demon. He looked Vĩnh up and down. "You've been biking for three hours and you have calluses on your heels? Weak, Vĩnh." The old man carried with him an American-themed lighter and a Marlboro cigarette since the state-owned Vinataba brand was too bland for him.
He stood up and stretched his arms to the top of the short ceiling, then approached his son. The two of them stared at each other as nightly patrons, yelling, and blaring horns filled the background outside the shop. His father then put his own heavily-calloused hands on Vĩnh's shoulders, giving the boy a quick look up and down. Unimpressed, he lowered his hands to pinch the boy’s stomach, barely gripping it at first because of taut skin and lack of fat. Once pinched however, the old man shook vigorously until the skin turned bright red and his nails had drawn blood.
Vĩnh screeched while backing away to put pressure on his stomach. "What was that for?"
"Weak." He rolled his fingers on the cheap folded out, formerly-white table he called the manager’s desk and checkout counter. "All skin and bones. You need to eat more. Grow big and strong."
They met each others' eyes, then the boy nodded in acknowledgment.
"I just talked with a customer," Ba Kiệt said while glancing at the phone. "My old military friend, the Lieutenant Colonel, was unsatisfied with the delivery. Broken glass bottles. He wanted a refund."
"I offered—"
"What did you offer? Hm?" He paused for Vĩnh's response, bug-eyed, before exclaiming, "You don't have anything to offer, Yinh!" The old man's Southern dialect intensified as he pronounced the V in his son's name with a Yuh.
"Money—"
"Yinh! You don't have money! You spend it all on shit coffee and cheap restaurants! God's sake Yinh. If you had some saved up, we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"I gave him a refund—"
"With whose money?"
A small eep escaped Vĩnh's clenched jaws.
"My money!" His father yelled. "You owe me!" His saliva squeezed out between his irregular, black-gunked teeth, hitting, then dripping from Vĩnh's face like tar. "God! God punished me with a dishonest and thieving son, along with his whore mother."
"Ba!" Vĩnh reacted without thinking. "It wasn't my fault I crashed! Some stupid—"
Slap!
His father struck him hard enough to force him on his knees. The old man raised his hand again and Vĩnh flinched, covering his cheek with his forearm.
"Put your hand down, Yuh-inh."
Vĩnh lowered his hand, then clenched his jaw.
Ba Kiệt raised his right hand, its ingrained black dirt had seeped into each wrinkle and fingerprint. Vĩnh breathed heavily, then closed his eyes.
However, before exploding like his son expected, Ba Kiệt pressed his forehead into Vĩnh's, then sighed and stood back up. "Go home. We'll talk about you paying me back tomorrow."
Feeling the red sting on his cheek, Vĩnh turned his back, then hoping he could speak loud enough for his father to hear, but soft enough that he wouldn't care, he mumbled, "You shouldn't speak about Má like that."
His father took a deep breath, and Vĩnh clenched his jaw tight again. Instead, his father said, "I graciously chose your mother when no one else would. Then God blessed her and me with you…a strong, young man." He relinquished his hand, then pulled out a cigarette from the loose box on his manager’s desk. "Everything I do is for you. Everything. Do you think I am too mean sometimes, Vĩnh?"
Vĩnh shook his head with minimal movement, finding comfort by staring at the grody tiles unevenly spaced on the floor, peeling grout discolored by years of spills and dirty feet.
"Don't lie," the old man reached for a nearly-empty lighter. Sparks flew, but nothing lit. "Life is about harshness—it's about enduring difficulty. Otherwise, we won't succeed, correct?"
The boy froze at the thought of answering a rhetorical answer wrong. Luckily, his father occupied himself trying to light the cigarette, failing twice more. "When I was your age, I fought in the war. Can you imagine? I wasn’t as small as you, but I was still small. I survived. Now, I give you and your mother the best lives I could."
"Maybe we didn't—" Vĩnh mumbled.
"What?" Ba Kiệt leaned in. "Speak up con. Being quiet is for cowards.” The lighter's spark wheel reddened his father's thumb. “Your mother owes me her life.”
“Dạ Ba.”
His father huffed, then flicked the lighter again. Nothing. "Fuck! We don't even know how many men that slut fucked before I—"
Vĩnh threw the hardest punch of his life—straight into his father's nose. He felt cartilage jamming into the nasal void, cracking the nose bridge and surrounding bone. His finger knuckles made contact with the old man's dry lips, which bled from being crushed into his front, black-gunked teeth. For a split-second, he savored every skin, fat, and crunch his hand experienced. An uncontrollable smile drew itself across—.
—which is what Vĩnh imagined.
Instead, the boy was paralyzed.
And his father finished speaking, "—her family left for America. Cowards. You know I was a high-ranking general before I took her hand. She was in the street—the fucking prostitute, walking around with no morals. How a god-fearing woman became that way I do not know.”
“She did it to survive,” Vĩnh mumbled.
“We all do things to survive. No son, the worst thing she did was not tell me until after she gave birth to you.” He handed Vĩnh the lighter. “Try boy, maybe your small fingers have better luck than my old hands.”
With one masterful flick, Vĩnh created a flame. The old man, looking unimpressed, leaned in close with a cigarette in his mouth. He inhaled the poison smoke, then exhaled it, shrouding his son’s face.
Vĩnh mumbled again. “I’m still your son. Má left that work…”
His father snorted, then spit a yellow-green chunky booger onto the ground.
“She stopped working when she met you.” The boy said, perhaps hoping it would rekindle some favorable emotion his father had when he fell in love.
“I know con…but you need to understand…it’s the principal that’s wrong. No man wants to raise another man’s child, and no man wants a tainted woman—a woman who has given her blood and innocence to another man.” Then he put his hand on his son's shoulder, and looked him in the eyes. "You will work hard and—”
Vroom! Vroooom!
Motorbike engines exploded from behind their shop. Vĩnh turned his head to see the bright headlights flash through the shop's windows.
His father screamed, covered his ears, then hid behind the counter while swearing, "Fuck! Damned noise! They won’t fucking get us! Fuck!" The cigarette fell from his mouth onto the gunked-up tiling. The boy quickly stomped it before it would light any plastic or trash.
After his temporary blindness departed along with the motorbikes, Vĩnh looked down at his father.
"Hide con hide!" Ba Kiệt hissed with enlarged, weak eyes and heavy-breathed scowl. Then softly, he whispered with the most pitiful voice, "Vĩnh, come here." The man gestured with the slightest twitch of his index finger; unfortunately, his son froze, so instead he reached out and pulled his son down with a strong embrace as though he were a mother bird with a baby chick.
It was unusual to hear such loud engines considering most of their neighbors only had enough money for bicycles. The narrow alleys leading in didn’t fit any vehicles too wide either.
The boy whispered his father’s name.
Ba Kiệt shushed his son, then whispered, "Be quiet, the dogs are coming."
"The dogs?"
“Shhhh…they’re coming. Don’t let them hear you. They’ll take you from me!”
Ba Kiệt had never held his son so tightly. Not since he was still a baby.
Silence fell over the following few minutes, cut only by crickets and a single dog’s barking echoing through the alleyway.
His father slowly loosened his embrace to search for his cigarette, scrambling on his knees and hands; they were shaking. Once found, he blew on it, then shakily put it to his mouth and took a deep breath.
After the smoke had calmed his nerves, he said to his son, “Open your hand boy.”
Not obliging quick enough, Vĩnh’s father grabbed his hand, tracing each crease, then wiping the dirt that plastered itself in the boy's wrinkles and between his fingers. Following the cleaning, Ba Kiệt pushed down into the fleshy part and out, assessing the suppleness and translucency of Vĩnh's palm. "Too soft. I'll have you work extra in storage and stocking this weekend." Ba Kiệt put the nearly-empty lighter in his son's palm. "Throw it away for me con. Then go home and eat."
He waved his son away.
