Pauline Nguyen - Lotus

 

When Saigon fell to communist rule in 1975, my father realized that he had no choice but to escape Vietnam. And the only way that he could do this was to build a boat, and smuggle himself and his family out to sea. I was three years old at the time and my brother, Louis, was two. 

 

My grandmother begged my father not to leave. She couldn't understand how a parent would want to risk perishing their children out at sea. But my father is a very determined man. He stands at just 5’1”, a little shorter than myself, but what he lacks inches he makes up for in fearlessness and determination and he had already made up his mind. He would rather die trying than risk imprisonment or to suffer a fate far worse, the re-education camps. “It's not enough that they take our freedom,” he would tell me. “They want to take our thoughts as well.” My father was determined that, “If we died, we will all die together.” 

 

So, in October 1977, armed with only a rudimentary map and a compass to guide him, my father steered our vessel, our tiny vessel, out into the South China Sea. We spent our days drifting, and waiting and praying. We prayed that a foreign ship might come and save us. We prayed that we might find friendly shores. We prayed that the pirates wouldn't attack us and we prayed that our supplies would not run out. But our prayers were not always answered. Ship after ship after ship ignored our SOS, the most basic code of the sea. And at gunpoint, a group of Malaysian soldiers pushed us off supposedly friendly shores. 

 

We ended up in Thailand, where we spent a very difficult year. And in 1978, Australia finally accepted us. The government housed us at Westbridge Migrant Hostel, and my father quickly found a job working on the production line at the Sunbeam factory in Campsie. Sunbeam gave him the graveyard shift from 02:00 PM to 02:00 AM, and they gave him all the jobs that nobody wanted. “The train ride home was the worst,” my father would later tell me. Every night was dangerous for him. 

 

The locals threatened to beat him and the bigots threatened to kill him. My father cried every day going home on that train. A lot of us cried in those days. We came into this new world with nothing. Nothing. No job, no house, no money. We didn't know the laws, the systems or the language. My father had nightmares. And it's the same dream over and over. He's back in Vietnam. He's preparing for our escape. He's back in the water, drifting day after day with nowhere to go and then he wakes up.

 

My father had constant flashbacks to the war. Part of his job as a lieutenant in artillery was to return to the scene and count the dead bodies after a kill. One shell killed so many. The scars from his own bullet wounds resemble a question mark down the length of his spine. But determined to succeed, my father took on a second job, and then a third job and then a fourth job. And at home, he was always angry. He had anger in him that none of us could explain. He would throw things, he would yell at us, he would smash things. And sometimes he would just stand there and scream. 

 

My father was determined to raise four high achievers. He wanted to make sure that the sacrifices that he and my mother made were honored. It wasn't long until he started offloading his anger upon my mother. Soon after that, he started to offload his anger upon his children as well. If someone were to ask me now, “What it is that I remember most about my childhood?” It would be the overwhelming stench of fear. Fear followed us every day of our lives. Fear stayed with me everywhere. My father kept three instruments of torture. The first was a flexible cane whip, the second was a stiff and shiny billiard stick and the third was fear. 

 

Twice a year, from the age of 7 to 13, we would bring our school her reports with absolute fear and loathing. For every B, he caned us once. For every C, he caned us twice. And this ritual required us to lay flat on our stomachs and not budge a millimeter until he was finished. Blow after blow, hacking at the flesh of our buttocks and our thighs. When he was done, he threw us a dollar for every A. My father would find any reason to beat us. And sometimes he would beat us for no reason at all. One of his most well used and memorable quotes, “I created you and I have the power to destroy you.” Yup, he did that all right. 

 

At 17, I ran away from home and I spent many years hiding from my father. I would look over my shoulder everywhere that I went, paranoid that familiar faces were following me. You see, I wanted my fears forgotten, not faced up to. But there comes a time in your life where you need to overcome your fears by looking at it in the face. And for the sake of my mother and for the sake of my brothers and for all the shame that I had dumped upon my family in the years that I was gone, I reluctantly reconciled with my father. 

 

Out of duty, I would go home to visit. And I hated those visits. I hated the sense of claustrophobia and the sense of suffocation that I always felt in his presence. The meetings were always so stifled, and false and tense. But what I hated the most was the overwhelming realization that I had grown up to be just like him. I too was angry all the time. Angry at my loved ones, angry at my work colleagues, angry at the world, angry at myself. Angry people are very skilled at noticing all that is wrong. 

 

I carried this anger for many years. And later, when my partner and I wanted to have a child, I was determined that this cycle end there. I was determined to not be the same person I had always been, because I was frightened. Frightened of history repeating. Frightened of treating my own child the way I had been treated and I needed the cycle to end there. I could not pass on my anger to the next generation. 

 

Toward the end of my pregnancy, I landed a book deal to write a memoir about my family. And as I'm writing this book, my fears returned. As I'm writing this book, I'm thinking, how am I possibly going to survive my father's reaction to this story? There are 10 chapters all up in my book, and it's not meant to be a scathing account about my father. It is a beautiful story about personal freedom, and family and hope. But in order to talk about the good things, I have to talk about the bad things as well. 

 

It was my plan to finish my book and give it to my father in its entirety, so that he could see the full arc of the story and so that he could see what a beautiful story it really is. But as I'm writing this book, this cloud of dread is hanging over me, I know that one day it's going to be published, and I know that one day the world's going to read it and I'm just dreading the day my father's going to read it. But there's a job to be done and a story that needs to be told. And so, I write. 

 

By the end of the seventh chapter, my father demands to read my story. And I freak out. I freak out, because he can't read it now. It's not finished. The seventh chapter is actually the most confronting chapter and it was the most difficult chapter for me to write. It possibly is the most scathing chapter about my father, and he can't possibly read it now. But you don't say no to my father. I had no choice, but to hand over my unfinished manuscript, the story about his life written by his prodigal daughter. I didn't hear from my father for two months, and I needed to hear from my father. I needed to find some sort of closure, so that I can finish my book and move on. 

 

Father's Day came, and I decided to go home and face the music. So, I'm in my car with my beautiful baby daughter, Mia, and we're driving home to bony rig to confront my parents. I am so nervous and so scared with this confrontation that I can hardly breathe. I'm not scared that he's going to hit me or be violent or anything like that. We've passed that stage in our lives. I'm scared, because I've exposed him to the world. I've exposed our family's story to the world and our family secrets. I'm scared, because he might give me some ridiculous ultimatum like, “I forbid you to publish this book” or something crazy like that. 

 

But I'm scared, because I'm about to do something that's never been done before. I'm about to take responsibility to end this family's pattern. I'm about to confront my father in order to make things better than before. And so, Mia and I are waiting at the front door. I've taken with me a case of my father's favorite red wine as a peace offering. When the doors open, they take Mia, they kiss her, they cuddle her. They're so happy to see her. And I see that they've made a feast for me. 

 

We sit down to eat and I ask my father, “Dad, what do you think about my story?” He says, “Good. Good, good, but there's just one thing.” “What's that one thing, dad?” “The fish sauce recipe's wrong.” [audience laughter] “What do you mean the fish sauce recipe is wrong?” “There's no water involved, no water involved.” And I'm thinking, oh my God, this can't be happening. 

 

And later on, I ask him again, “Dad, what do you think about my book?” I get the same response about the fish sauce recipe. I'm so frustrated, we're never going to define our relationship, we're never going to connect. I'm doomed. I'm never going to finish my book. I won't be able to move on. I get my baby ready. I'm getting my things ready and I'm just about to leave and I ask him one last time, “Dad, what do you think about my book?” 

 

And in a voice so sad and serious, he says, “Do you know why Buddha sits on a lotus flower?” “No, dad.” “Why does Buddha sit on a lotus flower?” “There is nothing as beautiful as a lotus flower.” “Out of watery chaos, it grows, emerging from the depths of a muddy swamp and yet remains so pure and unpolluted by it. So pure you can eat it, all of it. The roots, the stems, the leaves, the seeds, the petals. But the lotus flower has another characteristic. Its stem you can easily bend, but you cannot easily break. It has tenacious fibers that hold the plant together. My children are lotus flowers. You have grown out of the aftermath of war. You have grown up in Cabramatta during its murkiest time and you have grown out of me. I am mud. I am dead. I am shit. I am very lucky to have you all.” 

 

And with those words, my father gave me everything that I had been waiting over 20 years for. He never gave me an apology. He gave me acknowledgement. Acknowledgment of the harm that he had inflicted. If someone were to ask me now, what things I think about when I think of my father? I would say I think about forgiveness, I think of redemption and I think about hope. But most of all, I think about unfailing courage in the face of any adversity.