By Julia Phan, Staff Writer
From the front of the van, I felt the steady motor moan and the familiar vibrations slowly dissipate as the vehicle neared a looming gate. I clenched my notebook and pen – somewhat of a safety net that allowed me to write to the world – tighter against my chest. The gate darkened over the bus into an all-consuming shadow, sweeping up my anxiousness with it. A dilapidated banner read Sơ Lược Về Hội, a school for disabled children. As I squeezed my eyes shut, the awful sign howled, reached out, and clawed into my mind.
Roped in by my parents, in hopes of exposure to my Vietnamese roots, I followed doctors and volunteers from around the world on a ride to a rural village in Central Vietnam’s highlands of Da Nang.
Unlike the elementary school in my Californian, Bay Area hometown, Sơ Lược Về Hội distinguished itself by having neither a nicely trimmed lawn nor a grand library. In an attempt to relieve the empty dirt lot, a lonely volleyball net stuck to the ground. The head nurse looked at me over an acrid mug of coffee. Her eyes were bright and searching, like twin spotlights carving through the mocha-infused steam.
“You’re an expert at standing still.” Her voice shattered the calm in my mind that I tried so hard to re-collect. She gripped my shoulder. “Talk with these kids. They’re your age!”
Her words knifed through me. My memory flashed back to the comfort of my home routine that I now yearned for. She thrusted me into a world where the air hung thick with humidity. It hit me in the face like opening a dryer mid-cycle. I watched the medical staff make makeshift clinics and pull out medical beds. Their white coats darted and slowed, like dragonflies zipping above a pond. I was waiting for my own courage to summon and take effect.
Label it the writer’s paradox, but my own motherland had become a terra incognita that was harder to write about, something unusual for a journalist like myself. This place was different. This was my own native country. With every judgment I made, guilt struck. I whittled down my existential identity crisis to a terrible fear: I was scared of my people.
By the time the head nurse returned to me, ready to rouse, I scrambled to start my volunteer work. Walking into a classroom wrapped in the mustiness of old paper and glue, I approached a young girl. Her frayed, dark hair was cropped close to her head; pink-ish flip-flops baked from play and soil.
Months before the week-long trip, I collected hundreds of donated stuffed animals in California to distribute to the families following their medical exams. My bags of stuffed animals heaved to the ground and the crinkling plastic sounded. The girl, who was blind, sucked in a gasp and jerked back, causing a whirlwind of papers to fall.
“Tôi không có ý đó.” Her thin voice warbled as she spoke. Then, her words surged forth. “Tôi không biết có người—”
“Không làm gì sai cả.” I saw her face soften, as she was not much as forgiven as she was understood. My remission continued as I compiled her papers. “Tôi đến từ California.”
She speaks, fileting her words this time. She pauses and tries again.
“I, er, can speak little English.” She tongued at the edges of her English vowels and dragged out others. My eyebrows flashed up and held their position in her effort to speak my American language. “My, hm, dream is to go somewhere like Cal-er-California.”
My insides twisted. My fingers rapped against my sides, hoping to pick up a familiar rhythm. Her dream in life was the mundane part of my vacation plans. I nearly felt a thousand times out of place. My foot beat the ground, hopefully strong enough to break a hole, so I could slip through the floorboards back to my suburban bubble of ignorance.
I dug into the bag of stuffed animals. I clasped her hands together in the shape of a cup and placed a teddy bear.
“I want to give a toy from the States. I’m Julia. What is your name?”
She cooed into the plush.
“My name is Hoa,” she whispered. “Hoa means flower in Vietnamese.”
Hoa began to rub her thumbs over my skin and run her hands through my hair. My stomach lurched. Then, her warmth cooled and her hands entangled with orange string and paper. I wrestled with trying to figure out what Hoa was making.
Hoa’s fingers continued to deftly fold the paper mache. The atmosphere was charged with an electric buzz. I was the onlooker who spectated in the theater of Hoa's craftsmanship. A few minutes passed, and she handed me a fragile, large, and orange paper flower.
“I made it for you. Can you feel the flower?” she questioned me. At the perch of age, I had yet to realize that in this in-between world, Hoa found answers, at least spiritual ones, in the most unlikely of talents.
“Make your own garden now,” she said.
As the last light whimpered and dissolved over the horizon, I left the school with an invincible determination to serve my community and voice my people’s stories and plights through writing. Years later, I still have the flower gift laying on the nightstand by my bed – a testament to Vietnam, Hoa, and now my strength and tenacity.
