All In (21 page)

She took hold of my hand. “It will be okay, Xao. You will join me in America very soon.”

I couldn't say anything. Tears flowed down my face.

When the bus started moving toward the camp gate, I was still holding on to my grandmother's hand. I ran alongside but lost my grip. I fell in the dust and cried until my father picked me up and led me back to apartment seven, room ten.

Six months had passed since that day. Now as I sprinted across Ban Vinai toward home, it hit me,
I will get to see my grand-mother again soon.
The thought made me so happy that I think my feet actually lifted off the ground and I began flying toward the apartment.

My grandmother and my uncle's family had settled in a place called Nashville in something called Tennessee. I assumed we would go there as well. In order for a Hmong refugee family to be allowed into the United States, someone there had to commit to be their sponsor. No doubt my uncle had found a sponsor for us in this place called Nashville. Whatever Nashville and Tennessee might be, I knew they had to be better than Ban Vinai.

When I reached our building, I raced up the stairs and darted down the balcony, not even thinking about the height. I burst into our room and nearly shouted, “Did you hear that? They called our name. We have an interview. We're going to America.”

“No,” my mother said, “we didn't hear anything. Are you sure you heard it correctly?”

“Sure, I'm sure,” I shouted.

“I will go and check this out,” my father said. “Stay here with your mother, Xao. I will be right back.” My father darted out the door toward the camp administration buildings. I could tell from the way he walked that he was as excited as
I was. Who wouldn't be?

“Did you bring the water, Xao?” my mother asked.

Water? Who cares about water at a time like this?
“No, ma'am. I guess in all the excitement, I forgot it.”

“Stay here with your brothers. I'll go next door and get some,” she said.

I sat next to my little brother. “We're finally going to get to leave here.”

But not all of us
, I thought. I looked around our small apartment. So much had happened here in the past four years.

My mind wandered to a day in 1977, two years after we'd arrived in the camp, when my little sister woke up complaining of a stomachache. With so little food and so much sickness, her symptoms were not uncommon.

My sister's stomachache grew so bad that my father took her to the health clinic the Thai government had built. For the camp's population of approximately 50,000 refugees, the clinic had only one or two doctors and a handful of trained nurses.

My sister was given some medicine, but it didn't help. Then one day she woke up with a purplish color to her skin. She was in so much pain. All she could do was cry. Throughout the night and all during the day for nearly a week, she cried. My parents tried so hard to help her, but they didn't know what to do.

Then she left us.

My parents dressed her in her finest clothes and carried her through the camp while we sang hymns.

We buried her body in the cemetery on the edge of
Ban Vinai.

Then I thought about my baby brother, who'd died two years later. He'd been born in the camp, right here in our apartment, a short time before my sister had become ill. My father delivered the baby himself, just as he had delivered me and my brothers and sister.

Oh, my baby brother was so small, so young when he passed.

Merely five or six months had gone by since we'd lost my brother. I couldn't help but think that if he and my sister had survived a little while longer, until we were allowed to go to America, they might have been all right. I couldn't imagine children dying in America.

I wanted to be able to do something someday to help people like us. I planned to become a doctor. I knew that meant a lot of schooling, but I believed if I could ever get the chance, I could do it.

We had a school in Ban Vinai, and all the children went there every day from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon. I learned to read and write in both Lao and Thai. I did so well that my teacher let me skip the second grade. That made my father proud.

However, I don't mean to mislead you into thinking I became a serious student while living in Ban Vinai. The Tom Sawyer in me kept coming out. I had to find a way to have fun.

From time to time, the Thai officials running the camp set up an outdoor movie theater in the large field where we played soccer. Unfortunately, it cost money to get into the movies, and neither I nor any of my friends had any. The theater consisted
of tall sheets stretched out between poles, one of which served as the movie screen.

Walls of cloth couldn't stop my buddies and me. We waited until no one was looking and crawled under the sheet walls and then mixed in with the crowd. After all, who'd notice four or five little boys?

And who could blame us for wanting to sneak inside? They showed Jackie Chan movies there. Every little boy loves Jackie Chan. I will never forget the first movie I ever saw:
Snake in the Eagle's Shadow.
Jackie was great in that one. Today I own the DVD; it brings back such great memories.

Before long, we were caught and security guards were stationed around the theater to keep us out. To me, it made seeing the movie that much more of a challenge—and I love challenges.

One particular movie night, the three of us remaining in Ban Vinai from our original gang noticed a woman wearing a long, flowing dress. It looked like something out of the movies.

I motioned for my buddies. “Follow me, and do what I do.” I slipped through the crowd until I was right behind the woman in the dress. With so many people milling about waiting for the movie to begin, no one paid any attention to me or my friends. I crouched behind the woman, then ducked underneath her dress, the other two trying to follow me. My plan was for the three of us to duckwalk under the dress all the way into the theater.

We might have made it, except one of us tripped, which sent the other two sprawling. Then I rolled onto the woman's dress, which nearly pulled her on top of us.

The next thing I knew, a security guard was glaring at the three of us, while the woman yelled.

My buddies and I laughed so hard we nearly hurt ourselves.

After that, we contented ourselves with watching the movie from a distance while perched high in the nearby trees. It was the perfect view. I couldn't hear the movie, but who needs sound when you have kung fu fighting?

During the day, we swam in the camp's large lake, played marbles, or flipped rubber bands. We also invented a game where we flipped Pepsi caps. None of us had any real toys aside from some little something or other that we won as a prize at school. That didn't stop us from finding ways to have fun. Even in this place filled with so much death and helplessness, children always found a way to play. I guess that's what enabled us to survive.

My father came running back into our apartment, almost shouting, “Xao was right. We definitely have an interview.”

“And then we go to America?” I said.

“First we must pass the interview,” he said, trying to calm me.

“And then America?”

“If we pass the interview, yes, then America.”

I jumped and shouted. I'd never heard such good news.

Our interview with the Americans came one long month after the happiest day of my life. The entire family had to be interviewed together. My father had drilled us so we'd know how to respond and when to stay silent.

You must understand, all 50,000 refugees in Ban Vinai would do and say anything to get to America, but not just anyone could get in. It was not enough that you were Hmong and your life was endangered by the Pathet Lao; you had to prove you were genuinely a political refugee because you'd joined the fight against the Communists on behalf of the United States.

The American representative must have heard all sorts of wild stories from people desperate to get out of Ban Vinai.

Because record keeping in General Vang Pao's army had left much to be desired, my father had to answer some very specific questions about the weapons he'd used in order to prove he'd actually fought for America. I stood next to him as
he explained the firing capabilities of the M-1s and M-16s.

The American representative also asked him to describe the mission when my father had rescued the downed American pilot. “And what was the pilot's name?” he asked through an interpreter.

“I don't know.”

My heart sank. I was afraid he might not believe any of the story.

My father didn't panic in the least. “When I led my men through the jungle to the downed pilot, all I cared about was getting to him before the Communists did and taking him out of harm's way. The pilot didn't speak Hmong, and I don't speak English. Even if he had told me his name, I wouldn't have been able to understand it. Besides, I didn't have a chance to sit with him for a long chat. The second we got him back to our base, a helicopter swept down and carried him away.”

The American made a few notes and gave a slight smile.

I relaxed a little, until the interpreter asked the next question. “All of your children look like you, except these two.” He pointed at my younger brother, Kham Dy, and me. “They have very round faces, different from yours and your wife's.”

What? How could this man question whether he's my father? Of course he's my father.
For a moment, I feared they might try to separate me from my parents and leave my brother and me in Ban Vinai.

“I'm only a human being,” my father replied. “God gave me these children, and I accept them just the way they are. They may not look like me, but I have no control over that. Only God does.”

I loved his answer.

The interviewer, however, pressed further. Turning to my brother, he said, “Is this really your mother and father?”

“Yes.”

Before the interview, my father had told all of us to give succinct answers.

Then the interviewer turned to me. “Is this your father and your mother?”

“Yes.”

My father didn't explain to the man that our real mother had died during childbirth when I was three. I think he was afraid something might get lost in translation and the interviewer might get the wrong idea about us. The man conducting the interview had lived in Laos as part of the CIA and knew polygamy was common in our culture. My father didn't want to give someone the opportunity to jump to the conclusion that he had multiple wives.

As it turned out, he didn't need to worry. We passed the interview and were scheduled to leave for the United States with the next group.

Leaving Ban Vinai proved to be harder for my father than I ever would have imagined.

Me? I couldn't wait to get out of there, though I hated the thought of leaving behind the last two members of my old gang.

For my father, leaving meant doing something he never had before. All my life I'd watched as he put the needs of the people of his village above his and his family's. When we'd
escaped through the jungle, our family had taken up the rear. When we'd jumped into the trucks in Num Chang, my father had made sure everyone was on board before he and two of his young sons were. When we'd crossed the Mekong, everyone else was safely on the Thai shore before our family ever climbed into a boat.

This time, however, my father had no choice but to leave some of his people behind. The night before we left Ban Vinai, he gathered the few who remained from our village. Many of our people had already gone to America, while some had not survived the years in the camps.

The scene reminded me of the night the entire village had gathered in our house in Laos when we'd made the decision to escape through the jungle. Back then, I'd felt as if my father was Moses getting ready to lead his people out of their slavery in Egypt. Now, four and a half years later, my family stood on the brink of entering the promised land while others had to stay behind in the wilderness.

The last two members of my gang, my buddies Bee and Yer, came to the meeting on my family's last night in Ban Vinai. I couldn't bring myself to think we might never see one another again.

Bee asked, “Xao, when you get to America, do you think you can send me some money?”

“Of course.” I firmly believed I'd have so much of everything in America that I could easily spare a few dollars to send to my best friends.

Then, looking out on those who remained from our village,
my father spoke. “Since long ago in Laos, I have always tried to do what was best for you. I have led you the best I knew how. Tomorrow, we will part. I pray we will see each other again on this side of heaven. Until we do, be strong. Do not give up hope. God is here, and He will continue to take care of you.”

Many tears and good-byes followed.

Bee, Yer, and I stayed up most of the night talking about the good times we'd had. We didn't mention the bad times. They didn't seem so important right then.

I gave my buddies my extensive rubber band collection. As it turned out, I'd become the best rubber band player in the camp, at least in our little corner of it.

I also gave them the plastic bag full of bones I'd buried. Every so often, a group of men had come through the camp and collected all the leftover animal bones from the food we'd been given. They'd given us candy in exchange for them. I wasn't sure why. Word around camp said the men sold the bones to a company that ground them into a powder used in a meat tenderizer. Neither my buddies nor I cared what the men did with them. All we knew was that we could trade them for candy, and we loved candy. Now my friends could enjoy some, my treat.

Finally, morning came. I woke up so excited I could hardly hold still. I ran to the shelf where my parents stored all the important items, but it was pretty bare. My parents had given away everything we weren't taking to America.