Thu Anh Nguyen
1. THE DISPATCHI Have to Leave So That I Can Return
I am always leaving, and I want them to be prepared. Before summer suddenly turns into Fall, before all the leaves have hit the ground, I make sure I have somewhere else to go. I have to leave so that I can return, so that I can make it through the bitter cold months of winter. It’s my own way of preserving myself; I am the best and most ripe at the height of harvest, and I can last all year only if we spend some time working on me, getting me ready for the long haul.
This leave-taking is the natural rhythm of my family. It’s the way of refugees, which we four became after the Vietnam war ended.
First, Dad tried to leave on a boat, without us.
Then the four of us left together, on a plane. You would think that leaving the only language and family you have to land in the country that helped you destroy yourself would be the hard thing, but it turns out that you don’t find a place to land right away.
The first place we leave in the United States is California because we don’t know anyone there. Then we leave Houma, a town so tiny in Louisiana, that I still describe it as “near New Orleans.” Dad barely made a living on the shrimping boats, and came home reeking every night. Mom couldn’t find a job, and we couldn’t continue living with their friends even though they begged us to stay.
Mom got worried when Dad was held up at gunpoint one evening even though he claimed it was no big deal, and the guy just wanted a ride. The final straw, when it was too much to bear to stay, was when their friends offered to adopt me and my brother.
We settled in Florida, but the leaving never stopped.
This leave-taking is the natural rhythm of my family. It’s the way of mothers, which I never understood until I became my own mother.
Mom had periods every few years when she went silent. She was a storm we couldn’t forecast. She did not make any announcements, but acted like she was going to run an errand, or go to Ba Noi’s house. Then she just didn’t come home for a few days.
Did I worry about her when she was gone? Did I miss her? Did I know, somewhere beyond knowing, that she was going to come back? I know now that she did not have to come back. She was always beautiful, and she was the one who knew how to do the important things: the caring, the laundering, the feeding, the sheltering. She could have made a new family. More likely, she could have gone it alone, not have to hand her weekly paycheck to any man, slice apples for children to snack on, or pretend to smile when our restaurant customers complimented her on her English. She could have been gloriously invisible, untethered.
I can’t distinguish these fantasies I have for her from my own.
Mom always returned, and I still don’t know where she went. My brother doesn’t even remember that she left at all (or he’s not letting himself remember). My dad never acknowledged it beyond having to make us hot dogs with buttered rice for dinner.
I learned from my parents that you leave to survive. I don’t think I will leave my children or my husband, but how can I know for sure? What do I really know of disaster?
My leaving is less significant than theirs in every way, but it is also how I survive. When I am seventeen, I move out of my parents’ house. I don’t speak to my father for a few years, not until I am financially independent. I don’t fully reconcile with him until I am dating someone so beyond his reproach, he has nothing to say to me about it. I have finally learned to harness patriarchal oppression to my advantage.
And every couple of weeks, when I speak to my mom on the phone, I hang up on her in the middle of a conversation. I am 41 years old, and I am still having to find a way out. During one particularly circuitous and brutal conversation recently, she asked me, “why do you have to be this way?” You know my response. This is all you’ve taught me.
2. BUREAU INVENTORYBowl of fruit
A mix of fancy and dutiful pens
My pink typewriter
Chocolate, always chocolate
Light therapy lamp
Journal
One-Sentence Journal by Chris La Tray
Candle
Lukewarm mug of tea
3. BIOGRAPHYThu Anh Nguyen’s writing has been featured in the Southern Humanities Review, Cider Press Review, The Crab Orchard Review, The Salt River Review, 3Elements, and Connections. The author’s poems were also a semi-finalist for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize for the Southern Humanities Review. She was honored with a writing residency from The Inner Loop Poetry Series. She also writes about equity, justice, and community through literacy. Her essays on the importance of reading diverse literature have been featured in Literacy Today.