Taboos do not apply to those marooned in uninhabited islands
My daughter was back home from the department store where she works as the warehouse keeper. One look at her face and I knew she had a hard time.
"Susi, you seem to have had another bad day," I said.
"Yes Ma, Lori came and was chatting with Heidi. My greatest friends a few months ago they talked and laughed not two yards from where I stood but spoke not a word to me. They pretended as if I was not there. I do not know how they managed. I am a non-person in my work spot Ma, I can't stand it. I want to end it all." She hugged me and sobbed. I patted her back as if she was once again my baby.
"Don't talk like that and don't even think of doing away with yourself. If our people had lost hope you would not be here. Your father would have died with a shot in the back of the neck, I would be breaking stones in prisons and you would have become a servant to some big shot in Hanoi."
*
My name is Mary but I was not born Mary. My Vietnamese name is too complicated; I will not bother you with it. Our eventual arrival in the States is an adventure story. Though I was only 8 years old when it happened I have a clear recollection of the events. We lived in North Vietnam during the war. My father was a farmer but he was also an informer for American intelligence. One day my father had a visitor in the middle of the night. He told my father that the police had some reason to suspect that he was in touch with the enemy. He said they would pick him up for questioning any time now. That of course meant torture and after that a bullet in the back of the neck. His family will go to concentration camps. My father collected whatever food stuffs he could gather and we cycled to the next village where he had friends who were also informers and who would also be in trouble. All of us, 18 people of three families, cycled to the shore and with the help of contacts got into a boat as day was breaking. Unlike us the other two families were fisher folk. They knew how to handle boats. We unfurled the sails and pushed off. We were now the famous boat people.
Our plan was to enter the shipping lanes and get help. We apparently did not know the lanes for five days we saw no ship. Our food stock was all gone and water supply was dwindling. After three days of nothing but sips of water to drink death from starvation was staring us in the face. Then one afternoon we saw a ship. They gave us food and water and towed us close to South Vietnam shore and let us loose. We made land fall near an American army camp. Though the Americans gave us food and shelter they were not too friendly. My father told his story and gave them his code number. They must have checked for from then on we got very good treatment and eventually permission to come to the States.
In America one man more than any other was very helpful. He must have taken a liking to father for he gave him training for job. It was only after he joined the factory where that man was working in that he knew that the he was none other than the senior VP of the manufacturing company.
I schooled in that small town and married a Vietnamese refugee also from North Vietnam though not a one who escaped in a boat but crossed over the border. He was working with father. We have two children Dan and Susi.
All Vietnamese are hard workers and we of North Vietnam, thanks to the regimentation of the Communists, were in addition as disciplined as soldiers. My father rose rapidly and was soon the right hand man of the VP. He had suffered so much that his body was weak. He died. The VP gave his job to my husband. We prospered. Then the blow fell. The company collapsed. The reason was massive corruption by no less a person than our godfather the VP. He apparently had another side to his character about which we knew nothing. He and three others all Vietnam refugees were arrested. My husband was among them. All eventually got stiff prison sentences. My husband did not have the mental strength to take it. He lost all desire to live. He pined away and died.
Our small town that was wholly dependent on the factory suffered greatly. We were ostracised. I understood their anger. They rightly felt that refugees whom they had befriended ought not to have done this to them. This VP was the man who set us on our feet in this strange land. It took courage to help a destitute group of refugees with no proper education, no knowledge of the language, and no training for jobs. He joyfully did that. My father had to do whatever he wanted him to and so did my husband. That is Vietnamese culture which we cannot expect the townspeople to understand. My husband could have got a much lighter sentence if he had cooperated with the persecution by turning against his mentor. That he would not do. We are proud of him.
*
It was Susi's talk of ending her life that pulled the trigger on the plan that I have been mulling about for some time. We were like people stranded in an island. We three have no one to talk to and no one to interact with other than ourselves. It was as if my son, daughter and I were like Crusoe alone in a remote island. I judged that absence of friends of the other sex was the killing element in this ostracism. If that can be set aright some sort of stability will enter our lives. How to achieve that? I had to think out of the box as they say here in the States to get to a solution. I did and came out with a solution that many may consider wicked but I was comfortable with it. It was on the surface a simple solution—my son and daughter must become lovers. Taboos do not work under conditions we were now in. I decided to bring them together.
Susi calmed down after the burst of anguish. She went to wash and change. She was back soon in a sarong and loose top with a mug of coffee in her hands. She like Americans drinks coffee from mugs and not from small cups as we used to in Vietnam. I waited for her to settle down and then started.
"Susi, do you masturbate?" She stared in bewilderment.
"Mom, have you taken leave of your senses, or are you delirious? Is this the time to clear such a doubt?"
"I am in perfect control of my senses. This is the perfect time for such a question as you will presently see. Answer, do you masturbate?"
"Of course I do. What else do you expect a 20 year old woman to do? After Ron cut me cold I have no boy friends and cannot have one."
"Whom do you think of during masturbating?"
"Ma you have become mad to ask a question like that."
"Answer my girl." I spoke tenderly.
"You should not ask a question like that. I refuse to answer anyway."
"Dan?"
"My brother?"
"Yes?"
"Mom, how can you say such a thing?"
"Please do not mistake me. All young girls use their fathers and brothers while masturbating. I have done so in my time. Answer me." She turned away for I was treading on slippery ground. "So you do. Natural enough. Then why not?"
"Why not what?"
"Have sex with him."
She got up and stood arms akimbo staring angrily at me. I did not flinch. I met her stare without blinking. She turned and stalked out of the room. I took my novel written in our language and read a chapter to give her time to settle her neurons. Then I went to her room.
She lay on her bed face buried in the pillow. I sat by her side. For a while I fingered the soft hair on the back of her neck. Susi liked that and often would ask me to do that to her. Then I leaned forwards and rested my body on her back. I gently swept the hair covering her ear and spoke softly into her ear. If she was expecting an apology she was mistaken. A person who had braved the stormy China Sea in a small open boat and one who was an eyewitness to a dozen of her village friends lined up against a wall and shot was made of sterner stuff. I was actually on the attack.
