non-fiction
roin Pink Ao
Lnnon McGinnis
Historians today believe that to
land history, we have to look at
^.people’s stories. This focus on
« per® is contrary to past
landing of history which focused
ory told from famous people’s
Modem historians who
view of history started the
alHistoricism movement in the
> While historians of today may
;„rdinary people, each person’s
extraordinary because each
rieiice is unique. My mother
■s herself as an ordinary person
Han ordinary, unexciting story to
[owever.l believe that her story
aordinary.Shewasbomin what
now call North Vietnam in
53 (known as Indochina at that time)
[lived in South Vietnam during and
r the Vietnam War. Though she is
[amousandis in fact an ordinary
II, her story is so extraordinary
use she survived. My purpose in
Tproject is to discover my mother’s
n and present it in such a manner
tniy readers will be able to better
island what life was like for a
ame.se wOman whose life was
ver changed by war.
In this project, I will trace the life
ffiy mother, Lan Hoang McGinnis,
in Vietnam to her
age to an American in the U.S.
main focus will be on the time
unding the Vietnam War and how
lother’s life turned out as a result
; war. Although not a detailed
■\ of Vietnam, this project will
e connections with Vietnamese
or\ to help readers understand what
ewas like for a Vietnamese woman
ng and after the Vietnam War. My
cr agreed to be interviewed and
about the events concerning her
liii Vietnam and the U.S.
The following is an excerpt
ni my mother’s story and refers to
in my mother’s life after the
tnam War had ended. She was one
_lhe Vietnamese Boat People, people
fled the Communist regime in
tnam by boat to other countries. The
owing scene takes place during her
pe from Vietnam and also when
hai pirates raided her boat. The
individuals in this excerpt are as
0"s: Lan (my mother), Thanh (my
Iter's younger brother), Tien (a girl
0 escaped with them), and Dinh (her
Ikr who also escaped with them):
One day in 1980, Lan’s father
Ed her, if he could find a way,
i>M she want to escape Vietnam. She
lied to him, “I would rather die at
than live here. There is nothing left
•olive for.” Her father began the
Ks of looking up old contacts to
d ways to escape Vietnam. He used
Muence and connections from
»lddays to work out deals. To this
y his family is mostly unaware of
' ™2naged the arrangements; he
ft most of his plans to himself. He
ffedout a deal with another man
been in prison with him. This
"hadbeen an officer in the South
'Mniese military; he would captain
They found a boat somehow
Dai to Blue Jeans: A Vietnamese Woman’s Story
L' ndlQITIQC . . _ . ^
dthe
escape was carefully planned,
•o maps and aliases. As part of
was sent to stay with
Vain s family until the time was
’‘ Two other girls and their brother
I'fd there too;
Tjust stayed there for weeks
day my dad came to see us
® gave all of us some money.
™ '’s left. And that was the last
sver saw him. One day someone
said it’s time to go. So, we
nabus and someone had North
soldier’s uniforms, not
^•“niforms.V.C. uniforms are like
black pajamas, these were olive green
uniforms. At the checkpoints, I was so
nervous, because the stuff for escaping
was underneath us. ”
Though Lan only stayed there
for several weeks, it seemed like an
eternity to her. Her younger brother
Thanh was sent to stay with another
couple and pretended to be their son.
Their father carefully prepared for
their escape over the course of several
months. According to the plan, the
family would rendezvous at a small
inlet at Ben Ninh Kieu where the boat
would come to pick them up. Lan sat
on a bench in front of the bus stop by
the road, dressed in peasant clothes
and the traditional Vietnamese straw
hat, which is shaped much like a cone.
Thanh and Lan recognized each other
immediately, but they had to pretend
that they did not know each
other. They had not seen
each other for nearly two
years. Thanh, though he
himself was only fourteen,
had two younger children
with him, a boy and a girl
who were the children of
the friend of the family who
had last sheltered Lan’s
parents. As the day turned
darker, Lan, Thanh, the two
children and other people
started walking up and
down the beach. Many of
those people were escaping
too. The boat was late in
coming. Everybody was
becoming nervous. Most
of the other escapees were
either acquainted with Lan’s
family or had been in prison
camps. Many people in the
group, Lan, Thanh and the two children
included, went uneasily back to the bus
station to lie on bamboo mats in the
open air and wait:
“Then we went to Ben Ninh Kieu,
there was a park and we walked there all
night long, just back and forth, back and
forth. And it got so late, and we didn’t
see anyone, so this guy, our connection,
he came and told us that he didn’t see
the boat, so he said, ok let’s go back to
the bus station. So we went there and we
rented bamboo mats to put on the ground
in the open air and just laid there.”
As the evening wore on and
everyone was becoming tense, a man
finally came running up from the
beach. The boat had finally come. The
rest of Lan’s family did not arrive in
time, so only Lan and Thanh escaped
on this trip. Though several people
wanted to wait longer for Lan’s family,
the boat had to leave because of the
tide. Lan later found out that her family
was almost captured on the way to the
rendezvous point, which forced them
to return home and try to escape again
another time.
Eighteen people were on the boat.
They stayed inside the cabin of the boat
during the day and could only come out
at night, because they knew that it was
possible that they were being watched
by the Communist shore patrol. They
circled around for days hoping that
more people would show up, but when
no one did they were forced to leave
on the fourth day. To avoid possible
suspicion, they had to make it appear
as though they had no set destination;
Shannon McGinnis, 06-07 President's Cup Winner
however they actually had a carefully
charted course and plenty of rations.
The group was well prepared, and even
had Communist (not VC.) uniforms
and weapons just in case a patrol
boat did decide to take a closer look.
They had to use these uniforms once
when they passed a village of boats
as they were passing Ca Mau, the
southernmost tip of Vietnam. Lan and
a few others put on the uniforms to
keep up the charade that they were a
patrol boat. Lan quickly ducked back
into the cabin, however, when she
overheard someone on another boat
say, “Oh look, that VC. is so white.”
They continued past the boat village
without further incident, until they
were suddenly spotted by a real patrol
boat which then began to chase them.
They managed to outrun the boat and
reached international waters where
they were safe from the Communists
preventing them from escaping. It took
them four days to leave Vietnamese
waters and reach international waters.
Once they reached the open
ocean, they spotted quite a few large
ships, but none stopped to help them.
In the afternoon of the third day at sea,
Lfe and her shipmates spotted a ship
on the horizon. Several of the men on
board called the giris out of the cabin
and told them “make yourselves look
really tired, like you need rescuing and
maybe they will stop and help us.” Lan
thought to herself that this was a really
stupid idea, since they had plenty of
food and a set course. They approached
the ship and once they were close
enough, Lan saw Thai characters
written on the side of the ship and she
knew immediately that they had made
a huge mistake. She screamed, “Thai
pirates!” The pirates were naked to the
waist and as their huge ship bore down
on the tiny boat, Lan and everyone on
board could see them laughing, their
teeth gleaming white in their dark,
suntanned faces:
“I’ll never forget, those pirates,
they were so big, so heavy and they
were laughing. Their teeth were so
white, they were very dark and they
were laughing. And I ran inside the
cabin and we tried, but we couldn’t
outrun them because they were very
big and we were just a little boat.”
Lan ran into the cabin and as
looked at the brother of the two giris, she
saw the horror she felt reflected in his
eyes. The two children and the two other
girls started crying: “Tien, Dinh, and the
other two giris started crying and I told
them, I said pray, pray. I never prayed
that hard in my whole life. Suddenly,
I felt so calm inside, I was not afraid
at all.” At this point, the pirates started
jumping down onto the boat. One of the
girls gave Lan a gold ring and told het to
throw it into the water. One of the young
men also gave her a neariy two-inch
gold statue of the Buddha. She pinned
the statue to the inside of the lapel of her
shirt. Lan went to the stern and sat on the
edge of the boat:
“I was sitting on the edge at the
back of the boat. I was looking down
at the water and I saw the water, it was
clear water with a lot of white specks
in it. And I was sad, I said to myself,
why does my life have to end like this.
if they try to do something to me, I will
jump off the boat and drown myself. ”
At the same time, she was think
ing that it would be a waste to throw
the ring into the water, so she simply
dropped it into a crack at her feet. The
pirates called everyone to the back
deck. The pirates began to search ev
eryone. Lan still felt the calmness from
earlier, but as they were searching her,
she pretended to cry. Later on, the men
from her boat would tease her for just
pretending and not actually crying. The
pirates somehow missed the gold statue
in their search and let Lan go into the
cabin. She feels as though fate played
a hand in these events, guiding her ac
tions and keeping her safe from harm.
As she walked into the cabin, she saw
some small bottles with a small amount
of diesel fuel still in them. She walked
over to them without thinking. She felt
as though some spirit was guiding her
and she dropped the statue into one
of the bottles. As soon as she did that,
the pirates called her back out again
because they had found the ring where
she had been sitting. The minute she
walked out, one of the pirates grabbed
her chest and the pirates searched her
again thoroughly, but found nothing.
If they had found the statue, she feels
certain she would have been raped.
During this time, the captain kept
begging the pirates in Vietnamese
(which they didn’t understand anyway,
as they spoke only Thai), not to hurt
any of the women, since they were his
sisters (though they weren’t really)
and to take whatever they wanted.
They took the propeller. The captain
started cursing them and said, “They
took the propeller!” Fortunately, the
boat had another engine, so they were
still able to function. The pirates left
the ship and threw some fish and ice
to Lan’s boat, which was perhaps their
way of paying for what they had taken.
Everyone on the boat was shaken, but
thankful to be unharmed. Many other
boatpeople were not so lucky; they lost
much more than just a propeller and
a gold ring. Many boat people were
killed, maimed, or raped during pirate
attacks. Lan heard rumors of pirates
capturing women and imprisoning
them on islands where they were kept
as sex slaves. Lan and her group were
very thankful that they escaped with so
little loss. Later that night they spotted
land. After a journey of three days and
three nights they had finally reached
their first destination: Malaysia.
PARDS from page 5
toward the outlaw; it expertly landing
right at the man’s feet. “Some old play
ing card?” the outlaw asked, though the
light of recognition flashed in his eyes.
“You know what this is,” Parker
said, keeping a tight rein on his temper.
Travis was toying with him. “And you
know that I know what it means.”
Then it came. Either the blink of
an eye or the twitch of a finger was all
that wamed Parker of what Matthews
intended. Instinctively, Parker dove,
rolled, came up firing with both hands.
Bullets pierced the air where he had
just been standing. He heard rather than
saw Travis squeeze off two more shots,
one going wild and crashing through
a window to the sound of breaking
glass. Parker took a second to aim; one
wellplaced shot was all it would take.
But he wanted the dog alive.
Matthews was a fair marksman,
when he wanted to be, but somehow,
miraculously or otherwise, none of his
shot struck home. Parker put a bullet in
Matthews’s shoulder, making him drop
his gun which skittered across the floor.
Then for meanness or revenge or some
sort of homespun justice, Parker shot
the outlaw in one of his boney knees.
He’d never walk again, and might even
lose that leg, but at least he was alive,
and as Parker saw it, that was much
more than the bastard deserved.
It was over in a matter of mere
seconds, although Parker was sure it had
been hours. The gun-smoke started to
clear away. Frantic step on the boardwalk
outside announced the arrival of the local
law, attracted by all the shooting and
shouting.
According to the very few wit
nesses that had stayed to see how events
would pan out, Matthews had, indeed,
drawn first. So, legally, it was called
self-defense. Although Parker resented it,
he had the doc sent for. He would have
preferred to let the outlaw bleed his life
out on the sawdust covered floor, littered
with broken glass and splashed with
whiskey, among other things. But he had
to remind himself that dead men tell no
tales, and that he needed Matthews alive.
He could never hope that the bastard
would confess, but maybe his mere pres
ence would lend enough truth to Parker’s
version of events.
“I wired that Sheriff Daniels, like
you asked me to,” a young man said,
derailing Parker’s train of thought.
The mention of that name stopped
him cold. Where did they stand now?
They could not rightly be called friends,
not after what Parker had almost done,
not after that night getting out of jail. But
could they rightly be called enemies?
Buck had never drawn iron, it was the
others that had done all the shooting that
killed Parker’s horse, and almost killed
him. Buck had tried to get him to see
a doc for his leg that started throbbing
again, now that the fight was over and
his nerves were beginning to calm. But
maybe that last part had only been his
duty; after all, lawmen were meant to
look after their inmates.
It was too confusing.
Parker pushed all that to the back
of his mind. What had happened ... well,
that could never be undone. And right
now, there were more pressing matters at
hand. “Any response?”
“No. Not yet.”''
He hadn’t expected any; not so
soon. “Very well then.” As a way of
ending the conversation, he slipped a
coin into the boy’s hand.
Parker turned and walked over to
the bar, which now sported a few new
bullet holes. He made a point to walk
around where Matthews’s blood had
stained the floor.
“Bartender,” he said. He needed a
good, strong drink.
“You’re free to go,” Buck said in
a voice that was cold and sharp, like the
edge of a knife.
Another look at the evidence by an
impartial judge two or three towns over,
and the fact that Travis Matthews was at
last behind bars due to the ‘courageous
actions of this fine young man,’ had, if
not proved Parker’s innocence, at least
granted him amnesty in the eyes of the
law. Parker was relieved to hear that;
he could finally walk down his town’s
streets without being shot at or set upon
by hounds. He could finally go home.
He nodded, and turned to leave,
intent on saying not another word. But
something made him stop. Buck had
already started to bury himself in the
mountain of paperwork on his desk. Hg;,,
had not bothered to look up, to see if
Parker had found the door.
“Buck, I...” Parker struggled for the
words. How do you talk to a man that
had been closer than a brother, and that
had almost died at your own hand, - and
would have, had it not been for some
random fluke of fate? “When I was stuck
under that horse and you...”
“Leave,” Buck intermpted, not rais
ing his voice, but instead shuffling through
another dated stack of wanted posters.
See PARDS on page 8