01 July 2009
My Teacher, My Friend — Part II
With growing spirit, the young Vietnamese immigrant embraces his new world
By Andrew Lam
Andrew Lam is editor of New America Media, an online collaboration of ethnic news organizations, and author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora. The following essay, the second of a three-part series on America.gov, will be included in his next book, East Eats West, set to be published in 2010.
(begin byliner)
That first summer in America, I bought my first typewriter from a cantankerous junkman whose inventory was down the street and who my family was fond of calling “Old Angry Junkman.” It cost $1.25 and some keys didn’t work very well and the ribbon had long faded. Nevertheless, I typed out Kenneth Grahame’s famous tale about Mole, who left his underground home and went up for air and ended sailing down the river toward adventures. I read many sentences from The Wind in the Willows out loud as I typed. Precocious, perhaps, but by the time I joined seventh grade in the fall, I was something of a typist and a reader of the English-language novel.
If I pushed myself so hard to move forward I had plenty good reasons: In Vietnam, I was a child of an upper-class family, insulated in a world of villas, lycee, servants, walled gardens and sports club. In America, I was the son of impoverished refugees who subsisted with another refugee family in a ramshackle apartment near the end of Mission Street, where the promises of San Francisco ended and the working-class world of Daly City began. My homeland abruptly evaporated, and my family and clan were torn apart, and my sheltered life was gone. Thrust upon an alien world, I understood intuitively that I had best run far and fast if I were to leave all my losses behind.
Thus, this way my world split into two: Night and I wept myself to sleep, longing for my lost world, for my father, dreaming a recurring dream of a Saigon in smoke and myself abandoned in an old villa as the Vietcong ransacked the city; but daytime — in school, at lunch, in English and art classes — I became a rowdy, giggly boy, chatting up a storm. I remember talking, a lot, and when my vocabulary failed me, resorted to using French words or drawing in my notebook or on the blackboard to convey my ideas and thoughts.
Within a few months, I began to speak English freely, though haltingly, and outgrew Mr. K’s cards. I began to banter and joke with my new friends. I acquired a new personality, a sunny, sharp-tongued kid, and often Mr. Kaesleau would shake his head in wonder at the transformation.
I made friends — Samoans, whites, blacks, Filipinos, Chinese, Mexicans. I wrote valentine cards to giggly girls. I joined the school newspaper, became something of a cartoonist. By my second year in, I was getting straight A’s, no fake A’s needed anymore, thank you. I joined the honors club. Mr. K marveled at the change. I remember his astonished face when I argued against the class clown and won; my tongue was being sharpened even if my sentences remained fragmented. I found my bearings; I embraced my new world. I was becoming, as my mother complained to my father, who escaped Vietnam on a naval ship and joined us a few months later, “an American brat.”
Here’s what some classmates wrote in my eighth-grade yearbook, one that I, since I was on the yearbook staff, helped design.
“Have fun talking your mouth off at Jefferson [high school] and maybe next year I’ll go to the ‘Lam’ dunk contest...”
“To someone who is always talking. Have a nice time at Jefferson...”
“To a kid who was so loud in art [class] and wore funny hats…”
“Hope you never change from the kid I knew from Colma. The little but cool Vietnamese I used to go to school with…”
On its last page, in lower left hand corner, Mr. K in his succinct and modest way left this note:
“To my good Friend. It’s been a pleasure to be your teacher & friend for 2 years. Don’t forget to keep me informed of your progress. Ernie Kaeselau.”
When I graduated from junior high, I came to say goodbye to Mr. Kaesleau and he gave me the cards to take home as mementos, knowing full well that I didn’t need them anymore. That day, a short day, I remember taking a shortcut over a hill and on the way down, I tripped and fell. The cards flew out of my hand to scatter like a flock of playful butterflies on the verdant slope. Though I skinned my knee, I laughed. Then, as I scampered to retrieve the cards, I found myself yelling out ecstatically the name of each image on each one of them — “school,” “cloud,” “bridge,” “house,” “dog,” “car” — as if for the first time.
It was then that I looked up and saw, far in the distance, San Francisco’s downtown, its glittering high rises resembling a fairy-tale castle made of diamonds, with the shimmering sea dotted with sailboats as backdrop.
“City,” I said, “my beautiful city.” And the words rang true; they slipped into my bloodstream and suddenly I was overwhelmed by an intense hunger. I wanted to swallow the beatific landscape before me.
My Teacher, My Friend — Part I
My Teacher, My Friend — Part III
(end byliner)
