Under The Farewell Tree
I Will Write To You, He Said.
It was a clear bright Saturday, the sun was shinning on a flourish of pink cherry blossom, hitting through the newly furnished branches of oaks and the birds were chirping loudly, circa 1984. I waved my last goodbye to my father, high from the living room windows of the 8th floor on a council estate in Hackney facing Victorian houses, (lucky 8 my mum hoped). If I had known this at the time, the photograph that is forever hung up in my mind would contain more details. I would have been able to take out the magnifying glass, look to see if he still wore his wedding ring or if he had a tear in his eye and a glint of tremble on his pouty lips.
I am off to work, he would say. Sometimes he wouldn’t return for a day or a week but he always did so when he drove off, I had a bad feeling in my gut but not bad enough to worry. He sat in the tanned interior of his gold spray Ford. With the windows down, he waved me another goodbye, his palm flickering and flittering like an old super 8 movie projection. He steered off, shifting the stiff gears from first to second and clutching away into the far right out of frame, the sound of his acceleration paused at the give way sign and it faintly disappeared, never to be seen or heard again.
This was always the beginning of my story, I told myself, it was when I started to write endless letters to him, questioning his whereabouts, if he missed me as much as I missed him and if or when he was returning home. As he vanished, or went missing, I had nowhere to post the letters until his mother, my grandmother, wrote to say that he had joined her in Queens, New York (two years or so later), that he came with the “other woman”. She reminded my mother that they were a devout Catholic family, not to worry, they could never accept the “other woman.” This became a story, a saga in itself, to be told on another occasion.
On a massage bed, in present time, I was irking at my face on a travel pillow with no cover at a local ‘luxury’ massage parlour in Phan Thiết, (I think ‘luxury’ meant it was in a shop and not someone’s front room littered with personal belongings). On the table, I drifted along my subconscious, half or fully asleep to a still or very slow motion image of my father waving goodbye underneath the crimson blossom of a Phoenix tree, a tree that symbolises departure. He was waving in the distance across a lawn of what seemed like deep orange martian sand. He was young and athletic, wearing a white shirt, his hair full and long, it must have been 1980. Above me, crispy pink and yellow paper Bougainvillea draped, below me, my childhood wrist wore a pink ribbon and I am in yellow clothing with bare feet covered in dusty red dirt, my arms reaching for him, running but also being held and pulled back, maybe by my mother.
It turned out that that was a time when my father was in hiding from various traffickers and he hid in my great grandparent’s haunted house on the outskirts of Phan Thiết, a fish sauce town along the South China Sea. No one dared to step foot in the house other than a brave assignee to place daily offerings, so as to not leave any ancestors angry, hungry, thirsty or in need of a nicotine hit. Daily ghost administration is a chore taken very seriously by Vietnamese families. My mum had stuffed gold in a chả lụa bánh mì (steamed ham in banana leaf baguette). The middle man had received it, then ran away with it instead of giving it to the intended people, leaving my father without an exit from the chaotic post war Vietnam. It was an apparent loss for the organisers which meant his life was in danger.
Your father had asked to see you for one last time, said my uncle Ni, (brother of my mother who was a teenager at the time), he adored you, he said, your father wanted to say goodbye just in case he couldn’t make it out alive or drown at sea. He ran onto the next, much safer hiding place away from family so that we would come to no harm. I will write letters to you, my father said to my 3 year old self. As soon as I am safe, I will find us a home, I will write to you then we can be together.
Perhaps that was my beginning. The beginning is wherever you want it to start, says my writer self, the first time we said goodbye.
My uncle Ni, begged to differ. Your beginning started when your mother met your father! He insisted, shouting with enthusiasm and surprise at his own memory being jogged. They met at a birthday party and fell in love. Then your father took the bus to Phan Thiết and fell in love with the place and all of your mother’s family fell in love with him!
We had a broken TV, said uncle Ni, we were one of the only families around here who could afford a TV but it broke. Your dad, being a TV technician fixed it for us. We were so happy, said my uncle, proud. We pulled it out onto the street yard underneath the shade of the mango tree and the whole street gathered around this moving black and white box and watched it in awe. He was such a good guy. He seriously liked to nhậu, (drinking alcohol & snacking).
My father was clearly adored, and liked to be adored. He even had convenient (haunted) hiding places, within easy reach of the sea where the boats fled.
My mother received news from his letter that he had reached Thailand and that he would send further updates as soon as a country accepts his refuge and that we must hold on tight because he will save her and the children.
Back in time at my great grandparent’s house, when they were alive and the home was full of life, the phoenix tree was preparing to bloom providing much needed shade. The leaves were fanning a small wind, the smallest of breezes were a respite from the blazing scorch of the sun. Someone always leaves when the red flowers appears, thought my uncle Ni, this year it would be his sister, my mother, off to Đà Lạt, the only member of the family to have a further education.
When she was a little girl with her siblings, they climbed the then young mango tree, away from the heat of May. They harvested its ripe juicy fruit, reaching for the ones too high and skipping on the burnt sienna sand singing songs of dramatic love and loss. They played hopscotch with a twig and devouring star fruit, juices dripping from their hands down their forearms as they formed together under the sheets of banana trees with its cones of blossom. Pick the betel leaves for dinner, their mother would bellow out. What happened there, that made the departed stay and linger? Why can no one live there since?
Sixty plus years later, my mother digs a hand shovel into the soil of her Dulwich garden in a council estate facing Victorian houses and plants Italian Delica pumpkin, still in the shade of her traditional Vietnamese bamboo hat, laughing about an innocent time of fruit picking, craving tastes. No! You can’t build a swimming pool there! Nor can you renovate that house. The ghosts will not like that, it is their home not yours.
Thank you for reading my stories on Substack. I hope you like them. Please like, subscribe and leave comments, say hi. I hope to continue these stories.
SOME NEWS: I have written a new book, Quick & Easy Vietnamese out on 15th August 2024. They contain many recipes I cook for myself and my family on a daily basis. Lots of cheats and ways to get ahead. Some recipes are comforting, ones you can sink your hands into and let out some emotion. Some are quick, easy and effortless but holds joy and comfort for every day lunch, dinner and celebrations - making the most use of simple ingredients and simple tools.
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My father passed away last May 2023 at the time of writing the book. I received news via a text message from my uncle, his brother in California after a very lovely day teaching people how to home cook Vietnamese dinners. I didn’t know that he was ill and dying. I never got to say a final goodbye.