All In Page 6

  “You can count on me, Father. I’ll make sure this is your cleanest field ever.”

  My father laughed. “I’m sure you will, Xao. I’m sure you will.”

  When we reached the field, I set right to work.

  My father had already cleared the trees in the field but decided he needed to take out one or two more at the edges. “The shade will keep the rice plants on this side from growing as they should,” he explained, just as his father had taught him, and as I would one day teach my son. It was the Hmong way. At least, it always had been.

  My father grabbed his ax and chopped down the first tree. After it fell, he hacked it into pieces small enough to drag to the brush pile in the middle of the field. I scrambled around him, gathering every falling branch. Then we moved on to the next tree and the next, my father chopping while I worked hard to keep up with him.

  After about three hours of work, something in the distance caught my father’s attention. He dropped his ax and walked toward me, never looking away from whatever had caught his eye.

  I didn’t pay too much attention to what he was doing. Since we were hunters as well as farmers, I thought my father probably saw a deer or some other animal he might kill for our dinner. When I bent to scoop up another pile of branches, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “Leave the sticks, Xao, and come with me.” My father’s tone and expression sent a chill down my spine.

  He grabbed my hand, and the two of us moved quickly toward the lean-to he’d built a few weeks earlier on the far end of the field. On a normal workday, the palm roof and open sides provided a shady place for a short break. Up ahead, I saw my uncle walking quickly down the hill toward our field.

  I knew something bad must have happened because no one made the two-hour hike from our village to our farm for a purely social visit. “What’s wrong, Father?”

  “I don’t know yet, Xao.”

  In retrospect, I believe he knew exactly. Whatever had happened, he’d been expecting it, even though he didn’t want to admit it to himself.

  My uncle arrived at the lean-to at the same time we did. Before he said a word, I knew something very bad had happened. I’d seen that expression many times. The heaviness on his face told me someone must have died. My grandmother still looked that way when she talked about my mother, who’d died when I was three.

  “They’ve attacked Hin Haw,”5 my uncle said.

  I didn’t have to ask who “they” were.

  My father sighed. “Okay, go back home and do what you need to. Xao and I have to grab some food for the pigs, and then we’ll be right behind you.”

  I turned to the field.

  “Don’t worry about the tools, Xao. Leave them. Get your basket. We need to leave right away.”

  We made a brief stop at a small stream, and I filled my basket with qos dlej, a large, leafy plant with a slimy, sticky sap, for our pigs. That was the one part of the hike back home that felt routine.

  As the chief elder of our village, my father ordered everyone to come to our house that night.

  By American standards, the house was not much with its bamboo walls and thatched roof, but in my eyes, it was a mansion. It was the biggest home in the entire village and the only one with running water. Using bamboo pipes, my father had engineered an aqueduct from a nearby stream straight to our front door. Everyone in the village came to our house to get water or do wash. My friends took their showers under our bamboo spigot. I thought my father was a genius.

  On this night, though, no one cared about our running water or the size of our house. Nor had anyone taken time to cook dinner or do any of their usual evening chores. As soon as my father and I arrived in the village, word spread and the people dropped everything and headed our way. Those who couldn’t get inside our house listened through the cracks in the bamboo walls.

  I moved close to my father as he took his place at the front of the crowd, but I didn’t come close enough to get in his way. Hmong families take seriously the old adage that children are to be seen but not heard, especially on a night like this.

  “Let us pray.” These were my father’s first words that night.

  I know even atheists have been known to say a prayer or two when things get bad enough, but my father didn’t pray like someone with nowhere else to turn. He prayed with the confidence that God was still in control.

  By the time my father said “amen,” the dread that had permeated the room didn’t feel quite so powerful, at least not to me. Strength and confidence came over me. I still felt fear, but it was no longer paralyzing.

  “By now everyone knows what has happened in Hin Haw,” my father said. “The Pathet Lao and the NVA attacked there, and it’s just a matter of time before they arrive.”

  Some of the men gasped. A few women sobbed softly.

  “The way I see it, we have two options, and fighting is not one. I fought these soldiers for many years, as did most of the men in this room. We can’t defeat the Communists. Not now.”

  Around the room, men agreed.

  “So here are our options. First, we can stay here and pray that when the Communist forces arrive, they do us no harm; we can try to reason with them and convince them this is our home and all we want is to work our farms and live in peace. Or we can escape to Thailand.”

  The cries in the room grew louder, but my father continued, unfazed. “So which of these two options should we choose? If these were reasonable men, we could try the first. If they were simply taking over the country and putting their people in complete control, they might listen to us. Yet that is not how the Pathet Lao or the NVA operate. They already have control of Laos. We pose no strategic threat to them. No, these soldiers attack the Hmong for one reason only: revenge.”

  Most of the men nodded.

  “I and every man in this room who served under Vang Pao have seen the Pathet Lao’s tactics firsthand. When they invade a village, they rape the women and girls. These so-called soldiers don’t care how young the girls are. Rape is purely a means of torture for them. I have also seen with my own eyes what they did to the children of the villages they attacked. And the men …”

  My father took a deep breath. “Let me simply say that anyone who resists them will soon wish they had not. My platoon came across the pits into which they had thrown both men and women after beating and torturing them. The Communist soldiers had used those pits as a latrine, urinating and defecating on those below. Most were left to starve to death. The lucky ones were shot and put out of their misery. These are not wild rumors or propaganda. I know these things to be true because I have witnessed the aftermath with my own eyes.”6

  I glanced around the room and found my buddies sitting close to their parents. The day before, all they’d cared about was getting out of their chores so they could go to the stream and play. Now horror covered their faces. I could only imagine how I looked.

  “Even those who manage to stay alive are not safe,” my father said. “In the eyes of the Pathet Lao, anyone who opposes them must be reeducated to see the wonders of Communism and the Pathet Lao. Entire villages have been sent to these re-education camps. Family units don’t matter. Men are sent to one camp, women to another, children to another. The children are taught to hate their parents for opposing the Pathet Lao. Conditions in all the camps are horrendous, nothing more than another means of torture, another place for the Hmong to die.” My father paused to let the weight of his words sink in.

  Some of the men knew my father’s own brother had been captured and forced into the camps. I could hear murmuring across the room, along with continued crying.

  My father remained in control of his emotions. “The Americans are gone and not coming back, and General Vang’s army is no more. No one will rescue us. I believe we have no choice but to gather whatever we can carry and go as fast as possible to the Mekong River and Thailand. The Thai are the only friends we have left. We will be safe with them.”

  With that, my father stepped back to all
ow the rest of the village to respond.

  Several women began making the Hmong cry of death. I cannot describe the horror that bloodcurdling wail brings. Every part of your body begins to melt away. It leaves you broken emotionally, spiritually, even physically.

  Their husbands tried to stop them. “No, no, don’t make that cry. Why are you doing that? We don’t know what’s going to happen, but if you keep making that cry, we all will die. Stop it right now.”

  My people are superstitious and believe reacting to such news with the cry of death seals your fate, allowing the evil spirits to swoop down and control you.

  No matter how much the men protested, the cry rose and filled everyone with dread.

  “How long will it take us to get to the Mekong?” a man asked.

  “At least a week, maybe longer,” my father replied. “We won’t be able to travel on the main roads. We would surely be caught. I’ve scouted some trails through the jungle that I think we can use without being seen.”

  “What about my child?” one woman said. “He’s just a baby. He can barely walk. How is he supposed to hike through the jungle for a week? He’ll never survive.”

  Other women shouted out, and the cry grew even louder.

  “We all have children,” my father said. In fact, in our village, children outnumbered adults four to one. “We will simply do whatever we must to get everyone to safety, no matter how young or old. Please listen to me. We have no time to waste. The soldiers will arrive any moment. We must leave now.”

  The discussion went on for a long time, critics attacking my father’s plan.

  “We should just stay and take our chances,” one woman yelled. “If we beg for mercy, surely they will spare us and our children.”

  One of the older men chimed in. “I think leaving is a very bad plan. How do you know our lives are in danger if we stay? You don’t.” Pointing at my father, he said, “You want us to leave everything behind all because of something you saw in the war, but the war is over. We aren’t soldiers here. At least, most of us aren’t. Perhaps your life is in danger because you fought against the Pathet Lao, but I have no grudge against them. Why should we leave to protect you?”

  The man’s son, an older man with a family of his own, joined in the attack.

  My father didn’t waver. “I’m not trying to frighten anyone into doing anything. These are the facts. You can go to other villages and witness the destruction for yourself. You can see the broken bodies of babies smashed on the rocks. You can talk to the survivors, the women brutally raped and then forced to watch as their husbands’ and brothers’ abdomens were slit open before they were left to die slowly. These are not wild stories anyone made up. These are the facts. We have no choice. If we’re to live, we must escape.”

  The weeping and wailing grew louder, but my father didn’t have to try to quiet them. The other men in the room, all of whom were related to our family, moved through the crowd and calmed everyone.

  One man, who proved to be the most critical of my father, refused to settle. He kept contradicting and questioning him. Finally the man said, “All of you may leave, but my family is staying. This is our home, and we refuse to run away in fear.”

  “Very well,” my father said. “You must do what you believe is best for your family.”

  This quieted the critics once and for all.

  As soon as the man and his son left the meeting, the discussion turned from the question of whether we should escape to full-scale planning for the journey.

  I walked toward my older brother across the room and sat next to him. “This is like Moses leading the people out of Egypt.”

  “Yeah, and Father is Moses,” he said.

  Any other time, I would have laughed. I couldn’t then.

  Like the night the Israelites decided to escape, this night for our family was different from any other.

  Once everyone left our house that night, I talked to my father. “Are we going to leave in the morning?”

  “No, Xao.” He did his best not to show his exhaustion. “We cannot risk having 100 people go walking along in broad daylight. The soldiers would catch us for sure. No, we will leave tomorrow evening, right after the sun sets. Now get to bed. Sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

  I lay down next to my brother on our bamboo bed. Neither of us could sleep. We talked through the night about the journey ahead of us, as well as what we would miss the most about our home. I didn’t want to say it, but I kept thinking there was a good chance one or both of us might not survive.

  I tried to chase the thoughts from my mind. I’d already lost my mother; I couldn’t bear the thought of losing a brother. I finally drifted to sleep to the sound of neighbors asking my father for advice about what to take or how to prepare food for the journey.

  I woke and rubbed my eyes. For a split second, all thoughts of soldiers and escapes through the jungle felt like nothing more than a hazy dream. The view from my bamboo bed was exactly as it had been every morning.

  Reality fell on top of me when an artillery shell exploded somewhere in the distance.

  What happened last night? It felt like I was experiencing the feelings from the night before for the first time: the fear, the pain, the sense that soldiers might appear in our village at any moment and we would all die.

  The morning sun filled my room as a beautiful new day greeted me, but I knew appearances were deceiving. This morning was not the beginning but the end. On this day, life as I had always known it ceased to exist.

  5. Names of villages and other places within this book are the Hmong names our family used.

  6. Numerous human rights groups support these claims. To learn more, visit Hmong International Human Rights Watch, www.hmongihrw.org.

  6

  Escape

  I walked outside and found my father. He was too busy slaughtering one of our pigs to notice me. Any other day, all the boys in the village would have been surrounding him, hoping to get the first chance at the pig’s bladder. While that may sound disgusting to Western readers, to the kids in our village, getting a pig’s bladder was like unwrapping a birthday present.

  None of us had ever seen a real ball. Instead, whenever one of our fathers slaughtered a pig, we blew up the bladder and kicked it around until it popped. If we were lucky, we could kick one around for two days. On rare occasions, we could squeeze three days out of one but only if we stopped the game every few minutes to wet the skin to keep it from drying out.

  “Good morning, Father,” I said.

  “Oh, good morning, Xao. Here. I have something for you.” He handed the pig’s bladder to me.

  For a moment I forgot about the coming soldiers and having to escape through the jungle as soon as the sun sank. “Thank you, Father.” I grabbed the bladder and ran into our house to find a strip of cloth to tie off the end after blowing it up.

  My buddies were all busy doing chores, and my father had sent my brother to the barn to feed the animals. With no one around to play, I practiced dribbling the makeshift ball on my knees. It was all so surreal, as if this were just another day in Laos. I could still hear the gunfire in the distance, but then again I’d heard it every day of my life. Today felt no different.

  My mother and grandmother were busy cooking rice and frying up the pigs my father had butchered.

  Though they cooked all day, we didn’t eat much. All the food was for our trip. They stuffed the rice and pork into the hollow part of bamboo branches and sealed the tops of each, turning the bamboo into primitive thermoses. Every woman in the village was busy doing the same while the men butchered animals, gathered weapons, and prepared.

  Every so often, someone from our village approached my father with questions about how much to pack or the best way to turn a bamboo branch into a food container. I will never forget one visitor.

  My great-uncle, “Grandpa,” the one who had wanted me to dip my finger in boiling oil, said in a hushed tone, “Youa, we need to talk. Privately.”


  They walked near our stable, where no one could hear them.

  No one, that is, but me. I sneaked around behind them and found a place in the bushes where I could listen. I couldn’t help myself. I was a very curious boy, which is a polite way of saying I was nosy.

  “Youa, we have a problem.” Grandpa’s words struck me as funny in light of all the problems we faced in that moment.

  “How so, Yang You Chong?”

  “My son and his wife have just had a baby, and that baby cannot stay quiet.” He might as well have been talking about our family. My youngest brother was barely a month old.

  “Many families in the village have babies. What of it?”

  “Long ago when our people left China, they had to escape through the night just like us. The Chinese almost caught them because of the crying of the children. Our ancestors found a way to keep the children quiet.”

  Grandpa didn’t need to say anything more. Everyone in my village knew the story well. Parents had mixed opium with water and force-fed it to their children to sedate them.

  Opium was common in the hills of Laos. My father had warned me how dangerous it was. I wanted to jump out from where I was hiding and scream, “No, Father, don’t do it. Don’t let them bring it. They’ll try to give it to Boun My. I don’t want him to die!”

  But I didn’t say anything. I simply crouched and listened.

  My father looked at Grandpa for a long time. “Do you really believe this is necessary?”

  My father knew Grandpa had more than one reason for bringing opium along. Many people in our village were addicted to it, and Grandpa was one of them. However, my father did not feel it was his place to question him. Hmong people respect the wisdom of their elders.

  “Yes, very necessary.”

  “Very well. If you feel it’s necessary, bring it along.”

  Again, I wanted to run to my father and beg him to forbid Grandpa from bringing this horrible stuff with us. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Soon, I would wish I had.