To cheer her up, I offered, "I'm only in Vung Tau because I just had a huge, violent fight with my mother-in-law. The old lady threatened to stab me more than ten times!"
She laughed. I laughed. It's good to make people laugh.
It pains me very much to write this, because it involves a hurting toddler, my 2-year-old nephew, Suki. My mother-in-law has been abusing the poor child psychologically and even physically, for as long as I've been able to observe them together, which is nearly his entire life.
I witnessed a six-month-old Suki routinely overfed, so that he would often vomit. I saw the old woman press down the screaming child for half an hour at a time, to force feed her gross concoction into his mouth. When he spat this out in terror and pain, the old woman would rage and scream.
I've heard her say to Suki, "I'll break your leg," "I'll tie you up with a rope" and "I'll beat your mother to death," which is the Vietnamese way of saying, "I'll beat the living f*ck out of you."
Once, the old lady hit Suki on the ear in the presence of his mother, May.
May, "Don't do that, mom. You'll make him deaf!"
Old lady, "Let him be deaf!"
Why would anyone talk this way to a child, and why is she so angry?
My mother-in-law's first husband was an ARVN captain who spent 13 years in a Communist reeducation camp. With her husband jailed indefinitely, she fled to her father-in-law in Can Tho, but he refused to accept her and her two young children into his household. Back in Saigon, the Communists then confiscated without warnings her stalls at Binh Tay Market, so there went her income. Desperate, she married a hickish and vapid Chinese, Sen, from way down the coast, who was already married and with a son, it turned out, not that Sen cared about them. Still doesn't.
With Sen, she had a daughter, May, but then he cheated on her, with a fat and ugly Chinese in Cho Lon. Sharing the same language and culture, they could become genuine intimates. Even after she went blind and became an invalid, he stayed with her, until death. Despairing, my mother-in-law tried to hang herself, but botched her entry into a permanent hell. Though she and Sen stopped sleeping together, they have continued to share the same roof.
Those who've read my novel, Love Like Hate, would have recognized many of these details, so now you know, Kim Lan is based on my mother-in-law.
Although the lady has every reason to be deranged, she has no rights to abuse any child, but why doesn't May intervene, and where is his dad?
In Love Like Hate, Kim Lan is also married to a Chinese Sen, and this chess playing man wants their daughter, Hoa, to wed a much older Taiwanese who's missing a hand. Hoa is partially based on May, and the Taiwanese also exists in real life.
Although I've sometimes been accused of making everything up, I paint just about everything from life, so that even my fiction is barely fictional. I'm inspired by what Thomas Hart Benton said, "Every detail of every picture is a thing I myself have seen and known. Every head is a real person drawn from life."
The fictional Hoa has much more integrity than the real life May, however. She believes in love and rebels against tyrannical family pressures. In real life, May did shack up with the one-handed Taiwanese for nearly five years, all for money, and she's reeled in a few other foreigners as well, with the full support of her mother.
She laughed. I laughed. It's good to make people laugh.
It pains me very much to write this, because it involves a hurting toddler, my 2-year-old nephew, Suki. My mother-in-law has been abusing the poor child psychologically and even physically, for as long as I've been able to observe them together, which is nearly his entire life.
I witnessed a six-month-old Suki routinely overfed, so that he would often vomit. I saw the old woman press down the screaming child for half an hour at a time, to force feed her gross concoction into his mouth. When he spat this out in terror and pain, the old woman would rage and scream.
I've heard her say to Suki, "I'll break your leg," "I'll tie you up with a rope" and "I'll beat your mother to death," which is the Vietnamese way of saying, "I'll beat the living f*ck out of you."
Once, the old lady hit Suki on the ear in the presence of his mother, May.
May, "Don't do that, mom. You'll make him deaf!"
Old lady, "Let him be deaf!"
Why would anyone talk this way to a child, and why is she so angry?
My mother-in-law's first husband was an ARVN captain who spent 13 years in a Communist reeducation camp. With her husband jailed indefinitely, she fled to her father-in-law in Can Tho, but he refused to accept her and her two young children into his household. Back in Saigon, the Communists then confiscated without warnings her stalls at Binh Tay Market, so there went her income. Desperate, she married a hickish and vapid Chinese, Sen, from way down the coast, who was already married and with a son, it turned out, not that Sen cared about them. Still doesn't.
With Sen, she had a daughter, May, but then he cheated on her, with a fat and ugly Chinese in Cho Lon. Sharing the same language and culture, they could become genuine intimates. Even after she went blind and became an invalid, he stayed with her, until death. Despairing, my mother-in-law tried to hang herself, but botched her entry into a permanent hell. Though she and Sen stopped sleeping together, they have continued to share the same roof.
Those who've read my novel, Love Like Hate, would have recognized many of these details, so now you know, Kim Lan is based on my mother-in-law.
Although the lady has every reason to be deranged, she has no rights to abuse any child, but why doesn't May intervene, and where is his dad?
In Love Like Hate, Kim Lan is also married to a Chinese Sen, and this chess playing man wants their daughter, Hoa, to wed a much older Taiwanese who's missing a hand. Hoa is partially based on May, and the Taiwanese also exists in real life.
Although I've sometimes been accused of making everything up, I paint just about everything from life, so that even my fiction is barely fictional. I'm inspired by what Thomas Hart Benton said, "Every detail of every picture is a thing I myself have seen and known. Every head is a real person drawn from life."
The fictional Hoa has much more integrity than the real life May, however. She believes in love and rebels against tyrannical family pressures. In real life, May did shack up with the one-handed Taiwanese for nearly five years, all for money, and she's reeled in a few other foreigners as well, with the full support of her mother.
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