The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong

Author:Denise Chong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

THE FIRST LEG OF THE DAY-LONG BUS TRIP from Tay Ninh was to Ho Chi Minh City. From there, Phuc took a pedicab across town to another bus terminus and boarded another bus south to Tien Giang, the capital of the province by that name, and the name of one of the major branches of the Mekong River that empties into the South China Sea. The city was picturesque; its houses were built on stilts over hundreds of inlets. At first, Phuc was repulsed by the smell of tidal flats and by the brackish, brown water that came in with the tide, gathering in stagnant pools during the rainy season. However, the tides set the rhythm of the town, each house relying on them to fill their individual cement reservoirs with water.

The school in Tien Giang served students from some ten provinces. Home provinces paid their students’ tuition, as well as providing a dormitory and a monthly stipend for food, books and other expenses. Tay Ninh was one of the poorer provinces; its monthly stipend wasn’t enough to live on. Every weekend, Phuc took a same-day round trip to Trang Bang—Tay Ninh was out of reach in a day—bringing with her laundry to wash in the cleaner well water there and returning with cooked food and money from Nu. Often she saw both parents there, her mother at the shop, her father at the outbuilding of the temple. Having seen Phuc through high school, Tung now considered his fatherly obligations mostly discharged. By the conventions of the Vietnamese family, a parent’s job is to raise the younger children until older siblings take over the responsibility. Nu kept her fold-out cot at the shop and Tung hung a hammock at the temple in exchange for some caretaking there.

The six-month course was anything but onerous. Phuc enjoyed making new friends and did so easily, especially because they were all from the same province and, typically, of the same religion. By day, she and her friends liked to cross the “monkey bridges” over the inlets, named for the agility needed to navigate the spindly poles lashed together. A favorite entertainment was to gather at midnight in a crypt at an adjacent cemetery to ask resident ghosts for predictions about future loves and next year’s entrance examination results.

Phuc’s closest friend was her roommate, whose ambition was also to study medicine, and they made a pact to try to attend the same school. Trieu was as carefree as she was pretty. Phuc was always cheerful and laughing, but ever mindful of the task at hand: to study. Trieu had a boyfriend, and Phuc found herself fending off more than one hopeful. Most eager among them was an older student, respected by the teachers for his grasp of all subjects, which was superior to their own. The military had interrupted his engineering studies to send him to Cambodia, and he was now hoping to transfer into medicine. Though amused to hear he was warning others “Kim Phuc is mine!” Phuc hardened her heart against him when he sent her a love letter.

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