Mai Donohue does not know how old she is. Depending on whom you listen to it varies between 48 and 54. In Vietnam, during the war, identities were up for sale. In case you were stopped and questioned, you needed papers; permits, identifications. To prove that you weren't VC, to prove that you were. Throughout the war, Mai's name and age changed so many times that she cannot remember the date of her real birthday. So if you ask her about the day that she met her husband she will tell you the exact date and location. She will describe his smile and the way he laughed. But she cannot tell you how old she was.
At fourteen she had been forced into an arranged marriage with an older man from a neighboring village. This was the custom and there was no choice. BY the time she was fifteen she had a son named Anh and a husband who continually beat and tortured her, at one time even leaving her for dead at the side of the road. Fearing for the life of herself and her child Mai fled her husband's village and sought the help of her mother. But her husband was not the only threat to her safety. Mai was afraid of being kidnapped by the Viet Cong to serve in the jungle army. A new identity and the streets of Saigon were her only option.
She searched for a job in order to feed her son, but no one would hire a single girl with a baby to care for. Sick, hungry and unable to feed her child, she returned to her village and gave her child to her mother to raise. Fearing her vengeful husband, she returned to Saigon and she was right to do so, for a few days after her departure he came and took his son back to his village to be raised by his family. Soon after, Anh's father would be killed under mysterious circumstances and Mai would not see her son again for another twenty years.
Upon her return to Saigon, Mai had immediately found employment as a babysitter for a young family at Tan Son Nhut Airbase. Soon she also took over the cooking responsibilities. For three years Mai hid in Tan Son Nhut and it was here that she began to learn English. The maid of a neighborhood woman who took English lessons made a deal with Mai. Mai would write letters in Vietnamese to the maid's boyfriend and in return the maid would save the scraps from her employer's English lessons and give them to Mai. After she left Tan Son Nhut, Mai continued her lessons, saving money from her jobs at the pharmacy distributor and as a cook. She paid for one lesson at a time depending on how much money she had. As a supplement to her lessons, Mai also gathered newspapers, which had been used to wrap food in the market, and used them to educate herself.
This is how Mai describes herself and her life at this time in her life. In my life I am a wild girl, I do the black market, I buy and sell American dollars, I hang around in bars. In that time of my life it was a very low time because I don't know when I die when I lie, because I have no family really, my family don'... I run away from them...I don't believe in anything...The war is pretty strong, my family reject me because I divorce, I, I run away, so the only thing is I do what I want, so only thing I can make money to survive. If I have an ice cream stand, the mob, the gangsters come after me. So I learn English."
It was her desire to practice her English that prompted her first conversation with her future husband. "I was young and I, I like t have fun, so a group of friends and I went to a nightclub to dance. I study English at the time and I wanted to practice my English. I always eager to speak to meet Americans. And a group of friends came in, a group of Americans, and some of my friends knew the group of guys and so we put our tables together and we sit down and we talk." But there was one man there who wasn't talking. "He was very quiet and I think he a snob, everyone think he is a snob."
But he was handsome. "Very handsome. I think he is very handsome, so I say 'hello' in English and he say 'hello' and he give me a smile. And he have just a beautiful smile and I really like him...And so it was good for me to have someone to talk to, to practice my English and I sit down and he was handsome and I could not not talk to a handsome guy. If he was a dog I wouldn't have talked to him, but he so handsome. So we talk a lot and he tell me stories, that his father sick and he was poor and he don't have any money. And so I feel sorry for him and I buy him a fried rice. Because I feel sorry for the poor guy."
But Mai already had a boyfriend at the time. He was another American named Bill who worked for the CIA. But Mai could not stop thinking about the man she had met at the nightclub. As she says, "It was his smile that caught me." His name was Bernard Gerald Donohue, Jr. He was a Lieutenant in the Nay. The day was December 21, 1969. It was the winter solstice. The longest night of the year.
Mai had been living with her Godmother in Saigon, an older woman who was the second wife of a wealthy and influential businessman. She had no children of her own and took in Mai as a daughter. When Mai returned home that night she told her Godfather about the man she had met. Her Godfather recognized the name because Bernard worked in a building which Mai's Godfather had designed. Now she knew how to find him. She could not stop thinking about him.
Bernard Donohue, or Bernie as he was called then, was a graduate of Annapolis originally from Brockton, Massachusetts. He had arrived in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive of 1968 to sere on the Mekong River patrols. At the end of 1968 he was sent to Saigon to open the Combat Training Center for the Vietnamese Navy. A few days later Mai showed up at Bernie's office. She had convinced a girlfriend to drive her past the building on her Honda.
"We ride around and around and around and finally I said, "I have to come in and see this guy, say hello', I don't know why. And I come in and there MP's everywhere and they halt me and they ask me where I'm going and I say I want to see Mr. Donohue. And they go upstairs and they get him down and he so surprised to see me. And I told him that the Honda had broke. And he not stay very long because he was in the middle of holding his school, he teach, he training Vietnamese Navy. SO when the Americans go home, when they withdraw, the Vietnamese people can run the ships, the fighting boats. So he had to go back up there and I come out and he waves bye for me and I come out and we jump on the Honda and we go. Because the Honda didn't brake. I just lied."
Three days later Mai returned home from her English class to find Bernie in front of her house. He said that his Jeep had broken down in front of her house. Then he asked her to go out. Even though Mai already had a boyfriend, she couldn't resist his smile and so she agreed to go out to dinner with him. "We go into a restaurant to have some rice and things like that, and I bought him food again. Because I don't think that he has any money, he poor. And later on I find out that because all of his friends, Americans say that Vietnamese girls are very sweet and everything, but they take all your money. If you tell them you have money. So he hears this and he thinks that it is better to say how poor he is so that I don't take his money. He wasn't poor."
They continued dating, but Mai had still not broken up with Bill and had to cover up her deception to both men. However, there were times when this became very difficult. "I had another boyfriend and I start to sneak around and I tell him that my family need me. Then one day in the middle of the afternoon, Bernie come in from his job to come visit me. And I sit on his lap and I kiss him, and I took off his dog tags and put them on the table, the coffee table. And when he get up and he drive away, Bill comes in, the CIA guy comes in with a huge bouquet, must be two three dozen red roses and knocks on the door. And Bernie had just drive away, to take his jeep and go down the street.
Bill had learned from friends that Mai had said that she was sick and that she was at her house. "So he come in and he give me flowers and I so scared, I tell him 'get out get out', because I have to go see my uncle because they need me and whatever. Before he get out, it dawned on him that somebody's tag dog, dog tags were there. And he leave the flowers, he went because he was a very good guy. Bernie drives down the street and realizes that his dog tags not on his neck and it is very important. Never go anywhere without a dogtag, but because a girl kiss you (laughter). So the dogtags gone because I played with it, I was not supposed to do that, but I played with it and I just forgot. So he comes back, the other guy just came out and Bernie came back, but nobody recognize, nobody know that I have double-crossed both people. And so he comes in and he sees the flowers but it never registered to him that it was only me at home and it had just been a few minutes. But this guy (Bill) he drives down the street and he realized that these dog tags were up there and nobody in the house except me. And Bernie picked up his dog tags, I was nervous so I push him out the door and I tell him go go go. He had to go back to work."
But the ordeal was not over. "The CIA guy come back and I ran upstairs and I tell the maid to close the door and say that I'm not there, that I had to go see my aunt, whatever. So I ran upstairs, grabbed my pocketbook and you know the houses they like that (gestures with hands) and like that and have the alley way in the back. If you come down the front door there are the streets, so if you go in the back there are streets but they are alleyways. I think I am smart, but as soon as I pop out and Bill standing right there at the back door there waiting for me, and he tried to grab me. But I yelled at him, told him to go and I jump in a cyclo, and I ran into my Uncle Tung, he owned a hardware store. And I hide in there and the CIA guy, Bill, he stands outside for a while and he sends a boy in to say that he want to see me, to come out or he would come in. And at that time I was really scared that everybody would find out that I go out with Americans. You not supposed to go out with Americans."