It is amazing how many times it is necessary for one to hear a story before she really experiences that story for herself-before she can see every color, count every wrinkle, feel every ounce of the beating sunlight, and smell every spice of a busy Thai marketplace. The market's squabbling shoppers and animated vendors with sprawling tables of yellow star fruit, red lychee, fish and greens cluttered the immediate expanse outside the fence enclosing Ban Vinai refugee camp. The first time Shoua, my mom, told the story of her encounter with a fortune-teller while buying vegetables in this market outside Ban Vinai camp in northern Thailand where she was living in 1980, I pictured that fortune-teller as a tiny, frail, gray-haired woman.
Isn't that what she looked like? "No, no. She was rather plump actually, and short. She did have graying hair, but you know how the white Hmong wear their hair shaved in front and kept longer in back? That is what her hair looked like. She grabbed my hands as my mother and I were passing by, and she touched my ears. She said, 'Child, you have been promised to someone, haven't you? But please, please do not marry him. He likes you, but his mother will not love you. If you marry him, prepare yourself for a life of poverty and despair. He is not your intended husband. Your husband has yet to arrive. He will not be very large or even very tall, but you marry him, dear. He will love you.' After she said that, I worried, and I thought to myself, what if it doesn't work out between Chue and me?"
Shoua was not in love with Chue, but marriage to him seemed to be an established fact, and she did not question the conventions of her culture. Chue was a tall, broad-shouldered youth, a couple years older than she was. He was a second cousin from her mother's side of the family.
He had first seen Shoua when she her family arrived in Ban Vinai, pouring tiredly out of the dirty canvas-covered trucks after a one hour ride from the edge of the Mekhong river. The family had escaped across the Mekhong like thousands of Hmong refugees before them who had survived the harrowing escape out of Laos in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. As they tottered out of the truck, the family worried that the stern-faced Thai guards, their fierce guns and humorless stance barring the fenced entrance to the Ban Vinai camp, would rob them of their last meager belongings. Luckily, the guards merely offered the exhausted family disparaging looks. As she entered the camp, Shoua considered the rows upon rows of long wooden houses and tin roofs, the red dust stretching over the ground, the thin, ragged Hmong who chattered noisily and gawked at the newest arrivals. The hot, restless camp seemed so far removed from the lush green of the jungle of her childhood and the homes of thatched bamboo huts and rice fields that she grew up alongside in the Lao highlands.
Jolted back to reality, Shoua found herself-along with her parents, seven siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles-ushered into relatives' homes, where they stayed for a few months until a residence of their own was prepared. Each family, no matter the size, was designated a single room to live in-a single room which was part of a larger twelve-room longhouse. The large family squeezed into this tiny space, and life soon settled into a norm of restless waiting-waiting for the rain to wash off the heat and stickiness . . .waiting with white buckets in long anxious lines at the water hose . . .waiting for the weekly paltry ration of rice and chicken. . . waiting for one's name to appear on the lists for America. In the midst of waiting for the rest of her life to take wing, Shoua began harboring fledgling plans.
"I had decided that I would go to school and become a nurse, make some money and help my family. In the squalor of the refugee camp we barely had enough rice to eat. Camp officials portioned out food--for a family of ten like ours, they gave five pounds of rice and one chicken which was supposed to last the whole week! This is why we were all skin and bones." Shoua had no interest in marrying, but she was the daughter of a firmly traditional man and the granddaughter of a powerful clan leader--men for whom reputation and family alliances were essential. Their daughters were expected to marry to further these principles.
For these reasons, Shoua soon found herself engaged to Chue, even though she barely knew him and was not even aware that he had any interest in her until a few days before he was about to relocate from the refugee camp to America. He had suddenly informed his parents of his decision to marry her. An agreement was reached between his family and hers, and Shoua quickly discovered that her future was decided.
"He had picked me, and my family had accepted. I was so young. Only fourteen. I did not know what I wanted, so I resigned myself to marrying Chue. But after that wise woman's troubling words at the market, I was even less sure about the future."
Soon after her marketplace encounter with the fortune teller, Shoua found herself at the home of another spiritual diviner. "My mother and I had snuck out behind my father's back to consult a diviner. While at the diviner's home, my mother asked if he would look into my future. This man was relatively older, maybe in his fifties; he was tall and I remember that he preferred dark clothing. As he pulled my hand toward him, he slowly traced one of the lines on my hand and told me the same thing the woman from the marketplace had said. 'This line represents the man you are engaged to now,' he said. 'Clearly, the line ends here in the middle, so he is not intended to be your husband. Your intended has not yet arrived.'
"A few months later, there was a big squabble between my family and Chue's family. The problem had nothing to do with either of us, the children, but because the families were no longer in accord, the elders angrily broke off our engagement. And I accepted that." About a half a year later, Shoua was introduced to Yee Moua at a soul-letting ceremony between their clans. One year after a family member dies, relatives gather to perform a ritual full of ancient spoken word, drumming, sacrifices and feasting to set free the dead's soul. The Hmong believe that a soul can reincarnate only after this ceremony is performed. This particular soul-letting ceremony was being held for a mutual relative of the Mouas and the Thaos. Shoua's grandfather, as a Thao clan leader, was asked to attend. He brought along Shoua and a few other girls from the Thao clan. As Shoua explains it, community events like this one was designated as a way for young people to meet and mingle.
It has taken me three times of listening to her tell the story to finally capture her first impression of Yee. "He was slim, like the fortune-teller told me. He was really cute, and I also liked that he was quieter than most boys, not a show-off." The soul-letting ceremony was during the day, and later that night Yee's uncles brought him to Shoua's house so that he could visit more with her, but as Shoua says, "We spoke only a few words to each other, because the older people were all there and I was really shy." Yee was shy too. He did not have much to say to her then and the two would not speak again except for a few words exchanged in passing.
To be a good Hmong daughter, one stayed quietly at home, and let the boys come to call. The accepted Hmong method of finding a wife was that a young man would come call on a young woman, and if he liked her enough, he would bring along an older family member, usually his father, older brother, or an uncle on his visits to observe her. They paid attention to the way she served, spoke and interacted with others. They looked into her family history and considered the desirability of a connection with her male relatives. There were such things as romance and Hmong lovers, but they existed only as wispy ghosts in the dark of night, meeting secretly in the shadows behind huts or in far away fields.
Shoua was not interested in the secret activities of young lovers. She was brought up in a household where dealing with young men was severely frowned upon, and she was not about to get herself into trouble. As a result, when Yee and his uncles would hang outside her house in the evenings, trying to catch her for a moment of conversation, she was polite, but always shrugged them off and hurried away. A few times, Yee and his uncles had even gotten an older woman, a distant aunt of Shoua's, to ask Shoua to come and sew for her. When Shoua arrived at her aunt's house, Yee was there, egged on by his relatives, waiting to talk to her. At the New Year's celebration that December, Shoua dressed in her Hmong costume-colorful knee-length skirt, black shirt and apron, dark turban headdress, colorful sashes and an intricate silver necklace. She ball-tossed and sang folk songs with the young men, including Yee.
But even after weeks of casual meetings with Yee, Shoua still knew little about him, and remained uninterested in his pursuit of her. That Shoua was indifferent to Yee and to his family's desire to acquire a bride was overshadowed by the fact that she was a woman, and as such, without rights and opinions.
"The Mouas wanted to steal me away to marry their son, so every day for about a month your dad and his uncles would either come by or send messengers telling me to wait for them at a designated spot and they would take me away with them, to be married. I just ignored what they said." In fact, she made it a point to stay inside on the nights they said they would be coming for her. Over time, the men finally understood. They would have to resort to cunning if they wanted the girl.
I cannot remember the first time my mom told me the story of her kidnapping by my dad, but I remember distinctly the shock I felt. I could not believe it. It was scary hearing that my parents had not fallen in love-that he had not rescued her on a white horse, swept her away to live in his castle, or awakened her with a kiss. It was scary knowing that, in fact, they barely knew one another when they married. A few re-tellings of their story later, I was able to see that the characters involved in the kidnapping story, as it came to be called, had evolved. Over time the events of that evening when my mom went out to wash her feet and ended up being hauled off by my father, became just another tale of our family history.
It was late in the evening, and getting increasingly darker, as there were no streetlights in the refugee camp and the inhabitants of the camp were settling in for the night. Shoua had a flashlight with her as she went outside to wash her feet. Her flip-flops squished noisily as she walked the few feet between the water tub and the back door of her home. Behind the water tub, a waist-high wooden fence encircled the longhouse. A few feet beyond the fence, she noticed two figures hovering in the shadows and motioning to her. In urgent whispers they insisted she walk nearer because they had something important to tell her. Shoua recognized the boy, Yee, and an uncle of his. Wanting nothing to do with the men, Shoua shrugged them off and stepped around to go inside until the uncle said, "If you don't come talk to us, we'll be here all night and then the Thai guards will come beat us up for staying past camp curfew." Afraid, Shoua hesitated, and not wanting to be the cause of any trouble, she decided it would be easier to go and talk to them. After all, what could they do to her?
Shoua cautiously made her way over towards the fence, and as soon as she was close enough, the two men grabbed her. They gripped her arm so hard that she had to move just a little closer towards them to adjust herself, intending ferociously to fight both of them off-but her tiny movement gave them the leverage they needed and the men yanked her over the fence, dragging her painfully across the wooden poles. Fearing for her reputation and her fate, and seeing her future dissolve before her eyes, Shoua yelled frantically to her friend, Kang Zhoua, who was nearby-"Hurry, hurry! Get my mom! Call my father! You have to get help! They're taking me! Hurry! I can't get free! Help me!" But her kidnappers were too fast.
"They dragged me far away, keeping me a prisoner the entire time. When we got to your father's uncle's house, someone cried 'she's come! They've brought home the bride!' As a signal of claiming me as their daughter-in-law, one of the great-uncles took a live chicken and waved it around your dad and me. I was quiet throughout because I was embarrassed and struggling would have been of no use."
In the morning, Shoua figured that since it was now light, she could surely find her way back home and visions of escape swirled in her mind, but the more she thought about it, she realized that she could not go back home. In Hmong culture, a young woman is considered compromised if she is discovered with a boy for more than a few hours. Shoua had been gone for a whole night. Whether or not it was against her will, this fact remained. There was no escape.
"I didn't want people to talk, to say 'look at that girl. She went to get married, but her family had to go and get her back! The boy's family must not have wanted her!' If I would've gone back home, people would have branded me with many names and my reputation would've been ruined-so I stayed, and waited to see what help would come."
Shoua's Uncle Cheng was designated to act as a mediator between her family and Yee's family. He reported to Shoua that her mother and some of the rest of her family had wanted to come after her, to bring her back home, but her grandfather, Ly Xeng Thao---a powerful clan leader---scolded them, saying that to do so would only cause the family to lose face to the Moua's.
Traditionally, if a young man wanted to marry a young woman, his family would hire a meikhong, a wedding negotiator, to go to the girl's house and negotiate permission of marriage, relations between the clans, and terms of the bride price with the girl's family. Depending on how his meikhong is received by the girl's family, the young man would either end up with a bride or without one. In addition, if a young woman was willing to marry the young man, her family had less of a right to demand a bride price from the young man's family.
Kidnapping was employed when a young woman was unwilling to marry, or if the young man's family did not have the money to pay for a large bride price. According to societal rules, when a young woman was kidnapped, the situation was treated as if the woman had agreed to leave with the man. Therefore, incredibly, Shoua's kidnapping was treated by the community as if she had left willingly. Even among girls who were known to be virtuous, the social stigma against autonomous girls was so great that few people would believe she had left unwillingly. Even those who knew Shoua best--people like her mother who knew that she had not leave of her own free will--could not defend her from this social perception.
For Shoua's family, dealing with the situation meant accepting the kidnapping. As a result, Uncle Cheng, the messenger, had been instructed to tell Shoua that she was not allowed to go back home because her family could no longer accept her.
"I was so angry! I thought, okay, fine. If you don't want me, I'll stay here. I felt that there was no need for my family to deny me a home." Shoua was upset because she had been disowned, virtually punished for something that she did not cause. It would take many years to heal the underlying resentment she felt for the people who were supposed to be fighting for her but had turned their backs on her instead. She felt imprisoned.
***
After twenty years of marriage, my parents are still together. As I kid, I remember that the least of my worries was that something would happen to their marriage. I have yet to ask them what it is that has made it all work out in the end, an important question, I think. But knowing these two people as I do, I would venture to say it is my father's love and kindness that won her over, my mother's commitment to marriage that makes it last, and their tangible devotion to their children that smoothes out the kinks and preserves the fortune teller's prophecy.