Mother called me again. She called to ask if I was going to visit the family this weekend. I didn't pick up. I let the call go to voicemail. I just don't know how I'd tell her that I had already planned to spend the weekend with my boyfriend on the San Diego beaches. In the summer, Fresno is such a depressing place to be. With weather that is as hot as being in the middle of a smoldering fire, Fresno was my hell. San Diego was my haven. During High School, I decided that I didn't want to be stuck in Fresno and applied for every university in California and was accepted into UC San Diego.
I grew up in a "Hmong Village"—as most people liked to joke—which were essentially apartment complexes owned by Hmong people, inhabited by Hmong people. The elderly would uproot the ground by the buildings to plant their gardens. Each patch would contain herbs, chili peppers, and collard greens, and during the different seasons, the patches would be filled with sugar cane, pumpkins, squash, and corn as well. The Hmong people didn’t usually ask for permission to dig up the earth—they just did, as if the land of their “village” was Laos or their own private property. The children were half-clad—sometimes nude—running around bare-footed with toys—sometimes knives. Grandmothers, like a mother hen, took care of children while sitting outside in the shade with their paj ntaub (embroidery) and talking to other women about the latest gossip.
That was the place that I had to get away from. I needed to run away from the childhood that was so old-fashioned, so traditional—something that was not me.
I can still remember, back in high school, when my parents thought I was a lesbian. They would say to me, "Daughter, why have you not brought home any of your boyfriends?" They would ask this to me for five years and I would say, "I'm not interested in having a boyfriend," or "I'm too busy with school to worry about boys!" My parents would hear from the grandmothers that they saw me holding hands with a Black boy but, they would shrug it off saying that I was probably practicing for the school play. However, when my parents heard a rumor that I had kissed a girl underneath a tree, they erupted and immediately sought to find me and bring me home. They did not care if I was or was not kissing a girl; they said I was not allowed to "hang around" with my girl friends after school.
At first, I was annoyed. The audacity of my parents, to chain me in my room, and care not of facts. They would lecture me of how it would be a disgrace for their child to be "gay"—my parents names, shamed by the community. Being locked up in my room and my parent's lectures—all of those I could take, but when that horrible weekend happened, I could never forgive my parents and the humiliation. The weekend of the "Water Festival"—a weekend long soccer tournament with music, entertainment, and Hmong food—my parents brought home a Hmong man who was 16 years my senior. I went and brought him water and peaches that were picked that morning from our tree just outside our front door. He thanked me and asked me what my name was. "Kuv lub npe hu ua Paj Hli." He nodded and looked at my father and smiled.
My father had then asked me something I regretted doing, even to this day. Though a simple task, the agony still fills me with such pain. My father had asked, in Hmong, in a soft tone, "Paj Hli, take our visitor and show him our chickens in the backyard." I tried to hide my confusion, not sure why this man had come to our home, yet I did as my father told.
The guest followed me closely as I guided him to our back yard. It unnerved me at how close he stayed. I could feel his breath on my neck. I opened the door to the back yard. In the fence, you could see that 3 wooden planks had been taken down and were laying flat on the ground next to the gap in the fence. This was so grandmothers could enter through the back yard in the neighboring houses. The chicken coop was towards the back of the small yard. Closest to the door was a four by four cement patio, which was littered with blue flip-flops of all sizes and gardening boots. As we navigated through the shoes, we walked on the small patch of grass until we got to the part of the yard which had no grass; this is where the chickens were. Here is where I laid my naivety and traditions to rest.
As we reached the door to the chicken coop, the guest grabbed my hand and said to me, "Your hair smells very nice." My face, which was still looking ahead, became filled with anxiety. He touched my shoulder and took a strand of hair and tucked it behind my ear and lowly said, "It reminds me of the starry night." As these words crept to my ears, my eyes bulged, filled with fear. Trying to pull away I said, "Please do not touch me." As I struggled to loosen his grip, he grabbed my shoulder with his other hand and exclaimed, "But we are to be wed tonight. That is why you are gathering the chickens."
As the reality of what my parents had done became clear, I attempted to get away. In my flurry of kicks and struggling, I managed to get away and snuck into a neighboring back yard. As he followed me, I found a gap in the fence, which led to the canal area behind the houses. I ran and ran until my muscles pumped acid, my throat became strained, and the tears had dried and became crusty watermarks on my cheeks. I thought to myself, "They cannot marry me off, if they cannot find me!" and struggled a grin of victory.
Those next four days were probably the hardest part of my seventeen years alive. With enough clothing in my gym locker to last me for a week, I would find shelter in local runaway homes. Classmates, who lived in the same apartment complex as me, would tell me of how my parents were looking for me and would ask me what I had done to upset my parents so much. My younger sister, who was a freshman, spotted me and said how our parents had lost even more face because of a disobedient child—Me. I just laughed. I laughed and told my sister that our parents will need to come and find me before I would return. And they did.
Walking to the county library one afternoon, my dad drove up in the pick-up truck and yelled at me to get inside. As I willingly climbed in, the only thing that could be heard were my sniffles and tears. Once I was inside the truck, he did not say a word until we got home. My parents "disciplined" me with everything imaginable. They wanted me to remember what would happen to me if I ever tried to disobey them and shame their faces again.
They hit me with a belt, sandals, chopsticks, a wooden spoon, the metal end of the fly swatter, an extension cable, their fists, a backscratcher, and finally a metal baseball bat which belonged to my older brother. I cannot remember much after passing out from hitting my forehead on the coffee table after being kicked by my mother, but when I woke up, I was lying on the floor of my bedroom. One of my sisters rolled me to my side after she heard my breathing becoming gargled by my blood.
I would miss the rest of the week of school and arrive Monday morning with bruised head, arms, legs, and shoulders and two black eyes. The next two weeks, I would explain to everyone that I "fell down the stairs" because I was clumsy. You could tell that no one believed me and perhaps, I didn't want them to. It was that day, the third day of returning back to school that Asheron, an African-American student that was in the Honor Greek Mythology class with me, would be my savior, and my boyfriend. He would be the person that would encourage me to apply for UC colleges and leave Fresno; the person that I would follow to UC San Diego.
I suppose, one could ask me when I started to like Black guys. I think it started in 4th Grade. My teacher was the first African-American teacher employed at my school. While most Black people were stereotypically loud and obnoxious, my teacher was educated, articulate, and had light skin. I had not thought much of my teacher at first, as most Hmong families are prejudice of Blacks, but he helped me gain a sense of respect for African-Americans through Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his message—equality for all races regardless of creed, color, class, and gender. While most of my other teachers did not give any one person specific attention, he was earnestly engaging. In my family of 13 siblings, where I am an invisible commodity to my parents—something to be sold to the highest bidder—this attention, I adored. My teacher taught me patience, self-worth, and how to not be weighed down by oppressing religious and cultural obligations. Since then, I sought to find someone who would love me for who I was and my goals in live, not how well I cooked, cleaned, and birthed babies. I found all of this in Asheron.
Asheron was kind of a mindful and introverted person. He had a soft-spoken approach to himself and was very smart, which could be intimidating at times however, our conversations of theory and politics were so engaging. He would listen to my statement and either agree or make a rebuttal. While I could barely hold a simple conversation with my family, feeling like an infant, Asheron made me feel educated and articulate. More importantly, he was educated, articulate, selfless, and a gentle mind with a strong sense of self-worth and motivated to achieving his Ph D in Criminal Forensics. So, when he told me he was accepted into UC San Diego, I hid my acceptance letters from Harvard and Yale and went to UC San Diego with him.
There were many occasions where I would spend time with Asheron and his family in their condo on the San Diego beaches. Four-day cruises to Tijuana were annual occasions. All the things that I felt I had missed when I was growing up, while living in the "Hmong Village", I had realized in the three years of Asheron's presence. The times that he would confront me about why he hasn’t met my parents or siblings, I would simply tell him that my parents were going to visit my sick grandmother in Sacramento. For the most part, Asheron would not push the subject and left it as it was. I couldn’t tell him that my parents were prejudice of Blacks.
It was a mistake to check my voicemail from my mom in front of Asheron. He asked, “What are you listening to?” For a second, I had to think to myself of what to say? Telemarketer? A Wrong number? It was easy to know that Asheron would see through my lie if I were to say such a think as he had already seen my look of anguish.
“Oh, it’s just my mother.”
As I said that, his eyes lit up and he asked, “I haven’t heard your mother’s voice before. Why don’t you but it on speakerphone so I can hear, too?”
The idea of him hearing my mother’s shrill voice asking me in Hmong and English, interchangeably, to return home for the weekend made me ill. “Oh, Sweety… I really would rather not—“ but before I could finish my sentence Asheron had already reached over the table and pressed the speaker button on my phone.
“Paj Hli, caij ntuj kub twb yuav dhau. Come to Fresno and see your daddy. He is very sick. Ib pliag koj call me.”