Identity, A New Zealand story

Identify
Author: NTVH
Note: Please see Artist comments for translation of Vietnamese sentences that are used.

*****

"Mẹ ơi, Việt Nam có đẹp như New Zealand không hả mẹ?"  

Ivy Peterson still remembered when she was a little kid, she always asked her mother about Vietnam. Her mother would smile to her and told her about the dreamy Vietnam where everything was strange and bizarre. She went back there sometimes when she was a little bit older. The country at the other side of the ocean was nothing like a dreamy world. It was dusty and full of people.

She remembered the moment she came back to great-grandparents' house, she was surrounded by a lot of people, her grandparents, grandaunts, granduncles, uncles and aunts and their children, who she had never met and could never remember their names and faces either. Every time she went back, she had to learn about them again.

One thing Ivy would remember about them was that they were always nice to her and they loved to have her out with them. If she could choose to live with them longer she would. She guessed that would be much better than living here where people loved to stay at home and relax next to the TV.
Ivy used to love to hang out with the kids in the neighbourhood but her parents didn't really like that idea.

"Maori kids might give you a bad influence." Her mother would say, always speaking English when she needed her husband's support.
"Bad influence on what?"
"You know, Maori, they would steal your stuff if they need money." Her mother said.
"And get you to drink alcohol." Her father added.
"Nonsense." Ivy argued.
"Anyway, if you can, stop hanging around with them."
"I told you from the start not to choose a house in this area."

And they ended up spending hours arguing about money saving and Maori. This argument would never end and no one would notice that Ivy had already snuck out to spend time with the neighbours. Mrs. Mahata always gave the girls some pancakes when they were gossiping about the other kids at school. Why could people think of Maori so bad? Ivy would have been very glad if Mrs. Mahata had been her mother. But she would never say it out loud or else she would get a very long lecture from her mother for that.

Ivy's mother had always been pleasant when she was a kid. She would cuddle Ivy in the arms and laugh when the little girl did something wrong. And when her father started to scold her about that, mother always said, "Con yêu, nếu con cứ nghịch ngợm thế thì con sẽ biến bố thành ông già khó tính đấy." Of course, Ivy's father would never understand a word her mother said since he wasn't born Vietnamese. There was a time that she really thought that Vietnamese created a sanctuary for mother and daughter only. Not anymore. She now wondered why someone would come to another country and still speak their own language when no one would understand them.

*****

It all started when Ivy got to intermediate school. Even though Mr. Peterson was European, Ivy still looks Asian or more of an Asian than European anyway. Of course Ivy had her father's handsome nose but her black eyes and tan skin was still that of her mother. Her mother used to say she looks too cute for a Vietnamese kid but no one had ever told her if she looked good as a Kiwi, too. Her father obviously didn't care if she looks too much of an Asian or not, for him, her mother was beautiful and Ivy looked like mother so she was beautiful, too. But the kids at school didn't think the same.

Things wouldn't be so bad if she went to the same school with the kids in the neighbourhood. At least they had known each other for years. But her parents thought it would be good to keep her from getting too close to the Maori kids, so they got her to an intermediate school two hours drive away from where they live, Helensville, all the way to North Shore. And the first day at the school, a bunch of kids in class came to her.

"Ni hao, ni hao."   One kid said. Of course poor Ivy wasn't Chinese and she never met anyone that was Chinese before. She looked at the kid confused. The kid turned back to his group and said. "I guess she couldn't even speak English properly." And everyone laughed. This time Ivy understood clearly what they said. She didn't answer them and didn't say a word until the end of the day.

"Cat got your tongue, Chinese?" The kids followed her after class. They swayed their arms and legs, trying to mimic the Chinese kung fu they saw on TV. "Heya, heya. Come on, teach us some move." They shouted and laughed.
"I'm not Chinese." Ivy finally said.
"Liar! Liar!" They yelled. "If you are not Chinese then what are you?"
"I am..." For the first time in her life, Ivy wondered who she was. She would say "I am a Kiwi" but that didn't seems quite right. Since she was born it was always mother who were around, talking to her in Vietnamese and taught her about the Vietnamese tradition. How Ivy wanted to say out loud that she was a Vietnamese. But for the kids, wasn't there any difference between a Chinese and a Vietnamese at all? Ivy remained silence. She wished her mother was a Kiwi like everyone else.
"See? She's a liar." The kids continued their chorus. "From now on let's call her Liar."

Ivy cried when she saw her mother appeared at the gate, waiting for her. She welcomed Ivy with her usual smile and her warm voice. "Chuyện gì thế con gái yêu?"   Mother always smiled whenever something happened to Ivy, she would even pick the girl up in her arms if she could but since Ivy had grown up, she stopped doing so. She wiped away Ivy's tears and they walked back to the car where dad was already waiting and the family drove back home in silence.

Ivy ran to the Mahata's house right when she got back. How she missed to be with the Mahata girls. They had never said anything mean, never questioned such kind of things about her. Just like Ivy had never felt anything wrong with them being Maori, the Mahata had never felt anything wrong with her being half Asian either. Mrs. Mahata gave them freshly fried pancake and asked them about school.

"I wish you'd be with us, Ivy. Most of the kids from last year were there, too. It was so much fun." One of the girls bragged.
"I wonder why you have to go all the way to the North Shore." Said another girl.
"Dear dear, be thoughtful don't you. Ivy's school is a famous one, they offer a good education. If I had the money, I would send you guys there, too" Mrs. Mahata said to the kids as she brought in another plate of pancakes and the kids would burst into laughter. Ivy wished she would be born in the Mahata family, so she could go to same school with the others. But did that mean she wouldn't be her parents' daughter in the first place? It was hard to choose between your beloved parents and something fun. But if she were to be born in the Mahata then she would just be a pure Maori, a hundred percent Kiwi, then nobody would question who she was.

The day after wasn't much better for Ivy at school. The kids came to her again during the break and continued on their joke from the day before.
"We have been wondering if we should call you Liar or cry-baby." They laughed.
"How about crying liar?" One suggested and the group burst into laughter.

The next day, the day after that, and for the whole month the kids kept coming with their ridiculous jokes aimed at Ivy. Since it was an all girl school, there was no violence. But sometimes, words hurt much more than physical attacks. They leave no trace on the surface, you have no evidence to tell someone else and if you fight back you will be at fault. The words of the bullies just kept echoing and penetrating the little girl's heart until it became unbearable.
"So what is your next plan, Chinese? Invading New Zealand?"
"There's no way a crying liar like you can steal our country. Go home, Chinese, go to your undeveloped place." As they talked, they walked away and laughed again, leaving Ivy alone.

Ivy ran away from school, and from all of those bad mouth girls. She wished to be with the Mahata girls so much. They would always team up like they had always done and told those girls to back off. But Ivy was all alone, she didn't know where to run and how to get back home. The moment Ivy stopped running, she found out she couldn't recognize the place. There weren't any familiar faces either. The little girl stuck there, in the middle of a crowd full of strangers, she burst into tears. She wished mother would be around, she wished the Mahata would be around.

"Are you alright?" A policeman came to her and asked. She was still crying. "Are you lost? Where are your parents?" Ivy still couldn't answer. "Where are you from?" She shook her head, kept crying. "Can you speak English?" She nodded and finally stopped crying.
"I am a Kiwi." And she meant what she said.

Her mother came to the police office an hour after. Ivy could notice that she was crying on the way there. She wanted to run to her mother and hug her tight but she couldn't. She couldn't even answer it when her mother asked what had happened in Vietnamese. Being a Vietnamese did nothing good to her. Her father was a Kiwi, she had the right to be a Kiwi. From that moment on, Ivy decided not to speak Vietnamese ever again. Ivy's mother stopped talking in Vietnamese after many attempts without any explanation from her about the decision. It was also from that time, her mother was not as pleasant as she had always been in the past.

And that was Ivy's story of five years ago.

*****

"I wish you would be my mother, Mrs. Mahata" Ivy said when she came over the Mahata's house, waiting for the girls to go together to the school prom. "It must be so much more pleasant."
"Why do you say that?" Mrs. Mahata asked. "Your mother is a kind woman, isn't she?"
"I don't know. She used to be I guess. But it was like long ago."
"Aye, what happened?"
"I'm not sure. I think it was because she couldn't accept that I want to be a Kiwi instead of a Vietnamese. But daddy is a Kiwi you know."
"And you wouldn't want to be a Vietnamese anymore? I remember you used to brag about Vietnamese tradition a lot." Mrs. Mahata smiled as she recalled the past.
"It must be much easier for you because you are people of this country. No one would tell you to go. I wasn't even born in Vietnam. I was only there for some weeks, I don't even remember the place now. But daddy is a Kiwi so I had the right to live here, too, right?"
"Well, does that mean your mother doesn't have the right to live here? Honey, she probably had someone telling her off the country, too. But she still chose to stay with you and your father. Do you think that it would be too harsh for her that even her daughter would refuse her?"
"I don't know. But does being a Vietnamese matter?"
"It might not be a matter to you, honey. But for your mother to be Vietnamese is like for us to be Maori. It is something to be proud of. And I think the reason why she taught you about Vietnamese tradition is because she wanted you to feel proud of the Vietnamese in you as well as your Kiwi heritage."

Ivy didn't say anything. She had never thought about what Mrs. Mahata had just said. If she felt proud to be a Kiwi then why wasn't proud to be Vietnamese? It was the person she was born to be. She started to feel overwhelmed by guilt.

"Tell them that I will be back soon." Ivy said to Mrs. Mahata and dashed back home. The Maori lady smiled.
Ivy ran upstairs as her mother looked out from the kitchen. "Ivy, I thought you went to the prom with the Mahata girls?"
"Not yet, ma. Erh... Mẹ, cái áo dài của con mẹ để đâu?"  
Her mother stood there, confused.
"Mẹ! Nhanh tụi nó đang chờ."  
Ivy's mother smiled. It is always good when you recognize who you are and feel proud of yourself.