From ‘Notes of a Warrior’s Son’ chapter of Perfume Dreams

Liar. Where’s the proof? Your father ain’t no real general!

Yeah, probably a corporal for all we know. Hahaha.

He is so. I’ll show you.

Here is my second act of betrayal.

I was sixteen and full of bravado. I had a purple belt in karate, was practicing for brown. I got into fights. I hated being called a liar. I had to prove myself.

One afternoon I stole his uniform from his closet. In front of my friends I unfolded the uniform. We were partying in a garage a few blocks down the street, drinking beer, listening to music. Eyes widened. There were oohs and ahhs.

I was nervous. There would be harsh consequences if Father found out. Of all the things we managed to bring with us from Vietnam the uniform was the most sacred.

Nevertheless I felt triumphant. All my stories were finally validated at that moment. “Whoa, it’s for real,” Rick, my challenger, said, conceding. My friends took turns examining and marveling at the thing. It had been at the battlefields of Vietnam. It connected them to a world they saw on TV, a world they understood on some level or another that had somehow changed theirs. Many knew someone who went. A few even knew someone who didn’t come back.

As they examined the uniform, an idea hit me. I grabbed it and went to the bathroom and quickly changed into it. I came back out and started dancing. My friends laughed. A few shook their heads in disbelief. “Crazy kid,” someone said.

Upon his words, an icy nausea rose in me and I stopped. I felt ridiculous. I felt I had crossed some invisible line and a part of me was offended by my own profanity. I staggered into the bathroom and checked myself. In the mirror Father’s uniform hung loosely about me; I looked young and foolish in it. The uniform seemed to belong to somewhere else, in the dark, to memories, to mud and soil and burnt-out rice fields and bombed-out villages, and to the monsoon rain, to an unresolved war and all the profound sorrow and grief that I could neither fully subsume nor process. I felt like throwing up.

Then an unreasonable terror rose from the pit of my stomach, my heart pounding - I was afraid that I could not take it off. I felt entombed in a sea of khaki green fabric.

And it was then that I, retching, wanting to laugh at my own silliness but overwhelmed by guilt and a flood of tropical memories, plucked clumsily at the buttons, at my old skin, and wept.

For futher readings and listening, go to:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5523004

Andrew Lam’s essay collection 2006 PEN/Beyond Margins Award.

Copyright © 2006 Andrew Lam. All rights reserved.
contact: alam@newamericamedia.org