Trang Nguyen keeps it together in Sacramento
Paul Kekai Manansala
To honor the family, she stays in school and cares for her five
siblings.
By Thuy-Doan Le -- Bee Staff Writer
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BERKELEY - Most nights, Trang Nguyen scurries around her kitchen,
squeezing from memory what ingredients to put in the boiling pots and
sizzling pans.
Over time, through trial, she adjusts the flavor of the beef broth for
pho, a Vietnamese dish with rice noodles, learns to roll elegant goi
cuon, or spring rolls, and fry banh xeo, a Vietnamese crepe, without
breaking it.
All this, while keeping after her two youngest siblings to get off the
computer, do their homework, stay on track.
But some nights, the 20-year-old gives up and simply makes spaghetti.
It's been nine months since her parents were shot to death at their
Pacific Plaza jewelry store in south Sacramento, a killing that
remains unsolved; nine months since Trang weighed dropping out of UC
Berkeley to return to Sacramento to raise her brothers and sisters.
But honoring her family, Trang decided, meant staying in school. Duty
meant taking over as head of the family of six. So she moved her
siblings to the Bay Area and was no longer just a college student
worried about making the rent and getting to class; but wage-earner,
housekeeper, cook, disciplinarian, the authority figure who sets the
curfews and signs the enrollment forms.
For Trang, it sometimes feels overwhelming, being responsible for so
many lives. She feels ill-prepared to take her parents' place, but
draws strength from their memory.
Hidden beneath her shirt is a gold pendant, etched with the likenesses
of her parents, Hue Nguyen and Loi Thi Ngo. "In loving memory of Hue
and Loi," it reads.
"It would be easier to give up if I was by myself," Trang said. But
now that's not a choice. She won't abandon her siblings.
It means a life bound by decisions: how to make their meager savings
stretch over the next 10 years, until her 12-year-old brother Khanh,
the youngest, finishes college.
It means holding off on buying headstones for her parents' Sacramento
grave site, to replace the small plaques that get lost when the grass
grows high.
Friends and even strangers have been generous; Trang gets some state
aid for her youngest siblings, and financial aid from Berkeley. Her
boyfriend contributes from what he makes in his marketing job. But
money is a constant worry.
During the fall, Trang worked three jobs, but, increasingly frazzled,
she quit two and now just works one, at UC Berkeley's University
Relations Department.
That gives her more time for school and taking care of her family. But
the loss of income means taking out more student loans.
"If we weren't going to college, I wouldn't worry so much," she said.
"Everyone would have their own jobs."
Even so, education remains the priority.
Trang's mother didn't finish middle school in Vietnam. Her parents
were too poor. Her father, who dreamed of becoming a math professor,
instead was drafted into the Vietnamese army.
In Sacramento, the couple managed their cousin's jewelry store,
working every day but Tet, the annual lunar festival celebrating the
new year. Their goal was to get their children through the best
universities they could afford.
Nine months ago, on July 25, Trang had just finished classes and was
headed to work when she received a hysterical cell phone call from her
sister.
" 'Ma ba' (mom and dad) have been shot."
"Stop joking," Trang remembers saying. "I have to go to work."
More sob-choked details on the phone. They'd been shot by an unknown
man. Police suspected robbery but weren't certain. Driving back to
Sacramento, she found herself stuck in traffic for four hours.
When she arrived at Florin Mall, across from Pacific Plaza, her
relatives turned to her.
"Stop crying," she remembers them saying. "Your siblings are watching
you."
In the Vietnamese custom, when the parents are dead, the eldest child
takes responsibility for the younger siblings. It means showing
strength in the face of hardship, and if necessary forfeiting one's
own happiness to make sure the younger children become successful.
Trang immediately knew her role.
"That was it," Trang remembers thinking. "I had to put a hold on
grieving. I was thinking, 'What's next?' "
She immersed herself in the exacting and unfamiliar Vietnamese funeral
rituals. She'd need to hire Buddhist monks; find the "ao tang," white
mourning robes, for everyone; and set the ceremonies and burials at
precise times determined by her parents' ages and the date and time of
death.
Two days before the funeral, Trang Nguyen saw her parents' bodies for
the first time since the shooting. Until then, she'd only caught
glimpses of their covered forms on television, allowing her and her
brothers and sisters to hold out the fantasy that it might not be
true.
"I remember feeling so numb, so sad, but I couldn't cry," Trang said.
"I don't know why I was so calm. I told them my mom needed more blush
and I wanted them to cover my dad's wounds better."
After the funeral, the house that had been so crowded and noisy became
quiet.
"It was just us. No parents. We couldn't sleep in their room," she
said. "We lit candles and slept in the living room. We got so paranoid
because the guy who shot my parents took the keys. We were paranoid
about every car that passed by."
In the weeks after the funeral, Trang felt the family couldn't stay in
Sacramento. With the help of friends and UC Berkeley, they moved into
a student apartment complex.
Initially, all five siblings moved in with Trang and her boyfriend,
Steve Pereira. Over time, she agreed to let two of the sisters,
17-year-old Nhung and 16-year-old Van, return to Sacramento to finish
high school. They live with friends, while Trang sends $500 a month to
support them and supervises them daily by phone. Her brother Khang,
18, also left to attend another UC campus, where Trang helps him with
expenses.
Even with four of them - Trang; her boyfriend; her 15-year-old sister,
Huong; and 12-year-old Khanh - the apartment is cramped, and, at
$1,460 a month, expensive.
As they set up their new life last fall, Trang and her siblings found
their grief intruded on even the simplest tasks.
Filling out enrollment forms for Khanh and Huong at the local public
school, they came to a blank space labeled "parents information." The
question immobilized them, Trang recalled.
Over the months, Trang and her boyfriend have integrated student life
with raising the youngest siblings. Morning starts with getting them
up, fed, dressed, in the car and off to school. Then, Trang heads to
campus for classes and work and back home to prepare dinner.
Between school and work, she is joined to her cell phone, coordinating
schedules for car pools to and from school, extracurricular
activities, grief counseling.
To the chagrin of her siblings, she drives the family's old brown van,
a 1991 Ford Aerostar. Picking up Huong at school, she honks while
Huong pretends not to see her, embarrassed to get in because her
friends are watching.
Trang juggles the schedule to make it to Khanh's basketball game, only
to sit on the wrong side of the court.
"She's so embarrassing," said 17-year-old Nhung.
Nhung remembers how her father, after dropping them off at school,
would circle back to peer through the window to make sure all the kids
were eating their breakfasts.
Her friends would ask, "Hey, isn't that your dad?"
It embarrassed her then, and now she finds Trang just as bad.
As much as her sister gets on her nerves, though, Nhung understands.
Even from two hours away, Trang gives her a curfew: On weeknights,
they have to be home by 9 p.m.
"She'll call and check up on me, like she's still next door," Nhung
said.
It's not until after Khanh and Huong are in bed, usually around 11
p.m., that Trang gets to her own books.
For this semester at least, she's dropped her biology classes. The
easier course load has allowed her to think about music again.
In high school, she first kept her singing aspirations a secret from
her father. But as she sang karaoke and in the back yard, Trang
realized that she loved music and wanted to study singing, not
science.
She and her father debated, until one night he slipped into a club and
heard Trang perform. He proposed a compromise: Trang could pursue
singing as long as she had a backup plan.
They settled on medical school. So in addition to music, she's
majoring in molecular cell biology. Determined not to lose her
culture, she's added a Vietnamese language class to her load.
In the apartment, Trang tries to create a familiar home for her
siblings. All of them were born in the United States, so English words
dominate their conversations. But they joke in Vietnamese and call
each other by their Vietnamese nicknames.
"My parents always wanted us to speak fluently, but we didn't have
money to take classes," Nhung said. "My mom didn't speak English very
well, so we communicated with her in Vietnamese."
In the apartment, their parents are very much present. The scent of
incense from their parents' altar pervades every room. Each day, the
children carefully place fresh flowers and food on the altar, offer
prayers and ask for guidance.
Huong places incense between her parents' framed photos three to four
times a day, more than anyone else in the house. She says her prayers
in broken Vietnamese.
"I tell them about my day and that I'm OK," Huong said. "I hope that
they are happy and proud of us. I tell them I try to overcome it and
that we're going to make it."
Though determined to fulfill her new role, Trang has her eye on the
day when her brothers and sisters won't need her as much.
She still hides her grief from her siblings, pouring it instead into
her songs. She recently penned a ballad, called "Deep Inside,"
dedicated to her parents.
"How am I supposed to feel when you were my strength," it goes in
part, "One day I will learn to heal and live my life. Feeling stronger
each day, I will learn to love and find my way through all this pain."
Trang thinks her father would be proud that she's pursuing her dream
of singing. Though nothing's firm yet, one San Francisco club where
she auditioned has asked her back to discuss performance fees.
If she ever makes it, she said, she would not assume a stage name but
remain Trang.
"That's my name," she said. "It's what my heritage is, and it's what
my parents gave me."
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About the Writer
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The Bee's Thuy-Doan Le can be reached at (916) 321-1040 or
td...@sacbee.com.
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Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala