Victor over the Past - Chapter 11 & 12

From: … Nguyen @yahoo.com>
Subject: Nguyen 's Biography
To: thuyhang606@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 9:42 AM

Thân tặng TH quyển hồi ký …

" Về chia sẻ kinh nghiệm với bạn bè. TH cứ tự nhiên. Nếu bài học cuả mình có hữu ích được cho đời thì mình nên chia sẻ. Có vậy thì xã hội mới tiến bộ và phát triển được. Những gì mình có thể để lại trên đời này thì mình nên để lại."

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CHAPTER 11

 In school, I began to make some new friends. Among them were Nguyen Hieu Trung

and Tran Anh Dung. Trung's family owned a Judo school. The school was very popular

and had a good business. Trung was a third degree black belt himself. Sometimes he

showed me a few moves of Judo. Dung's father was a soldier and was killed in the war.

Dung's mother and sisters worked as maids with very little pay. We liked each other

because we were playful, rebellious, and unpretentious. We expressed freely our

thoughts, and we respected each other regardless of our backgrounds. Everyday we

gathered in the sidewalk coffee stand watching people walking by and laughing about

silly things we saw or experienced in school. On weekends we went to movies or just

hung around town.

 One day during school break, lieutenant Hien came to my house about nine o'clock in

the morning to tutor me as usual. About the same time, my great aunt wanted to go to

market to get meats and vegetables for our meals for the day. After greeting the

lieutenant, my great aunt got on the jeep and signaled the driver to drive away. After

they left, the tutor and I began our studying session. It was only about twenty minutes

after our session started. We saw the driver appear at the gate. I told my tutor that it was

unusual that my great aunt finished doing groceries that fast. Before my tutor and I could

say anything, the driver ran up to us and screamed frantically that my great aunt got

killed. My tutor and I tried to calm the driver down, and at the same time we tried to get

the details of the incident from the driver. After few minutes, the driver told us that on

the way to the market, a car tried to overtake another one from the opposite direction

from his heading. As the car approached closer to the jeep, the driver made a quick

maneuver to avoid the accident. My great aunt was thrown out of the car because she did

not have the seat belt on. She was killed instantly as she hit her head on the road. I could

not believe what I had learned. Another tragedy came to my family again just as we

began to get our lives together. While I stood there overwhelmed and confused, my tutor

started up his motocycle and took the driver back to where my great aunt's body was.

They contacted my father, my sister, and worked with police personnel to take care of the

situation. They asked my father for a place to bury my great aunt because she did not

have a burial lot. My father decided that they could use his lot, which is next to my

mother's tomb, to bury my great aunt. We did not go through a huge funeral ceremony

like we did at our mother's funeral. We tried to get things done quickly, so we could get

our lives back to normal as fast as we could. With all the tragedies that happenened to us

in such a short period of time, we could not afford to lose any more time. After my great

aunt's death, my sister Thanh-Tung took over the responsibility of managing the family.

At the age of 17, she already played the role of a mother, an older sister, a friend, and a

manager in the house. She worked very hard both at school and at home. She followed

the path that my great aunt did. Every morning, she got up and directed all the house

keepers, the cook, and the nanny what to do before she went to school. After school, she

got home to follow up with everybody. Next she started to balance the books. Then she

began to do her homework. She studied late every night. For the first few months, it was

almost unbearable for her, but later on, she began to do much better, and she felt a little

bit easier as time progressed. We tried to get our lives back to normal as much as we

could. And we did manage to survive through all the sudden changes that happened to

us so far.

 To be continued ...