Excerpt from The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The south
May 1956

1. Leaving Home

Right after my high school graduation in 1956, I found myself on a bus headed north to a small coastal town where a summer teaching position awaited me. Outside the windows, the ratty fringe of Saigon slipped away— dirt lanes and sewage creeks banked by weathered shacks and smoldering fires. Women stooped with age swept smooth the bare ground in front of their homes. Naked toddlers stood in doorways, knuckling sleep from their eyes. Fresh incense on roadside altars sent tendrils of prayers heavenward. Above the mottled tin roofs, early sun flicked through the foliage. A breeze carried the grassy scent of paddy water. I was twenty-one and striking out on my own for the first time. I had a suitcase with two pairs of slacks, three white shirts, underwear, a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and a comb. My first week's wages would afford me another pair of trousers and a shirt. It wouldn't be appropriate for the students to notice their new teacher's meager wardrobe.

Passengers outnumbered seats on the bus, but the driver kept on picking up more people along the way, the ticket-man happily pocketing their fares. The bag-man roped the luggage together in a great camel-hump on the roof: bamboo cages of ducks and chickens, wooden crates, boxes, rucksacks, bundles of fresh vegetables. A number of people spent their whole trip standing or sitting on their valises crammed in the aisle. Some used the bus as a local shuttle service to nearby villages.

It was a Friday, so there were plenty of travelers, too many toddlers for a peaceful journey. Somewhere up front, a baby wailed relentlessly. A ruckus broke out at the rear. A rooster had gotten loose and half the bus erupted into flurries of hands, feathers, and screams. The owner leaped over two rows of seats, caught his rooster by the neck, and landed in the lap of a merchant woman. She said, "Thank you, Buddha, but what's a granny like me to do with two roosters?" Trader-women hooted. A plump matron said, "I'll take the big one, he's not so bad looking." Another chortled and said, "The feathery one has more stud potential." They cackled, and the man, red-faced, crept back to his seat with his bird tucked safely in a sack. The women continued cajoling as though they were sitting at home. Their cheerful mood was infectious, and I felt rather buoyant, even though I was wedged between an old man, who squatted barefoot in his seat, and the window. But having the window was enough for me to consider this as a propitious beginning. Lightheaded with freedom, I felt as though I was flying on newly discovered wings.

It seemed so effortless, as if I had, by receiving a diploma, strolled through a magical portal, and left behind my whole family crowded in a shed of a house. The ease by which this job came to me made it seemed like destiny. Things had been difficult since we fled Hanoi two years ago, so I loved feeling that I was at last on the right path. All I did was answer the first ad I saw in the Saigon Daily. It was a math and science position at a private school. After a few letters, I was granted an interview. The principal came to my family's noodle shop. Mr. Thinh Nguyen was a short, thick-bodied man in his late forties, with a small hump on his back, which he immediately explained was from a motorcycle accident. Despite this handicap, he was elegant in his movements and had the graceful glide-walk of a short-legged man. He smoked small French-style cigarettes made in Vietnam.

By our accents, we knew we were both northerners. As it turned out, he had studied in Hanoi and roomed not far from our old neighborhood. I told him my family were refugees, arriving two years ago under the Geneva Accord, which gave the Vietnamese Communists the northern half of the country. He said he had to leave his home a few years before then. Like most refugees, he didn't talk about why he fled or what he left behind, and that was fine with me. Everyone had lost something. No one willingly chose an impoverished exile, dislocated from his birth-village and the spirits of his ancestors. I respected his silence and he did not press me for details of our plight. I appreciated the courtesy. Looking around at the rancid hovel in which my entire family lived and worked—the crude tables, the dirt floor, the windowless loft—I thought it would sound vaunted or, perhaps, blatantly false if I tried to explain who we once were, or spoke of our lineage. It wasn't shame; we were beyond that.

Excerpted from The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham. Copyright © 2008 by Andrew X. Pham. Excerpted by permission of Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.