There is a large patch of land on the
corner of 65th street and Lemon Hill Avenue that once was purchased
with the intention of building a single family swelling on it. It is home to a community garden, still
watered by one hose that is attached to a neighboring house. It’s filled with an assortment of herbs, cabbages,
Chayote, and bamboo and serves as a place of healing that has brought a whole
community together.
It is very hard to see all of this as you
pass it on the street, so it deserves explanation.
It all started with one man, Pho, who eyed
it every day on his way to the bus stop.
He saw the lot’s potential, rather than the lot itself, thinking of home
and the farm he once had there.
Pho had fled Viet Nam in 1979 with his wife
and newborn son, Ba. They escaped on a
boat bound for Malaysia, where the driver promised paradise in two days for the
equivalent of a years’ salary. Pho paid
it, but two days into the journey he realized he had been deceived by the boat
driver. He didn’t seem to know the
proper route and had never been on the open sea. By day five the refugees onboard were without
water and many became sick, including his own son, Ba, who died on-board. The sea accepted his little body after the boat's alpha male demanded his removal.
“Let him go to heaven, Pho!” the boat’s loud
and domineering Le screamed. “His ghost will
turn this boat over and drown us all if you keep holding on to him!”
With tears and a broken spirit, Pho’s own
wife Lo let the lifeless body be swallowed up by the waves, knowing the
violence that would follow her and her husband if she didn’t. The women on-board hugged her and wept aloud,
crying out to their family spirits to help them find passage to somewhere. Cold and without hope, Pho wished that the
sea would take him, too.
Instead, a ship carrying large metal boxes caught sight
of them and blew a horn so loud it sounded like a thousand crows in one
house. That afternoon, a plastic boat
with a motor met them, throwing them a tow rope and a gigantic thermos of water. They all drank for the first time in a day
and a half, although Le drank most of the water and his wife only slightly
less.
Within days they were on a US Navy ship
that fed them rice and water. Things
looked hopeful for Pho, and he thanked God for accepting his son into heaven
and giving them this blessing. His wife
was still inconsolable and blamed him for their departure from her beloved Vietnam and little Ba’s death.
Now Pho worked in State Government in
Sacramento. He had trained for two years
to be a translator and he was happily installed in the Department of Motor
Vehicles. People around him were
impressed at how quick he was to learn things and how accurate his work
was. He worked tirelessly without
complaining and earned many chances to promote, which he did.
In Pho’s heart, this new country with so many
opportunities was precisely why he and his family made the journey here. Within four years he had saved enough money
to buy a home with two bathrooms and a big kitchen. Lo approved and asked if her mother could be
sent for. Within two weeks, she was living
with them.
Pho and Lo loved their American house, but
the backyard was all cement with a swimming pool. Pho convinced his wife and Mother-in-law that
it would be good for drawing friends and for the neighborhood.
He was right.
Lo and Pho were like magnets in their community and made friends with many neighbors, most of them Vietnamese. Even so, Pho could see that Lo had never
fully recovered from the tumultuous journey.
She was a shell of a woman, even when they entertained crowds in their
home. Even when she made the shredded
pork and cabbage that she served with special pride. Pho could see that she was still only
surviving this new land; her son had carried the secret of her light to the
depths of the ocean with him.
“I have seen a place today,” Pho told her
shortly after moving into their new home.
“That looks like it may be a good place for a garden.”
“Hmmm.”
Lo was busy putting their new baby, Roseanne, to sleep. She was no more than eight months old and Lo
was already pregnant with another.
“Its soil is beautiful. I believe the loam is very good for leafy
vegetables and herbs.”
“Hmmm.”
“Perhaps you and your mother can visit it.”
“Perhaps.”
“And if we ask the neighbors we may even
find out who owns it.”
Lo did not answer, but Pho could see a
sparkle escape her eyes.
The following Saturday, Pho announced to
his mother-in-law and his wife that he was going to visit the patch of land on
the corner to see if he could find out anything. Lo surprised him by saying she was coming
with him.
They walked in silence, as was their
custom, and finally came to the piece of land – a dirty street lot with plastic
grocery bags and bottles embedded on its surface.
“I will go to this house,” Pho pointed at a
large blue house next door. Lo nodded,
but didn’t move.
Pho knocked and a small girl answered. “Good morning, is your mother home?”
The girl smiled. “I’m the mother.” Pho smiled, repentant.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t worry,” the girl said. Her hair was the color of the light people
and it was near her face in a fancy braid.
“Everyone does that.”
“My name is Pho Phuoc, and I live there,”
Pho pointed to his house, not visible and over half a mile away. “There on Francine Drive. I would like to know if you own this lot next
door.”
The girl raised her eyebrows and puckered
her lips. “No, I don’t. My husband and I just rent this house. I’m wondering if the man we rent from owns that lot.”
“I am wondering if we would be able to
clean up this lot and make a community garden…”
“Oh, what a charming idea!” The girl
interrupted Pho, but it made him smile.
It was good that she didn’t object and perhaps she could convince the
lot owners that a community garden would be a good idea.
“My wife and I are farmers,” Pho continued,
even though he had not used that description of himself in years. He had forgotten how to see himself as a
farmer.
“I see,” the girl turned her head to cries
from another room. Pho handed her a
business card that he had brought along with him. He had even written his home number on the
back.
“Please, will you ask this man if he knows
who owns this property to call me?”
“I sure will! I’m Laura, by the way.” The young girl smiled and held her hand out
to Pho, who looked at it, then shook it.
“I am Pho.”
It took two weeks for the phone to ring
about the lot, and it was Lo who answered and didn’t know what was wrong. When her husband came home she explained to
him that she received a phone call from a man who kept repeating things in
English to her and she couldn’t understand.
As Pho pushed the magic *69, and the number that called appeared. Pho wrote it down and redialed. Lo watched him closely throughout the exchange.
“Hello!”
An unhappy man answered.
“Hello, this is the person you called
today,” Pho said, in respectful tones. “My
wife doesn’t speak English.”
“Is this Pho Foo-yok?” The man seemed to be
shouting.
“Yes, this is Pho Phuoc.”
“Yeah, don’t you dare touch my property!”
“Are you the owner of the property on 65th
and Lemon Hill?”
“I sure am and you are not gonna lay any
hand on my property, you got it?”
Pho was too stunned to say much. “Yes.”
There was a click on the other end of the
line and Pho realized that the angry man had hung up. As he replaced the reciver in its charger, Lo asked him what was said, worried that it was her fault that the owner was
angry. As Pho explained, Lo shook her
head.
“If only I spoke English,” she said,
quietly.
“No,” he said. “The man is angry for no reason.”
There was silence between Pho and his wife for two days. Every time he walked to the bust stop Pho saw the dormant land there, waiting to be a garden. It could save Lo, he thought. If only...
A year later Pho could look at the lot no more and decided to call the angry owner back.
“If you allow us to farm this piece of
land, we will make it better and cleaner and you can take it back anytime.”
The angry man seemed to be thinking about it, then he answered: “I don’t want a bunch of people on that
property. It’s my retirement.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Who do you say is going to farm that land?” The angry
man asked.
“My wife and her mother.”
“What about you?”
“I work during the day.”
“What do you do?”
“I work for the DMV.”
There was silence again.
“Is there a way I can meet with you?” The
angry man asked.
“You can come over to my house and meet us,”
Pho said.
“Alright, give me the address.”
Pho stuttered to remember his address and
gave it to the man, who hung up after telling him he’d be right over. There was frantic preparation of tea and
cookies. Pho's mother-in-law ran around cleaning surface areas and quieting the babies. Lo stood stunned and waved her hands excitedly at Pho, asking if she should change her clothes.
The man showed up in a large van with a
wheelchair lift that removed him from it. Pho and Lo observed his carefully as he wheeled himself up the driveway, dressed in a suit with one eye covered by a patch.
“Come in!” Pho said, bowing slightly. The angry man shook his head and tried to smile.
“Chair won’t make it through that
door. We can talk here.” Pho guessed that the man had been wounded in an accident. It was unfortunate that someone
so young would be in a chair that walked for him. He saw much of this back home after the war.
The angry man waited while Lo brought out a kitchen chair for her husband to sit in. She stood next to him as he and the angry man talked for an hour
about the land. It belonged to the Man’s
father and was left to him when the father went to heaven. The man now worried about the area and he
knew that the field was no more than “a place to get drunk or smoke dope” – and
he worried about it becoming a nuisance.
“Why don’t you sell it?” Pho asked. He secretly wished he could afford to buy it.
“It won’t sell in this neighborhood now.”
“Will you lease it to us?” Pho said this
impulsively. With a home of his own and
two small daughters, there was no extra money to pay a lease. Even so, he had to resuscitate his wife
somehow; he could see that the prospect of farming had brought her back to life.
“Nah,” the angry man’s face seemed to
lighten. “If you clean up that place and
keep the riff-raff off, I guess I’ll let you grow stuff there. But I’ll tell you, the minute I see anything
illegal or suspect or even something I don’t like…”
“No, no, no…”
“…I’ll shut that thing down.”
When Pho later translated the whole conversation for his wife, he saw the girl he
knew from the Gia Định Province, tanned and parched and
smiling with her hat hanging from her thin neck. It took her only a few minutes to gather the
few gardening tools they had together. The following morning she was up before dawn; she and her
mother strapping the girls to their backs. They happily began clearing away the surface
rubble from their new farm.
Within days they were ready to plow and it don’t
take long for them to have an audience.
The white girl from next door brought a long hose to them and offered
her own water to make to the process easier.
Irrigation took only two days and then came the planting.
Tending the garden breathed fresh life into Lo, who was energized from the process and came home to do housework and cooking even better than she had done before. She and her mother had a routine and grew accustomed to unannounced visits from the man in the wheelchair. Once, when visiting, she saw him smile.
In the first harvest, the women realized that they had planted too many bitter
melons for one family to use, so they shared them with grateful neighbors who decided to celebrate the garden with a party. They all made Canh
Cua soup, where each neighbor contributed one ingredient.
Even the angry man attended. “You know I know Viet Nam, I bet you didn’t
know that, did you?” he said to the Pho at the party.
“You know my country?” Pho was pleasantly surprised at this fact.
“Yeah, I did a tour there!”
“You did a tour?” Pho realized that the angry man in the
wheelchair had fought against the communists that expelled him and Lo from
their home. This must be how he got the
wheelchair… “Ahh, I see.” Pho saddened
and the angry man tried to cheer him up.
“Yah, it was a heck of a place.”
Pho nodded again. It was glorious in his growing up days; he
had even heard the land had recaptured some
of this glory recently, but he couldn’t
be sure without seeing for himself.
“You know, I don’t even know your name. What is your name?” Pho asked him after awhile.
“Neil.”
“Hey everybody!” Pho called out, then again in
Vietnamese, “Tôi có thể có sự chú ý của bạn!”
After the party quieted, amidst the sipping of
the bitter melon soup, Pho raised his
glass and smiled. “I want to lift my
glass to Neil, a very generous man!”
The party lifted their glasses to toast him and
Neil was flabbergasted to the point of embarrassment. The party continued and Pho and Neil
exchanged glances.
“Last time I tell you anything,” Neil said,
trying to be angry.
Pho knew better now:
Neil needed the healing power of the garden as much as he and Lo did.
