Catch the Water Buffalo

I’m teaching Ben how to drive in his spotless car. Dust-free plastic flowers hang from the rear-view mirror. Catholic Social Services in Charlotte gave Ben the 15-year-old Volvo, so he could drive the other men in his family around.  Only 23, he must guide his older nephew as well as the younger.

Ben and the others are Bunong, one of the 26 Montagnard tribes from the central highlands of Vietnam.  The French, America’s predecessors in Vietnam, called them montagnards because of their mountain origin. Like most Montagnards, Ben is short, with a broad face and flat nose. His black hair lies in a fringe across his forehead. Every weekday morning, I teach Ben English in a little apartment in west Charlotte, just off Wilkinson Boulevard, with 42 other refugees.  Ben often comes in holding hands with one of the other young men.

Although North Carolina has many Montagnards, Ben and the others are the first Bunong.  Each tribe has its own language. There are no English-Bunong dictionaries. He has the photocopied primer that they used to study English in the Cambodian camps.  The primers provide translations of commonly used phrases.  They can say, “Quick!  Catch the water buffalo,” “The rice is high in the fields” and “The elephants are angry at the rain.”  I teach them how to say things such as, “Where is the break room” and “Uh-oh! The copier is broken.”  Ben really likes the phrase “uh-oh,” which is easily mastered, covering a multitude of sins.

He and the others don’t yet have the words to explain how they came to the United States, so with gestures and pictures, they acted out the story of the three weeks they walked over the Vietnamese mountains.  By twos and threes, mostly young men, sometimes whole families, they left their longhouses, coming together on the path through the jungle, until groups of 70 or more walked at night, sleeping during the day.  When the Bunong crossed into Cambodia, they settled in refugee camps.  Their limbo ended a year later, when they arrived at 1 a.m. on July 13th in Los Angeles.  All 43 students in my class know the exact time and date.
“Why did you come to the United States?”  I asked.

“Free,” Ben replied.

Ben worries.  He takes jokes badly. After Ben had learned some English, he brought in a driver’s manual and asked me to make a tape for him.  When I handed him the tape, he asked,

“How much?”  I laughed and said $10.  The next day he gave me a new $10 bill.

“Oh, no,” I said, “That was a joke.  It was free.”  He didn’t come to class the next day.  But he must have forgiven me, because for a couple of weeks I would see him walking around the apartment complex in his slippers and Hello Kitty T-shirt, listening to his Walkman, and hear, “No right turn, one way, pedestrian crossing.”  I offered to take him on a driving lesson.  Ben looked very concerned.

The next day, he returned, saying, “Vietnam woman no drive, woman no drink coffee.”  I realized that I was something of a floozy, or appeared to have sexual identity problems, driving to class every day with my mug of coffee.

I tried to reassure Ben.

“Here in America, it’s OK for women to drive.  It’s OK for women to drink coffee.”

“OK?” he asked.

“OK,” I answered.

“OK,” he said.  “You teach me drive.”

So now we are in Ben’s car and nearly out of gas.  I wonder whether he has been waiting to get gas until I can go with him.  Fortunately the gas station is only a block away on Wilkinson.  We drive to the gas station very slowly.  Ben has a definite antipathy for curbs, so we coast down the center of the road.  He appears to be following a different philosophy of driving, one where courtesy dictates that he make a turn incrementally, telegraphing his intentions with the widest possible sweeps of the wheel. He knows oncoming traffic will stop.  I practice yoga breathing.

Ben pulls up to the pumps and turns off the engine.  He gets out and studies the pumps, hesitating.  He finally chooses a gas and begins to pump.  I think he is pumping premium into his old Volvo, but I am a woman.  I’m pretty sure that women don’t tell men what gas to use in Vietnam.  Ben finishes and heads in to pay.  I know the man inside can see how much Ben owes, and I know Ben knows the words for money, so I stay in the car.  I resist the urge to buy some coffee to go.  Ben would not like the trash in his car.

Ben comes out of the little store and gets into the car.  He turns the key.  Nothing.  He tries it again.  There is no sound, not even a click.  He pops the hood and we get out.  Neither of us knows what the problem is, but we suspect it’s in the engine rather than the trunk. He looks intently at the engine to save face, and I look, too, to be helpful.  A man in a flannel shirt and blue jeans leaves the store as we gaze on.  In a second I take his measure – a man who can work with his hands, or at least looks that way.

“Excuse me.  My friend’s car won’t start.  Do you know anything about cars?”  For a moment, I wonder whether Ben thinks I know all men at the gas station or whether he is aghast that I am yelling to a strange man.

“Sure, let me take a look.”  Our flannelled friend joins us under the hood.  “It’s your battery.  See that corrosion?  Let’s move the car over there, and I’ll see what I can do.”

The man and Ben push the car while I steer, and we get it into a parking space by the side of the lot.  Our new friend drives his truck over.  When he gets out he has a couple of socket wrenches in his right hand. I congratulate myself on choosing a man who travels with tools.

“Your terminals are really corroded, but I think if we clean some of the crud and really crank that nut down, you’ll be able drive it.”  He knocks some of the fluff off, and tries to tighten the nut with a wrench.  “These are metric,” he says.  “I need another wrench.”

He walks back to his truck and lifts out the mother of all socket wrench sets.  It’s a yard wide, and when he opens it, we see dozens of wrenches, all sizes.  We gape, impressed.  I wonder whether Ben believes all American men have such riches in their vehicles. Ben takes a step closer, peeking over my shoulder. I feel his breath.

The man reaches for a wrench on the second row, and tries it on the terminal.  This wrench fits perfectly, and he makes a few hard rotations.  I admire his precision, his unerring selection of the exact size needed from the vast array, his ability to tighten the nut without stripping the threads.  Then he bangs the hell out of the terminal.

“Uh-oh,” Ben says.

“Of course, you can’t get it off now, but you’ll be OK for a while. Start it up,” the man says. Ben gets in and turns the key.  The engine comes to life again.

“Thank you so much,” I tell him.  “How long do you think it will run?”

“Oh, months,” he says.  “You’re lucky you ran into a mechanic.”  The man closes up his mammoth wrench set, and puts it into his truck bed.
I thank him again and get in the car. Ben races the engine as we sit for a few minutes.

“What he have?” Ben asks.

“The tool? He used a wrench. Wrench,” I say.

“Wrench. Wrench,” he repeats.

We head to the abandoned strip mall across the street to practice turning and parking.  This will be our first and last lesson together. I don’t know whether Ben is too uncomfortable learning from a woman, or whether this particular outing has been too eventful. In a week or two, our English class will be over. Ben will get a job at a doughnut shop in Charlotte. On his third try, he will get his driver’s license. When I see him in a year, he will be driving the meticulously kept Volvo, careening with young men. But now in the empty parking lot, we see two of his friends walking back from an errand.  They wave and laugh, and we stop. Ben rolls the window down and talks rapidly. The only word I know is “wrench.” He puts the car in drive.  His friends squat on a concrete barrier, knees akimbo, like frogs by a pond. As Ben drives with his grand gestures of the steering wheel, and some double pumping of the pedals, I think about our good fortune. We lurch and whirl across the broken asphalt, the strip mall a blur.

~Kristin Sherman