Chapter 25

Graduation day started for Lanh with a trip to her gynecologist. She wanted a checkup to make sure that she was healthy and ready for her wedding night. “I can help you if you’re afraid of the pain,” he said and told her he could “snip” her hymen so her first time would be painless.

“I just want to know if I’m ready to have babies,” replied Lanh. “It’s going to be my husband’s job to take care of that other thing.” She hated being in his office, but it was something that had to be done.

“You’re as ready as you’ll ever be,” said the Doctor, “you’re young and healthy, and my physical exam tells me there’s no reason not to ... other than being a virgin.”

Lanh grinned as she hopped off the exam table. “I intend to take care of that issue in three days.”

“Good luck Mrs. Campbell,” said the doctor as he left to give her privacy.

Still glowing from being called Mrs. Campbell, Lanh met up with Tam in the waiting room and they headed straight for the door. “Good to go?” asked Tam.

“Yeah,” said Lanh, without looking back over her shoulder. “He said that those frat parties that Bao and Kim-ly introduced me to didn’t cause any permanent damage,” as they got in Tam’s beat up Toyota. She gave Tam an innocent, wide-eyed look.

“You are such a brat!” fumed Tam and gave her baby sister a hug in the car. Lanh never would have said anything like that before she fell in love. “What did that boy do you?”

“Nothing ... yet” sighed Lanh.

Later that evening, Lanh was talking to a larger audience. “Hello, my name is Lanh Nguyen. It wasn’t a shock to me to be selected valedictorian, after all, I worked harder and longer than any of you, and earned higher grades than all of you. Most of you don’t know me, but the ones that do know me, know me because you spent my high school years trying to crush my spirit, rape my body, and destroy my relationship with the one man in this school who loves me. You hate me for my size, you hate me for my race, you hate me for my sex. But I earned two letters, I have a perfect GPA, a man who loves me, and scholarship offers from four ivy league universities, so FUCK YOU, I’m leaving you behind me in the dust. Choke on it.”

Lanh looked up at her audience, who stared at her for a moment, then started applauding. Kim-ly actually rose from her seat and hugged Lanh, “It was perfect baby girl, I DARE you to give that one at the ceremony tonight.”

Her audience, composed solely of her brothers, sisters, and Don, surrounded her and congratulated her one last time before they left the hayloft where Lanh held her last practice speech, but she didn’t look happy or even slightly amused from her satirical speech. Huy gave Don a crushing one arm side hug and said, “I don’t know what you did to my baby sister, but I like it. Keep up the good work.”

Trung gave him a shot in the arm and added, “Two years ago she wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouthful, and now, she’d shame a hockey team. It’s amazing.”

“I’ve got a gift,” said Don without humor. When he got to Lanh, she threw her arms around him and began crying. Huge, uncontrollable spasms of sorrow shook her tiny frame, and Don was crying too, holding her tight, and whispering softly, “It’s over em yêu, we beat those bastards, we’re safe now...”

“What the hell?” asked Bao, as he and his brothers watched their baby sister and her fiancé cry. Don slowly led her out into the night, where they could be alone.

“That wasn’t a joke,” said Kim-ly, looking like she was getting ready to cry.

Tam stood in front of the three brothers with a stern scowl. “Everything she said was true, it was from the heart, those assholes dragged her and Don through hell, this was her way of purging the pain.”

“Remember those bruises and black eye Don had when you first met him ice skating?” asked Kim-ly. Her brothers nodded. “That wasn’t from a hockey game, they beat him up for dancing with Lanh, after they first conned him into doing it.”

“They beat him a couple of times,” muttered Tam as Don and Lanh came back in, gathered up their caps, gowns, and honor society ribbons, and headed down the earthen ramp outside. “Remember the wired jaw, the arm in a sling, the knee brace, the broken ribs when you had to help Don pull the dock and the boat out of the water?”

“Don said it was a diving accident,” said Bao.

“Some assholes decided to gang bang your baby sister,” growled Kim-ly. “Don stopped them, and they beat the living fuck out of him.”

“Who was it? I’ll fucking kill the little shit,” roared Trung.

“It was several little shits,” said Kim-ly. “And they stalked him for two years.”

Tam, just a few inches taller than Lanh, planted herself in front of her brothers with an angry glare that held them in check. “Lanh asked him to tell you that it was a diving accident because she knows what you would do. You would go to prison for beating up a teenager.”

“Killing a teenager,” corrected Trung.

“Does má and ba know?” asked Huy.

“Yes, they had to go get Lanh from the hospital after they ran a rape kit on her,” continued Tam. “They can never know it was just a part of the harassment. If they found out that moving to a small town caused Lanh so much pain, it would kill them.”

“She fell in love with a guy that both má and ba approve, even if he isn’t Asian,” said Kim-ly, who was still impressed that her father accepted Don.

“The truth they need to know is that the harassment ended,” said Tam. “I don’t know what you guys really think about Don, and honestly, I don’t care what you think. All you need to know is that your baby sister’s Prince Charming just showed up at the door with her lost glass slipper. Got it?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” said Bao as he and Kim-ly walked out to the car.

“I couldn’t,” said Kim-ly. “If you went to jail it would have broken Lanh’s heart. But if you knew and did nothing...” Kim-ly looked around to see if anyone could hear them. “If you blew her off she would have killed herself.”

“No,” said Bao. “Lanh?”

Before they got into Trung’s car, Kim-ly held her fingers about four inches apart. “She had an aspirin bottle that big packed full of sleeping pills she stole from Mom over the years. If she hadn’t met Don, she would have eaten every one of those pills after that Christmas Dance when they pranked her so bad.”

“God damn,” muttered Bao. He felt horrible. He’s made Lanh’s entire life unhappy, except for the past two years. “How do I make it up to her?”

“Just love her.”

The valedictory address Lanh gave the school was different from the satire she used to purge her demons in the hayloft. She never sank to reminiscing about their time in high school. As far as she was concerned, that was over. She started by thanking her teachers and the staff of the school, and whoever was nice enough to place a milk crate behind the lectern for her to stand on so she could be seen. She spoke about teaching and learning outside of the classroom, of absorbing and sharing the knowledge gained at work and life in general, and how it applies at work and at home.

“ ... and as you are mentoring your new co-workers, and as you teach your children, most importantly, observe them as you teach them, because quite often the lessons they teach you will be more important than the lessons they learned from you.

“In my sophomore year I was given the opportunity to tutor a fellow Woodcutter, and the rewards were incredible. He paid attention to me and went from a D student to an A plus student. At the same time, I paid attention to him and a whole new world opened up to me. I have been involved in the restaurant business my entire life and never thought once about where the food comes from. Now, thanks to my student, and thanks to what he taught me as I was teaching him, I am raising the vegetables, milk, and beef served at my family’s restaurant. At the same time, I found my knowledge of the subjects I tutored to be exponentially greater than ever before. When I told my Grandma Tri that I was going to be your valedictorian she said that she was happy that the student I tutored was a good student so that I could learn from him.”

“What Grandma Tri said to me, was what other people said to me; she just said it in Vietnamese. She said that the best way to learn something is to teach it...” At this point, Lanh’s eyes began misting up. She fought the urge to run into the audience and throw herself at Don. Instead, she went off script. She tore up her three by five cards that contained her talking points and said, “My parents, and teachers, and brothers and sisters all taught me so much, and I can never repay them properly, but my student, the one that taught me so much more ... in return he only asked me for my hand ... and I said yes,” she said holding up her left hand, displaying her ring. “We still have so much to teach each other, and we have a lifetime together to do it.” As she stepped back from the lectern, she waved to her graduating class.

Never in the history of that high school had a valedictory address been ended in such a fashion, a mousy little Asian girl, the only Asian student in the school, announced her nuptials to conclude her valedictory address, an amused sense of mild shock run through the audience before a rousing standing ovation. During the ovation, Lanh shook hands with the standing and applauding members of the School Board who were seated on stage, all wearing cap and gown. Several of them were wearing the octagonal tam to show they were PhDs.

Paul Mach took the podium. “Miss Nguyen, I need you back here.” Lanh looked shocked. This clearly wasn’t scripted. She doesn’t do well with anything impromptu. She walked back to the lectern where Mr. Mach moved the milk crate to the side of the lectern. Automatically, Lanh stepped up on the milk crate and forced a smile on to her lips. The audience chuckled. Mr. Mach continued. “Miss Nguyen, isn’t it true that the debate team took State Class A championships for the past four years?”

He held the microphone to her, and she meekly said, “Yes.”

After applause, he then asked, “For each of those four years, who was the captain of the debate team?”

Again, he held the microphone to her until she meekly said, “I was.”

After more enthusiastic applause, he asked, “Lanh what does your team call themselves?”

She blushed and giggled, then said, “Lanh Sharks.” Now there was laughter, applause, and a chant of “Sharks! Sharks! Sharks!” from her team members.

Mr. Mach continued. “This year our swim team had their best year in two decades. We had a boy and girl swimmer both medal in the regional championship in Eden Prairie, and both took gold at the state class A championship at Brooklyn Park, a first for the Grant Valley Woodcutters! And both of those swimmers were personally coached by who, Lanh?”