Ecole Française Colette on Ho Xuan Huong Avenue in Saigon is a massive two-story adobe structure. It is painted orange and has green wooden shutters. Beyond the green metal arched gates, the courtyard is covered in pea gravel. There is a bust of some unknown man’s head on a stone pillar in the middle of the courtyard.

When I was a student there, it was only a one-story building. And I don’t remember it being painted a cheerful orange but rather a faded and jaundiced horse manure color. The hallways between the classrooms were always dark and scary. On the occasional few times that I was allowed to use the bathroom, I would run quickly and squat over the latrine, hoping for fast release because noises echoing from the ceramic tile walls were surely from the dead, as legend had it.   

Colette, before it was a school, was a hospital. The lore was that so many soldiers died there at the hospital that their spirits still haunted the building. Some were benign yet others were to be feared because they had died violently and were seeking revenge.

The war in Vietnam precipitated that some schools be combined or shut down. Colette was not shuttered but they changed to a two-session school day. Some students attended the morning session and some, like me, went in the afternoons. 

Sometimes I got to school with our nanny, on a pedicab, or cyclo. My best days were when my favorite cousin would come pick me up and take me on the back of his motorcycle. I still can’t believe that my mother allowed that. But it was exhilarating for me as a kid to be on a real motorcycle, not one of those putt putt mopeds.

School went from two in the afternoon to six in the evening. I was usually picked up by my mother or my nanny. 

A week after my friend Suzanne, who had been kidnapped and had gotten part of her ear chopped off, their wires got crossed and neither my mother or my nanny came and got me. 

I waited in the schoolyard with all the other students. But no sign of them. The number of kids dwindled and the custodian came and ushered the few us left out of the yard so he could lock the gates.

Outside of the gate, I waited with some older girls remaining. As the group slowly thinned out and the sky darkened, the cold of fear started creeping up my limbs. I approached an older girl and begged. “Big sister, can you stay with me? I don’t know where my mother is.” She agreed and comforted me but eventually her ride came and she left too. 

I was alone in front of these huge metal gates in the dark. The same gates which kept the ghosts confined to the building. The same gates where some random criminal had dropped off my friend Suzanne with part of her ear missing. The same gates where Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk had self-immolated in protest of the government’s persecution of Buddhists.

I was paralyzed with fear that I would be kidnapped next. There were stories all over Saigon about what criminals were willing to do for the ransom. The general consensus was that it was a lucrative business for them and they were not moved by pleas of mercy from their victims.

I had heard talk of people losing fingers, hands, and toes, but seeing for myself Suzanne’s left over ear made it hard to breathe that evening, while I was alone in the dark. 

I started to walk away from the school towards the direction of one of my aunt’s house. The sidewalk was completely pitch black. I was sobbing with every step. I hugged my schoolbag to my chest to stop shaking. I concentrated all my senses to pick up any odd sounds or movement and prepared myself for escape should I need it. I prayed my legs would work. I remember being startled and then relieved when I walked into some overhanging limbs and the foliage brushed my face. 

I was desolate. I felt abandoned and unloved. How could they forget me? Fear was joined with bitterness and deep hurt. I had always felt that I was the least favored child of the four. Would they pay the ransom if someone took me? Would I be sold to some codger to be a child bride? Would I become a prostitute like my tutor was always implying?

When I finally entered my aunt’s house, still crying, I wasn’t met with hugs or relief. That’s not the way they did things. She did, however, put a large bowl of rice with meat and veggies in front of me and said, “Eat!” 

And I knew people DID care for me.