A few years ago I was in need of a seamstress to shorten and hem up some trousers. There was a tailor shop a couple of doors down from the barbershop which I frequented, so I dropped in hoping to get my trousers fixed. The lady who owned the shop was a most friendly and pleasant Vietnamese lady who turned out to be quite talkative. She is a year older than me.
It must have been some twenty minutes before I had the chance to bring up the reason for my visit. “Yes, I can do that for you, brother,” she said. From that point forward, I have been her brother. My wife became her sister.
Brother, you go Vietnam before?
she once asked. I told her I had spent three years in Vietnam.
“You ever go Mekong Delta?” she asked. “Yes, I spent a tour in Bac Lieu with Advisory Team 51 working with the 21st Vietnamese Infantry Division,” I replied.
“Oh, my ex-husband was in the Vietnam army in Bac Lieu, too!" she replied.
My new sister then went on to tell me and my wife her whole life story. When she graduated from high school, her father planned for her to attend college. She protested saying, “Father, I don’t want to go to college. I want to go to a tailor and dressmaking school. My father was happy because he was going to save a lot of money.”
”And when did you move here?” I asked.
"Well, brother, my husband came first. I stayed in Bac Lieu with my baby boy and two young daughters. But my husband started living with another woman in Pennsylvania and forgot about his baby boy, two daughters and me. “
My wife, Malina, and I could only listen as she kept laying out her whole life story.
“My sister was immigrating to America and she asked my two daughters, my baby boy and me to go with her to her interview at the American consulate. She told the interviewer I was her sister and wanted me and my kids to be added to her petition and immigrate with her because we did not have anyone to care for us. The interviewer asked me if I was married and I said yes.”
"And where is your husband?" asked the interviewer.
"He is already in America living in Pennsylvania," I answered.
"Then why doesn't he petition you to join him?"
"I don't know why. That's why my sister wants to petition me," I answered.
"Well, give me your husband's phone number in Pennsylvania and his name so I can call him and talk to him," said the interviewer.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't have his phone number or address," I said, "but I had my husband's address and phone number. I did not want to share with interviewer because I did not want to make trouble for my husband."
"Then I cannot help you," he said. "You need to go to the waiting area while I process your sister's petition."
"It broke my heart, brother," she said. "I went to the waiting area with my kids to wait for my sister. But my sister kept begging the interviewer to accept me for the petition because I didn't have anyone else to help me and my kids."
"But why won't her husband petition her?" asked the interviewer.
"Really, she doesn't want to tell you, but her husband married another woman in America, and he is not helping my sister or her three kids. She has no one else but me to help them," my sister told the interviewer.
"The interviewer was a good man, and he changed his mind and agreed to add my two daughters, baby boy and me to her petition."
"Go ask her to come back in," he told my sister.
"I walked back in and the interviewer gave me some paperwork to sign, and my baby boy, my two very young daughters and I joined my sister and came to America. I got jobs as a seamstress part-time, cleaning offices and working in a restaurant and saved enough to send my daughters and my boy to college. They all graduated from college and are all very successful now and married. One of my daughters is working for George P. Bush, Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office and nephew of President George W. Bush. My kids helped me save enough money to open up my own tailor shop. We had a very hard life when we first came here to America, but now we have a very happy life. My ex-husband is sick, and his wife is not taking care of him. He wanted to come to see his son and daughters, but they don't want anything to do with him."
My new Vietnamese sister never remarried and spends most of her day at her tailor shop which now added laundry and dry-cleaning services. On Christmas day last year, she didn't have anything to do, so she opened up her shop thinking someone might need some work done on their Christmas dress clothes. In the early evening, she saw two black persons coming to her front shop door. She greeted them at the door and asked them to come in while she stayed by the door. They came into her shop and brandishing a gun demanded she give them all her money from the register. She bolted out the door and ran a few doors down for help. Someone called the police, but the two black persons had already fled. “I was scared, brother, but God helped me and saved me," she told me.
Two days later she was watching TV and saw the two black persons being arrested in Killeen some sixty-five miles from Austin, Texas. They were attempting to rob a store in the Killeen area." When our daughter went to see her for some work to be done on one of her gowns, my tailor told her how an established customer took her a gun so she could protect herself. She refused the gun saying, "No, I'm sorry, but I cannot do that. I cannot use a gun."
"But, you know what, dear?" she told our daugther. "I have lots of pepper spray. My customers bring me pepper spray, so I keep alot of it here for my protection. I take pepper spray but not a gun. Also, my son installed security cameras. So I feel safe now, but I still keep the door locked and open it only when a customer rings my doorbell."
My wife and I go see our Vietnamese sister anytime we need work done on our clothes, and she has fitted our daughter's Prom and military JROTC ball gowns. Our new sister is an excellent tailor, and my wife and I have always pleaded with her never to retire. We need her!
©Copyright texan@atudemi.com - January 2022