Faulty or False

personal essay, immigrant story, truth and lies, family

Fueled by the knowledge that my step-grandpa was going to die soon, I entered an uneasy interview with my mom and the egotistical man who abandoned his family and who also has Alzheimer’s.

When it became clear to me that my step-grandpa’s cancer would kill him, I felt the constraints of time clamping down on me more than ever. Spurred by the pressure of my maternal step-grandfather’s impending death, I went with my mom to visit her biological father—known to me as Gonggong—and his third wife. On the ride to his apartment, I learned he had Alzheimer’s, which strengthened my resolve to interview him while it was still possible.

The interview was conducted in Cantonese, which I understand more than speak, so I mostly listened and recorded our words so I could keep his answers for future reference. I was captivated by his story of a young underdog trying to carve out a place for himself in an unyielding world. Gonggong grew up in famine-ravaged southern China in the 1930s but at the age of 15, he left his family behind—walking, hitchhiking, and sailing over a thousand miles away to find better prospects in Vietnam. 

Although his words spun a web of sympathy that I could feel myself falling into, I had to keep in mind Mom’s warning—he often stretched the truth or outright lied for his own benefit. However, I couldn’t find signs of embellishment in the story of his travels. He knew every city he had passed through and what mode of transportation he had used to get there—and I verified his route by tracing it on a map. He remembered exactly how profitable his early business ventures in Vietnam were—in short, they weren’t—and how after ten years of laboring for his friends, he was still so poor, he could only feed his first daughter a mash made of cheap tea and cookie crumbs donated by a relative. As his life’s story began to overlap with my mom’s, however, his version of the tale didn’t always match hers. The discrepancies were excusable; forgetting the type of cookie he would bring home for Mom, and whether he came home every day or just sometimes. Perhaps it was Alzheimer’s, or maybe, it was simply that time had eaten away at his memories. Maybe, even, my mom was wrong, and her animosity had altered her memories to make her believe he bought cheaper cookies or that he wasn’t around often.

Just as my mom thought the interview was ending, I asked Gonggong to recount his split from my grandma. “Are you sure?” Mom interrupted. She was wary, having heard him tell so many variations of this story, each more self-serving than the last, but I insisted. I didn’t care if his stories were warped; I was here to hear his truth, not the truth. 

“She left me because I was poor,” he said, curtly. He looked to my mom, waiting for the next question.

But my mom turned to me instead, snapping, “He’s lying.”

“Yeah, I know.” I said, but I had barely gotten the three words out before Gonggong began to rant about my grandma’s illiterate, dirt-poor family, living in the slums, and how my grandma’s dad had practically extorted him with her bride price. 

Mom had no plans to listen. She turned away from Gonggong, pinning his third wife under a biting glare. “How quickly did he run to your house? Did your father let a fickle husband in?” 

Shaking her head at her younger self, the third wife proclaimed her regret—“I should’ve known better than to elope with a playboy!” The two of them spent the rest of the interview cackling about the egos and faults of men. 

As noon approached, my stomach began to noisily count down the minutes until lunchtime. Mom gave Gonggong a tray of Japanese takeout—when we had picked it up earlier, she had happily explained that it was the first meal she’d ever bought for him and a symbol of her forgiveness. It was cheap and we weren’t staying for lunch, but the simple gesture was already so important to her that I couldn’t help but smile as she presented it to him. We got up to leave, but then Mom stopped in the doorway. Looking directly into her father’s eyes, she suddenly spoke with ice in her voice—he wouldn’t get away with a gift; he would be left with the voice of a daughter who’d grown up hating him. “Don’t try to lie to me. Don’t make yourself the victim. Don’t think you can fool me. I remember the table you flipped. I remember the red handprints you left on my mom’s throat when the two of you fought. I remember you asking me to leave with you instead of staying with Mom.” Her face made an expression I’d never seen before—head tilted, eyes scrunched and glossy, lips quivering. “I wanted to go with you. I remembered the cookies you always gave me. I loved you more.” Now she seemed to be pleading, but that couldn’t be. Mom didn’t ever plead. “But I had to choose my mom. Between you and her, she was the one that would stay with me forever.”

I knew the story. Mom was four. Her siblings had gone to school, but she was too young to join them, so she had hidden around the corner and watched her parents fight, although she barely understood what was going on at the time. Gonggong was cheating on my grandma, though that was expected of Vietnamese men back then. But my grandma wouldn’t have it. In the fight that followed, he almost strangled her, but her brother intervened and forced Gonggong out of the house. The moment he was out, he ran off to live with his lover, his current wife.

Now the apartment was silent, still. Only my eyes moved, flicking between the people in the room. Mom stood, half turned to the door she had intended to walk through, half turned to confront the father that abandoned her. Her clenched fists still strained, blanching at her anger, sharp nails carving crescent moons into her palms. Mom held a shocking amount of anger beneath the surface. I silently cheered her on. She deserved this moment. Gonggong deserved to hear this. 

Gonggong shook slightly. His eyes were unfocused—or perhaps he was just unwilling to meet Mom’s gaze. The muscles of his spindly old legs twitched, and his feet were drowning in his large mustard-colored socks. Finally, Mom grabbed her purse and I lurched to follow her out the door, wondering if Gonggong was really confused, or just using his poor memory as an excuse to ignore the truth.

The silence continued as we drove home. But the memory of Mom’s outburst kept replaying in my head—“But I had to choose my mom. She was the one that would stay with me forever.”—until I quietly remarked, “But your mom left too. She fell in love with my step-grandpa and left to live with him in his village of red dirt.”

Mom sighed. “You want to know about your step-grandpa?” She didn’t like to talk about him. She didn’t want me to visit him in the hospital either. “I’ll tell you someday.”

I had gone into Gonggong’s interview expecting a few short words on traveling from China to Vietnam. Instead, he shared decades’ worth of memory—worthy of hearing, even if some parts were faulty or false. 

My step-grandpa died 16 days after I interviewed Gonggong. Just moments before he died, I had been staring up at the ceiling of my room, wishing I’d asked him about his past when I’d had the chance. Maybe he wouldn’t have given an interesting answer and maybe he would’ve lied. But it would have been worth it.