The Girl in the Picture

Penguin Books

Chapter One

    KIM EASED BACK A CORNER OF THEbedroom window curtains. Only fromthere could she see signs of life outside. The windows of theliving room looked at the brick wall of the house next door.Though a skylight in that room made the concession to light, thefeeling in the second-floor apartment of the duplex was one ofclaustrophobia, echoing that of the one-way, one-lane street onwhich the Bui family lived, in a poor, congested neighborhoodtucked in behind the smaller of Toronto's two original Chinatowns.However, from the bedroom window, if one lifted one'seyes over the unbroken line of parked cars and the jumble of flatand peaked roofs opposite, one could take in a view of Toronto'smodern downtown skyline.

    Kim's eyes swept the sidewalk for anybody watching theduplex. Then the uncovered porch below. Nobody. But the evidenceremained: a crushed pop can and the telltale red-and-whitecarton of a Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch from the outlet at thetop of the street. Yesterday evening at dusk, she and Toan, believingthey had entered their apartment unseen by coming up the backstairs, had looked from this window, and noticing the pop can andcarton left behind, had come to the same conclusion?the twowomen they had just met on the sidewalk had been staking outtheir address for some time that day, at least long enough to gethungry. One of them had a camera. Kim had cautioned her husbandagainst opening the front door to remove the refuse. Thismuch she knew: the long lens of a camera can see a lot.

    The night before, Kim had gone to bed in an agitated state.She had called Michael Levine, the lawyer acting as her agent,who was handling her publicity, including requests from themedia. "If those women try to get into your house," he'd said, "callthe police." The image of men in uniform made Kim anxious, andthat night, she had one of her recurring war nightmares. Sometimesthey involved bombs, sometimes mortar fire or gunfire. Butalways she is a child. That night it began with her standing amidsta group of chatting soldiers. An argument broke out amongthem. Gunfire erupts. "We have to get out!" Kim screams. Sheruns, terrified of being killed. But as she runs, she tires, and shedoesn't know how she will keep going.

    As usual, she woke to escape death. Feeling stone cold, she didas always: she shook Toan awake. "Hold me," she whispered.When her tears stopped, as usual, she found she was consolinghim: "It's okay. I have to suffer like that."

    Toan left to go job hunting, picking up the pop can andcarton on his way out. Kim turned her mind to how the daywould unfold: the colleague of the photographer, or rather, theone without a camera, had agreed, as Kim had asked, to call Kim'slawyer. "After you call him, after that I can work with you," Kimhad told her. All that day, Kim found herself waiting for the telephoneto ring, expecting Levine to call to say that the two womenhad requested an interview. Not even her usual hour of Spanish-languagedaytime TV soaps could distract her from the questionsthat paced back and forth across her mind. How did the twowomen know her address? Why had they been waiting all day onthe sidewalk? The day came to an end, marking the beginning ofthe weekend, when Levine's law office would be closed.

    By Sunday, Kim was relieved to have church to occupy hermind. The word of God made her forget all her worries. Thefamily's church was in Ajax, an hour away from Toronto by thechurch van service, and no one there but the pastor knew ofKim's history. Since she and Toan were the only Vietnamese in thecongregation, it seemed unlikely that her past would even comeup. On Sundays, they attended both the morning and eveningservices, spending the interval at the home of a friend from thecongregation.

    After the first service, she and Toan went to collect theireleven-month-old son, Thomas, from the church daycare.

    Kim felt an urgent tap on her shoulder. It was another father."Your picture is in the newspaper!" he exclaimed.

    The man, who was responsible for buying newspapers for thechurch's reading room, held up a Toronto tabloid, The SundaySun. It was that day's edition, March 19, 1995. "The photographthat shocked the world" shouted the front page, above a picture ofa young girl, naked and running in terror. There was anotherheadline, "Child of war is a woman living in Metro," alongsideanother picture, one of Kim, wearing the coat she'd been wearingall week.

    Kim lifted her eyes from the newspaper. Clearly, the twowomen had got the photo they'd come looking for. "Yes," she said."I am the girl in the picture."

    The newspaper that broke the news?thatthe subject of one of the famous pictures from the Vietnamwar now lived in the West?was The Mail on Sunday, a Britishtabloid. It syndicated the story to, among others, Toronto'sSunday Sun, which played it across pages two and three. Accompanyingthe article were photographs of Kim and Toan pushingtheir baby in a stroller on a Toronto street, and of Kim's parentsin front of their mud hut in Trang Bang, Vietnam. The articlebegan:

To her neighbors in a working-class area of Toronto, she is just another young mother, anonymous and hesitant. But to the world, she will remain forever the human symbol of the pointless brutality and savage cost of the Vietnam war. Next month it will be 20 years since the futile American military campaign finally ended ...

    Of all the countless photographs and films which captured that terrifying and bloody war, one potent and compelling image remains: of a young girl, naked and terrified, screaming in pain as she flees a napalm attack on her family's village, Trang Bang, 40 miles from Saigon.

    Today Phan Thi Kim Phuc is a woman of 32. Once exploited by the Vietnamese for anti-capitalist propaganda, wheeled out by the Marxist regime as painful proof of American colonialism, she is now living in hiding in the West, a defector from the Communists who have manipulated her almost all her life ...

    The breaking story was picked up by international wire services.Within a couple of days, Kim's telephone began to ring, anddidn't stop. In short order, she tired of hearing callers, completestrangers all, asking to speak to Kim Phuc. She took to letting thetelephone ring, leaving Toan?if he was home?to answer andgive out the telephone number of Kim's agent. Upon the insistentringing of the door buzzer, the couple would go to the frontwindow to spy on the person below. Invariably, it was a journalist?orso Kim assumed, judging by the camera bag over a shoulderor the notebook in hand. Often there was a waiting taxi.Eventually, getting no answer, the journalist would leave.

    Night and day, the couple kept the curtains drawn on thefront window. Kim grew afraid to leave the house for fear that itwas being watched, or that someone lay concealed, waiting for anopportunity to take her picture. Whenever the buzzer sounded,she tried to keep the baby quiet, and to avoid stepping where thewooden floor would creak. Sleep did not release Kim from heranxiety but rather plunged her into the darkness of her recurringnightmares. Exhausted, she spent entire days in her turquoisedressing gown.

    This was not the scenario she had contemplated when, a fewmonths earlier, she had made the decision that, in order to helpsupport the family, she would reemerge from her private life andsell her story; it would be her "work." She had gone for advice toNancy Pocock, a lifelong social activist well into her eighties. Kimand Toan, like many Vietnamese and Salvadoran refugees inCanada, called her "Mother Nancy."

    "Mom, I want to stop being quiet. Please, how can I do that?"Kim had asked her.

    Nancy had a family friend who knew a prominent Torontoentertainment lawyer, but before making the introduction, shehad first wanted to make certain that Kim understood something:once she invited publicity, there would be no going back.

    "Yes, I know. I cannot be quiet again," Kim had said.

    But after a month of jangled nerves and recurring nightmares,Kim was having second thoughts. She worried that plansmade with her agent to have the media pay for publicity might befor naught, that, like those two women from the British tabloid,the media would try to get a story and pictures of her withoutpaying a cent. She felt as though the journalistic hounds wouldmake her into a victim all over again. "The accident of those twowomen on the sidewalk," she lamented to Toan, "was like a bombfalling out of the sky."

Continues...
Excerpted from The Girl in the Pictureby Denise Chong Copyright © 2001 by Denise Chong. Excerpted by permission.
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