USD-Magazine-Summer-2023

more they drank, the louder they'd crank the music. Before long, the women would yell at each other until Duong’s mother would inevitably storm out of the house, vowing never to return. “Chaos would ensue,” Duong says. “They’d yell, argue and throw things. I’d hide in my grandma’s room and cry until it was over.” Eventually, Duong’s mother fled to New York for a decade with her new husband. After that, Duong’s mother existed primarily in photographs. Duong grew up with a fantasy she played over and over in her mind, of her mother picking her up from school the way other moms picked up friends and classmates. In Duong’s mind, her mother drove a red Lexus. She wore a beautiful skirt and blouse with blue flowers and long, flared sleeves that billowed as she walked. Her hair was curled and her makeup was simple — light mascara and blush in a soft shade of pink. “I imagined her walking to my lunch table and surprising me,” Duong recalls, with the trace of a smile on her lips. “She’d hold my left hand and I’d wave goodbye to my friends as we drove off.” Duong’s father, originally from Vietnam, was in prison for shooting a man and was still serving his sentence when Duong was born. She was 8 years old when he was released. Duong resented him for leaving her alone with her mother, who abused her. But he was abusive too — slapping her across the face, slamming her head into a window, pushing her down and kicking her in the stomach. He constantly shut her out of his room, where she couldn’t help but notice white powder on his desk. He even took her along on drug runs, leaving her in the car while he was buying or selling. One day — in a state of

room belonged to Duong’s uncle. She and her grandmother shared the other room. “My grandmother had a lot of regret with her own kids,” Duong says. “Now, she’s working hard to be a proper mother, through me, but I feel bad that she had the responsibility of raising me.” Watching television shows and movies, Duong knew other families were different, but it wasn’t until she was filling out paperwork with a financial aid counselor during her senior year in high school — and the counselor checked the box indicating Duong was an

at a flea market, she carried it everywhere she went. Eventually, Duong moved in full time with her grandmother. “I call her mommy,” Duong says lovingly, of her grandmother. genocide. She came to a foreign place where she didn’t know the language. Her husband abused her and cheated on her and, eventually, she decided she was better off navigating alone.” Grandmother and granddaughter lived together in a humble, two-bedroom home in City Heights. One “She’s the true definition of resiliency. She survived the

paranoia fueled by cocaine — he nearly killed an elderly man in nearby Linda Vista, whom he was convinced was following him. Soon, he was back in prison. Duong spent her childhood bouncing around from one relative to another, until her welcome expired. Some were abusive. Some were merely inattentive. She carried her belongings in a blue, plastic laundry basket and had only one item she truly treasured — a toddler-sized yellow blanket with a brown bear holding three balloons — one red, one green and one blue. Bought

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Summer 2023