The narrator describes a significant moment in her life: Crossing the ferry in Saigon to return to her French boarding school. The narrator is fifteen. An adult Chinese man approaches her. The image she has of herself at this time is her favorite; it occurs before her face matures at eighteen. After that, the narrator believes she resembles a much older woman with a face that “has been laid waste” by her experiences (5). The narrator is the only one of her siblings to continue her education into high school; her mother wants her to obtain a math degree. The narrator has always wanted to become a writer. She reflects upon how she has never—until now—written about this period of her life.

Though her mother is the headmistress of Sadec’s French school, the family lives in near poverty and struggles to maintain an estate her mother purchased. Still, the family does not have to sacrifice having a staff of servants; their white privilege among the native Vietnamese allows them class-based luxuries.

The narrator describes herself on the ferry. She wears secondhand clothes and makeup, including a man’s hat of which she is fond. The narrator compares the image to a photograph she has of her son in which her son is assuming the attitude of who he wants to be: “It’s this photograph that comes closest to the one never taken of the girl on the ferry” (13).