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Dev and her mom, Loc Dang in Provincetown, Cape Cod two summers ago
It was 1972, the year Dev was born, and the Vietnam War was raging. The Viet Cong was slowly taking her family's farmland away and it wouldn't be long before they no longer had enough left to live. The crops they knew so well, from peanuts, to green beans, bananas to peppers, along with the chickens that roamed near the rice fields, was their home and it was almost gone. Dev and her 7 siblings' lives were becoming progressively desperate in the war torn country with seemingly, no end in sight. As Dev entered her teenage years, the path ahead was crystal clear-- it would soon be her turn to attempt a potentially deadly escape.
Every year the family scraped together their meager profits to buy a gold bar, the currency used to board a flimsy fishing boat off their country’s coast. One by one, the children joined other passengers they didn't know, to do the unthinkable-- brave the dangerous, open water for their only chance at a better life. For hundreds of thousands like Dev, the treacherous trek was worth the risk, though it was highly illegal and many didn't make it. Even just plotting the water crossing was a dangerous endeavor. Dev's older brother Dien was jailed and tortured for making the mechanics for the vessels the boat people would use in their quest for freedom. He was caught by the Viet Cong on his first attempt at escape. Prisoners like Dien, were allowed one visitor per month, and when his friend Luu-- a captain on one of the escape boats-- came to visit, he begged him to save Dev. The captain kept his promise around the same time Dev's parents had enough money to buy her a gold bar, and just like that, it was time for her to attempt the harrowing journey she still has nightmares about today. August 3rd, 1988, Dev boarded the boat flying an S.O.S flag, clenching the gold bar in her hands.
The journey Dev took as a boat person from Vietnam to a Malaysian refugee camp in 1988 as painted by a fellow boat person, based on Dev's memories
August, 2021, Avon, Connecticut
In its second year of business-- Dev's Academy has become a big hit and getting an appointment with her isn't easy. Microblading eyebrows takes skill and experience. The technique involves ink and a sharp blade to cut in what looks like tiny hairs, to create natural looking brows. Dev also does permanent makeup and that too, is booked weeks in advance. Her following is a loyal one, and her customers are her top priority which is why it was important to her, that they be greeted by a clean, fresh, inviting interior. The thoughtful transitional design is made up of soothing colors, modern wainscoting, and of course, a wide variety of plants. A sign that says, "Be Our Guest" sits squarely on one of the shelves of a built-in hutch next to the reception desk, and though it's a simple statement, it has a profound underlying tone. Dev told me how much of the decor relates to her life story, as well as Scott's response to what she endured in her journey to Connecticut.
There is a placard with her picture on it near the entrance of the spa speaking of her years of experience in cosmetology, but it doesn't mention that she is also an engineer. Dev said numbers always came easily to her, which was a relief, when she arrived in the United States, and English didn't. In fact she chose her name, Devaney from one of her favorite math textbooks that she used while studying at the University of Hartford. It was written by renowned Massachusetts mathematician Robert. L. Devaney.
During our chat, Dev led me to the back of the Academy, into another big room to show me the rest of the spa, which become more serene with each step. It was then I noticed the view at the very back, that not only catches your eye, but beckons you into the lush, green foliage in the distance.
"Wow, that's really beautiful," I said.
Dev turned from me to gaze out the window too, only, it looked like she was seeing something thousands of miles away.
She said, “It is beautiful, isn't it....”?
I couldn't help but wonder what it was that in that moment, that she was REALLY seeing.
The view from the back of the Microblading Academy, lush and green and enchanting
August 6th, 1988, Vietnam
Day 3 on the boat in the waters off Vietnam and Dev is suffering severe sea sickness. Today was supposed to be the day the 72 passengers would arrive at a refugee camp in a neighboring country to start their new life. Instead, Dev is thirsty, starving, sick and scared. She's laying down on the bottom of the boat, and even though she’s packed in tight with scores of other people, she feels completely alone. Dev had heard the stories about the journey, and what happened to some who came before her: pirates, rape, storms, even cannibalism. Dev wasn't going to take any chances and tried to keep her wits about her, but she was weak, and her body was shutting down. She remembers her arm being on top of her body as she laid in the hot sun, and she didn't have enough strength to move it without using her other hand. The days turned into nights, over and over, and soon the boat people realized they were lost at sea.
Dev was giving up hope. That is, until the woman next to her gave birth to a baby in the midst of all the despair around them, and when Dev heard the baby cry, everything changed in an instant. She was so close to death and yet the baby represented the freshness of life, something she realized she wanted to keep fighting for at all cost. It wasn't long after, she awoke to another sweet sound: the peacock-like wail of seagulls flying overhead. Land was near. The shores of Pu Lau Bidong, Malaysia, to be exact.
August, 2016, South Windsor, Connecticut
Scott and Dev met on a blind dinner date in Connecticut, and they hit it off right away. Raised in Agawam, Massachusetts, Scott had a loving adoptive family and a story all his own, though he was too young to remember it. He was left in a basket outside a theater in Soul, Korea, abandoned for reasons he will never know by parents he has never met. Scott has heard Dev's story many times in their years together, from the rats chewing her feet during a prison stay when she was a child, to the dangerous disease ridden life at the refugee camp where she spent a year living off a bucket of water a week. He says he completely understands why his wife appreciates so much about the spa's orderly design, and it's clean and restful setting. Scott has tried to make it feel like "a home away from home" for all who come through the door.
If the struggle to escape the Viet Cong wasn't enough, there is another battle Dev has overcome. Dev is a cancer survivor, which helps her understand the cancer patients that come from all over New England to use her microblading services. She gives them eyebrows with ink, before the chemotherapy takes their own-- and their dignity-- away. Dev's time on the boat, in refugee camps, and battling cancer has enabled her to understand their hopelessness, fear, and the inhuman suffering that goes along with it all. She finds such joy in their elation when her work is done, knowing it's a momentary reprieve from their pain. She wants them to leave her spa feeling whole, and that's something Scott wants Dev to feel, too.
As our time together was wrapping up, my eyes turned to the Snake Plants on the ledge once again, and this time, I could almost picture Dev's grandfather's garden in Vietnam myself. I now understood how the plants, now potted in American soil, reminded Dev of herself in so many ways-- who she has become, where she came from, and just how hard she has fought to survive.
