Lost in translation

Ngan Nguyen wasn't big on the communists, so in 1982, when they weren't looking, she fled Vietnam.

She was determined to get to America to work and send money back to her five siblings and many nieces and nephews.

Hers has been a meager existence on the fringes of the Vietnamese community here, working as a nanny, a house cleaner, often living with the families she worked for. She never married, never took a vacation, never owned a home, because she sent most of the money she earned back to Vietnam.

And for the last few years, she has been homeless. She has been trying to get an apartment through the Boston Housing Authority, and this is where it gets interesting.

Four months ago, the BHA offered her a one-bedroom apartment in East Boston. At least that was what was offered in the BHA letter she showed me. But there was confusion, not surprisingly, because Nguyen does not speak English. Somebody showed Nguyen a studio apartment, and when Nguyen later delivered a paper bag with $500 in cash and $200 in gift certificates to a housing office, the BHA decided this constituted an attempted bribe.

Let me repeat: The BHA believes a 68-year-old homeless woman tried to bribe them so she could get a bigger apartment.

Nguyen's friends - including Kim Pham, a fashion designer who has been letting Nguyen sleep in the fitting booth at her Chinatown shop - said Nguyen was offering a gift, not a bribe. They said it was all a cultural misunderstanding. They said the paper bag contained most of the money she had.

Lydia Agro, a spokeswoman for the BHA, said the case is under investigation by federal authorities. Agro said it was more than just the alleged bribe. "She told us she had no income," Agro said.

According to Nguyen's friends, she has no steady income, but picks up odd jobs where she can.

While no one will say this publicly, there are people at the BHA who think Nguyen is a con artist, that she has bags of money stashed somewhere and that she was not guileless when, on more than one occasion, she left behind for housing officials what former state representative Vinnie Piro once described to an FBI agent as "a little walking-around money."

But people who know Nguyen - not people who have met a confused old woman on the other side of a counter, but people who have known her for many years - scoff at that. They say she has been living hand-to-mouth for years.

Tom Daley, a friend, said Nguyen has been in and out of shelters, which terrify her. "She's no con artist," he said. "She's a little old lady who doesn't understand how this society works."

Donna Agnew, who runs an art gallery in the North End, said that whenever she arranged for Nguyen to clean friends' houses, Nguyen left gifts behind.

"Giving a gift to someone who gives you something is part of this woman's culture," said Agnew. "The idea that she was trying to bribe someone is ridiculous. The communists put her in a reeducation camp. She escapes, makes a life here, and this is how it's going to end?"

The idea that Nguyen was offering a bribe for a bigger apartment looks even more dubious when you consider she gave up a subsidized apartment in Dorchester in 2001 because it was too big.

"She said she knew there were people with kids who needed the space, so she gave it back," said Tin Tran, Pham's son, who translated for Nguyen as we sat in a Buddhist temple in East Boston. "She lives very simply."

No doubt this federal probe, already four months in the making, will be one of the most intensive, thorough investigations in the history of the world.

But here's the bottom line: An elderly woman with bad legs and respiratory problems has been sleeping on floors while the BHA lives up to the well-deserved stereotype of an uncaring, soulless bureaucracy. Marvelous.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.