VITNAM
by KHANG NHAN
In AP Lang, the topic is the Vietnam War. The prompt asks me to argue whether America did the right thing in attempting to prevent the spread of communism. Vietnam was in the right because it was trying to liberate itself from their colonial masters. The pencil presses against my paper, and a bit of the graphite chips off. I write Vietnam becomes V-I-T-N-A-M: ‘vitnam’. These words twist in peculiar shapes. They look foreign. What does a capital V look like again? One line connects to another, curving upwards to the right, right?
I shiver, even with a jacket, even in a warm room. The cardboard butterflies are blue, green, and pink, taped onto the plastered walls. The board is white, stained with old marker. My teacher wears pastel green and blue. She’s kind. So I give her those colors. Smoke hangs in the air. This paper disintegrates into ash. The texture changes—grainy, then wrong. It isn’t my fault. The prompt asks if America was right. The paper shakes. It isn’t my fault. I spell the word war: W-A, no W-R-Y? I drop the pencil. It slides off the table. My hands grab my hair and pull loose flakes into my palm. The window is clear.
Is it my fault that my reflection in Vietnam looked like a monster? A butcher with his face stitched from mouth to head. Outside, the road is empty, and the streets are foggy. The school bell rings. My lungs reject it. My toes curl inward. It’s windy inside the classroom. I tilt my head up, and my classmates turn into rice crops: tall, bright, and green. The floor pulls at my feet. I take out a new pencil and rub my thumb along it. I rub it. It sounds like wind rushing through a valley. The smell turns earthy, replacing sweat and pencil-wood. The pencil feels sturdy, like bamboo. The pencil drags through Vietnam and the line goes wet.
There are no more rows of chairs and tables. A single tree stands at the center of four rice plots. A breeze hits my face. Clean air fills my lungs. That tree. My hands shake staring at it. I’ve been here before—ninth grade, visiting family. The water beckons me in again, and I follow.
Usually, I hide behind my pencil. I need something to purge what’s in me. I see the monster I write about in my notebook. But today, my reflection is him in the water. He isn’t on the page anymore. He’s within me.
A snap from a falling branch. My skin burns against the wind, and pieces of mud fly through the air. Beneath me, the rice field’s mud tugs at my legs, clawing me down. I look back at the water, and my reflection is gone.
Then my Xoài—my grandfather, ‘Mango’—called out for me. But something was wrong. He is made of crystal. The scenery flashes past as we drive. The oceanside is riddled with trash. People wear torn clothes, selling lottery tickets to others.
I wrap my arms around him, but I can’t quite touch him. The air is sticky. I force my arm through, but I can’t touch him. Something pushes me back. It reeks of stagnant water. The wet earth consumes my arm and absorbs my heat. From my silt-infected arm, another arm rises. Its hand presses down on my shoulder. A face forms in the liquid. He is my own character. He pulls my face apart and spews the brown liquid. Mud blinds me. I hear my voice. He shouts, he screams, he scolds his own family. His voice echoes, and my aunts and uncles step away. Their bodies crystallize too—then shatter.
I am back in my grandparents’ house. The flooring is covered in mud. My disintegrating hands claw through the silt. My grandparents’ tender voices echo through the mud. Their bodies are made from crystal. Mud crawls into my eye; I cannot see. I can only hear.
I heard them cry when I slammed a door shut one day. I spent that night on my computer.
It crawls into my ear. I cannot hear. I can only feel.
I shut myself in my room. I used to starve myself because my grandparents made the same meals every day. “No,” I shouted to them when they offered.
My arms wrap around crystal legs. Their shards pierce through my arms.
My character kills because it’s where my guilt goes. I filled his heart with fungi so mine could complain about food. He’s my reflection. In the mud. This is mud. It’s hot.
“I’m sorry.” My body aches and burns. “I can’t explain it now. I couldn’t then. I never will. But is my mud worthy of your cure?” I shout, suffocating in a pile of silt that muffles my voice. “I want to eat at the dinner table with you. I want you to ask me about my day.”
The mud recedes. My face is stitched, but it loosens.
“Hôm nay thế nào?” His voice reverberates through him.
“It was okay. Today was okay.” The mud recedes further. I can see Xoài’s face again, and my hands are wrapped around him. Beside him is my grandmother. You’re both crystal.
I see both of their faces. It’s not crystal. he mud lifts, thins, and vanishes. I’m back, in this memory. I can feel my tongue again. The mud is gone.
My grandfather wore a blue-collar shirt today, driving me on the moped. A rough wind swept down the road. There were sand dunes surrounded by short trees. We drove through some clunky roads before reaching the mountain entrance.
My Xoài parked at a fork in the road. Thick, layered bushes surrounded us, and touching them cut my fingertips. A trace of mud flowed through. Living in America made me forget sandy roads; now they’re bumpy. I walked beside Xoài, matching his pace so he could talk to me. But he never did. I didn’t see him in colors like everyone else. He was bald and bearded. The sandy road stopped at a grassy mound. Waves clashed against the mountainside; above, birds perched with their wings spread, bathing in the sun. I stared mindlessly—mud stirred. I wondered if my grandfather saw the monster I created; it rotted me from the core.
Could you say “I’m sorry” with a blade in your hand? Or did you have to surrender your blade and shout out loud for them to understand you? I was stuck with you. But I think I will write you an ending where you lie alone on the beach, staring at the stars. Because you deserve a happy ending. You are mud, and mud gives life; I lived with mud, but it ends with a sprout. This memory of my grandfather on the mountain cliff was the last time I would see him before my departure.
I uttered the word “Sorry.” The stitching was removed. And I hugged him. He was warm despite the chilly mountain pass.
I take a breath.
The sound of the ocean crash fades into the low hum of the air conditioner. The smell of salt water is replaced by graphite and floor wax. I am not on a mountain, nor am I drowning in mud. I am a student sitting in the corner of my class.
I look around at the butterflies taped to the plastered walls. I see my teacher in that pastel color. The air feels fresher to breathe. The paper on my table no longer shakes. Thirty minutes in, and I still haven’t written anything.
Was America right? I pull a new pencil from my bag and write what is true to me: Vietnam was in the right for trying to free itself. Vietnam was in the right for trying to free itself. People can’t be repressed forever. They break through.
author pic here
Khang Nhan is a Vietnamese student interested in the themes of guilt, alienation, and the cost of ambition. He writes to give texture to the abstract emotions within the human soul.
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