Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge
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pie through gardens, break windows with the butt of their machine guns, and<br />
burst through front doors. They come out with more people surrendering their<br />
hands to the air. Black smoke escapes from the windows of a few houses before<br />
blazes eat them from the inside out.<br />
"Ba Nguyen," Mother looks up at him from the patio ground. "Make<br />
them go away. Make them go away."<br />
Ba Nguyen turns away from the ledge and stares at the black mailbox.<br />
He walks to it and pulls down the door. Bending over to look inside, Ba<br />
Nguyen reaches in and feels around, head turned up to the sun. But he reaches<br />
in farther and puts his head inside. He wiggles his body. Slowly, he is swal<br />
lowed whole by the mailbox.<br />
The men in black pajamas run up Montana Avenue. Their arms barely<br />
swing as they hug their machine guns dose to their chests. Mother stands up<br />
and wipes her eyes as the men jog up the steps.<br />
"That's it, that's it. Keep moving," Coppola yells. "Keep moving, but<br />
don't look at the camera."<br />
Without stopping, they nin to the mailbox. Like smoke sucked<br />
through a vent, they funnel into the mailbox. And with them follows the<br />
Mekong snaking its way up Montana Avenue. The mountains melt into the rice<br />
fields, and with the low douds, they drift across downtown Los Angeles and<br />
pass through the mailbox. Even Coppola, the man who claims he is Vietnam,<br />
passes through.<br />
Everything. Everything Ba Nguyen brought from Vietnam is gone,<br />
and there is only downtown Los Angeles: the Bonaventure Hotel, the Sheraton,<br />
the twin towers of the Atlantic Richfield Company, First Interstate Bank, other<br />
mirrored skyscrapers, the knotted freeways and a sea of cars. Mother is not<br />
standing next to me, crying. She is gone.<br />
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