a golden shovel

My mother wakes early to go to church. Dawn redux. Her áo dài is Virgin Mary blue. Her hair is still long, reflecting light. A border control officer filters through her documents, preparing to send her through to their new home destination. The casting call goes out in the meantime: Paid extras needed for jungle defoliation scene. Apocalypse Now and Hearts of Darkness play across the screen of my mother’s face. I glimpse a flicker, a flare, then the sudden foul odor of napalm & oil in the swamp.

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In the opening scene, a man showers. The mist rises & clings to the blue tarp, temporary walls to maintain the privacy of the 100 refugees at the Jose Fabella Center. Trees flank the main road. This stay could last forever, or it could be a stopgap before the repatriation of our protagonist—back to the jungle where he would have spent a decade of his 30s into 40s, being tortured in a reeducation camp, lucky to not be one of 3.9 million dead. He scrubs off his 12 years as a soldier, a long 6 months ago.

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Dissolve. Our protagonists in a small boat at sea. View of my mother’s pallid face. The camera moves to the sea, as the boat drifts closer toward land in the distance. Through starlight, then dawn light, the journey begins its 8th day. Mist burns off. Cut to my mother tilting a canteen toward her lips. She drinks down seasickness. Cut to Sê, visibly pregnant, clinging to the edge as the boat lurches over a wave. Cut to my father cooking cháo cá over a tepid fire, then, my mother unloading a mouthful of bile into the water.