Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano

Rickshaws. Rice paddies. An old war. Napalm.
“The Vietnamese people are so nice, so accommodating,”
I’m always told,
White people reassuring me that my Vietnamese half isn’t inherently demonic,
like the American soldiers were told. No—
“They are not people. They are things that you must kill by any means.
They are not human.”
And that was Dad’s first memory of Vietnam.
Me—I don’t have memories yet, but I’m sure glad those people are so nice.

Eagle Brand medicated green oil. Chay-yaw. Buddhas and their altar. My ghost family.
“You’re American like your daddy,” Mom tells me. “Your sister—she Vietnam.”
I can’t prove otherwise,
my tongue and throat conspire against me when I speak Vietnamese as I know how.
But I try to show Mom how much I like durian…
just like White people who’ve been to Vietnam on vacation or for research,
how they say they’re experts in durian and nuoc mam. They tell me this
after they try to make small talk on planes, asking
“Where are you from?”
And I say, “I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but now I live in Canada.”
And they say, “No, but where are you really from?”

Alcohol. PTSD. Heaven and earth and reincarnation.
Temples 90 minutes away. Church with an outhouse down the road,
by the crick.
I don’t know how it’s going to be when I go.
I’ve gone there in my mind so many goddamn times,
my migraines and insomnia from all that jetlag catching up,
but I know it’s not the same.
I just know there’s a demon I have to face.
I don’t know if it’s me.
I don’t know what it is.