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lean just the same to see him in the dark and to hear him whisper.
"We ate sugar cane out on the porch. When you were three, we'd eat
them out on the porch. Remember?"
I think of sucking the sweet thin strands from between my teeth.
Before I can answer him, he continues.
"Of course you remember. Remember the marketplace?-the buckets
cramped with eels, crabs, fish, and squids?"
The words pass from his lips, contorted to accommodate syllables and
inflections of a language he just learned, and always his lips yield to the limits
of what his crudely healed scars will allow him to manage. His voice grows
harsher with excitement, and spit collects at the corners.
"No," I cut him off. "No. No, I don't remember doing such things.
am not allowed to. Mother told me never to dream of you. She told me I was
too young to remember you, so I don't dream of you."
Ba Nguyen's eyes remain wide open as he sits up straight. His mouth
is open. He leans forward again insisting I remember them. Words spout from
his mouth so fast that the spit at the corners of his lips begins to drip on his
shirt, and I want to wipe them. Instead I shake my head.
He begins to wilt and turn pale. His shoulders slump within his paja­
ma shirt and his head lowers until he falls over onto his side and curls up. Both
knees come up until they touch his chest and his arms wrap around his ankles.
Mother screams, "They're here! They're here!"
*
Ba Nguyen and I join Mother out on the front patio. Down below on
Silver Lake Avenue men in black pajamas and pith helmets tote machine guns.
They march down the cellter of the street, stop in front of a house and go inside.
There are shots before they come out with men, women, and children with
hands behind their heads. And I recognize them-Koreans, Chinese, Japanese,
and Vietnamese people we pass up on our way to work. They continue down
the streets rounding up everyone. Still, shots are fired but no bodies lie in the
streets.
Coppola stands beside a cameraman, directing him where to point the
lens. He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts down to them, "Don't
look at the camera! Keep moving! Keep moving! Don't look at the camera,
goddammit!"
"When you brought Vietnam, you brought them also." Mother says.
She slumps down on her knees and cries in her hands.
The men in black pajamas continue to run down the streets and tram-
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