Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge

pie through gardens, break windows with the butt of their machine guns, and
burst through front doors. They come out with more people surrendering their
hands to the air. Black smoke escapes from the windows of a few houses before
blazes eat them from the inside out.
"Ba Nguyen," Mother looks up at him from the patio ground. "Make
them go away. Make them go away."
Ba Nguyen turns away from the ledge and stares at the black mailbox.
He walks to it and pulls down the door. Bending over to look inside, Ba
Nguyen reaches in and feels around, head turned up to the sun. But he reaches
in farther and puts his head inside. He wiggles his body. Slowly, he is swal­
lowed whole by the mailbox.
The men in black pajamas run up Montana Avenue. Their arms barely
swing as they hug their machine guns dose to their chests. Mother stands up
and wipes her eyes as the men jog up the steps.
"That's it, that's it. Keep moving," Coppola yells. "Keep moving, but
don't look at the camera."
Without stopping, they nin to the mailbox. Like smoke sucked
through a vent, they funnel into the mailbox. And with them follows the
Mekong snaking its way up Montana Avenue. The mountains melt into the rice
fields, and with the low douds, they drift across downtown Los Angeles and
pass through the mailbox. Even Coppola, the man who claims he is Vietnam,
passes through.
Everything. Everything Ba Nguyen brought from Vietnam is gone,
and there is only downtown Los Angeles: the Bonaventure Hotel, the Sheraton,
the twin towers of the Atlantic Richfield Company, First Interstate Bank, other
mirrored skyscrapers, the knotted freeways and a sea of cars. Mother is not
standing next to me, crying. She is gone.
59