To the pre-teen girl selling ducks on the side of the road in Bien Hoa, I see you. You are sitting there in your too-small dress with your stepfather, the only father you have really known. You spent the morning with him, walking through the wetlands near your home to set the traps. You felt important and big, being taught grown-up things. What a thrill to find the ducks in the cage later, knowing the whole scheme worked. Now you sit with him, patient and quiet, as the ducks squawk and protest in their large woven basket, waiting to be chosen, plucked, cooked, and eaten.
You are waiting, too. You know the larger world is out there. It comes closer by the day. You have seen the people building the airbase nearby, the one that the French Air Force will use to fight the North Vietnamese in the ongoing Indochina War, the war they will later call the “first” because there are more conflicts to come. They picked the site because it was flat and accessible, and less than 40km (25 miles) from Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. You do not know yet that, 10 years from now, you will be on a different military base in Okinawa, Japan, teaching Vietnamese to American soldiers, and that one of those soldiers will be my father. For now, you are content to spend your days selling ducks for cash, helping your mother cook in the kitchen of your small house, and teaching your younger sister to read.
