Warning: This story contains a self-insert.
I wrote this a long time ago. It's a composition of memories and feelings that I compounded along with Hetalia to try and make sense of a confusing time in my life, when I wasn't quite sure what the parts of what I was made up into who I am. This was my attempt to explain my feelings towards a homeland I never knew.
I still hope someday to visit Vietnam with my father. I have decided to share this story, unedited from the time I wrote it (except for spelling here and there) because in spite of the humanized characters (and the shameless Prussia fan-service I gave myself - please remember I was young) at its heart it is a true story, and the emotions are true.
Added note: This story is not meant at all to show approval of Communism or socialism or any sort of political bias whatsoever. The yearning described in this fic is not for any certain type of political structure in Vietnam, but rather a yearning for the land, the culture, a connection with my heritage. Please keep in mind that this is written through the eyes of the daughter of a first-generation immigrant, and while I believe that my and my father's experiences and emotions are valid, I do not mean any offense to anyone.
Thank you, and please enjoy.
-Leila
She is eight when her father tells her about 'Nam.
Her father wears glasses and flip-flops and his kisses tickles when he doesn't shave. He'll sit and pretend to read the stories she scribbles onto scratch papers, and even at eight years old she'll call him Daddy and he'll carry her up to bed.
Once Leila asks what the shiny mark on his arm is, and he says it was a vaccination, a big word she hasn't learned yet. When her grandparents call, his voice will get louder and the words will jumble up together and she can't understand a thing. There are a lot of things she doesn't know, like algebra or how gravity works or how to find Iraq on a globe, or that there was a kingdom long ago carved out of the map. She doesn't know what vaccinations are, and she doesn't know the word 'refugee'.
"When I was your age back in my country, I used to run buck-naked through the rice patties," Her father always teases, and her mother glares at him across the dinner table and Leila giggles into her apple juice, her sisters both too young to understand. Daddy's country, she thinks, must have been a very interesting place.
"Are you Chinese?" She asks him one day after watching a movie she got for her birthday about a girl who dresses like a boy to fight a war, and she thinks of how her father speaks like the characters and how they have dark hair like Leila and her father and not like her mother.
He laughs, long and loud. "No, I was born in Vietnam. Your bà nội and ông nội were born there too. We're Vietnamese."
"Oh." There is a short silence, and she chews on a strand of her hair in thought before adding, "Where's Vietnam?"
"In Asia."
"Why don't we live there?"
"Because there was a war, and your grandparents brought us here to America."
"Oh." Like Mulan, she realizes, and she feels a tiny bit of exhilaration in her stomach, realizing that he's telling her a story, only one that's real, and it makes her suddenly happy and excited to hear more. "Am I Vietnamese, too?"
"Yep. But you're American first. Don't you forget that." And then he goes on, talking about how much more freedom there is in America, the land of opportunity, how lucky they are to live here compared to other places in the world. It is the things she hears in school, and she nods along with his words, only paying half-attention.
"I'm American," she tells everyone, lifting her chin proudly as she says it. "My daddy came to this country to find a better life from the war, and I'm happy for it."
(Though, she can't deny that every time she helps bà nội roll eggrolls and every time she hears her father speak that unfamiliar language, she can't help but feel that same kind of happy exhilaration from her head to her toes, and she suddenly misses something she can't quite name.)
Yao visited for the first time in nearly 1000 years in 1954, and Lien suspected the only reason was because he wanted to rub her victory in Francis's face.
"Congratulations, little sister," is how he greeted her, with a smile and open arms. "You should be proud of yourself."
She was, indeed. Indochina was no more, the French colonists were gone, and Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were free once again. Freedom, was what she had always told Francis, was only ever what she had wanted, but for all the European nation's claim of being 'civilized' and 'modern' and 'peace-loving', it had taken what it always did – guns and blows and blood spilt before he agreed to leave Vietnam for the Vietnamese.
It had all been wonderful entertainment for her neighbors.
"What do you want?"
He tsked. "Are you always this serious, or did Kiku somehow manage to break you?"
"He did not break me or my people." Only exploited and starved them, but worse things could happen, is what she told herself. And war does not last forever. Nothing lasts forever. And then years later, there she was. Free. No walls. No burnt out skeletons of cities.
"I don't feel anything now but pity for him, for all of them."
Ah, irony, how great powers love to scowl at each other across continents, exchanging angry words and smug looks, not unlike the expression on Yao's ever-youthful face as he discussed boundaries and freedom and perhaps he had forgotten how China had once ruled Vietnam as well, long, long ago, but she had not.
And Lien, well, she was no fool.
"Hmph." Yao said nothing in reply, instead sipping at his tea and looking out the window. The lotus trees outside were just starting to blossom, a sign of beginnings, of a new age.
Oh, freedom. It had not even been 100 years, and yet Lien closed her eyes and she missed that word.
"Your Việt Minh were very brave, weren't they?"
"Yes, they were."
"And do you agree with their decisions?"
She set her cup on the table, feeling the heat seep through the porcelain and curl around her fingers. How different, she thought, was this, this simple meeting between nations, compared to the loud fracas that usually occurred when nations came together. Perhaps it was just their Eastern culture, or perhaps it was that he was a power and she was not. This civility was not unknown to her, but still out of place. They could have been humans chatting over crops and growing seasons, for all the chaos that was involved.
"I believe in what is best for my people."
"And dividing into two nations is best?"
She eyed him warily. Perhaps she might have believed his concern when she was still young, when her sleeves were too big and she couldn't walk on her own two feet, but that was a different time before she learned what the word 'greed' meant.
"There was nothing written in Geneva about it."
"It was my people's decision."
"And how will that affect you, Lien?"
"Hopefully, not at all." Hopefully being the word. A cool spring morning, and red birds on the lotus branches, and both the Northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Southern State of Vietnam hoped and prayed that this peace would stay, while Hồ Chí Minh sang her praises and the Catholics moved south.
(Hindsight is a cruel, cruel thing. If she could go back and shake her old self and warn her of the Việt Cộng, of the Soviet Union, of the Americans, of the days and months and years to come, if only, if only…)
Yao smiled at her across the table, and after a moment Lien smiled back.
Outside, the birds sang and the lotus branches quivered in the breeze.
The tea grew cold.
She is fourteen when she begins to question the fairy tale.
Leila has heard a bit more about the war in school – a civil war, the communist North versus the free South, and it's surprising to hear that for once it was a war that the Americans did not win. She thought her country was invincible. She had never even thought it was possible for them to be defeated.
Her father scoffed at that. "It was not the Americans' war to win or lose."
Despite this, her story still has a happy ending, and it's a tale she loves to tell. A truly American story, she likes to think, of immigrants and opportunity and freedom and its ends with a little girl being tucked into bed at night safe and warm.
It's this story she wants to tell at a speech meet in eighth grade, the prompt being, 'Who is the bravest person you know?'. But details are needed now, a simple happily-ever-after won't suffice, and to this end, she asks her father once more.
"What was it like during the war?"
He stops at a red light while driving her to a soccer game and studies the car ahead of them. At first, she thinks he's ignoring her, until the stoplight turns green and he answers.
"Why do you want to know?"
Sometimes it's hard to get him to speak of the past. He repeats the 'running naked through the rice patties' story as often as he can, but when it comes to other things, Leila is lucky to get one word answers. Hints of it sometimes bleed through, like when her grades are low and he reminds her of the opportunities he never had, of living in a house the size of the kitchen with no electricity or running water. He can sit (or sleep) through some of the most violent and bloody movies on television, but the one time Leila turned on a documentary about the war, he stood up and left the room.
She tosses the ball back and forth between her hands absentmindedly, watching as the grocery stores and secondhand shops fly past the window in blurs of color. "I have to write a speech for Saturday about the bravest person I knew. I figured I could write it about grandma and grandpa."
Her father taps his fingers against the steering wheel, squinting at street signs. There is another long silence before he speaks. "Why don't you ask them?"
Because I can barely understand a word they say. They have tried to convince her, over and over again, to learn the language of her grandparents, and she likes to think she'll be able to speak it fluently before they die. Leila does like the sound of the foreign words on her tongue, but it is so hard, and her lessons turned so frustrating that eventually she gave up after only learning one sentence to satisfy her relatives – "Một cô gái đang chạy." The girl is running.
(Running? Running to where? Running from what?)
"Because I don't like talking on the phone," Leila lies instead, and looks at her father expectantly as he makes a right turn into the parking lot of the park. He is silent as he searches for a parking space, but she has learned to read the way he'll squint behind his glasses and how he'll take a deep breath before speaking, whether or not he'll answer her, and he unlocks the passenger side door and gives her a smile as she steps out of the door.
"Tell you what. Go out there and get a hat trick, and I'll tell you what I remember."
Leila rolls her eyes (it's always soccer, it always comes down to soccer for him, sometimes she thinks he loves the sport more than she does, even though he never got to play it) and heads towards the field.
Later, she thinks, it was probably easier scoring three goals, than having to listen to him tell stories, because the stories keep her up at night, paint pictures in her mind that won't go away no matter how hard she tries.
(Her grandfather a mechanic for the Americans desperate to get to America before the Communists came, her grandmother huddled on the floor of her house with her children, screaming at the village militia to stop shooting at the Việt Cộng outside, the autistic boy down the road accidentally opening his uncle's closet with the artillery and the explosion that rocked the entire block afterwards, the guerilla soldiers that could been seen from time to time, a grenade falling on top of their house and embedding shrapnel in her father's shoulder forever, the children who played on the floor with the gun parts while their parents discussed the best strategies, the horrible week where no one knew where anyone was and no one wanted to think of the consequences if they didn't get out of there right then.)
She doesn't want to think about it, doesn't think about it anymore.
It had never been what she wanted.
The pain would keep her up at night, like landmines embedded in her skull, set to go off at any moment. Like someone was tearing off bits of her and devouring her slowly, ripping her apart, and Lien wanted to scream.
Fools who thought war was simple. She didn't even know, which side was she on? The loud, brash American with the smile that he thought could fix anything was always spouting off on how they'd definitely win against the Commies, how his army was like invincible, and sometimes Lien believed Alfred, and other times she would have the urge to grab a pistol and just shoot him through the head, because wasn't that what he was talking about doing to her people? Didn't he realize he was fighting with her and against her at the same time?
"You don't understand," she told him once, cutting him off in the middle of one of his speeches about the heroics of his soldiers. "This isn't your war."
He blinked, blue eyes still innocent and carefree, even after all he had seen and done (wasn't this the boy who had brought the world to its knees just thirty years ago, with a weapon no one had ever seen before? Wasn't this the nation who spent too much time around a big red button for comfort?) how could he still smile like that and tell her everything was gonna be all right?
"I've been through a civil war myself, you know," he said knowingly, patting her on the shoulder, and she tried not to flinch at the touch. "Trust me, it'll all work out in the end. It always does. The good guys always win!"
The good guys, she thought, watching him walk away to inspect a supply truck, watching the mechanics working on the planes that would fly over her forests and spray her people with chemicals that burned and devastated. The good guys, who were they again? Were there any of them there?
Oh no, she never wanted it, to be a pawn in a chess game against powers. Because that's all it was, wasn't it? This was just a tiny footnote in a much bigger chapter, one that she barely got a taste of the first and only time she met the Soviet Union during the war. They shook hands and watched their mortals sign papers. His hands were like ice. He told her she was brave.
She thanked him on the days she felt like the North. She cursed him on days she felt like the South.
Yao was older and wiser, and he told her on the days when she wasn't quite sure of who she was anymore or where she was going to end up, when the pain became too much for her to handle and she would huddle on the floor, wishing it would all just end, he told her that it was how war goes.
"Little sister, the only enemy you have is yourself." He laid a gentle hand on top of her trembling head. "The Soviet Union and I are willing to help you. You must pick a side."
How can I?
How do you choose some of your people over the others? How do you mend something so irreparably broken that it is literally tearing you in two?
And once she screamed that at Alfred, because it was too much to handle, because she couldn't handle it, the voices all churning up in her crying for different things, the burns scattered across her body, the men whose bodies littered her forests, the children who had lost their homes forever.
"What do you care, this isn't your war! All you care about is getting the better of Ivan, that's all it is! It is my people you are fighting against, it is my people who are dying, but what does that matter?"
And Alfred only looked at her, with eyes that had seen so much death and sadness and had never reflected them, not once, and it took her a moment to realize that the tears running down his face mirrored her own. And she remembered how many people he had lost as well, in a war that was not his to fight, and when he left and Sài Gòn fell she slept well for the first time in years.
Leila bites her lip, driving the car ever so carefully into the tiny garage by the house. In the passenger seat, Gilbert tries to hold in his laughter at the look of concentration on her face, and fails when she hits one of the trashcans.
"Shut up!" She scolds, trying to keep a grin off of her face as they step out of the car. "I don't know why I even brought you along, all you ever do is play lame music and try to start fights at truck stops."
"Hey, I make road trips awesome, all right?" The ex-nation of Prussia grins, and Leila rolls her eyes as she pushes open the screen door of the house, poking her head into the laundry room.
"Bà nội? Ông nội?"
She slips off her shoes at the entryway, and Gilbert follows her into the house, his hands in his pockets and looking around at the pictures lining the walls, the Oriental artwork and the rosaries and a letter from Pope John Paul framed up on the mantle. It's tiny, but cozy, with unfamiliar smells from unfamiliar foods always filling the kitchen and Vietnamese soap operas always playing on the TV.
A tiny woman (even shorter than Leila, Gilbert notices with a tiny bit of a smirk) pokes her head out of one of the rooms, a smile lighting up her face. "Leila!" She says, and Leila bends down to give her grandmother a hug, the old lady's head only coming up to about her shoulder.
"Just stopping by," she says with a smile. "I brought a friend to visit."
Her grandmother lets go and smiles up at Gilbert, who stands against the wall and waves, feeling a bit out of place, but he's a bit used to that feeling anyway and instead just watches when Leila's grandfather comes in (only a bit taller than bà nội) and gives her the same greeting, chattering happily in heavily accented tones.
"Where you go to?" Ông nội asks Leila, gesturing for both her and Gilbert to take a seat while bà nội busies herself in the kitchen, a pot of phở already cooking on the stove.
"No idea," Leila admits, looking over at Gilbert. "It was my idea to stop here, so it's Gil's turn now."
Her grandmother murmurs something in Vietnamese that makes ông nội laugh and Leila to go a very deep shade of red. Gilbert thinks he has an idea of what it was, and he grins, causing her to step on his foot. Hard.
"Road trip was her idea, though," he says, trying to hide his wince, his first words to her grandparents, who eye him knowingly.
Leila rolls her eyes, just as another man enters the kitchen, short, silent, with a face that tells he was born with Downs Syndrome. Gilbert looks to Leila for an explanation, but she just stands up and hugs the man, calling him Uncle.
("They had another son, a long time ago, that died." She whispers to him later. "And he was born…different. He's been like that as long as I can remember. I was scared of him until I turned fifteen and grew some balls.")
They sit there for about an hour, just talking, Uncle eating. Leila translates what's hard to understand, and Gilbert has a feeling this is how she must feel whenever he and Ludwig speak German (and the slightly satisfied look on her face is telling him karma is a bitch). They decline food, but bà nội is packing up a cooler with, holy shit, that is a lot of frozen eggrolls, and it weighs a ton too.
After a while, though, he subtly suggests they leave ("Come on, we're losing daylight!") and Leila stands in the living room to say good-bye while he examines the different pictures in collages and frames around the room. Leila and her sisters as toddlers, their baptisms and first Communions, cousins being born and aunts and uncles getting married. Memories from the last forty years all gathered in one room, and Gilbert finds himself a bit taken aback by it all. Humans still somehow have the ability to surprise him, even now.
(There's even a picture of Leila at eight or nine years old, wearing a red aoi dai and smiling with crooked teeth, one that he keeps coming back to for some reason that he can't place.)
"That's my Dad."
He turns to the left. Leila has finished her good-byes, following his gaze to the mantle and pointing to one of the few black and white framed photos, one of a boy and an old man standing, without shoes, in the dust with a flag behind them.
She points to the boy. "My Dad. He was seven when this was taken, a year before they left. It was in front of a barber shop. They hung the Southern flag in the background. It's the same flag my Dad made me wave on Multi-Cultural day in elementary school. All the other Vietnamese kids had the Northern flags."
Gilbert studies the unsmiling faces, too-skinny bodies, the worn clothing. Tries to compare this image to the one he knows of her father, a short, slightly overweight man with graying hair and almost always a smile on his face. It's a hard stretch.
Leila moves to the photo next to it, of her grandmother with her children around her, holding her youngest baby on her hip."Ông nội was in the Vietnamese army, years before the war. He and a buddy were just hanging out, smoking one day, when his buddy decided to show him a picture of his cousin. Ông nội thought she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, so he went to every Catholic church he could find, looking for her until he found her. Her mother protested at first, saying he lived too far away, but they entered a yearlong engagement and fell in love anyway."
Gilbert thinks it sounds a bit like a fairy tale, but Leila is convinced it's true, and she hugs Don one last time before heading out the door, pulling Gilbert behind her.
Once they're in the car, however, she just sits in the driver's seat, staring at the wheel. Gilbert looks over at her, not quite sure what to say or ask. When she does speak, it's to ask him, "Where to next?"
"You all right?"
"I'm fine. I just remembered something."
He raises an eyebrow, and reaches over to pull the keys out of the ignition, despite her protests. He grins and holds them above his head, refusing to give them back. "Tell me."
"You moron, they're gonna think something's wrong if we just sit here!"
"Hey, I've got time."
She scowls, crossing her arms over her chest and fuming at the dashboard. There is a long silence, punctuated only by the yells of the neighborhood children playing in the street and a few passing cars.
"When I was twelve, my mom, dad, sisters and I went to go get a picture taken for Christmas cards. I was pissed. I didn't want to dress up and stand in one spot for half an hour to get the lighting right, and the picture people got their schedule messed up so we had to wait even longer. I knew my dad hated it too, so I told him how I felt about it. I was in one of those 'self-righteous' moods, and I told him how stupid it was to take a picture like that when all it is, is a status symbol to show other people that we can afford clothes and to have pictures taken and things like that. I told him in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter."
She laughs humorlessly, beating her fist lightly against the steering wheel. "He got so mad. He stood up and just left the picture place without another word. Mom was barely able to convince him to come back in time to get the pictures taken. It wasn't until later that I figured out why."
Gilbert thinks he knows why, and lowers the keys a bit, but he still asks. "Why?"
"You saw those pictures, right? And I was right. Those stupid Christmas cards were a symbol. A happy, colorful Christmas card, a testament to how hard he's worked to get where he is, compared to a colorless image of a barefoot boy in front of a barber shop."
She sounds vaguely disgusted with herself, staring down at the pedals of the car, before reaching over and snatching the keys out of his hand. Her grandparents wave as they pull out of the garage, and they're on the road again, the radio playing loud and miles and miles in front of them.
Neither of them speaks. Gilbert vaguely remembers mentions of the war – on the other side of the globe, Ivan talking about it every now and then, but it seemed like a tiny thing. Barely worth a thought. After all, how many wars has humanity gone through? How many civil wars have different nations gone through, how many people were affected by the stalemate the Soviet Union and the United States were at back then? He can only remember thinking of the events in Vietnam maybe once the entire time, and that was to remark to himself that he didn't envy any nation caught between Ivan and Alfred.
(Or, on second thought, maybe he did. After all, such a nation would still be considered a nation instead of merely a memory. Which was worse, he wondered?)
And yet, something that happened so long ago and so far away still came back, in the end, and after a while the silence becomes too much because he's always hated silence anyway, and Gilbert turns to her and asks, "So do you know any Vietnamese?"
Leila merges into another lane before answering. "I can listen to it and understand it, but I'm crap at speaking it. All I can do is count to ten and say 'the girl is running.'"
He smirks. "Say it."
She rolls her eyes. "Một cô gái đang chạy."
The girl is running. Oddly fitting. Gilbert leans back in his seat, watching the trees flash by the window, the different cars and trucks, and an idea pops into his mind.
"Can I drive?"
"Fuck no. You and your brother spend too much time with Italians, there's no way in hell I'm letting you drive."
The village was in chaos. Children running everywhere. Adults packing their things. Lien wandered here and there, helping who she could, offering a smile to those who sorely needed one, advising people what they should bring and what they should leave behind.
One family stood at the edge of the village, packing their things into a car and exchanging good-byes with their friends and relatives. The eldest girl walked back and forth between the car and the house, checking to make sure everything was there and occasionally scolding her brothers. The mother held her baby against her hip and smiled tearfully at her own siblings, promising to see them again.
"Lien, Lien."
Lien blinked, looking down. The family's youngest boy, eight years old whose name she struggled to recall, was tugging on her hand. She kneeled down next to him and smiled. "Yes?"
"I don't want to go."
"I don't want you to go either." She didn't want them to go, every family that left, whether it be by boat or by plane, broke her heart. But they didn't shatter it completely the way the children who accidentally stepped on the mines did, their broken bodies strewn across the streets. "But you'll be safe in America. I promise."
That had been the last promise Alfred made before he left, the one she was determined to make him keep, because he owed it to her, to her and her people to make sure that they were safe, to make sure that they were okay. And he promised he'd do so. He promised.
The little boy looked up at her with wide eyes. "I don't know how to speak English, though. Neither do bà and ông."
"You'll learn."
"Where will we live?"
"Your uncles will help you find a place." This child was one of the lucky ones, with relatives already in America to help pay for the journey. With God's help (or whatever she believed in – Lien didn't really even know anymore) his parents would find jobs. The children would grow up and learn more than they could ever have in Vietnam. They would grow up and be strong and healthy and have American children that wouldn't be hers anymore, and the thought made her want to cry a little bit, but instead she bit her lip and smiled at the boy. "Everything will be all right."
He looked at her, a bit of suspicion in his eyes. How did he know she was telling the truth? How did she know everything was going to be all right? But he had to trust her, in the end, because she was his nation, at least for now, and she loved him and still loves him and it broke her heart to see all of them go.
"Tam!" His sister called, climbing into the backseat of the car. "Hurry up! We're leaving!"
The boy turned away for a moment, the tiniest bit of fear beginning to show in his face. Lien squeezed his hand, and walked him over towards the vehicle, helping him into the backseat. He pressed his face against the window, taking one last look at his friends and relatives, one last look at his village and home, taking one last look at his country, and the hope and fear and innocence in his eyes that still persevered despite everything he'd seen, despite having to leave, despite the piece of shrapnel in his shoulder that had been there since he was a baby.
Lien took a deep, shuddering breath, the walls breaking down as the car began to drive away, the ground blurring beneath her, covering her mouth with her hand to hide the sobs that threatened to break free. She almost didn't hear the boy, leaning out of the window, yelling back.
"Don't cry, Lien! I'll come back! I'll come back to visit, don't cry!"
Her breath caught in her throat in something like a laugh, raising her head and giving the best smile she could muster. She watched as the car turned a corner and disappeared from sight, leaving nothing but dust in its wake. She stood there for a moment, already missing the people who were no longer hers, before turning around, back to the people who, for the moment, still were.
The World Meeting this time is in New York. Lien doesn't really think much of it, other than to remark to herself that it's better than Washington D.C. and dark black granite walls with carved names. The politics and policies are the same as always. Fights over trade, over nuclear power, over who did what to who when exactly. As always, the tension between world powers is thick, though gladly it's not the same as it used to be, when temperatures would seem to drop whenever silence fell. Now, it's mainly the usual loud chaos it's always been.
She doesn't speak much, only raising her hand to vote every now and then. She keeps her opinion on nuclear power in the Middle East to herself, and she doesn't even want to touch any of the European nations' problems. Yao nudges her to get involved in some of the conversations, but other than that she keeps to herself. The only time she even speaks directly to Alfred is to ask him what's for lunch.
So Lien is incredibly surprised when, as the meeting has adjourned for the afternoon on the fourth day, she is approached by the ex-nation of Prussia.
"I'm sorry, have we spoken before?" She asks. She vaguely remembers glimpses of him, long ago, during the World Wars and once when she visited Ivan during her own war, but never have they said a word.
"No." Beilschmidt says shortly. For someone who isn't even a nation anymore, he speaks more in meetings than she does, albeit mostly to call people out on idiotic decisions, trying to pick fights, and occasionally speaking for his brother. "But I know someone you should meet."
He leads her to the elevator, down to the ground floor. Several countries are already there, chatting with their mortal bosses or trying to get out of there as quickly as possible. Kirkland and Bonnefoy are arguing loudly at the top of their voices, as usual.
Beilschmidt walks past them towards a girl sitting near one of the fountains in the lobby, swinging her legs back and forth. Lien can tell by one glance she's a mortal, one of those three girls that she's seen hanging around the European nations and Alfred. One of the few people outside of world leaders who know the truth about nations, but she never really has gotten a good look at any of them until today.
The girl looks up, smiling at them as they approach, before jumping up as though she's so excited and impatient she can't sit still for another moment. Something about her is vaguely familiar, but Lien can't manage to place it. Instead, she asks, "She's one of Alfred's people, isn't she?"
"No." Pause. Beilschmidt considers the question for a moment before answering again. "She's American, but her father was born in Vietnam. He came to America because of the war."
Simple words. It's the same fairy tale for so many people, yet it makes Lien stop for a moment, look over at a girl who had been born in a country far away from her own, who had never even seen Vietnam with her own eyes, and yet.
And yet.
And yet Lien can see the faintest trace of envy in Beilschmidt's eyes, and doesn't even need to ask then who the human really belongs to.
The girl reaches them, finally, and stands in front of the two nations, her hands behind her back, rocking back and forth a bit of her heels and grinning. She doesn't say a word, just stares at Lien, opening her mouth to speak before closing it, as if some indescribable feeling she can't explain is welling up inside of her.
"Hi." She finally says, and Lien remembers those eyes, looking out at her from a car driving far, far away that wasn't really all that far away at all. "I'm Leila."
"Hello." Lien replies. "I'm the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."
She didn't think it was possible for Leila to smile even more, but she does, positively beaming when she replies. "I know. My dad told me all about you."
fin
Authors/Historical Notes:
-In 1954, Vietnam achieved its independence from France. For years, it had been considered a part of the French colonies of Indochina. During WWII, after the Axis invasion of France, Vietnam fell under the power of Japan, who used the nation's resources and people in its war efforts, therefore the references to being 'exploited and starved'. After WWII, Indochina was again under French control, until forces led by the Việt Minh drove the French out, leading to the independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.
- As with almost every new revolution, the question of what sort of government the nation should take caused much tension. Rather than start another conflict, the country was divided into the Communist Northern Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Southern State of Vietnam, led by Hồ Chí Minh and Diem respectively. However, this solution did not last.
- The Vietnam War was, in essence, a civil war. Both sides were Vietnamese. The North, wishing to unite the country, invaded the South, who fought back. The Northern forces were known as the Việt Cộng, while the South was defended by several village militias. Eventually, America, fearing a domino effect if Vietnam became a Communist nation, threw its support behind the Southern forces, while China and the Soviet Union supported the North.
- This war also took place during what was known as the Cold War, a tension-filled period between the Soviet Union and the United States. In a way, the Vietnam War was an extension of the rivalry between the two powers, which, when you think about it, sort of sucks.
- Notably, the Vietnam War was fought using guerilla warfare, which, simply put, means that soldiers fought in the forests using tactics to hide themselves from the enemy. The Americans were also known for spraying the forests with Agent Orange, herbicide meant to destroy crops, which caused starvation and also polluted water sources leading to mutations, and napalm, which burned and burned and burned.
- Landmines were also another factor that caused much devastation, to soldiers and civilians alike.
- The war was not popular in America at all. Protests against military drafts flourished in the United States, and eventually the Americans withdrew from the war.
- The Fall of Sài Gòn occurred in 1975. It is considered the end of the war, as afterwards the North succeeded in reuniting the country under one Communist government. The city of Sài Gòn was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City, after the leader of the Việt Minh who helped free Vietnam from the French.
- Thousands of refugees fled Vietnam before, after, and during the war. Most of them came to America, including my grandparents and my father. The stories embedded in this fic are all true to an extent. As a child, I was always told the bare minimum fairy tale, that my family came to this country looking for a better life. When I was thirteen, my father went to the doctor to talk about a pain in his shoulder. An x-ray revealed there was a piece of shrapnel embedded in his shoulder. My grandparents said when he was a baby, a grenade landed on their house. Though they had all survived, that shrapnel had always been there. It was a reminder of how little I knew about my family, and I wanted to know more.
- My grandfather did actually meet my grandmother in the way described in the fic. He worked as a mechanic for the Americans in the city during the war, but when it became apparent that the South was going to lose, he returned to his village to take care of his family and arrange passage to America.
- My grandmother took care of the family while my grandfather was away. My father once described a memory he had of the Việt Cộng being outside his village and the village militia inside, firing at each other. Their house was caught in the middle, and he remembered huddling with his mother screaming at their men to stop shooting, she had children with her. He also recalled one of the militia leaders keeping the artillery in a closet, until his autistic nephew one day stumbled upon it and the explosion could be felt the equivalent of a block away.
- My father had uncles living in America during the way, who paid for the plane fare to bring them to the States. They traveled from their village to Guam, before taking a plane across the Pacific Ocean to Oregon. There, my grandparents got their first jobs picking fruit. Their children began to learn English and attend school, and they all graduated from high school, save for my uncle, who was born with Downs Syndrome but is loved anyway. Most of their children went to college, and now work as a lawyer, stock broker, teacher, quality manager, and owner of a high-class bar in Portland.
- I grew up eating my grandmother's food and listening to my relatives speak Vietnamese, but we moved before I could learn the language beyond numbers 1-10. My grandparents used to give me music videos with Vietnamese pop songs, but I still never grasped it. An attempt with Rosetta Stone enabled me to say words like 'book' and 'water' and 'juice' and 'The girl is running.' (actually don't know how accurate that is, so don't quote me on that). And then the software broke and I started learning Spanish and French in high school.
- Despite this, I am still very proud of my Vietnamese heritage. I loved learning how to make eggrolls and fried rice, and still hope to learn the language and visit the actual country someday. We visit Little Saigon every now and then, which is a bit like Chinatown. A copy of the black and white photo of my father as a boy sits on the desk in his study, and I get a glimpse of it sometimes on the way to my room. I do actually get a bit offended when people say that you're not really something if you're only half of it ("You're not really Vietnamese, you're only half-Vietnamese.") because I really do love the country I have never seen very much. I love knowing where my family comes from and their stories. Vietnam, I feel, is just as much a part of me and who I am as much as America is, and I am very proud to be Vietnamese.
-The title comes from a song named "A Mother's Lament", an anti-war song. You can find it online, I was originally inspired by a beautiful a capella version while writing this.
-This story is dedicated to my father.