lulusgardenfli: Good to read your review Lulu! I'm glad you love Minh and hope you love her more here.
JosephineFiore: Thank you for reviewing! I glad you find the story refreshing! There aren't enough good Vietnam Stories out there!
S*C
Sickly red mornings were the norm in Vietnam. Like the sky was stained with the bloodlust that had run rampant the night before.
It's been weeks since Soda's platoon had entered the jungle, and in the time, his appearance and those of his buddies had become a calendar of sorts -tore uniforms, grimy hair, and blood splattered skin keeping track of how many days they'd been away from home, from sense, from anything sweet and innocent and good.
Light humming hit his ears instead of bullets for once, Soda softened from his place on his sleep mat. It shared with a pretty one-night lady, who'd been open to providing relief to servicemen, in exchange for goods. She wasn't the first woman he'd shared intimacies with here, but she was the first he genuinely enjoyed being around for more than just the physical. Trinh was knowing and smart and open to a laugh. And damn if her mouth didn't know seven ways to send a guy to paradise. Not a bad deal, and if Soda hadn't known she was also taking night-calls from three other guys in the platoon, he might've even liked her as something more than just a body to escape misery with.
But as it were…he felt that he could honestly call her a friend. The second friend he'd made in this place, after Minnie Mouse. But there were obvious benefits to having an adult-lady friend as opposed to a child one.
Soda draped an arm behind his head, fist griping strands of his wheat gold hair, considering. Though, the same was true the other way around as well. His thing with Trinh offered physical pleasure, but his affection with Minnie Mouse was the truer friendship, with no strings attached except the unspoken ones. That he would do his damn best to keep the million and one things that could kill the little girl away from her village. And she would never be afraid to run up to him and greet him with a hug and a blinding smile:
"Dragon Hair! Dragon Hair!"
The whole platoon hadn't stopped getting a kick out of his new 'girlfriend' yet. But there was a definite easing of tension between the locals and them, when Soda and Minnie looped down the dirt road together; her wearing his helmet, and Soda keeping a hand on her head. A little more seriously, some of the guys start calling them Pocahontas and John Smith. Anything that helped keep the peace here (and therefore their lives) was welcomed.
But Soda wasn't the only one who'd gotten what was left of his heart strings tugged. Homer Cursty had a soft spot for her as well, claiming that her firecracker antics reminded him of his kid sister back in Nebraska. Hell, even Lone Wolf smiled once or twice, when Minnie turned a cartwheel for them.
Keeping that smile safe and carefree was a fair easier reason to accept for being here than the ones Uncle Sam had tried to give him. Reasons that Soda still couldn't understand.
He shuffled. It was too hot most nights for blankets to be rendered necessary, so the only thing covering both of them were the waves of Trinh's hair. That proved a problem when the pounding of young, frantic feet stormed up to the shack, and Soda barely had time to jerk his pants over to cover himself as a young girl with a God-awful haircut and boys clothes -one of Minnie Mouse's sister- came barreling into the one room, pouncing on Trinh and shaking her awake.
"Lanh!" Trinh snapped, covering herself with her shirt. But the twenty-five-year-old's anger melted away when the teenage girl started babbling. And Soda had picked up enough Vietnamese to understand the words for Mother and Baby and Coming.
S*C
Minh's family had been blown from sleep that morning with the force of Má's shriek, though with eight people (Minh, her sisters, Daddy, Auntie, and her brothers) bumbling around for match sticks, it took a while for the flickering light to reveal what was wrong. Everyone stared at the spent, swollen body of Má, and the pool of crimson she was laying in. That meant Little Brother was coming.
Nobody seemed too happy about that, though.
The grown-ups exploded into a frenzy, sending Lanh to fetch the midwife Trinh, who usually ended up killing half as many babies as she saved. And soon the house was full of neighbors, murmuring and tongue clucking while Má screamed and screamed and screamed, shrill and pleading to the three Christian Gods the funny priest used to talk about:
"Lạy Mẹ Maria đầy ân sủng, Mẹ Maria là nơi ẩn náu của con! Holy Maria be my haven! Chào đức mẹ Maria, God-Giê-su- Hỡi Maria, Mẹ của chúng ta, hãy giúp -help me! Mother!"
Pushed to the side, Minh cowed with her sisters-cousins, the older girls looking as especially horrified, and all of them once more forgotten. By the time Midwife Trinh showed up, it was too late. The Baby had come and gone without a breath of air in between.
Má followed soon after, like a matchstick with the flame blown out.
The woman of their village began clamorous mourning. But Minh ran. Devastated, scared, she fled her family and all the neighbors; she didn't want them. She wanted Má. Stumbling, falling and skinning her knee only to spring up and run onward, the hem of her favorite red dress-shirt got torn and draggled with bloody mud. And she cried for her Má, cause even at eight, Minh knew death when she saw it. She'd seen it in the bodies in the river, in the stories the G.I.'s swapped, and she knew that Má was gone somewhere that a little girl like Minh couldn't follow.
Though at this moment, Minh surely wanted to try. Who would love her without Má?
Minh ran and fell. Fell and cried. Cried and ran near the bulrushes of the riverbed in the early morning light, chasing the morning curls of mist and her missing Má, until the morning sun grew strong enough to drink up the mist and shine, clear and yellow, along the overgrown banks of the river.
There she stayed, fists and feet hitting, kicking the ground in wild defiance, screaming into it the way poor Má had screamed. The idea was to keep pounding it until the earth chough up Má and maybe even Little Brother. But the earth was too big, and like everything, it ignored a little girl like her as easily as a water buffalo did flies.
"Má…" Minh cried when she, at last, spend herself. "Má…come back."
S*C
When Soda peered inside the mourning house and did a head quick headcount, he suddenly had a good idea of what it must've been like to be Darry: a boiling frustration mixed with disbelief when he found a certain little girl missing.
Did nobody even bother to watch Minnie Mouse through this shit? But then he snorted as his common sense gave the answer. Soda wasn't blind. It was plain as day that in Vietnam, girls were valued the same way a goat was -good for milk, not worth crying over if the family needed to make soup.
But Jesus Christ…
He rubbed his brow under his helmet, feeling an old, indescribable ache re-settling in the marrow of his bones as he trudged out of the house and off to track the little girl down. It was getting dark, and while the area had been quiet the last few nights, there was still everything from Charlie to orange-and-black striped kitty cats that wouldn't have qualms about finishing off a wandering child.
Luckily for the both of them, the kid was right where Soda thought she be -curled up on the river edge, with more mud than skin, tears dry on her cheeks as she sniffed and shuddered.
"Ah, honey," Soda muttered tiredly to no one in particular, squatting down to gather her up, pulling her out of the muck. "C'mon, let's get you cleaned up..."
It had never been Soda's job to wash a little kid -by the time it fell to Darry and him to raise Ponyboy, he'd been a teenager after all. But it didn't take much figuring out; bring the two of them down to the water, Soda sat down Indian style, with Minnie Mouse in his lap. While he used his helmet as a bowl to washed her's face and mud-clumped pigtails, till both were reasonable cleansed.
He tried to smile. "That's better."
Minh's lower lip wobbled, and she looked up at him, those wide dark eyes starting to fill with tears all over again. "She said she take me to the river today," she replied voice full. "And I can't find her nowhere."
She sniffled and Soda felt smile bled away as the bullet hit home. Without conscious thought, his grip on his young friend tightened, his arms and chest allowing themselves to be turned into a bed, a cradle, a place of rest.
"Ya miss ya Má, sweetie?" he said somehow, throat just a little too tight. "Is that it?"
She sniffed, making fresh tears spill down her little smudged cheeks, leaving cleaner tracks in the stains there that he missed, and nodded dolefully. Before he knew it, Soda was hugging her closer, and his own dirty fingers trying to smudge the tears into nothing.
"Sometimes," he confessed in a whisper, his medallion slipping free of his army vest to glint between them. "I still miss my Má, too. Miss her somethin' awful."
Minnie blinked, and while Soda was certain she hadn't understood every word, she knew enough to get the gist of what he was saying. That the two of them were both motherless here, with nothing but the water and memories to comfort them.
"It hurts," she told him simply, and laid her cheek against his skinny chest, tiny fingers fisting in his ragged shirt. "Don't it?"
"Yeah, baby," he said simply. "It does."
Translations:
"Lạy Mẹ Maria đầy ân sủng,Mẹ Maria là nơi ẩn náu của con! ("Gracious Mary, Mother Mary is my refuge!)
Chào đức mẹ Maria, God-Giê-su- Hỡi Maria, Mẹ của chúng ta (Mary, God Jesus- Mary, our Mother...!")