For my brothers,
Joseph & Michael
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
My name is Matt Pin
In the day
That night
It’s great being part
Tryouts start
On Wednesday
The assignment is
The piano sits
Something’s going on
Partner up and start throwing
On Wednesday
Coach Robeson starts
On Saturday, my parents
Veteran Voices, or VV
No one asks me any questions
Saturday is cold
Tuesday just before the final bell
Thursday night
Coach Robeson isn’t at practice
Across the street
Until they find a full-time
On Thursday night
On Wednesday afternoon
On Tuesday afternoon
On Wednesday
When I see Rob
We win our division
I can’t believe how easy
I’ve been thinking
On Sunday, it rains
The days are getting
Acknowledgments
After Words™
About the Author
Q&A with Ann E. Burg
A Brief History of the Vietnam War
Make Your Own Mooncakes and Paper Lanterns
Step Up to the Plate
Write a Poem
Copyright
My name is Matt Pin
and her name, I remember,
is Phang My.
His name
I will never say,
though forever I carry his blood
in my blood,
forever his bones
stretch in my bones.
To me,
he is nothing.
If he stumbled on me now,
I wonder,
would he see himself in my eyes?
And I?
Would I recognize the dragon
who went beyond the mountain
and never came back?
I carry her too,
her blood in my blood,
her bones in my bones.
Eyes I will not forget,
though I see them
only in dreams,
in fog,
through thick clouds of smoke.
I hear her voice,
thin, shrill staccato notes,
her words short puffs of air
that push me along,
inch by inch, breath by breath.
In choking mist
and wailing dust,
through sounds
of whirring helicopters
and open prayers,
I hear her.
You cannot stay here,
she says.
Here you will be like dust.
Bui Doi.
Dust of life.
You cannot stay here.
I remember little,
but I remember.
There were babies crying
and mothers screaming,
begging soldiers to take
their children.
Take her, take him.
Please let them live!
Pushing, praying, pleading.
I would rather be dust
on the road
than leave her.
But it is not enough.
She pushes me forward,
through screaming madness
and choking dust,
through fear and fog,
through smoke and death,
through whirring sounds
of helicopter prayers,
and night falling like
rain-soaked stars.
Survive,
she says.
Remember
not this shame.
My father says
when I am older,
there are places I can go
to find him,
but I won’t.
What good would it do?
He never saw my face.
But she was already swelled
with love for him when he left,
taking with him
his blue-eyed promise
that it would not end there,
with the smell of burnt flesh
and the sound of crying children.
I will come back,
you said,
and she believed you.
Why not?
You shared her home,
she called you husband,
why should she not believe you?
But you did not come back.
Why should I find you?
The house I live in now
is big,
but its walls are thin.
At night, when they
think I am asleep,
I hear the news on TV.
I hear them talk.
It’s no wonder
the soldiers are broken,
Dad says.
When they left, they were
high school heroes,
stars of the football team,
with pretty girlfriends.
Now look at them—
hobbling on crutches,
rolling themselves
in wheelchairs,
while people throw things—
tomatoes,
rotten apples,
angry words.
I have a now brother.
He doesn’t look like me.
I’m too much fall—
wet brown leaves
under a darkening sky.
Tommy is summer—
sunlight, peaches,
wide, grinning sky.
Even Tommy’s hair is summer.
Curls cling to his scalp like
the yellow-and-white sweet corn
at McGreavy’s Market.
Only one straight tuft sticks up,
like a clump of sun-scorched hay.
I have another brother.
Dark skin, dark eyes,
straight black hair,
and a laugh like a
babbling, bubbling,
quickly tumbling
brook.
She would not let him come.
If we got separated,
he might not survive.
Who would want a little boy
mangled and deformed,
she said,
with missing fingers
and stumps instead of legs?
Who would want a little boy
like that?
I would, I begged.
But no, she said.
You are strong, she said.
You go.
When you are grown,
if you still remember,
you can come back.
How can I go back?
Where would I look?
What would I say?
If I remember.
How can I forget?
My now mother
is small like me.
Her hair is long
and yellow.
She fills my room
with the smell
of summer.
When I wake
in the middle of the night
full of screams
and flashes,
she sits on the edge
of my bed,
her pale hands move
gently across my face.
Her voice is soft,
like warm honey.
She sings a quiet song.
There is darkness on the water.
There is darkness on the land.
There is darkness all around us,
but I will hold your hand.
You are safe, my precious child.
You are safe now, you are home.
We have found you and we love you.
You will never be alone.
There are no mines here,
no flames, no screams,
no sounds of helicopters
or shouting guns.
I am safe.
How can I
be home?
My father
has chestnut-colored eyes
and short brown hair
that is starting
to wear away in front.
His well-scrubbed hands
are square and strong.
Every Saturday afternoon,
if it is not too cold
or rainy,
we go to the park.
My father and I
toss a ball.
I catch it
in my oversized glove.
Again and again,
he pitches,
I catch.
I pitch,
he catches.
Back and forth,
back and forth,
until dusk creeps in
and the ball
is just a swiftly
moving shadow
fading into darkness.
Every time at the park,
I remember the first time.
What is this place? I thought.
I was small.
Small, but not young.
I was almost ten,
but I looked much younger
than the other boys my age.
There were two boys
and a little girl
bouncing
on a pink elephant
with gray spots.
There was a painted
ladybug seesaw,
a shiny slide,
and monkey bars.
Even now,
sometimes
I cannot believe it.
I cannot believe
so different a place.
A place made
just for children.
I think about him.
I wonder where he is.
He would like it here.
Tommy is too young
to play ball.
When he comes
to the park,
we put him
on the swing.
Higher, he says,
and I pull him
back as far
as I can reach
and then let go.
Higher, he says,
laughing.
His small fists
squeeze the chain.
His perfect toes
dangle
inside
bright red sneakers.
In school
for Veterans Day
we write essays
on freedom.
I write,
Freedom is the color
of bright red sneakers.
What is this? the teacher asks.
Does this make sense?
The first two years,
I went back to the
adoption agency
every Saturday morning
to learn English.
Once a month,
my mother and father
came with me.
We spent
the day reading
legends and fairy tales,
how Au Co was
a beautiful mountain fairy
who married
Lac Long Quan,
a daring dragon prince.
We celebrated Tet
and Tet Trung Thu.
We ate banh giay
and played danh phet.
We did not talk about
the American War,
how tanks lumbered
in the roads
like drunken elephants,
and bombs fell
from the sky
like dead crows.
For two years,
I learned about Vietnam,
but it wasn’t any
Vietnam I remembered.
The teacher
was a tiny woman
with small eyes
who always stayed
in one spot
when she talked,
but whose words rolled
up and down,
up and down
the classroom walls
like a glass marble.
She told happy stories
of people and places
I did not know.
Colorful costumes
and carnival dragons
live in another Vietnam,
a Vietnam
that I do not remember.
I close my eyes.
I listen.
I try to remember
the colors,
but I cannot.
I try to form
dragons from
dust,
but I cannot.
I try again.
But I cannot.
My Vietnam
is drenched
in smoke and fog.
It has no parks
or playgrounds,
no classrooms
or teachers.
It is not
on any map
or in any book.
My Vietnam is
only
a pocketful
of broken pieces
I carry
inside me.
The children in that class
look at me strangely.
My lashes are not flat
and straight like theirs.
Their hair is not thick
and brown like mine.
We are all children
born in Vietnam.
Most of us
have two names.
A new name
to welcome us,
and an old name
to remind us.
Still, I am different.
My face
is part American.
But anyway,
twice a year
we get together.
We celebrate
Tet or Tet Trung Thu.
These customs
are strange to me,
but still
my stomach aches
with sadness.
I want to go back.
The agency classroom
is decorated with
red and gold streamers.
There are fresh fruits,
flowers, and sticky
little rice cakes
on the teacher’s desk.
Are you all right?
my mother asks.
She feels my forehead.
She touches my face.
She compliments my
paper dragon and my
folded lantern.
I shrug.
I’m just not hungry.
I give her my dragon
and my lantern.
Here, these are for you.
Maybe he’s getting too
old for all this,
my father says.
He needs to experience
his culture,
my mother answers.
At night,
when I try to sleep,
I hear her cry.
Music is soothing.
My mother’s words
float through
the thin walls.
Maybe music will help
soothe his monsters.
Let him play baseball,
my father answers.
He has a good arm.
I turn out the light
and keep listening,
but it’s quiet now,
darkness on the water,
darkness on the land.
In
the day,
Jeff Harding works at
the same hospital
as my father.
At night,
he teaches piano.
Jeff was supposed
to go to a school
for music,
a special school
in New York City.
Instead,
he went to Vietnam.
He rode the
helicopter ambulances
that rescued
the wounded.
He took care of them,
right there
on the helicopter.
Maybe one day
Jeff can show you
his Dustoff patch,
Dad says
Saturday during breakfast.
But I know he won’t.
Jeff’s Vietnam
is my Vietnam,
the Vietnam nobody talks about
on Saturday mornings.
On Wednesdays,
an hour
before dinner,
I sit at the piano.
My fingers stretch
across the keys
like a soundless
spider.
Jeff stands
beside the bench
as I play.
He crosses his arms
and smiles.
You can hit the keys a
little harder, he says.
Let’s look at the notations.
He points to the fancy S.
That’s the treble clef.
Each line and space is lettered
so we’ll know what note to play.
Let’s learn the lines first.
Here’s a way to remember them.
He puts his foot up
on the bench
and taps each line
with a pencil.
Every good boy deserves fudge.
He smiles and
taps them again.
Every good boy does fine.
The next day,
after school,
I practice piano
for half an hour.
Some kids complain
about practicing piano,
but not me.
Notes are like numbers,
never changing.
Staccato or sustained,
pounded or tapped,
notes always stay
the same.
Ten divided by two
will always be five.