Personal Narrative: My First Vietnam War

CREATIVE WRITING

Sometimes I walk past the house that’s filled with dread, hate and fear. Sometimes I think I put myself through the pain to make me stronger. Sometimes all I can feel is hate and anger filling my blood, my body and my mind. When I think of those years, the awaiting dark holes are released to blacken the rest of the few memories filled with light.
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The war had broken out and all the children were being evacuated to distant cousins or aunts in the surrounding war-free countries for safety. My parents had told me that I was only going away for a while, the war would be over and I would see them soon. Those memories are the only few that bring light to the darkness inside, the ones that keep me sane.

I had a name-tag placed around my neck; my name and a number were all that occupied that paper. I had no thought as to where I might be going, as far as I had known; it was only my parents and I in the world. It was all we needed. It was all I needed. It was perfect. The other children were just as clueless as I, no one knew what was going to happen, we were all put on ships like storage left in the bilges to rot.

I heard my name and number being shouted out in the middle of the night, it was my turn. I wasn’t the last to get off the ship but I pitied those who were. The ship captain had told all of us what a great
experience we will have, digging up our family roots with long lost cousins and distant uncles, telling us that we will live a privileged life, somewhere where there is no war, sadness, famine or drought. The life I had lived with my parents wasn’t that great, we moved from place to place, depending where my father could find work, but we were happy, together. I had no care for what the captain was saying, I had only wanted to be home, with my parents.

His face is something I could never forget. The first time I laid eyes on that fat, oily, sleazy, disgusting face, covered with mad hair and a beard that looked like it could hide a murderer’s secret, my body shivered, tingling with fear as he exposed his toothless grin. I had to ride on his lap in his tractor, his body touching mine; I could feel his hot and heavy breaths seeping through his beard onto my neck. I remember that wheezy chuckle whenever the truck would bounce over a bump or through a ditch.
He lived by himself, alone on a farm in the middle of a country I couldn’t spell nor barely say. He spoke little English, and the words he did know, he spoke so constantly that it feels like they are etched onto my forehead.

There was nothing to do, nowhere to go.
I would stay in his little cottage and clean and cook with what memory I still had of my mother, imagining her next to me in our kitchen, letting me help her with what we had to cook dinner. On the good days, when he would come home happy, he sometimes let me listen to the radio, but on those bad days, he would hurt me. He would be drunk from being at the pub, he would’ve had too much to drink and he would touch me, at first I would push away but he would get angry, he would shout and grab the nearest thing to him and hit me with it. If it would break, he would blame me and punish
me.

I had a huge fear of rats, and he knew that. So one day when he had come home drunker than ever, he lifted up my dress and I knew what he wanted. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to get away, but he was too strong, I bit him hard and I heard that chuckle and I felt that hot, heavy breath on my ear and he whispered
“you stupid slut”, and he threw me onto my bed and locked the door. I couldn’t move, my body sinking into the mattress, stiff and sore. He came back ten minutes later with a potato sack filled with something. I saw something squirm in the little light that was produced from the dying candle and I knew that smell, I knew that sound. He tied my arms and legs to the ends of the bed, my body stretched. He tied the itchy, brown potato sack around my wait, blew out the candle and locked the door behind him. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it scratching and biting at the sack, trying to escape its trap. I knew that eventually it would have to nibble its way out and I knew the direction that it was only capable of doing so. I pulled and twisted my wrists trying to free my wrists from the bounds he had put me in.

I had no idea of the time or how long I had been buried in darkness, but when the squeaking had stopped I knew what would follow. I tried to remain calm, I pictured my parents, I imagined them waiting for me, worrying about me. But the war had stopped, and I was still here. Why hadn’t they tried to get be back, and take me away from this place?

Sometimes I walk past that house. I look at it, the small cottage surrounded by apartment blocks which were said to be the new age in housing and development. It had taken me eight years to free myself of him. After eight years, I sneaked into his room, stood by his bed and pushed my pillow onto his fat, wrinkly, oily face. I enjoyed watching his body squirm and twitch, it was calming.

Sometimes I stand in front of the cottage and I hold my stomach, holding the scars that will remain with me forever.

I had hated this place, but I had nowhere else to go. I had no one. Nowhere to go. Nothing.