June 2020

After moving to the U.S. from Vietnam, Hoa struggles to adapt Hoa fidgeted nervously with her brown paper lunch bag containing her turkey-and-cheese sandwich, small rounded carrot sticks, and container of applesauce that came in the drab, wrinkled packaging of a school lunch. She glanced around, feeling some kind of dread inside eat away at her stomach, her hands trembling and clutching the bag ever tighter. She was in a new, unknown land, surrounded by new, unknown people who spoke a new, unknown language. She surveyed the cafeteria, stuffed full with bodies and chaos and noise that made her feel absolutely overwhelmed. She kept her head low and eyes pinned to the floor, focusing on just moving one foot after the other, right after left, not quite sure where she was to go. She didn’t know anyone, and being the shy person she was, she shuffled over to an empty table at the back of the room and began to nibble at her food. Hoa had come from Vietnam, a country in Asia that seemed to her to have almost nothing in common with the country called the U.S.A. where she’d moved only weeks before. She used to live with her mother, father, little sister, and older brother in a small village near the woods. Every morning, she and her siblings would pack a bag of good homemade food and walk down the dirt road lined with flowered trees that blew in the breeze, mixing in with the aroma of soil and grass. They’d arrive at a small schoolhouse and sit in class with children from their village and others around the area. Hoa had had a kind teacher with warm skin and a smile that ignited her eyes, who would read stories to the class all day when they did well on an assignment. She had also had friends, people with whom she could laugh and feel safe and comfortable. Of course she knew that her home country was far from perfect, but that place was her home. When she’d had it, her life there had just been routine. It had seemed normal and not at all special. But now, she wanted more than anything to have it back. Tears welled in her eyes, which had grown hot and puffy. Now she lived with only her mother and little sister on a crowded street lined with small, squat houses that all looked identical to one another. She was shaken gruffly out of bed in the morning, shoveled down some breakfast, and then stuffed herself into a bus near-bursting with people—loud, talking people, who smelled of breath and sweat. After a lurching, nauseating bus ride, she would be sucked out the door by a wave of kids and washed inside a big confusing maze of hallways, classrooms, textbooks, and strangers. Her teacher seemed dry and humorless, hadn’t yet made any effort to help her with English (not that she wanted anything to do with their clumsy, blundering language), and told the class that she had moved to America from China. Hoa couldn’t really understand the words that people said around her, and she couldn’t speak like them either, but she had gathered what he’d said well enough and knew very well that he was wrong. She’d come from Vietnam, not China. And, unlike in Vietnam, she had no friends. She inhaled a shaky breath and then stuffed a baby carrot in her mouth to try and push back the wave of homesickness that arose within her. One of the only things she had left from her home in Vietnam was her name, Hoa, which translated into English as “blossom” or “flower,” and her mother said she may have to lose that too, change her name to a normal American one that people could pronounce easily. Suddenly, the despair seemed like too much to take. Vision blurred, Hoa located a door that she knew led out to the playground. As she walked slowly over toward the entrance to the outside, pushing it open, she felt invisible, like maybe if she were to just disappear right then, no one would ever even know. A cool breeze greeted her when she stepped onto the playground. It smelled of plants and soil, like a small pocket of home that she could never leave behind, but was at the same time tinted with the odor of gasoline, like a reminder that she was very, very far from that place she held so dear. Hoa closed the door with a click, her steps transforming to a run. She ran past where the playground ended and was replaced with rolling hills and fields dotted with wildflowers. Past where a stream divided the school’s property from that of the people who lived next to them, and even a little farther still. As the wind rushed through her hair and the landscape soared by her, Hoa felt as though she could just keep running and running until the end of time, hardly even noticing as everything flew by, leaving it all behind her. Finally, her breaths coming in wild gasps, her legs collapsed beneath her. The sun’s glow bathed everything in a golden light. Trees across from the valley where she sat swayed in a gentle breeze that ruffled the daisies and wildflowers scattered about. The day seemed all around cheerful, as though everything felt the need to mock her in her misery. Bright light from above caused her to squint, as though the sun’s glare were reflected back through her own gray eyes, pooling with tears of homesickness, sadness, and anger. Anger at this horrid, loud, stinky, chaotic place. At her parents, for getting into that fight that had divided her life and family. The tears flowed silently down her cheeks as fluffy white clouds blew over until her eyes slowly fell closed. Hoa just sat there, reality slowly creeping up on her. For a minute, she had been caught in that wild fantasy of running in