Hang's rewrite 1st draft

American bullet.

Another story of "Miss Saigon".

I still couldn't believe that I was killed until I felt no longer belong to my body, no more warmth could I feel from the air. I was killed, one shot in the head by my most beloved one, unbelievable. This whole mess was… unbelievable.

Southern Vietnam in the early of 1960s was chaos. Our village was already so poor when the government came and took the rest of the food. I was only four. All I could remember was my mom hugging a soldier’s leg, begging him to leave us some rice. “My child, please have mercy for my child. I beg you. Please think of the poor boy.” She said, voice trembled in tear but nothing she could do to get back what was taken. He kicked her over and over, tried to shake her off. I remember he said something like “be honourable” and “for the nation”. And then they left, the soldiers, with our food, drained our village to its last drop. Nothing left for us to live onto. That night Kim’s mother and mine left us and head to the wood. Kim was crying when her mother gave her to me, “she hasn’t got anything to eat for the whole day, the poor girl” she said, I could see her trying so hard not to cry. My mother gave us two tiny roll of burned rice leftover from yesterday and then they left. Kim cried louder and I couldn’t help but join her. I was four years old and Kim was two at the time.

As we grew up, we’d gotten used to the sign of the soldier coming to the village to take away the food. It wasn’t a pain to people anymore, as if giving their food away is a part of their life, produce food, give them away, produce more food and then give them away. Before we even know how to talk, we already know field work. Before we could even harvest the rice, they are already taken away. In the end of the day, the girls followed their mother to the wood, and brought home some wild vegetable and bulbs. Thanks to that, we continued on living.

One day, as mother gave us half of her dinner as usual, father refused it and said to her “We can’t live like this any longer. I can’t live on feeling like eating your blood, your flesh like this anymore. You eat it.” Mother looked at him, she started to sob “But dear, if you don’t eat enough, you won’t be able to work, we won’t get enough food for the soldiers, they will kill us.” “I will think of something,” he said, “can’t be poor forever.” He said, and the next morning he disappeared, and the morning after that, and the whole week, and the whole month, and one day he came back, his shirt dyed with what we thought was blood, he gave us a bag of rice and then run away without saying anything. The next day soldiers came again, with time with some big white foreigners.