She spoke with a heavy American accent, the words swallowed in the back of her throat. The tones were even and uninteresting, as if someone had spliced away all the dipthongs and diacritics to create an auditory flatline. Whatever musicality inherent in the tonal Vietnamese language was gone. She didn't know the various pronouns for "I" or "you" and her English words were poor substitutions.
I was following my mother's cousin to school. She had been born in the U.S. to my grandfather's younger brother, and knew little about where I came from, other than that it was the country of her parents. I remember walking through the school grounds trailing behind her words trying to decipher her meaning as we weaved through the outdoor hallways. She talked the entire time we walked, with me not understanding a word and she uncomprehending the turmoil I could find no voice to articulate. It was spring, or perhaps a fair-weather day sometime in fall, and though there was no rain, everything felt dark and heavy as I entered the doors of the classroom.
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