Fade In

Abstract

Fade In Cathy Linh Che (bio) a golden shovel using the beginning lines of the script ofApocalypse Now, in which my parents, who wereVietnamese refugees, were hired to play extras I chew my dinner carefully. Ahelicopter arrives. The singleman at the table is my father. The imageof his younger self fades, then a faint scent ofBaler. So I walk in the forest listening to trees. ________ My aunt asked her son to serve us coconutcut from the cluster of treesout front. For the time beingit is 2011. History is being viewedon the television, throughthe eyes of a white American. Thefact is, my parents were barely visible through the veilof that gaze. They were the props ofempire. Characters with short timeand no lines. Orprops to smell like areal thing. Movie so real, it's beyond a dream. [End Page 34] ________ While directing, Coppola occasionallychomped on a green coloredmango, skin and all. Film was all smokeand rigging, waftsof bright sulfur throughsalt spray and surf-ready waves. Thescene opens just outside the frame.My mother sleeping in a room, scented with yellowdroplets of piss. How thenshe lay, bathed in violet. ________ The musicblares. A speaker beginsto call like a child, quietly,on its way to howl, then silence, suggestiveof taxidermy. Mother ofGod, pray for my mother in 1968,13 and sent away––eager for the year to become, finally, 1969. Then, perhapsshe listens to theradio, through to the endof the evening. Bythe time she wakes, my father is already gone. Thescene opens just outside the doors [End Page 35] ________ of the schoolhouse. I can see him now,walking toward the beach, movingpast fishermen selling their catch, throughthe crewmembers setting up their cameras to capture themorning's just-rinsedlight. He waits to enter the frame.The director asks: Areyou ready? My father climbs aboard a helicopter, which skidsacross the shore. He considers his role ofan interpreter. His English, his training as a mechanic. The helicopters,borrowed from Marcos (Ferdinand, notImelda), suddenly swerve. The Hueys thatCoppola used to stage a war are needed to put down rebels. Wehad to wait, my father says. But we received payment. Still, we do what we can:keep busy, practice English, prepare to makea life somewhere new. My mother insists that filming was funfor them,a way outof the boredom of the camp. AsI listen to their telling, I realize thatmy version doesn't match theirs, though,I take what I can. Along the way, I discover a lost uncle. Ratherthan seeking hardfact (he may still be alive somewhere), I record the shapesof my family's feeling: the guilt thatstays, the glidewhen I press my mother, who bynow, engages with the narrative ata distance, with the triggered up-close at random [End Page 36] ________ intervals. She pastes album after album of photographs, thenmarked Cathy Linh Che, 1980–, anod to a gravestone, in defiance of (or an elegy for?) a phantomcountry. The construct as real as a helicopterexploding ceremoniously when her friend from the camp tosses her straw hat in.Her face in fullview.In Baler, a surfboard floatsatop a few waves, right by"Charlie's Point." Theguide drives me via sidecar to a grove of palm trees—when the scene from the film comes at me suddenly."Napalm" dropped along this ridge. River mouth withoutvine or cover. The charred remains warningmy mother about theAmerican life ahead of her: a junglein flames. Mortar fire bursts,only, it's just a dream she carries intoAmerica, and only when I ask her aquestion. Her answers are never reluctant, brightwith detail, her face alight as if diving into a red-orangefire, her past defoliated under a globof liquid heat. In exchange, 80 pesos for a day ofacting work. Just playing life anew, napalmthat never burned...