Chiến Tranh, 1970 by Ursula Villarreal-Moura

My father remembers the feel of the liquid chemical on his skin. An impromptu basketball game interrupted by an overhead roar. Choppers spraying defoliant over the jungle, so US soldiers could locate the enemy. Young pilots parting clouds like reckless kings, Agent Orange sprinkling down like hot confetti. Sticky is how my father describes it. Everything was sticky: the tropical air, basketball sweat, the herbicide glossing his skin, napalm blasted onto the Vietnamese.

Decades later, the cancer appeared. Topographical skin maps circled like theaters of war. This is an illness, a tactic, a tumor, a hero, an incendiary, a nightmare without end.

In 2017, my father’s prostate was surgically removed and biopsied at a VA hospital in San Antonio. It tested positive for the famous defoliant. Petals and leaves have fallen off of him, DNA that became me.

Together, my father and I watch documentaries in his man cave, learning about Mexican Americans drafted into Vietnam. We watch cable series about Vietnamese soldiers who survived.  He pauses the screen for me to write down all of their names, a roster of people I must research and remember.

My father rewinds history.

Ursula Villarreal-Moura was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in various publications including Tin House’s Open Bar, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, and Bennington Review.  Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, a Pushcart Prize, and longlisted for Best American Short Stories.