It was a cold October night for Hang Nguyen. She had
reached shelter inside the classroom, yet bent forward
over her dictation— resisting still that shove of chill air—
she fought in the community college parking lot.

Her slight oriental frame shivered in a metallic orange
desk. Fluorescent light cast a gray spell on waxy black hair.
She pulled it back severely. She couldn’t intrude
upon silent, relentless flows of her boney fingers.

She was one with the number-two pencil along a flat
yellow surface of a legal pad, flushed against a
floor-to-ceiling window—comprised the back wall.
The window was on diagonal— resplendent in its

Burgundy vertical Venetian blinds. Hang never raised
her fiercely-focused eyes above melon-like globes of the
enormous, blue, plastic-rimmed spectacles. She looked
neither left or right at her fellow students in front of the

Room whence came the drone of the instructor. Under
the sequined-shell epaulets of a pink cardigan, her tidy
square shoulders remained taut, motionless. Her slender
neck did not strain under the weight of her thick plait of hair.

Shiny black polyester pants completely enveloped her
spindly legs, crossed tightly at the ankles. Her left-toe
balanced in its blue satin slipper while her left foot at a
slipper’s gold buckle remained suspended in air.

The instructor called for the finished papers. Hang
breathed in deeply and exhaled, her small breasts
emerging like twin sand funnels in an orlon beach.
Some color rose to her cheeks, as she released her pencil

Methodically, brought it to rest in place.
She allowed a slight movement in the back of her neck.
She pressed herself luxuriously against a molded plastic
seat, unfolded her legs, opened her beige-peach lip into

A slight smile, placing her dictation in hands of her friend,
Mo, to be passed forward, who had escaped from
Viet Nam with Hang. They lived in the same refugee
camp in Oklahoma before traveling by bus to San Diego.