Tag: literature

A short story by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

(In loving memory of my little friend Maria T, February 2017)

The light bounced leisurely on soft waves across the surface of Botany bay. My eighteen-month-old is on all fours, mesmerized by a shiny blade of grass by the bank. Happiness tipped over with the sharp kicks from my unborn son on my battered bladder, I’m suddenly wishful of the adult nappies I’m so abhorrent of…

His eyes glossed over white, icy, opaque, a stranger, the father of my thirteen-year-old daughter. I had begged him- please forget her, I forgive you. He just laughed, the light never reaching his eyes- she, to you is the mother of my child. I had loved him, the love of my life. He had picked me to dance, me the awkward skinny girl, amidst all those tall pretty ones.

Come Lizy daddy should be home soon, you’re sister will be screaming murder for dinner- The seventeen-year-old with an appetite of a whale, and a temper to match her father. I’ve never forgotten that first dance; I’d thought it was a mistake. My heart pounded through the rib cage, my head spinning, faint. Luckily, he held me firm on square shoulders. My mother was even more smitten than I was. They were soul mates.

Lizy strapped into her three-speed stroller, equipped with insulating bottle holders, and five positional modes, missing are GPS and autopilot. The price of a second-hand car, this stroller is unlike the one I’d attained thirteen years ago, a hand-me-down from a fifth cousin of a friend of mine, it had that tendency to flip backward incurring possible cranial injury. Mama mama please, I want to swim duckies- Lizy is always fascinated with nature. Lizy has her pappa’s aristocratic nose, and is pale like his white English heritage. I had once considered such a nose, replacing the flat, wide, perky Asian nostrils -Yes Lizy, we will definitely make a date with the ducks next time.

I don’t remember much of my father, but my mother had made many of those impossible promises. My mother, a lost vibrant lonely soul, was burdened with never being able to find love. Her passion was in the cards, Jack of Spade and the King of Heart. My mother is Anh’s spiritual surrogate mother, in the history of the world the most enthusiastic bà ngoại. My mother was both ba and má to Anh, while Tuấn was selling furniture and I’d juggled two dental surgeries. I don’t mind being the eldest, the responsibilities. Both my sisters had studied hard, Annie now a pharmacist, Rose a business analyst, plus both had never considered joining a gang nor ever into drugs. They’ve grown into tall pretty confident girls, the kind I’d admired.

Lizy, what shall mama make for din din tonight? Spaghetti, Spam fried rice- waddling through my third trimester, all I’m perpetually yearning for is an endless nap- a nap Lizy? Papa can call for pizza. I would sneak into bed nightly, next to the tiny frame. Anh, curled up in a ball sucking her callous right thumb; for this earthly angel, I’d never missed daylight. Tuân kissed me before he left, or did he? I vaguely remember whispers and shuffling of shoes. Tuấn shares my mother’s love affair, for him it was the Queen of Clubs.

___

Falling in love is a thick fog appearing overnight, one would stumble into it knowingly, but totally blind, unaware of that head-on collision! Mai’s love for Anh’s ba will always be a mystery to me. My sister never saw Tuan’s hands in both her pocket and my mother’s pocket conclusively. Tuan was clever, witty, charming, and from a wonderful family. There were moments toward the end I believed, she did just that, married him for his family. I was born after Saigon fell, she was five when my auntie smuggled her on the boat ending up in Songkhla Refugee Camp. Mai was a stranger when we saw each other after fifteen years. My mother wept, Rose hung onto my mother’s left trouser leg like a Koala on speed.

Propped up amidst crisp white pillows Mai’s withered form was yellow and shrivelled. Mai’s eyes glowed, rosary beads in between thumb and fingers, lips in rhythmic adoration to Mother Mary. My faith failed as I watched her. There were drugs that could have saved her, but no divine intervention, what hope?

I was above the South China Sea when they had covered her face with crisp white linen at St. Vincent’s. I was heading for Hanoi to finalize my divorce. My husband of eleven years felt it was time I devoted my life to his family’s business, while he may devote more of his valuable time to an eighteen-year-old cabaret singer at our local club. It’s true; I have forgotten what I looked like in the mirror so confirmed by my mother-in-law. We never had children, an infinite blessing. It is an ugly world.

Phượng rơi rỉ đỏ rực rỡ vỉa hè. Nàng sắn vạt áo dài vào dây thung ở lưng quần, vạt gió luồn vẫy tung hai hàng mây trắng, hai bàn chân nàng trên bàn đạp của xe đạp thật vững vàng và nhất định hướng xuống đại lộ, dài ơi dưới bóng những cây cổ thụ.

Cậu ngày nào cũng đạp xe theo nàng về, cậu không mấy cao, da dẻ ngâm nắng. Nhưng khi cậu cười, hàm răng trắng, dưới khểnh thật khó quên – em đợi anh, mai anh có lệnh đi ra trận gần biên giới, em đợi anh nha? Ngậm ngùi lẫn trộn lạ lùng nỗi buồn và hy vọng lời của cậu. Giờ nàng chỉ còn nhớ được nụ cười trong sáng đó. Hè năm đó mưa chảy đỏ những cành hoa phượng, cậu không một lần nữa gặp mùa thu.

_____

Orange jacarandas litter Saigon pavements with its blossoms in full summer. Tucked in the long skirt of her áo dài escaped in a cloud of white, her feet hastened with purpose on the pedals, down the avenues under the outstretching shade of the ancient trees.

A particular boy followed her home every day from school, he was on the dark side in appearance, average height. His smile was bright, with a bottom, left crooked tooth egging to be noticed – Wait for me, they are sending me to the front, wait for me won’t you? A strange mixture of hope and sadness in his voice. All she can remember now is that white smile. The orange petals rained and bled that summer, he never saw the next fall.

Twenty-six with four children under six, April thirtieth 1975, her husband was on the losing side of the Vietnam war. With a few months of work experience from a stint at the city public hospital, she sent her husband to be re-educated. It took four years.

Her long waist-length wavy hair twisted in a tight bun, lengthening a pale white neck. She never smiles, emotions are for the weak. Spasms of small coughs express irritation and suppressed anxieties. The huge dark pools of her eyes flash moments of desire, sadness, despair. But, who would dare look? On white horses (from the winning side) they came, in earnest to rescue this angel from her tragic circumstance.

My ears were full of chicken pox, a gregarious pale skin nine-year-old boy, a head full of curls lined up in my stead. The nurse couldn’t tell us apart, the little lies that made up my life. The last health inspection before boarding Thai Airways for Sydney.

Panatnikom refugee camp was a huge metropolis of bare concrete walls, my younger siblings babied, I would roam its shadows alone. My mother, her cheeks I could imagine, that cough she had during the five years my father was taken in re-education camps, in the years I was caught stealing fifty “xu” on the dinner table(or was it five). I had buried her in the recess of my memories, the lanky nine-year-old with sad round eyes. 

Her name was long and tedious, names from an ode about a tree, a bird in an abandoned forest, an endearing name her father had entitled her. 

The weird eyes those boys gave her, made her hide behind walls, in public baths, clogged up toilets. 

My memories of April. 

I could barely note a few paragraphs before the hot tears would swell at the back of my eye sockets. I thought of my ambitious dream of noting those formative years for my children. The yearly trip back to the five star holiday trips, a testament to the betrayal of my country, my abandonment. The irony, my laughable tears. The guilt of having survived the starvation, the drowning, escaping the rape – what a pretty girl, they whispered, as they stared at my under developed breasts in the red and white T-Shirt from St. Vincent De Paul or was it the Salvation Army.