The Mountains Sing(21)
A FEW DAYS later, a group of men built a well and installed a manual pump. Even little children could use it to fill their buckets. Instead of waiting for their turn to collect water from the slimy tap, kids now washed themselves in front of their homes, tossing rainbows of water over each other, laughing.
Construction materials started to fill our shack. Mrs. Nhan came by one late evening, bringing a book of astrology. She sat with Grandma by the oil lamp, scrutinizing complicated-looking charts, comparing them against our birthdays.
“The date of the Ox, the hour of Dragon is an auspicious start,” Mrs. Nhan said, and Grandma nodded.
Grandma stayed home to supervise the construction. Every day, returning from school, I had to push through a crowd of curious onlookers to be able to get inside.
The workers and Grandma labored day and night. More than two months later, our new house stood, gleaming under the sun. Grandma could only afford to build one floor, but all the rooms we’d planned were there, the way we’d mapped them out.
Grandma smiled as I dashed from one room to the next. There was so much light. I loved my writing corner, the bedrooms, and the living-dining room that opened into the kitchen. I adored the entrance door with its solid wood panels and the windows that let me see a piece of the sky.
I continued to share a bed with Grandma, leaving the other rooms empty. They were there for my parents and uncles to come back to.
Grandma brought home a young bàng tree. We planted it in our tiny front yard, on the same spot where the old tree once stood. Every day, I watered it and watched it grow. I couldn’t wait for my mother to return, for the tree to shade us as we washed our hair.
As we now had a secure roof over our heads, Grandma came home from the market just after sunset once a week. We spent the entire evening practicing meditation and the swift moves of Kick-Poke-Chop self-defense.
“Calm your mind and build your inner strength,” she told me.
Grandma kept working extra hard. Gradually and secretly, she brought home pieces of furniture: my study desk and chair, a bookshelf, a wooden ph?n for the living area, three bamboo beds, and a dining set. They were old and rickety, but we treasured them. We kept the bookshelf next to my study corner and filled it with stories that would take me to faraway places.
“Do you want a job, H??ng?” Grandma asked one night that summer as we unrolled our straw mat under the bàng tree. It was too hot to stay inside. The neighbors were also out on the lane, paper fans flapping in their hands.
I didn’t answer, fearing she’d ask me to become a trader.
Grandma flicked her paper fan. “A friend of mine is making quite a bit of money raising chickens and pigs. All in her little apartment. We have more space than she does.”
“Pigs and chickens? Here?”
“Why not? We can keep the chickens in the washroom and the pigs under the ph?n. It’ll work, believe me. My farming experiences will come in handy.”
To prepare for the animals’ arrival, Grandma had another window cut high up into our washroom’s wall, to give light and air. She had a multilayer bamboo shelf made. “For the chickens to sleep on and lay their eggs,” she explained.
I went with Grandma to pick up ten newly hatched chicks, who stood in a bamboo cage, chirping all the way to our home. The piglets were delivered to us during the night. As soon as I saw them, their names came to my mind. The white piglet with scattered dark spots was Black Dots, and the black piglet with the cute face was Pink Nose. While the chicks were confined to the washroom, we let the pigs roam around our living-dining area.
Now I no longer minded that Th?y had stopped speaking to me. The animals became my most loyal friends. The chicks sang for me when I picked them up, fed them, and cleaned their stall. Black Dots and Pink Nose rubbed their wet mouths against my feet and fell asleep in my arms.
STILL, I MISSED my parents dearly. During the years that she was gone, I imagined seeing my mother again every day. I imagined disappearing into her embrace, into the river of her hair, into her soft breasts. I imagined our voices rising like kites from under the shade of our new bàng tree.
I missed how my mother had filled our home with her singing voice, how gracefully she’d danced, how she’d led me along by my fingers, twirling me around her so my shirt would flare. Whenever I was sad, I told myself to be strong, like my mother. She never cried or showed fear. Once we found a snake under our bed and, while I stood there shrieking, she bent and picked it up by the tip of its tail, flinging it out of the open window.
By the beginning of 1975, rumors spread that the war was really ending, and I imagined my mother flying me down the streets of Hà N?i on the back of Grandma’s bicycle. We would scream at the top of our lungs as the bike rushed us into a brilliant summer, into red ph??ng flowers, into purple b?ng l?ng petals that blossomed above pavements punctured by bomb shelters. We would stop at the Lake of the Returned Sword, delighting in the delirious coldness of Tràng Ti?n ice cream.
In my dreams, my mother always returned with my father. He was tall and handsome. Sometimes he would rush toward me on his two feet; sometimes he struggled on a single leg, leaning on a crutch. Sometimes he embraced me with his two strong arms, and at other times he had no arms at all, just two lumps of soft flesh protruding from his shoulders. But he always laughed as he called my name: “Here’s H??ng, my daughter.”
At the end of March 1975, our city was hit by an unseasonal storm. Heaven dumped bucket after bucket of water over our heads, turning our neighborhood lane into a twisting, blackish river.