The Mountains Sing(23)

“Don’t tell her about your Uncle Thu?n yet,” said Grandma. “When she sleeps tonight, I’ll bring Thu?n’s belongings into our room.”

I nodded and buried my face into Grandma’s hair. Years later, looking back through the journeys of my life, I understood the fear Grandma must have carried, not knowing what would happen the next day to her children. Yet she had to appear strong, for only those who faced battles were entitled to trauma.

That night, after Grandma had fed her a bowl of ph?, I sat guarding my mother. I thought that if I watched her closely enough, she wouldn’t disappear again. I believed that if I told her how much I’d missed her, she’d once again be the mother I knew.

But as a fifteen-year-old girl, I couldn’t imagine how the war had swallowed my mother into its stomach, churning her into someone different before spitting her out. I couldn’t understand how she could scream so loud in her sleep, about bullets, shooting, running, and death. There were words I didn’t understand. And I couldn’t understand how my father’s name could sound so sad on her lips.

In the days that followed, several neighbors came to visit my mother. To my surprise, she didn’t get out of bed or sit up. She only nodded or shook her head at their questions, her face sad and empty. She did the same with her friends and colleagues from the B?ch Mai Hospital. After a while, they all left, whispering that she was exhausted and needed to rest.

But I knew it was more than that. Sometimes when I was alone with her, her shoulders trembled. She must have been crying, but still, no sounds emerged. They only came during the night, when she slept, her body shaking with nightmares.

Fearing my mother would hurt herself in her sleep, I moved into her room. She didn’t want me to be on the same bed, so I unrolled a straw mat onto the floor. I’d been a good sleeper, but no longer.

Once, deep into the night, I heard her whispering in jumbled sentences about a baby. Hair stood up on the back of my neck as she said she’d killed it. I covered my ears. For sure my mother wasn’t a murderer. For sure she’d helped deliver the baby, who didn’t survive.

The next morning, I told Grandma what I’d heard. She pulled me close. “Your Mama is a doctor. Accidents happen. Don’t think too much about it.”

Grandma and I tried to nurse my mother back to her own self, by cooking the food she used to love. Yet she ate as if she were chewing sand. She said she was tired when we attempted conversations with her. She turned away whenever I came into her room. She was home, but not home, for she was so lost in the war, she forgot I was her own daughter.

I gave her the recent letters I’d written to her and my father, but she left them there, unopened, next to her pillow.

Grandma had to return to her job. I stopped going to school, to stay close to my mother. There was enough dry food for me to cook, and Grandma often brought us meat, fish, and vegetables early in the morning.

Our days passed quietly. There was no laughter, no talk as I’d hoped.

“Go with her for a walk, she’ll feel better,” Grandma told me.

But my mother shook her head whenever I suggested the idea. “Let me sleep.” She turned away from me again.

One afternoon, as the sun pulled its light across the sky, I held a comb in my hand. Crawling over to my mother who lay on the ph?n, I wondered if she’d push me away.

Her shoulders quivered as I touched her. Untangling the stubborn knots in her hair, I talked. I told her about the books I’d read. I chatted about her friends, who still lived in temporary shacks across from us. Their children had such hungry eyes, sniffing the smell rising from our kitchen. They were the same children who refused food whenever I brought it to them, saying their parents didn’t allow them to receive anything from us.

My mother stopped shaking when I finished combing, but her back was still turned toward me. I swallowed my disappointment, moved to the kitchen, and started a fire. Instead of cooking dinner, I found myself grilling a bunch of dried b? k?t fruit. Their perfume reminded me of our happy times when my mother and I washed our hair under the old bàng tree.

The b? k?t sizzled, flowering their fragrance into the air. From the corner of my eye, I saw my mother turn. Her gaze followed my hands as I filled a pot with water, crushed the roasted fruit, and dropped them into the pot. She watched as I broke dry branches, feeding them to the fire, keeping the stew from boiling over.

“Thank you, Daughter.” Her whisper startled me. I turned to see her behind me, the stove’s flame dancing in her eyes.

“For you to wash your hair, Mama.”

She nodded. “I can take care of it now. Go outside and play.”

I didn’t want to go, but my mother’s eyes told me to. Standing under the bàng tree, I felt abandoned. Tiptoeing to the entrance door, I peeked inside.

My mother was lugging a bucket into the kitchen. It looked heavy, and I knew it was half-filled with cold water. She lifted the pot of b? k?t from the stove, pouring the liquid stew into the bucket, sending steam swirling up around her. She mixed the hair wash, testing its warmth with her elbow.

My mother looked her old self when she sat in a stream of sunlight, tilting her head forward. She scooped up the mixed b? k?t stew, letting it run through her hair. A river of light wove its way down a river of black.

Enthralled by the scene, I was stunned when her sobs came, so suddenly and unexpectedly. Her hands clutched her shoulders. She rolled into a ball on the floor, her body shaking.