Sleep with mama
Uncle second joined the army. After 1975, he attended the reeducation camp, and then got married. Grandpa gave a piece of land to the couple who had five children together. Uncle youngest carried the niece in his arms round the night because she couldn't get to sleep, just crying all the time. Uncle second, tired of life, drank wine and got as drunk as a skunk every day, dropping by grandma's house. Uncle youngest scratched the wind* for him. He woke up, looking round bewildered, and strutted home.
Aunt third got married far away from home making uncle youngest pine away. When he was young, he followed grandma like a shadow, saying that when he grew up, he would be president and still sleep with her. When grandma went to work, he stayed at home, crying and following aunt third closely. Aunt third carried him on the side, whose long legs reached her knee, and he kept asking her to carry him, and would cry if she let him down. Even when she went to the toilet, he would follow in and sit next to her.
Aunt fourth went to medical school a long distance from home. Uncle fifth also went to a boarding school in a remote province, working in return for the tuition, growing into a tall and strong man who came home for a visit during holiday. Uncle youngest, infatuated with his sight, also asked to go to distant school. In the 10th grade, he was admitted to a boarding school like his brother’s, a long way from home. Grandma took him to the school which was located in the middle of mountains and fields, looking isolated and lonely; she led him back home to school locally.
Uncle youngest became the main breadwinner of the family with grandpa away on business for months only to visit home once in a while. Grandma and uncle youngest went to work on a remote farm, silently hiking back and forth for a dozen kilometers between dawn and twilight, rain or shine. During the school year, he went to school in the morning, and then after lunch at noon, he threw a carrying bamboo pole and frames over his shoulder, hiked across the shallow river in the dry season, and went deep into the forest to axe for firewood. On the first day, he accompanied a neighbor of his, who was a senior woodcutter walking nimbly while shouldering huge firewood on the bamboo frames. Eagerly, uncle youngest chopped down long sticks and put them on the frames, but the long sticks were so heavy to carry, partly because of the wind, that he had to chuck them one by one until he had only two mere sticks left back home. The next day, learning from his humiliating experience, he chopped just the right lengths of wood. Loading them up high on the frames, he still was able to walk lightly home. That year there was no shortage of firewood in the house.
Grandpa’s connections introduced him to a sawmill who allowed the family to collect sawdust for the kitchen instead of firewood. Uncle youngest did not go to the forest anymore; every few weeks he went picking up sawdust. Once a friend of his invited him to go get sawdust together for fun. The boy was tall and strong, and his cart was enormous, too. After unloading his friend’s sawdust at his house, uncle youngest pulled the cart home. He was weak while the cart was too heavy; he had to call auntie eighth to help. Upon straining the cart to the gate of the house, he endured it no more and ran to the toilet, the shit falling out of his pants onto the ground.
That year, grandma brought home raffia palm leaves and taught young uncles and aunts to weave into twines for money. What one had to do was to weave the threads into a certain prescribed length and get paid accordingly. Grandma was in charge of the exchange for money to buy rice. So, weave as many strings as possible. Uncle youngest learned very quickly, weaving leaves while reading lessons. Auntie seventh did more slowly but beautifully, much more so than uncle youngest, but he said it was important to make more ropes to earn more.
Grandpa passed away from hepatitis. Uncle youngest loved his younger sisters, but he was very strict and scolded those who did not study well. Once auntie youngest was reported to misbehave, uncle youngest forced her to lie down and caned her, teaching her while crying himself .
Uncle youngest graduated from university and went to work in the mountains for a few years, went to Saigon, taught English, sent money back home, and told grandma to stop working and rest. Uncle second also went to Sai Gon, lived with his oldest son attending college, visited uncle youngest who gave him some money to get by. His eldest son dropped out of school midway though, started doing business with friends, left the joint venture and opened his own company, signing on with agents across the country.
Uncle second often returned to grandma’s house to celebrate New Year's Eve, anniversaries and others; everything was taken care of by his eldest son, and he suddenly had ample leisure time. The son bought a dragon fruit garden for him to manage, hiring gardeners and harvesters. Then he had grandma's house repaired and moved in with his wife, living upstairs; 95-year-old grandma was downstairs, and she didn't like for the daughter-in-law to do anything for her at all. She called for auntie seventh for everything. Food that was not cooked or bought by auntie seventh would be left uneaten. Clothes not washed by auntie seventh would be left unworn. During the pandemic, auntie seventh could not come over because of the lockdown. When she did, days later, she saw grandma was washing her clothes that uncle second’s wife had washed and dried. She would not eat the rice cooked by the daughter-in-law, either, saying that it was as dry and hard as stone.
Uncle youngest spoke English like the wind. He retired and opened IELTS classes at home attracting numerous students. His eldest son went to university in the US on a scholarship, but he had to provide for him every month. He was in debt, worked long hours, and only returned to visit grandma during Tet and grandpa's death anniversary. During the pandemic, he did not come. His daughter, in her turn, having earned a scholarship to study in an American university, was preparing to depart. His debt was still there, perpetuated.
On grandpa’s death anniversary, uncle youngest caught a coach home at midnight. Auntie seventh’s son slept on the divan in grandma's bedroom. Uncle youngest took a thin blanket, spread it on the floor next to it, and lay asleep there. Grandma woke up and told him to go upstairs to sleep on a decent bed, not to lie on the cold ground. He wouldn't listen but asked her to go to bed. In the morning, he got up early to light incense for grandpa. The whole family gathered in large numbers with aunt third's reunited from afar. Uncle youngest finished talking about teaching IELTS for grandkids, kissed grandma and said goodbye to everyone to travel back to Saigon because he had a class to teach in the evening.
Uncle youngest left when auntie seventh's son got home from a morning coffee. Grandma complained that uncle youngest hadn’t been upstairs but laid and slept on the cold ground when coming back in late after midnight. Auntie seventh's son spoke up, 'Uncle youngest told me, 'Every time I come back, please you go upstairs to bed so I can sleep with grandma. You are here and sleep with her all the time already.' It was then that everyone figured it out.
*scratch the wind: use a coin to scratch on a patient’s back with medicated oil, a folk cure to treat colds
What is love?
“I love you.”
Those are the words generations and generations since long have expressed to each other; lovers, parents to children, teachers to students, politicians to citizens and vice versa, etc. Everyone says the words.
And then time passes and the word ‘love’ no longer holds its true meaning. Now individuals add an attribute to it ‘true love’. In its pure original meaning, love is absolute in itself.
Love is often talked about, discussed, and also most abused.
Lovers say love and get married. But that seems the end of the world. A Vietnamese saying goes, “Tình chỉ đẹp khi còn dang dở” meaning “It is better to travel than to arrive.” Married couples break up, separate, and divorce, and this trend seems to be on the increase. Men and women start to lament, “Where was yesterday?” “What went wrong?” “Is there really true love?” “What has happened to the man, the woman, I fell in love with?” They start looking for what is called true love which they suppose can last to their expectations, which does not appear to come around very soon. Then some individuals say, “There are eternal moments of love; there is no eternal love” which seems to be a popular declaration of love. Yes, love is.
True love might be found in Jesus’s words, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13). These words came from the Child whose birthday the whole world has been celebrating for millennia, the Great I AM. His crucifixion has always characterized true love for humanity. We are wondering whether someone has ever done what Jesus Christ did two thousand years ago giving His own Holy Life for mankind.
True love finds its meaning in events which might not be accepted normally. People often say, “Forgive, not forget” when they realize that the partners, friends, lovers, relatives they have loved, adored, and admired, have turned to betray their trust. They say, “I forgive you.” Deep inside, they tell themselves, “Never forget.” It is not necessary to try to explain the reasons why humans cannot forget each other’s wrongdoings. But it is this fact that man never forgets others’ sins that could have hindered them from achieving ‘love’ in its pure sense. On the cross, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). And then, "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25). What happens if one does not forget? Psychiatrists might say the incident still lingers there in the mind which will one day reveal itself in a negative harmful manner.
Again what is love? Love is to forget oneself and prioritize the beloved above everything else, to give in, and to sacrifice oneself. Unless one does this one never understands true love, but how can one do this to achieve true love?
I would argue that there are two cases. In the first occasion, one is divine as it is said, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” And that is the Great I AM. There is no doubt about this.
What about us humans?
Michael was not in love with Jenny who loved him deeply for being so kindhearted allowing poor students to attend his class free of charge. Once, broken hearted by his affair with Elizabeth, Michael dated Jenny. He tried to kiss her, but was refused. They parted. Jenny went to France after wedding Louis. They had a daughter who gradually clung more to the father and Jenny felt lonely. She went back to her home town and met Michael again after twenty years. She was bursting with feelings. Michael was in financial troubles, having undergone all the ups and downs of bringing up a family of two and an unemployed wife. He needed help and Jenny agreed to lend him some money. He invested in stocks and lost all the money. Jenny found out and got hurt thinking that Michael had cheated her. She grumbled and called him names. Michael kept quiet and promised to pay back the money. He did, after confessing to his wife about his failures. The latter also grumbled and called him names. Michael kept quiet too and silently found ways to borrow money to pay Jenny. He had realized what love meant. He kept quiet instead of shouting back at Jenny or his wife. He realized what they had been calling love was not really it.
Love by itself in its nature is unconditional. You love and love will do everything for you without questioning, like what parents do for children. Once you have understood the reason, the condition why you love someone, that is love no more. Love is unforced. One cannot tell, ask, force, or beg someone else to love one as it is there or not there, uncontrollable, unconditional. Some scientists might say it is the chemistry that bonds the two strangers together in a weird way, but it is still unexplainable why these two and not those other two that get hooked. It is like a grace.
It is a blessing for whoever has true love in life.
Those are the words generations and generations since long have expressed to each other; lovers, parents to children, teachers to students, politicians to citizens and vice versa, etc. Everyone says the words.
And then time passes and the word ‘love’ no longer holds its true meaning. Now individuals add an attribute to it ‘true love’. In its pure original meaning, love is absolute in itself.
Love is often talked about, discussed, and also most abused.
Lovers say love and get married. But that seems the end of the world. A Vietnamese saying goes, “Tình chỉ đẹp khi còn dang dở” meaning “It is better to travel than to arrive.” Married couples break up, separate, and divorce, and this trend seems to be on the increase. Men and women start to lament, “Where was yesterday?” “What went wrong?” “Is there really true love?” “What has happened to the man, the woman, I fell in love with?” They start looking for what is called true love which they suppose can last to their expectations, which does not appear to come around very soon. Then some individuals say, “There are eternal moments of love; there is no eternal love” which seems to be a popular declaration of love. Yes, love is.
True love might be found in Jesus’s words, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13). These words came from the Child whose birthday the whole world has been celebrating for millennia, the Great I AM. His crucifixion has always characterized true love for humanity. We are wondering whether someone has ever done what Jesus Christ did two thousand years ago giving His own Holy Life for mankind.
True love finds its meaning in events which might not be accepted normally. People often say, “Forgive, not forget” when they realize that the partners, friends, lovers, relatives they have loved, adored, and admired, have turned to betray their trust. They say, “I forgive you.” Deep inside, they tell themselves, “Never forget.” It is not necessary to try to explain the reasons why humans cannot forget each other’s wrongdoings. But it is this fact that man never forgets others’ sins that could have hindered them from achieving ‘love’ in its pure sense. On the cross, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). And then, "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25). What happens if one does not forget? Psychiatrists might say the incident still lingers there in the mind which will one day reveal itself in a negative harmful manner.
Again what is love? Love is to forget oneself and prioritize the beloved above everything else, to give in, and to sacrifice oneself. Unless one does this one never understands true love, but how can one do this to achieve true love?
I would argue that there are two cases. In the first occasion, one is divine as it is said, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” And that is the Great I AM. There is no doubt about this.
What about us humans?
Michael was not in love with Jenny who loved him deeply for being so kindhearted allowing poor students to attend his class free of charge. Once, broken hearted by his affair with Elizabeth, Michael dated Jenny. He tried to kiss her, but was refused. They parted. Jenny went to France after wedding Louis. They had a daughter who gradually clung more to the father and Jenny felt lonely. She went back to her home town and met Michael again after twenty years. She was bursting with feelings. Michael was in financial troubles, having undergone all the ups and downs of bringing up a family of two and an unemployed wife. He needed help and Jenny agreed to lend him some money. He invested in stocks and lost all the money. Jenny found out and got hurt thinking that Michael had cheated her. She grumbled and called him names. Michael kept quiet and promised to pay back the money. He did, after confessing to his wife about his failures. The latter also grumbled and called him names. Michael kept quiet too and silently found ways to borrow money to pay Jenny. He had realized what love meant. He kept quiet instead of shouting back at Jenny or his wife. He realized what they had been calling love was not really it.
Love by itself in its nature is unconditional. You love and love will do everything for you without questioning, like what parents do for children. Once you have understood the reason, the condition why you love someone, that is love no more. Love is unforced. One cannot tell, ask, force, or beg someone else to love one as it is there or not there, uncontrollable, unconditional. Some scientists might say it is the chemistry that bonds the two strangers together in a weird way, but it is still unexplainable why these two and not those other two that get hooked. It is like a grace.
It is a blessing for whoever has true love in life.
Reunion
When I was very young I often told myself never to fall for women. I would keep my heart apart, not involved in any relationship with the opposite sex. Keep firm, I told myself, and ignore them, those silly girls – ‘women,’ as I called them. And I seemed to gloat seeing my female friend who was a bit taller than me suffer for my straight face. She looked really miserable when I turned my eyes away and walked.
‘Hai, please.’ Ngoc called softly.
I kept walking my way. She cried quietly I knew, the way she kept silent, waiting.
I went on walking away. And forever. To the big city where I settled down with a family of a boy and a daughter and on the brink of a break-up.
Now it had been thirty years. Time flew and we grew old. I was back to the old town with dusty streets still haunting the sunlit sidewalks and low roofs and the guys hanging out around the log piles behind the village school where we had often met early morning for exercise and chats. More chats than exercise. Ngoc would linger behind and talk to Tam, trying to ignore me and at the same time suffering extremely for my indifference to her.
Ngoc and Tam had got married and two kids got into life expanding the gap between the spouses at night and day time and weekends, him with busy workload in his office as a police officer and her attending to endless shoppers at her grocery stall in the local market. She was so permanently young that her small shop kept attracting the other women to come, buy stuff and share ideas of how to beautify themselves and the men to admire her charm and pay for items they had not intended to buy originally.
My sister asked me to accompany her to the market for love. We had rarely met, so anytime together would be welcome. She as if inadvertently took me past Ngoc’s stall, stopped by and bought something from her. I knew she did it purposefully but ignored it. Ngoc, taken by surprise, glanced at me, blushed and left, asking her assistant to attend to my sister.
‘She still is in love with you, Hai.’ Whispered my sister. What can I do?
I myself had been seeking for that longing look all my life. It had all in it, love, sadness, disappointment, sulk, … I was dumbfounded. What was that I could not name. Now I still could not categorize that. Only one thing I was sure about, then and now. It was love, great love. Thirty years before I had realized I should not look into her eyes as they could kill me and make me act foolishly. But now I wished I had so that I would have stayed in them forever. It was still there and seemed to be stronger as time went by. Why? And I suddenly got startled that I had always been in love with her. How stupid I had been. I had been taking it for granted that she would be there for good, and anytime I could come back and we would be like in the old days, feeling peaceful and warm with each other. I had been so wrong. It was said girls of the same age were more mature than the boys. All my life I had been there with her regretfully only in mind. How she had been suffering and so had I. What made us suffer? Destiny? Fate? We had married and been unconsciously unhappy. Our better halves which should have been joined had been located in the wrong places and now were crying for their reunion.
‘I can’t.’ I said and walked away again. And she cried one more time, eye lids smudged with tears when she was now lying peacefully in the glass coffin when I stepped in to see her for the last time.
Her sister, Hong, gave me a box of one thousand five hundred and sixty letters. Fifty two weeks per year for thirty years she had regularly written to me, weekly, but never sent. ‘She has been hoping to give them to you personally if one day you will ever ever return to her.’ Her sister said.
‘Hai. Why did you never look into my eyes?’ The first letter started.
The End
CHILDREN OF GOD
I have always believed that the children of God are always good. But of course at that I was wrong. We are human and ‘to err is human’, right? So I started to believe in the goodness of God who I thought everybody believed would take care of humanity. At that, of course, I was wrong too. When I talked to Huyen Nhu, my best friend, she laughed and said,
‘You are so vulnerable believing in such things. Life is not like that. As Shakespeare said, ‘There is nothing good or bad; only thinking makes it so.’’
‘What’s the point? I am talking about us. I am talking about God. Do you believe in God?’
She punched me on the back, ‘Wake up. There’s nothing like God. God is for the weak-minded. If you still believe in God you’ll end up wasting your time getting nowhere. Look! People died on the Korean ferry. I can say most of them are innocent people, especially the students. Where was God? Why didn’t he or she, if it is a woman, rescue them from the accident? Or better let me ask you this. What is the purpose of this entire universe that you said God created? Why does he or she, again if it is a woman, allow humans to suffer from evils of all kinds?’
Of course I could not answer that question.
‘There are things we the mortal cannot understand. But I be….’
She slightly kissed me on the mouth suddenly enough to shut me up. ‘I …’
Again another kiss. And then again and again whenever I opened my mouth to continue the train of thought. She would not yield. Oh I began to like this game being shut up with a slight kiss, so I wanted more. She did then realize that that was my trick, getting a kiss from her. So she stood up and ran out of the room,
‘You suck.’
That was not my fault. I stood up and followed her outside standing on the balcony looking down the street, watching people hurrying back and forth in the traffic. Why are people always in a hurry? Where is all the calmness of life we used to have?
I started to voice my questions. Nhu very quickly put her hand on my mouth as if having read my mind.
‘Don’t.’
We stood there for ages. The sun was going down the west. The late afternoon was getting deep blue. I forgot I had always enjoyed this moment of sunset, especially beside somebody I liked, I loved. The quietude of our nightfall against the bustle and hustle of the current downtown made me cherish the more the coziness of company that Nhu and I had together. Life was so wonderful. I felt calm.
I glanced sideways at Nhu, a drop of tear slowly rolling down on the beauty cheek. I took hold of her hand and squeezed slightly. She leant her head against mine and sobbed silently.
‘We’ll be alright. We’ll be alright. I’ll be here with you all the time.’
That had been a promise I gave her the first time we met.
We came from two extremes of everything. She was from the up north and I the down south. She was always loud and I deep in thought. She studied engines and I philosophy. The common thing we had together was love for twilight.
I was visiting my friends at the University of Technology dormitory and chatting with them at the café outside the house when I saw her. She was standing on the balcony looking to the west where the blue sun was setting the dusk. The clouds had made it so dark that the evening came early. I kept looking at her again and again and she was still there until it was so dark nothing could have been visible. Our friends kept talking and then all stopped and all were staring at me.
‘What’s wrong with you Khang? You’ve been quiet.’
Then they realized I had been looking to the silhouette on the balcony.
‘That’s Huyen Nhu, rare beauty in our uni.’
I seemed to have made a big decision in my life.
We started dating, most often at dusk to enjoy the moments together.
‘There’s nothing as charming and beautiful as the time of the day when the sun is going down and darkness is coming. Light is weakening and life seems to give up. That’s what I like about it. That’s like our life. Life in the end will give up and obscurity gradually wraps over. The best time of a person’s life appears to me like not when we are strongest but it is when we have reached the peak and seen the horizon.’ Nhu said the first time we dated and perceived our shared hobby, watching the night fall.
All our dates took place around sundown whatever season it was. Was it an omen?
‘My’s coming tomorrow. You don’t have to worry about the household chores.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Why we? I thought …’
‘I thought …’
Yes. Both knew if anything wrong happened either would be very, very sad. One for the other’s life and the other for the other’s love. I just prayed regardless of her objection to my ‘blind’ faith in God and such silly supernatural forces.
Tomorrow I would be hospitalized for an operation on a brain tumor. Doctors said the rate for success was very high; still, there were risks, who knew.
I felt very calm inside indeed. Of all the accidents happening in the world like with the Malaysian MH370, the Korean ferry and Ukrainian crisis mine was nothing compared to them. And I had always prayed to God to let me be part of His cause in the world. ‘Bear the cross.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ I said.
But it was selfish not to think of her if something happened to me. The living would suffer more. I added, ‘I promise I’ll survive the surgery and get back to you soon.’
…
You’re a liar. Nhu cried by Khang’s still body. You had promised me that you would come back and now you’re gone.
‘Why? Why did you love me like the late afternoon, in the twilight? Why did you find me so late in life?’
Khang’s funeral witnessed only some attendants, his college mates and Nhu.
Back from the crematorium, Nhu kept the jar for three days; then she went to Vung Tau. She scattered the ash on the Front Beach.
Khang had been an orphan and his only dream was to go to Vung Tau with Nhu and watch the sun setting there. It had never come true, but now.
Now he could do it every day.
- The End -
‘You are so vulnerable believing in such things. Life is not like that. As Shakespeare said, ‘There is nothing good or bad; only thinking makes it so.’’
‘What’s the point? I am talking about us. I am talking about God. Do you believe in God?’
She punched me on the back, ‘Wake up. There’s nothing like God. God is for the weak-minded. If you still believe in God you’ll end up wasting your time getting nowhere. Look! People died on the Korean ferry. I can say most of them are innocent people, especially the students. Where was God? Why didn’t he or she, if it is a woman, rescue them from the accident? Or better let me ask you this. What is the purpose of this entire universe that you said God created? Why does he or she, again if it is a woman, allow humans to suffer from evils of all kinds?’
Of course I could not answer that question.
‘There are things we the mortal cannot understand. But I be….’
She slightly kissed me on the mouth suddenly enough to shut me up. ‘I …’
Again another kiss. And then again and again whenever I opened my mouth to continue the train of thought. She would not yield. Oh I began to like this game being shut up with a slight kiss, so I wanted more. She did then realize that that was my trick, getting a kiss from her. So she stood up and ran out of the room,
‘You suck.’
That was not my fault. I stood up and followed her outside standing on the balcony looking down the street, watching people hurrying back and forth in the traffic. Why are people always in a hurry? Where is all the calmness of life we used to have?
I started to voice my questions. Nhu very quickly put her hand on my mouth as if having read my mind.
‘Don’t.’
We stood there for ages. The sun was going down the west. The late afternoon was getting deep blue. I forgot I had always enjoyed this moment of sunset, especially beside somebody I liked, I loved. The quietude of our nightfall against the bustle and hustle of the current downtown made me cherish the more the coziness of company that Nhu and I had together. Life was so wonderful. I felt calm.
I glanced sideways at Nhu, a drop of tear slowly rolling down on the beauty cheek. I took hold of her hand and squeezed slightly. She leant her head against mine and sobbed silently.
‘We’ll be alright. We’ll be alright. I’ll be here with you all the time.’
That had been a promise I gave her the first time we met.
We came from two extremes of everything. She was from the up north and I the down south. She was always loud and I deep in thought. She studied engines and I philosophy. The common thing we had together was love for twilight.
I was visiting my friends at the University of Technology dormitory and chatting with them at the café outside the house when I saw her. She was standing on the balcony looking to the west where the blue sun was setting the dusk. The clouds had made it so dark that the evening came early. I kept looking at her again and again and she was still there until it was so dark nothing could have been visible. Our friends kept talking and then all stopped and all were staring at me.
‘What’s wrong with you Khang? You’ve been quiet.’
Then they realized I had been looking to the silhouette on the balcony.
‘That’s Huyen Nhu, rare beauty in our uni.’
I seemed to have made a big decision in my life.
We started dating, most often at dusk to enjoy the moments together.
‘There’s nothing as charming and beautiful as the time of the day when the sun is going down and darkness is coming. Light is weakening and life seems to give up. That’s what I like about it. That’s like our life. Life in the end will give up and obscurity gradually wraps over. The best time of a person’s life appears to me like not when we are strongest but it is when we have reached the peak and seen the horizon.’ Nhu said the first time we dated and perceived our shared hobby, watching the night fall.
All our dates took place around sundown whatever season it was. Was it an omen?
‘My’s coming tomorrow. You don’t have to worry about the household chores.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Why we? I thought …’
‘I thought …’
Yes. Both knew if anything wrong happened either would be very, very sad. One for the other’s life and the other for the other’s love. I just prayed regardless of her objection to my ‘blind’ faith in God and such silly supernatural forces.
Tomorrow I would be hospitalized for an operation on a brain tumor. Doctors said the rate for success was very high; still, there were risks, who knew.
I felt very calm inside indeed. Of all the accidents happening in the world like with the Malaysian MH370, the Korean ferry and Ukrainian crisis mine was nothing compared to them. And I had always prayed to God to let me be part of His cause in the world. ‘Bear the cross.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ I said.
But it was selfish not to think of her if something happened to me. The living would suffer more. I added, ‘I promise I’ll survive the surgery and get back to you soon.’
…
You’re a liar. Nhu cried by Khang’s still body. You had promised me that you would come back and now you’re gone.
‘Why? Why did you love me like the late afternoon, in the twilight? Why did you find me so late in life?’
Khang’s funeral witnessed only some attendants, his college mates and Nhu.
Back from the crematorium, Nhu kept the jar for three days; then she went to Vung Tau. She scattered the ash on the Front Beach.
Khang had been an orphan and his only dream was to go to Vung Tau with Nhu and watch the sun setting there. It had never come true, but now.
Now he could do it every day.
- The End -
A CALL AT MIDNIGHT
I am very much afraid of a call at midnight. It rarely gives good news. Nobody would bother you at midnight with a call except it is an emergency, a relative passing away, a car or plane crash, an accident, … you name it. But that could not have been the reason why my friend often calls me at midnight. He well understands me and wants to assure to me that midnight calls are not all bad. So he called me.
‘Hi. You know who already. There’s nothing. I just call to remind you that we are having a drinking party tomorrow night. So plan ahead and come. Now you don’t have any excuse not to come. Otherwise, I’d call you tomorrow midnight to call you names for not coming tomorrow night. Ok buddy?’
And without waiting for me saying anything, he hung up.
‘What a …!’
Ring. Ring. Ring. Him again, of course, to stop me blaspheming.
‘Don’t even think of it.’ He said and hung up.
‘Really what a …!’
Ring. Ring. Ring. Of course who else? I ignored it for a sec and pressed the key. He would call later if I did not answer it, not caring if it would make me doze the next morning for a sleepless night.
‘Love you.’
‘…!’
I don’t love him, but I cannot live without him. He’s my breath and soul and everything since when I cannot remember. But truly that’s not love. I have always wondered myself what love is and seemed not to find the answer.
‘Is this love? Between you and me?’ I confronted him one day.
‘Yes and no. Yes because I love you. No because you don’t love me.’ He said blinking his eyes, the way you were wondering if it was a lie. But I don’t love him really.
Why is it so hard to love a person? What is wrong with me? Or has been? Since when have I become callous of other people’s feelings though I can feel his love for me?
I used to feel touched and nervous and happy the first times we looked into each other’s eyes and I did really want the moments to last longer. Many first times the second year at college.
The first year on campus with a few touches leaving some little desires for more because that’s not enough then passed. We parted for summer back to our own home towns. I forgot him completely with my family around, making up stories to tell my younger and older sisters who were yearning to hear something exciting outside of the tedious boring monotonous toiling life of a small town. In all my stories there would certainly be him and me. A white horseman and a Cinderella although the Cinderella would never end up marrying the white horseman and but a poor teacher teaching in a mountainous school to which the students had to cross a monkey bridge. Accidents happened and some died.
That might have been the reason why I could not talk myself into loving my white horseman. Look at him and you would certainly want to fall for him but at the same time tell yourself to stay apart. He is a good guy. That’s for sure. But the way he dressed himself immaculate as his skin was would make you think of the time it would take to groom every morning or any time you asked him to go out.
Anyhow, we have been in love. Or used to. It is hard to tell. I hooked myself to him the first few times chatting by the corridor of the row of class rooms ending with a stinking bathroom we often joked about.
I did not come to the party as scheduled or promised or anything. I just could not, making lots of excuses for not going, switching off the cell and putting a lock on the outside. I could do it easily through a hole beside the door rings. Passers-by would suppose I was not at home and I would enjoy the solitude to eternity. Stupid. He woud have said, supposing there was a fire or something. I would not care.
But then I did die really. It is as true as the fact that you are reading this right now. Please look sideways in case I am looking at you horizontally or from above diagonally or vertically. This story was written by a ghost, the spirit who called my boyfriend at midnight to remind him of the unrealized party he invited me several days before I locked myself and perished in the fire.
As it happened, my boyfriend, and I think now I should name him in case you wanted to tell the story to another weak-minded friend of yours, Kha, came to my apartment to take me to the drinking party of his and his old school mates’. They had parties every now and again, so many that sometimes his mother had complained to me they were like homosexuals sticking to one another like there were no other friends of the opposite sex. His mother kept asking me to take care of him, ask him for his hand and marry him so that she might as well get rid of him and all his drunken friends and orgies.
Proposing to him like I was a man and him a lady. No way, momma. Poor crazy momma and him and the like and me. I’d rather die.
And so I died while he was sitting far away outside on the other side of town calling me up from the death and the fire blooming like flowers in spring. Firemen came only to look on bargaining for a better deal and while nothing progressed the fire was swallowing everything including my boyfriend’s beloved, me. Kha tried to plunge himself into the building but failed as the neighbors knocked him out and dragged him to safety. They did not want to see another lunatic dying for love.
Waking up, Kha sat against the wall across the road and kept staring at my apartment, shouting hoarsely and voicelessly for the me to come out. He did not know all the time I had been sitting beside him, listening to his breath when he was out, and his ethereal transcendental murmuring which he thought would stop the Death with his scythe from taking me away. I was kissing him while he slept, while he voiced and while he cried. Now I could kiss him without worrying that he would betray me and run away with another beautiful girl when I got older and turned ugly. Now I could kiss him without feeling guilty, worrying that it was wrong doing that while my home town kids were drowning under the demonic waves the rainy season brought about under or over the monkey bridges the government ignored because they said they were not on the main arteries for the development of the area. Now I could kiss him without worrying that I could not stop loving him, that I would let loose of my desire and get distracted and destroy my future because of a middle class handsome boy other girls could not resist. Now I could kiss him forever without him knowing it. Now I would possess him for good.
Somebody said fire flowers were the most beautiful because they were gentle and strong, quiet and loud, soft and flexible, destructive and beneficial, nothing and all, the alpha and omega, the origin and end of all universe, the ante-big bang and the expansion of the first energy and eventually the doomsday. And I loved fire. I had loved it since time I could hardly remember. Might have been since I learned to meditate and look into eternity and grasp the meaning of my life and others’. Might have been since I was conceived in my mom’s womb which my father would want to remove three months later. Fire had been there with me and now I was wrapped in it. What was it like? You might ask. Was it the same as the one the great Buddhist monk once engulfed himself in fifty years ago when he protested against the harsh regime killing innocent people? I would be happy if that were though I was just a small pebble, dying from a silly reason and accident, the anger of myself and my futile love for the unreachable handsomeness of my boyfriend. My heart had turned ash because it was an earthen one. It was said the martyr’s heart had remained intact, pure, undamaged and been taken to a pagoda where it was enshrined for the followers to worship.
So I returned every night. In fact, I had never left since the fire. I had been with him, seeing him talk, sleep and socialize. He almost never left home embracing my image in his mind nostalgically, sorrowfully and painfully. He almost went mad reprimanding himself, blaming himself for my death.
‘If only I had been stronger, broken in and pulled her out the first moment getting her call.’
I loved him so.
And that was why people said they had been hearing calls at midnight every night since. From ... eternity.
-The End -
‘Hi. You know who already. There’s nothing. I just call to remind you that we are having a drinking party tomorrow night. So plan ahead and come. Now you don’t have any excuse not to come. Otherwise, I’d call you tomorrow midnight to call you names for not coming tomorrow night. Ok buddy?’
And without waiting for me saying anything, he hung up.
‘What a …!’
Ring. Ring. Ring. Him again, of course, to stop me blaspheming.
‘Don’t even think of it.’ He said and hung up.
‘Really what a …!’
Ring. Ring. Ring. Of course who else? I ignored it for a sec and pressed the key. He would call later if I did not answer it, not caring if it would make me doze the next morning for a sleepless night.
‘Love you.’
‘…!’
I don’t love him, but I cannot live without him. He’s my breath and soul and everything since when I cannot remember. But truly that’s not love. I have always wondered myself what love is and seemed not to find the answer.
‘Is this love? Between you and me?’ I confronted him one day.
‘Yes and no. Yes because I love you. No because you don’t love me.’ He said blinking his eyes, the way you were wondering if it was a lie. But I don’t love him really.
Why is it so hard to love a person? What is wrong with me? Or has been? Since when have I become callous of other people’s feelings though I can feel his love for me?
I used to feel touched and nervous and happy the first times we looked into each other’s eyes and I did really want the moments to last longer. Many first times the second year at college.
The first year on campus with a few touches leaving some little desires for more because that’s not enough then passed. We parted for summer back to our own home towns. I forgot him completely with my family around, making up stories to tell my younger and older sisters who were yearning to hear something exciting outside of the tedious boring monotonous toiling life of a small town. In all my stories there would certainly be him and me. A white horseman and a Cinderella although the Cinderella would never end up marrying the white horseman and but a poor teacher teaching in a mountainous school to which the students had to cross a monkey bridge. Accidents happened and some died.
That might have been the reason why I could not talk myself into loving my white horseman. Look at him and you would certainly want to fall for him but at the same time tell yourself to stay apart. He is a good guy. That’s for sure. But the way he dressed himself immaculate as his skin was would make you think of the time it would take to groom every morning or any time you asked him to go out.
Anyhow, we have been in love. Or used to. It is hard to tell. I hooked myself to him the first few times chatting by the corridor of the row of class rooms ending with a stinking bathroom we often joked about.
I did not come to the party as scheduled or promised or anything. I just could not, making lots of excuses for not going, switching off the cell and putting a lock on the outside. I could do it easily through a hole beside the door rings. Passers-by would suppose I was not at home and I would enjoy the solitude to eternity. Stupid. He woud have said, supposing there was a fire or something. I would not care.
But then I did die really. It is as true as the fact that you are reading this right now. Please look sideways in case I am looking at you horizontally or from above diagonally or vertically. This story was written by a ghost, the spirit who called my boyfriend at midnight to remind him of the unrealized party he invited me several days before I locked myself and perished in the fire.
As it happened, my boyfriend, and I think now I should name him in case you wanted to tell the story to another weak-minded friend of yours, Kha, came to my apartment to take me to the drinking party of his and his old school mates’. They had parties every now and again, so many that sometimes his mother had complained to me they were like homosexuals sticking to one another like there were no other friends of the opposite sex. His mother kept asking me to take care of him, ask him for his hand and marry him so that she might as well get rid of him and all his drunken friends and orgies.
Proposing to him like I was a man and him a lady. No way, momma. Poor crazy momma and him and the like and me. I’d rather die.
And so I died while he was sitting far away outside on the other side of town calling me up from the death and the fire blooming like flowers in spring. Firemen came only to look on bargaining for a better deal and while nothing progressed the fire was swallowing everything including my boyfriend’s beloved, me. Kha tried to plunge himself into the building but failed as the neighbors knocked him out and dragged him to safety. They did not want to see another lunatic dying for love.
Waking up, Kha sat against the wall across the road and kept staring at my apartment, shouting hoarsely and voicelessly for the me to come out. He did not know all the time I had been sitting beside him, listening to his breath when he was out, and his ethereal transcendental murmuring which he thought would stop the Death with his scythe from taking me away. I was kissing him while he slept, while he voiced and while he cried. Now I could kiss him without worrying that he would betray me and run away with another beautiful girl when I got older and turned ugly. Now I could kiss him without feeling guilty, worrying that it was wrong doing that while my home town kids were drowning under the demonic waves the rainy season brought about under or over the monkey bridges the government ignored because they said they were not on the main arteries for the development of the area. Now I could kiss him without worrying that I could not stop loving him, that I would let loose of my desire and get distracted and destroy my future because of a middle class handsome boy other girls could not resist. Now I could kiss him forever without him knowing it. Now I would possess him for good.
Somebody said fire flowers were the most beautiful because they were gentle and strong, quiet and loud, soft and flexible, destructive and beneficial, nothing and all, the alpha and omega, the origin and end of all universe, the ante-big bang and the expansion of the first energy and eventually the doomsday. And I loved fire. I had loved it since time I could hardly remember. Might have been since I learned to meditate and look into eternity and grasp the meaning of my life and others’. Might have been since I was conceived in my mom’s womb which my father would want to remove three months later. Fire had been there with me and now I was wrapped in it. What was it like? You might ask. Was it the same as the one the great Buddhist monk once engulfed himself in fifty years ago when he protested against the harsh regime killing innocent people? I would be happy if that were though I was just a small pebble, dying from a silly reason and accident, the anger of myself and my futile love for the unreachable handsomeness of my boyfriend. My heart had turned ash because it was an earthen one. It was said the martyr’s heart had remained intact, pure, undamaged and been taken to a pagoda where it was enshrined for the followers to worship.
So I returned every night. In fact, I had never left since the fire. I had been with him, seeing him talk, sleep and socialize. He almost never left home embracing my image in his mind nostalgically, sorrowfully and painfully. He almost went mad reprimanding himself, blaming himself for my death.
‘If only I had been stronger, broken in and pulled her out the first moment getting her call.’
I loved him so.
And that was why people said they had been hearing calls at midnight every night since. From ... eternity.
-The End -