The Mountains Sing

by Que Mai Phan Nguyen

  “She can afford to throw her money away, money she earns without doing any real work,” said someone else.

  I saw myself in the angry sneers targeted at Grandma. I’d held strong feelings about her job, only to have my eyes opened by her entrepreneurship, hard work, and determination.

  I had to be Mèn the cricket who was brave and stood up for his own beliefs. I found myself on my feet. “Please, may I speak? My name is Hương. I’m Grandma Diệu Lan’s granddaughter. My parents have gone to the battlefields, and Grandma takes care of me. I live with her, and I’m aware of what she does.” I looked at Grandma and smiled. “Grandma Diệu Lan works harder than anyone I know. She barely sleeps. Just look at the blisters on her feet and they’ll tell you that she doesn’t exploit anyone. Every cent she wants to donate to this neighborhood has been hard-earned money.”

  A tear rolled down Grandma’s face. Silence enveloped the room.

  “Children don’t lie.” Mrs. Nhân stood up. She was the only person here who’d remained friendly to us. “Don’t think about propaganda, please. Think about the benefits this would give your own family. Your children will have more time to play. You will have more time to relax. The water will be much safer. No more lining up from four in the morning. No more fighting about who got a fuller bucket.”

  People started murmuring together again.

  “All right, all right.” Mr. Phong raised his hands to silence the crowd. “Let’s have a secret ballot. There’re paper, pens, and a box on the table over there. Write down your wish, yes or no to Mrs. Diệu Lan’s offer, and put it into the box. The majority decision will be the final one.”

  As the neighbors made their way to the table, Grandma found me. “I guess from today I shouldn’t call you Guava anymore. You’re a young lady now, Hương.”

  I beamed. “I love my baby name, but yes, Hương would be nice.”

  I squeezed Grandma’s shoulders as Mr. Phong read the result aloud. “Out of forty-one people present here tonight . . . thirty-six agreed to Mrs. Diệu Lan’s proposal.” He turned to Grandma. “On behalf of our neighborhood, thank you.”

  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. Nhân 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. Nhân 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 phản 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, Hương?” 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 phản. 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 Thủy 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 Nội 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 phượng flowers, into purple bằng lăng 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 Tiền 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 Hương, 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.

  Grandma and I sat on our phản, counting the money she’d made that day. Strange noises made us turn toward the door, noises other than the rattling of the wind and rain.

  “What’s that, Grandma?” I asked.

  The strange noises boomed again. Faintly, I heard a human voice.
Grandma dropped the money, rushing forward.

  I jumped down, too. My toes hit the snout of Black Dots, who squealed.

  “I’m coming.” Grandma pulled the door open. In the dim light of our oil lamp, a thin shadow stood, its hair a tangled mess, its clothes dangling shreds of rags.

  The wind tore in, snatching away the light of our lamp.

  “Bà ơi.” I called for Grandma. The shadow must be a ghost whose grave was unearthed by the storm. The ghosts in the stories I’d been reading were hungry; they sucked people’s souls to fill their stomachs.

  Grandma was saying something. The wind was howling louder, the ghosts cackling. I hung on to the phản, my body as stiff as a tree trunk. I opened my mouth to call for Grandma to come back, but words were stuck to my throat.

  I heard the door closing, moans, footsteps. “Hương,” Grandma called. “Your mother is back. Give us some light.”

  My mother? Could this be true? I fumbled in darkness, searching for the box of matchsticks. I struck one and a fire sprang up, wobbled, and died. I tried another. It didn’t ignite. For the third time, I struck three sticks against the side of the matchbox. Holding the fire, I turned.

  A woman stood, her head on Grandma’s shoulder. Her eyes were closed. Her face was red and swollen, her hair glued against her skull.

  “Hương, your mother is home. She’s home!” Grandma sobbed.

  The fire ate into my fingers. I dropped the matchsticks onto the floor. I didn’t feel any pain, for I’d seen the deep anguish on the woman’s face. My mother’s face.

  “Mẹ.” I struggled against darkness, rushing to her. My cheek was hot against her chest. My hands clung to her bony frame. “Mẹ, mẹ ơi.”

  My mother’s fingers trembled over my nose, mouth, eyes. “Hương. Oh, my darling. Hương . . .”

  The tears that I’d buried inside of me burst. I cried for the years we’d been apart, for Uncle Thuận’s death, for the deaths of my classmates, for myself and the fact that I no longer had any real friends.

  Grandma relit the lamp. She pushed the money on the phản aside. I helped my mother lie down, drying her with a towel. She shivered under my hands.

  As Grandma went to get a change of clothes for my mother, I kissed her forehead. A fever seared through her skin. She moaned.

  “You’ll be better soon now that you’re with us, Mama.” I ran the towel along her legs, wiping away the mud, eyeing the large bruises imprinted on her skin. “How did you get home, Mama? Where’ve you been?” I wanted to ask about my father but feared the answer.

  “Hương.” My mother opened her eyes. “Your Papa . . . Did your Papa come back?”

  My heart paused in its beat. The lamp stopped flickering. “Mama, you didn’t find him? You didn’t see him?”

  A tear slid out of my mother’s eye. As she shook her head, I stood up. I walked to the room Grandma had reserved for my parents, putting my face against its door. My mother had led me to believe that she could find my father and bring him back to me. I had believed she could do anything she wanted to.

  “I’m sorry, Hương.” Her voice was a bare whisper.

  The door was hard and cold against my forehead. I wanted to break it open.

  “Now the war is ending, Hoàng will be back any day. He’ll be back,” Grandma’s voice said.

  “Did you ever get a letter from him?” my mother asked.

  “Not yet, Daughter. Perhaps he found no way to send it.”

  “How about my brothers, Mama?”

  “I’m sure they’re fine, and they’ll be home soon.” I turned to see Grandma sitting my mother up, giving her a glass of water. I looked up in the direction of Uncle Thuận’s altar, feeling thankful for the darkness: it had concealed the truth from my mother, for now.

  As I helped Grandma change my mother, I eyed her protruding ribs. The bruises were not just on her legs, they marked their presence on her back, chest, and thighs. What had happened to her?

  Grandma brought a towel and a pail of warm water. As I cleaned my mother’s face and hands, she lay there, her eyes tightly shut, her body shuddering. I turned away. I didn’t want to look at her, nor pity her. Where had my strong and determined mother gone? She didn’t ask about Grandma and me, how we were doing and how we’d survived the bombings.

  “Let her rest,” Grandma whispered, pulling a blanket to my mother’s chest. As she started cooking, I went out to our young bàng tree. The rain had died into the earth. A half-moon dangled from the sky. I closed my eyes and saw myself as a child, my mother combing my hair, her singing voice the wind in my ears.

  Grandma came out. She embraced me, her arms felt as solid as tree roots, holding me up. “I’m sorry your Mama isn’t well, Hương. We must be the pillars for her to lean on.”

  “She used to be my pillar, Grandma.”

  “I know, but you’re a strong woman now. . . . She needs you.”

  I looked up at the moon and tried to let its soft light calm me. Perhaps it was wrong of me to feel disappointed at my mother. At least she’d tried to find my father and bring him back. Grandma had said that it was an impossible task.

  “Don’t tell her about your Uncle Thuận yet,” said Grandma. “When she sleeps tonight, I’ll bring Thuận’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 phở, 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 Bạch 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 veget
ables 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 phản, 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 bồ kết fruit. Their perfume reminded me of our happy times when my mother and I washed our hair under the old bàng tree.

  The bồ kết 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 bồ kết 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.