As soon as we got off the bus, my mother and I were surrounded by a band of welcoming teenagers. They jostled each other to be of service, helping my mother with her bag and me with the hat I took off to shake the dust from my clothes. "Grandma told us to meet you early this morning," they explained.
We already knew there would be a wedding, a large wedding. Mother was in high spirits.
Back in the old days, grandma used to be very poor, with nothing to offer her daughter for a dowry when she moved with her husband into town.
"Dear me, why are you so late, sis?" Uncle Năm rushed out to give mom a hug. Then he turned his attention to me, "Trúc, how quickly you've grown! Are you ready to have a husband?"
I frowned. To grow up is to get married, is that the way it is? Mom whispered in my ear, "In the country, people are like that. You just got here, don't wear such a frown."
I tried to smile and my uncle's sincere grin made me forget my disappointment as he led me out into the garden, where bountiful bunches of longans hung from branches.
"They'll be ripe in less than a month's time.
Then you can eat your fill."
"Why not now? I want them to be ripe now." I was teasing.
He was about to pull down a branch and pick some for me, but I waved him off, "Oh, no! I was just kidding. They're still green."
He looked over at the star apple, also in bloom, but still without fruit and then, together, we burst out laughing.
"Such a pity. Not a single ripe fruit now that you are finally here," he said with a click. He was the nicest of all my uncles, always considerate and careful not to offend his nephews and nieces. Whenever he came to visit us in town, he always did his best to please us.
"Trúc!" he called.
"Yes."
"You know your aunt already?” he said blushing.
"Is she beautiful?"
"Not very." He swung on a branch and called out to me, "Trúc?"
"Yes?"
"I'll tell you this," he whispered to my ear, and I tried to avoid the tobacco smell from him.
"I'll give this to you. Then you can present it to your aunt and tell her it's a gift from you."
I was surprised to see a ring with a red stone.
"Why don't you give it to her?"
"I have my own gift," he said. "This should be from you. It will add to her joy."
He blushed as he looked at me. His face was full of eager anticipation, his austere face grew brighter. Poor uncle! He must love her so much, and she so nagged.
"It's not mine," I retorted. "I don't find it right to do so". I tried to push his hand off.
He pressed the ring into my hand without saying another word.
Later that afternoon, I noticed he placed another ring in my mom's hand. "Just say it is your gift," he pleaded. Her eyes were red. The presents were small and only a few of them, but he wanted his wife to be happy.
Adults are so complicated. I didn't stay around to peel onions. Instead, I walked down toward the river. The ring with a red stone gave me a strange sensation. And I felt good with that ring on my finger.
As I climbed the dike, the wind remained cool and lightly scented. Several children were playing and making a lot of noise. They quietened down and began to disperse when they caught sight of me. The river had little waves and ripples. I found it strange that the same sky could cast such different colors on the ocean and river, leaving the ocean a deep azure and the river this mild blue.
I walked down toward the river, its water was silently troubled, to where a young girl was squatting, not far away. Her light green shirt was outlined against the afternoon blue sky. I tried to be friendly. She looked back at me.
"You came for the wedding?" she added.
News spreads fast in the countryside. I nodded. "You live here?"
She stared at me with wide eyes.
I saw red on her cheeks, and the red penetrat-ed into his eyes. She stood, propped up by her hand. The wind blew her shirt open. Her hair, carefully pinned, was mostly in order, only a few hairs flying loose about her ears. She seemed extremely embarrassed. I had the impression she would plunge into the river.
I came closer, "What's the matter?"
She stepped back, "Nothing." Her complex-ion turned pale. Her fringe seemed to stand on end.
An idea came to me. "Is it perhaps, my aunt?" I said.
She smiled a polite smile and her body stiff-ened. Except for her flopping shirt I would have thought she was stone.
I didn't know what else to say. We just stared at each other and then I opened up my hand with the ring, the red stone ring, naked against the void.
The bus sputtered and skidded as my mother lay against the side dozing - mother was exhausted from the two sleepless nights. I couldn't sleep.
I looked out the window as the dike dwindled from sight, paddy fields and the road running back…
Never would I forget my aunt's terrifying scream, a scream of suffering, reproach and humiliation as it ran through her new room where she stayed with my uncle. Later we heard muffled sobs.
I got up and felt my way around in the dark of night. "What's that, mother?"
She pulled me back. "Go back to sleep".
"Didn't you hear anything?"
"Just go back to sleep."
I lay gazing up into the dark.
I couldn't recognize my aunt the next morning.
Her expressionless face with no anticipation, longing or desire. She had shrunk like a snail. She looked around her with lifeless eyes. Now I understood her scream in the night.
A cry for help without any response.
Uncle brought my aunt to see us off at the bus terminal. He appeared quite happy, somehow relieved. She stood by his side, quiet as the river at dusk, with her pale, lost, silent eyes. I held her hand for a long time, "Dear aunt." I felt like crying. She glanced up briefly and I caught glimpse of a transparent tear rolling then drying quickly or rolling back again.
The bus started to move and I turned to watch her small figure grow smaller and smaller. Something had died in her and something broke in me.
Mom always tried to change the subject whenever I mentioned aunt and her midnight scream. "Country girls generally marry young," she said, "and you better get an education or you'll marry young, too."
Such hardship. She made marrying young sound like the curse of some ghost.
In my dreams, I kept seeing aunt with outstretched hands and shining rings on each of her ten fingers. I saw her with her hair blown down across her face, running along the dike and down, down to plunge into the river. I also watched her bury her face in a white piece of cloth, her tears turning the cloth ocean blue.
I read articles about married life and understood a few things, and came to a conclusion that she had died that night of her marriage.
But such a conclusion pained me more than satisfied my curiosity. Throwing away all the papers and magazines, I drowned myself in my studies. I had examinations coming up, didn't I?
Then, when I had nearly managed to forget, she reappeared. It was a terribly hot summer's day. Someone stepped over the threshold and then stopped short. I didn't recognize her at first until minutes later. Aside from her too big belly, she looked shrunken and pitiful. With sunken eyes, sunken cheeks, hunched shoulders and long, thin wrists and ankles, she stared at me.
Right here and now, I though I could under-stand her at all.
She smiled, quiet as the river in late afternoon.
I recalled the little girl in the light green shirt by the river.
"Aunt, you're going to have a child!" I burst out, feeling a pain in my eyes.
She nodded and I pulled her in. "You're alone. Where's uncle?" I asked.
"He's out paying the cycle driver," she said.
I looked out. He was red in face from arguing with the driver. "Don't think that I am to be cheated so easily."
I shouted out to him, "Pay him off!"
He shouted back, "I am not stingy, but I hate it when things like this happen. It bothers me."
"The doctor said that if I didn't feel any pain then operation would be necessary". As she held my hand, her fingers appeared so bony. "You know, Trúc, I was to blame," she said. "I owe your uncle many apologies. Now, it serves me right!"
I tried to assure her. "Don't talk like that".
The maternity ward was silent. My parents were standing outside. Uncle was dozing in a bench, occasionally slopping at mosquitoes. A lot of stubble had just grown only after a short time. The doctor placed an apron on me and I heard her let go a sigh as she stepped outside.
Aunt lay on the table, a very short table, with her legs folded back. Her belly rose up much higher than her face and she bled and turned pale, trembling slightly.
Her tears ran clear across my hand and she moaned, "It's not so easy to be a wife. It serves me right."
I cried as well. Blood, red. I was frightened. I dragged a bucket at her feet over and stooped down to throw up.
"I want to tell you, after I die…"
"You won't die," I told her. "But just tell me…"
"That ring. I gave it away to someone."
I quivered. That ring with a red stone. Why did she mention it this moment? Red stones were like surrounding red blood drops. I bent to throw up… I myself had worn that ring on my finger.
"What's the use, aunt?" I asked. "What's the use, such a fantastic story?"
She looked up to the ceiling with wide-open eyes. A lizard was trying to swallow a beetle, its beck bulging. The beetle's legs struck out of the lizard's wide mouth. Something likes a smile on the open lips of aunt. "This ring, when I die, you…"
"How silly you are!" I shouted.
The doctor came in. "You get out, little girl!"
She ordered.
I could not concentrate on my lessons several days afterwards.
Before me was the image of aunt's face with her empty eyes looking at the infant wrapped in a towel. It closed its eyes shut, some young hairs moving slightly on its forehead. It breathed regularly & peacefully without knowing its mother's despair, who desired to go to the other world with the infant.
Uncle exclaimed with the delight of an old father, "Honey, it's a girl. Daughter or son, just the same to me. I treasure it."
"Daughter," she repeated with a voice like a knife cutting the void.
I went in search of a gift for the infant, and another for my aunt. What gift to fit an infant born to its father's delight and its mother's despair? What gift for a 17-year-old woman without any dream, any hope, any expectation in life?
I went…and went, browsing from morning till evening…two times to some stores, then came home with nothing to buy.
Many years passed. From time to time, after a visit to the country, mother told me that uncle and aunt had two more children.
Aunt was now a fat and capable housewife. I couldn't picture aunt as a fat woman. Once or twice I felt like going to the country for a visit but changed my mind.
And then I fell in love, and I forgot aunt. We went to a jeweler's shop to choose the rings. Sweet tiny rings sparkled in the window. I opened my hand to put rings on.
Suddenly, I caught sight of the red stone ring.
I asked the shop owner, "How did you acquire this ring?"
"You like it?"
"How did you have this ring?" I repeated the question.
She observed me carefully, "I am a dealer. I own a lot of this kind of rings, though some of them are of old style."
To prove it, she took out many red stone rings, and put them together. They were all exactly alike. I couldn't tell which one had belonged to my aunt.
- Nguyên Hương