Tấm’s mother tipped the basket of crabs she had gotten from the fields, a rainfall of brown, black crabs in a pot full of water. They crawled about disorderly covered with mud and foaming, the pot turning dirty.
As usual, Tấm took out the biggest one, its shell brightly shiny with cracks in the pattern of bird claw, looking like the Buddha’s face. She attached a box of matches to the crab by a thread to play the game of pulling a vehicle.
“Long live the Crab! Long Live Mr. threewheeled Cực!”
The crab was a strong and hard-working as Old Cực whose job it was to pull a three-wheeled cart on charter in the village. Whenever he earned a little good money, he bought Tấm some snacks… He said, “Crabs are sacred animals, each carrying a Buddha on their shells.”
Then Tam heard her mother shouting as if she burned herself. “God damn you! Crabs are as rare as gold, fields are full of fertilizer. How come you take so big a crab? Give it back to me, quick!”
Tấm’s mother gave her a real big blow. She saw stars, each star producing a crawling crab.
She furtively approached her mother. Crabs were torn out of their shells. Their legs were faintly moving with pain. Her crab with a Buddha’s face was among the others soundly thrashed. Tấm held high the peddle. The crab in the pot squirmed violently and squirmed jerkily, all of them, mother-crab, child-crab, brother-crab, sister-crab, Mr. three-wheeled Cự c-crab… Tấm closed her eyes in agony. Heaven fell black. That black mass suddenly broke with those crabs’ cries and sobs. Far away, crab-holes turned empty.
The peddle in her hand grew heavy, too heavy for her to hold.
Day after day, mother did the same thing. Fewer and fewer crabs were gotten, and Mom grew thinner and and thinner. Once Tấm looked at her mother while she was working on the crabs. She was startled to see her pointed kneecaps reaching her ears. She looked like a big crab cowering in the pot. Her dad had been killed in a battle, her mother worked hard to feed her.
She loved Tấm with a love, as severe as her own paw-wrinkled face, as the hard-working crab with a Buddha’s face, which at times, gave Tấm a hard pinch with its pincers.
Tấm asked her mother, “Why eight legs and two pairs of pincers?”
“Because it wants to find lots of food for its young”, answered her mother. “And why doesn’t walk, just moves sideways.”
The space in front of her mother darkened.
She has all her life moved sideways. Tấm went on singing “A crab with her eight legs and two pairs of pincers doesn’t walk but moves sideways all day”. Her ears deafened. Tears oozed out of her eyes in silence.
Tấm loved her mother very much. She stole those crabs with Buddha’s faces and scattered them around the house. They hid themselves very well, nowhere to be seen all day long.
During the night, Tam went to the toilet and stepped on something that gave out a littlesound. One more crab passed away in the dark.
One early afternoon, it was real hot. The three-wheeled Cực called on Tấm, his face turning pale, “Tấm! Your mother fell sick.”
Tấm fainted near a tree trunk. Old Cực seized her arms with his robust ones, dragging her up and on. Seeing her mother lying on the field in the open with her limbs curved up like a crab separated from its shell and with her empty bag nearby.
Her mother died of sunstroke.
Night was falling. Neighbors came to arrange the funeral. Tấ m’s eyes were dry. Crabs did not return. Her mother didn’t either. Tấm herself was nowhere to be found. She was flying up in the sky, where two star-eyes blinked down to the village, houses huddling like crab holes.
The funeral procession was as silent as a group of crabs carrying the dead crab. The crab group was long, each one with a shiny black shell with bird-paw wrinkles in the Buddha’s face pattern.
- Nguyễn Quang Trung