My Heritage
I was sitting on my parents’ bed, looking out of the window watching the moon slowly emerging from underneath dark clouds when I heard gentle footsteps from behind. I did not turn, but I felt my mother had entered the room, carrying some fabric under her arms.
Mama put the fabric on her dressing table, then walked towards the bed and sat beside me. I leaned my head over her shoulder, feeling her warmth, listening to the rhythm of her heart. Soft light from the moon streaming through the open window forced darkness to recede. The silvery light of the moon always soothed my nerves. I felt warm drops trickling down on my face and falling on my hair. Bathing in moonlight, my mother and I appeared calm, but beneath our tranquil bodies, our hearts were trembling. I reached for Mama’s hands and held them in mine, the hands that had been working for her family ever since she was a little girl of eight. I wondered when, if ever, I would help to stop this pair of hands from labouring and when I would dress her fingers with the rings that once she had dreamt of having. We sat in absolute silence while tears wet my cheeks and my mind filled with strange and anxious thoughts.
I opened my eyes from slumber; I was laying on my parents’ bed. The room was dark. The silence was deafening. Moments later I heard a rustle behind me and felt a gentle movement of air. I drew in a long breath and held it as long as I could so as to preserve the familiar scent and with it the memories of the love that had always nurtured me.
‘Wake up, my child.’ I heard my mother whispering.
I turned, but could not see her face as the moon had already gone and the sun was still asleep. Her features slowly emerged in my mind: the light in her eyes, the beauty on her cheeks, the kind words on her lips, the melody in her voice and the love in her smile. I was recalling the face that had been imprinted on my memory since I was a child, when our home was full of love and laughter. I pondered the past, longing for olden times, the times when we were living together as a family. Mama sat holding my hands, gazing out of the window into the darkness.
A faint light, the light before dawn, made the room just visible. I looked about. On Mama’s dressing table my eyes caught the sight of a set of peasant clothes: black trousers, brown blouse – áo bà ba - with two pockets in the lower part of the front panel of the blouse, and a large piece of cloth. Next to them was a conical hat, made of bamboo leaves. The piece of cloth and the conical hat’s ribbon were made from the same material as the blouse.
Reality dawned on me; in the light of a candle, Mama had sat all night by my side stitching the clothes; they were stained with tears from her eyes and blood from her fingertips.
A few hours earlier, when the rays of moonlight were fading away, I had lain down, dressed as I was, upon the bamboo mat on my parents’ bed, while Mama lit a candle. I remembered I was gazing at the flame of the candle while my mother was cutting.
The very thought of seeing myself dressed in peasant clothes sent a chill down my spine; I was about to walk away from all that I had grown to love and to value all my life. How was it that I must leave? Would my mother be able to cope with my absence? I thought that one day all of us might be reunited as a family, but would we ever return to the old ways?
‘Be strong, Daughter,’ I recalled my father saying, ‘Leave! You must live!’
So, that’s it! I must leave, in order to live a new life! The new beginning! But a life without my mother, my father and my surroundings! Suddenly worried thoughts rushed into my mind: would the boat be safe? Would I be safe? Would I avoid all dangers? I closed my eyes, feeling great sadness in my heart. Tears flowed down my cheeks. My nose was blocked. I sat up to breathe. My mother held me in her arms; she could not hold back her tears either.
‘Be strong, Daughter.’ I heard my father whispering; he had entered the room quietly. ‘It’s time you should get ready.’
I got out of the bed and mechanically picked up the peasant clothes.
‘Everything will be fine!’ Papa spoke in a positive tone as he moved to the window. ‘We’ll meet again soon!’ Whilst I got dressed, my father stood gazing out of the window, speaking to me. His words filled me with hope and courage. All would be well, he said, and when he had news of my safe landing, he would arrange for the rest of our family to leave Việt Nam. ‘We’ll be together again.’ Papa repeated the phrase many times so as to convince all of us.
Blackness over the horizon was disappearing when I heard a tap at the door. It was a gentle tap but sounded urgent. Papa went and opened the door. I heard the voice whispering a few words. Leaving the door half-open, Papa turned and looked at Mama and me; he said nothing.
Mama put her hands on my head, holding it for a second, then moved her hands slowly from the top of my head down to my waist where my hair ended, her eyes fixed on me. I looked at her face, the face that was always full of love, and saw the face of a mother who was crushed by the pain of love while saying goodbye to her seventeen-year-old daughter before sending her across the dangerous ocean to an unforeseen future in a foreign land. The only balm for her suffering was the dim hope that one day her family would be reunited in peace.
‘Send us a telegram immediately when you reach safety,’ said Papa, stroking my hair.
Mama moved away, picked up some pieces of ginseng, wrapped them in a piece of cloth, and then came close to me. ‘Chew a little at a time,’ she said in a whisper. ‘It will give you strength.’ She put it in the pocket of my blouse and tucked some money in the other pocket; then she moved her hands along both pockets as if to make sure nothing had fallen out. Next her hands moved along my shoulders to my neck as if she were adjusting my blouse to make sure it fitted well, as if she were dressing me up for a special occasion. She stood quietly looking at me for a moment before suddenly throwing her arms around me and hugging me tight.
While Mama was embracing me I felt her pain and her love; I felt as though the warmth in her heart and the strength in her body were flowing into mine. I wished I could preserve that moment forever. There were no words to describe the depths of our feelings.
I heard the tap at the door, followed by Papa’s footsteps. Papa whispered something to the man at the door. Then I heard the man’s footsteps as he descended the stairs.
I felt Mama’s lips on my forehead before she released me from her arms; she stood quietly holding my hands. ‘Take care, my daughter,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll pray to Lord Buddha to keep you safe.’
Papa held the conical hat in his hand, gently loosened Mama’s grip, then put the conical hat under my arm. ‘Be strong, our Daughter!’ He motioned me to go.
It was as though Papa had hypnotised me to be strong. I turned and walked through the door, through the hall, down the stairs, without looking back. I walked down, step by step, slowly descending from the third floor, still feeling the warmth of my mother’s hug and the glow of her kiss on my forehead. Mama had never kissed me during my teens for, being Vietnamese, we rarely show our emotions.
As I descended the stairs, I recalled how, a decade earlier, I had leaped up these stairs for the first time, with my father and mother following behind. I was then a seven-year-old girl in my school uniform, a sky-blue blouse and an ocean-blue skirt. I had counted these steps as I climbed up, feeling proud of our newly constructed home.
That was a great time for my parents, a time of happiness, love and hope. Every day when I finished my school lessons, I would rush up to the balcony to see them. We had only just moved into our new five-storey home, and we would stand on the balcony, watching passers-by and the activities down in the street, while the rays of the sun beamed onto us, bathing us with warmth.
That was the time when my parents enjoyed sitting on the balcony, drinking lotus tea whilst Papa recited poetry from Lady poet Hồ Xuân Hương or passages from Vietnamese Classics: The Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Du or a novel in verse Lục Vân Tiên by Nguyễn Đình Chiểu, or quote the writings from Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, or analyse the stories written by Nhất Linh, Khái Hưng and Trần Tiêu. Papa’s voice was sometimes high, sometimes low, reflecting the emotions in the passages. He recited them in his distinctive northern accent, a mixture of Hải Dương, Nghệ An, and Hà Nội, pronouncing every word correctly. He had been travelling long and far since he was a child. He had lived in twelve major towns, as he moved through the length of Việt Nam, from North to Central and then to Southern provinces. In each of these places, he had tuned his ears to the local accents and practised correctly pronouncing certain words which people in his ancestral village could not say correctly. He had also learned both French and English. As a result, he was very conscious of his voice, always speaking every word with its correct sound.
While my parents were talking, I would hold onto the handrail and look down into the street; my face would reach just above it. When I saw our regular sweet vendor or smelt the pleasant scent of a mixture of ginger, spring onion, mung beans, coconut, brown sugar, sesame seeds, sticky rice flour and tapioca, I screamed with excitement. Mama would smile as she gave me some đồng, Vietnamese money. I would run downstairs and bring back a tray with three small bowls of chè trôi nứơc, sweet floating cake juice. It was our favourite sweet.
While we were eating, sometimes Papa would tell us about his childhood experiences and sometimes he would describe the many wonderful dishes that his mother used to cook for him. Every time he spoke of his mother, I saw a glint of happiness in his eyes, as though he saw her standing at the door, carrying a big pot of food, and calling out to him to come and eat. Papa’s eyes sparkled with joy when Mama said, ‘I’ll make you some of your favourite dishes for dinner and your mother’s version of gỏi cá fish salad dish tomorrow.’ He bent close to her, wanting to kiss her but she was shy and would turn away.
A decade had passed and now at the early hours of the ninth day of the third moon of the year of Tân Dậu, The New Hen, I was descending the stairs for the last time and leaving my childhood home forever.
As I reached the ground floor, I heard footsteps behind me. They were Mama’s footsteps, followed by Papa’s. I looked back. At the foot of the stairs Mama was standing in Papa’s arms. He was holding her shoulders, stopping her from running after me. He motioned me to leave. I looked again and saw that more than half of her hair had turned white, even though she was only forty-three. Over the past six years, since the Fall of Sài Gòn, worries and toil had sapped my mother’s strengths. My father, too, had aged; he only kept himself going by his positive outlook and strong will power. His voice echoed in my mind: ‘Be strong, Daughter. Leave! You must live!’
I turned around and took larger strides toward the front door, not looking at anything else around me.
‘Look after your health,’ Mama called after me.
Little did I know that that would be the last time I heard my mother’s lovely voice!
A young man and two young women were waiting for me near the front door. I recognised the two women. They were in their teens; both were daughters of the French teacher Papa had had in the 1940s, when he was studying at the college in Vinh, the capital city of Nghệ An Province.
‘We’ll go through the market to the bus station,’ said the young man. ‘You two can walk together behind me, and if you see any sign of trouble, stop following me.’ He spoke quickly in a quiet voice, his eyes moving briefly from the two women to me. ‘You walk on the other side.’
He paused and then added quietly, ‘Remember, always keep a distance.’
As we were about to leave, impulsively I turned back. I saw Mama standing in Papa’s arms, her cheeks glistening with tears. I held back my own tears, forced a faint smile and waved, then walked away. She stood watching me leave home, not knowing that she would never hug her daughter again!
I crossed the street onto the other side, heading in the direction of the market. From a distance I turned around to look at my childhood home.
I stood like a peasant, in the brown áo bà ba and black trousers, with the conical hat under my arm. I took a deep breath to fill my chest with cherished memories, as if these memories would help me to embrace the new life on the other side of the ocean. After a moment of quiet, I turned and walked away, carrying a few pieces of ginseng and some đồng Vietnamese money in my blouse pockets - and my heritage in my heart.