I was five years old, when my paternal grandmother began teaching me how to count. I pursed my lips as round as possible to pronounce the digits properly. For every successful attempt, father gave me two sweets out of his pocket as a reward. However, despite granny’s efforts, I could never go beyond the fingertips of both her hands, which were always spread out like the fan that grandfather left on a rattan chair in the corner of the corridor.
Every time the table had to be set for a meal, I took four bowls and four pairs of chopsticks out of the larder and placed them all on the food tray, granny issuing directions in a low voice, "This one for grandfather, this one for granny, this one for father and the last one for Bi." After a few times, I came to know that there were four members in our extended family.
Father was out all day long. Every time he came home, he placed one of his hand on my head, and bending down, would ask, "You’ve behaved properly at home today, haven’t you?" Then he went into the house, sat on the sofa and looked attentively at the photograph on the wall over his bed. The woman in the picture had a serious look and two eyes wide open, full of desires and anxieties. Every time he returned home, father just looked at it for a long time and said nothing. Granny only left the kitchen where she worked to prepare everything for the next day, entering the main house at dinner time and before bedtime. I played near Grandfather until late in the afternoon. When granny prepared to go to the market I asked to go along as well and she usually agreed, of course. Our village market was at the foot of the dyke. The first time I was led there by granny I was very happy. How wide and long the path was! Lined with coconut trees on both sides it ran through green fields of Indian corn, past rows and rows of sweet potatoes. At the market, I always found several dirty young children in tattered clothes playing under the shadows of the pine trees. Their toys, simple as they were, and their games had me so captivated that granny had to struggle to get me away for fear that it might soon turn dark. Before leaving the market she always bought me some sweets. Once, while eating them, I counted the amount of sweets and all of a sudden asked her, "Why are there only four people in our family, granny?"
She looked at me for a while without speaking, and said that previously the family had had five, and the other woman was now missing. She was a very beautiful young lady, so beautiful that granny could not express her beauty in words. She was certainly the most beautiful woman in the region. She was the only daughter of a teacher who taught my father. Father was the only one to pass the GCE examination in the district, so the rural scholar regarded him as his own son. After completing four years at the Secondary High School, father was urged to get married by my grandparents. At first father did not agree, but finding Granny in tears often, decided to give in. But, he said, "I’ll marry Thoai, no one else." A few days later my grandparents went to the scholar’s house to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The old scholar agreed at once, but his daughter refused, saying she wanted to study further. Nevertheless, her father had the last word in the matter, and at last she was compelled to accept her grandparents’ proposal unwillingly. She showed her unhappiness by staying at home all day long, saying she might fly into a rage if she met father on the road. Oddly enough, when Thoai became my grandparents’ daughter-in-law later, she behaved properly. She was very polite to them and took very good care of father: making tea for him, presenting him his hat before he went out, or taking his bicycle out of house as he set out to work. She seemed to be another woman altogether. That was the happiest period in father’s life.
***
When Thoai gave birth to a baby boy, me, my grandparents were even happier than when father got married. Dad was deeply moved. He took annual leave to stay at home and look after her, doing housework that he had never done before. Afterwards, on a cold and rainy afternoon in winter, she went to the river to fetch water home. And never returned. Three years had passed, and still nobody knew of her whereabouts. Grandfather intended to put up an altar, but father resolutely opposed it, resolutely maintaining that she was alive somewhere and would return home some day. One of the villagers told father that he had seen her walking to the station, perhaps to visit her relative in Quang Ninh province. This consolidated father’s belief that she was still living. On the day she left home, I was two years old, no more nor less.
***
Those days, I was not old enough to understand what granny told me. But I always felt that I was missing something, and over time realized that home would have been merrier if there had been five members in the family. Whenever father went away on business for several days, I found the house quite deserted and quiet and wished that the woman called Thoai in Granny’s story would come back to us and talk and play with me. Once, standing at the iron gate to our compound, I had a glimpse of a little girl my age holding a small and beautiful doll in her arms. Delighted, I waved an invitation to come nearer to the gate. As she left suddenly, taken home by her elder sister, I asked her, "Who gave it to you ?" "Mother," she replied with a brilliant smile. There was nobody at home I called mother. That was the first time I conceived, vaguely though, that I had no mother. I burst into tears.
The knowledge did not make the situation better. Father was out all day long again. Granny remained busy in the kitchen as usual while Granddad busied himself with his brickwork. Every evening, after finishing his work, he sat in a rattan armchair placed in a corner of the verandah and cooled himself by waving a fan, looking blankly ahead. I was alone in the house. The rhythm of the life was played unchanged day after day, until one rainy evening in October, when the wind from the dyke blew violently into our house as we waited for Dad to return so we could have dinner. Never had he come home so late. I was very hungry. I took turns staring at the rattan cover over the food tray, and glancing at the gate hoping to see father come in and sit down to start the late meal. We waited and waited.
When he came back home with his bicycle, it was quite dark. He was soaked to the skin and shivering with cold. Leaning his bicycle against the step of the verandah, he turned back and called out, "Come in, please." There was no answer. We could hear hesitant footsteps in the courtyard. Then a strange woman came in. She was very pale, arms trembling with the cold. She seemed to be on the point of fainting. My grandparents did not say a word. Granny silently went into her room, took out a blouse and a pair of trousers and handed them to her.
Consequently, there were five people in my family. Now each time I counted, I could spread out my whole hand with its five fingers, not four with one finger bent down. The woman never smiled. Her eyes looked frightened. Granny called her Dan. She seemed glad with the presence of the strange woman in our house. The newcomer worked very hard. Each time she took hold of the broom, she swept the whole house and courtyard up to the gate. To me, our gate looked larger and the kitchen garden appeared greener. Granny smiled happily. Dan often looked at Dad when he stared at the old photo.
From then on I rarely went to market with Granny, staying at home and playing with Dan or watching her work. Time and again, she drew me close to her and asked me something or told me a story that Granny had not told be before. Many days, she talked to me until dinner time. After the meal I asked father to let me sleep with her that night, so that I could enjoy the whole story. He nodded his consent. He seldom talked to Dan, keeping a distance always. Her presence in my family did not disturb its routine at all.
Sometime later, Dad bought her a new beautiful flowered blouse. She wore it frequently. Once, coming back from the market, Granny gave her a brand-new white hat.
I am not sure whether it was the fact that I’d been separated from my mother when I was still too young, or the care and affection I got from the woman Dad led home that rainy day that convinced me that she was Thoai of yore. Many nights, she hugged me tightly and pressed her cheeks against my forehead. I rubbed my little hand over her face, and one night suddenly called her Mother. She was trembling, and warm teardrops fell on my forehead. "Bi, go to sleep, dear," she said affectionately. I buried my head in her chest and rounded myself in her arms, expecting that from now on she would always be beside me, lulling me into sound sleep with interesting stories that I’d never heard before.
Days passed. I got accustomed to her warm breath like a cat becomes familiar with the warm straw when winter sets in. I was really happy that there was someone in the house that I could call mother. Sometimes, lying beside her I would bite one of my fingers to see whether I was still awake or in a dream, and when I found her beside me, my mind was at peace and I went to sleep in her arms. Then one chilly winter night, after dinner, while everybody was sitting around the shiny brown table to have some tea, father sat lost in thought for a long time, saying nothing. Granny seemed to be tensed up, looking at him and then at Dan. Dan sat with her head bowed, fingers running over the flap of her blouse. A moment later, she looked up and said something to Granny who just stared at her and said nothing. When she finished speaking, Dad heaved a sigh and looked at the photo. Looking very sad, Granny stood up and walked towards her bed. There she lay for hours with her back to us, saying nothing.
The next morning, Dan left home early with father. She ruffled my hair, saying, "Bi, behave yourself. Your mother will come home some day." That afternoon she did not return with father. She’d gone away for ever. Grandfather became less talkative and Granny was in bed for nearly a week. She seldom smiled since. I did not know why Dan had left us that way. Was it that father made her too sad? Or was it the fact that in a far-away corner of the country, another family like ours was waiting for her to come home? I cried a lot but could not find the truth. Years later, I learnt that the woman that I had regarded as Thoai in Granny’s story was a woman father had saved from drowning at the place on the riverbank that mother used to fetch water from.
Again, there were only four members in the family. A few months later, Granny went away to stay with my aunt H»ng at her house to look after her new-born baby. Only three of us remained in the house: Grandfather, father and me. When I was eight years old and preparing to go up to the second grade, Grandfather passed away, and Granny came back to stay with us. Father began talking to me more frequently and taught me how to solve difficult problems in the evening. One night, before going to sleep, he embraced me tightly and asked, "Bi, do you believe that mother will come back home ?" "Who’s my mother, father?" I asked. That night he told me the whole story about the woman in the photo for the first time.
***
Now my father’s hair has turned grey. Granny is no more and I no longer count the number of people in my family on my fingertips. But there is one thing that I keep believing: Some day "the woman in the photo" will come back to us.
Translated by Van Minh
