Exercise #9 / Creative writting

Detail... detail

What surprises you when you write your story

 

First day of the Lunar New Year in the morning Việt nam time, late evening waiting for New Year's Eve in Seattle.

Nam, my brother sent me a picture of special food and flower offerings he arranged for my mother's altar.

My sister and her family went back to her husband’s hometown for Tết.

My sister’s -in-law, Nam’s wife did the same. She took the children back to her home village to celebrate Tet with her family.

Nam stayed back to fulfill his Lunar New Year duty. All the Vietnamese have the tradition of inviting their deceased family members and all their ancestors back home to enjoy a sacred meal with the family.

We video-chatted to each other.

He sat inside our small kitchen. He thawed a Vietnamese squared cake wrapped with banana leaves called bánh chưng to heat it up. The 900 gr bánh chưng was big, heavy, and frozen.

He put the whole bánh chưng to be defrosted inside the white microwave.

Next, he put the big pot of stewed pork with boiled eggs on his cooktop.  He effortlessly turned on the stove with one finger.

The kitchen was bright with the light of neon tubes. He sat on a chair in front of the granite counter comfortably waiting for the stewed pork and the bánh chưng to heat up. 

He took the cake out and cut it up.  He tested the cake and laughed with me. “Outside is good but the filling is still frozen.”

He put the cake back inside the microwave. We talked while he ate his bánh chưng, stew pork, and white leek pickle.

 I asked him: “You have a big meal yourself. Do you remember we used to share this kind of bánh chưng among the three of us and our mother?”

He smiled, "Good old day, huh? "

My memory traveled back to the same kitchen 40 years ago, the kitchen of our childhood.

I remember the kitchen was always dark because we had a tiny yellow light bulb for the whole space.

We did not use the electrical light bulb often because we experienced blackouts all the time. Sometimes the whole building went off without power for up to three, or four months. We used the small egg lamp fueled with kerosene oil to light up the kitchen when we needed it. The kitchen was dark.

And.

The kitchen housed many cockroaches. That would be the vivid memory of my childhood kitchen.

We had a green wooden cabinet that my father made himself to store utensils, pots, and pans. There was not much food inside the cabinet.  All the food got rationed. We had one kilogram of sugar per month for the whole family. The sugar would run out in the first week of the month. Rice got rationed.  One can of instant milk per month was saved up for the children just in case we got sick. If my mother opened the can of milk, she would dip the can into a bowl of water to prevent ants from getting into the can. We had to wait in line to get meat and fish sauces. Waiting in line to get food was one of the tasks that I had to do every day and I hated it.

Food was limited but cock roaches were plenty. 

I remember my mother used cockroach-terminating chalk sticks to kill them. Before bedtime, she drew lines on the ground, inside the kitchen, and around the cabinet. She drew lines in and out of cabinet doors. She drew lines along the cabinet legs. Cock roaches usually come out when people are not there inside the kitchen when we were all asleep.

In the morning, I could not wait to come to the kitchen to check out how many of them got killed. I counted them victoriously and reported back to my mother.

Because of power outages, we could not use the electricity stoves which the kitchen was originally designed for.

We cooked our meals with an oil burner when oil was available. If we ran out of oil, we cooked our meals with coal or wood sticks. When I used wood to cook, I carried the clay stove outside so the smoke from burnt wood would be vented out through the hallway.

I grew up using that kitchen for 27 years of my life.

After my father left the house and my mother was so sick with leukemia in 1982-1983, Ba Minh became an important part of my family.  

During the time that my mother was sick, he came to our house daily to help with cooking, cleaning, and taking care of us.

Like I shared before, he had his own family as well. He split time between two families. He could ride his wife to work in the morning. He went to work himself. At noon, he came to the apartment to spend time with our family until 2 PM. He biked to pick up his wife at her work at 4-5 PM. On weekends and holidays, he would stay at his house with his own family. During Tet, he would come to visit my mother and the three of us on the third day of this holiday.

Ba Minh used the kitchen to cook for my family when my mother was too sick to sit up and the three of us were too little to help.

He cooked vegetables with beef for my mother every lunch so she could regain her health from leukemia. We, three little children, would never eat beef back then. Wholeheartedly, we wanted to save the beef for my mother. We would do anything to keep my mother alive and continue to live with us.

We loved Ba Minh as our own father. I always felt happy when Ba Minh came. I felt our family whole again whenever he was at the apartment. I thought I could love him as my father forever.

Apparently, I was not his daughter and never will. 

When I was in high school at 17 years old, I got molested by my father-figure Ba Minh. I remember around late afternoon; he came up to the apartment looking happy. He came back from a party, and he was drunk. He lay down on the hammock and asked if I could give him a kiss.

I knelt, thinking about the kiss on the cheek like usual, he hugged me and started to put his tongue inside my mouth suddenly. I was shocked and confused. Not sure how I managed to stop and walk away from him.

The day after, when my mother was cooking lunch on the oil burner in our tiny kitchen, I sat down next to her, confused, and scared. She knew something was up. She was quiet and worried.

It took me a few seconds to disclose to my mother what happened.

I told her that Ba Minh kissed me yesterday and I was scared. My mother looked straight into my eyes for a long time. I remember my mother’s eyes were brown. Whenever I looked into her eyes, I always saw a deep sadness hidden inside her soul.  She asked, “Kiss where?  I used my finger to point at my mouth.

My mother was silent. 

I still sense her long sigh until today writing this. She continued to cook. We stayed side by side for what I felt as eternity. Time and space disappeared. Just me and my mother. 

She said to me, “Before your father left the house, he warned me.” “If you are not careful, he will rape Thủy Châu, your daughter.”

 She continued, “I would never get mad at your father. I understand if I am not careful, it may happen.”

“Please keep your distance from Ba Minh, I will arrange this. I will tell him. He may have been quite drunk yesterday. He may not know better.”

I kept my distance from Ba Minh from that day on so obviously and abruptly that my mother took notice. She once told me, “Please keep things at least normal for now. I must find the right time to talk to him.”

That was the last conversation that my mother told me about this matter. I kept it with me.

My brother and sister did not know.

The surprising part when I wrote it down today was that I realized that my own parents tried to protect their own offspring from any predator the best they knew how back in the day. I know that my mother was profoundly truthful when she revealed what my father said.

To be honest, my father’s warning was surprisingly brutal, straightforward, and painful to recall. Truth hurts. The truth could cut deeply inside my soul. But it helped me to prevent further harm.

I appreciate both my parents so much. The moment I was with my mother in that kitchen was forever treasured in my heart.

My brother enjoyed his 2024 version of our kitchen with bright neon light and was equipped with the best modern cookware he could afford. 

He ate three-quarters of his bánh chưng. He massaged his big belly gently. He smiled at me satisfyingly. He happily wished me Happy New Year to end our video chat.

I looked up to 2024, the year of the Wooden Dragon.

I would keep the version of our kitchen 40 years ago for myself. The tiny dark space ran by an army of cock roaches and on top of that, my deeper love and appreciation for my parents.