Wednesday.05.05.04
countryside memory 1 [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:47pm
i sat on the ground, looking out.
“here, have some Thanh Long fruit my boy” my countryside uncle offers me. all around are rice fields and Thanh Long fruit trees. you eat so much you get sick of them, he had said. you never go hungry, you can eat your fill of Thanh Long all you want someone else had said. the two kids stood on the dirt path, looking out at their home, their heaven, the peace of earth. in front are two farmers, bending down and working at their fields. my uncle pointed to them and said,
“see those people over there? they work 12 hours a day, dawn to dusk, and then go home to cook for their families. after that they watch a bit of tv and then it all starts again the next day. isn’t life rough?”
my countryside family have a smile about the way they talk, eyes perpetually wrinkled with laughter. my uncle’s voice is soft, slow, and surprisingly comforting. the whole concept of living among family this large, of walking for 10 minutes in any direction and being able to walk into a room without knocking, to sit and talk as i had done those few days. everything was so simple, so happy. i murmured a yes and we continued to look at the sky, darkening by the minute as it began to sleep. the moon, as bright as ever, stood above, large face peering down at us. the picture i took, which you can see below, is of two of my cousins. my family living in the US, particularly those my age and younger, have no idea who they are. and i feel sorry for them, because i left a simple Vietnamese countryside a better person than i was when i came in, despite all the muck that comes with being human. they’re all angels, beautiful smiling angels, from the gurgling newborn carried on the hip of a child to the toothless grin of an 84-year old man who spoke fluent French and contemplated worldly facts of which even i was unaware. my family.
in the orphanage today i peer close to the faces of the children, bend down to those who will spend the rest of their lives lying on their stomachs. wide open smiling mouths and closed eyes are the responses from an action as simple as a hand on the back. sores, blue salve, and at one bed dried puke pooled at the boy’s mouth, a row of ants marching in from the outside to pillage the nutrient. a smell of feces, a baby holding onto the side of a pen as he’s wiped down after being hosed, and how dirty they all are, how happy they are despite their destitute condition, how sad their eyes when you look close. they cry out to me, shout my name, call me teacher teacher as they wave to me to come over. a boy waves a bottle of milk in my face and i see that the sucker on it is worn out, ripped with a crooked hole where there should only be a pinpoint opening. at the window the girl with the monstrous skin and slow movements plays with an empty snack bag. they have nothing to play with but garbage that can be found in the street. the boy with the enlarged head and sweet voice cries out to me,
“teacher! teacher! can you ask her to give me the bag? i want to play with it.”
i coax the grey skinned girl to pass it, and she slowly gives it to the boy. she grabs the bars of the window and peers outside.
“unngh!” she shouts, pointing outside.
“yea… look, a woman.. a boy…” i begin to explain to her. “people….. society….” i find myself murmuring, rambling on in Vietnamese, instinctual response to a child living a life from behind window bars, within a cage of a pen. below are people in motion, students at plastic tables upon dirt paths, a continual bustle that is the story of this city. i pat the girl’s back and it is hard as a rock, like the ones i drove across to get here, embedded in dusty brown dirt.
it comes time to go and i wave, they wave, and they all shout. goodbye teacher, come back again please, goodbye teacher.
goodbye my friends, i’ll be seeing you again.
Comments (1)
and what proof does awe give? [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 12:47am