She Weeps Each Time You're Born Read Free Page B

usually sat. Little Mother picked up her sleeping mat and unrolled it on the floor. Slowly she eased herself down and took off her
non la
. The money was there, but the flower was gone, its little pink bud like a mouth. She took a deep breath and held the hat up to the fire, searching it with her eyes for the words Tu had paid for, had chosen just for her, and how the artist had painstakingly woven them through the lining.
In the long river, fish swim off without a trace
. How the local people believed that a girl who wore a conical hat laced with poetry would become milder, more gentle, the girl effectively domesticated. Like a water buffalo when the farmer takes her newborn—how in her mourning for her baby, the water buffalo will do anything the farmer asks.
    Little Mother could feel the hole where her heart should be. The poem was gone, the writing rubbed out from sweat and the daily friction of her head.
Who tends the paddy / repairs the dike?
She considered going back out into the fading light, the mosquitoes beginning to swarm, maybe even going all the way to theriver to look for the missing flower she had been entrusted with, but outside the visible world exploded and the first pain hit.
    Bà tottered back into the hut carrying the tin bucket. Outside the sound of the burning sky roared overhead. She put the water down next to the fire and stood still for a moment taking in the scene with her remaining senses, her eyes gray with twilight. I knew the old man wouldn’t disappoint us, she said. Quickly she hustled back outside to collect more firewood.
    Left alone, Little Mother didn’t cry out as her water sluiced down her legs and into the dirt. On all fours she made her way to the door. She wanted to see the mountains one last time. From the doorway they looked like a python after it has eaten a full-size animal. The dream was over, the heat of his hand on her leg. Already the memory of blue flames dancing on the mountainside was fading.
    Their last night together she and Tu had sat staring off at the mountains. On the closest slope they could see a handful of blue lights twinkling. She’d sat back and waited. He was always telling her the most beautiful stories, transforming the world before her eyes. Tu cleared his throat. We all carry a light inside us, he said. He told her they were little blue fountains of flame where someone had died and gone unburied, the body’s gases escaping into the air. In the distance she could make out four of them, the fires like indigo stars twinkling on the mountainside. Wandering ghosts, Tu said. Briefly he touched her knee. If you meet one, address it as
anh
or
chi
, he said. Brother Ghost. Sister Phantom. She nodded, her young face filled with seriousness.
    Little Mother closed her eyes. Pain radiated through her body. She could still see the bright red birthmark on the edge of Tu’s hairline, the mark shaped like a diamond. At times it seemed to change with his feelings, the color deepening as an emotiontook hold of him. She would never see him again in this world. She crawled back to the fire and collapsed.
    When she opened her eyes again, it was night, the air sulfurous and filled with thunder and lightning. Each time one hit, brightness like hell itself. She could feel the earth tremble, the one-room hut quivering as bits of dried thatch rained down from the roof, the splintery wooden boards rattling like teeth. On her mat in front of the fire pit she imagined what kind of world the planes came from, a land of fire and iron, liquid light, pain and the quiet that comes after. She tried to remember even the smallest scrap of her favorite dream, the heat of his hand on her leg, but all she could recollect was a cacophony of doors swinging wildly in a thrashing wind, the sound of their hinges like broken jaws. It was the only dream she ever had anymore.
    There was a piece of rope and a knife and an old gunnysack laid out on the floor. Bà had the fire