Part 1

The small canal lay across a large field. And when we decided to stop, the fierce drought seemed to have gathered all the sunlight to pour down on this place.

The young rice plants in the field, their stems already dry and curled like unfallen ashes, crushed to pieces when held in the hand. My father removed the bamboo frame that covered the boat floor, the flock of ducks swarmed out, frantically, squirming and splashing into the alum-scummed water. A new layer of alum, dark yellow, thickened on the feathers of the hungry ducks,

sticky on Dien's shoulders as he swam away to stake and spread the net to fence the flock of ducks. I carried the basket to the shore, lit a fire.

Then the fire that was whistling under the rice cooker rose to her heart, the woman was still lying on the boat. Even the intention to sit up quickly disappeared under the long groans.

Her lips were swollen and pale. And her hands, and her feet, and under the shirt I had covered her with was another shirt that had been torn to shreds, exposing the purple flesh that had been pinched.

And the roots of her hair were also bleeding. People had put their hands in them, twisted them to drag her all the way down the village road, before stopping for a moment

at the rice mill. They tossed and tossed her on the ground strewn with chaff. The female lead, a disheveled woman, had lost her voice, sometimes fainted from jealousy

and exhaustion. But the bustling crowd around her had revived her spirit, they kicked her with their feet at her tattered body with a spiteful, gleeful look,

forgetting the failed rice crop that had dried up in the fields, forgetting the worry of hunger in the middle of the lean season. The fun would have been long, if a new idea had not come up in the excitement. They used machetes to cut her thick hair, vigorously, as if they were chopping a handful of hard, dry grass. When the tail of her hair was severed and she was free, she jumped up, rushed

down to our boat like a scream, rolled over my feet, to my father, and knocked over the bags of rice husks that my father had just stacked.

The crowd was stunned for a few seconds to accept that their prey had run away. It took me a few seconds to eagerly see myself as chivalrous as Luc Van Tien, I struggled to push

the boat away from the shore, scared and happy, I held the pole and pushed myself to the middle of the river, my eyes never leaving the crowd that was pouring out to the edge of the bank, ready to jump down, jumping around

madly. Then the sharp curses faded away, the sound of the flock of ducks quacking under the stall faded away, in me there was only the sound of the Koler4 machine exploding, shaking violently

under Dien's hands, spitting out clouds of acrid, black smoke. The smoke drifted behind us, blurring the figures of people looking on in despair, a hand

holding her hair and waving it in the wind…

My father had no role in that escape, he was silent, when he had gone quite far, he went to the bow holding a pole. I crawled into the boat, took a shirt and covered her,

so that it could cover her torn breasts and bloody thighs. She smiled tearfully, said thank you with her eyes and fell asleep.

The whole way, she did not change her lying position, still, cold as a dead person. In the boat, there were only endless moans, sometimes long, sometimes short,

sometimes sad and sad, sometimes sounding like choked sobs…

Thanks to that, we knew she was still alive, to go with us almost all the way down the Bim Bip River, to this desolate field. Dien was a bit worried when he heard her still

moaning, thinking she was hungry, he urged me to cook rice quickly. It felt sorry because on the boat there were only a few dried, salty fish, “I can’t even swallow them, let alone…”

But that afternoon and the next day, she didn’t eat. She refused to drink water, waiting until her dry lips had begun to crack, then she took a few small sips, which seemed to be just enough to wet her lips. Hungry and thirsty, but she was even more afraid of pain. People had poured iron glue on her vagina…

I told my father and Dien during the meal. I heard the two of them fall silent, the sound of bamboo chopsticks hitting the bowl stopped. Dien looked at me and I read the fear and disgust rising in my father’s eyes. Dien poured water into the bowl, stirred it quickly, then followed the dirt road along the canal, and went into the village. I told him,

stop by the store and buy me a thousand and a half of sugar.

The wind must have drowned out my words, when he returned, Dien had nothing with him, he quietly spread his hands in front of me, his hands were covered with a layer of something, smooth, transparent, and

was drying, making his fingers stiff as stone. Dien said, “Iron glue…” It seemed that the people who produced this glue did not expect it to have so many uses. My sister and I carefully peeled off the glue, the young skin on his hands was red and burned, bleeding. We looked toward the boat’s hold,

hearing the vast breathing with the wind

Part 2

The field has no name. But for me and Dien, there is no place that is nameless, we mention, we name it with the memories we have in

each field. The place where my sister and I planted trees, the place where Dien was bitten by a snake, the place where I had my first period… And tomorrow when we drift to another place, mentioning

this field with her name, we will surely be moved.

Early in the morning of the third day, she was able to sit up, looked around, and asked, “Oh my god, where is this deserted place?” The village was far away behind the rows of green coconut trees. The fields were empty, on the banks of the canals, there were only cotton trees. Two children with dewy heads were busily mixing food for the ducks, looking at her in surprise and ecstasy. Her voice was unharmed, clear and sweet.

She asked, “Where do you bathe, my dears?”. I pointed down the canal. She looked at the alum scum, bored. There is a pond over there, Dien said.

It was an old bomb crater, with water spinach growing all around, and water spinach covering the water surface, the stems of which were thin and red. This was where Dien had caught some soft, plump catfish yesterday. She immersed herself in it for a long time, without scrubbing, just letting the cold water soothe the painful areas. When she came ashore, I saw blood dripping down between her thighs, she must have done something with that cruel glue. Then, after a long time, with short limping steps like when she had walked, she

and I returned to the canal bank. Dien was delighted to see her wearing her alum-stained shirt and her crumpled shorts.

Only my father was sullenly clearing the grass around the hut. Only my father was indifferent to the results of my sister and I. Ignoring her father's indifferent attitude, she looked at the man

who was hunched over in the early morning sun, staggering: "Your father is so handsome...".

For that reason? Was it because of her father that she stayed with us, in a deserted field. The wounds had healed very quickly. She smiled, being beaten so often was getting used to it.

I asked her what she did to be beaten. She smiled, "Being a whore". Then perhaps she felt guilty for being too rude to us, she ruffled Dien's hair "You probably don't know...".

Dien looked at me and smiled. We had met many, many women like her. Every harvest season, they would bustle along the dike, hovering around the huts of the harvesters,

the men guarding the rice and the duck farmers running the fields. They tried to look young and fresh, but their faces and necks were sagging, looking closely made tears well up. At night,

behind the rice piles, they let out their giggles, their gentle breathing... into the sky, making many women who were busy cooking rice and breastfeeding their children in the tents feel heartbroken.

Every night when we bought wine for our fathers, we passed by couples. We recognized them right away, when they were naked, they still calmly

giggled and wriggled their bodies, not standing there embarrassed and resigned like the women in the countryside. The next morning, they staggered away, taking with them

the small wages from a hard day's work of the men.

She, like them, was just starting to decline, starving in the city, so she ran down to the countryside, opened a small shop, pretended to sell small cakes and candies, but in reality, she was working.

There, the men were easy-going and honest. She lived on the money they earned from fishing at night, from selling rice, dried coconuts or bunches of ripe bananas. There was also a time of unexpected harvest, when she lured a man into bed play, for two days and nights, and she got one million and two. That was the loan to reduce hunger and poverty, when she got home, with eight hundred thousand left in her pocket, how sad must that man have been, how resentful she must have been when he saw his wife and children huddled around a pot of boiled potatoes in the dim afternoon sunlight. - Eating on other people's sweat and tears, so getting beaten up every now and then is a worthy price, isn't it, my dears?

She said, and fell over laughing, as if she felt that the price she had paid was just right. "But I'm lucky, thanks to that I met you, to be able to live together like this, it's really

happy...".

Father was not happy, because he had another mouth to feed. The ducks were not happy either, they pecked at her feet every time she stepped over the fence, "Why are you here to have our food portion

been cut down, the trough is full of rice husks, it's disgusting to see you, and on top of that, you force us to lay eggs to feed you". She jumped out, screamed, then laughed (with her eyes swaying toward her father) "one day these devil ducks will like you, for a while...". But Dien and I knew she would leave, exhausted. The time she spent with us was therefore fragile. Many times, when herding the ducks to eat a certain amount of rice, thinking she had left, Dien would run back in shock. - Do you guys really love me? Isn't that pitiful...!? "

She was surprised to see tears streaming down Dien's cheeks (she didn't know he had been suffering from a disease called hydrocele since he was nine years old). It was touching that life had beaten us up, but these two children were strangely affectionate and attached. Another reason for her to stay with us, during an unusually hot and dry season. The season came early. That's why the sun was so long. Recently, we stopped at a small hamlet on the bank of a large river. Ironically, the people here had no water to use (like us walking on the endless land without a clod of earth to throw at the birds). Their bodies were covered with scabs, the children scratched until they bled. They went to buy fresh water by rowing boat, holding their breath to keep the water from spilling out because the road was long and the water was expensive. In the afternoon, after working for hire, they went down to the pond to bathe in the water that was sour because of alum, then

rinsed it with exactly two buckets. The water used to wash rice was used to wash vegetables, and after washing vegetables, it was used to wash fish. Three-year-old children already know how to appreciate water, and even if it is necessary, they will try to run out to the garden to pee in the chili pots and onion pots (causing the trees to lose their leaves). There, a boy said, "I wish my mother could have a good bath before she dies." This sentence made me feel sorry for him so much. The day I left, he stood hesitantly on the sidewalk and asked softly, "I wonder if you want to stay with... my mother?!". I shook my head, how could I bear to share his mother's two small buckets of water?

I urged my father to leave that dilapidated hamlet. The fields we passed through had dried rice when it first bloomed. People could not grow beans or melons because of the lack of water. Groups of children played on the dry canals.

The place where we pitched our tents and held ducks, the water had turned dark and gloomy yellow. But we had nowhere else to go, from the other side of the Bim Bip River was a buffer zone for large cajuput forests. This season, people take water from all the small rivers and canals to pump into the forest to fight fires. We also cannot go up the Bim Bip River to cross Kien Ha, where veterinary quarantine is very strict. And bird flu is said to still be breaking out all over the plain.

To prevent the ducks from being buried alive (which means losing capital for the next season), we decided to keep them here. They are raised in exhaustion.

Every day, I drive the ducks to eat the dry, shriveled rice flowers in the fields. Without water, they are pale, slow, and cannot go far. Eggs are sparse, the ones they lay are also hard, long, light, with thick, rough shells. What more can we ask of old ducks, who have been laying for three seasons, and have been hopeless because it is increasingly difficult to find rice and bran in the food trough. Even the water for them to bathe in is sour because of alum.

But the rainy season was still far away.

Every day, Dien invited her sister to go fishing, catch fish and bail out the shallow ditches. She brought the fish she couldn’t finish, and proudly gave her father a few tens of thousands of dong left over after buying some clothes. Her eyes looked at her father provocatively, “The pursuit is still long, honey…”.

She was stubborn. She tried every way to get close to her father. One day, she told Dien to go down to the boat to sleep with me, and she would go up to the hut. It was a dark night, a thin, flickering moon drifted in the sky. Dien wriggled and turned constantly, he said he had trouble sleeping, he wanted to hear me sing, any song. But Dien was still awake, it seemed that my singing voice couldn’t drown out the rustling sound in the small hut on the shore. Dien complained that sleeping on the boat was too shaky. I knew his heart was wavering.

Dien had days of confusion. He often asked me, “How do people love their mother?”. His face relaxed, when he realized that the hairpin, the fresh coconut or the catfish… that he had given to her was exactly the same as what people often gave to their mothers. And the longing when he was far away, the desire to lie close, to rub his nose against that person’s skin…

was as natural as the most normal thoughts of children. But doubts still lingered in Dien’s eyes, and he decided to endure alone,

to explore alone. For example, tonight, what makes our hearts ache, what makes us feel angry, heavy?

When I woke up, Dien had fallen asleep tiredly, he lay curled up, his hands clasped between his thighs, his face sad as if covered with a layer of frost. She stepped out of the hut, happily

stretching. Satisfaction and contentment sparkled in the corners of her eyes. Her face was filled with light, as if she had just opened a door to the sun. There was a path

somewhere stretching out before her. She smiled and said: - The dew was so heavy that it kept dripping on my face, tickling me to death.

Then she took over cooking. She rolled up her sleeves and busily blew on the fire, her messy hair covered with fish scales. She looked like a hard-working wife. That image brought tears to my eyes,

but my father only smiled indifferently. Because of that smile, I also had tears in my eyes.

My father gave her some money right at the meal, when the whole family was present, "I'll pay for it the other day...". Then my father calmly dusted off his butt and stood up, his eyes filled with contempt and triumph. She stuffed the money into her bra and smiled, "Oh my god, you're so generous."

Dien and I invited her to go fishing (We thought she was sad, although it was quite funny, being a paid prostitute, what's there to be sad about). The whole time, without catching any fish, she

said,

“It’s so funny, even these devil fishes are criticizing me.” The sentence sounded so indifferent, absent-minded, and hopelessly pitiful. Dien quietly caught the perch that swam down the ditch, dived deep, and hooked the fish onto her hook. When it came up, she was already smiling.

That afternoon, we played around in the water for a long time. She laughed and vomited when she saw the mud sticking to my nose, gray-green like the beard of a water chestnut. Suddenly, her expression became strangely affectionate, as if she was cuddling a baby, and my seventeen-year-old brother stood there, frozen in embarrassment. The water churned in his belly, and I knew she was boldly doing something down there. Then, discovering a great loss, she exclaimed in shock: - Oh my God, what’s wrong, honey?

She only asked difficult questions. Just hearing them hurt, let alone answering them. For example, once she asked, "Where is your mother?", "Where is your house?", Dien got angry: - If I knew, I would die immediately.

Part 3

In the afternoons when our boat passed by women washing clothes on the riverbank, I often asked myself, did I just pass by that mother? I tried to keep

in my heart the image of my mother but then became more and more desperate when I saw it gradually fading, thinking that someday we would meet again but not recognize each other, my heart felt so sad

sad.

My mother often brought pots and pans to the river to clean the pots and pans, ready to welcome the boats (bông bought some fresh vegetables and sold the ripe bananas in the garden. Gradually,

in the afternoon, the merchants often anchored their boats near the mangrove trees in front of the house. One said that he could not stay far from the woman whose smile made the whole

river sparkle. My mother glared at him: - Doc...

The man laughed and swore, "I lied and Miss Hai hit him with a car and killed him." (Immediately, Dien whispered, "Where did that guy get a car from under the boat, lying...", and with a strange look of dislike, Dien told me to look at his face and bare back covered with moles, saying "Because when his mother had just given birth to him, she forgot to cover the basket, so flies were flying everywhere").

Even though that man had too many moles, even though he was not tall, had little hair... but with a boat full of fabrics, the men The hard-working women in my hometown often

looked forward to him. They all became children when they stepped onto the boat, they chattered, were excited, they longed to the point of restlessness, then hesitantly returned to shore

with a feeling of regret, sadness, feeling old when passing by the rice barn that had just been harvested, the cloth seller took a few bushels but it seemed like a little bit of youth had been taken away.

All their lives, the rice barn always made their hearts ache, when they thought about illness, rebuilding the house, or getting married for their children.

My rice barn had been empty since after Tet. That made my mother a little sad, but the cloth seller said, “Miss Hai, just look at it, it’s okay if you don’t buy it – then he was

surprised when he saw my mother excitedly trying on the colorful pieces of fabric – Oh my, it looks so normal but when you put it on Miss Hai, it looks so luxurious”.

My mother suddenly wondered: - Doc…

I have never seen that strange red color. Redder than the hibiscus in the yard, redder than blood. Mom looked at us and asked, "What are you two staring at?" I said, "Mom is so strange, I can't see." Mom was so happy, "Really?" I wanted to cry so much, mom and I were strangers to each other, why am I happy?

One day I had a dream, with no beginning or end, I only saw Mom struggling in that strange red cloth, but it tightened, squeezed, and tightened until Mom

became a small butterfly, fluttering towards the sun. I woke up with a start and realized that I had fallen asleep in the rice barn, the dog Phen outside was impatiently scratching the ground at the hole (Mom must have thought that my sister and I were going out so she locked the front and back doors). But Dien sat there, stubborn, not moving, his body

was covered in sweat, it didn't look like he was crying, but tears were flowing. I hugged his head, hiding his gaze in my chest.

The ten-year-old turned his back, the nine-year-old buried his face in his sister's shirt, but both of them still clearly saw, on the familiar bamboo bed, my mother writhing under

her mole-strewn back. They clung. Struggling. Groaning.

That was the last impressive image of my mother on the floor of a small house, in front of which was a U-shaped table, a bamboo stove, then a small rice pot built near the bed, and a low kitchen. Around the porch, along the paths leading to the garden and the wharf, were boulders, split coconut trunks, which my father had worked hard to pave so that during a rainy

season, my mother's feet would not get stuck in mud.

For many years after that, I did not dare to remember my mother, because as soon as I thought of her, that image immediately appeared. Following it was the brilliant color of the cloth my mother had just exchanged (not for money, or rice). But, I should have remembered the part where Mom lay in the hammock singing to me to sleep, or the part where Mom sat washing clothes on the sidewalk, or Mom bowed her head in the middle of the dreamy smoke, blowing on the fire in the kitchen…

Mom had many beautiful images, and her worried face that afternoon was still beautiful, seeing tears continuously falling on Dien’s face, Mom

asked in shock: “Oh my, what’s wrong with your eyes?”. I answered, rubbing slowly, “Maybe he saw something bad, Mom. He slept in the rice bin this afternoon.” Mom looked at me, dead silent, her gaze seemed to fade on her beautiful, sad face. I couldn’t explain why I was so happy.

And I always thought that it was because of that sentence that my Mom left.

I ran to the neighbor's house and told Aunt Tu that my mother had gone. The whole neighborhood was jubilant, some were happy that their wives had not left them for another man, some were happy that the most beautiful woman in the neighborhood had gone, no need to worry about her husband who had been coveting her all day, some were sad, the boat probably wouldn't come back to this neighborhood. Everyone was talking and gossiping, making a fuss, asking me to remember if my mother had done anything special before she left that could be a prediction. This was very important, it allowed people to test their own experience and guessing. For example, if someone in a house had just died, they would cry out, no wonder they heard an owl calling so mournfully the night before. For example, if a house had been robbed, they would tell each other, the other day I heard a strange dog barking, so I suspected... But the story of my mother's passing was not very mysterious...- This afternoon, your mother didn't cook rice...- Really?- Your mother lay on the bed and sighed...- Really? How did she breathe out?

I couldn't describe it. The sigh, sounding so sad, flowing like tears. My mother sighed when my father's boat docked because she knew that someday my father would be gone.

My mother sighed when she bathed, when the water flowed down her skin as white as grapefruit flowers. When she sat mending old clothes. Every time the cloth boat docked, my mother also sighed,

her hands nervously squeezing her two thin, flat pockets. She sighed even when Dien asked for money to buy candy, mother.

Everyone was not disappointed, they let time go back far, it turned out that there was a sign that this relationship would end, right on the first day, right on the first

meeting. My mother sat crying by the Dai River, my father rowed his boat past, had passed a distance but because he felt sorry, he turned back. My father asked, where are you going, I

would give you a ride. My mother looked up, her face full of tears, "I don't know where I'm going either." My father took this poor girl home, and while thinking

about where to go, my mother loved my father, and then gave birth to my two sisters. Obviously, too obvious, see, my mother just hitched a ride for a while and then left, everyone had a premonition, except my father, so now he cried with resentment and laughed painfully.

At this point, there was no more talk, the neighbors left. Just like when the singing had just ended, they whispered and went into the night, the sound of dogs barking loudly along the alleys.

Dien and I lay staring at the mosquito net roof, listening to the wind whistling on the old bamboo tops on the sidewalk. After a while, Aunt Tu came over, she called my two sisters to her house

to sleep.

The next morning, she went to the market, to the wharf, and told me "Ut Vu's wife left home. Followed a man." The owner of the ferry running the Hung Khanh route told his female friends, and in the afternoon

my father received that message while he was lifting the pole for a house near Hoi market. I heard my father laugh, sounding angry, “Are you done joking around, old man?” It seems unbelievable, when a person thinks that, as long as he loves with all his heart, bears all the hardships of earning a living, he will be rewarded accordingly.

It seems funny… And my father slid to the ground, trembling…

The journey home seemed very long and harsh, it exhausted my father. My father laughed bitterly, when he saw my mother’s clothes still hanging in the house, even the bath towel and

the old Lao sandals, as if she was playing in the neighborhood, just needing Dien to call her and she would rush back, happily asking “This trip will be enough money to buy a color TV,

right, brother?”.

Looking closely, my mother did not bring anything. That detail hurt the person who stayed behind, it showed that the person who left did not think, did not hesitate, did not hesitate at all, just shook himself

clean, that’s all.

My father burned all of my mother’s belongings. Smoke billowed in the house, the smell of burnt fabric and plastic, the pink and purple shirts crumpled, melted into drops of ash. Father looked at the fire, his face hardened, then his eyes suddenly lit up, ecstatic with a new thought.

We rowed the boat away, heartbrokenly looking back at the house that was writhing in the red fire. We heard the crisp crackling sound of burning wood,

and the neighbors calling to each other. Surely someone would slap his thigh, "Yesterday, looking at Ut Vu's gloomy face, I suspected that he would burn down the house.

I suspected that, it was just like that, you guys."

Telling so many stories like that was to answer my sister, my house, my mother, in the end, they had all turned to ashes. So when the rice harvest season ended, the other duck farmers had returned home, and we continued to wander.

The ducks took us from one field to another. Sometimes, not because of life, they are an excuse for us to live a nomadic life, to go to places where there are few people. There, few people discover the unusual things about my family, and rarely ask the question, "Where are the children's mothers?". So that my father has to say "dead!" and laugh coldly when hearing someone exclaim: "Oh my, poor children!"

Part 4

The first time my sister and I got lost in the fields. The afternoon rain extinguished the sunlight, and darkness quickly fell. Rain was everywhere, the rows of gardens became distant and obscure, where were our hut and boat, Dien asked in confusion. We waded down to one side of the garden and desperately chased the flock of ducks away. My father had returned to the boat since noon, he might have gotten drunk and fallen asleep. Maybe he was still awake but he didn't go looking for them. After crying for a while, seeing that the sky was getting darker, we decided to let go, following the flock of ducks, who knows...

Luckily, they remembered the way home. When we saw the flickering light at the bow of the boat, we were so happy that we were reborn, Dien held my hand and ran like crazy, the water in the fields

splashed white. The flock of ducks had a rough time (which caused them to stop laying eggs that night). My father sat waiting next to the whip.

Later, he learned to navigate by the sun, by the stars, by the wind, by the treetops... thinking about the time he got lost in the fields, he laughed so much. What was even funnier was that Dien, who was very familiar with the roads, got lost again, in broad daylight. He was struggling in the middle of a mound of land covered with thick vines, not knowing which way to get there but couldn't get out, when a woman brought a basket of cookies and told him to eat. He was so hungry, Dien ate nearly ten of them. When I found him thanks to his groans, his stomach was rumbling, and his mouth was full of mud. Looking back and forth, there was no one, only a grave lying close to the ground, covered with green grass. In the following days, I returned to the mound alone, but waited and waited, but no ghost appeared. According to Dien's story, that woman was really kind, only stroking his hair and her eyes were filled with love. I heard and cried to death, why didn't that ghost hide it from me?

Then I sat down and wiped my tears away, carefully, so that my face was calm and dry. I was determined not to let my father see me sad, determined not to let him say the words

"Can't stand this life anymore? When are you going?".

My father often beat my sisters and me, often when he just woke up. That's when people feel desolate, bored, after a long sleep, opening their eyes, the wind is still cold,

the sun is still yellow on the cold, desolate fields. And I remembered what I did this morning, this afternoon like my mother, put too much pepper in the fish stew? Or

because I tied my hair up? Or because I sat and picked lice for Dien?

Or because the older I got, the more I resembled my mother. One day, in the middle of the night, Dien woke up, saw me turning my back and mending my shirt, he cried out in surprise "Mom!". I felt

disappointed to the point of exhaustion. I have almost completely erased all my habits and everything related to my mother, but how can I give up this image?

I had to let my father beat me to ease his pain. Later on, my sisters and I did not feel any remorse, because we understood that we were beaten only because we were my mother's children, that's all.

For us, that period of time was still very happy, later on, my father got tired of beating us. He was indifferent, cold, and said a few short sentences when he needed to say something. My father

gave the ducks to the two of us, and in his free time he would sit and carve knife handles and chopping boards, or quietly carry his fishing rod to go fishing, both to earn money and to avoid having to look at the

children of a heartless mother. As a result, the boat seemed small, but it was extremely wide, with only three people struggling, but many years passed, my sisters and I still

felt distant from our father. Once, when we were on the river, Dien pretended to fall and sink, I pretended to scream loudly, my father was a little startled, about to jump into the water, but then he calmly sat back down, continued to carve, probably remembering that Dien had been wading in the river since he was four years old, how could he drown?

We knew it was hard to ask for anything more, just a little bit of father's heart was enough to be happy. My father was like a ceramic object that had just been through a big fire, still the same shape but cracked, so we only dared to stand far away and look, tenderly caressing it, otherwise it would break.

And the boat, the fields, the vast river forever

Dien and I had to learn how to survive on our own. Sometimes it was surprisingly easy… Thanks to Dien being bitten by a cobra, we learned how to distinguish the teeth marks of poisonous snakes. It left a pair of teeth marks on Dien’s ankles like two small, deep holes. Of course, it was thanks to the kind harvester who carried Dien a distance of

field to the master to get the snake venom, that he was able to save his life and gain… experience. Later, once when we were crossing a thick patch of grass, it was my turn to be bitten by a snake. I cried, Dien, Hai must have died first. Dien looked at the wound and smiled, saying it was okay, Hai lived a long time, the two rows of bloody teeth were exactly the same like this,

it was definitely a water lily bite. And looking at the butterflies flying, looking at the clouds drifting, I knew if it was a sunny or rainy day. Hearing the cuckoo calling, we knew the tide was rising. Stopping the boat at a certain canal, Dien climbed up a tall tree, looked over the fields and calculated how long he could hold the ducks there before running out of food, exactly.

Or we judged where the harvest came early, where it was late to leave this field, we went straight to another field, as soon as the rice was just

ripe.

So, our nomadic season lasted continuously from the rainy season to the sunny season, then back to the rainy season. Sometimes I missed the people a little. They lived in that small hamlet, only a few hectares away from where we set up camp. They were swarming in that town, where we often stopped to buy rice, bran, fish sauce, salt... to reserve for our long trips to the fields. And they lived right here, they harvested rice while talking dirty and laughing loudly next to the flock of ducks chirping for food, but I still missed them...

Perhaps because their lives were becoming more and more strange to us. They had a home to return to, but we didn't. They live in crowded neighborhoods, we do not. They

sleep with beautiful dreams, we do not. Lying crookedly, huddled together on the boat stall, we have lost the habit of dreaming. This

makes me and Dien so sad, because the only way to see our mother's image has also disappeared. And, for example, when dreams return, we

don't know for sure whether that image of our mother will appear or not