Song of life…

But the physical pain was not as hard as the mental suffering, when her father was drunk every day, the house was always noisy. Mrs. Hau could not swallow her food, sometimes lying down to rest after a tiring day was dragged up and scolded. Throughout her childhood, she witnessed her father beating her mother when drunk. Every stroke of the whip on her mother's back is still imprinted in her mind.

The sentence she heard her mother say most often was: "If it weren't for the children, I would have left my husband." Several times, her mother asked for a divorce, but then the busy life dragged the woman back into old habits.

But this time was different. Before anyone could even suspect anything, the court summons had already arrived home. Without saying a word, my mother took a knife and cleared a corner of the garden, asking someone to build a small tent. The women in the village often stopped by, contributing steel wire, a few sheets of corrugated iron, a dozen brand new bowls, and a set of old but still usable pots. Several times the tent poles had been knocked down by Mr. Hao. The clothesline in front of the house was finally put up safely after the fourth time.

When Hue and her brother returned, they could neither persuade the drunk nor persuade the sober. “Mom has lived her whole life for you. Now that you all have your own happiness, let me live my life. My life is not much, it’s just a part left.”

“A piece”, those two words were like thorns stabbing into Hue’s heart when she bought a new broom to sweep the floor in her mother’s hut. When she bent down to blow until her eyes stung by the newly lit wood stove.

The day she packed her things, Mom didn’t bother to look back at the spacious two-story house that she had worked so hard to build all her life. Mom got married and lived in three dilapidated, leaky houses before finally having enough money to sleep at night without worrying about storms outside. Now, Hue and her siblings couldn’t bear to let Mom live in a makeshift shack.

She told her mother to wait a few days so that her children could hire someone to build a small house, but her mother shook her head and said:

- I don't want to delay any longer. I don't need a big house either. At my age, the less I have to hold on to, the more at ease I feel.

- Or do you want to come live with us?

- Mom is still healthy, you don't have to worry. During the day, Mom goes to the fields, and at night she goes to the temple with the elders. At night, she can sleep soundly without disturbing anyone. That's the best.

The first meal of a new life consisted of nothing but a bowl of mixed vegetable soup, a bowl of crushed salt and peanuts, and steamed tofu with rice. But Hue knew this was the best meal her mother had had in decades.

Because the rice today was cooked with just the right amount of water, it was soft and sticky, not dry like it had been for so long. Just because dad liked to eat dry rice, every time mom washed the rice, she hesitated and poured out a little more water. This was also the first time mom had been a vegetarian and was able to eat in peace.

In the hut, there was nothing but a book of scriptures and a set of clothes for going to the temple. Mother made the first strokes of the hoe to plant a few clumps of dahlias.

*
* *

After waking up from his drunken stupor, Mr. Hao sat motionless, looking out at the yard strewn with mango leaves. The house was quiet, the chickens had been chased away and now did not dare to come near the house anymore. The dog saw its owner awake and quickly ran away. He stood up, tiredly holding a broom and started sweeping the yard. But in the middle of sweeping, he suddenly sat down for a long time.

The entire scene was recorded by the camera installed at the end of the porch. From that same angle, Hue had seen her father sitting alone, chewing rice. She knew that in the bowl of rice there was only a salty dried fish. The wine bottle was lying around in the corner of the sidewalk, and the sound of a cuckoo bird calling for its friend outside the fence echoed through the camera. When she saw her father reaching out to wipe away the pain, she suddenly burst into tears. Mrs. Hau told her son:

- Don't worry. There are still boxes full of rice, vegetables grown by Mom in the garden, fish in the pond. There are some hens laying eggs outside so the house always has eggs. He won't be hungry, so don't worry.

- I'm not worried about you being hungry. I'm just afraid that if you drink alone and catch a cold, no one will know.

- Maybe he will live a new life. The life of a sane person.

Hue came home to see her father busy in the kitchen. The old kitchen was covered with soot, the light bulb gave off a yellow light. It had been a long time since Mr. Hao had lit a wood stove, so it seemed that the small fire had ignited something in that old soul.

Hue remembered her father from long ago when they were still young. In the morning, her father only dared to eat cold rice mixed with cassava and refried it with salty fish sauce. The rest he gave to Hue and her siblings to eat before going to school. Her father left home on a rickety bicycle to work as a construction worker.

Every afternoon, Hue and her children would sit on the mango tree waiting for their father to come home from work with a few red and green lollipops coated in sugar. The color of their father's feet would never go away. The mortar would corrode from his nails to his heels, and every sleep would be filled with heavy snoring.

During the rainy season, the sky and earth roared, thunder shook and lightning flashed, all the doors of the house were closed. Only dad carried a flashlight and waded from the lower fields to the upper fields to catch frogs so that mom could sell them early the next morning to pay for her children's school fees.

In the childhood memories of Hue and her siblings, their father was like a tree that stretched out to the limit to protect his children. Later, when drunkenness made him like a tree leaning against the storms of life, Hue was still like a small bird's nest clinging to the tree, hoping for calm skies and calm seas.

After the wet season, the downpours came. Hue couldn’t sleep all night because she was worried about whether her mother’s hut was leaking or not. Turning on the camera at home, Hue saw that her father couldn’t sleep either. He sat on the porch, poured a full cup of wine but didn’t take a sip. Leaning against the house pillar, his eyes were on the corner of the garden where his ex-wife’s hut was. He sat and sat and suddenly stood up, put on a nylon coat and walked into the darkness and the heavy rain.

In the morning, when Hue returned home, she saw the wine glass filled with the bodies of moths floating. The house was quiet, not even a sound of wind. In the dark room, her father lay curled up, suffering from a fever. His body was burning hot, his clothes were still wet from the rain. Her mother, who was weeding peanuts in the field, heard the news and rushed home. Hearing the familiar sound of chopping wood in the kitchen, Mr. Hao opened his eyes and looked around.

That was the first time she saw tears flowing from the eyes of the man who had gone through most of his life...

Mrs. Hau cooked porridge, cleaned here and there, washed clothes, dried the mats and blankets to get through the damp season. After that, she returned to her hut to make a pot of sticky rice to make cakes to bring to the pagoda to worship on the full moon day.

He woke up to find the porridge still warm, the medicine box at the bedside had a sticker with the dosage clearly written on it. The house, touched by the hand of a familiar woman, was no longer cold and damp. His eyes could not leave the faded peacock blanket drying in the front yard. It was his grandparents' wedding blanket during their difficult times. The wind blew, the blanket fluttered as if to remind him that the things were still there but the people had been scattered.

He lay still listening to the buzzing of mosquitoes, then realized that all these years, even when he was drunk, someone still let him sleep under the mosquito net.

Last night, while standing outside in the pouring rain, looking at the small hut in the corner of the garden, all he could think of was the makeshift but joyful house when he and his wife first got married. Last night's rain might not have leaked into her small hut, but his heart was filled with sadness...

After getting up from his illness, he opened all the doors in the house. He cleaned up the pile of wine bottles scattered around in every corner. He flatly refused calls from his drinking buddies.

The villagers saw him working hard with a hoe in the fields, dredging the pond, repairing the fence, smiling and talking to everyone he met. They said to each other: "He's awake."

Having cooked and eaten dinner himself, he looked up at the camera and asked: "Have you eaten yet, kids? We have crab soup, eggplant, and freshwater shrimp." Hue asked:

- When did you know how to pickle eggplant?

- It's mother and son who do the salting. But when it comes to salting eggplant, dad is still as clumsy as ever.

Hue looked at her father's thin, lonely back in the late afternoon when everyone was gathering, and her heart was filled with sympathy. Because Hue knew that under the hut in the corner of the garden, her mother was also lonely, no different. But her mother was right, when standing on the other side of the slope of life, her father had lived a new life, sober and kind.

Hue's daughter has grown up and understands things. When she comes home from school, she sits and watches the camera all the time. While Hue was busy cooking in the kitchen, she heard her daughter calling out to show off: Mom, tonight grandma brought grandpa something in that clay pot again. Mom, it seems like grandpa is helping grandma fix a chair. Mom, grandma is scolding grandpa! But grandpa just smiled, that's strange. Mom, it seems like grandpa just invited grandma to come home to make the house warmer. Mom...

Every year, the Yen Tu apricot tree blooms bright yellow at the end of March. What a strange apricot variety, when Tet comes and spring comes, hundreds of flowers bloom, it still leisurely budding and sprouting. Then at the end of spring, it leisurely offers its enchanting yellow flowers.

In the small yard, dad was chopping bananas and mixing them with chicken feed, while mom was busy drying the first batches of boiled bamboo shoots. The dog and cat ran around, adding to the lively atmosphere of the house.

Just that simple thing was enough to make Hue silently and sadly watch. The camera not only captured the scene of reunion, but also seemed to capture the sound of the wind rustling through the banana leaves…

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/khuc-doi-3152210.html