"Mom... Mom"...
The child's voice startled her awake, "Mom! Mom!" The night was cold, the mist was hazy and unreal. She groped her way out into the yard. Outside the alley was a small, naked boy waving at her. Behind him was a swarm of children. They were running and playing, chattering. She raised her arms toward the boy. He looked at her for a moment, then ran away with a shrill laugh like the sound of glass rubbing against each other. She chased after him. Chased forever, running and screaming: "My child. My child, stay with me"... The night light was dim. She was still running like crazy on the deserted street. He was running so fast. Was he still angry with her? She frantically ran. His shadow still flickered before her eyes. She fell into a hole in the road. The hole seemed bottomless, causing her to rush down...
She woke up with a start and realized she was dreaming. The weather was cold and she was sweating profusely. That boy and those strange children had been disturbing her dreams since the day she became pregnant with him. She had hoped for him but because of the harsh conditions, she had to grit her teeth and deny it, to keep the so-called love for that despicable guy. But in the end, the child was lost, and the love was gone. Leaving her with so much bitter resentment...
The dim moonlight outside shone through the window, along with the chill of the late autumn night, making her shiver. Her mother lay beside her, hoarsely saying, "Go to sleep. You're having too many nightmares." She lay down, trying to curl up and bury her face in her mother's chest: "I'm so scared! The boy came back to call me." Her mother got up, lit an incense stick, mumbled a prayer, then lay down gently: "I've been thinking too much, I'm having too many nightmares, I'm so confused." Her mother's breath caressed her forehead. She felt peaceful again. For years, she had the habit of sleeping with her mother like that. Her mother often pushed her daughter away while scolding her lovingly: "Move away. You're so big, you're still...". She whined again: "I won't get married. I'll sleep with you forever."
But one day she was lying down, nestled against another, more muscular chest, breathing heavily and rapidly. "Will you marry me?" But when she announced that she was pregnant with eyes sparkling with joy and hope, he was shocked:
- Oh my! Give it up! Give it up!
- Why? I am twenty-eight years old this year…
- Because we are still poor! Still poor! Do you understand? Abortion is the only way we can get married. Now focus on making money .
He insisted. And the very next morning, her man disappeared while she was still hugging the pillow and sleeping, thinking she was hugging her fiancé's waist. She went down to the construction team to look for him, they said he had returned to the main construction site. She bitterly dragged her tired body back to her rented room. Then she asked for leave to go find the father of the baby in her belly.
Her heart was broken and tormented with a feeling of bewilderment as she walked out of that maternity clinic. The pain cut into her flesh. The pain tossed her to the depths of pain, sorrow, humiliation, and hatred. Last week, when she found him, she cried, complained, knelt down and begged, but the lover who had just been half her heart, her pure love, now appeared in his true form as a heartless, heartless, and heartless man, pushing her hand away and handing her a wad of money with a cold face: "You'd better leave him. You and I are no longer destined to be together. Don't ever look for me again!"
She remembered that she had entered the maternity clinic unconsciously and in a moment of intense hatred, she had rashly decided to remove the blood of that unfaithful man from her body. Then she found herself lying in a deep, narrow, oxygen-deficient hole. She opened her mouth to breathe, trying to draw precious air into her chest. There were hurried voices and hurried footsteps, then the sound of a heartbeat pounding out of her chest, thumping... thumping... She opened her eyes. The female doctor breathed a sigh of relief: "Awake." She stared at her, not understanding what was going on. She was still half-asleep, half-asleep, then suddenly sat up, brushed aside the complicated chain of drugs, and panicked: "Where is it? Where is it?". The doctor comforted her: "Lie down and rest. You can't go home. Come back tomorrow when you're better. Let's monitor it first"...
It was not until noon the next day that she finally returned home. Her mother, with a special intuition, held her daughter's hand and choked up: "How could you... Have you forgotten all my advice... It's okay for us to take care of each other...".
She could only bury herself in her mother's arms and sob in sadness.
When her leave was over, she threw herself into her work like crazy to forget her guilty obsessions. Sometimes in the late afternoon, she would circle that clinic and hesitate, half wanting to stop, half wanting to walk quickly to escape her fear. She would see the timid figures of the girls coming... She felt sorry. Those girls would recover their health. They might start a new love. But where would their blood, those poor fetuses go? Just like her child last month. They would become medical waste! The image of the red bucket containing the body parts of her child and those before her kept appearing red and bruised before her eyes... Oh my, she didn't dare think about it.
But at night I toss and turn, tormenting myself.
She remembered clearly that night she dreamed of the baby again. It laughed loudly, but in a flash it sounded half real and half unreal, half distant and half close, as if it was coming from somewhere. She frantically ran after it, wanting to hug it, wanting to whisper lovingly to it. She thought that if she didn’t quickly, quickly say words of repentance to her child, it would never forgive her. It was still staggering ahead. While running, she tripped over black plastic bags that were lying on the path. From those tangled bags, children poured out, crawling around… She woke up with a start, frantically reaching out to turn on the bright lights in the house and in the yard. At that moment, something seemed to awaken and urge her: Bring those poor fetuses home and give them a home! Save them from being medical waste! Hurry! Only then would her heart be at peace.
It was simple to think about, but it was difficult to do. After many procedures, she got the abortion facilities to agree to collect the unlucky fetuses. The first days of collecting, when she opened the bags to put the babies in jars, she was extremely scared, the things were stuck up to her neck. The poor creatures were rejected by their mothers. But the visual obsessions urged her even more. So every night, her old motorbike helped her go around all the facilities. She recorded everything in her notebook.
Date... 12 babies (five jars). There was a five-month-old baby (buried separately, named Thien An).
Day... 8 babies (three bottles)...
Her diary kept getting thicker. A few more "fathers" and "mothers" came to help, sharing the day. A plastic recycling facility provided her with all the large and small plastic jars available at the facilities to contain each fetus... She felt strange. Since she went to do "that job", she had only dreamed of her son coming home once and then never again. That time, he let her hug him tightly and smiled a lovely smile, not screeching like before! When she woke up, she felt mixed feelings of joy and sadness, and deep down in her heart, she believed that her son had forgiven her even though he had melted into the mud somewhere. Maybe he had transcended into a bright flower by the roadside, a small white cloud in the sky, or a moonlight that guided her home from the maternity ward after each late night...
***
The wind was still blowing, bringing the cold of the winter night. She shivered and wrapped her scarf around her neck. Her house was located deep at the end of a road on the edge of the city, with many trees and few houses. The street lights were weak and pale yellow. Just avoiding a mound of dirt, she braked her bike. She was shocked. She almost hit a child sitting in the middle of the road. She stopped her bike and walked over. The child looked up at her. Oh my! Could it be the little girl she had picked up from a pile of trash last week? That night, around nine o'clock in the evening, on her way home across Bo Bridge, she faintly heard a cry and a moan: "Mom, take me home." She turned her bike around. The wind from below blew up and was cold. Right next to the pile of trash, a lumpy bag lay there. She opened it suspiciously and was startled. It was the stiff corpse of a baby girl about six months old, with a black birthmark as big as a finger on her shoulder. She choked up, tears streaming all the way home.
Sitting down next to the child, she lovingly asked: "Were you at Bo Bridge that night? What do you want me to do for you?" The child burst into tears: "I miss... I miss seeing the sun... I miss seeing my parents... I miss breastfeeding. I hate my mother..." She was moved to tears: "My child, please let go of your hatred and quickly be liberated. Soon you will get what you want..." And in the blink of an eye, she found herself sitting on the side of the road, surrounded by silence under the yellow street lights. Shocked and heartbroken, she continued walking, unable to understand whether the scene she had just seen was real or an illusion...
***
Early in the morning, she and two other "mothers" went shopping to prepare for the burial of their children. The freezer was full. She had been to the burials of the children dozens of times, but each time she felt a sense of nostalgia. Since morning, the three "mothers" had gone to several flower shops but still had not found the right flowers. One "mother" was impatient: "We usually use white chrysanthemums because the souls of the children are pure." But she still shook her head. She wanted to find daisies. They were available this season, but why were they so rare? They were only available at the last flower shop. She chose the most beautiful bouquets to bring home. The children would come to live in the house reserved for them on her family's tea plantation. The entire cost of building the tomb, from digging, building, and stone cladding, was given by her aunt from Dong Nai . She had invited a monk to do the procedures at the cemetery. The "fathers and mothers" had also transported the styrofoam boxes containing the fetus jars up the hill. A construction worker prepared the materials. The sun began to shine, in the fragrant smoke of incense, she choked:
- Children, the sun is shining warmly. You will be able to enjoy the sun to your heart's content.
Everyone took turns opening the jars, pouring in some fresh milk and dropping in a chrysanthemum. More than four hundred little creatures were warmed by the first rays of sunlight and the purest air of the world. Everyone stood still, watching. She smiled at the children happily running barefoot on the ground and playing under the bright sunlight of the morning sun. Then, in a flash, the children returned to nestle under the chrysanthemums. When everyone closed the jars, everyone was surprised to see the flower inside holding clear, sparkling drops of water...
The next day, when visiting the grave, the group was stunned by a scene they had never seen before. From the head of the grave, countless white and yellow butterflies spread out like daisies fluttering around the graves. A butterfly landed on her shoulder. On its pure white wings was a dark gray mark. Its jet-black eyes, like two mustard seeds, seemed to stare into her eyes. And in those eyes, there were two tiny drops of tears...
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nuoc-mat-cua-buom-buom-truyen-ngan-du-thi-cua-tran-thi-minh-185241013205024903.htm
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