In 2002, in a small countryside, at that time, still poor and hungry because of craving for a bowl of white rice with hot braised pork, Chou’s family was extremely poor, the poorest in Dong village that year. At that time, people still distinguished between classes as usual like now, who said the strong leaves cover the torn leaves, but Chou saw the strong leaves as crushing the torn leaves, it was more correct.
The children in the village did not want to play with Chou, they cursed her for being poor and wearing torn pants patched by her mother. Therefore, Chou’s mother always told her that if she came home early from school, she should go home right away or she would be late, and not hang around outside. However, she was still young, she wanted to have friends, she wanted to go home from school and discuss her studies with the girls in front, she also wanted to watch the boys playing marbles, but she was afraid of being chased away like usual.
It was walking alone, timidly on the side of the road, pulling off some heliotrope leaves, dirtying its fingernails. It used its hand to wipe them off on its pants to clean them, then suddenly it saw something like a pink piece of paper fluttering under the tree, about 1 meter away from where it was standing. It stopped and rubbed its eyes to see clearly, the stain of the leaf sap stuck to the big round face of a naive little child who could spit out milk looked really funny. It discovered that it was most likely a coin, it didn’t know how much money it was because it couldn’t distinguish denominations, it was only in first grade and its family didn’t have much money to deal with. It only knew that the bubble wrap with Uncle Ho’s face and a series of numbers was the money that its mother usually kept hidden in her pocket every day. It raised its head to look around and saw that the group of girls were walking quite far away from it, then it turned around to see if anyone else had seen the same money as it. Seeing no one else, he tiptoed, tiptoed step by step, trying to act like a normal kid coming home from school, but his face was extremely tense, his heart was beating twice as fast as normal, his eyes were darting around. Finally, he got close to the money under the tree, suddenly the sound of an old motorbike whirred past, he jumped in surprise but still managed to quickly step on the money with his foot.
It stood there for a while, afraid that if someone found out about the money, it wouldn’t know what to do. After a minute, when it saw that no one was there, it slowly sat down on the ground, but its legs were glued to the spot. It pretended to wave some wild flowers nearby and slowly reached down and pulled the money out of its legs, stuffing it into its stomach. It was so panicked that it couldn’t remember to put the money in its pocket, so it ran all the way home. It ran into the house, breathing heavily and looking out onto the street to see if anyone was chasing it. Luckily, the people were just passing by.
His mother was sitting on a red plastic chair, knitting (a traditional craft of Chou village), which had almost lost its color. Seeing him breathing heavily, she smiled and asked, “Why do you have to run, Chou?”
Chou was still holding the money in one hand, holding it tightly with the other hand. She was happy, her eyes were big and round, smiling at her mother and saying breathlessly: “I just picked up a bill, Mom”. Her mother was surprised but thought it was probably 10 cent or 20 cent that children had dropped on the street: “How much did you pick up?”. Her big face smiled widely, spreading her 2-fingered hand in front of her mother. Her mother asked again: “2 cent?”. She shook her head. Her mother guessed again: “So it’s 20 cent?”. She still shook her head and smiled widely: “I don’t know, I saw the number 2”. Her mother looked bewildered, not having time to think about how much she picked up, only knowing that her face was so happy. Chou then pulled the bill out of her stomach, held both ends of it up in front of her mother and showed it off: “Ta da”. Her mother was surprised and shocked, both happy and worried, not knowing where Chou got the 2 dollars from?
His mother eagerly asked: “Where did you pick it up?”
Chou said: “I picked it up at the beginning of our village, near the electric pole, under the heliotrope tree on my way home from school.”
His mother just began to breathe a sigh of relief and became happy again. He solemnly thrust the money into his mother’s arms and jumped up happily, because he knew that with this money his mother would be happy and would be able to buy rice to cook. There was no more rice in the house, for the past few days his family had only eaten itchy potatoes and boiled sweet potato leaves from the backyard. Just thinking about it was enough to make his stomach full and crave for dinner tonight.
Author: Han Dung Dung
March 13, 2024