From a child who stopped her father from remarrying, Ha gradually grew up, understood life, lived tolerantly and emotionally. She no longer hated that woman...
Every time she came home, Ha saw her father bending over somewhere in the garden, breaking some dry branches and picking the water spinach that had spread from the garden to the yard. More than a dozen clocks hung all over the house were ticking. Ha said:
- Dad, sell or give away your clocks. Every time I come home, I see the hour and minute hands spinning around, making my head spin. Our house is so small, but with more than ten clocks, we have to live ten times faster than everyone else.
- Isn't it faster?
Dad said that and then went down to the kitchen with a bamboo basket and went to the garden. Dad was busy with the lush vegetables that were growing all over the well yard.
Since the day his mother passed away, the house had not changed at all. The villagers had started using tap water, but the Ha family still collected rainwater for drinking. The old tank was covered with moss. In the drizzly winter, when they woke up early in the morning, the moss around the tank and the brick walls were shiny green.
Ha grew up on her father's shoulders. The day Ha became a girl, her father shyly went to buy curtain fabric. Ha had washed the curtain fabric in the well yard, but her father waited until the evening when there were no people to take it to Ben bridge, washed it thoroughly, then brought it home and rinsed it with a few buckets of rainwater before drying it.
One time, Ha used a flashlight to look for her father at Ben Bridge and saw a familiar figure of a woman from the neighborhood busy doing laundry with her father. Ha grabbed the basin of clothes and threw them all into the river. Ha ran home, her father following behind, his arms hanging down as if carrying a thousand boulders.
Miss Thon left the village after that night. More than ten years passed, she only returned to visit the village for a short while.
Dad's back was hunched over even though he wasn't hunched. The floor was littered with bamboo shavings. The bird cages were meticulously crafted. Each bamboo slat was smooth and shiny.
Many times, Ha felt that her father had quietly turned into a stone, a statue, his knees longer than his ears. Sometimes he rested his chin on the pillow and stroked and bent it. Guests came to the house, sometimes with a bird cage, sometimes with a clock or a broken fan. Some people came to fix it and took it, but others told him to keep it and do whatever he wanted with it. As a result, the fans were wrapped in plastic and stacked tightly in a corner of the house. The clocks hung all over the walls, emitting urgent sounds.
The year had already ended, and the fewer people in the house, the faster time passed. There were nights when lying in her room, the sound of the clock seemed to pierce her heart. The sound of frogs croaking or the rain, a downpour, a really heavy rain, pouring loudly on the tiled roof, pouring on the trees and leaves in the garden, drowning out the sound of the hour and minute hands, then Ha could sleep.
There were nights when her father was snoring, Ha opened the bedroom door, quietly slipped out into the garden, and sat on the cement steps by the water tank. In the dim light of the moonlit nights, Ha clung to every bit of her mother’s memories. Ha flipped through each one like a poor child counting lucky money. That was her mother’s smile when she pulled up a heavy bush of cassava, that was her mother calling out: “Ha, come out, I’ll give you this.”
How many years have passed, every year the days before Tet are the most depressing days. Summer misses her mother...
On the morning of the 30th of Tet, Ha carried her basket to the market, her eyes blurred in the early morning mist.
The Tet market was bustling. Toothless old people stood by the new clothes stalls. Children clung to their mothers' shirts, demanding gifts. Peonies, red roses, and violets were shining brightly in the sweet cold. There were only two people in the house, father and son, and food and drink were not worth much, so Ha did not buy much. Meeting acquaintances in the market, some stopped to ask, others joked, "When will you get married so that dad will have a girlfriend?"
In recent years, the economy has been difficult, so fewer people have booked Tet tours than before. At the beginning of December, Ha returned home. She used a hoe to dig up the garden, bought some seedlings to plant vegetables to distract herself. When she finished, she took down the old calendar pages that had been stained with days, months, and years. Looking at the house, every corner saw broken furniture, it was a pity to throw it away but not knowing what to do with it. Ha's father kept every item he touched: "Leave it to me." When the furniture was bundled up and taken out into the yard, in several sacks, his father sighed: "Well, I guess it's okay, but why are there so many?"
- Dad, please give me some less clocks and fans. I have trouble sleeping, the clock keeps beeping all night.
- Leave it there for the sake of sound. The night was dead silent, the radio said the program would end at 11 o'clock...
So, for many years, since Ha left, every night Dad would turn on the radio to sleep to hear people's voices. When he turned off the radio, he would listen to the sound of time to help him sleep. Looking at the clocks ticking and clicking on the wall, Ha's eyes became dizzy. She held onto a chair and sat down. The winter sun shone weakly.
Lower the rolled up mat and bring it to Ben bridge. There, the villagers contributed to build a solid concrete wharf.
In winter, the wind and steam blow coldly, but this place is always bustling. People bring mud to sow rice in preparation for the spring crop. People carry cassava tubers to wash before grinding them into flour... Villagers often tease each other that Ben Bridge is a news agency, from what plants to plant, what animals to raise to the election of Mr. Trump, everything is discussed. Now, every time they meet Ha, villagers no longer ask when he will find a wife for his father, who dares to marry an old man. People ask Ha when she will get married, if she gets married, she will give her grandfather a bunch of grandchildren to cling to.
Ha replied:
- Tomorrow I get married, the day after I give birth to a litter.
Then there was a burst of laughter, but before the story could end, little Hoa ran over, out of breath, saying as if she were crying:
- Ladies and gentlemen, our relative fell down right in the mossy yard, it hurts a lot.
Ha stopped, her head felt like it was electrocuted, leaving behind the mat, Ha ran ahead of the little girl, across her yard she called her father:
- Dad, Ms. Thon fell in the yard.
He was also startled, put down the unfinished bird cage, hesitated for a moment, Ha startled:
- Falling hurts so much, dad.
Then Ha ran ahead, he followed quickly, little Hoa ran to her grandmother, the two of them helped Mrs. Thon sit on the porch, her left leg seemed to be unable to move anymore. She had to go to the hospital.
Ha called the neighborhood taxi driver, stuffed some money into his father's pocket, and stayed. The cement yard had no one to sweep it, and the drizzle had made the moss green and slippery. Ha found a wire brush, sprinkled a layer of lime powder on it, and sat scrubbing the entire large yard for several hours. The villagers who came to inquire were all startled:
- Oh, is that Ha? The yard is slippery, isn't it?
Ha waited while working. Ha had brushed the last moss in the yard, there was moss on the wall too, there was also the steps by the water tank, and there was also the well yard, if her father and she hadn't come back yet, Ha would have brushed it all.
If she didn't brush the moss away, what excuse would Ha have to stay at her house? That year, Ha was the one who threw away the pure white cloth basin. Several times, Miss Thon asked if she would come over to boil water when Ha got married. At that time, Ha even shouted:
- I live with my dad, I'm not married.
Now, Ha is old enough to love Miss Thon in a woman's way, old enough to know that after each of her trips, the house only has her father and a vast void.
It was very cold, sunny but still cold, this cold, Miss Thon fell like that, the pain was excruciating, Ha's hands also started to turn red but she didn't feel cold, nor tired.
Late in the afternoon, Dad and Aunt Thon also came home. Her left leg was not in a cast but it must have been very painful. Aunt Thon almost leaned on Dad. She shyly said that there was no one at home, Dung worked far away and was only home on Tet and Dad's death anniversary. Luckily, Hoa ran back and forth.
Ha went down to the kitchen to put on the pot of porridge, fiddled with her shirt and was about to go home. Miss Thon said softly:
- Stay and eat with me, there's a lot of porridge.
Ha's father turned on the light, the weak light bulb gave off a red halo, Ha said:
- Tomorrow, Dad, fix the light bulb for me. I will bring you a watch.
Miss Thon said to change the subject.
- The yard is so slippery, luckily I didn't break my leg, after Tet I can go rowing and planting lotus.
The House of Representatives excused itself to go home before his father. It was early December, and the villagers had hung up twinkling lights long before Christmas.
The wind blew cold from the pond. Ha entered the house, the clocks started ticking again. She pulled up a chair, took out the batteries in each one, and went to bed. Ha turned off the lights early, so that when her father came home later, she would pretend to be fast asleep. If he scolded her tomorrow, she would accept it.
The wind blew in through the window next to Ha's bed. She knew that in the garden, each leaf in each thin branch held a green bud. The house was silent, Ha fell asleep, she felt her chest was light and from somewhere far away in her sleep she saw herself rowing the oars to patch the lotus roots.