Rice Drum

Being a child was the start of all the suffering pouring down on their fates. The first rain of pain came from the mother's womb that took them into this life.

Photo by Sandy Ravaloniaina on Unsplash

Hao tried to get rid of the kid.

***

Six months ago, Tien was rescued from a shed near a shrimp farm. The straw hut belonged to Hao's older brother, Kieu. Neighbors kept hearing the mourning and crying, so they banded up and broke into the locked shack.

Tien was half-naked, wailing inside. His right arm was hand-cuffed into a metal bed frame nearby. His right thigh's skin was burnt into a swollen red patch like a chunk of meat at the butcher's. The injury released thick white liquid from the splotchy and blistered marks. A neighbor used an axe, chopping the metal chain to release Tien. He was quivering with a fever; his jaw was stiff when they called the ambulance. He mumbled his mom’s name: “mẹ Thương, mẹ Thương, mẹ Thương...”

Kieu and his wife were arrested for using child labor and torturing a minor. Hao hardly saw them back then before the neighbors broke into the shed. They were well-off, while Hao was just a poor younger brother who lived in a tiny boat, rowing from village to village, asking for anything to work and live from hand to mouth.

Kieu owned a shrimp farm on the tip of the island, looking out the Mekong River mouth, where the water was murky and nutritious like mother's milk. Shrimp farms were a fast-earning industry as the Mekong shrimp was favored in restaurants and exportation markets. Kieu recruited workers from far-flung islands to do arduous work like feeding, cleaning, or digging new ponds. Villagers saw all kinds of workers coming to work for their farms. Farm owners like Kieu got rich quickly on workers' burned backs in the delta's suffocating humid sun.

***

But Hao brought the poor kid to the greedy monster's hand.

A night two years ago, Hao rowed his boat back home after a week cleaning and plowing some fields for the new rice season. He stopped by the ferry dock for a duck noodle.

The hawker served late, even after midnight. It was raining hard. He stooped under the thin plastic roof of the hawker, trying to keep his tall body away from the downpour. A woman was pulling noodles next to a boy at the same tiny table. He was shivering in a plastic raincoat.

"Too bad, it would rain all night," Hao complained.

"That makes my duck noodle taste better," the noodle lady lit up the conversation with a generous smile.

"Well said, do you guys know this is the best duck noodle along this river?" Hao started the conversation with the woman.

The woman nodded. The child pretended to look away when Hao turned to him. He was tall but too thin to his height, gulping noodles like swallowing a big fish.

"Hey, eat slowly. You will choke if you don't chew the duck meat well," Hao observed the kid, worried that he didn't enjoy it properly.

"We are finding some work to do," the woman talked reluctantly, "... work for him."

A thick silence formed at the table. Both Hao and the noodle lady didn't know the answer. That was why she stayed up this late to serve some last customers, and he was there from a poorly paid job.

"If he couldn't find a job, his younger brother at home would starve. I cannot afford to take care of them," the woman started to sob. She used a torn cone hat to cover the kid from the raindrops while her clothes were getting soaked from the water blown by the wind. The flicking light of the oil lamp created a bold edge on her bony face. Her cheekbones were sharp like a sickle shade.

A frustration convulsed in Hao's stomach. He chewed the noodle repeatedly and choked himself with an absurd concern forming in his throat. They were only strangers to him.

"Maybe my brother needs some workers," he said, and immediately regretted. Until then, he hadn't met or visited his brother for years. The brother got rich, and his wife didn't like to have a penurious younger brother sucking their blood, as she put it.

On a night like this decades ago, Hao listened to his mother sobbing in a land of sorrow. The rain created a pitch-dark curtain, with his expectation that it would be a new day behind the darkness, although it proved to be just a delusion.

Hao took the woman and the child to the farm the following day. 

From afar, Kieu called for his workers to feed the shrimp early. The sun was scorchingly hot. In the ponds, tiny shrimp wandered around. Their bodies were transparent as liquid, flowing in every direction. Hao squinted his eyes, trying to focus on one particular shrimp. It climbed upward and fell on the blue plastic bottom layer of the pond. It repeated the steep hike, despairingly searching for a way out of its designated fate.

"Why such a sudden visit?" Kieu's wife glared at Hao.

"I, sorry, he... -wants to find a job. I think you guys are recruiting workers," Hao jerked up his chin.

"He is so thin. What could he do? Weakling," Kieu grumbled and scanned through the boy's lanky features.

"I can do everything: feeding, cleaning, sweeping, plowing, whatever," the boy suddenly spoke. The words tangled into each other as if his tongue mixed them into a thick dough inside his mouth. It's a birth defect, kind of.

"He can't even speak properly," smirked Kieu's wife. "What do you care? He could work," Hao confronted her.

***

Hao gave the woman a ride to the ferry after they left the boy at the shrimp farm.

The woman told him that she was desperate. She didn't earn enough to feed the kids since her husband left home for another woman. She didn't want to let the boy work at that early age but had no choice.

"You don't need to explain that to me," Hao cut off the conversation. She reminded him of his mother. Every mother had a choice. They just didn't choose the children if they didn't want to.

Hao thought of that year when the flood season came. Water gently crept onto the front porch of his house. The rain sounded like a bawling child. Hao's eyelids were heavy, and he fell asleep. The warm yellow light bulb carved a deep shade on his mother's nose corner. She brought her face close to him and squeezed him tight in her arms.

Hao breathed in her body smell, a nostalgic mix of sweat, old milk, fresh grass, rice leaves, and charcoal smoke when she cooked after finishing on the field.

Hao woke up; the porch was underwater. The village sunk halfway into an infinite liquid mirror. He didn't see his mother by his side. His hand searched for her. The bed was cold. He ran out and stood above the glassy surface. He looked down on the flood and saw his own shadow. Alone.

Hao didn't know when his mother left.

He sunk in the depth of silence. Hao never met her again.

Their grandmother worked until her back bent like an old shrimp to care for Hao and Kieu. Looking at his grandmother's body shrinking due to overwork, Hao persuaded himself that his mother didn't want to have a hard life with two kids, so she left for good.

Neighbors said that his mother was afraid. She had seen her husband everywhere whenever looking into the sediment flux. He was trying to pull her towards him once and for good. People living by the river believed that drowned people were cold, wandering in the riverbed, waiting for a chance to invite their beloved to join them in the endless journey beneath. Hao wondered when his father would find him.

He had waited for years.

***

After Tien was rescued from the shed, the police informed Hao about his brother's crime.

Kieu confessed to the police that he got irritated because Tien couldn't speak but mumble. His wife beat Tien every time he went to inform her about the water discharge at the cleaning station. She couldn't make sense of what Tien said. It was just a mixture of sound and saliva. Kieu joined the abuse when the boy tried to run away from the farm.

In the emergency room, Tien's face was unrecognizable; deep bloody scars on the forehead, bruised mouth, and lips cracked open. The lanky body from the night he met was swollen up in purple bruises and beating marks. His right thigh was wrapped in white gauze for burn treatment. The handcuffed arm was heavily infected and formed a deep wound. Rusty metal ate his flesh; the skin was broken up where the metal cuffs tightened.

The hospital discharged Tien after a month. They couldn't find his mother, so the village leader called Hao again.

"Let him stay at my place. I will take care of him until his mother shows up," 

***

Hao then regretted what he had just spoken out loud, but there was no turning back.

Hao hated the way Tien ate. Tien chewed rice in his full mouth for a while. The chewing sound beat Hao's ears like a woodpecker knocking on a piece of wood, persistently annoying.

"Chew quietly, please," Hao said, trying to be gentle.

"I am sorry," Tien mumbled. The words floated inside his mouth. The thick tongue moved about in his mouth, unintentionally creating weird sounds like drowning people struggling with air bubbles. At the end of meals, his chews turned into hammer bangs. Hao let out an exhausted sigh and left.

Beyond his unbearably noisy chews, Tien worked hard and never complained. He followed Hao to rice fields, construction sites, or orchards, doing his job neatly like a diligent cow. With the kid's help, Hao finished his career faster and asked for higher pay from landowners. 

Sometimes, he tripled the income by delivering them a clean field just after two or three days, compared to a week or 10 days as before.

Photo by Andhika Y. Wiguna on Unsplash

On the last day on a hilly field in An Giang, the boss gave them tips after securing the transplanting seedlings on time. Surprisingly, Tien transplanted the area in just a morning. Every seedling was firm and stood up straight in the mud. The field looked like a tiny army in order, queuing straight from every angle. Tien focused on every little rice seedling as if assuring them of sturdy roots and abundant growth time. The field owner generously offered them more lots from her friends' farms.

At night, Hao counted the cash and divided it in half.

"Your salary," Hao put the money on the table and pushed it toward Tien.

"My salary?"

"Yes, you worked."

"...you feed me," Tien took all the tongue's effort to arrange a clear sentence.

"I already deducted the food."

Tien received the money and looked at it like an alien object. "What should I do with it?"

"Buy things. Spend. Save. But don't lose it. You need to bring money home to help your mom," Hao shrugged.

"Have you ever heard from my mom?"

"No, I don't know you guys. Remember?"

Tien turned quiet. He chewed again. The chews got louder. "Remember to cover the entrance when you sleep." Hao left the table.

***

It had been six moon seasons that Hao heard nothing from Tien's mother.

Sometimes, he wondered what he would do next with the kid if the mother never showed up. They had traveled on the boat from island to island. They worked on anything they could find. People liked to hire a team better than hiring a one-man crew. Hao had more work to do than the time he was alone. He didn't have to worry about food, but he struggled to understand his situation being stuck with a child.

"Do you hate me?" Tien asked when they lay on the boat deck on a humid night. There was no wind in the air.

"No. Why?" Hao answered. His heart lost a beat as he knew he was lying.

"I think everyone hates me."

"Who is everyone?"

"Your brother, my mom."

"You have money to give your mom now. She will not hate you. She

must be in need of help." Hao became curious.

"Why do you think she needs help?"

"When we left you at my brother's farm, she said that you and your younger brother were starving."

"As she said..." Tien left the conversation at that and turned to the other side. After a while, Hao heard him snoring. 

***

Years ago, before everything happened, Hao's father went fishing with his friends.

At the fish migration race's peak, people threw nets randomly at night and caught thousands of glittering fish, up to tonnes. If dad caught enough fish, his family could afford a worry-free flood season. They would have enough dry fish, rice, and money to live through three floating months. As his dad was about to go that night, Hao cried like a spoiled child, insisting his father let him go fishing with.

"Hey, little toad, you like a rice drum, right? I am going to fish and buy you a new one,"

Hao stopped crying. For months, he had dreamt of a rice drum to play and sing at school in the Moon Festival. He broke the old one last year on New Year's Eve to show his grandparents how fast he could play. But a rice drum was expensive. He had passed by the big store in the market with Dad, touching the red-painted wooden body, trying its sound and feeling its leather drumhead vibrate gently with the low sound. 

"ohmmm."

He dared not to ask Dad for it. He quietly kept the dream in his head. How did Dad know?

Photo by Nguyen Linh on Unsplash

Fellow fishermen brought his dad's body back at midnight.

Hao saw a big crowd of neighbors in his house before his mother closed the door in front of him. The fishnet was stuck in the boat engine, and its rolling pulled him down with all the net wrapping around his body and ankles. He couldn't get out.

Until they managed to stop the engine and pull the net up, his body was already cold. Somebody bought the rice drum and put it into Hao's hand at the funeral. He threw it into the wooden coffin. He secretly wished the water would eat the cold box away and bring his father back to life if he offered his treasure to the river god.

Transplanting time finished, and the harvesting season arrived.

When Hao rowed his boat along the canals, he saw the abnormal color of growing rice plants. At this time, the young rice should have been abundant in dark green color. Their milky and fatty smell should have filled the fields to the horizon.

Instead, they got drier and more brown. Hao pulled scoops of river water to fill up the tank. That night, the rice tasted mildly bitter when he cooked it. Hao asked the fishermen on the way, and they said the salt came deeper inland this year.

Nobody needed to harvest anymore. Some mornings, Hao rowed to twenty farms, asking for work. Landowners shook their heads. Crops were dying. Farmers tried to cut costs by cutting and firing the fields on their own. From the boat, Tien saw multiple pillars of smoke from afar; hunger lurked around.

"Do you want to return home and see your mother? It is a good chance as we have nothing to do." Hao suggested when watching the smoke gradually thin and become a blurring layer in the cloudless sky.

"No."

"Why? You... you couldn't be here forever?"

"I don't have a home. Or a brother," Tien added.

"Mom just told that to everybody she met, hoping someone let me stay."

Tien just spoke out loud what Hao thought when giving his mom a ride to the ferry. He hated to face the reality that the kid had nowhere to go, and now he was the only dock Tien could hold on to. But he had already known all that from the day sitting in the ER room waiting for Tien to open his eyes.

Hao threw the anchor rope on the boat. They needed to find some place, some job, or anything to do, or this situation would suffocate them both. Tien started rowing.

***

Hao and Kieu's lives were never the same after their father's death.

Hao was alone. He became a victim of big boys in the village. The gang gathered after school and tortured any loner they found with no companion. They threw his backpack into the canal. They ripped off his little money for snacks. Or, they just found it fun to kick and push him into the river.

Hao often returned home with bleeding lips or swollen cheeks. His grandmother tried to figure out who beat him but never got the answer. Hao knew that if Grandma scolded the kids who did that, he would just get beaten up worse the next day. He'd better keep his mouth shut.

Kieu was in a better position. He was taller and older than most of the kids in the village. He knew who to hang out with. He could punch kids of the same age if they dared to gossip about him. But he didn't help Hao.

One day, Hao sneaked through the little gate behind the school so as not to trespass on the big boys' territory in front of the school gate. He was gathering his breath when suddenly someone kicked him from behind with full force. He fell into a shallow hole in the school's backyard. Looking up, Hao saw his brother and the gang laughing at him from above. They threw rocks and pieces of wood at him. Kieu jumped into the ditch and kicked his little brother's face, belly, and back. Hao covered his face and curled up like a helpless shrimp. He heard his brother's restless breath and the constant kicks hitting his arm bones and skin.

As he passed out, he heard the big kid in the group praise, "Good. You proved your loyalty. You struck him hard."

"He killed my father. He deserved it," Kieu spitted.

They left in gloating laughter, and Hao, lying there in the pit - for the first time - experienced the pain of losing Dad under a different light. His heart throbbed like the racing rice drum, louder after each breath, and then gently faded away.

He whimpered like a wounded dog.

***

Hao woke up when the voices of people echoed from afar.

Some high-pitched voice crashed with the dog barks. He opened his eyes and saw people chasing and beating someone near the river's edge.

"Bitch, do you think you can snatch my husband from me?" a hoarse female voice rose, sinking all surrounding voices. 

Hao jumped up and ran out of his boat to see what happened.

A woman wearing a silky pink dress fell by the edge of the water. The silk was torn in several parts, stained in mud and some colored liquid, showing her right shoulder and thigh with bleeding cuts and dark bruises.

"Leave her alone, you people. Get out!" Hao roared like an angry predator. He jumped onto the river edge with a metal shovel. The woman crawled towards him, and he noticed one of her ankles was cut. From there, bleeding out a thin string of red liquid, leaving a mark on the end.

"None of your business! Do you know what this bitch did?" At least seven women and some other men were surrounding them.

"I don't care whose business it is. If you beat this woman to death, you will rot in jail. I am a friend of the district police. I am the witness of this," Hao just told another lie. He felt the chilling fear run down his spine. He was ready for a fight, but in front of him was a major swarm of hatred.

"My uncle does not joke. His friends would detain you guys if you killed her," Tien appeared behind the group. He ran to Hao's side and pulled the woman's shoulders from the beating scene. Her black hair was tangled in blood, and some strange liquid struck his hand when he touched it.

The group hesitated. Hao read that in their body movements. He pushed forward, "Come. I will break your skull with my shovel. Dare you?" he waved the shovel. It hissed in the air.

"You are taking in a snake," the hoarse-voiced woman smirked. She waved the group back up and left. Their curses wouldn't fade until their silhouettes disappeared from the bamboo shrubs.

Hao let out a long sigh. Tien had already put the woman on the boat deck, trying to cover her with a kroma towel.

"Mom, is that you?"

Now Hao stared at the face of the woman he just rescued from the crawls of the mob. She didn't look up to see him in the eyes. Tien held on to her fragile shoulders as she was still shaking. Hao's grip tightened. The woman looked away, leaving her head dangling from Tien's arms. Her sobs broke down like the sound of an injured bird straying from its flock.

Hao had seen many jealous fights in his nomad life along the Mekong River.

They could kill other fellow women for the sake of their husbands. He saw cruel acts like shaving the girl's hair bald, tearing her clothes to rags, and throwing paint on her body. He wondered where the husband was among the dramas as if a girl alone made up an affair to threaten one's family.

This was one of the most brutal scenes he'd ever seen. Her hair was cut like a torn rack. A strange liquid mixing something between egg white, glue, and red paint poured on her hair and breasts. The most cruel way to destroy a woman's body. Both her hair and skin were damaged.

Hao ordered Tien to cut out the pieces of clothing stuck on her skin and covered her in his oversized T-shirt. The cut from her right shoulder stopped bleeding as it was caked with glue and dry blood. Hao poured some strong rice wine into a bowl and used pieces of cloth to drape on the skin. She screamed. Her voice pitched up, cutting through the thick silence between them.

They bathed her like a saving a dying fish, trying to recover her from the curse of the river and the miserable trait of living. Hao was exhausted. He didn't even wonder why she fell into such a situation.

***

When the woman woke up, Tien was sent away to buy some antibiotics and bandages at the market.

Hao sat by her mattress. His face was colored by the morning sun like a copper facade burning under the jarring heat.

"Thank you for saving me... -again,"

"Just rest."

"I should leave." She tried to sit up.

"You abandon your son again?"

"He deserves something better... than me."

An inflicting pain rose in Hao's chest.

He wanted to stop the woman from leaving her poor son. He would have begged his mother the same thing if he had a chance when he was nine. Most children had no say in their parents' choices, although all parents claimed their choices were the best for their kids. One didn't have a choice where one was born into. Being a child was the start of all the suffering pouring down one's fates. The first rain of pain came from the mother's womb that took one into life. But this was not Hao's mother or childhood. He had left behind all the bruises, drum echoes, and loneliness. Why bother?

She broke the temporary bandage Tien put on her ankle last night and put on a T-shirt Hao left by her side. She pulled the anchor rope closer to the pier and walked off the boat. Her precarious body moved like a bamboo tree swinging in the wind.

Hao stared at her, stumbling until her shade left only a thin mark on the horizon covered in burning fields.

He emptied his lungs with a long exhale, filling them with a tangible weight he hadn't felt before, like the low and clear sound of the rice drum he played decades ago,

“ohmmm.”