"We Swim to Mother"
My Baby Brother Flood
By Khải Đơn
When the legendary flood happened 70 years ago, grandmother poured her hair down the river to rescue scattered people from the monstrous water flow.
Dad would tell me the story as he gently combed grandma’s hair out. Hiding between the hair, as thick as a silver stream, I pondered the image of my fragile grandma pulling people out of the rapids with her braids of hair. That was the kind of flood we had only heard of in myth; grandma had been the only one to witness the event.
Our village lay on a small, fertile island formed by alluvial water and yearly floods. Alluvium concentrated around the island, creating a bell of mudflats that was thick and rich enough to grow an annual season of peanuts or bitter-gourd before the flood came. The flood was playful. He gradually rose in the afternoon and touched the first layer of our home’s wooden floor. The water hit the wood and sounded like frogs croaking and cackling. My parents and I waited for him the whole night, but he did not rise any higher than that. When we drifted off in the whispering breeze, water touched our feet and giggled as we startled, falling out of dreamland.
Often, the flood sat right at the edge of our bed; mom would hug my little body and lift me higher, placing me in dad’s hands. He carried grandma and me to a high platform near the metal roof so that we would wake up closer to the sun, in awe of the panoramic view of the village full of water. Like a giant mirror facing the sky.
The flood was my baby brother. He stayed and played with me for some months before leaving for the sea. I often sat on our stilt house, throwing down a rod that dad had made for me to catch fish. I stole some burnt rice that mom left after lunchtime to hook on the rod to guarantee a catch. The flood watched me curiously and splashed some water on my feet. My neighbor Nhien swam from his porch to my house and handed me a bunch of yellow sesban flowers. Mom took the flowers and put them together with grey mudskippers in tamarind fish soup. Once in a while, dad called Nhien’s father over to row their tiny boat towards our backyard. We had macerated fish hot-pot together with sesban flowers and banana blossoms Nhien’s mother picked from their home.
One night, the water rose high and dad went out for fishing. We called it the light fishing season. Hundreds of thousands of fish with silver backs swam out to the sea. They needed to pass the bottleneck between our island and another small sand islet. Mom and dad put a huge net over the bottleneck and we remained on the boat for a midnight supper. When the moon set low on the horizon, a flow of light emerged from the pitch-dark water and moved towards our direction. I put my hand into the water and it glimmered. Two little fish flapped in my hand. Their backs were glittering in the silvery-white light. That flow of light stumbled into dad’s net and created a huge coil of silver, which lit up our wooden boat. Around us there were many others with their own rolls of light. The bottleneck glistened like a magnificent sky with its own underwater universes. I could see Nhien’s broad smile as he pulled the net with his father. I called his name and he called my name back. My mom explained that the flood led the way for little fish to see the ocean. I wondered if the flood also asked the fish to light up the ocean... and if I could ever join my baby brother in his journey.
***
On a gloomy afternoon, a man with pale skin approached our village. His roving eyes beamed a conniving smile in the high-powered flashlights operated by swift-footed cameramen surrounding him. I rubbed my eyes to clear out the dazzling lights. The pale man shook my father’s hand and declared to us that we would no longer be hungry in the flood season. I couldn’t recall any starvation in my early years of life. They had constructed some remarkable structures that would suffocate the floods. “No children will be drowned. Rice fields can grow four harvests per year. Rice will cover our rich soil and bring in a wealthy future.” Camera clicks and applause rained on his words. He told mom that I was a cute kid and the abundant rice harvests would make sure I grew up healthy.
When my hair grew long enough, grandma taught me to wash it by the riverbank. She poured her stream of white hair down the water and gently asked me to drop my own hair down next to hers. Her silver flow embraced my raven-black cascade. I heard a gentle voice echoing among the singing strands:
We swim to Mother, feed the hunger, hug the babies
Cuddling the fish, oh, speeding with the giant cá tra dầu[1]
Devouring alluvium, tasting salt, and swaying flowers
Grandma put a finger on her wrinkled lips, signaling me to listen in stillness. The song continued, describing the ocean beyond the river mouths, where muddy waves met chatty clams and quiet woolen snails.
***
By the time I was 17, I had forgotten about my baby brother flood. He never returned after the pale man’s visit and promise of newly-built dykes. Nhien left home after his father fell into a road erosion. His neck had dislocated, his head discovered lying in a direction facing us, as if trying to warn us about something coming towards us from the river. The night before, he had gone out to close the water-gate so that salt would not intrude into the rice fields in the rising tide. From then on, Nhien had to help his mom care for his younger brother, so he became a worker at the great bridge construction site. The day Nhien left, he brought me a small bitter-gourd vine planted in a chipped red mud pot and asked me to let it climb on my home porch. “Eat more bitter gourd, it will cool you down in the summer... and give you nice skin.” His face turned red, and he waved goodbye.
A brownish wave swept through the rice paddy fields, turning greenish rice into a fallow dirt storm and dissolving into the sky. The river turned blue, or hungry, as grandma put it. That day my dad left home. Salt burned the rice plants, and we failed the harvest. Dad needed to find a way to feed us. Grandma made a caramelized fish sauce dip for us, which we had with some thin dried fish for our farewell meal; that was all we had left in the kitchen. The dip tasted bitter and salty, like dying plants. Mom squeezed my shoulders tight, but she would soon leave too, joining dad in the shoe factory where he was to work. Mom’s face gradually faded from view as the ferry carried her away from my arms.
As we poured our hair into the river for a bath, I asked grandma why everyone had left. Grandma ignored my question and said the flood would return soon to bring back everything we had missed. I had almost forgotten how the flood looked. It was as if he had never been my brother.
***
The pale man announced that the drought season would end soon because they had broken the dams. They forgot that they were the ones who had put them up in the first place, the ones that had made my little brother flood leave us. Freshwater would return anytime to wash out the salt intrusion, the pale man assured. The crowd welcomed him with noisy applause, which echoed into the water. The pale man walked past my house, giving grandma a box of instant noodles, so that the TV crew could shoot a scene with him saving us poor people from the drought. On TV, grandma was labelled, “Mrs. Xuan – giant-flood survivor”. The pale man touched my shoulder with his greasy octopoid fingers and said that I looked fully-grown and abundant.
Grandma stopped walking about after her TV appearance. When they asked her how she had felt about receiving aid, she kept murmuring that the pale man had betrayed and killed the river. The beautiful TV journalist muted grandma’s voice. A voiceover described how the old lady was moved to tears by the city’s relief for the poor villagers.
I devoured the instant noodles that had been left as aid for us with boiled water from the river and asked for more, but grandma said we needed to be frugal because that month mom had been laid off, and dad could not send us much money. I regretted not having some sesban flowers in the noodle soup since the road erosion had brought down that flower tree with Nhien’s father years ago.
I erected a temporary coconut leaf shade in the front yard and put grandma’s bed outside. She could sit up and enjoy the river breeze as she looked out from bed. Grandma asked me to wash my hair by the river and to ask the water when the flood would return, but I disobeyed. The river smelled funky with the new sewage from the paper factory on the other side. My little bitter gourd-vine was lanky and tired in the incessant hot breeze. I touched its waving leaves and recalled Nhien’s voice from the neighbor's house.
Dad sent some cash home through the ferryman and asked me to buy a water purifier. I boiled the filtered water with lemon leaves and ginger to wash grandma’s greasy hair. In the water bucket, the white hair stream trembled as if it was calling for something. Grandma drowsed, and her hair waved about like a cloud in the front yard. I sniffed her hair, doubting suddenly the story I had been told as a child of grandma rescuing the village in the giant flood.
All the water-gates were left open. They looked like monstrous gaping mouths of greedy creatures waiting to swallow their prey. On the way back from school, I shouted into the draining river, hoping the flood would hear and return home with me, bringing the silver fish home, and splashing water on my feet. A pair of giant eyes emerged from the muddy water. They gazed at me sadly and re-submerged as a speedboat howled and sped past.
I asked grandma if the river had giant eyes. Grandma nodded. Her own eyes were watery.
***
I saw Nhien die on TV; or that was how it appeared to me: his crushed body being pulled out of a great bridge which had collapsed at the construction site. His long curly hair was caked with blood and his eyes were closed tight, as if they had never before been open. His orange worker’s uniform was torn apart by the liquid concrete and sharp metal poles which had rained on him and 52 other men. That night grandma asked me to sleep with her because she felt cold.
The pale man tried looking for Nhien’s house, his crew of admirers trailing after him. He asked me where the house was. When I pointed my finger towards Nhien’s funeral service next door, he complimented me, saying that my skin was smooth like porcelain. Nhien’s body was held in the provincial hospital. The coffin was empty, and I stared into it through the whole prayer session. I couldn’t recall how he looked; I could only see his hair, covered in blood. His mother begged the pale man to return the body so that she could pray for him to rest in peace. The pale man looked at the camera and said that all the victims of the accident would find justice, and that the government would take care of their families. He left without looking back at Nhien’s mother, kneeling on the dirt floor.
***
Grandma’s cold did not end in spite of the sweating summer. The heat drowned me in a restless sleep. In a dream, I saw grandma throw her hair downstream and ask me to tie my hair to hers. The weight of our hair caused the water level to rise, and I floated further and further away from home. Grandma spoke to me through her hair, telling me that she was taking me to the land of giant catfish. The strands of hair pulled me towards a swift stream. I could see the collapsed bridge from afar, where it had been broken into three huge pieces. One fragment thrust into the riverbed, leaning against the middle pier. Grandma’s hair pulled me towards the dock, wrapping me in a sealed cocoon before submerging me into the pitch-dark liquid body of water.
I opened my eyes, rough skin rubbing against my cheek. A creature had crept up like a submarine. Sitting up, I recognized the desolate eyeballs gazing at me in the muddy water. My arms and legs stuck to the creature’s viscous skin, and I gradually shrank into the posture of an unborn baby. The creature swam gently towards a speck of light from above. We emerged to the surface, below the bridge pier. The neon light from the thrusting deck fragments glared at us. Next to the collapsed foundation was the place where rescuers had pulled Nhien out of the wreckage. I wondered if the fish had witnessed the accident, and she said yes. She saw the concrete structure shrug four times before it let loose the deck. Nhien was far ahead, near the breaking point, so she couldn’t help. But she said Nhien did not feel much pain.
My hand slipped off her slimy skin as she stopped abruptly near the river bank. From there, I saw a patch of the village road shrug and gently dip into the river. Some light from the motorcycles and bicycles fell sharply into the gaping mouth of water and asphalt teeth. The river quivered and a hole opened within it, through which I was brought back to the night Nhien’s father passed years ago. He was there walking down to the delicate soil edge. He dipped a hand into the water and tasted it on his finger. That night he said salt was coming and our crops would die if it was not stopped. Suddenly, the earth crumbled and rushed towards him in enormous piles as if an invisible monster was gnawing off a huge piece of the shore, crushing him in its anger.
My hands trembled as I tried to reach for his dying face, but the fish plunged into another hole, bringing me through a narrow tunnel, filling my lungs with throbbing grief. When she ascended to the surface, I saw my island and the stilt house, where grandma was sitting, looking in my direction. I waved at her and slipped off the creature’s back. She slowly sank back into the muddy water. In a startling drop from the surface, my eyes cracked open. Grandma was there; her wrinkled hands embraced me tightly in my bed. She breathed slowly as if she was taking a dive into the hair river. My arms were sticky with the slime from the creature’s body. I had been sleeping next to her all that time.
***
“I had a companion in the flood,” Grandma whispered into my ear as I peeled a banana for her. “The giant catfish told me that the village needed help, so I poured my hair down the river. She swam and grabbed those who had washed too far from my reach. She clutched children who had fainted, and old men climbed on her back, as she swam endlessly back and forth while I continued to throw my hair out for those who managed to cling on. We fished out over three hundred people. She said we would see each other again when the river was upset.”
I counted the number of years and thought the fish must be older than grandma.
***
My baby brother flood returned without notice. He had grown into a daring man. I felt his cold splashes tickle my feet as I was studying my algebra exercises. I walked out to the riverfront and saw a water-gate moving towards our house from the dirt road. It was carried by a gray muddy wave. I put grandma on my back and quickly climbed up the abandoned platforms near the roof. I put her on an old pillow that we must have left up there years ago. I watched my brother’s return with great amazement. He submerged the dead brown rice field. He carried away the concrete embankment grasping to the riverbank like an ugly scar. Grandma rambled, “Save... save the fish.”
I jumped downstairs and ran out. I yelled to alert the neighbors. My baby brother flood told me that I should not be afraid. He was just passing by on a playful day because Mother river was thirsty and missing him a lot. I ran through his muscular body to the narrow mouth of the drainage system. The water-gate was blown away. Water poured out like a festival, orchestrated by my baby brother flood’s return.
People swam desperately in the rapids. Nhien’s mother was washed towards the tail of the island. Nhien’s younger brother gripped onto a piece of barbed wire covered by a climbing luffa tree. His hand started to bleed, and he let go. I took off my hair tie and poured my hair into the river. My hair wove him into a cocoon and flowed towards his mother’s arms. The hair strapped around her chest and pulled her towards me, so that I managed to put them back on the broken concrete road.
Suddenly a deep moan surfaced. I ran toward the narrow channel mouth. An enormous, grey, black, and white creature was blocking my brother flood’s body. She struggled to swim through the channel, her oversized head stuck in its middle. Blood was coming out from the tender forehead that I had laid on the other night. Her eyes looked at me with recognition.
My hair flowed by and embraced her sturdy fins, strapping around her body several times to ensure that they would be safe. She was beating her body against the mud banks to enlarge the channel. I walked towards the broader side of the canal, pulling her with all my strength. The soil and rock savagely cut into her skin and body. I couldn’t move her at all. My brother flood was preoccupied with his game. I shouted for his help.
My brother flood stroked my hair and rose higher and higher. Reaching the channel mouth, he flooded the island and lifted the fish with him. He swept her into the mother river with a strong throw and covered the houses and me in a thick surge of muddy water.
Grandma, my hair rescued the fish, and my brother flood returned to see us. We are not alone anymore.
I found myself floating in my baby brother’s arms, rushing toward the river mouth. He was bringing me to Grandma ocean, where all our brothers and sisters through the thousands of years could be found.
[1] Cá tra dầu: Vietnamese name, the legendary giant catfish in the Mekong River. They can swim through four or five countries and stay in deep water hole in Tonle Sap (Cambodia) or Mekong Delta (Vietnam)
Khải Đơn (Pham Lan Phuong) is a Vietnamese writer inspired by the Mekong River in South East Asia. Her work has appeared or is appearing in Orion Magazine and The Architectural Review. She won the Academy of American Poets/Virginia de Araujo Prize, 2021, at San Jose State University (USA).
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