*** Bits and pieces, beware the grammar, punctuation, and spelling ***
Mrs. Thieu fought the urge to scream, asking God to lift them off this miserable life. But she knew from experience, there wouldn’t be an answer. Just like the day when Mr. Thieu took his family to Ca Mao and asked her family in marriage, after a match-maker had arranged.
While her parents, chatting with the guess, Mrs. Thieu in the back-room on her desk, with homework lied across the table, lite by a wax candle, praying to Buddha – hoping that her parents would allow her to at least finished high school; either postpone the marriage or cancel it all together.
Cancel it altogether would be best, young Mrs. Thieu implored.
Before marriage, Mrs. Thieu went by the name Tam. The middle child. Her parents own a small fishing stall at the Cao Mao Market. The 3 sisters took turns helping out the family business. The competition with people similar merchandise was fierce. And promoting the business turned each of Tam’s sisters into an extrovert, selling machine: noisy, clamorous and competitive. The family weren’t rich, they had the necessary means to get by. Of the 3 sisters, Tam was the quiet one. She lived more in her head than anything else. During the many days at the stall, she would read instead of coax grocery-shoppers into buying the many catfish she on the table. Tam would often found herself lost in the many material art heroes genre, Chinese fictions depicting the adventures of martial artist. Her favorite author was Jin Yong. Many of Jin Yong stories carried Tam to ancient times, where heroes didn’t serve any Kings or Queen, any military influences, nor belong to a higher class. Often they were from a lower, peasant, serf class, bound by honor to do the right things, fight for what was truth, and defend the un-defendable.
Tam fantasied herself traveling up the mountain and lost in a Tomb of the living dead, where she found the Nine Yang Manual. And with it she mastered the Nine Yang style. She would travel place to place, helping the weak, and defended the righteous – she dreamt of traveling the world. And seeing the little blue marble that God had given to mankind.
One day I would travel to Ha Giang, the last city in the north of Vietnam, Tam often said to herself, I would visit the many cities along the way, meet new people, and seeing exotic locales.
Chasing such a dream had Tam save the little money that she could. A little ceramic piggy bank could be found near her sleeping area, and within it, were some of the monies that Tam was able to cultivate from odd jobs here and there; all in a hope to save enough so on her 16 birthday she would give such a present to herself – traveling around the country, exploring. But on her birthday, Tam daydream got crushed by a news delivered by her mother; she would be married to a man from Sa Dec.
Tam pleaded, but her effort was futile. She was too young, too inexperience to know better. The life of marriage in her mind were that of a close up, because of children and responsibilities. Worse of it all, as woman in a third world country, where a believes that once a woman wed off she was now belong to the groom, and his family; the bride never to set foot again in her home. Why such discrimination exist? One could assume because it was the man that runs the world, and for some odd reason these men had forgotten who gave them life.
We need to save face, we can’t do that, We’ve accept their endowment, those were the reason her parents told her. But the real reason, she heard in secret a few days later when her dad told a friends that having a girl is like having a time bomb – you never know when it’s going to blowup: having babies. Tam cried like a funeral on her wedding day. Deep down inside she promised to herself that, she would never let her children married at such a young age. They would all get a proper education. Then they would see the world, and do things that they dreamt of. But after 16 years, the irony came back to her. Her oldest child would soon getting married the same ages as she did.
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