Chapter 19: Chapter 18 – I Didn’t Know I Had a Cousin

Mom and I walk in the woods behind our house. At the side of the riverbed where I catch crabs, a coffee tree heavy with berries stands beside an oak tree.

Mom says, "It will be nice to have a cup of freshly ground coffee, with the aromatic beans from these berries."

I say, "And better yet, I can make coffee with the beans from these berries, and sell the coffee. I will ask the old woman at the flea market to let me sell coffee at her stand."

Mom says, "Wait here, I'll be right back."

She runs back home, and comes back holding empty rice sacks, saying, "We'll put the coffee berries in these bags."

I take the bags from Mom's hands, saying, "Mom, you stay down here. I'll climb up the tree to pick the berries. Each time a bag is filled, I'll drop it down to you."

When I get on the coffee tree, squirrels are chasing one another on the branches, chattering noisily. They scurry to the higher branches, rattling the leaves. I pick the ripe berries and put them in a bag. When it's full, I pull the strings and tie it up, and drop it down. The loaded bag breaks the leaves and twigs as it falls, and whips up a cloud of dirt when it lands on the ground.

Then I open the next bag, pick the berries and drop them into the bag. 

I have the last bag to fill. I peer at the higher branches to look for more ripe berries. A squirrel sits on a branch thick with plump berries directly above my head. The berries sway as the squirrel plucks them with its front paws, and eats the meat of the berries, dropping the coffee beans on the ground.

I reach my hand up to the berries. Scratch, scratch. I say, "Well, really! Angry squirrel!" Lucky for me, the squirrel scratches my sleeve, but not on my hand.

Clusters of acorns dangling on the oak tree beside the coffee tree, I yell, pointing to the oak tree, "You are on the wrong tree, squirrel! Go eat the acorns." 

The squirrel makes a high-pitched sound and chatters its teeth. Other squirrels come to join the alerting squirrel, and together they munch on the berries in a defiant manner, ignoring me.

I must get rid of the squirrels. I stomp on my branch to scare them off, but the branch snaps and hangs from the bark that has peeled off the trunk but still clinging to the trunk. I fling myself onto another branch, catching it with one hand. As I pull myself up on the next branch, the broken branch breaks off the tree and falls to the ground, scattering the berries.

The squirrels scuttle to the tips of the branches of the coffee tree, fling themselves onto the oak tree, and immediately gnaw away the shell of the acorns.

I filled the last bag, tie the strings, and drop the bag down. Mom puts all the coffee bags together at an almost hidden passage in a bush, at the side of the haunted house. 

A mother monkey darts out of the bush and stops in front of us, its eyes watching us. It's holding a baby monkey in its mouth, with the baby's tail flapping at one side of the mother's mouth, and the baby's tiny head poking out at the other side. The mother monkey sprints to the haunted house

I start toward the passage. "Where does this passage go?"

"Believe me, you don't want to know. Don't tell anyone about it either," Mom says.

Mom's iPhone starts ringing, and she talks on the phone. She turns her phone off, saying, "Mrs. Loan is in urgent need of a roast pig for her daughter's wedding tomorrow. She has asked me to make a roast pig. We have to go to a pig farm to get a pig. I've hired Mrs. Tam to butcher the pig. We'll roast it this evening."

We take a bus to the Mekong Delta and then walk to the farm known for selling pigs at good prices. We pass by a farmers' market, and it's at the end of the market day. There's a pile of discarded vegetable trimmings and fish entrails on the ground, and a farmer wearing a straw hat is shoveling the food waste onto his two-wheeled cart.

"Excuse me, Sir, what do you do with the food waste?" I say. 

"My wife turns food waste into slop for the pigs on our farm. Our pigs are for sale," he says.

"What's the name of your farm?" I say.

He has filled up the cart, and starts pulling it away by the handlebars, saying, "Jungle View Farm." 

The farmer has left. As we stand looking around, a stout woman pushes a cart that carries a jute bag with something wriggling in it towards us. She says, "You can get this pig for cheap." 

I look at the furiously wriggling bag and imagine I would be suffocating in it.

"How much does the pig weigh?" Mom says.

"It weighs 120 pounds. I want 30 dollars for it." The woman says.

"Wow! It's about 25 cents per pound. You should buy it, Mom."

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The woman smiles and points towards the foot of a nearby tree, saying, "I have one more pig over there. If you want, you can get both pigs for $45."

The bag at the tree doesn't wriggle, but it shivers. 

Mom pulls me aside, saying, "Mai, stay here with the woman so that she won't leave. I'll go to borrow some more money from Aunt Bebe, to buy both pigs, and in case we run into more good deals. But don't go away with anyone. Run away if there's a problem."

I don't like the look of the pig kicking in the bag. It would be terrible if it were me fumbling inside of it. Maybe the pig is actually a kid. She may kidnap me, put me in a bag, and sell me off at another market. I decide to stay at a safe distance and be ready to run away as soon as she starts to act weird.

I sidle away from her and move to the roadside to pick flowers, all the while keeping my eye on her. But I must try to find out whether or not a kid is actually inside the bag. I come back to the cart, and prod the bag with my fingers, hoping whatever is in the bag will make some sound, but it makes no sound. The woman is looking toward the road, and I put my face close to the bag. Whatever in the bag kicks vigorously, and I receive a kick in the face, right above my right eye. Zillions of colorful stars shooting out from my eye into space, I reel back and rub my eye.

The woman puts one hand on my shoulder, pointing her other hand to the road. "Oh, here she comes."

I don't look to where she's pointing. She must be trying to get me to look away, and snatch me when I let my guard down. I squirm to break free of her hand and crawl away and spring up as I catch some distance.

I dash over to a group of women who are picking pawpaw fruits from the trees on public land. They move their hands through the leaves and pluck the fruits, and put them in their soiled fabric bags. As I come near them, they raise their eyes with a look that freaks me out. I am afraid these people are conspiring with the pig vendor to kidnap me, so I run away. They laugh out loud. Creepy!

I run without looking to see where I'm going. I stop when my head collides with someone's body. I look up and see…"Mom!!!" I wail.

Mom rubs my head, waving the money in my face. "Are you ready to help me make roast pig tonight?"

I say nothing, just shaking my head. I feel bad for making us lose the opportunity to make a good profit from the pigs.

Mom stoops and looks closely at my face. "Oh, you have a little bump above your right eye. Are you OK? What happened? Is the woman still there?"

"Her pig kicked me from inside the bag. Let's go back to see if she's still around," I say.

We hurry back to her, but she's gone.

Mom looks upset, her face stiffened up, her lips pressed tight together, her mouth turned down at the corners. Then she opens her mouth. But before she says anything, I push the bunch of flowers toward her, and she smiles.

We stop at food stands, a rare treat. Mom has a bowl of steaming beef noodle soup called Pho. I have a plate of steamed rice crepes wrapped around a filling of ground pork and chopped mushrooms, garnished on top with bean sprouts and cinnamon basil. For refreshment, Mom gets Vietnamese iced coffee, and I get fresh coconut juice prepared by chopping off the top of a green coconut. I suck the refreshing juice through a straw, forgetting all about suckling pig.

We've finished our lunch. Mom says, "I want to return the money to Aunt Bebe, and then we'll go on to the Jungle View Farm to get a pig."

Aunt Bebe looks surprised upon seeing us. She says, "Oh, Thu, you've come back here with your daughter, my niece. And hi Mai, I haven't seen you in a long time. How you've grown." She embraces me.

Mom holds out money, saying, "Aunt Bebe, I want to return borrowed money to you."

Aunt Bebe straightens her posture and steps back. "Uh…Thu, why do you return the money so quickly? Don't you need it to buy the pigs?"

Standing with my head bowed and both my arms hanging at my sides, I turn to Aunt Bebe, saying, "Oh…Aunt Bebe, it's my fault. Mom told me to stay with the pig vendor so she wouldn't leave. But I was afraid she would kidnap me, so I ran away."

Aunt Bebe giggles, taking my hand and gently pinching my cheek. "When I was thirteen, I was always afraid of being kidnapped whenever I was left at home alone while Mama went to market."

She pulls out a ten-dollar bill from her shirt pocket and slides it into my hand. She turns to Mom, smiling. "Thu, you can pay me back later. Oh, by the way, do you remember our cousin Nina? She and her son have just moved from Da Nang and came here to live. Their house is only two miles away. If you and Mai want to go visit them now, I'll take you there."

"How old is her son?" I say.

"He's sixteen. His name's Nam," Aunt Bebe says.

I can't believe this. "Oh wow! I have a cousin. Mom, I want to visit them."

"Oh, yes. Let's go now," Mom says, looking happy.

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