Chapter 20: Chapter 19 – a Secret Shortcut We Can Take to Make It Quick to Get Home

Aunt Bebe skips into the street to hail a cyclo. The driver pedals his cyclo faster and stops in front of us.

Aunt Bebe says, "Please drive us to Market Square first, and wait for us while we shop."

At the market, I keep looking at the mannequins wearing girl clothes in a store window, and Mom's also looking at the window. Mom pulls my hand to lead me away from the store.

"Let's come inside the store to look around a bit," Aunt Bebe says.

A lady comes to the front of the store. "Hi, Bebe. Are you looking for any clothes in particular?"

Aunt Bebe smiles brightly. "Hi, Sen. How does it feel to run your own business? My niece, Mai, admires the clothes in your store window, so I take her in here to take a good look around."

The owner looks at Aunt Bebe, and then at Mom. "I would like to show Mai the clothes that just came in." She takes my hand and leads me around the store. She takes a shirt and a pair of pants from the same clothing rack and hands them to me. "I'm sure these will look good on you. Please go into that fitting room over there and put them on."

I come out and walk toward Aunt Bebe and Mom. They smile and nod.

Aunt Bebe pulls out some bills from her purse and gives them to the store owner while looking at me. "Mai, the clothes look good on you. Keep them on. You're going to meet your cousin for the first time."

Mom looks at Aunt Bebe. "You're being so kind to us."

"It's all right, Thu. You can pay me back later," Aunt Bebe says.

The cyclo driver drops us off in front of Aunt Nina's house, its front yard looking like a landscaped park. Through the wrought iron gate, I see a plump woman sitting on a rock bench under a white beech tree, sipping coffee. In the middle of the yard, a water fountain flows into its ten bowls arranged at different levels. Marble frogs and turtles affixed to the bowls' edge spew water from their mouths, water lilies float in the bowls, and big gleaming goldfish swim among the flowers.

Aunt Bebe calls through the gate, "Nina, guess who's coming? Here are Thu and her daughter, Mai. They come to visit you and your son. Mai is so excited to meet her cousin, Nam."

Aunt Nina looks up, puts her coffee cup down, and scrambles to get on her feet, smiling broadly. She opens the gate and immediately puts her arms around Mom and me, and holds us for a long moment. Then she calls toward a boy standing in the front doorway, "Nam, come out here and meet Aunt Thu and your cousin, Mai."

He comes and stands beside me. "Hi, Cousin Mai." 

I stare at him. "Hi, Cousin Nam. I'm happy to meet you. Now I know where you live, and I'll ask Mom to come here to visit more often."

Aunt Nina says, "Oh, yes. Please do. You're welcome any time, and we'll come to visit you. Please do come to our house."

When we're in the house, a maid brings out Mooncakes and tea served on a silver tea set.

After half an hour, Mom says, "It's so nice to be here. We'd love to stay here longer, but I'm so sorry that we are in a great hurry today. I got an order to make a roast pig for a wedding tomorrow. We came here to buy a pig for roasting. But we'll come back to visit you another day, soon."

Cousin Nam says, "Ma, why don't you stay home with the aunts? I'll show Mai around the city, and then take her to get a pig."

Mom puts money in my hand. "Pay for the pig with the money."

When we're outside, Nam says, "Where do you live, Mai?"

"Near the Skyscraper Tree by the Gold Nuggets River."

Nam brightens up. "Oh, really? I know where it is. I've been there a few times with friends. I even know a shortcut through a dried-up culvert to get there."

"Can we go to the Jungle View Farm to get a pig?" I say.

Nam says, "Okay, sure. The farm is on the bank of the Mekong Delta River. After we get a pig, do you want us to walk it through the shortcut to your house?"

I say, "Wow, that's amazing. Okay, take the shortcut. Will we walk through it again to go back to your house?

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Nam nods and walks toward an open shed, and pulls out a wooden tow cart with wheels and pulling rope loops. "We'll put the pig on this cart, and pull it through the culvert. By the way, the Mekong Delta region is the land of adventures. I'll take you on adventurous excursions when you have more time."

"Oh, Cousin Nam, I'll make time for it. And I'll bring my friends along if that's OK with you."

At the Jungle View Farm, a girl about my age stops playing and yells, "Mom, you get customers."

A woman comes out of a house and walks toward us. The girl comes and stands beside me, grabbing my hand. "Do you want to go to a pigsty of Kobe pigs to pet them?"

I scrunch up my nose.  "Yuck, they are too dirty to pet."

Her mom chuckles. "No, these are the specially raised Kobe pigs, and they must be kept clean and healthy, to make the good quality marbling in their meat. 

"How much does one Kobe pig cost if I buy it?" I say.

"$450," the girl says.

"How much does one common pig cost?" I say.

The mother says, "$45. The marbling in the meat of a common pig is not so well defined as that of a Kobe pig."

I say, "Do your common pigs eat the slops collected from a field market? A man shoveling the slops at the market told me that."

The woman says, "Yes, to keep the costs down."

I buy a common pig. We set it in a crouching position on the cart, and tie it so that it can't stand up. Cousin Nam and I pull the cart by the rope loops into the culvert. Where the passageway in the culvert slants down, we use our strength to restrain the wheels from rolling too fast, to prevent the pig from falling over. The culvert comes out right near the Skyscraper Tree.

Nam stares at the high wall beside our house. "You know, your neighborhood used to be an army base. Sometimes my friends and I come to play at this long wall, at a section a mile from your house. We dared one another to walk on the wall. But I dare not walk on it again."

"So you walked on it before?" I say.

"Yes, once. I took one step, but got scared and sat down straddling the wall."

I clap my hand, delighted. "At least it was the first step. Did any of your friends take more than one step?"

"Yes, one friend did. The guy climbed onto a tree and got on top of the wall. He took two steps, and then grabbed a tree branch and climbed down it, crying. 

Nam leads the pig into my front yard and leashes it to a big rock in a corner. "You can keep this cart. I'll make another one for myself."

We take the same culvert shortcut to go back to Nam's house.

When we get back, Mom and the aunts look at us. "Where's the pig?" Mom says. 

Nam says, "At your house, Aunt Thu. We walked the pig through a shortcut to your house."

Before we leave, Mom promises that we will come back to visit them again soon.

Outside the house, Mom says, "How did you two get to our house and back so quick?"

"Mom, Cousin Nam knows the quickest route to our house. It's through a dried-up culvert that branches off the Mekong Delta River. We walked the pig home using this route."

Although Mom is reluctant, she agrees to take the shortcut to go home. When we get out of the culvert, Mom is so delighted. "I don't feel comfortable going through the culvert, but only do it when necessary."

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