Raindrops on His Shoulders:
Tống Ngọc Hân

It is the last Tết that Mắn will celebrate with her family. Afterward, Mắn, a Hmong woman, will marry Chá, a Dao man from Hồng Ngài, a remote mountainous village in Ý Tý, where there are Dao people, old forests, and cardamom plants. Chá’s family has grown wealthy thanks to the annual harvest of cardamom.

Nobody knows why Dao women never marry Hmong men even though their villages stand next to each other. When asked, Mắn’s mother explains, “Probably because our cultures are too different, or because at one time, our communities had feuds and prejudices.”

None of Mắn’s friends or relatives marry Hmong men, and Mắn does not know why she has chosen Chá from the several men who proposed to her, especially when Chá had been married once before. Their engagement took place last week, and the shaman picked the most auspicious date for the Phàns to marry their daughter off to the Thàos. Mắn’s family is by no means poor, earning a few hundred million đồng each cardamom season, which helps them achieve a respected position in the village. The Phàns are a big clan, and Mắn is as beautiful as any other girl in Chu Lìn, and soon she will become Chá’s wife.

“Do you love Chá?” asks Chanh, Mắn’s younger sister, during dinner.

“No. Not yet.” Mắn shakes her head.

“Then why are you marrying him?” Chanh inquires. “You know you don’t have to, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must want to please someone in our family. Is it Dad?”

Mắn does not answer Chanh’s question, instead urging her sister to go to bed.

In the morning, the two sisters go into the forest to chop two big bundles of wood to bring back to the village. Chanh is eighteen, and Mắn has just turned twenty. Both of them dropped out of school after the ninth grade. In Chu Lìn, they are considered to have received more than enough education, compared to most girls. Her mother once said to her, “If I add up the number of school days that your grandparents, your dad, and I had, it’s still less than the number of days you spent in school.” In their family, only Mẩy, Mắn’s older sister, finished high school. She then got married and had children. Mẩy married a man in Pa Cheo, but he is a drug addict and the government committed him to a treatment camp a few months ago.

During the Tết holiday, lots of wood is needed to cook holiday specialties for the people and their livestock, as well as to keep guests and elderly family members warm. Thus, when preparing for Tết, the ethnic minority villagers are more concerned about having enough wood than about having enough wine or meat. This is Chanh and Mắn’s last wood-collecting trip and they need to give their machetes a break.

When they return home, Mắn notices a strange scene: a large cauldron of water boiling above a roaring fire and a slaughtered pig strung over a basin of pig blood. Why did Dad slaughter the pig so early this year? Mắn says to herself. Today is only the twenty-sixth!

Mắn’s mother sees her two daughters returning from the woods and rushes out. She looks cheerful and speaks in a whisper, “Your sister Mẩy just gave birth to a baby. It’s a boy, and she’ll move back here to live with us.”

“Why does she want to come back here? Where’s she now, Mom?” asks Mắn, thinking it unusual.

“She’s on her way here. She called early this morning and told us to get ready to welcome her newborn. Hurry up! Give me a hand.”

“Let me take a shower first. I stink,” Mắn says and rushes off to get her clothes.

The best wood is found deep in the forest, and the wood collected for Tết must be of the highest quality. The government permits Mắn’s family to harvest from the forest and also allows them to trim the dry cardamom branches to use as kindling after the plants are picked. Mắn and Chanh had to leave at dawn, and they took along large balls of rice to keep them nourished. They chopped wood all afternoon, slept in a tent at night, and returned early that morning.

Mắn emerges from her shower and sees her father striking the wooden boards directly outside Mắn and Chanh’s bedroom with a machete. He seems very aware of the noise he is making and uses a piece of charcoal to mark three consecutive planks. Mắn has no idea how he is able to remove the three marked pieces of wood so quickly and then lean them up against a langsat tree. Her father has taken them off to make a new door for Mẩy and her newborn to enter the house through. Mắn and Chanh must give their older sister Mẩy their bedroom and sleep in the kitchen.

Nobody knows when the Dao people in this region started the practice of not allowing women to enter a house’s main entrance after giving birth. If there is no side door, a new entrance to the nursery chamber will be made by removing a few wooden planks from the wall. The new mother will use the new entrance for an entire month. Many families leave the new entrance open to the elements from the time a woman goes into labor until she gives birth, and then they cover it with a new door. Thus, when building a house, carpenters often leave a few planks loose and mark them so they can be removed easily when needed. If the marks fade over time, the owner of the house needs only to knock on the wall and listen, as Mắn’s father has just done. The planks are like humans—they can talk.

Mắn grows introspective. If she gets married right after Tết, she will have her first child at this same time next year, just like her sister. But she doesn’t know where she will be when she gives birth to her son or daughter—at her husband’s home or her parents’. Will her parents-in-law be kind to her? If she gives birth at her parents’, her mother will boil water with medicinal leaves for her to bathe in, as she is doing now for Mẩy. This will put more of a burden on her mother, and the villagers will surely offer their judgmental opinions. She hopes that her parents-in-law will love her as much as her own parents do. Dao mothers are often like that: they prepare leaves for their daughter-in-law right after she gives birth. Leaves for bathing. Leaves for drinking. Leaves for eating. In her free time, Mắn’s mother often collects medicinal leaves to sell and instructs her customers on how to use them properly. But Mắn cannot remember all her mother has done or said.

Mẩy, three years older than Mắn, has been married for three years. In the past, she seldom came back to visit, as if she feared marrying a drug addict had crushed her father’s hopes. She would often return home right before Tết and gave her father a few liters of San Lùng wine and her mother a new scarf, a few pounds of pork, and water-buffalo meat as New Year gifts. Her father seemed not to appreciate them. Mắn and her entire family knew that he desperately wanted a son, but her mother was unable to have another child after Chanh was born.

Her mother paces in and out of their house anxiously. The door has been made. The pig has been slaughtered. Some chickens’ legs have been tied for later slaughter. The scent of the medicinal leaves is filling the air. The family is waiting for Mẩy to arrive with her newborn. Mắn’s grandparents do not seem pleased with the situation. In Chu Lìn, few married women come back with their children to live with their parents and grandparents. If they do, they will build a new house nearby. No one has behaved like Mẩy—she is coming back with a newborn that will keep everyone up all night with his crying. How will the family save face in front of their Tết visitors who will see diapers fluttering in the wind to dry?

At noon, well after the sun has burned the fog off the mountains, Mẩy’s brother-in-law arrives at the gate with Mẩy and her two children on his motorcycle. The family rushes out. Mẩy holds the baby in her arms, lowers her head, and mutters greetings to everyone. The baby’s face is fully covered except for his eyes, but he is too busy sleeping to open them anyway.

Mắn’s paternal grandfather is known for being difficult to please. Traditionally, the Dao people spend months preparing an elaborate ceremony to welcome a newborn boy. Witnessed by the gods, their ancestors, and a shaman, they must be extremely careful in naming him.

“Why is she coming back with her newborn on the twenty-sixth, right before Tết, and with only two hours’ notice?” asks Mắn’s grandfather. “What’s going on with her husband’s family? Why are they treating their grandson with such little kindness? Do they think the gods live too far away to notice and the shaman is useless? Have they lost their minds?”

Per custom, Mẩy and the baby enter the maternity chamber through the new entrance. It is temporarily covered with a canvas that she pushes aside to walk through.

The baby now squalls ceaselessly but his skin is glowing. Mắn’s mother pulls up his shirt to take a look at his bandaged navel and says, “May the gods witness! Look at his round belly and skin. He’ll grow up very fast. We’ll celebrate Tết early this year to welcome you.”

Mắn knows that her mother is trying to direct everyone’s attention to Tết so that they will be less irritated about having new family members.

The baby is well behaved during the daytime, but he bawls constantly through the night. When the roosters start crowing, he is still bawling. He only takes a break from screaming for thirty minutes and then starts up again, as if something is irritating him. Mẩy tries to force him to nurse, but he flat-out refuses. In the morning, when everybody gets out of bed, exhausted from a sleepless night, the baby closes his eyes and sleeps. As Tết approaches, there is so much to do, and everyone works all day long, which aggravates their lack of sleep. Chanh stares at the baby snoozing under a mosquito net and says sarcastically, “Sleep well so you can torment your mother at night.”

With heavy arms, Mắn soaks bundles of bamboo strings in water to soften them to tie bánh chưng, sticky-rice wrapped in banana leaves. Her grandparents sit next to the fire with bloodshot eyes. A cat sits between them, also exhausted. Every now and then, her grandmother nods unconsciously. It is a pitiful scene. Mẩy asks Mắn to look after her baby for a while. Mẩy covers herself carefully and runs out to buy something. She comes back an hour later, and thankfully, the baby is still asleep.

That night, the baby sleeps well. He only mewls a little every now and then as though he has heard all the adults’ complaints. He sleeps well for three consecutive nights, and Mắn’s mother is obviously elated and offers flattering words to everybody in the family.

Mắn’s father invites Chá over for the family’s year-end dinner. Chá is in his early thirties and works as a physician in the village’s clinic. At dinner, Mắn’s father tactfully invites Chá to move in with Mắn’s family after the wedding. Everyone at the dinner table is astonished.

“Dad, what are you talking about?” Mắn says, irritably. “Chá would never move in with us. His family’s affluent.”

A couple moves in with the wife’s family only if the husband is destitute. In this region, thanks to cardamom, no man is so poor that he cannot afford to offer engagement presents to the bride’s family and no man needs to move in with his wife’s family. Chá and Mắn’s wedding date has been scheduled for the fifth of February.

Mắn looks at her father as if trying to remind him it is not the right time to talk about this.

Her mother also wants to direct her father’s conversation elsewhere, suggesting, “It’s the Tết holiday. Let’s talk about delightful things.”

To her mother, this means the slaughter of their smallest pig to celebrate the Lunar New Year. The bigger ones with less fat will be saved for Mắn’s wedding. Another subject of conversation is how this year’s cardamom price is higher than last year’s, and her parents will soon build a new house. Only after bringing up these positive things does her mother mention Mẩy’s return and her baby: “The baby only cried the first night he came out of his mother’s womb, and since then he’s slept without disturbance.”

After dinner, when everyone is gathering around the living-room table drinking tea, Chá appears restless and asks for permission to visit the baby. Mắn’s father waves his hand in rejection, saying, “No, you can’t. Dao people have a custom. No man can visit a new mother’s chamber until a month after she has given birth. Even family can’t break this custom. And you’re our guest.”

“Am I just your guest?” Chá smiles and asks. “After the wedding, I’ll live here with you. Will you still consider me a guest then?”

Mắn’s grandfather is so surprised that he puts down the bowl of rice wine he is about to sip. Mắn’s father grows excited and holds Chá’s hand, insisting, “Say it one more time. You will move in with us?”

“Of course!” Chá replies honestly. “I’ve told my family about your request, and my parents are perfectly fine with it. Please let me take a look at the baby.”

“Let our son-in-law see the baby,” Mắn’s mother says. “He’s a physician.”

Mắn now understands why her father is so fond of Chá—because Chá has many brothers and Chá can become “his son.”

It is the first time the electric light in the nursery chamber is turned on. For the last five days, an oil lamp has been the only source of light. After taking a look at the baby’s belly and face, Chá picks him up and examines the bottles of medicine Mẩy keeps in the basket that contains his clothes. Chá says something very softly that Mắn cannot hear clearly from outside the room. Mắn sees Mẩy lower her head and wipe tears from her face.

Chá exits the nursery chamber and takes a seat in a chair. After drinking a bowl of water boiled with leaves, Chá seems to regain his composure and stares into the yard for a long while, although the darkness makes it impossible to see anything. “Dark as the night of New Year’s Eve,” as the saying goes.

Finally, Chá speaks.

“Do you know why the baby stopped crying and now sleeps so well? His mother made him drink sleeping syrup for kids, which is not good for newborns. He was crying because he needed to grow accustomed to the new environment. Once he does, he will be fine. If he persists for more than a few more days, we’ll need to take him to a doctor. When you allow Mẩy and her newborn to stay with you here, you need to accept the fact that there will be some changes to your daily life. His mother probably didn’t want the baby to disturb everyone’s sleep, so she made him drink the syrup every night . . .”

Nobody says a word. Mắn’s mother rushes into the chamber and bluntly, but compassionately, says to Mẩy, “Why are you so foolish, my dear?”

Chá has to return before the New Year countdown, so no one dares ask him any questions. Mắn’s father sees his son-in-law off at the gate and holds Chá’s hands tightly as if he doesn’t want Chá to leave. When he comes back inside, the sound of Chá’s motorbike has not yet begun to fill the darkness. Mắn slowly walks out from her room. Since Chá arrived, she and Chá have not had a chance for a private word. During his visit, Mắn, every now and then, has secretly looked at her fiancé and caught him glancing at her as well.

Mắn walks to the gate and approaches Chá’s motorbike. She stands next to him, and although she keeps an appropriate distance, she can feel the warmth coming from his body, and her face turns red.

“It’ll be this way just a little longer,” Chá says comfortingly.

“Go home,” Mắn says as she pushes Chá’s shoulder. “Look, the rain has made your jacket wet.”

“I can’t leave unless you do something,” Chá suggests endearingly.

Mắn comes a bit closer to Chá.

“Come closer,” he insists affectionately.

She steps forward, leaving just enough space for her to burrow her face against Chá’s back.

Mắn cannot remember what Chá said at that moment. Her feelings are indescribable. It feels as though she doesn’t walk with her legs back to her house—as though some kind of affectionate silence had carried her away for a long while and just then brought her back to the veranda. Inside, the five-day-old baby is whimpering to express his sulkiness with his mother.