The Vegetable Lady (2/11)

1977

On the way home from secretly collecting vegetables on the unused farm, I swung by the black market that operated on a train track. It was a modest place. When the Việt Cộng had 

cut off all transport to the countryside, the market gradually took over the space. The word “market” didn’t quite do the place justice. It wasn’t pitiful enough to be called a charity, but it wasn’t established enough to be called a business. It was what it was, and it worked. Thương, a young woman who had the mouth of a nagging grandma, made bowls of canh chua from a large pot, in exchange for half of any green vegetable. I made sure to be on good terms with her. She was the only one who would take my bitter melon, and the only one who knew how to cook it properly. Sometimes she would sneak some into the soup, masking the bitterness.

The stall owner, a frail relic, handed me the bundle of water spinach. However, I was looking less at the vegetables she was counting out, than at the flesh of her enveloped palms, which were scored and encrusted with dried blood and blistered. So many cuts and nicks. I realised that I was staring too intently and quickly put the leafy vegetable in my basket. When her gaze met mine she appeared wounded. 

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I can take this. I have nothing to exchange” I said.

“You go ahead and take as much as you want. The old lady’s going to die soon anyway. Better the spinach fall into your hands than the hands of the Communists.” At that moment, I could not help seeing in her eyes, the warmth and helplessness. Her small composition was much like a child’s, but the folds in her skin clearly proclaimed her years on this earth. 

I gave her a smile of gratitude and quickly gathered my things and headed off. One thing to note, is to never acknowledge somebody else’s weakness. Or at least, don’t let them see it. Vietnamese people like to convince themselves that everything is okay. Denial is what runs the nation now.

Deafening sirens invaded the humble market. Distorted voices of men overwhelmed the languid space. A flurry of heads turned towards the obnoxious police cars shoving themselves through and claiming their place in our space. Within half a minute after the third loud bang, it had turned the square into a warzone. We were like rats, scurrying around with no way of escaping. 

The guards came and raised their hands at the old lady. The communists were, what they claimed, here to protect the poor. And these people were the poorest of the poor. 

‘Oi!’ came a muffled voice, projected by a sort of broken microphone. 

I turned around and found a man dressed in a flimsy pickled green uniform with a sour frown on his face, storming toward me, as though he was ready to walk right through me. He wasn’t tall or particularly handsome either. He looked malnourished as we were, except he didn’t seem to mind much. Instead, he seemed to be wearing his hollow cheekbones and dark skin with pride. He wore it with too much pride. 

“Hey, brother! Writer! Maybe you can write a poem about my time with a prostitute. Only your gentle words will capture my intimate time. Hey! You!” 

I felt the breath of his words in my face; caught the smell of fish sauce from his lunch.

“What do you have there?”

“Water spinach”, I said, knowing that I committed a Communist crime.

They gave a family of four the same amount as a family of ten. I don’t know how rations were meant to work, but this was surely not humane. Surely they expected something like this to happen sooner or later. 

It wasn’t until I was tackled into the vehicle, that I thought of slinging some slogans at him. I remembered what I had all too often shouted out with people at protests, “Don’t let them scare you into forgetting why you’re here. The voice of the people! Don’t let them make you forget that.”

Instead, as the hands clamped down on my shoulders, I remained silent. 

My arms were twisted sharply behind my back, first my right one, then my left. The impossibly cold metal cinched tighter and tighter around my wrists, making the skin around my wrist more and more raw. The sore watermelon flesh beneath the handcuffs, slowly and steadily bled into the metallic knife cutting. I could feel the warm juice flowing down my hands. In my state of famine, it almost felt appetising. 

I cried. 

And this time I didn’t cry for myself, I cried for them. For the poor people who weren’t allowed money.