She Weeps Each Time You're Born Read Online Free PDF

eyes. Hadn’t she just opened them? The woman with the hollow face was gone. Everywhere the sounds of the empty village echoed in the night. The old honey seller began to wonder if it had all been a dream. In the sky a few clouds shrouded the moon. She turned to her granddaughter. What did she say to you, Huyen demanded. The accusation in her voice masked a deeper fear.
    Qui sat with her hands at her chest as if still holding the jar of honey and tipping it from side to side. Huyen wasn’t expecting an answer. The girl hadn’t spoken since the night Huyen had ruined her. When it came, she didn’t even recognize her own granddaughter’s voice.
    Qui pressed the imaginary jar to her heart. She said
be her mother
, Qui whispered. Overhead a bat went spiraling through the night like a falling star. The old woman reached over andeased the imaginary jar out of her granddaughter’s hands. It was the last thing Qui ever said.
    In the morning Qui roused her grandmother. The girl moved with a newfound energy she hadn’t shown in months. The front of her shirt was damp as if she had pressed two wet hands to her chest. Is it time, said Huyen. Qui nodded. Together they packed up their meager belongings and set out. Huyen followed without question. She had known this day was coming. After last night, the bats thronging in the air, she knew the moment had arrived. In some ways it felt good to hand over the burden of being the one in charge. Huyen smiled, her bloody teeth flashing. Maybe that was what had made her cruel. After everything she had done to Qui, it was only right that now she should serve her granddaughter. They were already in the next life.
    Three things cannot be hidden long: the sun, the moon, and the truth. Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened
.
    T U SAT UP IN THE TREE WHERE HE WAS WAITING AND ROLLED up his pant leg. A small dark sack clung to his calf, the thing almost as big as a rambutan, but the skin was smooth and rubbery. He poked it with his finger and watched it toll like a bell. He was lucky. It was only the second one that day. It was almost done feeding and would drop off soon enough. He didn’t have any salt, plus he didn’t want to use up a match. In a way it was part of him. He stroked it with his finger. With his eyes closed it almost felt like a hot pearl or a young girl’s innocence. For a moment he considered keeping it and somehow presenting it to her as a gift. This is my blood, he would say. When I am away from you, know that I am here. He laughed at the idea, knew it would be a twisted thing to do, to give your love a jungle leech bursting with your own blood, but he also knew if he did, she would nod solemnly in that way she had and hold out her cupped hand as if she were receiving the Buddha’s unpolluted heart. She would treasure it until it was just a piece of shriveled skin. She would never throw it away.
    Even lazing in the branches of a tamarind tree on the edge of the strategic hamlet, he was sweating. In the days and weeks after the monsoon, the humidity had emerged as if reestablishing its domain. From his perch on the edge of the jungle he could see the untended paddies, water buffalo wandering through the landscape at will. Yesterday he had watched an old man and a young woman having sex by the stream. As he watched, he made up a story in his mind, how the woman was actually the wife of the man’s adult son but how she had fallen for the father because in her eyes he was the man the son should have been. Long after the man and woman had risen from the grass, Tu kept developing the plot, the son running off to join the northern army, then later killing his father in battle but only realizing what he’d done well after the fact.
    Tu stretched himself to full length. There was nothing elseto do but dream. In Cong Heo there was no reason to work. Mostly the peasants sat around and