THE DREAM HAD A MAN’S FACE ...
NGUYEN THI. TUYET MAI
Eight years old, I wished I had a man for my own. He was a tall and big man with black hair and a lot of beard. He might be rude but very tender when he carried her little daughter, put her on his thighs, caressed her thin hair, then kissed on the top of her nose and made her giggle.
Every afternoon, I climbed a plum tree, looking at that picture in the next yard then I swallowed and sighed. For many years after, in my dreams, I had been always seeing his face, very lively, very close. And then my clear laughter echoed.
Sixteen years old, I needed a man inside my house. When I wanted to hammer a nail, carry a mortar, I or my grandma had to ask the neighbors for help. My grandma was very old. She couldn’t be a peddler any more, so she sold the land and the house, moved to a town for my sudy. Doing that, she didn’t know she had changed a man’s face in my dreams.
A man living opposite the alley had a face of Jesus on the Cross. He was a peddler, and every day he went out of the house from the early morning to the late night to make money. He had to support a blind mother, a mental wife và two young children. When I took his mental wife home, his rare smile made me touched.
“You shouldn’t go out without me! You lose the way and they will catch you!” he said.
The woman’s eyes were bright in one second when she heard his sweet voice. That night, in my dream, I saw I was that mental woman who lost her way.
I was pregnant for three months when my grandma died. My child might have thick, black hair and a lot of beard like his father – a version I had found in my university. Only this version didn’t put me on his thighs, caressed my hair, then kissed on the top of my nose but held me tightly, kissed on my lips crazily, looked for and squeezed my breats and then…
“I love you. I’ll spend all of my life to love you, to take care of you,” he said.
I was floating in his passionate arms. It seemed I heard he calling me: “My daughter…” I wanted to giggle but I couldn’t. I felt hurt and some blood dropped out from my cut heart.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know you’re still a virgin,” he said later.
I cried. Through the tears, I saw a face in my dreams turn into this version of the Internet-time.
“Your grandma was sick seriously. Come back now!” The man had a face of Jesus on the Cross sent me a telegram.
I took my version back home, on time to see my grandma stop breathing.
Opening my eyes, I looked around, being shocked for not seeing my version beside me.
“He has gone. When you fainted.”
I read his familiar writings, felt bitter from the bottom of my heart: “I’m sorry for everything. I don’t want to lie you anymore. I have my fiancée already. Just take care of yourself, please.”
My crying sounded very sad in the poor house. I cried a little for my grandma, but a lot for my unfinished dream. Luckily my grandma didn’t know the faces of the men whom I had dreamed in all of my childhood. Why they had the same face but the different heart?
The walls were white. The blouses were white. The ceiling was white, too. I heard the sound of metal from a very far distance. Then, between the unconsciousness, I heard a strange voice whispering: “Twenty years old.” “Her foetus is rather big.” “Cut her uterus.” “Barren.”
Twenty four years old, I began everything from the shards of the beginning. But I had cried a lot, had been crazy a lot for the baby would have never been born.
The company director where I worked had the same face of a man who had a mental wife. When his face lay on my breasts, his satisfied smile made me confused between the truth and a dream.
“I never love her. But I can’t divorce her because of my daughter. Now I have you, I must do it. Please wait for me...,” he said.
Yes, I waited for him. Waiting for every morning he went to the office early, pushed me down the desk face và made sex with me from the behind. Waiting for every afternoon, he came to my room, held me tight instead of the tennis racket, drinking me and eating me.
One year later. Two years later. The director’s second child, a boy, was born. The little baby looked very like him. The happy smiles of the diector’s family on his birthday party album was handed from this employee to that one. I felt my heart was dying, but not because of my colleagues’ mocking eyes and their mysterious smiles.
Now, every night, there were no men’s faces in my dreams. There were only white, black, yellow, red, round, long… faces, they were real, greedy, eating, drinking, scrubing my young and beautiful body. The fairy tale “One thousand and one nights” didn’t have the happy ending. Suddenly, I wanted to have a man’s face in my rare dreams due to the very short nights. A face of a man wouldn’t have enjoyed my body, but would have held my heart and my soul tenderly since I was young up to now. I died to see that man’s face, just in my dreams though.
NGUYEN THI. TUYET MAI
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.Updated: 27.11.2008.
