1.
My father grew up in the village. Relying on his uncle's influence in the family, he forced my mother to marry him.
On their wedding night, my father brought a dozen or so of his male relatives and dragged my mother into the bridal chamber.
The sobbing and vulgar laughter went on until well past midnight.
Unable to bear the humiliation, my mother grabbed a pair of scissors and cut off my father's manhood. Blood sprayed everywhere.
Everyone was horrified, and that very night they took my father away for treatment.
But it was too late. My father was left without his manhood.
Some time later, my mother became pregnant and gave birth to me.
Rumors quickly spread, and we became the laughingstock of the whole village.
As I gradually came to understand what had happened, I grew increasingly insecure.
The village children taunted me with rhymes. The clan considered my father a disgrace, and even his cousins cut off contact with him.
When the men in the village saw my father, they would deliberately pull down their pants and piss in front of him, laughing and calling him a “spineless dog.”
My mother became an object of their fantasies, and it was common for men to grope her on the road.
Once, my mother nearly got dragged into a haystack by a thug. My father cursed her for being shameless. After drinking, he slapped her and demanded to know whose child I was.
I raised my head and said nothing. He grabbed my mother's hair and beat her until she collapsed.
After his fit of rage, he locked my mother and me in the woodshed and left us with a threat: “If you dare run away, I'll break your legs!”
My mother held me and sobbed, leaning close to my ear. “I don't have long to live. Once you've taken care of my body, run as far as you can. Never come back!”
2
A few days later, my mother really did die.
My father beat her to death.
That night, my father came home dead drunk from who knows where, carrying an iron rod and beating my mother with it.
I ran over to stop him, but he slapped me to the ground. My head spun and my vision blurred.
The iron rod came down, and my mother lay motionless on the ground.
He swung with all his strength at my mother's head again, caving in a huge hole. Fresh blood and brains spilled all over the ground.
The stench of blood hit my father, sobering him up halfway.
He reached out to check my mother's breathing, then staggered over to a chair and sat down, eyes wide.
“Goddamn it, goddamn it, why didn't you dodge...”
He muttered under his breath, then got up and walked over to me. He kicked me several times and snapped, “Go to the woodshed and get the straw mat!”
By moonlight, my father and I wrapped my mother in the straw mat and carried her to the graveyard.
My mother's head kept slipping out. Her eyes rolled back as she stared at him, scaring him so badly he cursed up a storm.
We struggled to find an empty patch of ground in the mass grave.
“Hurry up and bury her. Don't let anyone see!” my father barked irritably, then ducked his head and looked around.
Somewhere, a wild bird suddenly let out a mournful cry.
“You damn jinx!” he cursed, then walked down the mountainside without looking back.
I gently lifted the mat and looked at my mother's mangled body, tears streaming down my face.
The cold night wind made me shiver uncontrollably. I pulled out my mother's hand and held it tight.
My mother's corpse was ice-cold, yet I still felt the warmth and closeness I knew so well.
Without my mother, I didn't know how to go on living.
If only people could die and come back to life.
As I thought this, an old face suddenly came to mind.
The old carpenter in the village.
Ly Nhi Dan, who used to play in the mud with me, had once said, “If something in your house breaks, just go to the old carpenter. Give him five coins, and he'll fix it for sure!”
I immediately stood up, felt around in my mother's pocket, and took out five bloodstained coins. Then I dragged the mat-wrapped body of my mother and headed toward the village.
3
The long-bearded old carpenter stuck his head out through a crack in the door. Two black, hollow sockets stared from his face.
He was blind.
“It's so late. What do you want?”
His back was hunched, and at a glance he looked even smaller and thinner than I was.
“I want to get something fixed. Ly Nhi Dan said you can fix anything.”
He gave a dry chuckle.
“What do you want fixed?”
“My father broke my mother. Please fix her for me.”
He froze and didn't answer for a long time.
An owl flew past, hooting once.
“Come in,” he said.
The old carpenter's house was very dark. Only a weak candle flame flickered unsteadily, and the whole room was filled with the strong smell of wax, making me cough.
Following his directions, I laid my mother on the wooden bed in the room.
The old carpenter went out back for a while. When he returned, he was carrying a large cloth bag.
Inside were a hammer, nails, scissors, and a lot of iron.
He ran his hands over my mother's body.
My mother's facial bones had shattered into pieces, and her body had been beaten until her skin peeled and her flesh came away.
The old carpenter deftly undressed her. After a long while, he sighed. His empty eye sockets seemed able to see the wounds on my mother's body.
Then he took out a sharp knife and drew a straight line from the top of my mother's head down to her navel.
Riiip, riiip, riiip...
A whole sheet of human skin was peeled off.
He soaked the skin in a tub of water and washed it clean, then used needle and thread to sew up each wound.
His movements were so deft that I wondered if he could really be blind.
Sleep suddenly overtook me. My eyelids drooped despite my efforts, and I drifted off.
When I woke up, the human skin was hanging on a drying rack.
My mother's head had been separated from her body and placed neatly on the wooden table. The hole in the top of her head had been stuffed with cotton until it was round.
The old carpenter was using tweezers to carefully remove bits of flesh from my mother's body. Her eyes and teeth had been taken out and lay scattered across the table.
He turned to fetch a wooden ball he had finished carving, then carefully painted it with pigments.
Before long, he had painted two remarkably lifelike eyes.
He fitted the eyes into my mother's sockets, adjusting them over and over for a long time, then finally glued them in place.
My mother's head was like a toy he held in his hands, examining it carefully.
He looked very satisfied. Then, with painstaking care, he opened my mother's mouth and hammered each of the repaired teeth into place.
Just then, a rooster crowed outside.
The old carpenter hurried to his feet and dressed my mother in the human skin that had been left to dry.
I went closer and took a look. The skin was covered in patches, and when it was on my mother's body, it looked terribly ugly.
The old carpenter was once again thoroughly pleased with the “masterpiece” he had poured his heart and soul into, nodding again and again.
“Sir, why isn’t my mother moving?”
“Don’t rush, don’t rush.” The old carpenter patted my head, stretched his back, and began muttering.
“No need to eat, no need to drink, can run, can jump, can sing.”
He began muttering a strange nursery rhyme.
After muttering continuously for a long while, my mother suddenly opened her eyes.
It was true—the old carpenter had repaired my mother!
4
A strange smile appeared on my mother's face, the curve of her lips stretching the skin taut.
Glue oozed from her eye sockets, and her clothes were still stained with dried blood.
I took my mother home.
My father was so terrified his heart nearly stopped. He dragged me out into the yard.
“How could this worthless woman possibly come back to life?”
Seeing how furious he was, I simply replied, “My mother is blessed with a long life.”
Smack! A resounding slap struck my face.
“You little brat, making fun of me! Just you wait—I’ll cut off your fingers and use them for drinking snacks!”
With that, he stormed out.
In my father's eyes, a woman who had been taken to the cemetery—even if she came back to life—must be possessed by a ghost, and bringing her home would bring bad luck.
But my mother wasn't a ghost. The carpenter had simply gone to great lengths to repair her. No one knew that.
When my mother came home, she went back to her usual routine, fetching water and cooking every day.
But I gradually noticed something strange. She didn't seem to hear any sounds, and she couldn't speak either. If my mother could talk, she would tell me stories every night.
I took my mother to see the old carpenter again.
He said my mother's ears and throat were badly damaged, and that to repair them, he'd have to take them out and replace them.
I gave him five coins again. He took the money and carried my mother's head and neck to the back of the house.
The clatter of tools mingled with the sound of flesh being torn.
About half an hour later, he brought my mother's head back out.
“Her ears and throat are fixed.”
My mother could hear and speak again.
Her new ears looked a little too big, and the scar on her neck was still very obvious. It would take a lot of makeup to cover it.
But I didn't care, because at last my mother could tell me stories and teach me to read and write.
Even though all she made were strange sounds, I was still happy.
However, I discovered a new problem.
My mother never ate or drank, and never said she was hungry.
When the food was ready, she only watched my father and me eat, smiling all the while.
“How can she stay alive without eating or drinking?” I went to tell the old carpenter again.
The carpenter opened my mother's abdomen and found that the inside was badly damaged, riddled with holes. He took a needle and thread and some rope, and repaired each damaged spot.
The more her body was patched up, the less sturdy it became.
I often heard creaking sounds from my mother's body, and my father often found gears and nails in his food.
My father thought my mother was bad luck and wouldn't let her into the house. At night, he locked her in the woodshed.
In the middle of the night, I sneaked out to look and found my mother standing in the corner, still wearing a smile.
Suddenly, I realized she didn't look like my mother at all. She was only an unconscious effigy.