By Anh, January 31, 2019 — I lived with my grandma when I was 5 or 6 years old for a couple years. What happened was that I did not have an original birth certificate. A midwife came over to help my mom deliver me. When you are born in the countryside you only have a temporary birth certificate, so my birthday is not really my birthday. The public school required an official birth certificate and you need to go to court to ask for it. Since I did not have an official birth certificate, I could not attend the public kindergarten.
My grandma lived in the countryside and she knew everyone in her village. She told the teacher in the village, “I want my granddaughter to be in your class that you are teaching.” The school system in the village was different than in the city because if my grandma said she wanted her granddaughter to be in school, it happened. That was why I stayed with my grandma from Monday to Friday. My grandma used to get up at 3 in the morning because she had to bring the produce to the open market. By 3 am she would wake me, and as a kid I did not want to wake up that early. However, she would slam down on the table and it would scare me awake. She wanted to be in the market before sunrise so I would have to go over to the neighbor’s house to continue to sleep. Then I would wake up at 7 o’clock and go to school. On Friday nights, my father would come pick me up and take me home. On Sunday nights he was supposed to bring me back to my grandma’s house but sometimes he got busy.
This one time he did not bring me back until Monday morning. He had a bicycle and I sat in a big basket attached behind the bike. He would pick me up and warned me, “You better sit still.” I know that on that particular day, we were running late. Usually Monday classes started at 8 o’clock but I do not remember why we were late. Anyways, my father talked to the teacher and explained that it was his fault that he brought me to school late, however after my father left, I was punished. The teacher said, “It is because you are late for class.” As a result, I had to kneel down on a prickly fruit called a durian. Even if it is ripe and soft the thorns still hurt, and I had to kneel on that. When I went home, I told my grandma that the teacher told to me to kneel on the durian. The next day she confronted them and asked,” Why did you tell my granddaughter to do that if was not her fault?” My grandma warned the two teachers, “I don’t want you two to tell my granddaughter to kneel down on that again.” That was the only time I remember getting punished which happened in kindergarten.
My cousin who is two years older attended school in the city, which was close by to my school. When school ended, we would sometimes walk home together. One day I saw a lot of kids, around the same age, gathered around by the river. We went down to have a look at what they were doing. There was a big tree with vines coming down by the river bank. Those kids were climbing up the tree, swinging on vines, and jumping down in river for a swim. I got excited when I saw them do that and wanted to try it as well. I jumped off and then I blacked out. Till this day I still don’t know what happened, but my cousin said luckily a guy saw me jump in and rescued me. I still don’t remember the details, but I remember when my grandma came home, she called my name from the outside and said, “Oh, I heard you had a very good swim today.” When I heard her say that, I got very scared and I knew I was in big trouble. I remember praying, “I hope she forgets!” because I was scared of what kind of punishment I would receive. However, besides some threats of taking me to my cousin’s house, nothing happened. At that time, she was cooking and told me to pick some Vietnamese spinach outside. I was so relieved. She cooked dinner, I helped her do the dishes, we ate, and then went to sleep.
We went to sleep very early. She said, “After you eat and take a shower. You go should be in bed by 7pm. After sunset, you are not to stand and look at the mirror because the spirts are going to get you.” Despite my grandma’s strictness, we got along really well because every time we sat down for a meal, I would eat really slow so that I could listen to all her stories.