What is my mother's biggest fear?

For the first ten years of my life, my family and I had lived in the middle of the community of Cham people (a minority ethnic group in the south-centre of Vietnam, Cham people have many interesting differences in culture compared to Viet people, they originally belonged to an ancient kingdom: Champa Kingdom). In spite of the cultural differences, my family integrated well in the local community. My sister and brother went to Cham’s school and learned to speak and write in Cham. My mother’s kiosk always had a variety of clients and most of the time they came not only to buy something but also to chit chat. I guess that was how social media was back then. I am writing this down now from the point of view of an adult but, the little me twenty-five years ago did not see any difference. I was born there amongst them, I went to school with them, I could understand all the slang words they said in their language. We were even invited to some of their ritual events. The world was so big and magical within that poor village for children like us.

As I had mentioned before, my mother is superstitious. Not more than the average of surrounding people but she always reminds us about what to do and which rules to strictly respect. When it was about death and life she was more than serious. I think she mainly cared about Karma. Again, that was my beloved mother and our culture. I am only telling the facts. Without any judgement.

Once there were a couple of women gathering around in our kiosk for quite some time. It was no longer a small talk on that day, rather a long one, starting with one lady and ending up with around five in our far-to-be-spacious kiosk.

As far as I can remember, there was a woman who had just died due to a traffic accident. In the village, a Cham funeral usually lasted for days and terminated with a cremation on the rice field. During the ritual days we children were told to stay away from the rice field. As far as possible.

Back to the main story, our neighbours, Mr. Ddung and Mrs. Hong, a couple who also had a small kiosk in front of ours, joined the group of chit chatting people later in the morning. Nobody seemed to care about the business nor work.

Mr. Ddung happened to be the man who was in charge of shaping 7 or 9 pieces of the deceased's bones during every cremation and handed it to the family for worship at home. That means he was a very important man of the village. But I think his wife was even more important than him. For being his wife.

By the end of the talk, someone asked Mr. Ddung if he could save a piece of forehead bone separately for us before cremating everything and spreading them on the field. With a flashed check-up on his wife he said that he would ask the permission from the deceased’s family and that it was probably positive to have a piece of skull. “I guess a  small piece is sufficient, isn’t it? There is no need to have a part of the skull, right?” My mother nervously uttered her thoughts while questioning everyone in the room. She seemed very unsure about the whole idea people brought to her that morning. When everyone was finally dismissed to come back to their work, I was ordered to keep this secret from my father. Of course I would. Needless to say how mysterious and important I was feeling about my duty. Even though I had absolutely zero idea about what exactly the plan was. Well, in the end I think my mother could not hold it herself and she told my father during our lunch time the next day. They said that if we abraded the bone into powder and mix it with coconut oil, it would make some kind of ointment which could cure my skin. My father, as always, did not say anything when it was related to something fictitious like this. I accomplished my mission anyway. I was not the one who said it to papa.

The funeral chant lasted for days and we were forbidden to play on the rice field nearby nor to stay out after the sunset. Every night when they started to dance around the pyre and an adjacent bonfire, the music became even louder and more mournful.

By the end of the week, Mrs. Hong passed by our kiosk very early in the morning and had a brief exchange with my mother. She gave my mother something hastily wrapped in paper that was locked immediately in a drawer later on.

I quickly forgot about the whole thing. When I was a child, there were many things that were more worth my attention than that. However, I was quite sure that not any type of bone ointment was applied on me. Besides all kinds of other things you could imagine, an ointment made of human bone was not the most peculiar product I had had to try.

Recently during a routine call with my parents I asked them about that. The other half of the story was finally unveiled: That piece of forehead bone was too hard to be abraded so that after several tries, she lost the coin-shaped piece of bone. No ointment was made. A trial was dropped. Not by me. Not this time.