After lunch at Aunt Ut Hue's house, I stretched out on the wooden daybed and let the breeze drift over my skin.
The house was open on all sides. Doors and windows stood wide, allowing the wind to come in and go as it pleased, running playful fingers across my face until sleep carried me away.
I don't know how long I slept.
A black drongo screeching from the chinaberry tree in the yard finally woke me.
The house was empty.
Aunt Ut Hue had probably gone back to the rice fields.
Her daughter Loan, ten years old, was nowhere to be seen either. I guessed she was out in the vegetable garden chasing dragonflies.
I wandered to the back of the house and splashed some water on my face.
On my way back inside, I noticed Loan standing beneath a guava tree, fiddling with a tin can.
Curious, I crept closer.
Only then did I realize she was playing telephone.
The can had both ends removed. One side was covered with paper, and a string ran through the center. The string stretched all the way to another can on the opposite side of the fence.
When pulled tight, it carried sound.
As I tiptoed nearer, Loan was chatting with Turtle through the homemade telephone.
She spoke excitedly into the can, apparently asking about schoolwork. Then she pressed it to her ear to listen to Turtle's reply.
I assumed she was so absorbed in the conversation that she hadn't noticed me standing directly behind her.
I was wrong.
Suddenly she shouted into the can.
"What did you say? There's a thief standing behind me?"
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Before I could react, she continued at full volume.
"So the goose thought he was a thief, but Brother Dong isn't actually a thief?"
That was enough.
I reached over and flicked her lightly on the head.
"That's enough, you little troublemaker."
Then I snatched the can from her hand.
"Give me that."
I pressed it to my mouth.
"What have you been saying about me, Turtle?"
I glanced toward Turtle's house.
She was standing behind the fence, trying unsuccessfully to hide a smile.
When she heard my question, she hurriedly answered through the can.
"Loan said that, not me."
"I only told her you were standing behind her."
"Then how does she know about the whole 'thief' thing?"
"I told her."
Turtle sounded perfectly innocent.
"I told her while you were still inside the house."
So it had been Loan teasing me after all.
I turned around, fully intending to flick her forehead again, but she had already vanished.
Remembering their conversation about school earlier, I hesitated before asking,
"You and Loan are in the same class?"
"Yes."
I frowned.
"But Thuc told me you're his age."
"Yes."
Turtle nodded.
"I'm fourteen."
Fourteen-year-olds were supposed to be in ninth grade, like Thuc.
Turtle was still in fifth grade at the village school.
I almost asked why.
Her grandfather had been a teacher, after all.
But in the end, I kept the question to myself.
There are hundreds of reasons why someone might fall behind in school.
Every reason carries its own sadness.
It felt cruel to make someone revisit theirs.
Perhaps Turtle sensed the question hidden inside my silence.
She answered it anyway.
"When I was seven, I got sick."
Her voice remained calm.
"Very sick."
"I became so thin you could see my bones."
"All my hair fell out."
She paused.
"Everyone thought I was going to die."
I looked at her without saying a word.
"I had to stop going to school for four years."
~~~•••~~~
Missing four years of school is a terrible thing for a child.
A teenager who should have been in ninth grade, sitting among ten-year-olds in a village elementary classroom, would usually become the target of endless teasing.
Yet Turtle never seemed burdened by it.
The more time I spent with her, the more I realized she felt no embarrassment whatsoever about being taller and older than her classmates while carrying her notebooks to the village primary school every morning.
In fact, she seemed almost proud of the years she had spent recovering.
She told me that after four years of swallowing medicine, she had become an expert on medicinal plants.
During those years, apart from her grandparents, she had only one regular friend: the old herbal doctor who treated her.
The village children visited from time to time, but children are children.
They would sit and talk with her for a while before growing restless and running off to catch crickets, fly kites, or play in the fields, leaving her alone on the cold wooden daybed to watch the evening sun ripen red beyond the distant mountains.
"Weren't you lonely?" I asked.
"No."
Turtle shook her head.
"I had lots of friends."
When she saw my skeptical expression, her eyes brightened.
"I'll tell you about them."
"Long Neck. Long Tail. Red Bottom..."
For a moment I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
Only after she explained did I understand.
Long Neck was the goose that wandered around the water-spinach pond.
Long Tail was a squirrel that raced up and down the coconut tree behind the house.
Red Bottom was a red-whiskered bulbul that had recently built a nest in the bamboo grove near her gate.
And those were only the beginning.
Turtle continued listing names.
Apparently she had an entire social circle living in the forest.
Among them was a monkey that occasionally came to visit.
My head was spinning.
I quickly interrupted before the introductions could continue.
"Okay, okay. I get it."
I clicked my tongue.
"You really do have a lot of friends."
Turtle looked up at me.
"Do you want to meet them?"
"Of course."
I answered boldly.
Then I remembered the goose that had nearly bitten my leg that morning.
My confidence immediately collapsed.
"Well... maybe... maybe I should think about it first."
Turtle slapped my arm and burst out laughing.
"Don't worry."
"Long Neck won't chase you anymore."
"I already talked to him."
The comment turned my face as red as a radish left out in the sun.
Once again, Turtle had managed to land a direct hit without even realizing it.
Ironically, she couldn't ride a bicycle.
"Why don't you learn?" I asked.
"You were sick for four years," I added before she could answer.
"Oh."
Right.
I scratched my head awkwardly.
To hide my embarrassment, I looked up at the butterfly bush shimmering beneath the afternoon sunlight.
"If you ever need to go somewhere far away," I said casually, "just tell me. I'll take you on my bike."
"I never go very far."
She shrugged.
"I mostly stay around the village."
I narrowed my eyes.
"Then what about the day you walked all the way to Ke Xuyen Market collecting bottle caps?"
"That was different."
She smiled.
"I only go there once in a while."
I brushed a hand through the yellow allamanda vines growing beside the well.
"Have you saved up a lot of bottle caps?"
Turtle blinked.
Only then did I notice how long her eyelashes were.
"I'm collecting them for Loan."
"For Loan?"
My eyes widened.
She nodded as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
"She's younger than the others."
"She can't compete with them when they're collecting caps."
"So I gather some and bring them back for her."
Her tone remained completely matter-of-fact.
To Turtle, helping someone smaller than herself required no explanation.
Yet I knew how valuable bottle caps had become to the children.
Thuc could buy peanut candy with them.
That hardly seemed ordinary to me.
Later, I would learn that Turtle did this all the time.
Whenever one of the younger children in her class was bullied by older kids, she stepped in.
She protected them.
Somehow she earned a reputation as a stubborn girl, the kind who wasn't afraid to fight if she had to.
But I wouldn't hear those stories until much later, when Thuc told me.
At that moment, sitting together on the edge of the well beneath the swaying shade of the allamanda vines, I saw none of that.
To me, Turtle was simply a gentle girl.
And I could not deny the truth growing quietly inside my heart.
The more time I spent with her,
the more I liked her.
~~~•••~~~
*To be continued
