Chapter 29 — The Child You Never Knew

But what do you want to do? Return to the entertainment industry? Filming? Participate in gameshow? She considered those options, but none of them really made her heart flutter. That night, after finishing her homework, Tieu Chau sat in the living room drawing. The picture the boy drew was no longer of a house with just two people, but of a street. There are many people on the street, some are walking, some are selling goods, some are chatting.

“Mom, what job do you want to do in the future?” The boy asked without raising his head.

“Why are you suddenly asking this?”

"Because I've been thinking every day lately. When I'm thinking, my right index finger will rub against my thumb. I've rubbed it many times this week."

Khuong Niem bowed her head and looked at her hands. The index finger is indeed close to the thumb.

“I haven't thought of it yet.”

“Then there's no rush.” Tieu Chau seriously colored the sign of a store in the painting, "Just think slowly. Either way, I'll take care of you."

"I'm only five years old. How can I support my mother?"

“Wait until you grow up.” The boy stopped writing and thought for a second, "Besides, I can also help now. I still have the money from the second-hand market last time. Mom, will you take it?"

Khuong Niem walked over and ruffled her child's hair. "Keep your money. I can support myself." Tieu Chau raised his head to look at her and said very seriously: "If you can raise your mother, you can also raise your child. But you can't always do these two things. Didn't you like acting in the past?" Khuong Niem's hand stopped on top of her head. Back in the day, she really liked acting. When she was an 18th-line actress, she also really liked being in front of the camera. It's just that later, those enthusiasms were completely drowned out by fear and humiliation.

“Since then.” She said, "How do you know I used to act in movies?"

Tieu Chau lowered her head and continued drawing, the corners of her mouth curling up. "I looked it up online. Once upon a time, my mother acted in a short film, I watched it. The teacher she acted in, she looked very beautiful when she smiled." Khuong Niem squatted down and looked at her child's eye level. “When will you watch it?”

“Last week. During IT class at school.”

“Did you use the school computer to look up my name?”

"Yes." Tieu Chau's eyes sparkled, "I found out a lot of things. Some people praised my mother, some people cursed my mother. If I read the words that curse my mother in two sentences, they'll turn it off. Because they said it wrong."

Khuong Niem pulled her child into her arms, her chin resting on the top of his head. This tiny baby knows everything, everything is in sight, but never makes her feel burdened.

“I will think carefully.” she said.

“Yes. No rush.” Tieu Chau snuggled into her chest, patting her back like a young old man comforting someone else, "No matter what you do, I will see that you are amazing."

Three months later. Winter in Lam Giang is not too cold, but the air is very humid. Khuong Niem wrapped herself in a thick cotton shirt and stood at the door of a small studio, looking at the staff inside adjusting the lighting. This is an independent short film project. The director is a young man who just graduated from the film academy two years ago, whose work has won awards at several small film festivals. The short film tells the story of a single mother riding an electric motorbike through the city late at night to buy medicine for her sick child. Fifteen minutes, no dialogue, relying entirely on acting and cinematic language. When the director came, Khuong Niem hesitated for three days. Not because of me role itself. She could play that role with her eyes closed. It's because once she returns in front of the camera, it means she chooses to step back into the field that once swallowed her. The last thing that made her nod was because of a sentence from Tieu Chau. That day after school, Tieu Chau gave her a picture. In the painting is a woman driving an electric motorbike, carrying a boy in the back seat, the two of them rushing into a bright yellow light.

“What is this?” Khuong Niem asked.

“It's mother.” Tieu Chau said, “Mom is moving forward.”

Khuong Niem looked at that painting. The drawing is not good, the proportions are all wrong, the electric motorbike wheel is drawn into an oval shape. But that yellow light area was very bright, painted very strongly, the crayon almost punctured the paper. The next day, she called the young director. “I accept.” The filming process went very smoothly. It only takes three days. Without a makeup artist, without a stylist, Khuong Niem kept her face bare, wore her own cotton shirt, drove a rented electric motorbike, and walked back and forth on the road that night in front of the camera over and over again. The last scene is her going to the pharmacy, buying medicine, standing smiling under the light in front of the store. That smile is not an act. She thought about the night Tieu Chau had a fever when she was two years old, and how she had to go to three hospitals to buy fever-reducing medicine. That smile is the smile when everything is over, the sigh of relief "it's finally over". When the director called cut, the scene was silent for a long time. Then, he spoke: "This scene is over." At dusk on the day of filming, Khuong Niem drove his electric motorbike to pick up Tieu Chau. In winter, it gets dark early and the street lights are already on. She stopped at the school gate, Tieu Chau ran out from inside, her school bag bobbing on her back.

“Mom, are you done filming?”

“Filming is finished.”

“Yes or no mom?”

"Wait until it's broadcast and I'll watch it myself."

"Yes." Tieu Chau climbed onto the back seat, wrapped his arms around her waist, "Mom, your smile today is not like any other day."

“Not the same anywhere?”

“More comfortable than before.” The boy pressed his face against her back, "When mom smiled before, her shoulders were very stiff. Today they are not stiff anymore."

Khuong Niem started the engine and joined the afternoon traffic. The car lights illuminate the road ahead, the bare branches of corn on both sides of the road cast thick shadows under the lights.

"Mom." Tieu Chau's voice came from behind, a bit sad.

“I like my mother now.”

The wind blew past the mother and child, bringing with it the cold and wet characteristic of Lam Giang winter. But the small warmth close to her back was hot and steady, like a furnace that never turned off. Khuong Niem said nothing. But she drove the car slowly, steadily, not too fast, not too slow, through the entire sycamore-lined boulevard, through the well-lit intersections, through the city that once left her covered in injuries but in the end still welcomed her with open arms. The road ahead is still very long. But you won't have to go alone anymore.