Hungry Ghosts - The White Review

Most of the time, I roll the chả giò without considering where they are going next or who will eat them. I do it only because it is something that Mum taught me to do, and likes to watch me do. But one morning Mum comes home from a shift, rests her head in her hands, and uses the last of her energy to talk without thinking. She never lets me touch her before she washes, so I sit across the room and listen. As she talks, I start to see the hospital — a place full of people in blue, white and muted green; people who never sleep properly, who are permanently ravenous but feel sick when they eat. I think of food that can never be mashed soft enough to swallow, whiteboards behind beds reading ‘NIL BY MOUTH’, stomachs with hidden holes that must be washed and re-dressed regularly. When I think of it this way, the hospital morphs into a place on the edge of the underworld. I imagine Mum’s chả giò bursting into flames at her colleagues’ fingertips, their chests burning as they swallow too quickly. I see Mum wheeling an IV drip-stand along corridors like Mục-kiền-liên with his staff, ready to rescue every trapped soul. I picture her disguising the bitterness of painkillers in yoghurt or apricot puree, the way she did for me when Calpol stopped working but I still hadn’t learned to swallow pills without choking.

Hungry Ghosts - The White Review