The woman in the mirror

Early morning. Buried in a pile of warm pillows and blankets, she suddenly woke up to the sound of rain hitting the glass window. Outside, the sky was gray, the raindrops were pattering down in glistening streams, soon forming puddles on the street. The musty smell from the hydrangea pots on the balcony wafted into the room, carrying the scent of dried roses. She lay still, watching the rain through the glass window. It had been a long time since she had been awakened by such a gentle rain. On the wall, the clock with the image of a pair of doves chirped seven times, she got up and walked out onto the balcony.

From the house in the neighborhood, the young couple's quarreling voices echoed again. She held back a sigh, returned to the house, and stopped in front of the standing mirror. The soft yellow light shone on the face of a woman who was almost forty. Her skin was smooth and bright, her nose high above her lips that were meticulously tattooed with high technology. Since she was a girl, she had been secretly proud of her beauty, and that beauty became even more attractive when she gave birth to Bon. But for some reason, today she saw in the mirror a sad woman whose eyes and demeanor exuded a depressing sadness. Perhaps as a result of a series of dense conferences, every night when she returned home, the clock hands were just past 11 pm. She only had time to quickly remove her makeup, then she threw herself on the bed and fell asleep in the lingering scent of perfume.

She went back to the balcony and looked down the street. The downpour had stopped. People were hurrying past. The couple who had just quarreled had now made up and were riding on an old motorbike, their little girl in a pink dress smiling and chattering. She saw the happiness on each of their faces.

She had a family, a good wife, a good mother until she suddenly realized that she had not become the person she had hoped to be when she was young. In the mirror was only a woman who was disheveled and exhausted from lack of sleep, a woman who was sloppy in old sweatpants. Everything was gradually pushing her back into the darkness.

She decided to temporarily step out of married life, many people who knew the story blamed her for being selfish. She silently accepted all the judgments of relatives and friends. No one knew that she wanted to live, truly, not just exist in married life. She felt that she needed to learn to love herself again. Her husband listened to his wife's sharing, he gently accepted and said that it was partly his fault, only offering to let him raise Bon now because he had a stable career, could spend time taking the child to school, so that she could spend time on the work and career that she had lost for so long.

So she decided to start over. The first thing she did was to take care of her beautiful appearance. In no time, she regained her slim figure. She returned to being a career woman, intelligent, sharp and attractive. But sometimes, after the brightly lit parties, she would return home alone to lie down, her mind blank, wondering if the world she had just passed through was real or not?

The clock chimed eight times. She sat at the dressing table, combed her hair, then opened the wardrobe and hesitantly chose a simple ash-gray designer dress with a few white flowers embroidered on the collar. In the conference lobby, she appeared gracefully. Still smiling charmingly and confidently, she took charge of her work. The conference ended with a gala dinner. She drifted away amidst the clinking of glasses and the pre-programmed compliments…

All fun must come to an end. The last guests hurried home. She saw them, the men who had been flattering and polite a moment ago, now hurrying away as if their outer shells had been stripped off and left behind. They were hurrying home after phone calls from home.

Left alone, she looked up at the sky. The city at night, the starlights twinkling, dazzling and splendid. The wind blew through the street. She slowly walked along the familiar camphor-lined street. In the night, the trees on the side of the road darkened under the lights, black and cold. Suddenly, she shivered. In that moment, she suddenly stopped. The dream of a small house with bougainvillea trellis in front of the yard, where she made cups of coffee for her husband every morning, where she busily prepared for her child to go to school. Also there, there was the sound of her child calling her mother happily and longingly every afternoon from the end of the alley, after school her husband picked her up from kindergarten...

That dream was so old that she felt like she had turned into a silly woman. Every time she remembered it, she quickly stuffed it deep into a drawer of memory, so that she would never have to remember it again…

The rain drizzled and then poured down as if it wanted to wash away the entire city. Her feet carried her through the dark rain. A few car headlights flashed by, the road surface shimmered like a mirror, occasionally splashing water onto her ash-gray dress. A few people passed by her, their raincoats pulled down, but no one paid attention to the woman walking alone on the street. The raindrops hit her face until it burned, she reached out to wipe them away, smiling slightly... That's right! Perhaps the old dream had returned. For the first time in so many years, she felt that dream clearly within her.

The shadow on the street was long and silent. She continued walking slowly. The cold rain soaked into her shirt and crept across her skin, but she only felt a sudden warmth creeping in like a newly lit fire, warming her soul. Over there, the house with the bougainvillea trellis still emitted a flickering light. Her steps slowed down. “You’re asleep now, right, Bon?” she whispered.

The night gradually turned to morning. She still stood there, absentmindedly looking at the light coming down from the house with the bougainvillea trellis in full bloom. The trellis was planted by her own hands when her husband came back from a business trip, and the gift for his wife was a fragile bougainvillea plant grafted from the root. Day by day... day by day... the trellis grew as Bon grew older. Until one day, looking at the trellis in full bloom, she suddenly felt herself change...

From the balcony, the shadow of a man in the house stepped out, absentmindedly looking at the sky, then when he bent down, his eyes suddenly stopped at the shadow of a woman standing under the camphor tree. The man rushed down the stairs, opened the gate, and ran towards the familiar tree. But there was no one there.

Back at the apartment, she stayed up all night. Standing in front of the mirror, she looked intently at the woman's face that appeared in it. The same smooth, bright skin, the high bridge of the nose above the meticulously tattooed lips. But tonight, she suddenly realized that faintly on that face was the gentle, longing look of a mother. "Bon! Tomorrow, I will come to school to pick you up!" she whispered...
The night is deep. From someone's garden the scent of laurel wafts. Intense...

Short story: VU NGOC GIAO

Source: https://baocantho.com.vn/nguoi-dan-ba-trong-guong-a190849.html