Mystery

Growing up in Saigon, Vietnam, we heard many ghost and mystery stories. My family used to sit around at night and listen to my older brother tell scary stories of a lonely ghost soldier with one leg looking for his way home from the battlefield, or a ghost story of a jilted lover who jumped off a bridge. On certain nights when the moon is half full people can still see her weeping under a banyan tree a few feet from the river bank. My first year in America I didn’t understand the holiday traditions of Halloween but I loved the idea of dressing up like a witch or a ghost and going door to door to get free candy.

I’ve faced many mysteries of my own. Sometime I misplace my money thinking I lost it somewhere. I’ll tear the whole house apart only to find out it was on the kitchen counter the whole time. But it felt as if someone was hidden it from me.

When we lived in our old house in Citrus Heights from 1989 to 1997 I always felt someone was watching me from the hallway. But when I looked no one was there, and the cats were no where nearby. Once in a while, when I was in bed half awake and half conscious, I felt someone above me pressing me down. They won’t let me get up. I would scream in my half dream state and no one would hear me. I could see my husband, Bob next to me but he couldn’t hear me. When I finally awoke I was all sweaty and spooked out. I dealt with this same dream many times in the first few years at Citrus Heights. When Bob was away on business a trip I would sleep with all the lights on in the house. Sometimes the dream happened as soon as I fell to sleep. The pressure of someone trying to press me down was suffocating. I described this weird thing to my doctor and he thought I was really crazy and suggested I should stop drinking coffee after lunch and stop drinking any alcohol at night. Then I told him I didn’t drink coffee or alcohol at all,  he suggested yoga or meditation, or even seeing a therapist. When I told my husband about the incident he sided with the doctor. He said there was no ghost, just the one in my imagination.

When we sold the house in 1997 I was cleaning up and the lady next door came by to say good bye. Then I learned about the first owners. They were a husband and wife in their 40’s. My neighbor broke the news to me that the husband committed suicide in the garage by running a pipe from the muffler through a little crack of the car window. He died from carbon monoxide poison. Shocked, I told my neighbor that the husband was still in this house and that he’d been playing mind games with me during the first few years we moved in. That also explained why our cat, Max, would sometimes growl at nothing when he sat on my lap. His fur would spike up like he was ready to attack an invisible dog. My husband would say there’s nothing there, he’s just a crazy cat. One of my acquaintances once told me that if I see a ghost it means the ghost trusts me. I think that’s crazy.

Maybe I did need more exercise. I love to swim laps and used to swim after work as a break from running. I used to go straight to the club from work and be in the outdoor pool by 6pm, I would swim about 2,000 yards (80 laps in 25 yards pool). Usually there were 3 or 4 of us in the pool, all swimming laps. One night I got there about 15 minutes late and there was no one else in the pool. It was winter and already dark. The lights around the pool were on but they were dim. The brightest lights were the lights in the pool under water, so you can see the lane markers. My favorite lane was lane 2 or lane 3 if there were other people in the pool. Tonight it was only me so I jumped in lane 2 and started my warm up. After a few laps I saw through the clear water that someone had jumped into lane 3 at the other end. With my tinted goggles it was hard to see clearly. But when I swam back to that end there was no one there. I stood up, looked around and pulled off my goggles. No one else was in the pool. I looked on the concrete around the lanes next to me. There were no wet foot prints or any sign anyone was there.

I swam three more laps and each time I touched the wall and turned around I would see through the water someone in lane 3 at the other end of the pool. But each time I didn’t see anyone swimming past me in the opposite direction. And there were no wet foot prints on the concrete. I got out of the pool fast and headed straight to the locker room to rinse off and drive home. A few nights later I talked to the manager about putting more light on the patio around the pool at night for safety or replacing the dim lights with brighter ones. When the manager came out to the pool with me to see where the lights were needed, I pointed to the other end of the pool. Right then I saw the shadows of the palm trees dancing in the breeze. The moonlight was casting the shadows. It wasn’t a ghost after all but the moving shadows made it look like someone was doing water aerobics.

I felt real silly for scaring myself from my strange imagination. A month later at the club Christmas party a good friend, Ron, said he hadn’t seen me in the pool for a while. I told him my silly story about seeing strange thing in the pool that turned out to be palm tree shadows. Ron had on a strange look on his face. He told me that not too long ago a triathlete had a heart attack during a workout and died in the pool. People tried to resuscitate him but it was too late. Ron said “I thought you knew.” All I could say to him was “what lane was he in?”

Lane 2 is my favorite lane

Rain

I like rain. I like to run in the rain, I like to sleep-in in the rain. I like rainy Saturdays and Sundays. But I don’t like when it rains on Monday or Tuesday or any work day. I enjoy the rain, I like listening to the rain drops. Rain can make me so happy and it can make me so lonely.

When I was in my early teens, I like an older boy at school. He didn’t know me, he was a few classes ahead of me. I didn’t know why I liked him and I didn’t know why I couldn’t share my feelings with my friend Phoung.

One afternoon the rain started as we were leaving school, I walked home with my friend and as we turned around the corner of my street, I saw him riding his moped with his friend sitting behind him. I was happy to see his full face even though both had on ponchos covering their heads and school uniforms. But I was sad because I wish I was a few years older and in the same class with him.

The walk home was long because I was wondering what he was doing that night with his friend, were they going to a cafe shop, to dinner, to a movie. My mind wasn’t there when my friend turned down her street and I was left alone to walk down my street.

It started to get dark and all the lights from all the shops and bars and restaurants started to reflex off the wet pavement and sidewalks. I could see the light reflected on the raindrops as it softly fell onto the ground.

Few people had umbrellas over their heads and some, just like me, were getting wet in the misty rain. I started to think what was he doing as I slowly walking home. Was he at home doing homework or at a cafe bar? I walked by several shops and cafe bars and didn’t see any familiar faces. The reflector of the lights on the wetted sidewalk was so colorful and beautiful, I wished I had someone to share the rain with.

After dinner, I had a fever and my mother made me go to bed early with an ice bag for my forehead. Laying in bed I was still listening to the rhythm of the rain as it hit the ceramic roof. As my eyes started heavily closing, the last thing on my mind was the beautiful and colorful but lonely rainy night on my way home from school and me wishing I was the friend sitting behind him on his moped.

Now, more than 40 years later, I saw in a downtown Sacramento restaurant a painting of the rain’s reflection by Stanislav Sidorov and memories of that lonely, raining night in Saigon when I was fourteen years old came flooding back.

The Found Running Gel

I picked it up, used the hem of my runningskirt and wiped the dust off on both side of it, ribbed open the running gel package and consumed it and put the empty package in my pocket.  After few minutes and few feet later, I realized that the closest bathroom would be less than 4 miles from where I was.  I started to reason with my imagination fear that I could hold it for four miles just in case the running gel didn’t get along with my belly. 

Why did I pick the package of the running gel and eat it? I have no idea why I did it but I just couldn’t let it sit and get wasted in the middle of the bike trial.  If it were a penny or a 20 dollars bill, I would stop and pick it up.  It’s the finder keeper thing. How finding a running gel package in the middle of nowhere would be any different?  If I lost something like $10 or $20 bills or my car key, I would be backtracking and looking for it.  I have backtracking few runs with several running friends, and I won’t mention their names, when one of us lost our keys. But if any one of us lost a package of a running gel on my long run, I would never backtrack my route to find it, I would keep on running and finishing the run.  I don’t think who ever dropped the gel would be backtracking for it. 

A mile later, an old memory came and danced in my head.  

My mind started bringing me back to a girl who sat next to me in my in class in Vietnam; I think we were in 3rd or 4th grade.  I had a small bag of m&m that I brought to school, I don’t know if I had shared it with her or not, but a bag of m&m was a luxury item in VN back then. I finished the bag and rolled it in a ball and tossed it back in my desk’s drawer.  When the bell rang, we all got up to leave but I came back because I forgot something. When I came back to the class room I saw that girl went through my desk, picked up the m&m wrap, sniffed it and tried to see if there was anything left in the bag, and there was one melted m&m left and she bended her head back and shook the crumple bag into her mouth. She saw me watching her and gave me a somewhat an embarrassed silly smile and I smiled back. After that I don’t remember anything but I remember we started sharing our foods together for the rest of the school year.  The following school year I never saw her again.  One in great while when I found myself not finishing a cookie or throwing food down the sink or in the trash, I thought of that girl who sniffed the empty bag of m&m.  

Two miles later after the consumption of running gel, I was still feeling pretty good, so far no weird thing happened to my indigestion but I just cannot shake the old memory out of my mind about a young classmate from my childhood who sniffed the empty m&m bag.