At 8 p.m., Mrs. Be rides a bicycle with her 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old grandson on the road to pick up bottles. Seeing the trash can, her daughter Han jumped down first to rummage around and collected 4 plastic bottles. And she went to the bigger trash can, trying to pick up the discarded Christmas tree branches, burning them to sell.
On a bicycle, her 3-year-old grandson Khang sat watching his mother and aunt work. Sometimes, seeing her aunt picking up something fancy, Khang stood up on a chair and begged to take it and play.
Mrs. Be took her youngest daughter, 6 years old, and her grandson, 3 years old, to collect ticks and bottles on the night of the 28th New Year (Photo: Diep Phan).
“I’m poor, so my children are poor too”
More than 20 years ago, she followed an acquaintance from Hue to Ho Chi Minh City to start a business. At first, she moved to rent a house, then she applied for a job as a waitress at a restaurant and met her ex-husband. Before giving birth to their first child, the couple decided to move back to their hometown to live, giving birth to three children at once.
Without a stable job, without a field or garden, life gradually became impoverished. At the end of 2008, her husband returned to Ho Chi Minh City, said that he would go to work to earn money to send home to support his wife and children but disappeared. At the same time, she knew she was pregnant with her fourth child for a few months.
“On the night of January 20, 2009, I carried my pregnant belly, took three children with me with 200,000 VND, and took a bus to Saigon to find a husband,” Mrs. Be said.
Han, the daughter of Mrs. Be rummaged through the trash cans by the roadside looking for bottles (Photo: Diep Phan).
The girl’s trophy following 1 minute of searching the trash (Photo: Diep Phan).
With no money to rent, she took her children to sleep in the dust in Cho Lon. During the day, they collect ticks and bottles to earn a living. From there, she drifted to a poor inn on a vacant lot near Lo Gom bridge, Binh Tan district, and has lived until now.
On the day of giving birth to the fourth child, the woman brought her three children to the hospital. The mother lay upstairs waiting to give birth, the children were sent to wait for help downstairs. 2 months later, she applied for a job as a plumber and met a man who was a construction contractor.
She sadly shared the reason why she decided to take another step while having 4 children, Mrs. Be sighed and said: “At that time, I didn’t think too far away, just saw that he was unmarried, had a stable job, I love you. I think I need a support.”
Ba Be did not know, because of that decision, she later had 2 more children. An additional burden fell on the unhappy woman because of her “indifferent” husband, leaving her to take care of her six children on her own.
The dilapidated old boarding house of Mrs. Be’s family in Binh Tan district (Photo: Diep Phan).
Currently, her two eldest daughters have their own families. The third daughter is 19 years old this year but has 2 children, 5 years old, 3 years old, also cheated by her husband. In order for her children to feel secure to help with sales, Mrs. Be took care of her two grandchildren.
For more than a decade now, every evening, when she finished taking care of her children’s meals, she closed the door, let them sleep on their own, then hugged the youngest child to pick up the bottles until almost morning. For the same amount of time, she did not return to her hometown to celebrate Tet.
“In the past, I hugged my children, now I have to hug my grandchildren because I can’t stay at home,” Mrs. Be confided.
Mrs. Nga, 54, a neighbor who has known Be for 12 years, affirmed: “We live in a poor working-class neighborhood with hundreds of different difficulties, but Mrs. Be is considered the most miserable because There are too many children.”
On New Year’s Eve, seeing her grandmother grab big bags and hook them up to the trunk of the stroller, her grandson Khang climbed into the car and waited. Baby Han also chirped around the car, looking forward to going with her mother to pick up the bottles. The reason the woman had to take Han with her was to let her watch over Khang. Many times, busy rummaging through trash cans looking for bottles, the boy jumped out of the car and ran to the street, looking for a trash can to bring back a big plastic bag. Not speaking properly, she pointed at the trash bag, nodded with the meaning of telling her grandmother: “There are bottles in here”.
Mrs. Be sits contemplatively, thinking regarding her life (Photo: Diep Phan).