It was a faint sound, almost imperceptible at first, just the dry scraping of a spoon against a ceramic bowl. It came from the kitchen in irregular bursts, quick and furtive, like someone eating with the fear of being discovered.
I headed toward the kitchen and felt my stomach tighten before I even saw it. The air in there smelled strange: sour rice, old oil, and something vaguely rotten in the background.
Hue was sitting on a low stool in the far corner, her back slightly turned to the door. Her shoulders were hunched and she was eating quickly with shaking hands, one arm wrapped protectively around her bowl, as if it were something she needed to hide.
For a moment, my mind refused to comprehend what I was watching. My wife had always eaten slowly, carefully, almost timidly, but now she was swallowing too quickly, barely chewing, wiping tears from her face with the back of her wrist between bites.
"Hue," I said, and she jumped so hard the spoon clattered against the rim. Her eyes looked up at mine with a terror that had no place in her kitchen.
I crossed the room in two steps and knelt beside her. "What are you doing?" I asked, but before she could even answer, I reached for the bowl, and what I saw inside made my blood run cold.
It was stale rice, clumped together in pale, hardened lumps. Among them were fish heads, broken bones, scraps of skin, and the murky, acidic smell of leftovers that should have been thrown away hours ago.
For a moment, the room tilted. The imported milk slipped from my fingers and fell sideways to the floor, rolling once before coming to rest against the cabinet.
Hue instinctively grabbed the bowl, his voice cracking with emotion. “Please, please, don't be angry.”
At that moment, something inside me broke. Not because she was eating junk food, though that alone would have made me tremble, but because her first fear wasn't shame, not disgust, not even hunger: it was my anger, as if she believed she was the one who had done something wrong.
I gently but firmly picked up the bowl and placed it on the counter. “Hue,” I said, lowering my voice because our son was sleeping in the next room, “tell me right now why you’re eating this.”
She looked down at her knees and tried to dry her face, but her fingers were shaking too much. Her hair was tied back in a mess, some strands stuck to her temples, and for the first time since giving birth, I noticed how much weight she'd already lost.
Her collarbone was clearly visible above the neckline of her blouse. The wedding ring on her finger seemed loose.
“I was just hungry,” she whispered. “Nothing special.”
I stared at her so long that tears rolled down her cheeks again. Then, from the bedroom, our son let out a little cry: thin, tired, and so weak it made the hairs on my arms stand up.
Hue automatically turned toward the sound and stood up almost too quickly, leaning on the wall with one hand. It was then that I noticed how unsteady he was, how his knees seemed to buckle under his own weight, and a pang of guilt hit me with such force that I had to grab the edge of the counter.
“You’re not well,” I said. “Don’t lie to me.”
He kept shaking his head. “Please. Please don't cause any trouble.”
Trouble. He said it as if trouble had already been living in that house for weeks.
