Beetle Nut Mamasan (An Excerpt from"The Ghost Closet" by Tom Treece)

At our next stop we had to leave the bus by the side of the road and hike inland where we dedicated our Duy Hoa Village Nursery School. I noticed a baseball-sized rock protruding from the path’s red clay and I dug it out and slipped it into my carrying bag, remembering I had promised one of my Vietnam veteran brothers back home I would bring him back a rock.

After dedicating the school we headed back through the village and toward the bus; that was when I noticed her. The mamasan - as we called the older Vietnamese mothers during my time there as a soldier - was sitting inside the open front door of her home. When she saw me she smiled, and when she smiled I had found what I had been hoping to find…a beetle-nut-chewing mamasan!

I remembered my time as a soldier seeing old men and women of villages with teeth as black as night from chewing Beetle Nut, an addictive Southeast Asian substance similar to tobacco, and had told Renee about them; now was her chance for a first-hand look.

I called to her and asked her to come out of her hooch and again raised my camera to indicate that I wanted to take her picture. She began giggling and I got excited as her giggles exposed her black mouth and teeth; perfect!
A bit shy at having such attention rained on her she balked at coming out until I once again pulled a crisp greenback out of my pocket and offered it to her; out she came. I raised my camera to record her grinning face and tripped the shutter….just as she stopped smiling and closed her mouth.

I shook my head and bared my teeth with an exaggerated grin in an attempt to explain to her what I wanted; I re-aimed the camera as she again broke into a smile. And again, just as I took the picture her smile disappeared. Finally I took a “You and Me” that showed her black mouth, but I never did get the smile picture for which I was wanting.