Five Places in the Silkworm House Where I Leave My Phone Outside, and Why

"The silkworms don't even know what a phone is, Mum. Why do you have to leave it outside?"

My daughter asked me that over the screen while I stood at the threshold of the silkworm house, one arm around a tray, the other holding the phone up so she could see. Ngọc lives in Saigon, has never once come home in silkworm season, and had now asked this three times.

They don't know. And I won't claim the phone does anything to them, because I don't know that, and I don't like talking about what I don't know. I leave it outside for my own sake. I have raised silkworms for more than twenty years, the house sits behind the mulberry field, and after going through that door more times than I can count I noticed five places inside where the thing in my hand made me lose something. Each place, a different something.

This piece is about those five places. They are not ranked by importance, only in the order I walk from the door to the spinning frame at the back of the house.

This is not a rule of silkworm farming, and certainly not a claim that phones should be kept away from people. I use mine every day, to call my daughter and to check cocoon prices. All I want to point to are five moments when my two hands are doing something with its own rhythm, and the device asks for a different one.

The plastic basket by the water jar, before washing my hands

The water jar stands on the front step, a coconut-shell ladle hanging from a peg. Everyone who enters the silkworm house washes their hands, me included, and Mrs. Ba from next door too, who has raised silkworms for more than forty years. My mother-in-law told me so the day I married in, and I wash with plain water and a bar of soap until my skin squeaks.

One season I would wash, then pull out the phone for a quick look, then go in. The moment I touched it my hands felt like they had picked up something again, so I washed a second time. Two washes, two touches. On the third round I stopped, stood looking at my wet hands, and found it funny.

The easiest thing to think is that the phone is dirty, so it stays out. But that is only true on the outside. Under it, what I noticed is that the water jar is the one place in my day where my hands start a new job: from the hands that hold a phone to the hands that tend silkworms. The threshold was already there. Nothing had marked it.

I took an old plastic basket and set it on a stool by the water jar. Before the first ladle of water, the phone goes in the basket. Hands washed, I walk straight in without turning back. You know it is working when my hand doesn't drift toward my shirt pocket while I wait at the first tray. The first time my hands felt empty, as if I had gone to market and forgotten the shopping bag. By the second week that empty feeling stopped, though I wouldn't say it disappeared. Some days I still stand at a tray with my hand creeping toward the pocket, only the pocket has nothing in it.

One morning Mrs. Ba stood looking at the basket for a while.

"What do you keep in there?"

"My phone."

"Hm. In my day I left my hat."

I didn't understand and she explained nothing more. I guess her hat was the place where she put something down before going in, and I didn't ask in case I guessed wrong.

On a busy day I only do it for the first feeding of the day. One time is enough to give that day a marker.

The thing I did wrong here was to leave the phone on vibrate in the basket, in case someone called. It buzzed against the plastic like a big cicada hitting a tin box, far louder than it ever sounded in my pocket, and I could hear it from the other end of the house. That sound made me more restless than holding the phone ever did. Now I put an old towel in the bottom of the basket and keep it silent.

Beside the big trays, while they're eating

When the big silkworms are eating, the whole house can hear it. A steady rustle, not loud, but thick, like someone crumpling newspaper very slowly in the next room.

Ngọc wanted to hear it. One morning I held up the phone to record a clip for her, adjusted the frame so the worms sat in the middle, my eyes stuck to the screen. After I sent it I played it back. The sound of the silkworms eating had turned into wind, thin and even, with nothing in it to listen to. And while I was recording, I hadn't heard it in real life either, because my head was busy watching the frame.

The explanation anyone would give is that I filmed it to keep it for my daughter. Underneath is this: the sound of eating is the only thing a tray of silkworms tells me. Mrs. Ba says she can hear which tray is hungry, which is full, which is about to run out of leaves. I don't know how right she is, because I'm not as good at listening as she is, and I've never dared ask what she goes by. Ngọc played the clip back and said it sounded like a fan. I laughed and didn't argue. What I do know for sure is that when I filmed, I kept a copy of the message without reading the message itself.

What I practise is standing at the head of a tray, hands clasped behind my back, listening until the sound thins out. One feeding is one listening. You know you're listening properly when you can guess that a tray needs more leaves before the surface of the tray shows through. The first time all I heard was one block of noise, and my legs got tired. By the second week, some mornings I could tell the tray near the door from the tray at the back, the way you tell two people talking apart in a market. Some mornings I couldn't, and I accepted the "couldn't" without forcing anything.

On a busy day I listen for a few breaths, until I know which tray is the loudest.

Where I slip is listening in order to grade it. I stand there thinking "this tray is fine, that tray is fine," like an inspector. Listening to grade it turns into one more thing to do correctly, and my ears go back to their old job: count, compare, note down. Let it be sound. Scores can come later.

By the hanging scale, before dividing the mulberry leaves

"Twelve point three... minus the sack, so that leaves..."

I stood there, both arms around a sack of freshly picked leaves, murmuring numbers, while the phone on the cement step by my foot lit up. I turned and tapped the calculator, because my mental sums are slow. A message arrived while I was tapping. I read it, replied, then looked back at the calculator screen: the number was gone.

That afternoon I divided the leaves among six trays from a number I half remembered. By evening the last tray was short. I grabbed a torch and ran out to the field to pick more, while the worms in that tray were already raising their heads in waves, searching. I don't know how long they had been hungry, and I don't want to work it out.

This mistake is easy to call poor multitasking. Underneath is something else. Doing the sum aloud keeps me inside the job of dividing: I'm holding the sack, I feel how heavy it is in my arms, I hear the leaves brushing each other. The number in the machine belongs to the machine and has no weight. When I let the calculator do it, my arms held the sack and my head was somewhere else.

I don't know whether doing it in my head is more accurate than the calculator. The calculator surely is. What I changed wasn't accuracy. Mrs. Ba needs neither: she lifts a sack, measures it with her arms, and is off by an ounce at most, but she has done this for more than forty years and I haven't.

Now I write chalk marks on the storeroom door, one stroke per weighing, and say the number aloud. I finish weighing, say "twelve point three" out loud, and only then divide. You know it works when, after dividing, no tray is left short. The first time, saying it aloud felt awkward, since the only person around was Mrs. Ba walking past. She glanced in, asked nothing, and went on. After a week the awkwardness went. The chalk strokes on the door piled up, and that had nothing to do with the phone.

On a busy day I only say the final number out loud. One number, enough to put my mouth and hands in the same place.

My mistake here was writing in chalk and forgetting to wipe it, so by the next batch I couldn't tell which strokes belonged to which. It took more effort than the calculator, so I'd drop it. Now at the end of each batch I wipe the door at the same time as the trays.

The front step, on the days the silkworms sleep

What do I do when they sleep?

Nothing. That is the answer, and it is the hardest part of the whole season. Silkworms sleep for a day, the whole tray goes still, their heads raised like someone dozing upright, no eating, no moving. No leaves to divide, no droppings to clear. My hands become surplus.

I sit on the front step, and the thing in my shirt pocket speaks. Not a ring, but the thought "I could look at something." Many times over.

The first explanation I came up with: I'm idle, so I pick up the phone, everybody does. But sitting longer showed me something else: this is the one place in the whole batch where nobody needs me. The silkworms don't, because they're asleep. Sometimes, strangely, it bothers me when nobody needs me. I fill it with something that needs looking at, anything at all.

I don't know what to do with that beyond admitting it.

Sunlight came through the gaps in the bamboo screen in a few stripes across the tray. An ant crossed the rim of the tray, and I watched it go all the way along one edge and then out of sight. That was all. But that "that was all" was something I hadn't watched for years.

The exercise is sitting. Go out to the step with a glass of water, the phone left in the basket by the water jar, and look into the silkworm house through the gap in the door until one of them stirs. You know you've done it right when you sit until a silkworm moves without getting up before it does. The first time I lasted about as long as it takes to boil a kettle. The next day it went better, the day after that worse again. By the end of the batch I still wasn't used to it, and I promise nobody anything.

Anyone who reads the piece about why the spinning circle on a screen makes me so impatient will find something similar somewhere else: waiting for something I don't get to decide.

On a busy day I sit once, until one stirs. If the silkworms sleep on a day when I have real work waiting, I go do that work, and I don't have to sit just to make up the number.

The trap I often fall into is switching to scrubbing the trays or sweeping the floor, so that I don't have to sit doing nothing. It looks so diligent, and I think I'm not touching the phone, while what I'm dodging is still the place where nobody needs me. There is nothing wrong with sweeping. I was just using it the way I use the phone.

Under the spinning frame, the night they spin

On the night the silkworms ripen, everyone in the house stays up. The spinning frame at the back is set up by afternoon, each silkworm has picked a bamboo cell, and in the dark you can hear a very small sound, like someone drawing thread off a spool.

Last year I switched on the flash to photograph one that was spinning. A beautiful photo. I sent it to Ngọc. Then Mrs. Ba, standing behind me, clicked her tongue once and said nothing. I asked, "What do you think?" She said, "Who knows. I don't know if it matters. I just don't do it."

I don't know whether a flash affects a silkworm. Maybe not. I didn't go looking it up either, afraid that I'd find out and still do as she does.

What I found sitting under the frame wasn't about the flash. It was that when I raised the phone, I stopped looking. In the whole night there was exactly one moment when a silkworm found its cell, and I watched it through a screen, which means I watched a copy of it, smaller and flatter.

What I do now: a small torch on the ground, a piece of dark cloth over it so the light is faint, and nothing lit in my pocket. I pick one worm and watch it, follow it until it settles. You know it works when you can say which cell that worm chose, which one up from the bottom, which way it leaned. The first time I realised a silkworm moves more slowly than I'd thought. Over the next few nights I started to see another one searching for its place, though one night the whole frame held only worms that had already settled. I sat with that empty frame too, and it was fine.

On a busy day, watch one, only one, until it finds its cell.

Mrs. Ba sat under the frame a while and then dozed off, her head against the post, and I didn't wake her. For a moment the house held three sounds: the faint rustle of the frame, her breathing, and me swallowing.

Where I slip is retelling. That night, after watching, I thought at once: how will I tell Ngọc tomorrow. I had started writing the message in my head before the silkworm was done. Now I think writing it in my head is another way of holding the phone.

If the phone stays outside and it still doesn't feel right

Two things happened to me.

The first: once when my mother was ill, staying at my aunt's, I couldn't leave the phone outside. It stayed in my pocket, ringer on, and I carried it into the silkworm house. That day I did none of the above. I have no advice for days like that. All I did was say to Mrs. Ba, "If I run out, would you watch the trays?" She nodded, asked nothing, and that part I felt lighter about.

The second: the phone stayed outside, yet I kept running out to get it, over and over. Then the basket became a place to come and go, not a threshold. I tried moving the basket to the mango tree at the edge of the field, a walk away. I went to get it far less. Some people don't need to go that far, and some need to go farther. Each person gets a different spot. Others pick another route, like turning off notifications for one hour every day, and see how it goes.

And if you don't raise silkworms, your home probably has a water jar of its own: the threshold of the bedroom, or a corner of the kitchen. Choose just one spot, a place where your two hands move from one task to another.

Last night the silkworms spun. I sat under the frame with the small torch, the phone lying in the plastic basket lined with a towel, by the water jar, outside the door. There was a faint rustle at the ninth cell in the top row. I don't know which worm it was.