Children of the River (6 page)

“Do you want to give this little one to me to keep?” Soka joked. “Of course, everyone prefers sons, but a daughter is good too.”
Soka would never have a daughter now. Everyone had told them it cost thousands of dollars to have a baby in the United States; where were they going to get money like that? Soka had felt she had no choice; shortly after arriving, she had the operation for no more babies.
Sundara watched her aunt with a kind of pained fascination, wondering if she was remembering the baby daughter that had died.
Soka looked up from Jennifer now. Her black eyes fell on Sundara and the smile faded. “You can do the dishes, Niece.”
“Yes, Younger Aunt.” Sundara slipped into the kitchen, suddenly trembling. Whenever Soka looked at her that way, she imagined her aunt saying to herself,
There is the girl who was sent to care for my little child and let ber die instead
Moni followed with plates balanced on her forearms. “Let me help.” Moni always had to be busy, as if to justify her presence. Easy to understand. How else could a girl feel without a real place of her own in a family? And Moni had no family at all, not here. Until recently she'd had to live with her American sponsors. They'd finally been able to help her get her own tiny apartment, but Sundara knew she was lonely.
“The Millers didn't have one of these dishwashing machines,” Moni said, “so I still don't understand how to work them.”
“It's easy. You scrape and I'll show you how to load it.”
Things like this made Sundara feel older than her friend, even though Moni was twenty-two. Having come to America earlier, Sundara understood many things about life here that Moni did not. But in other ways, Moni was the wiser; she knew something of men.
Deftly, Sundara fit the plates in the racks. “Why must they always play those songs?”
Moni shook her head. “That one about the woman and her children could make a stone statue weep.”
“And what about the one where the girl is stranded in Long Beach with a new baby because the man she escaped with abandoned her?”
“Ah, that's a sad one too,” Moni agreed. “That really happened to a girl I know. And of course her family has disowned her because they never approved of the match in the first place. But sometimes I wonder which is worse— being abandoned by your husband, or being stuck with one you don't like.”
Sundara pondered this as they worked. What a dilemma.
“Remember that girl from Salem?” Moni went on. “The one who's pregnant? She's
miserable.
She confessed to me the other day that she only married her husband because it looked like he had a good chance of being sponsored to America. Now, she says, he's turned mean, he beats her, and she swears she'd rather be back rotting in the refugee camp with the man she loves than here in America. Life here is not at all what she was expecting.”
Sundara poured the blue detergent into the cup. “That's not surprising. You'd need a powerful dream to sustain yourself through all that time in the camp. Day after day you'd be promising yourself your troubles would be over if only you could get to America. And then, of course, it doesn't turn out that way.” She closed the dishwasher door and punched the start button.
Moni jumped at the rush of water.
Sundara smiled. “Don't worry, it's supposed to sound like that. Now, speaking of men and the troubles they bring, have you seen Chan Seng?”
Moni glanced behind her to make sure they were still alone. “Can you keep a secret? We are thinking of getting married.”
“That's wonderful! But why a secret?”
“I'm not blind. I'm not deaf. I know everyone was whispering about me when I danced the
lamthon
with him at New Year's. So bold, they said. A girl who goes wherever the wind blows. They say I should marry that man from Battambang. The one who lives in Portland? Can you imagine? What a feverish rat! He's no man for a strong woman like me. But I like Chan Seng. I think everyone was too hard on him about his arrest. I think he honestly did not understand that in this country you can't go around catching the birds in the parks to eat.”
Sundara murmured sympathetically, but she was remembering Naro's anger at this incident. He had called Chan Seng a fool and complained that it made them all look bad. He hated to see that kind of thing get into the newspapers.
“You see, Sundara, since I have no one to arrange a marriage for me, I must do the best I can. I want to make a new life, start a family of my own. How can this happen if I do nothing but wait?”
“But won't everyone be pleased you've found a Khmer to marry?”
“I hope so.” There was a hesitancy in Moni's voice, a note of doubt Sundara did not understand. There was nothing in this match that would surprise anyone. They had all seen marriages between refugees agreed upon in as little as two days. Everyone understood that feeling, the impatience to belong to a family again.
“Are you still wondering,” Sundara said gently, “if your first husband is alive?”
“Oh, no. Many people saw the soldiers loaded onto the trucks and driven away. None of them ever came back.” She bit her lip. “I still think about him, but I am sure he is dead.” After a moment she said, “That is past. Life here is so different, I already feel as if I've died myself and been reincarnated.”
“Moni! That's exactly how I feel sometimes!”
Moni nodded. “I want to think about the future now.”
Later, when all the guests had gone, Sundara retired to her corner of the garage, a space defined by a square of rugremnant, a shelf arrangement of produce boxes, and a suspended plastic pipe where she hung her few clothes. She pulled the string on the bare light bulb and found her chemistry book. Then she curled up on the canvas cot, wrapping herself in the afghan Soka let her use. Colder, these nights. Soon she'd be sleeping in her coat again.
It had been such a long day—church, picking all afternoon, then this gathering. She had not studied as much as she'd meant to, and now she couldn't concentrate.
She kept thinking of Moni. As hard as Moni tried to keep to Khmer ways, people still disapproved of her. It didn't seem fair. Would it be this way for her too?
She decided to speak to her uncle. Somehow, Naro seemed more approachable, less intimidating than her aunt. She went into the dining area where he sat working over more letters on behalf of Soka's sister in the camp.
“Uncle?”
“Yes?”
“You know I am seventeen now.” She paused. “Wasn't Soka just seventeen or eighteen when you married her?”
Naro frowned. “You want to get married?”
“Oh, no! I just wondered…. Things are so different here. Girls go out with boys …”
“Not Khmer girls.”
Sundara looked down at the flower-patterned vinyl floor. How could he be so sure the way it would be with Khmer girls in America? Wasn't she herself one of the first faced with growing up here?
“I'm surprised you choose to hurt my ears about this. Don't we have enough problems? Besides, this is something for us to think about, not you. Your aunt and I will see about a husband for you at the proper time.”
“Uncle, please pardon my boldness, but Younger Aunt is already talking of matching me with that Chinese boy.”
“Well, naturally she wants to keep her eyes open for a good match. If some family offers an especially handsome bride-price …” His hand chopped the air. “Enough of this. Medical school is your goal. Your task is to go and study. Mine is to finish these letters.”
Sundara hesitated. There was so much more she wished to discuss. Should she explain about Chamroeun to help stall off her aunt's matchmaking? Should she remind her uncle how few suitable Khmer men they actually knew? No, obviously he considered the conversation concluded, so she returned to the garage.
For a moment she just stood there, peering into the far, dark corners, the cold of the smooth cement floor chilling her stockinged feet. Everything was different now. Couldn't he see that?
Everything.
What a long way she was from the airy, tile-roofed house she'd known as a child. At first they'd even been afraid to sleep in these strangely tight American dwellings. There was no air! Surely they would suffocate! Now she was used to it, but still …
Padding past the station wagon, her roommate, she checked the locks on the garage door and made sure the curtains they'd rigged over the glass panels were properly closed. Almost every night when she did this, she thought of home, and wished she were latching the shutters of the room she had shared with her sister Mayoury, taking in one last breath of the fragrant frangipani blossoms down in the garden instead of the stink of gasoline and laundry detergent….
But enough of this dangerous dreaming! She had nearly forgotten to put the last load of clothes into the dryer. She would not want to face a morning where Soka found wet clothes when she was counting on dry ones.
She climbed back onto her cot to the hum of the dryer, the rhythmic click of Pon's overall buckles against the metal drum. Not so long ago, she reflected, it had seemed quite reasonable that she should marry whoever was chosen for her, especially when the chosen one was Chamroeun. Now, somehow, she felt uneasy about this. What if it couldn't be Chamroeun? What if Soka thought only of the man's income and didn't care if he was kind or had a nice smile? She didn't want to be like the unhappy girl in Salem. And as for Naro's admonition to think only of her education … Well, becoming a doctor was so far in the future, and right now, in this lonely time, a chemistry book was no comfort at all. She needed something closer, sooner, something to make her eager for each new day.
But then, she
was
looking forward to something, wasn't she? Or more precisely, someone.
She hugged the afghan tight around her shoulders, alarmed at admitting this, even to herself. Such secret feelings would have to be guarded with utmost care, heaven protect her, for this certain someone was white, he was American, he was absolutely forbidden.

CHAPTER
7

“So—how about it?” Jonathan said. “We could go to the movies if you want. Whatever.”
“Oh …” She looked away from him, across the patio, stalling for time. A date. He was actually asking her out on a date. A picture flashed in her mind: Jonathan on the doorstep, like in the TV commercials, Naro and Soka looking him over, making him promise to bring her home on time…. No, no, never in a thousand years … She turned back to Jonathan. “Thank you, but I cannot.”
“Come on, don't you like me?”
Her cheeks burned. “You teasing.” He knew very well she liked him.
“Sorry.” He smiled, not sorry at all. “But what's the problem?”
She bit her lip. “I like to go with you, but—in my country, we don't go out on a date at all.”
Still he smiled, refusing to take her seriously. “How do you figure out who you want to marry, then?”
“Our parents arrange. The boy's mother ask the girl's mother.”
“But that's …
archaic.”
She lifted her chin. “My family would choose well for me. And my mother and father, they very happy together, even they see each other for the first time on their wedding day.”
“Yeah?” He sounded skeptical.
She shifted away from him. “If the family make a good match, two people can grow to love each other. Our system not so bad.” She gave him a sidelong look. “In Cambodia we do not talk divorce every time somebody get mad.”
“Hey, I didn't mean to sound critical. It's just that things are different here.”
“Yes,” she said, softening, “but not for me.”
His smile had faded. He seemed bewildered. “So you really won't go out with me?”
“Jonatan, I shouldn't even have lunch with you. To go to the movie … I'm sorry. I just can't.”
He blinked, at a loss. “Well … I guess if that's the way you feel …”
She thought about Cathy, about the other girls who gave him admiring glances. Perhaps no one had ever turned him down before. He looked so hurt.
But was she supposed to throw away the traditions of centuries to save the feelings of one American boy?
Of course not.
Still, imagine … to openly say to the world,
Yes, I want to be with htm and be wants to be with me.
To venture into public, the two of them, alone together for all to” see …
No, of course not.
But she couldn't pretend she hadn't felt it—a surprising little thrill of temptation.
After PE one day, Sundara and Kelly were dressing amid clouds of steam and deodorant spray when Cathy Gates started talking about Jonathan on the other side of the lockers.
“Leave it to me,” she said, “I’ll get him to do the rally skit.”
“I wouldn't count on it, Cath. Craig says Jonathan's acting kind of weird lately.”
“Well, he's
my
boyfriend,” Cathy said. “I ought to know him better than Craig Keltner does.”
My boyfriend.
Something welled up in Sundara. How easily those words slipped off this girl's tongue.
“What's the matter?” Kelly said.
Sundara had stopped dressing and was standing still, her head tilted. She laid a finger across her lips and glanced toward the lockers.
“I've
told
you,” Cathy's voice came again. “He's just working on a class project with her. And the only reason he's doing it at lunch is because he didn't get lunch period with us. Believe me, it's nothing.”
Nothing.
Had Jonathan actually said that?
Kelly leaned close to Sundara. “Are they talking about you?”
Sundara nodded grimly. Perhaps it was as Soka said. There was an order to things. Family must come first. Blood lines must not be broken. Destroy the order and it will destroy you. She'd opened her heart just the tiniest bit to an American boy, and already this had given Cathy's words the power to tear her apart. She resumed buttoning her blouse.
Cathy's friend said something Sundara couldn't catch. Then Cathy laughed in that easy, confident way she had. Sundara flushed. Maybe she
was
just a class project to Jonathan. She hadn't thought so, especially when he asked her out. But what did she understand about American boys? As Cathy said, he was her boyfriend. She was the one who really knew him.
Cathy and her friend slammed their lockers and left.
“What's going on?” Kelly asked.
Sundara clicked the padlock on her gym basket. “Jonatan McKinnon. Her boyfriend, but he ask me to have lunch with him every day.”
“So that's where you've been” Kelly stared in awe. Then she bounced up from the bench. “Well, does he like you, or what? This is really incredible!”
Sundara raised her eyebrows. “This is such a shock, that he can like me?”
“No, no, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that … Jonathan McKinnon! If he ever even looked at me I'd probably melt into a helpless little puddle. And he
likes
you?” She peered at Sundara, trying to push her glasses up by wrinkling her nose. “I don't get it. You just do not look the way a normal, sane girl ought to look if Jonathan McKinnon likes her!”
“Oh, Kelly, not so simple for me. Better he doesn't like me. I'm so scared. My family hear about this, they gonna be mad.”
“Who cares?” Kelly said. “For a boy like him I'd let my parents completely disown me.”
Sundara had to smile. Kelly was so funny. But she could afford to talk this way; for her, being thrown out wasn't a real possibility.
“So what's he really like?” Kelly wiggled her eyebrows. “Up close and personal? I mean, what do you guys talk about?”
“Well, he want to know about my life in Cambodia—”
“Sure, sure, but what about Cathy? Is he going to break up with her?”
“Oh, we never talk about that…. Sometime he talk about football. He such a big star, but I don't think he so happy about it.”
“Really? That's weird.”
Sundara closed her locker and leaned back on it. “Kelly? Will your parents let you go on a date?”
“Let me? Are you kidding? My mother would
die
for me to have a date. She's always bugging me about boys, and believe me, I don't appreciate being reminded I don't have anything to hide.”
Sundara sighed. “I have something to hide—and it scare me to death!”
In spite of her fears, Sundara found herself letting Jonathan fall in step beside her every day after international relations. Then she would follow him with her lunch tray to their special place on the patio. She watched herself doing this, day after day, almost as if she were watching someone else. So daring! Yet somehow the risk made her moments with Jonathan all the sweeter.
Then one day, when she had almost grown complacent, her luck ran out.
“I never understand why the American student so noisy in class,” she was telling Jonathan as they finished their lunches. “Don't they want a good education?”
“Sure, I guess, but—”
“In my country, you get goofy like that—whap, whap —you gonna get it with a stick on your back!”
“They
beat
you?”
“Oh, yes. Or one teacher I have, he pinch your ear like this.” She demonstrated, pretending to yank her gold earring.
“Sounds pretty rough.”
“Well, they don't have to do that too much, because most of the student have good behavior. They know they must learn; they gonna be in big trouble at home if their parent find out they not respecting the teacher. But here …” She shook her head. “Even you! I'm shock when you get so sassy, ask so many question. Like yesterday in international relations when everybody argue? That make me kind of nervous.”
“That was just a good discussion. Lanegren
wants
everyone to get involved.”
“He like it when the student argue with him? In my country, you don't even dare ask the teacher to repeat if you don't understand. That like saying he doing a bad job of explaining. Same thing if somebody your boss.”
“But if everybody's always pretending they understand when they don't, doesn't that lead to lots of misunderstandings?”
She frowned. “Sometime. But we don't like to argue about that face-to-face. We rather smooth it over, keep everything nice, try to understand without having a … what you call it?”
“A confrontation?”
“Yes! That the word. I'm shock when the American argue so much. Why you do this?”
“Beats me. I didn't know we did. Maybe we're just used to saying what we think.”
“But sometime that so rude!”
He laughed. “Hey, Sundara, guess what?”
“What?”
“You're arguing!”
“Oh, you! You always make fun of—”
She stopped dead. Across the patio—Pok Simo with his Chinese friend. She held her breath, willing herself invisible. He hadn't seen her yet. But then his friend spotted her. He nudged Pok Simo.
Pok Simo took in their little scene—the lunch trays on the bench, the notebooks unopened. His eyes narrowed to a hard glare. She turned away, trembling. What fate! Of all people to walk by and find her alone with a white skin. For Pok Simo would love nothing better than to get her in trouble.
“You know him?” Jonathan asked.
She nodded, feeling sick. “He is Khmer also.” Pok Simo resented the fact that her uncle had risen to the position of accountant while his father, once a high military attaché, now worked as a janitor. He resented even more Sundara's proud way of walking through the halls, her refusal to give him the deferential nod due one of high rank. Sundara shivered. He would savor his revenge in spreading this story.
“Is he gone yet?”
“Yeah, he took off. But what's his problem?”
She shook her head distractedly. Better if she had humbly bowed to Pok Simo each time they'd passed in the school halls, declaring herself lower than the dust beneath his feet. Now, for holding her head high, she would pay. Because what would Soka do if word of a white skin reached her ears?
News traveled fast among the Cambodians; Sundara did not expect to be kept in suspense long.
The following morning, her aunt's voice, harsher than usual, rudely ended Sundara's dream, a dream that somehow combined the warmth of Jonathan's smile with the softness of a night in Phnom Penh. Which was worse, the shattering nightmares, or waking from such loveliness at the snap of Soka's voice? Cold fear rushed through her as she remembered the previous day. Was it possible her aunt had already heard Pok Simo's story?
Sundara took her quick turn in the bathroom, washing her face, touching on some makeup, staring at her reflection. Did she look like a wicked girl? A girl who ate lunch alone with a boy? She would miss talking with him. Never before had anyone seemed so interested in her life, her feelings. What a relief it had been to speak of things so long held inside.
When she came into breakfast wearing jeans and a jade green blouse, Soka gave her one of those accusing looks. “You spend a lot of time on yourself lately.”
Sundara swallowed. She
bad
taken extra care in winding the ends of her hair around the curling iron, but her clothes were nothing special, except in comparison to Soka's. Soka refused to buy clothes for herself, and wished Sundara would also refrain. But Sundara didn't want to dress out of charity boxes as she'd had to at first. What fate! All those horrible pants suits of stretchy material … They were nothing like what the other girls were wearing. Not that she ever missed looking
exactly
like everyone else as she had at home, skipping to school each day in a blue skirt and white blouse. It was just that now she wanted to fit in with the Americans. She wanted jeans and tops like everyone else.
“Little ones! Come eat” Soka had set their places to eat around the table western style. Now she poured the sugary cereal the boys had seen advertised on television.
Pon punched off his cartoons and carried in the jar of strawflowers he'd been wiring for Mr. Bonner's wife. He earned two cents for each stem he attached.
“Wonderful” Soka said. “At least three dollars’ worth. What a clever son.” She gave his cheek a quick nuzzle. “Ravy, here is your note for the school.”
“What's this?” Naro wanted to know as Ravy stuffed the paper in the back pocket of his jeans and sat down.
“The school called,” Soka said. “They wanted me to write my permission so he can play football after school.”
“Football? Ravy, why do you want to smash into other people?”
“It's flag football, Papa, not tackle. You just yank the flag out of the other guy's pocket.”
Sundara and Ravy exchanged glances. She knew very well he could hardly wait to play tackle.
“Tälking to those people at his school is like pouring water on a duck's back,” Soka complained. “No matter how many times I tell them, I cannot make them understand that I am not Mrs. Tep, there
is
no Mrs. Tep. I am Kern Soka, I tell them on the phone yesterday, but it does no good.”
“You should give up trying to put
Kern
first,” Naro said. “It only confuses diem.”
She took a seat. “Well, I can understand that. But why is it so difficult for them to understand a married woman keeping the name she is born with?
They
invented this women's lib, not us.”
“Haven't you learned yet?” Naro said. “This is their country. They don't care about our ways. We are expected to imitate
tbem.”
“And some of their ways I don't mind. But I'll tell you one thing, these children of ours must not become too American.” She took each of them in with her eyes. “We don't want those bad things happening to the children of
this
family. Drinking, drugs, getting pregnant …”
Sundara's face got hot. She couldn't help it—Soka's black eyes boring into her like that. If her aunt's vague suspicions were this hard to endure, imagine how terrifying to face her wrath at the truth!
Her cousins had gobbled their cereal and excused themselves. They went back down the hall to collect Ravy's homework papers and Pon's toy motorcycle for first grade show-and-tell.
“The best American idea, as far as I'm concerned,” Soka went on, “is a man being allowed only one wife at a time.” She gave Naro a pointed look, then turned back to Sundara. “At home, Niece, if you get a good husband who makes a lot of money, there will always be younger women coming around, wanting to be wife number two. A terrible nuisance.”
Sundara kept her eyes on her noodles, unable to enjoy the rare hint of intimacy in Soka's voice. Even if this old quarrel had lost its heat for Soka and Naro, it still served as an ominous reminder of her aunt's temper. To this day Sundara recalled overhearing her own parents discussing it—something about a younger woman, and Soka taking an ax to Naro's prized motorcycle. Sundara shuddered. Soka was not a good person to cross.
And how treacherously close Sundara always felt to Soka's anger. It was do this, don't do that, every minute of the day. Now that Soka had her food-service job at the university, she seemed to have completely forgotten how much she had depended on Sundara that first year, how much Sundara had helped her, answering the phone, going to the door while Soka cowered in the bedroom as if expecting to be dragged away…. For a while Sundara had hoped all this might win Soka's forgiveness for the baby's death, but when Soka became strong again and unafraid, she also turned meaner than ever, as if blaming Sundara for her own period of helplessness.