Suddenly, I notice the frowns. My comfortable, practical, loose-fitting black pants, brown T-shirt, and black Teva sandals draw quizzical looks from my Cambodian family.
“You look like a Khmer Rouge,” one male cousin announces.
I stare back at them, aghast that those are the first words I hear from my long-lost family in Cambodia.
“That’s how she dresses when she travels,” Eang explains gently.
As my face turns pink from embarrassment, Chou’s eyes lock on mine and I see that they are the same: kind, gentle, and open. Suddenly, she covers her mouth and lets out a loud cry and runs over to me. The rest of the family watches silently as Chou takes my hand, her tears cool in my palm. Our fingers clamp around each other’s as naturally as if the chain has never been broken.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” Chou exclaims, her voice breaking through her sobs.
“Chou” is the only thing I can manage to say as I bite back my own tears.
“It’s really you,” Chou rasps, crying and laughing at the same time. I look at her, and the American part of me wants to take her in my arms in a warm embrace, but the Cambodian/Chinese part of me holds back. In America, I hug Maria, Tori, and my friends but never Eang, Meng, or any other Cambodian people. So I stand there, my arms hanging awkwardly by my sides while the crowd watches.
“Loung, don’t worry about Chou. She cries all the time,” Khouy teases as Chou composes herself.
“Second Brother, Eldest Brother, Eldest Sister-in-Law,” I greet Khouy, Meng, and Eang.
“This is Morm, Pheng…” Meng introduces me to a sea of new faces and names but I have a hard time turning from Chou’s husband. “Not ugly but tall and handsome,” I think and am happy for her.
“Come, let us go.” Chou pulls me out of the crowd, her eyes still red.
While the others follow with my bag, Chou leads me through a throng of armless and legless men and women beggars. “Land mine victims, many of them of here,” she tells me when she notices the halt in my steps. While the family packs into the back of Pheng’s truck, Meng, Eang, Maria, Tori, Chou, and I pile into our small rented car. As the driver takes us into the city, I am filled with many emotions fighting their way to the surface. Next to me, Chou smiles and gapes. Her hand gently touches my arm and then rests in my lap.
“How are you doing, sweetie pies?” I ask Tori and Maria in English. As they describe their trip to the village, I gaze out the window. My eyes flicker darkly when I see young children running in the street with tattered clothes and limbs so thin they look like stick figures. Behind them, men and women sit in the sun on small stools next to piles of garbage, trying to make a living out of their baskets of oranges, pomegranates, and jackfruits as our car kicks up dust into their eyes. Sun-worn gray, one-room thatch huts litter the landscape. But in my eyes, even in the midst of the obvious crushing poverty, the Cambodia I’m in now is not the Cambodia of my nightmares. Though the crumbling buildings and bumpy roads are the same, this Cambodia is crowded with strong-looking people and spirited smiles.
“Loung, you don’t feel sick?” Chou asks me. “It was such a long flight.”
“No, I slept very well—like a dead person. When I woke up, I read my books. I like flying a lot.” As I speak in my heavily accented Khmer, I notice the confusion on Chou’s face. Meng and Eang laugh out loud.
“Loung,” Meng says to me in Khmer, “in Khmer we say ‘ride on plane’ not ‘fly.’ And we don’t use the expression ‘sleep like a dead person’ here.”
“Eldest Brother,” Chou giggles. “Loung was speaking Khmer?”
“Chou, I will have to interpret Loung’s Khmer into Cambodian Khmer for you,” Meng chuckles. “After fifteen years speaking mostly English, she literally translates English words into her version of Khmer words.”
Though a little embarrassed, I laugh along with them. As Chou, Meng, and Eang banter on, switching from Khmer to Chinese, their happiness makes the air less stuffy. In my mind, I scream in English, “I can’t believe I’m here sitting next to Chou! Oh My God! I’m here!” We drive through concrete streets flanked by old three-story buildings covered in gray mold. On a wide side street, a man pushes a cart with big pictures of ice-cream bars and rings his bell. Suddenly, I remember running up to a similar vendor with Keav, Geak, and Chou and I smile.
“We are at Che Cheung’s house,” Chou tells me when the car stops in front of a an old two-story house. “She and the other girls have cooked up a big feast in honor of your arrival.” Chou reaches for my hand and walks me into a modern-looking big room filled with dark wood plank beds, dressers, and teak chairs. I take off my sandals and throw them on top of a pile of others and cool my feet on the beige ceramic tiles while the whirling fan above blows air on my natty hair. “Che Cheung is very lucky,” Chou whispers. “When the UNTAC soldiers came to Cambodia to set up the election, she borrowed money and started a business selling motorbikes. She did very well.” Since her first visit to Phnom Penh in 1991, Chou no longer fears the city and returns often to see relatives. But still, I’m taken aback that she knows about UNTAC, the United Nations Transitional Authority of Cambodia.
“Che Cheung, we’re here!” Chou calls out. Suddenly a swarm of new faces surround me and my name pops out of lips from every corner of the house.
“Loung, welcome to my home.” Out of the crowd, cousin Cheung steps out. A petite mother of five, she runs her hand over my arm. “Isn’t she so pretty? Her flesh is so young and smooth,” Cheung declares in a tone of a big sister as everyone nods their head. Under their intense gaze my skin transforms from glistening to sweating like a pig.
“Cheung, what are you cooking that smells so good?” Eang saves me.
Taking that as a cue, Cheung’s daughters roll out a round table and set it up in the middle of the floor. Then, like expert waitresses, they bring out hot dishes of sweet and sour fish soup, roast duck, steamed chicken, deep fried pork, and stir-fried bok choy.
“Eldest Brother told me you all cannot eat vegetables so I’ve made many meat dishes.” Cheung smiles proudly at the expensive and sumptuous meal.
“Cheung, that is too much,” Meng tells her.
“Eldest Brother, we meet together only once in fifteen years,” Cheung insists.
The hours after lunch are spent in quiet conversation and storytelling until the drowsy effects of too much food wear off. While the others talk, I steal fleeting glances at Khouy. He sits with his back straight against the wall and his legs crossed. In his jokes and laughter, I find my brother who loved his bell-bottom pants and listened to the Beatles on his eight-track tapes. As Khouy tells his story, I watch Pheng hold his infant son, Chou’s fourth child. In a culture that frowns on public displays of affection, I notice that Pheng’s eyes often stay on Chou when she is in the room. When questions are asked of me, my tongue feels foreign in my mouth as I struggle to produce the sounds and tones of my native language. When she sees my difficulty, Chou explains to the family what Meng told her about my difficulties with Khmer in the car.
When the sun is low in the sky and the air is cool, Pheng, Meng, and Tori climb into the front seat of the car while Eang, Maria, Chou, her infant son, and I pile into the back. Pheng turns the car onto a busy street and stops in front of a big, boarded-up movie theater.
“Do you know where we are?” Chou asks as I stare quietly at the crumbling façade.
“Street Charles de Gaulle, Rong Kon Saw Prom Meih.” I tell her the name of the theater with fluency. Then I get out of the car and step back into 1975. “Our house,” I say with certainty, my voice choking. As I walk on our street, I feel myself growing smaller as visions of naked pink dolls, a yellow ball, and a small furry French poodle rise out of the cement to greet me. When I look up at our apartment, I feel Ma’s soft touch on my skin as she wrapped a red chiffon cloth around my body and asked me if I liked it. “The color looks so pretty on you,” she’d said, “and the material will keep you cool.” She made three identical dress
es for Geak, Chou, and me to wear on New Year’s. All had puffy sleeves and skirts that flared above the knees.
“The family that lives there has good spirit.” Chou brings me back into the present. “They’ve let us walk through the house. If you want to see it, we can ask.”
“I’ve seen it.” Meng is next to me, with his wife and daughters beside him. Suddenly the street is congested with many noisy cars and motorbikes spewing out fumes that make my temples throb and I realize I’m not ready to see the house.
“No need,” I finally tell Chou. “It’s getting late. We’ll see it some other day.”
As I climb back in the car I turn to look again at our old home. I see myself on our old balcony, leaning over the railing, spreading my arms out like a dragon, pretending to fly over the city and not caring if anyone saw me. In his corner behind me, Pa watches proudly. I understand then that though America may be my home for the moment, Cambodia will always be my heart and my soul.
“I’m not afraid anymore,” I smile and whisper to him. Chou reaches out and takes my hand as we drive away.
Epilogue lucky child returns
December 2003
The dogs bark loudly outside the wooden door and wake me from a wonderful dream. With my eyes still closed, I relive the dream scene by scene to etch the details forever in my memory.
I am trekking among the ruins of Wat Banteay Srey, the beautiful and exquisitely preserved rose-colored sandstone temple of women built in the tenth century in Siem Reap. As I touch the cool rough carvings and stare at Apsaras, nagas, elephants, and a myriads of gods and monsters living in the stones, I hear footsteps behind me. I turn to see Ma smiling at me. She is alive and beautiful and basks in a soft twilight that makes her look golden and angelic.
“What are you doing here?” I ask her.
“Just walking with you,” she replies as if this is the most natural thing for her to do.
I don’t ask her any more questions and wait for her to catch up. As we trek along the thousand-year-old temple steps, neither of us speaks a word. It is the first time I am with her unencumbered by feelings of loss, horror, or sadness. It’s as if we’re living out a parallel life where the war never existed between us.
When I open my eyes, the feeling of peace and serenity is still with me. I am lying on a spring mattress on top of Chou’s plank bed in Chou’s room in the village. Through the slits in the wooden windows, there is only darkness. Even without looking at my watch, I know it is very early in the morning. Inside my mosquito net, the air is fresh and cool. When I hear Chou’s footsteps shuffling in the other room, it dawns on me that she and I are living out our parallel lives in this world. Since our first reunion in 1995, we have been forming a new sister bond in a world that does not include the genocide or the Khmer Rouge. I turn on a flashlight and begin to write.
“You’re up already?” Chou asks. She’s standing by the open doorway, holding an oil lantern in her hand.
It is my first day in the village of a planned three-month stay in Cambodia. And though work will keep me in Phnom Penh on most weekdays, I will spend every weekend in the village with Chou.
“Yes, the dogs woke me up,” I tell her in what is now fluent Khmer. “Doesn’t their barking wake you up at night?”
“No, I’m used to it.” She smiles.
“Can’t you tell the owner I’ll pay fifty dollars to buy the two dogs? Then we’ll make curry out of them.”
“We don’t do that here,” she chuckles, and leaves.
Finished with my writing, I turn off the flashlight, lie on my back, and listen to the rats crawl between the boards over my head. In the other room, Pheng and their five children are still asleep, the children’s bodies huddled close to keep warm. On my mattress, I lie awake listening to the hums of the mosquitoes outside the net. My thoughts drift to the little girl in the opened grave who once cried and grabbed for me in my dream. I know she exists, but she no longer haunts me. Instead, she walks beside me in my shadow, finally at peace. I close my eyes, pull my thick blanket over my body, and wait for the sun to brighten up the sky. In the kitchen, I hear Chou snapping dry twigs for a fire to cook the family’s breakfast of rice soup.
After I returned from my first visit to Cambodia in 1995, I left my job in Maine and moved to Washington, D.C., to work for a campaign to ban land mines. Then in 1997, I joined the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (WAF), an international humanitarian organization. They run physical rehabilitation clinics that provide free prosthetic legs, arms, wheelchairs, and other mobility devices in Phnom Penh and three other provinces in Cambodia. As VVAF’s spokesperson, I’ve made over twenty trips back to Cambodia, each time bringing friends and donors to help the country’s many land mine and war victims. With each trip, after I say my good-byes to the delegation at the airport, I come to the village.
But the village is more like a town now. It is a bustling, crowded town with over three hundred families and perhaps as many as four thousand people. There is still no running water, but for the past few years, electricity is available from six P.M. to nine P.M. for those who can afford to pay for it. Chou and Pheng no longer run their taxi service; they are concentrating full-time on their produce business. From fruits and roots, they’ve expanded to sugarcane, palm sugar, bamboo containers, and an occasional truck rental service. Both Chou and Pheng are extraordinary entrepreneurs and, as their business thrives, they fill their house with such modern amenities as a TV, VCR, radio, glass door cabinets, drawers, standing fans, and a squat toilet. As for their five children, Chou makes sure they all go to school three times a day, six days a week to study Chinese, Khmer, and English. When her oldest daughter, Eng, finished ninth grade, Chou sent her to Phnom Penh to live with cousin Cheung so Eng could continue with her studies.
“Wake up, little ones.” I hear Chou walk back into the house and wake her children. “It’s time to get ready for school.” In their nets, the children cough, sniffle, yawn, and complain, but they quietly do as their mother commands. While Chou dresses the little ones for school, Pheng unlocks their front door and greets the arriving villagers. I get out of bed, grab my video camera, and go outside to film the scene for Meng.
Outside, the roosters crow, pigs snort, and the dogs bark loudly as people arrive to set up the market. The villagers’ voices grow louder with the light as they arrive one by one, sitting body to body in wagons pulled by ponies and cows; the lucky ones sit on the edge of the cart with their feet dangling free, their mouths spitting tobacco. Others travel on their rusty bicycles carrying piles of morning glory, lemongrass, cassava, tiny bananas, green oranges, sugarcane, meat products, fish, and bamboo shoots attached to the handlebars and back racks. Once there, they set up their stools to sell their few products. By the time the sun burns through the haze, only a few stragglers who have come on foot are still shopping, as most of the rest have already picked up their supplies and left with bags balanced on their heads, hips, shoulders, or backs. After the throngs leave, all that’s left are the rotten fruit, dead fish heads, manure, chewed-up sugarcane, coconut shells, and other garbage, left to the joy of all the flies and bugs.
When the sun climbs high enough in the sky to warm my skin, I make my way to the outhouse for a shower. As I scoop cold water with a little bowl to wash my face, numerous large spiders feast on bugs caught in their webs above my head. I glance around and realize that Chou has never had a hot shower or taken a bath in her life. When I emerge from the outhouse, Chou’s children are scurrying around, fetching me bottled water, bringing me a chair to sit on, and taking my towel to hang on the rope to dry. While her family eats plain rice soup with fried eggs, Chou returns from the market carrying a bowl of pork-blood rice congee and seasonal fruit for my breakfast. As I eat, Chou’s six-year-old daughter, Ching, climbs on my lap. Ching is the spitting image of Geak, and in my arms I hold them both. But soon Chou shoos all the children off to school.
“Chou, I’m going to visit Second Brother’s house,” I tell
her.
“I’ll come with you.”
Together we walk the two minutes on the red dirt road to Khouy’s house and are greeted by Morm.
“Khouy has already gone to work,” Morm informs us. “But sit down for tea with me.”
As we sit on the chair swing under the tree, Morm tells me her family is doing well now. Between Khouy’s salary and her joint business with Chou, selling sugar and whatever else they decide will be profitable, they have more than enough to eat, clothe themselves, and send the children to school. As we swing in our chair, I tell them about Kim.
After he arrived in France in 1985, Kim started writing to Huy Eng and asked her to wait for him. When he got his French citizenship in 1993, he returned to Cambodia and they married with Amah’s and the rest of the family’s blessings. When he left, he took Eng with him back to France, where she gave birth to a son, Nick, and a daughter, Nancy. In France, Kim took a French name—Maxine—made plastic glasses frames by day and learned how to make French bread and pastries at night, dreaming of one day opening his own French bakery in America.
Meanwhile, in America, Meng filed many immigration forms, and in the spring of 2000 Kim finally received his papers to come live with Meng. But after two years, Kim and Huy Eng decided they didn’t like the Vermont winter; they moved to Los Angeles to live with Huy Eng’s brother and his family. In California, Huy Eng is a stay-at-home mom while Kim has found work making French bread and pastries in a five-star hotel. After four years of hard work, Kim had saved enough money to open his own bakery. Now Max Bakery opens seven days a week.