In the Shadow of the Banyan (22 page)

Mama got up and left the room.

I glared at him.
What are you waiting for then? Do it!
I raged in silence.
Shave your head. Bring back Papa!
I didn’t know if I was angry at him for his useless pondering or astounded by the absurdity of a god who could be so easily coaxed into returning my father with a simple offering of his brother’s hair. Papa was worth more than that. Big Uncle, blinded by his sadness, could not see my anger.

“I should at least learn to pray,” he concluded gravely, absentmindedly.

Auntie India, unconvinced of her husband’s sudden piety, gazed at him with quiet alarm, as if she thought him crazy, behaving one moment like his usual self, the jocular jester, then another like Papa, the silent, solemn thinker.

Tata, at once severely pragmatic and childishly naïve, intervened. “It’s not the gods you need to appeal to, Arun. Talk to the Kamaphibal. Explain who we really are. Maybe we could still join him.”

In her corner, Grandmother Queen, who had been observing this whole exchange, let out a rueful sigh and murmured, “The worst irony of motherhood is when you outlive your children.” Then, just as suddenly, her expression dulled once more, without a clue as to why. A funerary silence fell in the room.

Tears welled up in Big Uncle’s eyes and he fought them down with a smile. Later, behind the school building, thinking himself alone, he cried into his hands, unaware that I was watching.

•  •  •

Gradually things seemed to get better, or at least settle down. A new group of Kamaphibal, drawn mostly from the local peasantry, emerged when the former went on to other areas to sniff out more educated people like themselves to “recruit” to the Revolution. A sense of order took shape as the local Kamaphibal began assigning families more permanent shelters: those who wished could now go live in town, either by sharing houses with the townsfolk or by occupying the ones emptied by recently deported local families. Priority was given to those camping on bare ground, or to those—it wasn’t openly discussed but everyone knew—who had bribed well-connected residents. A hut was given to a family in exchange for a watch, or a wooden house for a traditional women’s belt made of pure gold. The yellower the gold, the more coveted it was by the town’s peasants and the bigger the house it would fetch. A rumor went around that one of the wives of the Kamaphibal was willing to give up the villa she had “inherited” from an exiled Chinese merchant in exchange for such a belt. When Tata heard this, she reminded Big Uncle that we had gold—plenty of it. Maybe we could barter a belt or two for more suitable shelter.

Big Uncle said we couldn’t trust anything or anyone—a rumor or a local resident. We had only to look at the Kamaphibal, he pointed out, whose members were always changing. Nothing remained long enough for us to rely on. We might be given a house one moment, he reasoned, but deported the next. So, after much discussion, we agreed the best thing to do was to stay put and, above all, not draw attention to ourselves.

As for our claim to be mango growers, the soldiers never returned to pursue further interrogation. Whatever the reason, for now at least, the disguise worked, kept us safely stationed in our classroom, which, as Big Uncle explained, would cloister us better than a house in town, where we’d be under the constant watch of the Revolutionary soldiers and the Kamaphibal and their conspiring relatives.

But the real reason we stayed, I sensed, was simply that we couldn’t bear to leave the place where Papa had last been, where the ground echoed with his footsteps, the trees heaved his sighs, and the pond mirrored his tranquility. Here, we could still be with him, and, as much as we wished to free his spirit, to let it travel the invisible universe and look for a new home, we were not ready to let go. We clung to it—the possibility that he existed among us, even as a ghost, even as an echo or shadow—because to let go was to relinquish our hope, to admit and submit to utter, irreversible despair.

So, even as more people were leaving to set up a new life in town, we continued to stay at the temple, and, instead of bartering for an unfamiliar, ghost-free shelter, we traded our gold for food. A necklace fetched us a pillowcase of rice to supplement the sporadic rations we received from the Organization via the Revolutionary soldiers or the Kamaphibal. A pair of earrings would get us a block of palm sugar that we’d use sparingly, as a special treat now and then for Grandmother Queen and the little ones. A bracelet bought a slab of beef that Mama and Auntie India salted and sun dried and portioned out to last us a whole week.

Everyone—no matter where he lived, at the temple or in town—was now expected to work. Big Uncle would leave every morning with a group of men to dig irrigation ditches and canals to channel water from the rain-flooded marsh to distant fields. Mama and Auntie India were assigned to gather rice shoots from nursery beds along riverbanks or on hills and bring them to the plowed paddies for the rice farmers to transplant. Tata, because Mama had convinced the Kamaphibal of her chronic poor health, and I, because of my polio, stayed behind to take care of Grandmother Queen, the twins, and Radana. I would’ve liked to get away from the temple, but this was our assigned work—to care for the aged and young—so others could do theirs. We each must contribute our worth to the Revolution, so said the Kamaphibal.

Work, the rhythm and routine of the day’s labor, the physical exhaustion at night, kept us from disappearing completely into our private grief, and when the Revolutionary soldiers started to bring rice and food at more regular intervals, when the Kamaphibal began to relax their control
and stopped asking who was who, when no truck or oxcart appeared to haul anyone away, hope began to emerge that perhaps the worst was over.

•  •  •

“Get your belongings! Out!” There were ten, twenty soldiers—maybe more. They stormed onto the temple grounds and ordered everyone outside. “You, you, and you over there!” They pointed with their guns as if selecting animals for shipment, separating large families into smaller ones. “Only immediate family members together! The rest divide up!” Big Uncle, shielded by a crowd, quickly gathered us around him. “We’re
one
family—a single unit. All children of
Grandmother.
” He fixed his gaze on me as if I alone held the key to our unity. “‘Grandmother,’ no more ‘Queen,’ understand?”

Yes, I understood. We were no longer who we were. How could we be?

A couple of soldiers broke through the crowd and headed straight for us. Mama grabbed Radana and held her tight. One of the soldiers pushed her aside and, in a single long stride, cut across to Grandmother Queen. He demanded her to identify only her
koan bongkaut
—children she’d given birth to. Grandmother Queen pointed to Tata and Big Uncle. Auntie India, seizing the twins, rushed to Big Uncle’s side. “I’m his wife—the boys, our children.” The three of them clung to Big Uncle like buckets to a bamboo yoke. Alone, Mama stood frozen in place, Radana pressed to her chest, a bundle of clothes on each shoulder.

The soldier pushed her and Radana to the left, Grandmother Queen and the others to the right. Panic and confusion ensued. Big Uncle tried to say we belonged in one family. The soldier swung his rifle like a bat and struck Big Uncle across the face. Big Uncle faltered, blood gushing down his nostrils, his nose broken perhaps. The crowd divided and all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of an aisle between two throbbing masses: on one side, Mama and Radana, just the two of them, desolation; on the other, Big Uncle and the rest of my family, safety in numbers at least. I could choose.
But which?
Tears stung my eyes, clouded my vision.

“Raami, come,” Big Uncle whispered, one furtive hand out to me. I stared at it, wanting to be held now in his strong embrace. “
Come
.”

I turned the other way and saw Mama, her lips parted but unable to speak, to say my name, to make any claim whatsoever. I blinked.

She needed me, and I needed her. I flew to Mama.

Big Uncle closed his eyes at the same moment that Tata and Auntie India broke into sobs, while the twins looked on helplessly. Only when the Revolutionary soldiers pushed us toward the entrance did Grandmother Queen blink in realization of what she had done—by forgetting to claim us, she had, in essence, thrown us away.

A row of dust-covered army trucks lined the road, a convoy of metal carcasses. I spun around, suddenly regretting my choice, searching for an escape route, but before I could even take a step a throng came at us, pushing forward at the command of a soldier. I heard Big Uncle’s voice above the crowds, “Raami, Raami!” I looked around, but I couldn’t see him through the sea of arms and hips around me. There was only his voice, desperate, despairing. “Aana! Aana!”

Mama did not stop or turn back to look. She held my hand firmly and, with Radana on her hip, pulled me along.

“Oh, Aana, where are you?” again came Big Uncle’s breathless voice.

Madness surrounded us on all sides. The only direction we could move was toward the exit. Our exile.

•  •  •

On the truck, I stood on tiptoes and searched the crowds, gripped by the feeling that I was leaving behind some essential, irrecoverable part of myself. I had believed we were led to sacred ground and thus would be protected, never suspecting heaven and hell could coexist in the same space. I lost my innocence, and with it the illusion that I was safe. Now there was no Big Uncle, no Grandmother Queen, no Tata, no Auntie India or the twins. There was no Papa. Whichever way I turned, I was faced with the same stark reality—my family was gone. Without my spirit, my
pralung,
my untainted hopefulness, I felt like a kite with its string severed, drifting, drifting.

As the truck began to move, I closed my eyes and let the world vanish in a single flutter. I couldn’t bear its slow disappearance, so I obliterated it before it obliterated me. I shut out the noise and chaos, the presence of
others around me. I became aware only of myself, the movements of my body—how it seemed to be operated by the same mechanism or wiring that propelled this metal clunker forward, as if we were both skeletons of our former selves, stripped of the padding and niceties that had cushioned us until now against unexpected leaps and shocks. When the truck stopped, I felt myself smacked against a rock. When it gunned forward, I hurled through the air, moving as fast as the wind.

It went on like this, my mind jerking to and fro, my body cresting the waves of nausea and numbness. Once in a long while I would open my eyes and search for Papa, for Big Uncle and the others, for their shadows and silhouettes among the human-shaped trees and hills, for the possibility of their existence somewhere in this world beside ours. Mama, cradling Radana on her lap, freed one arm and drew me to her, pressing my face into the softness between her arm and chest. She held me tight. I closed my eyes and sank deeper into the shadow that was all my own.

fifteen

T
he old couple smiled, exposing their dark-stained teeth. Their open, cheerful grins made their shaved heads—an expression of Buddhist piety common among Cambodian elders—appear disproportionately larger than their bodies, and their somber peasant clothes seemed incongruous with their lively moods and manners. They were inexplicably happy to see us, as if we were long-lost relatives and our much-anticipated arrival had somehow burst open a bubble of excitement. “You’re here, you’re here!” the wife exclaimed as she hurried toward us. Mama and I offered our
sampeah.
The wife turned to her husband and enthused, “Oh, they’re lovely!”

She welcomed us to their home, their village. Stung Khae, she called it—“Moon River.” My heart skipped a beat. Did Papa send us here? Did his spirit guide us to this place that bore the namesake of his reincarnation? To these people whose wrinkled, earthy appearance and sheltering happiness made me think they must have sprouted from the same seeds and soil as the trees around them? The husband did not speak but stood comfortable in his silence, one hand holding a whittling knife, the other fingering a piece of wood, as if trying to decipher through its grains and texture its predestined form. The wife couldn’t stop talking. “You’re the answer to my prayer! Oh, how I’ve dreamt and wished for you!”

She chewed and spat, red betel nut juice staining the corners of
her mouth and the ground near her feet. “I’ve waited for you since my bosoms were round!”

The husband smiled, not at all embarrassed by his wife’s candor, a small tobacco quid moving inside his left cheek, rolling languidly like a word, a sentiment waiting to be spoken aloud. His face, creased and parched, resembled a dried-up riverbed, yet he smelled like damp earth, fresh mud. He tucked his whittling knife and piece of wood in the folds of the
kroma
that belted his loose
achar
shirt and took the two bundles from the back of the oxcart that had brought us. The wife, noticing how dirty our bodies and belongings were, ventured, “Oh, Lord Buddha, the wind must’ve blown you here!” She dusted the dirt from my hair with a familiarity that made me long for Milk Mother. “You need a good wash!” Radana, waking up to the noise around her, rubbed her eyes and, after one look at the old couple, buried her face back in Mama’s chest, whimpering, frightened by their appearance.