Lucky Child (20 page)

In the rising dust cloud, the man holds his bloodied hands in front of him and pushes himself off the ground with his elbows. He manages to get on his feet and run toward the village. As he nears, Chou sees that his face is dripping blood and is all scratched up as if he’s just lost a fierce cockfight. On his jet black hair are bits of twigs, grass, flesh, and skin that shake loose as he staggers forward. In front of his chest, where his hands once were, are two shredded stumps that look as if they’ve been in a grinder, skin flailing, nails pulled off, knuckles and bones crushed, sticking out for all to see. As the man runs into the market, Chou sees only the whites of his eyes and then he begins to lick, bite, and gnaw at his bones as the blood spurts out, soaking his shirt and pants. The villagers move out of his way, covering their mouths, many gagging and dry-heaving in response to the spectacle.

Chou watches wide-eyed but feels herself close to fainting. In the middle of the crowd, the man stops. His face is eerily calm as he raises his mutilated hands to his eyes with a look of detached recognition. While his body staggers and sways like a drunk, his pupils roll back. The villagers watch in silence, as if paying respect while the man goes through his last wind of life.

When his wife finally arrives, the man is lying on the ground. Staring into his eyes, she kneels down, her pants soaking up the blood around him. She wipes the blood off his face. A loud wail ruptures out of her small frame with such agony that it breaks through the stone faces of the surrounding crowd. When the man goes into shock, his skin turns pale and cold. His lids slowly flutter and he stares at his wife. With her face inches from his, Chou’s friend tells her husband she loves him; then he is gone. His wife screams and howls sounds of sadness, pain, and anger while her hands smooth down his shirt and pants. But there is nothing anyone can do for he
is a ghost now. All around him, the crowd slowly moves away to allow the widow’s family room to console her. Chou leaves her friend and returns to the hut. Her body is drenched in sweat but her hands and feet are cold.

Before the rain comes, the water is at its brownest and murkiest. It is now May and still the rain gods have not turned the white clouds into black thunderstorms. Above Chou, the sun continues to burn and dry up the small water holes. Chou now has to travel an hour out of the village to a deep pond to gather the family’s water. When she arrives, she climbs out of the cart, unties the cows, and leads them to the muddy water. When the cows have their fill, Chou ties the wagon yokes back around their sturdy necks. Chou takes her pail and walks over to the grassy bank of the pond where the water is clear and her movements will not dirty it. Even on the short walk from the road to the pond, Chou is careful to step only on well-used paths and avoids crossing over thick shrubs and rice paddies. For as beautiful as the countryside is, Chou knows that beneath the wildflowers, green grass, red dirt, and the wetlands are land mines, grenades, bombs, and other tangible remnants of war awaiting her every step.

Everywhere she looks, Chou sees ghosts roaming around the villages—so many ghosts, in fact, that she has lost count. Sometimes at night, she thinks she can still hear them weeping in the forest, calling out to the villagers for help. When the moans grow too strong, Chou closes her eyes and shuts them out of her mind. She knows she cannot allow herself to think too much about death; such a path will lead her to wonder about how Pa, Ma, and Geak died. Chou knows only that the soldiers came and took them away. When she is consumed too deeply by thoughts of their deaths, she becomes like all the other ghosts who wander the world not knowing if they are dead or alive. She remembers stories Khouy tells of The Lon Nol soldiers decapitating the Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge soldiers so they will not be reborn to invade Cambodia in their next lives. The Lon Nol soldiers said the Viet Cong and KR soldiers believe that if the head is not buried with the body, the soul is doomed to wander the earth forever.

But today she is too busy for the ghosts to haunt her. Quickly, she scoops up pails of water and pours them into the big round containers on her wagon. With each pail, her arms grow more tired and her back stiffens.
In the warm water, the grass scrapes her feet clean, leaving her skin soft and smooth but vulnerable to the cuts and nicks of the sharp small stones and pebbles in the road. Still, she works without stopping to rest. When the two containers are filled, Chou breaks off a handful of green, leafy lotus leaves from the edge of the pond. She rinses them of dirt and debris and covers the surface of the water in the container with the leaves. The leaves will prevent the water from splashing and spilling too much on the bumpy ride home. Satisfied with her work, Chou walks around in the water and quickly immerses her body and head, washes her krama, climbs in the wagon, and leads the cows toward home.

Shortly after she arrives at the hut, Khouy rides his motorcycle up to their door, the wheels tearing up the grass and kicking up dirt.

“Chou! Second Uncle!” Khouy calls urgently. The sun is already low in the sky and the mosquitoes are waking in swarms.

“Second Brother, what is the matter?” Chou asks, rushing to meet him, her mind full of fear that something is wrong. Why else would Khouy travel alone to the countryside this late in the day?

In the past year, Chou has seen little of Khouy, but it’s been enough for her to know that he has at last settled down with a new wife. Khouy met Morm, a beautiful Cambodian, at the policemen’s headquarters where she was working as an administrator. Morm comes from a small farming family in a nearby village and Khouy was charmed by her immediately. As the days turned into weeks and then months, Khouy pursued Morm with his sweet talk, small gifts, and funny stories. Eventually, Morm returned his feelings and Khouy rushed home to ask Uncle Leang and Aunt Keang to approach her parents for Morm’s hand in marriage.

Chou and Kim were ecstatic for Khouy, as they’d both had to watch his distress when he was forced to marry his first wife, Laine. He did not love her, but married her in order to escape conscription in the Khmer Rouge army and also from being sent to work in the front lines, far away from the family. After the war, he and Laine went their separate ways; because they had no children together, they left each other’s lives completely. Now twenty-three years old, Khouy has found love with Morm, and Chou hasn’t seen him so happy in a very long time.

“Second Uncle,” Khouy says, running up to Uncle Leang. “I need Chou to come help Morm.”

“Khouy, how is the baby?” Aunt Keang asks, and presses her hands together as if ready to pray.

“She was born yesterday and she is fine and healthy.” For a moment, Khouy breaks into a broad smile, but then worries return and pull his face down. “But Morm, she’s burned badly.”

Khouy tells them about Morm’s difficult labor. While Khouy had waited outside the hut, the inexperienced midwife built a fire under their wooden plank bed to keep Morm warm and to loosen her back muscles. As the labor dragged into the night, the fire grew hotter and hotter, charring the wood beneath Morm’s body. But it was Morm’s first birth, so her whole body was in pain. She did not realize how badly she was burned until later, when her burns started to blister and boil. Chou and the rest of the girls in the family gasp as Khouy talks. When he finishes, Chou glances at their big cooking pot and remembers Kung’s pain with her burns.

“Chou, I need you to come live at my house and help care for your niece,” Khouy tells her. Chou nods quickly and, with Uncle Leang’s permission, she hastily packs her clothes and leaves with Khouy.

When Chou arrives at Khouy’s one-room wooden home, the sky is already dark. Inside, the house still smells of smoke and strong rubbing alcohol and body odor. While Chou goes to pick up the crying baby lying next to its mother, Khouy leaves the house to buy rice soup for his wife. Chou rocks the baby back and forth but the newborn continues to wail until Chou sticks a finger into her mouth. On the bed, Morm lies on her stomach, facedown in her pillow. She breathes deeply, as if asleep. For a moment, Chou is terrified that Morm has died while Khouy was gone. But then Morm stirs and opens her eyes, just as Khouy returns.

“Morm, I’ve brought Chou to help,” Khouy tells her, and bends down to look at her face. Even in the soft dusk light, Chou can see Morm is pale. Her lips are cracked and perspiration glistens on her skin.

“Thank you for coming, Chou,” she whispers. “I need to feed the baby. Please come help me.” As Khouy moves out of the way, Chou turns Morm on her side. Then she puts the baby next to Morm’s breast. She sits with them as mother and baby bond.

“Second Sister-in-Law, have you any medicine for the burns?”

“The midwife applied a burn salve before you came,” Morm whispers. “It will have to be reapplied in the morning.”

When night comes, Khouy sleeps in a hammock while Chou lies next to his wife and newborn baby. All night, Morm can only turn her head from side to side and moan until Chou wakes her to nurse. While Chou sits with them, Mom and baby soon fall asleep. By the time the sun peeks in again, all three adults are bleary-eyed and exhausted. Only the baby is well rested. Before Morm fully wakes, Khouy quickly leaves for work.

“Sokounthea, that’s a pretty name,” Chou coos, giving the baby her finger. The baby gums her finger and continues to wail loudly. “Shhh … shh. Let your mom sleep a little longer.”

“Kac, kac, kac. Waaaaaaa!” Sokounthea screams.

“You like to cry? I’ll call you Kac then.”

“Chou, bring the baby to me,” Morm calls out.

After Morm’s milk puts the baby to sleep, Chou helps her to the bathroom. While Morm washes herself, Chou builds a fire and makes rice porridge for their breakfast. Back in bed, Chou turns Morm over on her stomach to reapply the herbal salve on her burns. As Chou gently lifts off the cloth that covers the layer of ground leaves, Morm clenches her hands into fists and bites down on her teeth. Next Chou peels the sticky, thick salve off Morm’s back and bottom to reveal brown, burned skin that looks like melted rubber. Beneath the skin, the pink flesh oozes with wetness and small blisters. Chou grimaces and holds her breath.

“The top skin is drying up,” Chou exhales calmly and carefully reapplies the leaves. “And the blisters have burst and are drying as well.” Morm is quiet; her toes curl like claws rounding into her feet.

As she works, Chou feels her anger rise.

“But the gods must be looking after you because Kac is beautiful and healthy.” Chou peers at Kac sleeping peacefully next to her mother and her lips curl into a sad smile. In the four years of the Khmer Rouge, she cannot remember seeing a child born alive and healthy. Through the hard labor, starvation, disease, execution, and fear, she did not hear of many women carrying a child to full term.

“Thank you, Chou. You are helping so much,” Morm whispers and sits up. Chou walks to the kitchen and returns with a bowl of rice soup.

“Second Sister-in-Law, please eat this. You need to keep strong for the baby.” Morm takes a few sips and pushes the bowl away. “You must make more effort to eat your porridge. You are too thin,” Chou urges her.

“Thank you, Chou. You will be a very good mother someday.” Morm manages a small smile and swallows a few more spoonfuls.

“Just rest now and get better.” Chou straightens her mat and sheets before helping Morm to lie back down on her stomach. As Morm’s breathing slows, Chou gently covers her back with a light blanket and leaves to wash the baby, the dishes, and all the family’s clothes and diapers. Then she sits down to grind the herbal leaves to make the cooling salve for burns. As her hands work, Chou warms at Morm’s compliment. At sixteen, Chou is pretty, and though she has caught the attention of a few men in the village, she doesn’t care for them or their proposals of romance. Still, she dreams of someday having children and a family of her own to love and care for. What she doesn’t know is how to factor into this dream the ways she’ll be expected to be a wife to her future husband.

16 sex ed

September 1985

“Five dolla, fa a goood time—five dolla,” the boys cry in their fake accent as I make my way to Essex Junction High School. I glare ahead at them, taking in the details of their wispy mustaches and facial hair straining to grow from their red, pimply faces.

“Five dolla, fa a good time?” They laugh like hyenas, their mouths wide and fangs exposed.

“Losers,” I curse, and hold my head high.

Since the movie
Platoon
came out, I have been beseeched with requests for “a good time.” And though I have no plans—not now or ever—to see these war movies, many stupid boys somehow see me in them. I guess because I’m Asian and speak English badly, I must remind them of the Vietnamese prostitutes in these films. As I walk on, I brace myself for what I know will come next.

“Boom-boom or yum-yum?” the pack calls after me, spits of saliva foaming at the corners of their mouths.

“Losers,” I yell at them again, unable to think of anything else to say.

Leaving the boys behind, I imagine I possess supernatural kung fu skills, like the girls in Chinese martial arts movies. In my fantasy, I reach the boys in two great leaps and a bound. Whirling around, I slap all their faces in one motion while their mouths hang open in shock and awe.
Then I twirl into the air and kick them in the gut with a series of quick movements before landing softly, like a cat, on the ground. The boys stagger on their feet like drunken fools, their arms flinging about their sides as they try to balance. From my low position on the ground, I stick one leg out and spin like a helicopter propeller, knocking them off their feet. Standing straight and triumphant, I smile as they each land on the ground, a plume of smoke rising from the impact, their hair flying, small teeth spewing out of their mouths like popcorn, and their faces grimacing and twisting in slow motion.

By the time my movie ends, I’m sitting in my finance class, buoyed by my imagined ass-kicking Supergirl alter ego and ready to show off my intelligence with my oral report. When it’s my turn, I march up to the front of the class and write the equation on the board. I then turn to face the class and smile confidently.