Lucky Child (33 page)

Though it’s a short drive to the mountain, it’s a four-hour round-trip hike. I tuck my two pairs of long johns into two pairs of socks and tie my heavy Timberland boots tight around my ankles before pulling my jeans over them. Then I put on my wool cap, wrap a scarf around my neck, and slide my hands into my ski gloves. Before I step out of the jeep, I zip up my winter jacket on top of three layers of sweaters.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I announce.

“You know, it’s thirty-five degrees and sunny,” Mark comments as if this makes a difference. He wears only one layer of everything.

“Hey, if it’s not eighty degrees, it’s too cold,” I conclude, and hike in front of him.

On the trail, Mark stops every five minutes to stare out at the lookout points and I have to wait for him to catch up. And after two hours, my body, toes, and fingers are snug and very toasty under all my layers.

“Wow, look at that view.” He spreads his arms out like a bird. “It’s beautiful.”

From two thousand feet above sea level, the snow-covered world is magnificent and silent except for the whistles of the wind above the trees. As I breathe the clean, crisp air, the cold air reaches my warm throat and burns.

“All right, let’s go.” I cough and resume my exercise.

“Can you believe you’re hiking in the winter?” Mark asks beside me.

“Well, you know what they say, if you can’t beat them, join them. I still prefer sun and sand but I can’t sit around all winter just eating and getting fat,” I answer, and reach into my pocket to grab a Snickers bar.

“And you sure like to eat!” Mark laughs.

“Damn right.” I chomp into my candy bar. I love food. But not just any food—I love fried chicken, fried shrimps, fried beef, fried catfish, fried pork, fried eggplant, fried mushrooms, and anything Asian and spicy.

“But isn’t it beautiful out here? Now?”

“Uhh,” I shrug. “It’s more beautiful in the summer.”

By the time we make it to the top of the mountain, the sun is already sinking behind the horizon. Off the cliffs before us, bright colors of gold, orange, pink, magenta, and red splash across the sky, giving us a majestic sunset that even the gods themselves would admire.

“Wow,” Mark utters with awe.

Unlike Mark, each bright color hurts my gut so viscerally I want to reach in and cut out the cause. In each breathtaking sunset, Mark sees romance, peace, and beauty; I see the outline of Pa and two soldiers walking away from me.

“It’s getting late. Let’s go,” I tell Mark, and head back down the mountain.

For the next forty-five minutes, I thrash down the trail, running away from the sunset. By the time I reach the car, my chest burns and my legs shake with exhaustion.

“I’m starving!” I huff.

“Yeah, it’s been at least two hours since you last ate,” Mark laughs.

“Let’s go for some Chinese.”

In the jeep, my insides twist into painful knots. I reach into my coat and pants pockets and rummage through my backpack. I’m usually good about having food with me wherever I go, but not today. Suddenly my hands begin to tremble with anxiety. I wrap my arms around my stomach, which growls as if it hasn’t been fed for days. I lean back into my seat, close my eyes, and inhale and exhale deeply.

“You okay?” Mark’s voice sounds worried.

“I’m starving,” I murmur, close to tears. Then suddenly I snap. “Why the hell can’t you go faster? God damn it!”

“Chill,” he tells me.

“What the hell? I’m starving! How can I chill? What the hell do you know about starving?” I turn my head away from him and dig my fingers deeper into my stomach.

Mark is silent. I focus on the heat blasting at full force through the ventilator. The loud noise distracts my thoughts from food and for a moment calms me.

“Sorry I cracked,” I finally tell him. “I just don’t like being hungry.” I say nothing more and continue to gaze out the window as the jeep curves along the winding road. I stare at each passing road sign, concentrating on each one until my pupils narrow and my surroundings fade out. As time passes, I grow calm, but I’ve also checked out. My identity has shrunk down to two unblinking eyes zeroing in on road signs with laser-beam precision.

Then in the distance I see a marker for a country store.

“Stop at the store,” I tell Mark. “Please.”

“I thought we were going to eat at The Mandarin.”

“I can’t wait that long. We’ll go to The Mandarin some other night.”

“Okay.” He parks in front of the store.

While Mark stays in the car, I walk in and grab a few candy bars, stale bagels, beef jerky, bags of potato chips, and cans of root beer. From the counter, a man in his sixties follows me with his eyes as I make my way around the maze of junk food to the cashier. As he rings each item, he glances up at my face. When I reach into my pocket to pay him, he smiles and says, “Young lady, has anyone ever told you that you look like Suzie Wong?”

“No. No Suzie Wong here.” I give him the money and leave with a tight smile.

In the car I crunch on the chips loudly, but the noise does not shut off the old man’s question. Most Asian girls who’ve heard of Suzie Wong dread the comparison. Suzie Wong, after all, is a character in an old movie titled
The World of Suzie Wong.
In the part, actress Nancy Kwan played the character of a popular Chinese prostitute with a heart of gold who falls in love with an older white dude and gets rejected. I was bored with the movie but watched it when it was on TV because it was the first one I saw that actually had an Asian woman playing an Asian woman. After many years of watching movies where white women taped their eyes to play Asians, Kwan was at least the real deal. But I look nothing like her. We have different eyes, noses, mouths, and body types.

It’s seven P.M. when we arrive back at my dorm.

“Sorry we didn’t get to The Mandarin,” Mark says, and stops the jeep in front of my door.

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll pay next time,” I assure him and get out. Then I stop and turn back. “Sorry again about going psycho on you,” I say sheepishly and look away with embarrassment. “I think I’m manic or something.” I smile and try to think of something else to say. “Oh, by the way—if you ever run into my boyfriend, pretend you’re gay.”

“What?” Mark bursts out laughing so hard, his blue eyes squint and disappear just like an Asian’s.

“Yeah, he was getting jealous, seeing you in my room all the time, so
I told him you like only boys. And he believed me.” Because Mark is so pretty, stylish, and nice, it’s easy to convince people he’s gay.

“That’s why I like you. You’re never boring.” Mark wipes his eyes. “Pick you up at ten-thirty for the party?”

“Sure. Don’t be late!” I holler as the jeep takes off, knowing it’s no use.

Back in my dorm room, I quickly glance at my calendar for the week. In between classes on the Old Testament and Luke, Matthew, and Paul, I have feminist theology, Hinduism, and witchcraft. Then there are meetings with the students’ Hunger Program, Diversity Club, and International Student Association. On my desk, the piles of homework and study sheets await my attention.

“It’s Saturday night. I have Sunday to study,” I tell myself and leave the room. I walk down the hall to Suzy, Janey, and Amy’s door, but no one’s in. Briefly, the insecure high school girl resurfaces as I wonder if all the girls went to some cool party and didn’t tell me about it. I shake off the old feeling and knock on Hailey’s door.

“Come in,” Hailey answers.

“Hi, Hailey. What ya up to?” I ask and plop myself on her bed.

“I’m making a birthday card for a friend.” Hailey looks up from her colored papers, scissors, and glue bottles.

I met Hailey on the very first day of our freshman year. We were both assigned to paint a file cabinet in the work-study program. In between sanding off the old paint and splattering on a new red coat, we talked about her year off living in Denmark and my years growing up in Cambodia. After our first day, Hailey researched and read up on Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. This touched me in such a profound way that my eyes became red when she told me. For once, someone actually took the initiative to read about Cambodia and come to me with facts about the war and the Khmer Rouge’s politics that even I didn’t knew. For the next weeks, while we painted our one cabinet, Hailey became the very the first person I ever talked with at length about the Khmer Rouge genocide.

And now she’s writing a paper on me and my experience in Cambodia for her English literature class.

“Hey, do you have time to finish the interview now?” Hailey asks while peeling bits of tissue off her hands.

“Sure.”

“Hold on. Let me get my notes.” As Hailey gathers her questions, I stare at the photos taped to her walls. Like Beth, who is at another college, Hailey is blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful. On her desk, pictures of her mom, dad, sisters, and brother line up neatly, forming their perfect family.

“Okay, I’m ready.” She sits herself next to me on the bed.

For the next hour, I share the details of how my family and I fled the city to live in overcrowded villages, where we learned to live by a new set of rules. I tell her about the Khmer Rouge’s ban on religion, school, music, clocks, radio, movies, TV, and machinery and how the soldiers controlled our travel, friendships, and relationships. I shocked her with facts that during the Khmer Rouge time, there was no dating and no falling in love without the Khmer Rouge’s permission, especially if you were from different classes. And if you had sex without permission from the Khmer Rouge government, you could be killed for it. I describe the way we dressed, spoke, worked, and lived. I describe how my stomach ballooned from hunger, and how to survive I ate anything that was edible… including many things that should never have been eaten. I give her the details about the taste of rotten leaves, turtles, snakes, and rats. Hailey’s eyes glisten when I tell her about eating the animals’ brains, tails, hides, and blood, and roaming the fields for grasshoppers, beetles, crickets, and other bugs to help me stay alive another day.

In her warm room, with the heater whistling off as if it had someplace to be, I narrate my story to Hailey as if it all happened to another girl, in another time, but whose memory I possess. Until she asks me about Ma.

“In our conversations, you said you were angry at your ma for forcing you to leave her after the soldiers came for your pa…” Hailey’s voice trails off as she realizes the implications of her question. “I’m sorry if this is too hard. We don’t have to do this.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m ready to do this.” I place my hands on my lap and breathe. “I thought she was weak for kicking me out and not finding a way to keep us together. I thought she didn’t love me enough to keep me with her. I hated her weakness. When the soldiers came for her three months
before the war ended, I wondered how she had let herself be caught. I blamed her for being dead. I was angry at her for leaving me. I wanted only to be strong because the weak do not survive. For years, I did not want to be my mother’s daughter.”

“You know now that she was an incredibly strong woman,” Hailey states gently. “She did what she could to save you.”

“I’m beginning to realize it now. My sister Chou is like my mother in that way. They both possess a quiet strength that I don’t understand.” At the memory of Chou, the room suddenly grows cold. Hailey reaches out for my hand.

I try to laugh. “I better go back to my room and try to make myself beautiful for a party.”

Hailey stands up and pulls me into a hug. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she whispers into my hair. I bite my lip and hold back my emotions. “Thanks again for sharing with me.”

“Sure,” I answer her, now embarrassed.

“I changed your name to Serene in the paper, so no one will know it’s you.”

“That should do it.” I smile. Since I’m the only Cambodian girl at the school, I’m not sure how much anonymity that’ll give me.

By the time Mark’s jeep beeps at my door at eleven-fifteen P.M., my eyelids have been drawn on and darkened, my face powdered, and my lips painted red. In tight black jeans and a purple mock-turtleneck sweater, I am ready to leave Cambodia and party like it’s 1999 in America. But when I open the car door, my smile freeze at the sight of Tiffany sitting in the backseat.

“Hi, Loung,” she gushes. “Let’s party!”

“Hi,” I reply coldly. I can’t stand that girl and all her fakeness. I loath her big breasts, fake tan, and chic clothes. And she flirts with Mark. As I strap myself in the front seat, a big smile creeps onto my face as I visualize ramming my body into Tiffany’s and knocking her to the ground. I bet Tiffany is like one of the pretty girls in those slasher movies—the kind who stupidly prances around in barely there tank tops and miniskirts, running in their high heels from a masked killer wielding a gleaming knife. They inevitably veer off a busy street and into a dark alley where the killer
corners them. If these girls attempt to fight back at all, they slap their predator with open palms as if he’s a fly, and not a knife-wielding mass murderer.

I know I’m very different—I’m no fly-swatting girl. When Hailey and I attended a women’s self-defense course together a while back, we were taught to jab our fingers into our attacker’s eyes. While the other women squirmed and shook their heads, I envisioned two wet and bloody eyeballs dangling off my fingers. If it’s between me and my attacker, I will take him or her down. Sometimes I really miss fighting and the feeling of balling my hands into tight fists and punching somebody. Unlike Mark and Hailey, who are two of the nicest and gentlest people I know, the path of nonviolence and peace is not an automatic thing with me. If the three of us were to meet someone who was being an ass, Mark would wonder if something was physically wrong, Hailey would question his family history, and I would be ready to kick him in the head. Although I think this way, I don’t fight anymore—except with words. Being a peaceful person is not an automatic thing with me—I have to consciously choose it every day.

At the party, Mark circles the crowded room to say hi to everybody while Tiffany stands surrounded by a group of boys. In my corner on the couch, I listen as a student named Mike goes on and on about why beer out of a keg is better than bottles. As he blubbers on, his eyes become small, and his drunken skin pulls his face down like melted Play-Doh. All the while, my feet tap with annoyance at the shallowness of it all.