Children of the River (10 page)

CHAPTER
11

The door had hardly closed behind him before Soka turned on her.
“So! When the cat's away, the mouse becomes king!”
Sundara shrank from her.
“I can't believe you'd deceive me this way. You
knew
this was wrong. A boy in our house!”
“Please, Younger Aunt.” She backed up as Soka advanced, the boys scuttling behind her to the safety of the family room. “It was a mistake. I—”
“And then I find you've been sneaking off with him too.”
“Only once,” Sundara whispered. “And we haven't done anything wrong.”
“Not wrong, she says. Sneaking off isn't wrong?”
“Yes, I suppose it is, but I meant that we hadn't—”
“The way it looks is bad enough. Don't you understand? If people hear you're becoming an American brat, I will never find you a good husband. Shame! What a way to repay us for taking care of you! Ungrateful little crocodile!”
Sundara's throat closed painfully against welling tears. Did Soka have to deliver this tirade in front of the boys?
“Oh, I want to die when I think how I told the wife of Pok Sary her stories couldn't possibly be true.”
Sundara's head jerked up.
Tbc wife of Pok Sary?
“Yes, that's right. You'd better look scared. I heard about your sitting alone with some white skin at school. I tried to ignore this since it came from her, and you know how she envies us. And see what I get for trusting you? You've made me look like a fool. Ah, this would tear your mother's heart, to see how you speak from the palm of your hand, then give me the back of it.”
Sundara braced herself against the dining room table. Why had she ever done such a thing? Risked the very roof over her head? Jonathan's persuasive smiles already seemed a distant memory.
“You're supposed to be
studying
at school. You have a chance for the kind of education the higher classes have always wanted for their children. So what do you do? Start flirting with American boys!”
“We only talked,” Sundara pleaded.
“But don't you see? This is the way it starts. Just talking. Forget American boys. Do you want to be married and divorced, over and over? You deserve better. Hold yourself above this, Niece. You must marry the Khmer way.”
Part of her longed to beg for Soka's sympathy, make her see how hard it was to keep the old ways when you were young. But the longer Soka scolded, the feebler Sun-dara's excuses seemed, even to herself.
“Think about getting a good job, having kids, and taking care of your parents when they grow old.”
“Yes, Younger Aunt,” Sundara murmured. But would her parents have the chance to grow old?
“No good can come from going with Americans. Oiee! Didn't you see on the news? One refugee stabbed another over the most pitiful-looking white girl. And neither was even the father of her baby? This is what it leads to!”
“But Younger Aunt,” Sundara said, summoning her nerve, “what has that to do with us? Jonathan is the son of a doctor.”
“Son of a doctor, son of a President Carter. It makes no difference.”
“But not just any doctor.” Sundara took a deep breath. “The doctor who saved Pon. Dr. McKinnon.”
Surprise softened Soka's face. “The son of a good family, then.” She looked toward the door where he'd just gone out, as if wishing she could now recall him for closer inspection. She peered at Sundara, intrigued in spite of herself. “And this son of Dr. McKinnon, he's truly fond of you?” In the instant before Sundara could reply, Soka frowned away her curiosity as inappropriate. “But then,
bis
feelings are not our concern. Their ways are not our ways. Even with a good family, he is not good for you. You must not think of him anymore. You must forget him.”
The words Soka demanded caught in Sundara's throat.
Soka glared. “You will forget him.”
Sundara placed her palms together at her forehead in obedience. “I will forget him.”
This humble promise seemed to reduce the last embers of Soka's anger to ashen weariness. “Niece, can't you see how hard this is for me?” She sighed. “You're my responsibility. I'm supposed to make sure you grow up properly.” She glanced at the door. “Naro and his mother saw the boy's car. Don't expect me to hide the dying of an elephant with a tea tray.”
With that she took her forgotten shopping list from the counter and abandoned Sundara to the wide eyes of her cousins. Sundara sank into a chair at the table, burying her head in her arms. She'd imagined this fearful scene so many times; now it had finally come true.
“Ravy,” she said after a few minutes, “must you stand there looking at me that way?”
She pushed herself up and dropped to the mat on the kitchen floor. Sitting cross-legged, she resumed shucking the corn.
“Sundara?” Ravy edged over.
She stared at his Adidas, his bare, bony knees. “Yes?”
He rubbed his ankle with the toe of his other shoe, then squatted. “I like Jonathan McKinnon too.”
She swallowed hard at this unexpected sympathy. “Thank you, Ravy. That's nice of you.” She tore the green husks from a cob. “It's such a beautiful day. Why don't you turn off the TV and go play outside?”
“We will, when the game's over.”
He left her alone then. She'd be outside in a minute if she were Ravy. Just imagine. Right now Jonathan was driving along somewhere, the wind in his hair. What would that have felt like, riding with him? Free, that's how, like having wings …
Oh, what a sea of trouble. Better if she'd never spoken to Jonathan, never made a place in her heart for him. Now that place would be so empty.
Her own mother might have been more understanding, she thought with a pang, the kind to consider her daughter's happiness, arrange a marriage with a boy she already liked. But maybe Soka was right. Perhaps her mother would also be enraged at this, might come someday and weep at her wickedness.
It was hard to know what her mother would be like now. It hurt Sundara to admit it even to herself, but sometimes she could not clearly recall her mother's face. Not with a loving expression, anyway.
If only so many of her last looks had not been angry ones. “You foolish child,” she'd said. “There's no room to be dragging a parasol along on the plane. What will it take to make you be more practical?”
But her father had intervened. “Oh, let her take it. What can it hurt? The poor child …”
“The poor child? What about me? While we all go crazy with this awful shelling, all she can do is whine about having to stay home! I come back from the market after risking my life to get our food and here she is, complaining, on and on …”
Sundara shut her eyes now. If only they had known it was the last time they would see each other….
When the doorbell rang, Sundara's heart began to pound. Jonathan? He wouldn't dare come back, would he? But it was Moni standing there.
“Oh, Moni, I'm so glad you've come.” She hurried her into the house. “You will not believe what just happened. It still seems like a bad dream.”
“Tell me, Little Sister.” Moni automatically settled herself on the mat to help with the corn. No use in idle hands.
Leaning forward, Sundara related the whole incident, trying to keep her voice low. It would not do for the boys to hear her complaining about their mother.
“Actually, I'm lucky she didn't throw me out,” she concluded, then added matter-of-factly, “She hates me, you realize.”
“Hates you? You're her own niece. How can she hate you?”
Sundara pressed her lips together. “She has her reasons.”
Moni frowned. “Sometimes you talk crazy.”
“It was so foolish of me to risk making her mad like this. Even when I am perfectly obedient I can't please her. So what could I expect from lying about Jonathan? And to be truthful, I am angry with him, too. I can't understand why he would
do
this. To come here to our house! Maybe I should have been rude and not let him in. I've told him before that Khmer girls can't be alone with boys, but I don't think he ever believes me. He just laughs. And then, today … You know the way Americans always pat the children's heads? He did that to Pon!”
“No!”
“Yes! So when Soka came back, Pon runs right up to her: ‘Mother, the white man touched my head. Am I going to be stupid now?’ ”
Moni's eyes went wide. “Do you think he will be?”
“Moni” Sundara lowered the cob she held. “Haven't you noticed? The Americans do this all the time. It doesn't hurt.”
“But perhaps American children are different. Maybe their souls are lodged elsewhere.”
“We are all humans, aren't we? We're not
that
different. Anyway, whether it actually harms them isn't the point, is it? The point is, our people don't like it. So his doing it didn't help things one bit.” She threw down a cob, took up another ear. “Now Soka says I must have nothing to do with him.”
“That will be hard for you.”
“Yes, it will. Oh, Moni, if only she knew him. She thinks American boys are all bad, but Jonathan's really very kind and sensitive, not a loud, brawling type at all. He's been so nice to me. He's made me feel alive again. Oh, why didn't I stop seeing him long ago? Now it will be like I die.”
Moni shook her head sympathetically. They worked in silence for a while.
At last Moni spoke again. “With all your troubles,” she ventured, “it doesn't seem quite right to tell my happy news.”
Sundara's head snapped up. “Moni! You and Chan Seng are going to be married” She searched her friend's face. “Did I guess right?”
Moni smiled. “As soon as the stars are studied to choose a lucky day.”
“Oh Moni, that's wonderful. Please forgive my rudeness, going on and on about my own problems.” Joy laced with envy filled Sundara. “Tell me about it. Will you have a traditional
ceremony}”
She thought of the first wedding she ever attended, the wedding of Naro and Soka. How beautiful Soka had looked dressed in shimmering gold silk, her eyes outlined in black.
“Yes, traditional, but not as fancy as if we were back home. I hope you will all come.”
“Don't worry, no one will want to miss a feast. Will you be renting your clothes up in Portland?” It would be lovely to see Moni as a Khmer bride, especially after never having seen her in anything but castoffs from the church people.
“I haven't even decided that yet. We have a lot of plans to make in a hurry” The pile of shucked corn grew higher as Moni told how Chan Seng had found a better-paying janitorial job and planned to take more classes at the community college, how they were going to try selling spring rolls at the county fairs next summer, how they hoped to get an apartment in a complex where other Khmers lived. “I'm so happy,” she concluded. “Now I will truly have a place of my own. I will be a wife.”
“I'm happy for you too.” If not the most exciting future, at this moment it sounded wonderfully secure. A home of her own. “I wonder if things will ever work out so well for me. I suppose it
would
be easier to marry another Khmer.”
“Easier than what?”
“Than … than marrying an American, I guess.” Sundara's cheeks grew warm as she realized what she'd been thinking. “One thing I don't understand, Moni. If it's good to marry a Chinese so your children will have light skin, why isn't it even better to marry a white man?”
Moni looked puzzled. “I never thought of that.”
“Of course, I think judging people by their skin color is foolish to begin with, don't you?”
“Well,” Moni said, always honest, “I think lighter skin ir prettier.”
“I suppose so,” Sundara admitted. “But only because that's what I've been taught. I don't think it should be that way. Besides, it's not the color of skin that makes people different. I'm doing a report for school on a country called Northern Ireland. You should see how they're fighting there—white against white.”
“Can this be true?”
“Yes! And look at our homeland—Khmer killing Khmer. So I don't think color is everything.” She sighed. “Still, when it comes to marriage, I suppose it's easier when both are of the same race.” She hesitated, then decided to risk a confession. “Did I ever tell you I was as good as promised to a boy at home?”
“No, really?”
“Yes, his name was Chamroeun. I haven't heard anything about him since we left. He lived down the street from us in Phnom Penh. Such fun we had. He was very handsome, I remember. I wonder what he looks like now. He would be nineteen or twenty.”
“If he's still alive.”
Sundara glanced up, shocked. “Of course he's alive.”
Moni bit her lip. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to sadden you, but you did just mention all the killing …”
“Oh, but it's different with Chamroeun.” She forced her voice to be light, as if her friend's words had not shaken her. “He was so clever. And such a smile. He could talk his way out of anything. It was he who taught my brother all his tricks, how to wheedle money from my mother for treats from the vendor. Fried banana, that was our favorite.” Sundara smiled at the memory, then sighed. “I've listed his name along with those of my family and other friends in my letters to the Thai camps. Soka knows nothing of him, though.”
“Ah, that reminds me. I've been thinking that with so many escaping Kampuchea, someone might have news of my family, my little baby girl. Could you help me with a letter to be posted in the camps? I can't write very well, as you know.”
“Of course/’ Sundara said, “but are you prepared for all the letters you will get? If it is known you are in the United States, you will receive piles of letters from people you don't even know, asking you for money for food, for guns—”
“For guns?”
“Yes, for the resistance fighters. We get letters all the time. At first we tried to help everyone—a little American money lasts a long time there. But Soka says she doesn't want to pay for more guns. She says you never know who the bullets might hit. So finally we realized we could help only a few to buy food.”
“Better to help a few than none at all.”
“Yes, but oh, it makes you cry in your heart to read their sad pleas and not be able to do anything.”
“I must send the letter, though. I can't really rest until I learn what happened to my little one. You see, every time I hear a story about a family escaping with their baby, I think, why didn't I bring mine out? At the time, I thought leaving her was the right thing to do, but now …”
“Oh Moni, please don't blame yourself. What about all the stories where a family was caught by the Khmer Rouge because a baby cried? I'm sure you did the right thing.”
“Maybe,” Moni said, but it was clear that like every other Khmer in America, she could not seem to rid her heart of the what-ifs.
After they finished with the corn, they composed the letter.
“I have a feeling this will work,” Moni said, her brave and optimistic self again. “I think that finally fortune is smiling on me;”