The Rent Collector (7 page)

“Foolish girl! Listen to me!”

“I’m trying, but I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

She pounds the chalkboard in rhythm to her words. “Syllables begin with one of these consonant clusters . . .”

“It’s so confusing.”

She puts down her chalk. “I don’t know how else to explain. We are finished for today. We will try again tomorrow.”

As she gathers her things, I blurt out the more applicable question of the day. “Why do you drink so much?”

She jerks toward me. “Why do you ask so many stupid questions?”

And then her face twists and wrinkles as she draws both hands toward her stomach. She bends forward, as if she’s about to crumble to the ground. Before I can ask if she is okay, she straightens, lurches out through our open canvas door, falls onto her hands and knees just beyond the house, and vomits up her morning liquor.

I am speechless.

After several moments, when she apparently feels well enough, she stands, turns toward me, and then, as if nothing unusual has happened, announces, “I will see you tomorrow.”

I should learn my lesson and bite my lip. I don’t. Sopeap is drinking way too much. It has to stop. “Will you be sober?”

She answers so casually, after having just puked in my yard, one may have thought she’d been asked about the upcoming storm or the best time to catch the sun setting over the dump’s horizon. “Tomorrow? Yes, I’ll be sober tomorrow, but the day after—no, I’ll be drunk as a soldier.”

And then she shuffles away.

It’s a few minutes later when I go out to gather some cardboard to cover her mess, until a good rain can properly wash it away, that I notice something disturbing. On the ground where she has vomited, I also see blood.

*****

“Nisay’s finally asleep,” Ki says. “Come to bed.”

“I told you, I must finish my homework.”

“Or what? She’ll sit on you?”

“No, but she may throw up on me.”

When I continue drawing my letters, he presses. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I told you, in a bit.”

I am working by the light of a small oil lamp. We usually save it for emergencies—when Nisay is sick, for example. How can I make Ki understand that having my homework done for Sopeap is unquestionably an emergency?

He rolls over in disgust.

After I’ve drawn several additional letters, I relent. “Let me finish three more.”

He doesn’t answer and I’m not sure if he’s already asleep or just ignoring me. I write each one as precisely and cleanly as possible. Not only will I turn this sheet in to Sopeap, but she will then make me repeat each letter and its sounds, both dependent and independent. Who knew reading and writing were so complicated?

When I finally put out the light and crawl beside Ki, I snuggle close and wrap my arm around him. He doesn’t respond. It’s too dark now to see him, but the pace of his breathing and the tightness of his chest tell me he is awake.

“What are you thinking?” I whisper.

Seconds pass. When he does answer, I’m surprised to hear worry rather than frustration. “What will happen once you know how to read?”

“What do you mean?”

“How will it change things?”

I have been so focused on my learning that I haven’t noticed his apprehension.

“I hope it changes many things,” I answer softly. “I hope it will somehow get us out of the dump—and if not us, that it provides a path out for Nisay. Don’t you want those things too?”

It is a long time before he replies. “I know that we don’t have a lot here,” he says cautiously. “But at least we know where we stand.”

“Where we stand? What do you mean?”

Silence.
Worry in the dark can make it even darker.

“Ki? Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Life here
is
hard,” he finally says, “but it is constant. New trash always arrives—every single day. It will never end. When we are hungry, I go out and pick a bag of plastic or metal or glass, sell it for a few
riel,
and we buy our food. We generally have enough to eat. We have a roof overhead to protect us from the rain. Life isn’t complicated here.”

His affinity for the dump is unexpected. For three years, we have talked about the day we’ll make enough for a better life.

“But the gangs almost killed you . . .”

And then, like a slap, it hits me. I should have picked it up sooner but I am tired from the study.

“Food and shelter—yes, we have those here,” I say, in a muted tone, “but I don’t think that’s what you are worrying about.”

He rolls to face me, though without light we can see only murky shapes.

“Living at Stung Meanchey,” he says, “forces us to work things out, to need each other. If you learn to read—”

I don’t wait for him to finish. “Ki, listen . . .” In the darkness of our tiny room, his concern is clear. “It doesn’t matter if I learn to read, or where we live, or how we earn a living—no matter what, I will need you.”

He listens, then asks another question. “But do I make you happy?”

How can a woman raising her child in a place choking with trash answer that question and have her reply make any sense? Both at the dump and in my home tonight, I’m careful where I step. “Ki, you are the part of my life that I would never change. But offering our son opportunity, working with you to improve our life together—that kind of change is good, don’t you think?”

He hesitates, thinking but also listening, and so I continue. “I just need to get Nisay better.”

“Do you think he’s sick just because of where we live?” he asks.

The answer is so apparent it nearly screams, and Ki must hear it also because before I can reply, he responds to his own question. “Of course, we
do
live in the dump.”

There is a silent moment, until we both break out in laughter. We hold each other in the darkness for a very long time and then, with Nisay gently stirring at the foot of our mat, Ki helps me pull off my clothes.

*****

On the days Mother can’t watch Nisay, if he is not too fussy, I lay him on the ground beneath a makeshift cardboard lean-to and pick garbage nearby in the afternoon. Lately, I have surprised Ki with my eagerness to pick, even on the days when I’m learning letters in the morning with Sopeap. What I haven’t told him is that I pick every day because it provides the perfect opportunity to study. It’s a game I’ve devised where I look for paper when gathering—more specifically, paper with printing on it—and choose at random a letter from a word. I have five seconds to say the letter’s name and sound aloud. Each time I get ten in a row, I pretend to win exotic prizes—furniture, bags of rice, clothing, and packaged food.

I begin today with a torn green flyer, with pictures of an expensive home on the back, and I randomly select the letter
a.
I speak to Nisay, who is now sleeping, repeating the letter’s name first and then pronouncing its sound, as if the child lying nearby were even remotely interested.

“Nisay, this is the letter (
i
). It makes the
I
sound. Did you hear me?”

If someone were watching, they’d think I’d completely lost my mind—certainly a justifiable conclusion. I pick through layers of garbage, looking for recyclable trash, until I stuff two smashed aluminum cans and an empty perfume bottle into my canvas bag. I then snatch another loose piece of printed paper that looks to be from a magazine and randomly pick out my next letter. I know this one easily.

“This is the letter (
noo
) and it makes the
N
sound.”

I’m about to dig for more stray cans when I decide to cheat and sneak in another letter in between my searching. I snatch a light yellow wrapper that I recognize as packaging from one of the fast-food chains so popular with tourists in the city. It’s not the vivid artist’s rendering of an American hamburger on the front that catches my attention but the bright orange letters printed beneath. They are shadowed in blue and seem to float above the paper. As I admire the charm of the design, I arbitrarily pick the first letter of the last word.

“Nisay, this is the letter (
saa
). It makes the
S
sound.”

I am about to toss the wrapper and resume working when my eyes roll across each of the letters that follow. I have been repeating the tones of individual letters for so many days that my head doesn’t realize it should quit. As my brain stitches the sounds together, my tongue and mouth work in unison to pronounce them. It’s a short word, and in an instant, I understand that the letters grouped together spell the word
samnang
—meaning
luck.

I am so astonished, I speak it aloud a second time, emphasizing each sound as my eyes pass over the letters, forcing my mind to confirm what my lips have already declared. “Sam—na—ng.”

Without any help from Sopeap, I have read my very first word!

I glance around for someone with whom I can share this amazing moment. Ki is picking. Nisay sleeps. Other gatherers work at a distance. I alone am aware of the miracle that has just occurred.

I have read my first word!

My brain must finally be grasping the depth of my accomplishment because it’s now telling my body to jump up and down and scream as loud as humanly possible—to let everyone know that I, Sang Ly, an illiterate, foolish girl from the province, living in Phnom Penh’s largest waste dump, have just read
MY FIRST WORD.

I try to dance as best I can in rubber boots, and I’m about to shout in celebration, but my body doesn’t listen. Instead, my legs buckle and I slump down onto the trash that so generously provided my reading material. I pull my knees to my chest, bury my head in my lap, and cry the most personal and satisfying cry that I’ve had in a very long time.

Thank you, Grandfather, for helping me to read my first word.

When I am finished, I carefully fold the wrapper, place it in my pocket, throw my recycle sack over one shoulder and Nisay over the other, and then skip in my heavy boots toward home.

*****

By the time Ki arrives, I am unstoppable. I have deciphered the entire slogan and the wrapper now hangs on the wall below our clock. I pull it down to demonstrate my astounding newfound ability.

Even though I have already memorized every word, I point to each one for Ki as I read them aloud. “It’s from Lucky Burger. See, this is their name right here.” I motion to the words above the picture, in case he has any doubt.

He glances first at the lettering and then at me, I hope understanding that now is not a good time to be funny. I continue. “The slogan underneath, right here, says
Roal Thngai-mean samnang—Where Every Day Is Lucky.

Ki can’t help himself. “Does this mean we have to eat hamburgers?”

I leap toward him, wrap my arms around his waist, pull his body close against mine, and hold tightly. We embrace for a long time, but the best part of the evening—the moment I will remember more than any other—is that Ki hugs back.

Chapter Eight