Kamal did not have to wait a whole year to see Sophea again. She came back to the village in August for the wedding of her good friend Srun Kimleang. Kimleang was the last of her childhood friends to get married. Kamal waited to talk to Sophea outside her uncle’s house, but she had already sequestered herself with the bride to prepare the many dresses and hairpieces Kimleang would wear.
On the second day of the wedding, Kamal and his family and Sophea and her uncle and aunt joined the other villagers in the groom’s procession to Kimleang’s house, while the musicians marched behind and family friends carried pigs’ heads and plucked chickens for the evening’s feast. In the wedding tent, Kamal sat only three rows from Sophea. Although a bridesmaid, she spoke to no one around her, and Kamal sensed again that terrible aloneness he had witnessed before, which did not subside even through the joke telling and the ritual hair cutting of the bride and groom.
The old ta acha, who had already performed two marriages in Praek Banan that month, stood in front of the young couple and turned to Kimleang. “Be respectful to your husband, serve him well, and keep the three flames.” Kimleang nodded. The bride and groom exchanged rings.
When the parents tied the red string around the wrists of the bride and the groom, Sophea began quietly weeping. Kamal burned to take her into his arms.
That evening, after the wedding dinner, Kamal managed to sit at the same table as Sophea. Her melancholy of earlier in the day had vanished, and she talked with her friends and accepted numerous invitations to dance. He noticed how the men looked at her, even some of his own friends, and she smiled at each of her partners, although none of them were worthy of her in Kamal’s view. As she spun and turned to the music, her hair gleamed in the rented fluorescent lights and flowed like the morning river.
Finally the moment arrived when Kamal was alone with her. “I am happy to see you again,” he said, gripping his leg fiercely to give himself courage.
“Thank you,” she said.
He handed her a new letter. She read it without comment. He studied her face. What was she thinking? Another dance started, and a song blared from the speakers on the canopy posts. The music was so loud he could see the lemonade vibrating in her cup. Somewhere, people were singing an old harvesting song. What was she thinking?
He looked at her, and she was perfect. She was the world. She put her arm on the table. Her hand lightly brushed against his hand. “You are sweet, Kamal,” she said to him. “If you want to talk to me, come to my house in Phnom Penh.” She took a piece of paper from her purse and wrote down her address. She mentioned a date a month away.
Kamal felt his blood pounding in his ears. The music crashed and crashed. “I will do it,” he heard himself say.
“Do you know Phnom Penh?” she said.
“I will get there. You can be sure of that.”
“I live near Wat Langka. All the tuk tuk drivers know where that is. Go to Wat Langka and ask for directions to my street.”
Kamal nodded and mumbled something. Suddenly, he felt that he should leave the tent before Sophea changed her mind. He said goodbye and hurried away.
The next two weeks went by in a blur. Kamal began brooding over what clothes he would wear to Phnom Penh. He owned nothing suitable. Day after day, as he and his father began harvesting the cucumbers, he thought about this problem. The rainy season had started, creating a lavender mist that hung over the river. On the other side of the fields, the palm trees huddled together on their long skinny trunks like a bunch of girls gabbing at the market.
“Do you have a nice shirt you can lend me?” he asked Chhay one Sunday when he was eating lunch at his friend’s house. He had known Chhay since primary school and trusted him above all of his friends.
“You must be joking,” Chhay said, and made one of his monkey grins.
“He had a nice shirt when I married him,” said Kunthea, Chhay’s wife. “I haven’t seen it for three years.” Chhay’s little boy climbed up onto Kamal’s lap.
“Then can you lend me some money?” said Kamal. “I’ll buy a shirt in Praek Khmau.” He reached down and tickled the child’s feet.
“Of course, brother,” said Chhay. “And I’ll take one hundred percent of the credit when you achieve victory. It would be a relief for Cousin Sophea to get married.”
“You don’t need a nice shirt,” said Kunthea. “From what I hear, most of the girls are already in love with you.”
“I don’t believe that,” said Kamal. “And even if it were true, I don’t want most of the girls.”
Kunthea wagged her head at Kamal as if he were a spoiled child. “Sophea must already love you. She invited you to Phnom Penh. She’s never invited us to Phnom Penh.”
“We can go to Phnom Penh on our own,” said Chhay. “We went just a year ago.”
“Do you know Phnom Penh?” Kunthea asked Kamal. “Did Sophea tell you how to find—”
“Of course I know Phnom Penh,” Kamal said. He abruptly pushed his chair back and stood up, spilling his cup of tea. “Do you think I’ve never been to Phnom Penh?” he shouted. Immediately, his hand flew up to cover his mouth. Chhay and Kunthea were both staring at him in shock. Kamal looked at Chhay and then at Kunthea. “I’m . . . I’m so sorry,” said Kamal. “I’m so sorry.”
“You must be nervous about this whole thing,” said Chhay.
“Everything will be OK,” said Kunthea, avoiding Kamal’s eyes. She began clearing the plates from the table.
On the day that Kamal started his trip to Phnom Penh, the heat was not diluted by the rains, and he was already sweating when he got on his moto to follow the road to Praek Khmau. There, he would catch the three o’clock bus to the city. Passing the flooded rice fields and oxen and occasional cluster of tin-roofed houses along the road, he rehearsed the words he planned to say to Sophea. At two o’clock, he arrived in Praek Khmau. After locking his moto to a metal post, he took a seat on a crumbling wooden bench in the bus station. In his hand, he held the piece of paper she had given him with her address. Occasionally, he glanced at the painfully slow clock on the wall. An hour passed. The bus did not come. His new shirt was wet against his skin. Another hour passed. Then another. At ten minutes past five, the bus arrived with no apologies. With an anxious sigh, Kamal sat down near the front so that he could be first off. Only a few other people occupied seats on the bus—an elderly couple who would not stop chattering about meeting their son, and a single man who stared out the window. At Chrey Thum, a Muslim family boarded the bus and went straight to the back. A handful of others got on at Praek Sdei and then at Praek Ambel and Roka Khpos, and the farms went by one after another in the early evening light. The road widened. Kamal began to see cars and low buildings and crowds of people on the street as they approached the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
By the time the bus came to a stop at the Central Market in Phnom Penh, at half past seven, it was dark. He was already two hours late for his appointed visit with Sophea. Next to the bus station loomed a vast mountain of a building, several stories high, lit up as if several fires blazed within it. In the distance, he could see silhouettes of other buildings. Throngs of people and cars and motos buzzed and throbbed through the streets even though many of the shops had closed for the night. Kamal got off the bus, confused.
He had not been in this area of Phnom Penh during his visit five years ago.
In front of him, lights on a shop sign flashed on and off: “Angkor Samnang” “Angkor Samnang” “Angkor Samnang.” He stepped on a bottle and heard the crunch of the glass. Looking down, he saw that the street was littered with bottles and paper. After a car nearly hit him, he hurried onto a side road.
Remembering the purpose of his trip, he walked toward a group of tuk tuks parked outside a restaurant. A man and woman, well dressed, stood by the entrance and smoked cigarettes. They looked at him casually, as if he were a leaf blowing by in the wind, and continued their conversation.
“I wish you had brought me somewhere else.”
“I never said I liked this place.”
“Yes, you did.”
Kamal spoke to one of the tuk tuk drivers, who said he knew Wat Langka. It was near Independence Monument. They drove past shops crammed together side by side and on top of each other. Farther, gates of houses, small groups of men playing cards, starved-looking dogs. At Wat Langka, Kamal got out of the tuk tuk and paid for the trip. He asked about Street 308. The driver waved vaguely in a southerly direction. Now the streets were shadows, lit only by the occasional light in a house. Kamal set out on foot, walked by one house and shop after another. On Street 294, he got lost. A man sitting in a chair outside a prosperous-looking house, evidently a security guard, looked up as Kamal walked by. Kamal asked directions. The man only belched and put his head back down.
The next road over, Kamal found Street 308, almost completely dark and deserted. The address written on the rumpled piece of paper was a fine two-story house, mostly hidden behind a wrought-iron gate, with marble columns on both sides of the gate and glass-enclosed lanterns atop the columns. An engraved brass plaque gave the address. Kamal peered inside the gate. In the light of the lanterns, he could see Sophea’s white Land Rover. He could also see a tiled patio and a garden that wound around a little dark pond. Two windows on the ground floor glowed from the light within. Above them, a dim balcony and more windows. For a moment, Kamal tried to imagine how much money such a house must cost. He glanced back at the empty street. The incessant sounds of the city had faded to a soft murmur. In his pocket, he turned the piece of paper over and over. Then he heard Sophea’s voice from one of the windows. It was a voice he knew, and at the same time a voice he didn’t know. He remembered his last conversation with her, in the wedding tent, every word that she’d said. And he tried to match that voice to the one that he heard now.
His eyes found the window, and he wondered if she might come into view, but all he could see was a moving shadow. What was she doing? Was she waiting for him? Was she alone in the house? He looked again at the car, almost as if he didn’t believe he was in the right place. Should he knock on the gate? Would she even hear his knocking? After all, he was hours late. Perhaps she had decided he wasn’t coming at all. Or perhaps she would look out and see him in the light of the lanterns, walk across the tiled patio, and greet him. Would she ask him into her house? Or perhaps the original invitation had been only an amusement to her, a tiny excursion from her life in this marbled house with the car and the rich men. Kamal stood in the dark and listened to her voice. He looked again at the marbled house and the Land Rover. And standing there, he realized how foolish he’d been. He turned and stared at the street and saw how it narrowed and dimmed in the distance, until it merged with the dark houses and disappeared.
THIDA
(2008)
Neither Thida nor her mother had slept for two nights when they boarded the bus for Phnom Penh. Thida still held in her hand the small gifts her friends had given her at dawn before she left in the oxcart for Praek Khmau—a wire necklace, a scarf, and a tin can filled with dried fish. Exhausted, she leaned against her mother’s shoulder and closed her eyes. The bus was packed. They sat behind a man who clutched a half dozen live chickens upside down, their legs tied together by twine. The chickens pecked at Thida’s bare legs. Without opening her eyes, she kicked at the birds until they left her alone. Then she squeezed her mother’s hand. At the age of sixteen, she was going off to live far from home for an indefinite period, possibly years, to work in the sweltering Glory Bless Garment Factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Her mother would accompany her to the city, then return to their village. Ryna had pleaded with Pich not to let this thing happen. She had spent the last night pressed against Thida on her sleeping mat, her arms tightened around her daughter, both of them sleepless and without words.
As the bus started up, a cloud of red dust floated in and remained for the entire trip. The bus was hot and filthy. Food littered the floor. In front, the chicken man began coughing uncontrollably. Still squeezing her mother’s hand, Thida looked out the window and watched the rice fields go by, copper-colored and parched in this season, cows wandering by the side of the road, clusters of wood shacks, occasional pagodas, naked children squatting on the ground. A moto carrying three monks passed by with their orange robes flapping in the wind.
Thida looked at her mother and said halfheartedly, “Mae. Nita can help you.”
“No,” Ryna shouted, startling them both with the tone of her voice. “Nita should stay in school.” Ryna’s eyes moistened. “Mi-oun. Mi-oun. My precious daughter.”
Thida opened her purse and looked at the one photograph she was taking to Phnom Penh, a crumpled picture of her and her mother in the village pagoda last ancestors holiday. In the photograph, mother and daughter are holding hands. The mother possesses a stillness far beyond the moment frozen by the camera. The daughter appears supremely happy. Not quite as slender as her mother, she wears a knock-off blue jean jacket Pich bought in the market at Praek Khmau, with good luck beads wound around the buttons. She also wears a hat, unusual for the people of her village, soft and shapeless but angled stylishly and blue to match the color of her jacket.
Thida wanted to feel her mother beside her every time she looked at the photo, just as her mother sat near her now. Since she’d been a little girl, Thida had been the daughter who followed her mother everywhere, did errands for her, helped her with the cooking and cleaning, brushed her mother’s hair at night. She slept with her mother on the nights her father didn’t come home. When other girls asked Thida to play by the river, she refused, saying that she needed to stay home to help her mother. Her sister Nita was smarter. Sreypov was prettier. Thida didn’t care. She was the oldest daughter. She was the one the spirits had chosen to take care of their mother. Without being able to explain how, she’d understood that she’d been chosen. It was her honor. It was her blessing. Now she looked at the photograph and vowed that she would sleep through the next years as if in a dream, like walking through the dark fields at night, and never complain. And when the dream was over, she would return to Praek Banan and her mother forever.
As the bus neared Phnom Penh, Thida closed her eyes again and imagined brushing her mother’s long silky hair, much longer than Thida’s own shoulder-length hair. The brushing brought Thida quiet and calm. The long silky hair, the strokes downward and downward and soft like a breeze moving over the river, and all the night sounds of the world removed to a small patch of air and then silent. Silence.
It was three harvests ago that Pich first noticed the problem with his rice fields. A month after transplanting, half the young rice shoots turned brownish yellow. Kamal and Pich had just arrived at the farm, at dawn, and the fields were a soft sienna in the dim light. At first, Pich thought that he was not seeing clearly.
“What the fuck?” said Pich, and he threw his bucket to the ground.
“It looks like some kind of fungus,” said Kamal.
“Do you know what a fungus looks like?” said Pich.
Kamal didn’t answer.
“Then don’t tell me it’s a fungus,” said Pich. “What the fuck.”
Pich walked a half mile to his neighbor Rama’s rice fields, with Kamal following ten steps behind. The rice shoots there were a velvety green. “Rama has poisoned our rice,” said Pich. “I never trusted that idiot.”
The next day, Pich rode his moto to Praek Khmau and bought some fungicide. He and Kamal spread it on their fields. Over the following week, more plants turned brownish yellow, with white spots.
At the end of the week, he told the family. They were sitting at the table in the one-room house, the six of them, discussing Mr. Em’s new moto, when Pich suddenly changed the subject.
“Remember 1998,” said Ryna. “We’ll get through this again.”
“That was then,” said Pich. Almost as if to punish his family, he disconnected the radio from the wires that ran around the p
erimeter of the room to the car battery in the corner. “That was then,” he repeated, and lay down on his sleeping mat. “If Rama was behind this, he’ll be sorry.” Pich rolled over and talked to the floor. “I’ll borrow some money from Rith.”
“I’m going out,” Kamal said quietly. He put on a shirt and climbed down the rickety wooden ladder that led to the ground, where his friends were waiting for him on the dirt road. Thida could see their dim forms in the twilight. Across the way, kerosene lamps flickered in some of the houses, perched on their wooden stilts.
Thida kissed her mother. For a moment, she looked into Ryna’s eyes, trying to discern if the family was in real danger. Then she went behind the hanging sheet that separated the daughters’ sleeping area from the rest of the house. Nita and Sreypov followed.
Pich hated borrowing money. He hated being in anyone’s debt. So he sold one of their three oxen instead. It was the lame one, the one they called Old Bean, injured in an accident several years earlier. Old Bean brought in enough money to last half a year. Still, the family had to tighten their belts. Ryna stopped buying fish at the market. Once a week, her dear friend Makara brought them a chicken. Ryna rationed out bits of the meat to add to their rice and boiled the chicken bones to make broth. Then they began rationing their supply of stored rice. On Saturdays, the children picked up damaged and rotting tomatoes and fruits off the ground in the back of the market. But they were still hungry. They didn’t complain.
The following season, the same thing happened to the rice plants. They turned yellow and died. Pich took six dollars out of the emergency money tin in Ryna’s trunk, put the bills in his pocket, and disappeared for three days. When he came back, stinking and drunk, he lay on the ground under the house for another two days. While he lay there groaning, Ryna went to talk to Rith and borrowed money. She hid the money under a wood plank of the toolshed and took it out little by little.
The following year, as if by a miracle, the rice plants were healthy again. But the family was in great debt. They owed twelve hundred dollars, more than a year of their annual income. Rith, a scrawny man, but muscular, began showing up at the house asking for his money.
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