by Gish Jen
People leave things on the bus all the time, it is just so easy to do.
Church people met them, and took them to a house where the people weren’t home but had said Sophy’s family could stay, so they had all three bedrooms to themselves, and could even use the kitchen if they wanted. The woman in charge of them was named Ruth. She had white hair like an old lady, but she braided it in two braids like a girl, and her face was like a girl’s too, open and interested. She was very fat but got around okay, and everything she wore was fleece. Like she had a fleece hat and a fleece jacket and fleece mittens and fleece pants. And she had a cozy personality too. “Is there anything else I can get for you?” she kept saying. And “How can I help?” And “If you think of anything else, just tell me.” She sang all the time, or at least hummed, because that was her job. She was a song evangelist, she said, whatever that was, Sophy would’ve asked except that she had so many questions already and didn’t want to be asking something every minute. Like Ruth told them the church had other people coming too. “From Somalia,” she said. “They’re Bantus. Muslim.” And Sophy would have asked about that, except she didn’t have to, because Ruth had just figured out what Bantu meant herself, and told them. “I never knew that,” she said a couple of times. But the way she said it still made Sophy think about the guy who said that about how easy it was to forget things on the bus.
The house was so comfortable and warm, they would not have minded moving in for keeps. Like there were soft beds and a soft carpet, and pretty curtains and all kinds of wicker furniture. There was heat you could turn up or down in every room. And hearts—there was kind of a heart theme, with heart-shaped candles and heart-shaped pillows, and hearts stenciled on the walls. And of course there were Bibles, a Bible in every room, though nobody told them they had to follow Jesus or asked them to say Praise the Lord! even once. Every day Ruth would come take them to church, and every now and then some lady would say how glad she was that they were being saved from temptation, but that was all. People were just really friendly. Like they made sure they were saying your name right and asked a lot of questions about Cambodia, and even sort of liked it that Sophy’s mom didn’t speak English and paid her extra attention because of it. And even Sarun liked hearing Ruth sing, he said she had such a great voice it was almost worth sitting through the religious shit to hear her, though he thought she should open her eyes when she sang. But Sophy thought she just did that because she didn’t want people to watch her when they were supposed to be watching the screen with the words.
They stayed in the heart house for four great days. Playing cards and looking at the people’s stuff, and walking around and telling riddles. Like it turned out Sophy’s dad knew all these riddles that her mom did too. Like he would ask, What has a stem like a candle but opens up like a cup? And her mom would answer, A lotus! Or else he would ask, What cup of water can the wind not find? And her mom would answer, The milk in a coconut! And then they would laugh until they cried because of how much the riddles reminded them of Cambodia.
Meanwhile Ruth kept coming to visit, and every time they learned something new from her, like about maple trees, or about hypothermia, which was kind of scary, but they were glad she told them. The whole thing was like a family vacation, which they had heard of but never had before. Of course, it was cold. And it wasn’t pretty, if you looked outside. Like there was still snow, but the snow was all dirty, and everywhere there wasn’t snow, there was mud. Everything was a different shade of gray, it was like someone had forgot to flip on the color switch for this town. You especially noticed it after the church video, because the video was, like, so much more bright and real. But they were all happy anyway, talking to each other about the cold and staying in this warm place. They were even starting to like the services and the way everyone talked about love, even if it made them miss Sophy’s sisters. Like there was this big mirror in the downstairs foyer, right inside the front door, and every time they passed it Sophy looked at them all together and thought how great it would be if Sophan and Sopheap were here too, planning and walking around, and eating and joking. But the rest of them were still happy. Once she even saw her mom and dad hold hands, and once her dad said Sophy was a very polite girl, something he had never said before. None of them missed home at all. It was like they were a regular family.
If only life in the trailer was like the heart house! It was going to be. But that first night in the trailer they realized, not right away. The trailer smelled. The trailer had mildew. The trailer was cold. They were excited to think that it was, like, theirs! But they couldn’t sleep. First some kind of animal came right up to their window—like you could hear it outside, clawing around—and after that they kept hearing other sounds too. Like Mom kept hearing k’maoch, and Sophy kept dreaming her sisters had run away from their foster homes like she did, only to find out there was no one there. If she knew where there was a pen and some paper, she probably would have written them a letter right that very second. But instead she had to try to go back to sleep in this strange bed with, like, her mom sitting up, and the light on, and Gift fussing, and on top of it there was this big storm the next day, and the trailer turned out to leak like the Titanic. Sophy’s dad said it could be fixed, and that getting used to the trailer was nothing compared to getting used to the Khmer Rouge or America. But still when they went outside and saw the mountains all around them like walls, they just came back in.
They had their cabinets to fix and a lot to mop up, and in the middle of it all, their new neighbor came over, and that was Hattie. And Sophy was glad because she thought the kitchen looked bad with one drawer missing, and the cookies were good. But her dad said they should not be too friendly because Hattie said she was half Chinese and grew up in China, but he thought maybe she was Vietnamese. And why would she bring them cookies unless she wanted something? he said.
Of course, that made Sarun laugh. “What could anyone be wanting from us?” he said. And behind their dad’s back, he said, “He be dreaming, man. Dreaming.”
But their dad kept insisting that they should be careful. That woman might not even be a human, he said. That woman might be a k’maoch.
Sarun laughed and laughed.
Anyway, pretty soon he and Sophy’s dad were working on digging a drainage ditch because the ground was too wet to grow anything. And while you obviously couldn’t grow mangos here, if the soil was drained they thought they could try to grow apples and pears, and if that didn’t work Sophy’s dad had heard you could grow Christmas trees. Of course, there were hardly any other black-hairs here, but they didn’t care. They were all doing better. Sophy’s dad even seemed to like her mom, now that she had these tapes and was really trying to learn English, and Sarun wasn’t sending anyone IMs, because there was no cell service. And Sophy was perfect as an angel, so polite and hardworking, her dad looked at her one day and said, “Now if you go to Cambodia, people will say, Yes, that is a Cambodian girl. So polite! Whose family does she belong to?”
“I thought you told the judge you didn’t want me,” she said.
And her dad just laughed then like Sarun, and that was about the happiest moment of her life.
“Someone must have borrowed my mouth and made strange words come out,” he said. And when he did that lopping thing with his finger then, it was like he was trying to lop his bad words out of her memory, so she wouldn’t hear them anymore.
Life wasn’t perfect. Like there were all these flies! And her mom missed her friends, and the temple too, messed up as it was. And when they got Sophy’s sisters back, it wasn’t going to be easy to convince them they were going to like it here, because there was, like, no movie theater or mall, or anything. And it was a lot easier to make money in their old town because everyone knew from everyone else where to find work. Like there were factories making medical supplies and airline seats and stuff, and at night you could always, like, make key chains, or bag up parts for a kit. Doctors were easier to find too, and food and medic
ine. And you could walk places. Here you needed rides for every single thing, which was hard because they weren’t on, like, any kind of program. Like they were just this special case some pastor had thought should be part of his ministry but that other people wondered about, especially when they found out that Sophy’s family wasn’t even the Cambodian family they thought they were. Like the one time Ruth came to visit she said that the pastor in charge of them wasn’t the church pastor anymore, and that some people were glad, but that she was so upset she was leaving too, which was why she came, to break the news. It made them feel so bad. And who was going to help them figure out what to do about school and stuff now? Because what a good student Sophy was going to be this time! An A student, she’d always liked how that sounded. An A student, straight A’s, all A’s. Ruth said they shouldn’t worry and that someone would help. But in the end, she just disappeared like Carla and nobody else showed up, and the first thing that happened in school was that this boy offered to help Sophy figure out what was going on. Hershey, his name was, like Hershey chocolate, he said everyone called him that all the time. And she felt sorry for him because it wasn’t his fault that he was named Hershey, and he felt sorry for her back, and wanted to show her stuff like how to sign up for free lunch and how to get her locker to stay shut. It was the kind of help she had to make sure her dad never knew about, but she didn’t, like, know how to explain it, and before she could Hershey came by the trailer because she left her protractor at school and he knew she couldn’t do her homework without it. And that was the end of school.
And that was too bad, because even going for a little while made Sophy realize that she actually missed school. Like she even missed their old school, with the wack teachers and the wack kids and the wack stories, it was lucky they had the whole summer to figure out what to do next.
Then Hattie came over with the wheelbarrow, and they all liked her more after that, Sophy especially. She liked Hattie’s dogs and Hattie’s cookies, and she liked the way Hattie said, Ants do like peonies. And then Sophy’s dad changed his mind about Hattie and wanted her to teach Sophy Chinese, and maybe do home schooling, since Hattie used to be a teacher.
But then he hurt his back. And then he asked for white rice. Sophy said, “You’ve stayed off white rice all this time. Do you really want to go back?” Like so respectfully. But he said yes, just a couple of bowls until he felt better. Then he didn’t get better and didn’t get better, until he was not only eating white rice but drinking again too, and smoking weed. Which everyone smoked in Cambodia, or at least the men did, in fact Sophy’s uncle used to grow it on his farm—pure stuff, not like the stuff Sarun used to bring home. Sophy’s dad didn’t smoke it in their old town because it was illegal in America and someone could report you, but here there was no one to report you anyway. So he was not only smoking it again now but making Sophy’s mom put it in chicken soup, the way they used to in Cambodia.
“We should move somewhere else,” he said sometimes, when he was high.
“But, like, where? Where can we move?” asked Sophy.
“What about Long Beach.”
“Dad, there are, like, so many gangs in Long Beach.”
“Cambodia,” her dad said after that. His eyes were even more jittery than usual when he was high, and huge-like. “We should move back to Cambodia.”
But how could they go back to Cambodia when all they had there was, like, an uncle who could get blown up by a land mine anytime? And what would the kids do? When they only half spoke Khmer if they spoke it at all, and couldn’t read or write one word?
But that’s how he would talk, and all Sophy could do was be really gentle and polite, hoping he would stop. And sometimes that worked, sometimes he stopped if she talked sweet enough, or if she prayed.
The praying was a new thing she knew her mom and dad wouldn’t like. Because she wasn’t praying to the Buddha, and she knew what they would say. They would say she was forgetting her culture. Never mind that she was half Chinese, actually, they would say to be Cambodian was to be Buddhist, and that, like, would be that. But the blue car was coming to their house all the time, and her mom would never get in it, and so sometimes Sophy did, because wasn’t it rude to keep saying no to the driver when she was so nice? Sophy knew how the driver might feel because her mom was ting moung with everyone sometimes, even Gift. And hadn’t the church been really nice to them too? Of course, it turned out later that this church was actually different from the other one, but Sophy didn’t realize that in the beginning, like she thought they had to be the same because why else would the car be coming? And she really liked the driver, Lynn, who was short and, like, couldn’t talk for some reason—like she could understand and she could write, but she couldn’t talk, it was almost like she was from Cambodia or something. And she never looked offended when they said no, they weren’t going anywhere, she always just shrugged and held up this piece of paper that said NO PROBLEM, and winked. She was so nice that one day when Sophy’s mom was out housecleaning and Sophy was alone watching Gift, she decided to try going. Why not? She asked Lynn to wait a minute while she ran out to ask her dad if it was okay. And he was, like, drunk, and he and Sarun were digging, and the way she asked, so quiet-like, she wasn’t sure he even heard her, exactly, or gave his permission. He just kind of moved his head then went on digging while she, quick, asked Lynn to wait just another minute while she put Gift’s diapers and stuff into a grocery bag. And then they got in. The blue car had a carseat for Gift that you wouldn’t think he’d like but that he actually loved because everything was so interesting, even she thought it was interesting. Not that the drive was so different from the drive to the grocery store, but somehow she was just more noticing. Like Sophy didn’t see one other trailer with crates for stairs like her family had, she thought they should really get rid of theirs. And she saw that a lot of other people had whirly things or flags or little decks with planters on the railings, and of course that some people even had, like, real houses. Sophy didn’t like the ones that were falling down with sinking porches and peeling paint, but some were neat. Like the car stopped at this blinking red light, and right there on the corner she saw this little white house with blue shutters and a flag with a flower on it hanging over the door, and a little walkway between two little squares of lawn. And the more she looked at it, the more her eyes filled up with tears, it kind of reminded her of the heart house. She even tried to show it to Gift, but he was too busy playing with his feet to care.
The church center was two towns over, and in a white house too, only bigger and older, and with a giant cross that took up pretty much a whole wall. The entrance had a half-moon window, and a big curving staircase with a little door under it, and a lot of old wood paneling, but there was also a new wall of hooks and cubbies for the kids’ stuff. A short lady with frizzy hair welcomed them right as they walked in and asked, “First time?” And when Sophy said yes, she said, “Wonderful!” as if Sophy had just said the best thing ever. Then she showed Sophy where to put her stuff, and the funny thing was that she seemed just the right height person to be doing that. Like she was the perfect height for the hooks and cubbies, and hardly had to bend down to show them. And the other funny thing was that Gift got it right away that this was a place for him. Like he looked at all the shoes lined up in the other cubbies, and when Sophy took his shoes off and put them in his cubby, he crawled over and patted them. They were the only ones who brought their stuff in a grocery bag, but the lady didn’t seem to care, and Sophy at least put the bag in the cubby neatly, so it wouldn’t mess up the whole thing.
In their old town there were all these youth centers where you could hang out and get free food, but it never occurred to anybody to see if there was a center where you could bring babies, since between Sophy and her sisters and their dad, there was always somebody who could watch Gift while their mom worked. But now that Gift could crawl so fast and was pulling himself up and cruising, this was so great. Like they had this play space
in the basement with carpet, and there were blocks and balls, and a little picnic table with paper and markers, and even, like, a little playhouse with a little play kitchen. And a corner that was all trucks! Gift practically jumped out of Sophy’s arms when he saw the trucks, and when Sophy had to change his diaper, she could only get him to lie down by letting him play with a truck at the same time.
There were other babies there too, and other people taking care of them, which was the part Sophy liked. Like it was great when the short lady introduced her to brown-haired Renee, and black-haired Simone, and blond-haired Kate, who were, like, from all over! Like Renee was from Detroit, and Simone was from Vietnam, and Kate was from a farm pretty close by, but they all helped take care of a baby, like Sophy. Or babies, in Kate’s case. She had twins to watch after! Which was why she came as often as she could. Because how could she even let them out of the house back at the farm, when one could go one way and the other another and there was, like, dangerous equipment and pitchforks and fertilizer everywhere? Simone had two kids to watch too, but hers were one older and one younger, and that was easier in some ways, but harder in others. Like the older one was old enough to know she should not just run off, but the younger one would pull the older one’s hair, and then the older one would get really mad. So Simone had to kind of keep them apart, which wasn’t so easy at home because they lived in a trailer, like Sophy’s family. And so she came as often as she could too. Lucky Renee was like Sophy, with just one kid to take care of, she said she hadn’t even realized before coming that she was so lucky, and that was how Sophy felt too, like she hadn’t even realized. “We are so blessed,” Renee said, cooing at Gift and trying to teach him to give a high-five, and when she said that, Sophy felt like she knew just what Renee meant. We are so blessed.