by Gish Jen
It’s a squeeze, getting the three girls and Gift into the backseat of what is, after all, a subcompact car, but they don’t mind. They insist that Sophy sit in the middle, Gift on her lap. Everything is in English. In the front seat Mum faces forward, but with her chin lifted high and her head tipped back.
“Can you understand them?” asks Hattie.
Mum moves her head in something like a nod, though not a nod, either—picking up words, Hattie guesses, a phrase here and there. Every now and then the girls say something in Khmer, but Sopheap and Sophan do not speak as much Khmer as Sophy; mostly it is English, English, English. What is there to do around here? they want to know. They don’t like Sophy’s Christian radio station; Hattie happily shuts it off. Wow, cows, they say then. Why do they have those yellow things in their ears? And what’s that smell? They roll their windows up; they hold their noses and point. What’s that? They are impressed that Sophy knows what a pony is. A llama.
“They have mad ears,” says Sophan. She asks if dogs pull people on sleds around here.
Sopheap and Sophy laugh. “No, no,” they say. “That’s Alaska!”
Sophan, though, is still curious. “Do people here burn wood to keep warm?”
It is a few minutes before Sopheap finally says, “So, like, Sarun is in the hospital?”
Sophy nods.
“And, like, what happened? Dad beat Sarun up and somebody called the police?” Sopheap asks lightly, in a just-wondering voice.
“Yeah, except it wasn’t somebody.” Sophy noses Gift’s back. “It was me.”
“You?” says Sophan.
Silence.
“Because there was blood everywhere, you should have seen,” says Sophy, finally. “And, anyway, I didn’t call the police. I called 911.”
More silence. The windshield darkens, then brightens—the car passing through the shadow of a cloud.
“Wow,” says Sopheap.
“Those are cool cows,” says Sophan.
The cows are black except for what look like huge white cummerbunds fitted around their bellies.
“They’re called Dutch belted cows,” says Sophy. “Because of, like, their belt.” She lays Gift down flat across her knees, so that his head is on Sophan’s lap and his feet on Sopheap’s.
“You shouldn’t feel bad that you called,” says Sopheap.
“He was going to die,” says Sophy.
“It was a good choice,” says Sophan, playing with Gift’s hands; he grabs her earrings anyway. “Ow.”
“Definitely,” says Sopheap.
Sophy, in the rearview mirror, is blinking hard, her nostrils red; she looks as though she might cry.
“Actually I made a lot of bad choices,” she says. “Like a lot of them.”
“Still,” says Sophan. “That one was good.” She nods supportively.
“And then what happened?” Sopheap pulls Gift’s feet up to her cheeks; she kisses his toes.
“He got to the hospital and was bad but then he woke up and was talking. And everything was good until he had this big drop in blood pressure. Because of the bleeding in his head, I think it was called ‘subdural.’ Because it was, like, under his skull, and I guess sub means, like, ‘under.’ And that’s why you guys were allowed to come visit. Because he was unconscious again and they thought he might die.”
Sopheap stops playing.
“We were, like, mad scared,” says Sophan. “When we were, like, informed.”
“I guess it was pretty serious.” Sophy jostles Gift on her knees. “But now he’s okay, except that they had to drill these holes in his head.”
Gift chortles.
“Holes?” says Sophan, finally. “In his head?”
“To drain the blood out.”
“That is so wack,” says Sopheap.
“It was,” says Sophy. “It was wack. Anyway, it’s still great you came. Because he has to stay flat on his back now and can’t even, like, sit up to eat, and his head is half shaved and half regular. And he has this huge bandage and these things that, like, squeeze his legs all day. Wait till you see. And his roommate cuts these farts you will not believe.”
The girls giggle. Sophy sits Gift back up straight.
“So Dad went wild?” says Sopheap.
“Because of the puak maak?” says Sophan.
“Yeah,” says Sophy, handing Gift up to Mum for a visit. “Because, like, Sarun was supposed to stop seeing them when he came here, but he didn’t. Like first they got us this TV and then they were e-mailing all the time and then Sarun was taking off with them in this van and doing shit. And that made Dad mad. Sarun gave him money, but he was still mad. And then the police came just to talk, but Dad, like, went wild. Because they came.”
“Wow.” Sophan folds her arms.
“Was he like an animal?” says Sopheap.
“I guess. I mean, that’s what he said. That he was like an animal.” Sophy stops. “It was actually really complicated, I wish I could explain it.”
“You explained it.” Sopheap’s arms are folded, too.
“I don’t know.” Sophy’s arms are jammed between her knees and her shoulders scrunched up. “Anyway, it made a big mess. Like there was blood everywhere. I thought we’d be cleaning forever, but Hattie hired somebody to come clean it for us. Like even though Mum does cleaning she hired someone anyway. So we could use that room when you came, and because it took, like, special carpet cleaner.”
“That was so nice of you.” Sophan leans forward, grasping the headrest.
“It was nothing,” says Hattie.
“She saw everything.” Sophy looks straight at Hattie in the rearview mirror.
Hattie feels herself flush.
“That’s so great,” says Sopheap.
“When can we go see him?” asks Sophan.
“Tomorrow,” says Sophy. “If anyone asks, you’re supposed to say it was break and entry. Like it was a stranger, we don’t know why.”
“We don’t know nothing,” says Sopheap.
“Nada,” says Sophan.
“Zip,” says Sopheap.
“He couldn’t remember anything when he first started talking, and that was lucky, because that way we got to tell him what he should say. Of course, he said he wouldn’t have told the blues nothing anyway. He said even if he had no brain left, he’d know better than to talk.”
“Meh-meh-a-lala!” says Gift, standing up in Mum’s lap. He bends and straightens his legs; they really need to get him a carseat. “Beh-bahb-ba!”
“And one good thing is that the hospital saw him for free,” Sophy goes on. “I mean, they knew he didn’t have insurance but they saw him anyway. Free care, they call it.”
“Cool,” says Sopheap.
“Babababehbehbeh,” says Gift.
Hattie makes Sophy take Gift back to the relative safety of the backseat.
“So how do you like school here?” asks Sophan.
“Are you really going to a church school?” asks Sopheap.
Hattie helps them bring their stuff in but does not see them again until they are gathered outside a little later, around Sophy and her guitar. Sophy plays “I Surrender All”; Sophan and Sopheap listen with their arms folded, then start doing dance routines. Flaunting their fertility, Lee would say. Grinding their gynecologicals. Sophy focuses for a while on her playing, her eyes on her fingers as she reaches for certain tough chords. In the end, though, she breaks into a tune Hattie thinks she recognizes from the radio but can’t quite place—the theme to that Titanic movie, maybe?
The blue car does the driving the next couple of days. By the time it breaks down again, Sophy’s sisters, to Hattie’s surprise, have already gone back to their foster homes. Her lone passenger is Sophy, who sports Sopheap’s sparkly hoodie and big hoop earrings. It’s misty out; corkscrews of steam rise from the engine hood like genies.
“I’ll have to give you Sarun’s earrings,” says Hattie. “The wires are a little bent, but we can fix them easy enough.”
“You can give them back yourself if you want,” says Sophy. “I mean, like, Sarun’s been asking, when are you coming, anyway? Like yesterday he said, ‘Where’s the Vietnamese lady? Isn’t she going to come spy?’ ”
Hattie laughs. “Tell him the Vietnamese lady will come in with you soon.”
“He says he wants cookies.”
“Will do,” says Hattie.
Sophy cracks open the window. Cool air charges in but their feet stay warm, thanks to the heat—the blower blowing on them like a mini–desert wind.
“How’s he doing?” asks Hattie.
“He hates that neck thing.”
“The collar, you mean.”
“He says it’s like Dad’s brace came off and got wrapped around his neck instead. But anyway, his hair’s growing in already, and they’re taking the bandage off pretty soon, and the stitches are supposed to, like, melt by themselves.”
“And what’s the prognosis?”
“Is that, like, prediction?”
“Exactly.”
Sophy tucks her hair behind her ear; the earring catches in it. “His prognosis is great. Like he can see okay and his memory is fine and he talks as terrible as ever—I guess he talked ghetto to the doctors and scared them, but then he switched to normal and they laughed.”
Hattie smiles. “And his vision?”
“Fine.”
“How very very lucky.” That shattered occipital bone, after all, with his occipital lobe just below it—his primary visual cortex—Hattie shudders.
“The surgeon said time will tell but that he has good karma. He said my mom must’ve built it up for him.” Sophy turns the radio on herself, surprising Hattie; maybe it’s something she does in the blue car?
“Is the doctor Buddhist?”
“Jewish, I think. But he knew a lot about it. Like he was asking what Theravada Buddhism meant. I guess he only knew about Mahayana, because it’s, like, more popular.”
“It must be hard that your sisters went back.”
“I wish they could have stayed.”
“Your mom, too, I bet.”
“My mom?” Sophy loosens her seat belt, freeing her kangaroo pocket.
“Wishes they could’ve stayed, I mean.”
The children don’t stay.
“Yeah, well, Sophan’s home was cool about her staying longer, but Sopheap’s home wanted her back, like, immediately, I guess because they were traveling unsupervised, and once this other girl went home and got in trouble. And Sophan and Sopheap wanted to go back if they were supposed to, so they could get out of there on time. Like they were trying to make the right choice for a change.”
“That’s great.”
“I guess.” Sophy moves her hands around in the pocket. “Anyway, it was a lot of godless chatter with them around.”
“That may be,” says Hattie carefully, “but wasn’t it great?”
“I don’t know.” Out pops a hand; Sophy plays with an earring. “It was complicated.”
“I bet.”
“But it was great, too, I guess.” She gives a lopsided smile. “They liked you.”
“I liked them.”
“Really.” Sophy leans over, inspecting herself in the side-view mirror—something else she’s never done before. “They think you’re all right.”
“Do they?”
“It’s true. They liked you a lot more than they liked Ginny.”
“Did they really?” Hattie tries not to smile too broadly, though she can feel the dopamine levels rise in her brain; it is a wonderful drive.
Of course, they’ve driven together, just the two of them, before. As Joe used to say, though, Contraries are known by contraries; what with Sophy’s sisters gone, the car seems far quieter to Hattie than it used to. And maybe to Sophy, too, because she seems to be trying to fill up the air.
“I don’t think they really even understood what happened until they saw Sarun in the hospital,” she says chattily.
“Do you understand what happened?”
“I think my dad has PTSD. You turn left here.”
“Sarun’s not in the main building?”
“He’s in the new one.”
“Ah. I bet you’re right about the PTSD. Do you know what that is, exactly?”
Hattie expects her to say yes or no, but instead Sophy says, “Ginny said you wanted something from us, but I never could figure out what it was.”
“Really.” Hattie turns on the wipers; Sophy closes her window.
“She said that one day I’d know and that it would be like a rock rolled back.”
“Did she.” Hattie musters up her courage. “I guess I’d have to say,” she says, “that I’m just a lonely old bat.” The windshield wipers go.
“You go right at the light.”
Hattie puts on her turn signal. “I’m an old retired lady with a dead husband and a faraway son and no sisters. I’ve got Reveille and Annie, as you know. And I’ve got friends. But first Joe died two years ago and then my best friend went, right after him. Her name was Lee.” She stops. “And now Cato.”
“That sounds hard.” Sophy hits an adult note even as she flicks her zipper toggle up and down.
“It is. Joe was a good man. And Lee was wonderful. Funny.” Hattie makes her turn. “For a long time, I wished that I’d died, too.”
“You should go to church more.”
“I go every week, just about,” says Hattie. “And I go to the library. There are always warm bodies there. And my walking group is great.”
“Except for Ginny.”
“She’s not my favorite,” admits Hattie. “And you know, there’s no getting around the fact that I need other people more than they need me. I’m just not an integral part of anyone’s picture, if you know what I mean.”
She makes her turn, expecting Sophy to ask her what “integral” means, but instead Sophy says, “You mean you’re old.”
“Yes. In a way.” Hattie nods. “Though you’d have to say I was always old, then. Or that I’ve been old longer than most people. Or that coming to America made me old.”
Sophy doesn’t ask Hattie what she means by any of that, either. Instead, she plays with her cross. “Sarun didn’t steal any plywood, you know,” she says suddenly.
And Hattie is just as suddenly grateful that she is in such a concertedly even frame of mind. “That was Ginny’s idea, wasn’t it?” she asks, coolly. “To blame him.”
“It was. But he didn’t do it.”
“Don’t I turn left up here?”
“At the light.”
The wipers squeak on their downward stroke.
“She wanted to blame him because whoever got blamed for the plywood might just get blamed for the fire, too,” guesses Hattie. “And she wanted to burn down the mini-mall to get Everett. Is that it?”
Sophy nods, more open now than Hattie has ever seen her. “How do you know everything? I told Sopheap and Sophan that, and they said you were just smart.”
Hattie shakes her head. “I don’t think so.” She frowns.
“You keep going straight.”
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, wait, you see? You know everything. Go right, kind of around that island.”
Hattie steers. “I have a question about all that, though.”
“You mean about the fire and everything?”
“Yes.” Hattie glances sideways; Sophy’s face is open and friendly. “Did you really think that would work—that people would link the fire and the stealing in the end? Without evidence? Did you really think Sarun and his friends would be convicted when they were innocent? Just because they were strangers and made people nervous?”
Sophy slumps a little, her hands back in her hoodie pocket. “I don’t know. I mean, sure. I mean it was, like, Jesus’s plan, so …” She shrugs. “Ginny said we were like Esther, put where we were put for a reason, we just had to look at what we were given and, like, try to figure out what it was. Like it was a puzzle.”
&nbs
p; “And you let her try to pin it on Sarun because he was ruining things for your family. Is that it?”
“I guess. Straight.”
“Because here your family was, starting over, and he was driving your dad crazy. Messing things up with his gang. Disturbing things.”
“He was no good.”
“And this was a chance to stop him.”
“The Lord gave us this chance—I believe that. I mean, why else would He have sent the white van, right? Why else would He drive it right up to our trailer and put it right under our noses? Why else would He have terrorists attack America so people would believe anything?”
Why else would He have terrorists attack America.
“You mean, spooking people so they would believe almost anything about that scary van,” says Hattie, slowly.
Sophy nods. “I mean, the terrorists were probably sent to help a lot of people with a lot of things, not just us,” she says.
“The Lord God acting with divine efficiency.”
Sophy nods again.
“His plan,” says Hattie, “just happening to accord with your hopes.”
Sophy nods a third time.
“Because your father didn’t want Sarun anymore, and you didn’t, either.”
“I told my sisters the whole thing was my fault, but they said I was too sensitive. Like how could it be my fault, they said, just like they didn’t think they ended up in foster homes because of me, they said they just did stupid things themselves. Like the time Sopheap stole that car with her boyfriend. She said that was her own stupid decision, she just wishes somebody had told her she’d end up in a foster home for it. And Sophan said she was stupid to break into people’s houses and, like, try on their clothes and listen to their stereos and shit. She didn’t even steal stuff, but it was break and entry anyway, and they definitely should not have snorted any of the people’s coke. Like that was just so stupid. And when I said didn’t they feel that people looked down on them because of me, they said that was no excuse. They said they made bad choices and didn’t think about the consequences. And now they’re making, like, different choices. Like Sopheap says she’s going to be an independent woman and not get married or have children or anything. She says in ancient Cambodia women were more powerful than men, and that she’s going to go back to that and be like a she-man.” She makes a muscle.