by Loung Ung
I pick out a red ribbon and smooth it between my thumb and index finger. As the silky satin glides over my skin, my mind travels back to Cambodia where for four years we lived without colors and wore only the official Khmer Rouge black pants and shirts. The soldiers said that sporting colorful clothes separates people and breeds contempt and distrust among its citizens. They warned that children who longed for a red skirt, pink shirt, or blue pants were vain, and therefore had to have their vanity beaten out of them. I wonder what the soldiers would say if they saw my bowl of colorful ribbons. Whatever they would say, I hope they spew their words from their dead lips and decomposed flesh. I tie a red ribbon in my hair, thinking how happy I am to be in America.
It seems so strange sometimes that I have lived in America for two weeks now. And even though I have learned to live with the ghosts and spirits next door, at dusk each night I still take out my pen and mark Xs on my heels and ankles before the sun hides completely behind the mountains. Under the blanket, with Mickey, Minnie, and the gang on top of me, I escape to a troublesome and restless sleep. In the morning before Meng and Eang see me, I rush to the bathroom and scrub off my Xs so they will not scold me for being crazy. But sometimes we are surprised with an early visit from one of our sponsors and I have to resort to other means to erase the Xs.
One such surprise arrived on our second day in Vermont when we were awakened by a loud knock on the door. While Meng went down to open the door, I groggily rushed into my closet and changed out of my pajamas and into my brown shirt and pants. I cleared my throat and attempted to spit but my mouth was dry; instead of saliva, a glob of mucus landed on my palm. I smeared it over my ankles and rubbed out my Xs. I fumbled for the comb and brushed down my fly-away hair before securing it down with bobby pins. Finished with my primping, I hurriedly left my closet to make my bed.
All the while, the cheerful lady huffed up the stairs, explaining to Meng that she was a member of the parish from the Holy Family Church that sponsored our family to America. Meng smiled and thanked her. She then walked into our kitchen and proceeded to show us how to operate the stove, oven, and refrigerator. Crossing the kitchen to the sink, she opened our cabinets and pulled out a mug. She explained that it is used to drink tea or coffee. She then pointed to cups, bowls, and plates, and with each item, she told us what they are used for. When she got to the new tableware set, she instructed us that for everyday use, we were to use the old set; we were to use the new set when we have guests. By the end of her speech, Meng and Eang’s faces were tight and their smiles forced.
When the sponsor lady left, I asked Meng why so many people assume we don’t know about such things as fine china and cups. Yes, it was true that during the Khmer Rouge regime, our plate sets and silverware consisted mostly of coconut shells, banana leaves, our fingers, and our table was the rice fields. But before the war, our family sat for dinner at our big mahogany table and high-backed teak chairs while our house help served us food on fine china. Young as I am, I felt my ego bend like a bamboo tree each time the lady picked up another item, until in the end the reed was too heavy with burden and snapped, causing my face to darken and my eyes to harden.
“These people know nothing! They think we’re backward villagers and peasants!” I blurted out.
Meng bent down to my level. His eyes bulged and his head expanded with hot air so that he resembled a praying mantis. He ordered me to be quiet.
“These people have busy lives. They don’t have to help us at all but they do, so you be grateful.” His voice low, he continued. “They may only know about Cambodia’s war and poverty. They have no way of knowing we once came from a high-class family. Without them we wouldn’t be here, so unless you want to return to Cambodia, you better show them gratitude.” With that, he turned and left me. Ashamed and embarrassed, I vowed to be nicer and more grateful, and not complain anymore.
The next day, Michael Vincenti returned carrying a small, nine-inch TV. I followed on his heels and watched him set the TV down on the coffee table in the living room. As he pushed the plug into the wall, I bounced on the couch and waited for the magic pictures to appear. A few seconds later, the TV buzzed like a thousand bees, and black-and-white lines swam across the screen. Fascinated, I stared at Michael’s fingers as they fumbled with the knobs and dials until finally a clear voice came through and with it a cartoon cat chasing after a little mouse. I clasped my hands together in a praying gesture and glued my eyes to the magic box.
For the next two weeks, the sponsor visitors kept arriving, each time to give us new life lessons on everything from how to take a bus to the grocery store to operating the machines to wash our clothes at the Laundromat. In between these visits Sarah, our English tutor, would come to our home to teach us the English language. In her mid-twenties, Sarah was all smiles and big eyes that looked buggy behind her thick glasses. Each day, she would sit across from Meng, Eang, and me at our kitchen table and play cards with us. From her old cloth bag, she would retrieve her cards and teach us Go Fish and Memory. Each time we flipped a card, we would repeat the word after her. After we finished with our games, Sarah would take out of her bag many books with bright pictures of the rooms in the house, numbers, and letters. She would point to the various pictures or numbers and ask us to repeat after her.
As nice as Sarah is, I am happy when it’s time for her to leave because it means I can turn on the TV. Although I don’t understand the reason, Meng and Eang have a very strict policy that while there are guests in the house the TV must be turned off. This makes for many awkward and silent visits with our guest peppering Meng with questions as Eang and I sit silently nearby. Sometimes, a visitor looks in my direction and I smile, pretending to pay attention to words I do not understand. While the adults talk, in my mind’s eyes I flatten, pull, stretch, and reshape their human faces into cartoon characters. A man with a big nose becomes a pig, a round face turns into a monkey, and a thin-lipped person transforms into a chicken. At times, I have a whole farm of animal people, all of them pecking, hissing, or spitting noises at me as I nod my head in reply.
When we have no visitors, I stay in my closet; outside, the sun makes the white people brown, the birds chirp their wake-up song, and the clouds roll by as soft as cotton balls across the blue sky. At three, I leave my closet and turn on the TV in time to hear the familiar Looney Tunes theme. Then for an hour I follow Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Tweety Bird as they chase, kill, and bash one another without bloodshed or anybody getting hurt. In shows where a cartoon character dies, it usually comes back to life in the next episode or flies up to heaven with its tiny white wings while strumming a harp.
Each time the Road Runner comes on, I hope for the coyote to catch the bird and sink its teeth into the bird’s long neck. After all, I reason, the coyote isn’t being mean; it is hungry and only wants something to eat. If I could create a show, I’d draw the Road Runner plucked of its feathers and hanging on a hook, all naked and skinny. Slowly, I would deep-fry the bird in hot grease until it was golden and crispy. Then the coyote and I would crunch on it, bones and all, like it was a pheasant.
The days I don’t think about deep-frying the bird, I daydream about roasting the pig, barbequing the duck, and steaming the fish. This usually means that I need to fill my stomach with chips and cookies until the next mealtime. With my stomach full, I sit in front of the TV lost in a world where everything is light, silly, and young again. In the evening, when there are no more cartoons to keep me company, I tune in to the Brady family and laugh at their antics. Although I cannot understand their words, the largeness of their family and their crowded house make me feel less alone in mine. For half an hour each night, I live their lives and enjoy their family bonding and sibling rivalries. Watching them, I am taken back to a time and place when I, too, was part of a large family. But now, I am the only child of Meng and Eang.
As much as I like the show, I sometimes fantasize about beating up the Brady girls. In my mind, I lift their stick figures up
in the air, their golden hair flowing like silk threads over my shoulders as I send them crashing on my knee, snapping them like dry old twigs. I think of doing this not to hurt them but to save them. In my mind, I worry that if fighting suddenly erupts in America, many of its frail citizens with their weaknesses will not survive. And I want them to live because it is so much harder to see them die. I know that in my new home, there is no war, hunger, or soldiers to be afraid of. Yet in the quiet recesses of my mind, the Khmer Rouge lurks and hovers in dark alleys, waiting for me at the bend of every corner. No matter how far I run, I cannot escape the dread that they have followed me to America.
To escape the soldiers, I sometimes find myself in a field not far from our apartment. With my hair loose and free, I run through elephant grass as tall as my thighs until I come to a brook. The sound of the gurgling water soothes and relaxes my mind, shutting out the thoughts of war. On the edge of the rushing stream stands a tree that reaches up high into the heavens with branches that dip toward the earth. I run and wrap my arms around its trunk, pressing my body against its hard bark. My eyes closed, I imagine Chou on the other side, her cheek smashed against the tree, her fingers reaching out for mine the way she used to when we were together. When I open my eyes, Chou is not there and my mind races to find her, wherever she is.
As I focus my thoughts on Chou, in the kitchen Eang is being noisier than ever.
“Loung! Come help me clean the kitchen!” Eang wakes me from my daydreaming. I ignore her call.
“Loung, come help me now!” she yells.
In the past few months, I’d noticed that Eang had been more impatient and spent a lot of time throwing up in the bathroom. Then last week, while Meng waited quietly outside our apartment, Eang told me that she was pregnant and that the baby will come in December. I burst out laughing then because I now knew the reason for her bloated face and bad moods.
“All right! I’m coming!”
I turn around and survey my closet to make sure all is neat and orderly. In my sanctuary, my world is decorated with a single picture—a drawing I made of Mickey holding Minnie’s hand. Pulling the curtain open, I enter the big world.
A short time later, Joe McNulty arrives to take us to a barbeque at his house. At forty, Joe is a big Irish-Italian man of few words. Lumbering a head taller than Meng, Joe stands as strong as a tree and has a spirit as clean as the earth. Behind his thick glasses, his kind eyes inquire about our well-being and his hands are always ready to help fix anything broken.
At his house, Lisa McNulty swings open the door to greet us. Stationed regally near her feet, two gray fat fur balls with beady eyes regard us with suspicion before deciding we aren’t interesting enough and saunter back inside.
“Welcome! Welcome to our home!” Lisa walks toward us.
Whereas her husband, Joe, is quiet and reserved, Lisa is a fast-talking, animated Italian woman with an easy manner and infectious laugh. Standing almost as tall as Joe, Lisa dispenses motherly energy to everything she touches. And thus her garden blooms, her husband grows, her daughter sprouts, and her cats multiply. Beside her, strutting confidently toward us, is their daughter, Ahn. Now thirteen, Ahn was only eight when she left the orphanage in South Korea and traveled by herself to America to live with her new mom and dad. Five years later, Ahn possesses the bright smile and kind eyes of a well-loved child.
As Lisa beckons us into her home, Ahn runs up to me and grabs my hands. Pulling me into her garden, she talks excitedly and points to the six cats in her yard. Her hands mime that they’re all hers. Before we can escape, Lisa stops us and whips out her camera. She then takes one picture after another of our family before asking Joe to take one of just the two of us.
With her arms around my shoulders, Lisa tells me how pretty I look. Eang laughs and explains that I chose my own outfit. As Joe aims his camera at us, I run my finger through my hair, tucking a piece behind my ear and beam at the compliment. After four years of living under Khmer Rouge rule, I now wear only brightly colored clothes.
From a few feet away, Joe waves for us to look into the viewfinder and asks for a smile as the camera flashes and commits our image on film for all to see. In the picture, Lisa looks light and happy. Next to her, my face is dark with a frown, my eyes squint, but I’m all dolled up in my floral pink tube dress with white spaghetti straps, blue-and-white striped socks, and green sneakers.
After a yummy barbeque of burgers, hot dogs, and Eang’s special Cambodian chicken, we all walk the short path from the McNultys’ house to the fairground. The sky has turned pink and orange and the air blows cool breezes that chase the bugs away. All around us, the mass of people stroll together, their voices a low hum broken by an occasional shrill call for their kids to slow down. As we march along, my skin picks up the excitement, a charge of electricity.
The mass is all heading in the same direction, to a field of grass and shrubs used to host the fair every summer, and an occasional concert or monster truck show in the fall. Soon the mass grows too large for the sidewalk and overflows onto the street, slowing down traffic as people stop to greet, talk to, and gossip with their neighbors. Looking around, I’m surprised to see the normally drab white people dressed in festive red, white, and blue colors. A man in front of me adds another foot to his frame with a blue-and-white striped top hat. Next to him, white stars bounce on the back of a woman’s shirt as she jogs to grab a child’s hand. The young child breaks free of the woman’s grasp, her voice raised to its highest pitch, her arms out like the wings of a plane, as she runs to meet another friend her age. Once together, they wrap their arms over each other’s shoulders and lean their heads together, whispering secrets into each other’s ears.
Watching them, my palm feels empty and cool until Ahn sprints to my side and takes my hand. With her black hair and Asian features, Ahn is the only other girl who looks similar to me in the crowd, and she makes me feel accepted. Her acceptance warms me. Hand in hand, we edge along with the crowd toward the fairground. Ahn drags me along and talks excitedly about the exploding lights that cover up the sky like shooting stars. Behind us, Joe and Lisa explain to Meng the importance of the Fourth of July.
After a few moments of searching, Joe finds a bench in the first row with room enough for all of us. All around, children scream with joy; their arms shoot out sparklers and flap around like dragonflies. Somewhere in the distance, a band plays songs I’ve never heard. The drums and symbols roll and clash thunderously, lifting me into the air before the tuba drags me back down to the ground. Above us, the stars twinkle like the eyes of the gods, blinking in and out, as if they’re spying on our festivities.
“It’s almost time, it’s almost time,” the crowd whispers.
The crowd huddles in the dark, forming bumps on the field resembling burial mounds.
“It’s almost time,” the mass exhales.
My skin moistens from the sound of crackling gunshots from afar.
“Any moment now,” the swarm murmurs as the excitement grows. Perspiration forms above my lip. I wrap my arms around myself, my hands rubbing my skin to warm my arms.
Suddenly, a cannonball shoots into the air; the whiz of its flight and brilliant explosion hovers above me. My hands clasp over my ears, my eyes shut, and my jaw clenches so tightly I feel the muscles of my cheeks cramp up. In the sky, the rocket explodes, and its deafening sound vibrates in my heart. Then another cannon hurls another weapon above the crowd and is followed by many more as I brace myself for the oncoming war. The smell of burnt powder, the brightness of the bombs, and the haze of smoke are so terrifying that even the stars leave us and disappear into their black holes. Somewhere in the crowd, a baby screams; its cries jump into my head and are trapped in my skull, flooding my senses. Another explosion sends me trying to scurry under the bench but Meng grabs my arms and holds me in my seat. I want to be a good, strong girl so I press my body against the back wall as more flares shoot into the night and burst into fire showers. I flatten my body into the bench
and try to disappear into the wood.
In my seat, my throat closes as I gasp for air. Suddenly, I am outside of time and space and in a world where Cambodia and America collide, with me stuck somewhere in the middle. A baby screams as the soldiers reach into the bomb shelter and pull out a woman. Her clothes are black and dirty and her face is muddy. She clutches her baby to her breast and begs for mercy, taking me back to the death of Ma and Geak. All of a sudden, my world goes red and I am back in America, disoriented and terrified. As the sky continues to explode, I count quietly under my breath, inhaling the falling ashes and damp earth through my nose and mouth.
“One … Two … Three,” I breathe as pictures of Cambodia and America are superimposed one on top of the other. My eyes shut, I pray the bombs will not hit my shelter and bury me alive.
In the night sky, the gods battle their grand finale. In the bomb shelter, the Cambodians get on their knees, their palms together and pressed against their chest, and their lips singing incantations and prayers for the war to stop. Not caring, the gods throw firestorm and lightning, tearing the sky apart, while the souls of its people hide deep within the earth.
In my mind’s eyes I see my friend Pithy crouching next to me, her mother and brother huddled together beside her. Another explosion splits open so loudly that even the gods desert us and leave us to the enemies. In my head, a mother screams and I turn to see Pithy, her head cracked like a coconut, her blood oozing out of her wound.