by Loung Ung
When the roosters crow at the brightening sky, the young children slowly wake to rub the sleepy seeds out of their eyes. By the time their mouths open with the day’s first cry, the women have already peeled the potatoes, sliced the tomatoes, cut the carrots to look like bats, shaped the watermelons into flowers, made fresh noodles, scaled fish, and chopped the chickens. As the young mouths quiver and cry for milk, the first waves of women recruits return to their huts to tend to their own children while their younger, childless sisters arrive to take their place.
Chou brings the men breakfast at the outside table, making sure to serve Uncle Leang first, followed by Kim and the others. Before she heads back inside, Chou turns and glances quickly at Kim. Ever since Aunt Keang announced Chou’s impending marriage, an awkward distance has come between Kim and her. Chou wonders if Kim is angry with her for accepting Aunt Keang’s choice so easily. Chou has never worked up the courage to ask him, she’s so afraid of his answer. While he eats, Chou’s eyes linger on his face, and she notices how much his features resemble Ma’s. And just like Ma, he has been brave enough to stand up to the family.
Inside the hut, Chou and the cousins sweep the floor, wipe the plank beds, decorate the room with wildflowers, arrange the chairs, and clean out the incense bowl. On one altar, they replace the red ceramic bowl with a shiny gold brass bowl wrapped with dragon designs. Then they replace the old candles with new red ones. Next, they hang red paper Chinese wedding characters for health and prosperity on the walls and on top of all the doors.
The women steadily work to beautify the hut with their mixture of Chinese and Cambodian decorations. Soon they hear roars of motorcycles as Khouy and other male relatives arrive to help build the tent. When they have a big enough crew, the men drive away the cow wagons and their motorcycles. By the time the bright rays have dried up the morning’s dew the men return with their wooden poles, palm leaves, and bamboo rope to build the tent. In a flurry of action, the men heave the posts into position and erect the frame. Chou comes out to watch and smiles as Khouy takes charge, directing people while he stands on the sidelines to smoke. While the others sew the palm leaves for the roof, Kim climbs on top of the tent and ties the skeletal frame together. Below him, Uncle Leang saunters from one group to another and spews out instructions in between puffs of his cigarette and swigs of coconut milk. All around them, the cousins, neighbors, and friends hammer poles and posts to stabilize the tent. In the corner of the tent, Chou sees Pheng gather a spool of thick nylon rope hanging on his arm. She quickly hides in the shadows but realizes that no butterflies flutter in her stomach at the sight of her groom. She becomes nauseous when thoughts of the marriage bed enter her mind, and she feels at a complete loss. Neither Aunt Keang nor her married women friends have disclosed anything or given her any advice about what to do on her wedding night.
For a brief moment, she envies the women who choose their own husbands, but she chases such rebellious thoughts away. Besides, she knows she is young and uneducated; even if she could choose her own husband, she wouldn’t know what to look for in one. And so she will marry the man chosen for her and hope that one day she will love him. Her married friends assure her that love will blossom after the birth of their first child. She prays that they’re right, and wonders if she is Pheng’s choice or if his parents forced her upon him. She supposes it doesn’t matter.
“Ma, Pa,” she whispers, “today is my wedding day.” Chou’s voice is soft and firm as she tries to make herself sound like a woman. “Pa, thank you for looking after me. Ma, you don’t have to worry about me anymore. I’m going to be all right.” She visualizes kneeling in front of them with Pheng to receive their blessings.
“Chou,” Hong says as she rests her hand on Chou’s shoulder, “it’s time for you to get ready. The guests will be arriving soon.”
Hong leads Chou into a makeshift room closed off by red cotton curtains. The girls stop their work and rush over to look at the dress laid out on the plank bed. Squeaking with excitement, a parade of hands guides her to a seat.
“Chou, I will turn you into a beautiful princess today,” the wedding dresser declares, her hands heavy with her scissors and fake golden jewelry.
“I am but a peasant princess,” Chou laughs and sits down. In her throne, Chou feels her tired body relax and wishes for a small nap. But the wedding dresser keeps her awake by pulling tiny hairs off her thick black brows and temples with tweezers. Chou’s forehead is still numb when the wedding dresser splatters a pinkish-white foundation on her face, turning her two shades lighter. The wedding dresser applies dark charcoal to her brows and eyelids, then spreads her tube of red lipstick on Chou’s cheeks and lips. When she finishes, Chou looks like a pink plastic China doll.
“Let’s give her princess hair,” the dresser says to the group. She then pulls, teases, and puffs Chou’s curly hair into a big nest on top of her head. With dexterous fingers, the wedding dresser folds and twists her hair into one big bun and secures it with thirty large black bobby pins that poke into Chou’s scalp. As the girls gasp, she places a fake diamond—studded golden tiara in front of the bun and again pokes Chou’s scalp with another twenty pins. When she’s done with the design, she cracks three eggs and separates the egg whites from the yolks. While one girl runs the yolks to the kitchen for the cook to whip into the yellow cake mix, the wedding dresser mixes the egg white with lime juice in a bowl. She uses this mixture to wet down Chou’s fly-away hair and to hold the hairstyle in place.
“You look beautiful!” the girls tell her.
Chou teeters on her feet as she stands up, but she is smiling radiantly, looking like the golden goddess Apsara. For a moment, Chou forgets about the war, her dirty hands, and that Meng and Loung are not there. In her rented form-fitting shiny gold dress and her sparkling fake diamond earrings, she feels beautiful. When she whirls around, the thick gold bangles wrapped around her wrists and ankles dance with her.
“You look like a princess!” the girls exclaim in unison.
“I am a princess,” laughs a new playful Chou.
As the guests start arriving, Chou exits out of the parted red curtains and the room becomes still. The hut is filled with thirty or forty members of the immediate family, cousins, and close relatives all dressed in their finest, most colorful lace shirts and sarongs. Chou feels all their eyes on her, the men appraising her appearance, the women looking for details gone wrong. Chou lowers her head modestly.
“Chou’s beautiful,” Amah announces to everyone.
Chou looks up to see Kim and Khouy beaming brightly at her like proud peacocks. Chou feels her face turn red under her pink makeup when Hong leads her to the tent. Under the entrance of the thatched-roof tent, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, and black tie with a big red cloth flower pinned to his breast pocket, Pheng waits for her. Shyly, Chou joins him, her head down and her hands at her sides. One by one, friends young and old arrive on foot, bicycles, wagons, or motorcycles and are greeted by the young bride and groom. Once the guests pass the wedding party, they go inside to sit on high-back plastic chairs at tables decorated with bright fuchsia cloth.
Through the many decades of war and peace, the Cambodian-Chinese culture has evolved in many ways, as people intermarry between the various cultures and races. For Chou’s big day, the family chose to modify and shorten the traditional three-day-long Cambodian ceremony to just one afternoon event. During the next few hours, Chou and Pheng go through their own special truncated Chinese-Cambodian marriage ceremony. To receive their blessings in a Chinese tea ceremony, the bride and groom kneel in front of a pair of elder family members seated in chairs to offer them tea. After a sip of tea, the elders give the couple a red envelope containing a few Cambodian riel, small gold jewelry, and blessings for happiness, prosperity, births of many sons, and good health. After the Chinese tea ceremony, the new couple move to a corner of the tent where a red blanket has been out spread out for the Cambodian string-tying ceremony. Aunt Keang directs Chou and P
heng to sit close together with their knees facing the same direction. Two elder women lower them so that they can prop their elbows on a large red pillow. As they sit with their palms pressed next to each other in a prayer, the cousins invite guests to participate in the ceremony by tying a red string around both their wrists and blessing them with a lasting marriage.
By late morning, the new couple has received the blessings of family, friends, guests, and monks, and is officially married in the eyes of their community. Their last ritual is to go to every table and greet all the guests individually as food and drinks are served. At each table, more guests toast the couple’s happiness, prosperity, healthy children, and good health. As Chou takes sips of tea with her guests, she eyes the food keenly for she has not had time to eat. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Pheng, who is sweating in his suit and pale from hunger. Though they have said few words to each other, Pheng toasts Chou with their guests and often smiles at her. When they move around the room, Chou notices that Pheng keeps his steps small so she does not have to run.
When the sun passes over the tent and stretches long shadows, the guests have gnawed, chomped, slurped, sucked, and feasted on all eight dishes and sit happily rubbing their bellies. Then family by family, they leave the tent to slowly make their way back home.
Once the last guest has strolled out, Chou changes out of her princess dress and back into her peasant clothes. Back in their loose-fitting village attire, Chou and Pheng quickly eat the food put aside for them by Aunt Keang. Once they’ve finished, Chou and the female relatives clear the tables, sweep the floors, and wash the dishes and tablecloths. The men disassemble the tent and chop the poles into firewood. Once she is done with the washing, Chou scurries around looking for more chores to do. By early evening, even Khouy has ridden home with Kim and two male cousins piled on his motorbike.
“Take me with you,” Chou wants to yell, but she keeps silent and grinds her heels into the ground. Quietly, Chou and Pheng leave Uncle Leang and Aunt Keang’s house and walk a few feet to their new thatched-roof home built on the family’s land. With heart pounding and palms sweating, Chou watches as Pheng closes their door.
20 write what you know
November 1986
“Loung, wake up.” Eang peeks her head into my room.
“I’m up,” I grumble into my pillow, my hair a messy shawl hanging in my face. The clock on the nightstand says it’s 6:45 A.M. but with all the curtains drawn, my room is as dark as night. On most days, I’m out of my bed the first time the alarm clock goes off, but today I’ve pushed the snooze button three times.
“Are you okay?” she asks, her voice full of concern.
“Yeah,” I mumble into my pillow.
With bleary eyes, I watch as Eang sits on the edge of my bed and stares at me. Since our contentious beginning as sisters-in-law, Eang and I have become more like a mother and daughter. Unlike Beth’s mom, Eang does not speak of her love in words but in her cooking of my favorite dishes, filling up my drawers with warm socks, and always bringing me a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips when she does the grocery shopping. I close my lids and feel her fingers brushing my hair off my face. She then lays her palm on my forehead and cheeks.
“You feel cool,” she says, “so get up or you’ll be late for school.”
“Okay,” I reply and watch her exit my room.
In the stillness of the house, I sit up and stretch my arms toward the ceiling, and an aching pain travels from my shoulders down my spine and lower back. When I stand up, the pain shoots down my thighs and calves. In my groin, my stomach cramps while my pelvis throbs, as if my legs are being stretched and pulled apart.
“Ughhh, why do they call it ‘friend’ when it feels like a damn enemy?” I ask the wall.
In the bathroom, the night’s bad dreams hover over my head like dark, thunderous clouds. Every month for a year now, whenever my “friend” visits me, the war and soldiers follow. At night, I thrash in my bed fighting off the soldiers, werewolves, vampires, and other monsters as they try to rape and kill me. In the morning, the girl in the mirror stares back at me with dark, haunted eyes, ashen skin, and lips so dry that bits of translucent skin hang off them like shredded plastic on new construction. With my thumb and index finger, I pull the dead skin like hangnails. The more I pull, the more my lips tear and bleed. I brush my teeth, get dressed, and head out to school with the ghosts nipping at my heels.
At school, the clouds follow me everywhere. As I shuffle to class, the halls darken and lighten with the pulses of pain in my head. The kids around me move their mouths incessantly, their voices guttural and incoherent. In front of me, a group of boys high-five each other, flaunting their easy smiles and casual manner. The girls circle the boys, throw their heads back, and laugh with mouths opened so wide I see the pinkness of their tongues. I stare at these girls as they walk into their class together; their popularity, beauty, and confidence sparkle in the sunlight like magic dust in their wake. I want to run to them, grab them by their shoulders, and shake them until their secrets drop like fruits from a tree.
When I arrive in Mr. Johnson’s English class, I find him moving around the room like a 250-pound brown bear, ready to pounce on any unsuspecting student. As he passes our seats, Mr. Johnson frowns and glares at us from behind thick glasses. The girls laugh while the boys toss jokes back and forth with him like a game of Frisbee. It’s well known among the students that Mr. Johnson is more of a teddy bear than a grizzly. And this very popular bear is famous for jumping on his desk to serenade a student on his or her birthday.
“Class, settle down.” Mr. Johnson’s voice booms across the room. “We’re going to work hard today!”
With that, Mr. Johnson takes the class on a literary journey into the world of Ernest Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea. As the class discusses the book, I twitch in my seat as the redness flows out of my body and my thoughts drift to Ma. I look out the window and stare at the bright blue sky. The leaves are beginning to turn brown. Soon they will die and fall off the trees to rot on the ground.
You have to live for them because they died. This thought suddenly snakes its way on to the white page on my desk. I put down my pen and clasp my hands together. Did they die for me? Did they die for me? My mind repeats the question like a dark spell. Could Pa have escaped if he didn’t have to worry about me? Below the desk, my knees shake and knock into each other. I imagine myself lying on the grass under the tree, covered by the falling leaves.
As Mr. Johnson continues, I lower my head and stare at the graffiti drawings on my desk. In faded black ink, I read, S LOVES L; next to it in blue, A + M is scratched inside a heart. Carefully, I pencil C LIKES L into the love fest. For the rest of the class, I daydream about Chris as my mind calms and forgets about Pa.
“All right, class. Because you’ve been good, here are your papers back.” Mr. Johnson slowly returns our papers; he puts my essay on my desk just as the bell rings. While the rest of the students hurriedly leave, I stay glued to my seat and stare at the A+++ grade on top of the paper.
“Mr. Johnson, this must be a mistake!” I stand up and exclaim. Mr. Johnson saunters over and sits on the desk next to me.
“No, it’s no mistake,” he says, and smiles. “The assignment was to write about an important event that changed your life. And your paper about growing up in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge coming into your city was great.” Mr. Johnson then looks into my eyes and continues in a gentle voice. “I’m sorry you had to go through it. I’m sorry for all your losses.” I grit my teeth and stare at the A+++ in my hand. I feel Mr. Johnson’s gaze burning onto my cheeks.
“It’s my first A+++ ever!” I exhale the words and force a smile onto my lips to get us past the awkward moment. “I’m so used to getting papers back with all the red marks and corrections on them. This is so strange.”
“Well, your paper is great. But I will say this: You will not get another A+ in my class unless you learn the grammar rules. There are
many grammatical errors in your paper but for this once, I wanted to let you know that sometimes content counts more than correct grammar.”
“Thanks, Mr. Johnson.” My smile is no longer forced as I gather my books together and shove them into my backpack.
“And, Loung, there is certainly a lot more to your story. If you ever want to write about it, let me know how I can help.”
“Thanks.”
“All right, now get to your next class.”
I leave Mr. Johnson feeling light and head for my appointment with the school counselor. For a moment, the clouds vaporize. Outside, the sun shines through the windows and brightens up the halls. On the ceramic floor, my feet tap to the rhythms of the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited!” which I can’t seem to get out of my head. At Beth’s locker, I spy the freshmen boys staring at her shapely tan legs in her miniskirt.
“Beth, you’ve got followers,” I tell her, motioning to the boys.
“Yeah, well, they can look but can’t touch!” She shuts her lockers and laughs. At fifteen, Beth is now a shade blonder than when we were in junior high school.