by Loung Ung
“Hey, I just got my first A+++ in Mr. Johnson’s class!” I tell her excitedly.
“That’s great! He’s an awesome teacher.”
“Totally,” I reply. “Want to come over to my house after school?”
“Sorry, but Mom and I have plans.”
And like that, the clouds spring back over me with the force of a marble thrown from a stretched rubber band. Please tell me what it feels like to have a mom, I want to say, but I don’t.
“See you after school.” Beth waves to me and runs to her class.
Above me, the sky grows darker. I try to push it away, to shake it off as I make my way to see Mrs. Berringer, the school counselor. When my friend started to visit me, I began visiting Mrs. Berringer. Every few months, I make the appointment to see her with the intention of gathering information about the back pains, the muscle aches, and the dark dreams. But when I’m sitting in her chair, my friend is usually not with me, my body is well, and the dark thoughts are forgotten. Today the dark thoughts are with me and growing bigger. As I knock on Mrs. Berringer’s door, the clouds dim and buzz quietly like a low-wattage electrical storm over my head.
“Please come in, Loung.” Mrs. Berringer motions to the couch in her office. With a reach of her hand, the door swings closed with a click, shutting both of us in.
I sit on her couch and sink into the cushions. The couch is too big for me and leaves my feet dangling in the air. I hate it when my feet don’t touch the ground. I start to swing them, kicking the air as if it is water about to drown me.
“How are you today?”
My face cracks like I’m wearing a mud mask as I say, “Good, I guess.”
“Is there something you want to talk about?”
I like Mrs. Berringer. She possesses a kind and maternal face that reminds me of Beth’s mom. Still, I can’t talk to her. The sadness is so unending, I fear it will swallow me like a black hole. I’m afraid that if I let go and cry, I’ll never stop. And so I sit, hands clasped in front of me as I search for something to say.
“Well, I’m having a hard time with grammar,” I finally say. Suddenly my eyes are tired and my nostrils are wet from the inside. I turn my head from her gaze to stare at her bookshelves.
“We can get you help, a tutor maybe.” Mrs. Berringer writes something in her notebook. And like that, the moment is again broken. “I’ll talk to a few teachers and see what we can arrange.”
“Well, I’m also mad that Shelly passed a note to Nicole that said I’m annoying. I don’t understand at all. I’m not even friends with her but she’s saying bad stuff about me.” As each word pours out of my mouth, I wish I could cup my hands over them and push them back with my fingers. I want to tell Mrs. Berringer there’s so much pain inside me, that I’m lonely most of the time and scared a lot of the time. “Please help me,” I want to plead to her. But I don’t. I don’t know how to make my mouth form the words I need to say.
So for half an hour, I ramble on about nothing. Mrs. Berringer looks at me while I talk without saying much. I speak faster when I think she might be annoyed with me for wasting her time with such petty matters. As my mouth continues to move, above me the black clouds spread out across the room. Behind Mrs. Berringer, last night’s dream projects on the wall like a Technicolor silent movie. In it, I am running, the trees sweep past me, my long hair tangles around my neck, and my breath comes out short and shallow. A man chases me; although I can’t see him, I know he’s behind me. Suddenly, I run into a house and grab a knife off a kitchen table. The man enters; the door creaks behind him. I grab him from behind and while I hold his neck with one hand, the other slices the knife across his neck. But the knife catches on his skin. I see that the edge is not sharp because I’ve grabbed a butter knife. Not letting go, I saw his throat back and forth as his blood splatters all over me. The skin on my arms still burns where his blood touches me. The thought stirs the bile in my stomach like thick gray toxic sludge. As the bile moves up, I grit my teeth and swallow a big gulp of air. When Mrs. Berringer looks squarely at me, I become even more nervous that she will ask me if something is wrong, so I begin to talk faster. While I spin my words, the air in the room grows stuffy and hot but my skin is damp and cold.
“Well, our time’s up,” Mrs. Berringer announces.
“Thanks for listening to me.” I hold my smile.
“Come whenever you want. And check back later about the tutor.”
“Okay. Thanks again.”
I collect my things, leave her office, and head to the bathroom. I hurry down the hall, my steps quickening to a running pace as my body dry heaves and my stomach cramps. Urgently, I shove open the door to a stall, dump my bag on the floor, and kneel down by the toilet. From my gut, a toxic emotion swells and bubbles to the surface as I retch into the toilet. The poison heaves itself up my intestines to my throat, burning my esophagus as it catches there. With one more convulsion of my diaphragm, the venom comes out, spilling onto the sides of the bowl, tasting like spoiled food and rancid liquid. The war comes then, hot and fast in between the burps and hiccups. Then more convulsions, until finally I spit out only sour water.
When the last-period bell rings, I meet Beth at her locker. While Beth packs her bags, I watch Chris wrap his arm around Nancy, one of the most popular girls in school. Instantly, my heart beats rapidly the way it does after a three-mile run in gym class.
“Let’s go home,” Beth breaks my thought. “And you’re way prettier than she is anyway!”
“Whatever!” I pretend to stick my finger in my mouth and make a choking sound of mock disgust at Beth’s compliment. “Like gag me with a spoon!” I laugh.
On our walk home, my mood is again up, the sun appears brighter in the sky, and the wind blows with no hints of waking up any ghosts. As Beth and I chatter on about our day, I do not tell her about my nightmares or how I got sick in the bathroom. In between our talks of school and boys, the clouds slowly roll away and dissipate into the atmosphere.
When I arrive home at three P.M., Eang and Meng hurriedly leave for work.
“Hi, sweetie.” I pick up Tori in my arms and hug her tight to my chest. With my other arm, I grab Maria and spin around.
“Whee,” she cries happily. “More, more!”
“No, sweetie, I get a headache with this game. Let’s play movie star!” I tell Maria.
“Okay!” she hollers and scrambles up the stairs to retrieve my makeup kit. For the next hour, I tie colorful bows and ribbons in Maria and Tori’s hair, paint their cheeks, brows, lids, and lips in bright blue shadows and dark lipsticks, dress them up in pretty dresses, and take their pictures with my Nikon camera. Afterward, we sit on the swing in the warm afternoon light, soaking up the smells of Eang’s blooming flower garden. By the time I give them their dinners at six P.M., the sky is dark. At seven P.M., as I bathe the girls in the tub, outside the shadows grow and cover the world with an eerie stillness. When the clock strikes eight, the girls are in bed and falling asleep.
“I love you,” I tell Maria.
“I love you millions,” she replies.
“I love you billions.”
“I love you infinity.” She finishes the phrases I taught her and sleeps, a sweet smile forming on her lips.
As I leave them, I hear again the words many adults say to Meng and Eang when they are told of our story. “She’s lucky she went through the war at such a young age,” they sympathize. They believe that my age means I’ll heal faster, that I won’t remember. They are wrong. I do remember, I just don’t have the words to tell them about it. And although most of the time I’m silent about the war, it’s never silent to me. It’s always with me, in the buzz of a low-flying plane, the boom of fireworks, the cry of a child, the hums of a mother, the hands of a father, and the rumbles in my stomach. And I’m sick of it all. I’m tired of waiting for the pain to heal. I want it cut out of my body.
Outside the windows, darkness grows and the wind cries softly while the trees rustle in anger. T
he darkness seeps into my body like a virus that grows in my stomach and quickly spreads to my chest, lungs, heart, limbs, and head. Wherever the virus travels, it makes my muscles and limbs weak. In my room, black shadows drip down the walls like blood. On the table, the clock ticks the seconds away.
In my bed I close my eyes. When I open them again, I am walking in a graveyard. The nightmare plays out like a déjà vu with the same open coffin in my path, and in it, the same dead girl lies waiting. I wake up and kick off the blanket to see blood on the towel I laid on the bed. Quickly, I toss the towel into the hamper, swallow two Tylenols, and try to return to sleep.
But the girl is always with me now and haunts me even as I lie awake. Through her eyes, I see Keav dying alone on a dirty mat far away from her family. When I turn my head, the soldiers are beating up Ma again for trying to buy a chicken to feed a starving Geak. Then I follow Pa as he walks off with the soldiers into a glorious sunset to stand at the edge of a mass grave.
I get out of bed and make my way to the bathroom, leaning on the wall for support. The wall is cold and unyielding.
“I’m just so sad,” I finally say aloud, and in forming the words, something in me is released. “Getting your period means the chemicals in your body change,” I reason with myself. “Yes, chemical changes.”
In the bathroom mirror, the girl stares at me. Her eyelashes are wet, her face is haunting; she looks like the dead girl in my dreams. And the tears roll over me; like waves in the ocean they crash and pull me under.
“I’m tired.” Tired, tired, tired … I reach into the medicine cabinet and take out a bottle of Tylenol. I pop four pills into my mouth. But the pain is still there. I pour out another handful. The pills dance in my palms, gleaming white and inviting.
“Just wanna sleep,” I whisper. “I miss them so much.” The sadness is a black hole in my gut, a vacuum void that sucks all the light in. “I’m so sick of running.”
I feel nothing. Yet I feel everything. I cup my hand over my mouth and swallow the pills. The chalk gets stuck in my throat but I force them down. I crawl back into bed and let my body sink into the mattress. I wonder what it feels like to sink into the earth. Somewhere in Cambodia, I dream that Pa and Ma are sleeping together in the ground. I close my eyes and wait for Pa to come take me with him. In her crib, Tori cries but I ignore her.
“Meng and Eang will be home soon,” I whisper to her from my room. But Tori screams louder for my attention. Her wails awaken something in me.
I see images of Maria leaning over me. Her little face scrunches and twists as she caresses my cheeks to wake me up. Beside her, Tori’s in dirty diapers crawling over my body, screaming for me to change her. When I don’t wake up, Maria cries and pulls at my arm. When Maria disappears, I see four-year-old Geak holding Ma’s head in her arms. Her lids are red and puffy as she tries to pry Ma’s eyes open with her tiny fingers. When Ma does not wake up, Geak wraps her arms around her neck and refuses to let go. Her silent cries wound me a thousand times deeper than a cut with a knife. Slowly, I force my eyes to open. I know I can’t make Maria suffer the way I imagine Geak did.
Finally, I rouse myself from the numbness to vomit out the pills into the toilet. I enter the girls’ room and scoop Tori into my arms. Quietly, I change Tori’s diaper, feed her, and put her back in her crib. Before I leave, I tuck Maria’s blanket under her chin and feet.
“I love you infinity,” I say. Wherever they are, I hope Geak, Keav, Ma, and Pa hear my words.
Back in my bed, I turn on the light and pull out a wad of loose-leaf paper from the nightstand drawer. In the sky, the moon smiles approvingly as I pick up a black pen.
“I was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.” I begin.
part three reconnecting in cambodia
21 flying solo
June 1989
“Kgo, you look purdy!” Four-year-old Tori compliments me.
“Yeah, I like your hair all big and puffy like that.” Maria reaches out and pulls one of my curls.
“Careful!” I tell her. “These curls took me two hours with this skinny curling iron.” I pull a few more sticky strands of burnt, long black hair off the iron, roll them between my fingers, and toss them into the white plastic trash can where they lie like a cat’s nasty, coughed-up fur ball. Normally, I don’t spend this much time twiddling with my hair, but what the hell—it’s Saturday, and it’s the last big party of my high school years.
“Kgo, is that what you’re wearing or do you have another outfit in your bag?” At nine, Maria is as smart as she is beautiful.
“Smarty-pants!” I call her and ignore her question, not because I’m afraid she’ll tell on me, but because I’m too busy spritzing my curls with maximum-hold hairspray. Even though they’re so young, both Maria and Tori innately understand that there are things in my life that their parents do not need to know, especially things involving boys. Since I’ve had to babysit them from three to midnight all these years, they’ve met my various male friends who have occasionally dropped by the house to say hi. All these sightings could be used to blackmail me for a later bedtime or more designated TV hours, but they don’t do that. Even when Maria’s in her brattiest and most mad-at-me mood, she has never told or threatened to tell her parents anything about me and the boys.
Truth be told, compared to American girls, my experiences with boys are pretty boring and consist of nothing but a few kisses and holding hands. But thanks to cable TV and all the movies about girls doing drugs, hooking up with boys, and dying on the streets, Meng has decided that if I’m allowed the tiniest bit of freedom, somehow I will become the kind of bad girl who does stupid things with boys and drugs. Most of the time, I find laughable the idea that my brother thinks his unpopular sister could have a wild and crazy life full of boys and parties. But sometimes this illusion makes me mad I want to make like Speedy Gonzales and ondele, ondele away from him.
“Beth’s here!” Maria looks out my window and yells.
“Thanks, sweetie.” I stand in front of the full-length mirror and inspect my matronly brown buttoned shirt and black calf-length skirt. Then I gather my hair in my hands and tie it at the back of my neck.
“Beep, beep,” Beth’s little blue Honda calls to me.
“Out of my room, sweeties.” I chase the girls out, grab my big purse, and close my door. At the bottom of the stairs, I exhale a sigh of relief when I don’t see Meng sitting on the couch guarding the door. It is nine P.M., normally the time when he likes to relax on the couch watching TV or reading one of his Chinese books. And unfortunately for me, some very bad designer put the living room in the same space as the front door, thwarting my many attempts to leave the house undetected. But tonight, Meng is nowhere in sight. “Maybe a clean escape this time,” I think wistfully. Quickly, I slip on my black two-inch-heel strappy sandals, grab my keys off the top of the TV, and swing open the gate of my prison. As I am about to cross the threshold to freedom, Meng runs into the room.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“To dinner with Beth, then maybe to a movie or a girls-only get-together,” I answer, avoiding the word party.
“What kind of get-together starts this late?”
“It’s a last-day-of-high-school thing. Everything starts late.”
“What time will you be home?”
“Midnight,” I lie, and start out the door.
“Wait, come back here,” Meng orders me.
“What?” I reluctantly head back in. While I stand frozen in my annoyance, Meng walks over, reaches out, and buttons the neck button on my shirt.
“Okay,” he smiles. “Now you can go.”
“Huh, thanks.” I glare at him with embarrassment.
“Dear god!” I think. “I’m nineteen!” I run out the door angry and jump into Beth’s car.
“Hey, babe, thanks for picking me up.”
“No prob.”
“And sorry I kept you waiting, but you would not believe what my brother just did!”
/> “What’d he do this time?”
“He buttoned my top button for me!”
“You must be joking!” Beth laughs so hard, she shakes the steering wheel.
“Hell, at this point, I can’t even tell if he’s joking or not anymore. Just last month I went with the family to Montreal. At a rest stop I went to use the bathroom and some crazy trucker whistled at me. Meng got out of the car and followed me to the restroom! Then he waited outside until I was done to walk me back to the car! I was like, what? What is he going to do? The trucker was probably six foot five and two hundred and fifty pounds. And Meng is five-four and one hundred and thirty pounds. I was so mortally embarrassed.”
When Beth stops laughing, she turns to me and says in a serious voice, “You know, babe, he’s a decent guy. He’s strange, yes. Way overprotective, sure. But he’s a hardworking decent guy with good morals, or else you wouldn’t have turned out so well.”
Of course, I know Beth’s right. Meng is a decent guy. And I’m thankful that he’s fed and sheltered me, and worked so hard all these years so I can stay in school. But I feel like a worm in a cocoon wrapped in all these layers of thread to keep me safe and hidden. I can’t wait to bite my way out of all the trappings and find out whether I’m going to fly or fall flat on my face.
“All right, slow down a bit so I can change before we get to the party,” I tell Beth when we’re safely far enough from my home.
I reach into my bag and pull out a short black miniskirt. Quickly, I pull down my skirt and shimmy on the tight skirt. Then I shrug out of my button-down shirt and slip on a black sleeveless top that hugs my chest. I reach into my bra and adjust my breasts with hope that they’ll appear more heaping and full.
“All these years of ‘I must, I must, I must increase my bust’ didn’t do anything for me!” I complain. I pull down the vanity mirror, let my hair loose, and put on my favorite big silver hoop earrings. “Cool, now I look like Cher!”
“Yeah, your hair is sure big enough!” Beth laughs.