by Gail Sheehy
After five hours on bumpy, mostly dirt roads to the border, we were admitted to a camp that was nothing like what we expected. Neatness and order prevailed. Thousands of thatched dwellings showed little carpets of vegetable gardens in front. International relief agencies were providing food, birth-control injections, even electrification for rock bands. This was obviously the show camp.
The UN director of the camp, Erkki Heinonen, a reedy Finn, was not pleased to receive us. “We cannot allow foreign visitors to see the children,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It could put ideas into their heads.”
“Ideas?”
“These are simple children,” he said, offering us tea. “They lost their families. The Khmer Rouge taught them the world is flat, nothing beyond the rice fields. Why give them ideas? Let them go back to Cambodia.”
“Haven’t they endured enough?” I asked. “Couldn’t some be resettled in the West where they could have new families?”
“None of these people want to resettle in the West.” The director was emphatic.
“All eighty-five thousand of the Cambodians in this camp are just waiting to go back to the horror of the killing fields?” I asked, incredulous.
“Some have already gone,” he said, dodging a direct answer.
I stalled long enough to ask about the three giant plastic bags stuffed under his work table with what looked to be letters inside. “Oh, those.” The director brushed off my question. “Resettlement fever. People write letters whenever they see some movement—a few children were accepted by France the other day.”
The director excused himself. Alone in the office, I bent down to examine the plastic bags more closely. They were coated with dust. Crammed inside were hundreds of letters written by refugees in the camp and addressed to embassies, mostly to the U.S. Embassy. Pleas obviously smothered before they were heard.
“There’s a story here,” I said. Clay came up with the headline. “The People America Forgot.”
THE PLANE RIDE HOME seemed interminable. I couldn’t wait to get to a pay phone in the airport and call the editor of the New York Times Magazine, Ed Klein. I wanted an assignment to go back to Thailand. A few bags of unsent letters was hardly worth a story, but Klein didn’t give me a total brush-off. I had some reporting to do. Every call I made referred me to a man who was said to know more about Cambodian refugees than anyone in the world: Peter Pond, a New Hampshire minister with an extraordinary family of five adolescent survivors of Cambodian genocide. A humanitarian hustler, he found me first.
“I thought we should join forces,” he said on the phone.
“I don’t know much yet,” I said. “But the pipeline for resettlement seems to be shut down.”
Pond told me it was the new Reagan administration’s policy. Because the United States had closed the door on Southeast Asian refugees, other Western countries were following suit. That left the fate of the child survivors in the hands of the Thai military. “The silent policy of the Thais is that these kids oughta go back and fight with the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese, never mind coming to the United States.”
“But they’re still children, aren’t they?”
“Mostly teenagers now,” Pond said. “They were held hostage by the Khmer Rouge for three or four years. Separated from their parents and trained as the future of the country. No intellectual training, school was the rice fields. Some were forced to carry guns at the age of eleven or twelve.”
“How many survived?”
“At least half died, but about three thousand managed to sneak across the border into Thailand. They’ve been in the camps ever since.”
My interest was growing far beyond the personal. This was not just a story, this was becoming a mission. I called Klein with more ammunition.
“Thailand,” Klein said. “That’s a hell of an expensive travel budget.”
“I’ll pay half.”
A week later, I was back in Thailand to write a story about the child survivors of Cambodian genocide—the pawns of war.
PANIC WAS SPREADING THROUGH a different refugee camp, Sakeo, on the day I returned to Thailand. The first movement of refugees to a third country in a full year had taken place the day before. Rumor had it that this would be the last. As soon as I stepped out of the car, my pale face and red hair attracted a swarm of camp inmates. Hundreds of people pressed letters for the U.S. Embassy into my arms. I was trapped.
“Guide for you, okay?” A pair of muscular teenage shoulders appeared above the mass of short people, then a broad smile; he introduced himself as Nhep Sarouen and opened the crowd like a gate. Sarouen was hungry to speak English, forbidden by the Thai guards. He held out his battered English copybook and spoke in a hushed voice. “This my best friend, I sleep with, I play with.” In it, he had copied out an entire English dictionary.
“You America?” he asked.
“Yes, American.”
“America means freedom, something no one can smash out of our minds.”
“Do people here have serious hopes of going to America?”
“All people here very afraid they send back to Cambodia, Vietnamese kill them.” Sarouen looked over his shoulder at the Thai guards and sucked in his breath. “Take people, at night, in a truck to the border, no one see them again.”
Sarouen led us to the Thai commander’s office. Children scampered beside us, their shy smiles followed by the traditional Khmer greeting, their fingertips and palms pressed together in the shape of a lotus blossom. Then they dipped their chins to their fingertips. They never looked me in the eye. I knew that Cambodian children were taught as a sign of respect not to look directly at grown-ups. That was what I found strange about the girl with hungry eyes. I was vaguely aware of her, a child of maybe ten or twelve, darting behind bamboo fences but following me like a deer through the forest. Her wary eyes kept reappearing, and just as quickly disappearing. I took out my Nikon.
The Thai commander received me, scowling. “No camera. Not stay long. We do not consider these people refugees. Illegal immigrants.” He motioned to a mustached guard wearing orange lipstick to bring tea. I asked the official if Cambodians were still fleeing across the border and into his camp.
“Camp closed,” he barked. “Border closed. Must put in your story!”
Sarouen led me to a sequestered area of the camp known as the Children’s Center. It was under the supervision of volunteers from the International Rescue Committee. The young American woman in charge introduced herself as Margie de Monchy. She was prepared to use the full deck of her bureaucratic powers to keep me from interviewing any unaccompanied minors, as the teenage survivors of Pol Pot were called.
“But why? Don’t you want publicity, to help them get out?” My official role now was the newspaper lady writing a story for the New York Times.
Margie laid her cards on the table. “Look, these children see a farang and go a little crazy.”
“What’s a farang?”
“A foreigner. Us—French, British, American—we all look the same to them. They write more letters. Then you get back in your plane and forget.”
I asked Margie if the IRC had been able to trace any of the children’s family members who were still alive inside Cambodia. She looked at me wearily. “We’ve had a tracing program for almost two years. No hits.”
Using all the charm I could muster, I persuaded Margie that I would not forget. A story in the Times might put some pressure on the United States to open the doors again for resettlement. She relented. As I walked back through the camp to the car, I caught another glimpse of the phantom girl whose hungry eyes continued to follow me.
The next day four boys and girls were lined up for me outside the Children’s Center. A diminutive Cambodian woman, Darvy, was assigned as my translator. By late afternoon the tragic stories of massacre, mutilation, starvation, and seeing half-dead bodies tossed into pits had left me numb. But I had not yet seen a child from an urban background. There was
a delay; the child scheduled for that interview was not available.
The girl with the hungry eyes suddenly appeared. In the midst of the dust and chaos, she was perfectly groomed. Her black hair was freshly washed with the comb marks still visible; it ran down her back like a waterfall. Her miniature body was wrapped in a flowered sarong.
“She offers to substitute,” Darvy said. “She has twelve years, okay?”
“Okay.” This girl had something else, that indefinable gravity we call presence. I asked the translator to tell her it was all right to look at me. She did. I smiled. She did not. We contemplated each other for a long time. For the next hour, she never took her eyes off my face.
“Do you remember a happy time?” I asked.
Such a frivolous question caught her by surprise. Her face brightened to the innocence of a child—almost. “Yes, she has happy memories.” The translator painted the picture of an educated urban family who lived in a prosperous quarter of Phnom Penh. She and her brothers and sisters enjoyed picnics by the river and movies with their parents. Her grandparents had a gold-working shop. Her mother was part Chinese, which would explain her light amber skin. This made her family a prime target in July of 1975 when the illiterate peasant army of Pol Pot drove two million of the educated, urban populace on brutal marches out of the cities and into the war-wrecked countryside to do hard labor, deprived of schooling, money, or authority over their children.
“What happened to your family?” I asked.
The child spoke in a soft monotone, quickly but without inflection, digging the nails of one hand under the nails of the other, then flicking them apart with a high, clicking sound.
“Her father a soldier,” the translator conveyed. “He fight on side of United States. When Pol Pot come, father return with soldiers and white flag to . . .”
“Surrender?”
“Yes, surrender. Her mother first one Pol Pot soldiers take.”
“Why?”
The girl clicked her nails.
“She doesn’t know why.”
“Slap,” said the girl.
“Slap?”
“She mean kill,” the translator said.
“Slap,” the girl repeated.
Did she have brothers or sisters?
Click click.
“Small brother and sister, very sick, only eat roots.”
“Dysentery?”
“Yes. Then soldiers take her away. Send her work in forest. Send older brother away.”
“Did she see her small brother and sister again?”
“She sneak in fields at night to dig crab for them, but when she lie to go home see her sister, the sister die three days before.”
“And her little brother?”
“He starve.”
“Did she see that?”
Click click.
“She see.”
“Did she—did she see anybody beaten or killed?”
“She see woman and man, for love.”
“For love?”
“They punish woman and man in public. Beat with stick.”
Horror flickered in the child’s eyes.
“Beat them to death?”
“Yes. To death.”
“And she saw this, too?”
“She saw.”
“Oh, God, what did she think?”
“She think of her parents, maybe they die like this.”
Tears began to smear the girl’s expressionless eyes, but they did not spill over. She held up her arm in front of her face and dropped her head to the table. Soundless moments passed, a slight trembling in her back the only visible sign of distress. The sobs I heard were coming from the translator.
“I never see her like this before,” Darvy whispered.
“She’s never told her story before,” Margie said. “We don’t have time to ask.”
I massaged the child’s back and waited for her to compose herself. The Thai guard demanded to know when I would leave.
The girl lifted her head. Her face was bland as a Buddha’s.
I asked for permission to take her picture. Through the lens of my camera she looked like the apsara, shapely young celestial nymphs in Buddhist mythology that dance seductively in stone around Cambodia’s ancient temples. I mumbled endearments to the child.
“She thank you from her heart, and she—” The translator broke off in midsentence.
“What else did she say?”
Click click. The child worked her nails.
“Nothing. She confuse.”
“Please, what is it?”
“She think you take her to free country.”
“Oh my God—can you explain, I mean, this is for a newspaper story . . .”
The child immediately entreated the translator to put things right. “She very sorry she make mistake.”
The child backed away. The spell was broken. She stood straight and dry-eyed and bowed her head to her hands, forming the Khmer good-bye, waxen and closed. Outside I was besieged by a new crowd of letter bearers.
“What’s her name?” I shouted over the heads to Darvy.
“Who?”
“The last one.”
Darvy shook her head; she didn’t understand.
“The girl who couldn’t cry.”
Darvy’s lips formed the words Srey Mom. Surviving children had had their family names wiped from their memories to avoid being victimized as offspring of the intelligentsia. Srey Mom in Khmer meant simply “beloved girl.” It was not a name. Frantic grown-ups pressed in from all sides until I couldn’t see a thing. Only an airborne observer—one of those crisp officials in a UN helicopter—might have seen below the figure of a pale-skinned woman, blowing a kiss to the girl who could not cry.
CHAPTER 27
Separations
MY STORY CAME OUT in the New York Times Magazine in June 1982. The refugee children haunted my dreams. In particular, I could not forget Srey Mom. I had decided I must find a way to adopt her. On a crusade to spread awareness about the survivors of the Cambodian genocide, I persuaded Don Hewitt, the producer of 60 Minutes, to do a story on them. But personally, I was frustrated. How could the letter I sent to Srey Mom—the only name I had—ever reach her? Calling around to social agencies, I could not find anyone who could help me to sponsor a Cambodian refugee. It looked hopeless.
That summer, when Maura and I returned from Scotland after our last vacation together before she left for college, neither Ella nor I could bear to let her go. We made all her favorite dishes and ironed all her clothes, even jeans, anything to stay connected awhile longer. Before the designated day of letting go, the nineteenth of September 1982, Maura asked me to drive her to Brown University two days earlier than planned. I lied to myself: maybe she was just anxious to get a head start. That rationale didn’t stick. Feeling unloved and unappreciated, I had one of my flashes of temper. I scolded Maura in the cold, censorious voice she hated. She walked out of the apartment. I called Clay to tell him my life was over. I remember him saying, “Listen to yourself and you will realize that, rationally, none of the things you’ve just said are true. It’s all an overblown neurotic reaction to your daughter leaving home.”
What came out of this was an emotional collision with my daughter. She let me know how her self-confidence could be corroded by my outbursts. She didn’t get enough of me. Sure, I took her on trips across the country and halfway around the world while I did stories on famous people, but how often did I hang out with her, in her room, listening to her music, wanting to be there just for her?
Of course, I knew she needed to separate. Still, I was devastated. Instead of just listening with my heart, I offered excuses. It wasn’t easy being a single mother. I hadn’t chosen it. I had to work all the time to pay for our lives. On and on. It was Maura who patched up the rift, suggesting that I stay over in Providence for a day or two so our parting would not be so abrupt. We shopped for a bedspread, books, a pair of black Reebok Freestyles. By the time I left, she said she felt co
nfident and enthusiastic about doing well at college.
“Would you like me to walk you to the car?” she asked on that parting day.
“No, darling. It’s time. It’s your time.”
A FEW DAYS LATER, a two-sentence letter arrived from the girl who couldn’t cry. Over her handwritten Khmer, a translation had been penned: I miss you. I want to live with you in America. Even after nine months, she remembered. Our connection was profound.
Clay and I were not living together in 1982. By then, he was in Hollywood half the time, working for Twentieth Century Fox, occupying one of those movable chairs given to producers whose movie projects seldom get a green light. I hadn’t seen him for several months. When I called him with news about the letter, I hoped that he would share my delight. After all, he was the originator of the compassionate idea of adopting a Cambodian refugee. He was not happy.
I had found a rent-stabilized apartment on Fifth Avenue, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the then-miraculous price of $1,300 a month. It had a terrace overlooking Central Park. A small glass cubicle sat on one end of the terrace, where I wrote as if suspended in the sky. I could watch the leaves turn from scarlet to lemony pale and sit snug in a winter storm like being enclosed in a snow globe. It was as close to a writer’s heaven as one could get.
Unheated, the cubicle was also ideally suited to keeping the neurons jumping. In winter I typed in a hoodie, my feet encased in Alaskan mukluks. In spring, the terrace became my first garden. I filled the window boxes with swaying tulips. Tubs held bonsai mimosa trees and dwarf crabapple trees that bore fruit in the fall. It was a magical place to invite friends for drinks and outdoor supper.
“CLAY? OH, YOU FRIGHTENED ME.” It was after midnight. “C’mon up.” Buzzer, dash for the bathroom mirror, splash of cold water on sleep-puffy eyes; I wasn’t expecting Clay to be in New York. He came in with his rakish smile and his clean male smell. It was months after our Asia trip, but the magnetism had lost no pull. My heart turned over. The part of him that lived within me, impervious to time or events, was a separate and authentic thing—love. We couldn’t finish a glass of wine before we came together.