The Rent Collector

by Wright, Camron

  The clinic! I will take him to the French clinic.

  I retrace my steps back toward home. My lost sandal sits patiently in the trail and, miraculously, it’s facing the right way. I slip it on almost without slowing down. I pass our home, heading down the slope on the opposite side, until the ground levels out to the trail that leads to the city streets.

  On a good day, I will walk with Nisay to the clinic. Today is anything but good. I am panting by the time I reach the street where the motos cross. I wave frantically but the first two don’t stop. Perhaps they realize I have left what little money we have at home. The third to approach jerks his tuk tuk to the curb beside me. He is an older driver.

  “Please,” I beg, with all the motherly compassion I can muster. “I need help. I must get my boy to the clinic on Khemarak Boulevard, near the Russian hospital. He’s sick!”

  He hesitates, as if he also knows I have no money to pay, but then he glances at my son. “Get in!” he says.

  We climb into the two-wheeled cart hitched behind the motorcycle, and before I’m even settled, he lurches out into traffic. Any other day, I would be furious. Today, I am only grateful. As we weave in and out of the busy city traffic, I whisper encouragement to Nisay. “We’re almost there, son. They are good doctors. They will help and you’ll be fine.”

  Except for the sway of the moto as it darts back and forth, Nisay is motionless. And then the moto brakes to a stop and I jump out. I pay little attention to the pained looked on the driver’s face. I ignore his grimace as he stares past me to the clinic entrance. Only when I turn do I understand—the windows and doors are all covered with grates. The clinic is closed.

  “No,” I scream. “Open, please open!” I command the doors, as if I expect the chains to obey and part. They don’t.

  And then time blurs. I am in such a frantic frame of mind, wishing, hoping, pleading for someone to help, that I can’t be certain what is really happening and in what order. I am riding again in the moto, but I am crying hysterically because I don’t know where the driver is taking us. It’s my worst nightmare. Instead of endlessly falling into blackness, I am riding though the nighttime streets of Phnom Penh with my dying son lying limp in my arms, unable to wake up or get out of the racing moto.

  But I can’t be dreaming because surely in a dream, such pain and panic would have caused me to wake up screaming—and Ki would console me and tell me that everything is fine.

  Instead I am alone and my dreams are not only real—they get worse.

  We arrive at a tall glass building. When I realize the driver wants to put me out on the street, I refuse to get down. He pulls at my arm while I scream at him. “How could you! How could you!”

  He physically yanks me out as I grasp my son, but I continue to stand in the street shrieking in anger and pleading for help. Then someone else touches my shoulder. She’s an older Cambodian woman, dressed in a white uniform of the sort that medical workers wear. I am standing in front of the National Children’s Hospital off of Kampuchea Krom Boulevard.

  The woman escorts me to the entrance with my son. Just before passing through the doors, I turn to thank the driver, to apologize for my conduct, but I can no longer see him. He is gone.

  My child is taken from me and I think I tell the nurse what is wrong with him, but later, as I try to remember, I can’t be sure. I’m asked to wait in a room, but when I enter there is no place to sit. The seats are full of other desperate people living nightmares of their own.

  I find space against a wall, relieved to feel that it’s solid, and slide exhausted to the floor. I grab my knees as the adrenaline that has filled my body retreats. I may throw up, but I’m too tired to find a bathroom. I am uncertain whether I doze off or just stare blindly at the distant, whitewashed wall, but sometime during the night, the woman who escorted me into the hospital touches my shoulder to get my attention. She needs information. I give her my name and tell her where we live, and when she hears Stung Meanchey she doesn’t bother asking if we can pay. Before she hurries away, she says that my son is fine, that a doctor will find me soon to tell me more. To those watching, it must look as though she has delivered awful news, because as she walks away, I am so relieved that I cover my face and sob.

  There is a clock on the wall and at 2:10 A.M., I remember my own clock at home. I worry about Ki and the panic that he must feel, not knowing what’s happened to his wife and child. Then, an hour later, he runs into the waiting room. He is sweating and breathing heavily. When he sees me, still leaning against the distant wall, the relief that spreads across his face is so palpable that I feel it from across the room. It washes over his body, and by the time he reaches me, he slumps beside me on the floor. He puts his arm around me and he asks, “How is Nisay?”

  I hug back as best I can while sitting. “They are taking care of him. He’s going to be okay.”

  We say nothing more for several minutes, content to simply be together in spite of the circumstance.

  “How did you find us?” I finally ask.

  “I’ve been checking all of the hospitals. I’m so glad you didn’t go to the one on the north side of Phnom Penh.” And that’s when I realize he ran to each one.

  In Cambodia, it’s unfortunately common for husbands both to drink and to beat their wives. Other families are abandoned, left to fend for themselves. Instead, my husband runs through the city for the better part of the night to make sure that his wife and son are safe.

  We sit together on the floor for hours, taking turns resting as we wait for the promised doctor. Late in the morning, a haggard-looking man in a white coat appears. He is rushed and I expect we won’t talk long.

  “I am Doctor Chan. Your son will be fine. He was severely dehydrated and we’ve given him fluids throughout the night. We’ll be discharging him now, so you’re free to take him home.”

  I can’t express enough joy that Nisay is okay, but I also understand that he’s going home because we have no money to pay for his stay.

  “How can he be better so quickly?” I ask.

  The doctor doesn’t answer but instead offers instructions. “It’s critical that you give him plenty of liquids and—”

  “I try to,” I blurt. “But he has diarrhea so bad, and then he won’t eat or drink anything.”

  “I’ve got some pills that should help.”

  “When the pills run out, he always gets sick again.”

  “Just remember, plenty of water. Now, I’ve got several other patients waiting, so if you have any questions, the nurse should be able to help you.”

  And as quickly as the doctor appeared, he is gone. I don’t blame him, and I am not bitter. I sit in an overflowing hospital waiting room, brimming with desperate mothers, including many who lost their loved ones. How can I be anything but indebted to this man?

  Nisay is sleeping when the nurse hands him to me, but I can see that his color is back. They don’t ask for payment and we can’t offer, but instead we use what money Ki has with him to take a moto home. I hope to see the driver who brought me, to pay him and to thank him. When the moto stops, I look, but it is not him.

  It’s nearly noon by the time we arrive home, and our energy is spent. In spite of the heat, we close the tarp on our home to block the light and we lie down. I let my eyes close and invite the smells and sounds of the dump to swirl in my head and join me in slumber. They oblige, drifting across me like a nonexistent breeze that will soon make everything right in the world.

  “I love you, Ki. Thank you for finding us,” I whisper—or think I do. Then, as I drift to sleep, I open my mouth wide toward the heavens because all around me something wonderful is happening. For the second time in a month, snow falls from the sky to cover up Stung Meanchey.

  *****

  As the man calls to me again in my dreams, his face remains obscure. However, the distance in his tone, the inflection of his voice, his guarded manner, all remind me of someone, a forgotten acquaintance from years past. He is like the perso
n you bump into at the market and recall as a friend, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t remember his name. Then, after a few days pass—or a week, or even a month—the name jumps into your head, as if it’s been hiding behind a curtain in your mind, planning for just the right moment to step onstage.

  When I awake, Ki is no longer beside me. His boots are not in the corner, and I presume that he’s gone to the dump to pick. I can tell from the color of the light peeking in through the cracks that it’s already late afternoon, and I am starving. I hope that he can make enough in this short day to buy more than rice.

  Nisay lies beside me, breathing heavily. I’m not surprised. It’s always the same after our visits to the Western doctors and the modern hospitals. They give him medicine—sometimes vitamins, other times antibiotics, always names I can’t pronounce—and almost immediately, he feels better. He’s content, his diarrhea goes away, his appetite comes back. But then the pills run out, and in spite of the doctor’s insistence that my son is fine, his fever always returns.

  Nisay will soon awake, and I’m counting on the fact that he’ll be hungry. I roll away slowly so as to not disturb the child. He doesn’t move, though I’m sure his slumber will be short-lived. I’m also thrilled there’s no mess around him to clean up.

  We still have a kilo or two of rice but nothing more, so I quietly stack several small pieces of kindling into the lower opening of my clay cooking stove, which sits obediently in the corner. I click and touch the handheld lighter to the wood beneath until the flames burn on their own. It doesn’t take long to retrieve water from outside, pour it over the rice, and then place the pan on top where the heat is already converging. It will soon boil and, with any luck at all, Ki will arrive in time with something more—vegetables, pork, beef, anything. I’d even settle for more snails, if it weren’t for those nasty leeches.

  As the steam dances away with the smoke, I’m taken back to my childhood, realizing that mothers have been cooking rice in Cambodia this same way for hundreds, perhaps thousands of—

  And then, in the middle of my thought, I remember!

  The admonition in my dreams is from a man in the province, a man I haven’t seen in years. Even then, as a child, I kept my distance and he kept his. It’s not that he was cruel to me or any of the other children, or hurtful in any way. It’s that childhood rumors, even those borne of young imagination, can leave impressions that linger. The man lived up the river from our home, perhaps ten minutes by boat, three times that following the river’s path by foot. Since leaving the province, I’ve seldom given him any thought. But now he’s shown up in my dreams, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s coincidence or if my overwhelming desire for Nisay to get better is creeping into my subconscious.

  I forget the name of the Swiss psychiatrist whom Sopeap quoted, but he believed that dreams are important, that we should ponder them for meaning and answers to our life’s problems. This entire notion now makes me nervous. The man calling to me from my dreams, insisting that I should have come sooner, is Bunna Heng. While some Western doctors and other medical professionals might call him a witch doctor, he is better known in the village of my childhood as the Healer.

  I’m not bothered by what modern doctors think, for their remedies haven’t proven overwhelming. Instead, his words are what make me anxious.

  “You should have come sooner.”

  If my dream is about Nisay, and if I should have come sooner, does that mean I am already too late?

  If the Swiss dream doctor was right, if the stories and images of our dreams do matter, if they truly offer insight, understanding, and even warning, then I had better listen carefully.

  As my rice boils, I instinctively understand what I must do. I need to travel with my son to the Prey Veng province of my childhood and visit the Healer—and I must leave as soon as possible.

  *****

  Most of our clothes fit into two worn suitcases—gifts from the dump. Everything else of value—my cookware, clay stove, utensils, sleeping mats, and even my broken clock—I hide underneath our raised floor, which I access from the rear of the house. Still, nothing is secure. Everything we own could be taken at night, or anytime, for that matter, and nobody would notice. But we have no choice.

  I have not seen Sopeap since arriving home from the hospital, and my stomach tightens every time I think about her. It’s a distress overshadowed only by worry for my son. I presumed Sopeap would drop by to schedule our next lesson, and I could say good-bye then, but she hasn’t. I’ve been to her home twice, wanting to explain the reason for my departure, but there has been no answer.

  “Should we stay one more day?” I ask Ki for the hundredth time. “She may be back soon.” He ignores me, knowing another minute later I’ll tell him to hurry, that we need to leave now. In truth, I can’t honestly say if my urgency to get Nisay to the Healer is a prompting or paranoia. At times it’s so hard to tell the difference.

  We have counted our money and have just enough for the trip there. How we’ll afford to get back is still unanswered. I’ve convinced Ki that we should leave the dump the long way, out the western pathway, the one that leads past Sopeap’s home, to check for her one last time. We step from the house, ready to leave, when I see Lucky Fat running toward us.

  “She’s coming!” he says, tired and breathless. And it’s true. Sopeap trudges down the distant path, a slow but unmistakable silhouette against a backdrop of towering garbage.

  “I’ll take Nisay and the two suitcases and wait for you on the corner of Boeung and Keng, by the chicken farmer,” Ki says.

  “You can’t carry everything. Leave me a suitcase, and I’ll catch up soon.”

  But he somehow takes both suitcases anyway, along with the child, and then motions for Lucky to follow. The boy looks disappointed that he can’t stay and listen but he obeys. I study Sopeap as she approaches, once again finding myself at a loss for the right words to convey the mix of aching and gratitude that tangle in my heart.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask as Sopeap shuffles beside me and then rests against the floor where it steps up into the house. She looks exhausted.

  “My artery feels a bit constricted,” she says, reaching for her chest. Then I catch the slightest glimpse of a grin. “It’s my new favorite reply,” she adds.

  I return a smile. “Seriously, are you doing okay?”

  “I’m still here. Besides, it’s nothing a sip of rice wine won’t help.”

  “You shouldn’t drink, knowing you’re going to die.”

  Apparently I’m the only one who follows my logic. “Why wouldn’t I drink, knowing I’m going to die?” she asks.

  I change the subject. “I came by several times, but you weren’t home.”

  “Yes, I had some additional business in the city—rent collection duties. It took longer than I expected. I was happy to find out that Nisay is feeling better.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I hear these things. I am still the Rent Collector, you know.”

  But then her gaze drops, her demeanor darkens. “I do wish we could have finished. There was so much more I was hoping to talk about.”

  “We will,” I say.

  “Did we ever read the phoenix story?” she asks, ignoring my reply.

  “No. I don’t believe so.”

  “That’s too bad. It’s one of my favorites. I think that’s why I was saving it.”

  “We’ll read it together later,” I tell her, “just as soon as I return.”

  She is silent as she studies the garbage at our feet. “Of course,” she finally answers, but the words ring with hollow conviction. And then she adds, “No matter how much we cling to hope, our stories seldom end as we expect.”

  “Is that a quote?” I ask, uncertain whether she is referring to herself or to me.

  “No, that’s a fact,” she replies. Then she reaches into her bag, a gesture I’m going to miss. “I brought you something to read—for the road.”

  “You
did?” My voice brightens.

  She takes out a bound leather volume and hands it to me. “It’s so that you can read to your son.”

  “Thank you.” I take it from her aged, experienced hands. I fidget with it, saying nothing more. In the same way I read her body language, she reads mine.

  “What is it, child? Spit out your question.”

  “I just . . . well . . . I’ve been thinking about you being sick . . . wondering about what happens . . . you know . . . when you leave Stung Meanchey?”

  “When I die?”

  “Yes. How do you think it works? Are the ancestors really waiting? I don’t know a lot about these things—and I wonder.”

  “These are questions pondered, argued, and discussed by some of the most intelligent men in the universe.”

  “What did they decide?”

  “I believe they are still in committee.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  “If you must ask, it wasn’t a very good one.”

  “Do you ever talk to your ancestors?” I ask.

  “Mostly we wrestle.”

  “Wrestle?”

  “Yes, and I don’t recommend it. You will always lose.”

  “I am looking for a serious answer.”

  And then she sighs. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t joke with such bad arteries, should I? The problem is you need a sincere answer, and I don’t think I’m the person who can best offer it.”

  “Why not? You’re the teacher.”

  “Because I distance myself from heaven and then complain that heaven is distant. Look, as you continue to study and learn, you will find many opinions. You can believe writer Darany Ma, who suggests we face a cold and silent universe, or you can listen to Phirun Vann, who sees a power that guides our steps—”

  “That’s my point,” I say, interrupting. “How do I know? I love what you’ve taught me, I’ve loved reading our stories, but at times, it can be so . . .”

  “ . . . damned confusing?” she asks.

  I smile, and then, in true Sopeap fashion, she answers with another quote. “The poet Hunt said, ‘There are two worlds: the world that we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.’ I think if you follow his advice, you’ll do okay.”