Afterparties

by Anthony Veasna So

  “How adorable!” She stepped closer and peered through the glass. “What’s he doing?” she asked, her smile stretching to show more and more teeth.

  It may have been her smile that disarmed me, or that I was too absorbed in my own thoughts, but right there, with both of us standing in that haunted playground, the truth spilled out of me, everything that had occurred between me and you. It was one of those moments when—after spending so much time in your own head—you forget that other people take up a different space from your own. Or perhaps I simply needed to confide in someone, anyone, about this unfortunate day.

  “Oh, wow,” she said, placing her hand on her chest. “That’s so awful to have to deal with that—and at such a young age . . . and now he wants to protect you? It’s just . . . heartbreaking. Really heartbreaking. I was only a kid then, but still, I remember exactly where I was when the shooting was announced on the news. My mom burst right into tears. You know, I still think about all those lost little lives.” She looked up at the sky, at heaven, at a cosmic realm that was irrelevant to the parents of those children. No, the universe had already spit their children right back into the world that had destroyed them, reincarnated, reborn to live and die and live again, destined to an eternity of being exhausted, as everything, even the privilege of living, is exhausting when set on repeat. “All those beautiful little souls,” she intoned.

  Her gaze fixed on me now, and I could tell she wanted a response, like a student waiting for the teacher to identify an answer as right or wrong. It was a demand I received a lot, in fact, being the only Khmer teacher at a school teeming with Khmer youth. My expression was mined for validation a hundred times each day, and all the more so after the shooting.

  So we stared at one another—Ruth’s eyes searching for a sign of approval, with my own cutting straight into hers—until, from the corner of my sight, your head popped out of the classroom.

  “Mom, can we go now?” you shouted, half your body still behind the door. “I think I’m ready.” My coworker and I broke our gazes and focused our attention on you. The sun hit your face like a spotlight, made your skin look pale while also, somehow, exaggerating its brownness.

  “Grab my purse and we can go,” I yelled back, grateful for an excuse to end this interaction, to go home, to swap the overheating asphalt for the lingering scent of lemongrass and garlic. I turned toward my coworker, who was now, to my own disbelief, softly crying.

  Completely thrown, I found myself taking a step back, even though I knew, logically, that there was nothing outright offensive about her behavior. If anything, she probably had a better heart in her than I did—why else would she be reacting this strongly, years after the shooting had taken place? Yet I felt insulted. I wanted her to stop filtering the world through her own tears. I almost slapped her for crying at the mere sight of you, for conflating you with the memories of dead children. But I only turned away. I felt cold, my hands frozen in the sauna of this late-August day, and, despite myself, as I scanned the playground, I started to laugh.

  “How can you— What’s so funny?” my coworker said, alarmed.

  “It was the morning after Martin Luther King Jr. Day,” I answered, not talking to her anymore, really. “We were supposed to teach the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”

  Then, before she could respond, you jumped through the classroom doorway and said, “Let’s go!” as you pointed in the direction of the parking lot, waving my purse around. My coworker cried harder now, seeing you act like the genuine, impatient child you were, as she grappled with my total disregard for her tears. Unable to withstand her presence any longer, I left her there, without even saying goodbye.

  Back in the car, you declared you felt better. We were safe now; what had happened had already happened, you muttered to yourself, as if humming a lullaby meant to soothe an infant to sleep, the expression on your face glazed over, coddled by the heat. Staring out of the car window, you seemed at peace, the liquor stores and fast food chains and patches of unused land whizzing by.

  My attention began to drift then, as it often did while I drove, and I remembered how popular Michael Jackson songs had been when your Ba and I first came to California. They were the only American songs played at Khmer weddings, in between traditional songs salvaged from before the regime. “Man in the Mirror” was my favorite, but most Khmer people, including your Ba, loved “Thriller.” Your Ba was so excited when I told him Michael Jackson would be visiting my very classroom. He kept reminding me to take photos. He didn’t seem to care about anything else, had told me, the morning after the shooting, “Bad things happen all the time.” Years later, he would refuse to watch the documentaries and news specials that accused Michael Jackson of atrocious crimes, and I would think of that same resigned condolence he had offered me.

  I’ve never really told you about his visit, have I? It was in the afternoon, a bright winter day, the kind that made you think spring was around the corner, ready to slap February with blooming flowers and pollen. My students were reading chapter books in pairs, as neither they nor I had the energy for an actual lesson, before we heard thunderous choppers, the deafening drone of an engine, dust and debris being swept up and into the air. The more shell-shocked students burst into tears. I gathered my class and we headed outside, where the rest of the school awaited our famous visitor. When his helicopter landed on the concrete playground, countless security guards issued from the open doors, like solemn clowns from a tiny car, all of them intimidating in their sunglasses, their black suits imposing an air of restrained brutality. It made me furious to witness all this commotion, all this nonsense, on the very ground those children had died. Their blood was staining the pavement.

  Michael Jackson was on campus, from his arrival to his departure, for barely thirty minutes. “Hello, my dear little darlings, I’m so sad to have heard about your tragedy,” he said to my kids, in my classroom, and I could not fathom how he had dared to call them his darlings. When I asked if he could answer student questions, he only offered, “Let’s take a few pictures!”

  A week after the visit, I got the photos developed and showed them to your Ba, who marveled at Michael Jackson’s luxury brightness for about five minutes. Then, still mad, I threw the photos into the trash. All but the one you found, which I carefully placed into an album. As furious as I was, it felt wrong not to preserve at least one.

  But I’m losing track of the story. By the time you learned about the shooting, I’d stopped feeling angry, stopped feeling much of anything, really, until you forced me to explain the whole affair.

  “Man in the Mirror” had suddenly come to me as I drove back home from Cleveland Elementary. I found myself humming its tune, the chorus echoing in my head. I even searched through the radio stations, in case the song happened to be playing. Then I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw that you weren’t okay at all. You were crying, almost choking from your tears and snot. “Mom!” you shouted in between heavy gasps, “answer me!” I had no idea you were trying to reach me. All the peace you had worked for at my school had fled the car.

  One hand on the steering wheel, the other reaching back from the driver’s seat, I recklessly tried to console you. I was handing you a bag of pretzels, a bottle of water, anything that might calm you down. The car swerved back and forth as I tried to stop those tears. You sounded like you were continuously reaching for air, a surface to emerge from. Your little spirit was shaken to the core.

  “Look, a McDonald’s!” I cried, but you were unmoved; still, it felt worth a try. Only after I’d pulled into the drive-through, bought an ice cream cone, and shoved it into your hands did you begin to calm down.

  I parked the car behind the McDonald’s, next to an abandoned gas station, and we bathed in the stench of used frying oil. From the rearview mirror, I watched your reflection as you devoured the melting mess, opaque white streaks dripping down your hands, the remedy to your crying already going to waste.

  “Why were you ignoring me?”
you asked, gravely.

  “Was I?” I said. “Oh, oun, I’m so sorry—I’m sorry for ignoring you.”

  “But tell me why,” you responded. “I was talking to you.”

  “All I can say is I’m sorry,” I offered, as disappointment settled into your face.

  You continued licking your ice cream in silence. Looking at your visibly sticky mouth, I thought about Michael Jackson again, the absurdity of his photo jolting our day into being, how the more he had tried to change, to reinvent himself into something completely new, the more he seemed horrifically burdened by what he used to be.

  “I’ll finish this later,” you said, fitting the cone into the cup holder. I was too tired to tell you the ice cream would melt, that only a worthless puddle would be left. It was late, and we needed to get home. We had to finish unpacking.

  Even now, so many decades later, I often return to that afternoon of ours, and then I look back on everything else that happened to us, and I think, how silly of me to see our pain as situated in time, confined to the past, contained within it. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I should apologize to you, for refusing to be forthcoming into and through your adulthood; before your Ba’s death, I was continually thrown, perhaps even upset, by your endless curiosity with the regime, the camps, the genocide. Every slight detail you would demand to know, as if understanding that part of my life would explain the entirety of yours. Through my frustration, my clenched teeth, I didn’t have the words to say those years were never the sole explanation of anything; that I’ve always considered the genocide to be the source of all our problems and none of them. Writing this final section about Cleveland Elementary, your first tragedy—maybe that is my way of telling you.

  As it happened, as the gunshots were fired, and our kids started crying and bleeding and dying, I stared out of my classroom window and finally understood the brother I never really knew. Why he had committed suicide years before Pol Pot, when no one saw strife on the horizon. How, for my brother, even as a teenager, a child, the weight of life was always too immense to bear.

  Then, in a matter of minutes this time, it stopped. We counted the dead, the injured, those left over, and we grieved, as we had for the many lives before and since.

  When you think about my history, I don’t need you to see everything at once. I don’t need you to recall the details of those tragedies that were dropped into my world. Honestly, you don’t even have to try. What is nuance in the face of all that we’ve experienced? But for me, your mother, just remember that, for better or worse, we can be described as survivors. Okay? Know that we’ve always kept on living. What else could we have done?

  Acknowledgments

  There would be no book, no writing, no ability to tell a story, no sense at all of how the world can be, without my parents, Ravy and Sienghay So, who somehow clawed their way to a livable, beautiful life, who never thought to spare me from their stories, their history, who, instead, prepared me the best they could to seek growth, to not crumble under the pressure of everything bad and unjust. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for surviving, fighting, and creating a world out of nothing but your own wills, your imaginations. Thank you, Dad, for knowing how to tell a good joke, for working so hard all the time. Thank you, Mom, for being smarter, more philosophical, a better genius, than anyone I’ve ever read or encountered, including all those posturers I met at Stanford.

  There would also be no book without Alex. Thank you for always wanting to talk and listen. Thank you for reading all my stories and telling me which ones were terrible. Thank you for being hilarious, absurd, beautiful. Thank you for showing me that a queer Cambo from Stockton, California, could find a wealth of commonality with a queer half-Mexican kid from rural Illinois. I don’t think I could’ve finished this book without knowing that. I love you. You wrote these stories with me.

  My teachers all provided necessary support not only to the early drafts of this book but also to my development as a writer. Thank you, Dana Spiotta, for giving me the confidence to be critical of my work, for recommending the exact writers who helped me conceive of this book, and for being an inspiration—everyone should read Stone Arabia. Thank you, Jon Dee, for giving me the confidence to love my work, for teaching me how to read like a writer, for answering my manic emails, and for providing genius feedback on just so much of my writing. Thank you, Mary Karr, for giving me the confidence to believe in my work, for your insights on writing I still use for guidance, for volleying with me about literature, culture, the things that matter. Thank you, Chris Kennedy and Sarah Harwell, for our discussions about life, Will, death. Thank you, Arthur Flowers and George Saunders, for your critical eyes, and for being so transparent about what it takes to be a writer. Thank you, Mira Jacob, for critiquing several of these stories, and for teaching me how to locate the heat, the heart, of my writing. I am indebted to my Stanford teachers, too. Eavan Boland, Scott Hutchins, Blakey Vermuele, and Alexander Nemerov pointed me in the right direction. Allison Davis pulled my Levinthal application from a stack of privileged fucks and thought I had something true to say. I was so lost in college, and you helped save me.

  My Syracuse family, thank you, especially Zeynep, who literally nursed me back to health once, who is an airtight vault of all my opinions that the world is not ready for yet. My Cambos—my cousins and Sam, my sister—thank you for making sure I got to college, for equipping me to navigate the system, for inspiring my characters. My best friends, Gaby and Sharon, thank you for never letting me be just a writer, for reminding me that I am more than that, for providing me a home when I needed it the most. My kindred spirit, Soo Ji, thank you for being my personal Princess Carolyn, for strategizing with me our livelihoods, and for gifting me the horror story of I—n B—ll, which inspired the opening of “Human Development.”

  I would be remiss if I didn’t give shout-outs to those who pulled me out of the realm of the aspiring writer, to a place where I could sustainably thrive and have a career. The n+1 team, especially Mark Krotov, took a chance on me, publishing “Superking Son Scores Again” and “The Monks,” after I rolled into the offices with my cheap duffel bag one cold afternoon and talked nonsense for thirty minutes. Granta published “The Shop,” the story I hold closest to my heart. The New Yorker, in particular Cressida Leyshon, published “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts” and gave me a master class in editing my work. Zyzzyva helped push “Generational Differences” to its final form by accepting to edit and publish, for Spring 2021, this story based off my mother’s life. Sometimes, for absurd reasons pertaining to just staying alive, you need hard cash to write, to imagine worlds, and thus without the generous support of the PD Soros Fellowship for New Americans, and without Jolynn Parker and her guidance, this book would certainly be 30 percent worse, at least.

  Finally, Helen Atsma fought for this book, in all its shades and tones, but still pressed on how it could be better, and for that I am so grateful. Rob McQuilkin read two stories of mine and knew that I could have a long career as a writer. He looked past what most readers saw in my work, and found its pulse, its soulful longing, the urgent questions it was trying to answer. He oversaw so many drafts, and was always open to my ideas, never once second-guessing my wild ambitions. And Will, dear god, I hope you’re happy now, I really do. I feel so blessed I got the chance to know you when I could. This book is a love letter to you, to everyone I mentioned, to Stockton, to California, to my Khmer and Khmer American universe, and to the generations lost and living and upcoming.

  Portions of this work were previously published in different form in the following publications:

  “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts” originally appeared in the February 10, 2020, issue of The New Yorker.

  “Superking Son Scores Again” originally appeared in Issue 31 of n+1 and was the winner of the Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction.

  “Maly, Maly, Maly” originally appeared in Issue 236 (Spring 2021) of The Paris Review.

  “The Shop” was originally publis
hed online on January 13, 2020, in Granta.

  “The Monks” was originally published online on July 13, 2018, in n+1.

  “We Would’ve Been Princes!” was originally published in the Spring 2021 issue of American Short Fiction.

  “Somaly Serey, Serey Somaly” was originally published in the Summer 2021 issue of BOMB.

  “Generational Differences” was originally published in the Spring 2021 issue of ZYZZYVA.

  About the Author

  ANTHONY VEASNA SO (1992–2020) was a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in fiction at Syracuse University. His writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from the New Yorker, the Paris Review, n+1, Granta, and ZYZZYVA. A native of Stockton, California, he taught at Colgate University, Syracuse University, and the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland, California.

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  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  AFTERPARTIES. Copyright © 2021 by Ravy So and Alexander Gilbert Torres. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.