Across the Mekong River (13 page)

Outside
again, the snow fell in cold wet flakes and settled like dust on my face. Kia rattled on about the market and her friends.

I listened and nodded.
Suddenly I was so tired I could barely stand. The bus pulled up at last, and I sank into the seat. I put my head against the cool window and closed my eyes. The image of the oversized store filled my mind. This country was blessed with so much abundance, even in this bleak and barren city. But I did not care about these things. All I wanted was to be home, our true home, living in our quiet village. Working in our fields. It puzzled me that the American officials had flown simple farmers from the highlands of Laos across oceans and continents to live in a city like this. It made no sense. Nothing in this new life made any sense. And I let out a small moan. My boys would never find me again.

NOU

Mrs. Wilson rose from her desk, back erect, head high, staring at the class with keen eyes that took in every movement. She was tall and angular with prominent cheek bones, a square jaw, and curly hair cut very short. Her skin matched the color of the crayon named sepia that I had found in the big basket at the back of the room. After three months at school, I was not so much afraid as in awe of her. She dealt swiftly with anyone who broke the rules or disrupted class. The rude behavior of the students and lack of respect for elders shocked me. No child in Laos or Thailand would ever act this way. From the beginning I wanted to be a good student. But nothing came easily without a common language. She was not unkind, yet her brusque, cool manner held me at a distance. Some days I heard a slight impatience in her voice and sensed her exasperation with the added burden of my presence.

When Father and Uncle Soua registered me
at the school, the principal suggested I start in second grade with Blia. Father had Uncle Soua explain that I was eight, a year older than Blia, and had already completed level three in Ban Vinai. I had been a top student. The principal nodded. She understood, but education was different in America. I would have to learn English first. After I became proficient, then they would reevaluate.

For the first month I waded in a morass of confusion, trying to discern meaning from pi
ctures and gestures and faces. The letters and numbers in the books and on the blackboard remained nothing more than scribbled marks, shapes without form. Voices floated over me, a song I never heard. Blia soon tired of being my interpreter, and her impatience made me feel stupid. I was desperate to untangle the coded secrets of my new world.

Miss Swenson taught
me to fit the pieces together. For an hour, three days a week, I joined her English class with six other students--two sisters from Cuba with rosy cheeks and big brown eyes, a shy, skinny boy from Vietnam, identical twin girls from Cambodia who always spoke at the same time, and a chubby boy from Poland. Miss Swenson was young and pretty with long golden hair and eyes the bright green of banana leaves. Her manner was warm and accessible in a way Mrs. Wilson’s was not. I felt safe and capable in her presence. She showed us alphabet flashcards with pictures of animals and demonstrated how to shape our tongue and lips around the vowels and consonants so foreign to our ears. She never grew impatient, but repeated the sounds with us until we got it right. Once we could string together letters into simple words and phrases, we sang songs and recited nursery rhymes. Everyone clapped when one of us succeeded, and we got to choose prizes of candy, a shiny medal on a red ribbon, new pencils and a notebook, or a chapter book to take home. That was how I came to own my first books.

As the weeks passed, I began to catch more words and sentences watching television at h
ome or in Mrs. Wilson’s class. I strained and struggled to understand. It was exhausting, but the knot in my middle slowly eased.

“Put away your workbooks and take out your
readers,” Mrs. Wilson directed. The room filled with whispers and the flutter of books and papers scraping in and out of desks.

I glanced over and noticed Blia had finished only half the addition problems a
nd answered three incorrectly. Numbers did not come easily to me, but unlike Blia, I worked hard and managed to do well. I had offered to help her, but she turned away defiantly. She caught me looking and slammed her workbook shut, tossing it carelessly into the desk drawer and rummaging through the jumble of scrunched up papers and broken pencils to find her reader. My desk was obsessively neat. In Thailand the school had so little, only one textbook for each class and no history, science, art, or music lessons. Father had to buy my pencils and paper as money allowed. Now, I treasured the wealth bestowed upon me—lovely yellow pencils that I sharpened every morning, a thick pink eraser, my own box of crayons in twelve colors, crisp sheets of lined paper, and books with glossy colored pictures, hard covers, and a line on the inside page that said,
This book belongs to
, where I got to print my name in pencil. Mrs. Wilson had decorated the walls with a huge map of the world, posters of Native American tribes, and our art work and writing projects. Mobiles of the planets, stars, sun, and moon dangled from the ceiling and danced in the breeze from the heating vent. In the back of the classroom three easels held pads of paper, wide brushes, and jars of red, blue, yellow, green, and purple paint. Mrs. Wilson kept baskets of colored pencils, chalk, and more crayons on the back counter, which we could use with her permission. On Friday afternoons she played the piano and we sang songs. The two best behaved students of the week got to accompany her with the tambourine and a shiny triangle. What I liked best were the books on a shelf that ran the length of the wall under the windows. Mrs. Wilson let us borrow them during silent reading time. And on Tuesdays we went to the library to explore the endless stacks of picture books, chapter books on science and geography and people and animals, more subjects than I had ever imagined. I got to pick two to take home for the week. At first I could only look at the pictures, but soon I was able to read them out loud to my little sisters.

As with most of the world I had encountered since our arrival in Minneapolis, my new school both thrilled and int
imidated me. The old brick building had been constructed in the 1930s, and scuffs and stains marked the brown linoleum floors and faded tan walls. Dank, musty smells of rusted pipes, cleaning fluids, wheat paste, dust, and sweat, accumulated over fifty years, permeated the crowded rooms. Over seven hundred students ages five to twelve years old, in every shape and size and color, speaking a multitude of languages, attended the school. The older kids loomed like fierce warriors, crowding the halls, pushing and yelling. At first I did not understand the slurs and taunts that flowed from their mouths. That would come later.

The bell rang,
and I breathed freely at last. Mrs. Wilson walked us single file to the auditorium for lunch. Blia and I raced to meet Tou and Mee, and the four of us stood in the cafeteria line. Along with close to half the children in the school, we received free lunches because our parents were poor. I was unaware of this distinction at first. The school lunches presented me with a vast array of culinary delights: American cheese sandwiches, grilled and buttery, hot dogs, and peanut butter with grape jelly on airy white bread. On Fridays there were cupcakes with pink icing or brownies or oatmeal cookies. I even liked the meatloaf with greasy brown gravy and stringy pork chops with mushy peas. After the years of deprivation in Ban Vinai, I could not satisfy my hunger. On this day, they had my favorite: spaghetti and meatballs with applesauce.

We carried our trays to one of the long tables, crowdin
g in next to a group of girls. Shouting, laughter, and occasional shrieks bounced off the walls and high ceiling. May sunshine streamed through the windows. If we hurried, we could play outside. Tou shoveled food into his mouth anxious to join the other boys in a game of dodge ball. Blia, Mee, and I liked to swing from the bars on the jungle gym with the Cambodian twins and two Hmong girls in third grade.

“We’re adding and subtracting six-digit numbers,” Tou said through a mouth
ful of spaghetti. He excelled in math.

Blia shrugged. “Math is stupid.”

Tou swallowed and took a drink of milk. “I heard my teacher talking to Mrs. Martin and she says your class is for slow learners. You don’t do any of the same work we do.”

Slow
. The word hit me like a slap across the cheek. But I was not slow. Father would never have let them put me in slow class. Maybe I had misunderstood. I waited for Mee to refute Tou’s allegation, but she just stared at her plate, running her spoon through the applesauce.

“You
’re a liar,” Blia said at last. She stood up and grabbed her tray, carrying it to the return window. She sat back down, crossed her arms over her middle, and glared at Tou.

Mee looked up quickly.
“My dad said he’ll take us to the zoo Sunday.” Blia’s face brightened slightly as she turned her attention on Mee.

My cousins had told me about the zoo with bears and lions and dozens of other animals, many of which I had only re
cently learned about at school. I thought it odd that tigers and elephants, like those roaming the hills of Laos, had been captured and placed in cages for people to watch. But America was full of strange and wonderful diversions.

That winter my cousins and I reveled in the icy snow, throwing snowballs and building fat snowmen with rocks and cigar
ette butts for eyes and noses. After big storms we piled fresh powder into a small hill and slid down on a cardboard box. Once spring arrived we spent Sunday afternoons at nearby parks. I discovered the delicious joy of running barefoot through green grass as soft as goose feathers. I flew through the air on the swings, pumping my legs to get higher and higher, and slipped down corkscrew slides. Once the whole family went to a beautiful lake, the deepest blue I had ever seen. The sun sparkled off the glassy surface as we wiggled our toes in icy cold waves lapping onto the muddy shore.

The miracle of pictures appearing on our tiny television screen and voices traveling through telephone wires still baffled
me. The first time I rode an elevator I believed it was magic. Nothing else could explain walking into this tiny box from one room and when the doors opened again, emerging into another.

On my second Sunday in Minneapolis, Uncle Shoua
took us ice skating. Blia had been on a school field trip the year before and had begged him to take her ever since. Uncle decided my arrival offered an appropriate occasion for such extravagance. We rode a bus across town and got off in front of a great domed hall. Uncle Soua helped us lace up the rented skates. I couldn’t stop giggling as I tried to walk on the narrow blades, stumbling and grasping at Mee’s arm. We stepped onto the frozen rink, and I immediately fell on my bottom. Mee giggled and put out a hand to pull me up, but unsteady as she was, we both fell down. We laughed and laughed, a deep, side-aching laugh, slipping and sliding. Blia and Tou slid past us into the center, holding on to each other, repeatedly falling and getting back up. Mee and I managed to crawl over and pull ourselves up on the railing. I edged my way around the rink, my ankles wobbling and periodically collapsing. Uncle Soua laughed and waved from his seat in the gallery.

Music blared from huge speakers and echoed through the vast s
pace, pulsing in even rhythms. Skaters crowded out onto the rink and glided over the ice with graceful, sweeping strides. A man skated backwards, his feet weaving in and out, while another made figure eights on one foot, lifting his other leg out behind him. A young woman in a pale pink leotard and tights and bright pink muffler spun in circles as her short black skirt flared out like an umbrella. All I wanted in life was to skate like this. I watched and studied until at last I found my balance and took a few awkward steps, scraping at the ice. The tempo of the music alternated fast and slow, waltzes and rumbas, disco beats and slow love songs. I skated round the rink gaining confidence. The room grew dark, and a mirrored ball, hanging from the ceiling, splashed pulsating silver lights across the ice and walls. Skaters turned into slow motion robots.

We stayed the full ninety-minute session, s
topping only once to rest. I tasted my first cup of sweet, hot chocolate. By the end I was keeping up with Tou and Blia. My movements became smoother, less cautious as I learned to swing my arms with each stride. Faster and faster. I closed my eyes and tried to memorize the sensations of cool air rushing over my cheeks, the syncopated tempo of the music pulsing in my ears, the thrill of soaring over the ice oblivious to time and space. This was the feel of freedom.

At the end of June when I was ten, two sisters, seven and eight years old, drowned in Lake Harriet. The girls’ mother left for five minutes to buy sodas. They were floating on plastic rafts, drifting out onto the lake, and their mother called to them to paddle back to shore before she walked away. Neither girl could swim. Five other adults were sitting on the shore, watching their own children play at the edge of the water. No one noticed. One woman remembered yelling and splashing, but she thought the girls were teasing. The story led on the front page of the morning paper and ran on the local evening news for several days.

I remembered the special afternoon
when our family had taken the bus to Cedar Lake, how my cousins and I had waded knee deep in the shallow waters, splashing and playing. I studied the smiling faces staring back from the television screen; the girls sat on a chair, arms around each other. Their features were so alike they could have been twins. I did not know them. Yet the thought of their lifeless bodies sinking to the bottom of the lake triggered an ache deep inside me. I imagined them on the rafts, giggling, bobbing in the light breeze that sent gentle ripples skipping across the water’s surface. Maybe one slipped off by accident, or her sister, teasing, pushed her, not meaning to send her into the water, then desperately trying to save her and disappearing into the cold depths as well.