Across the Mekong River (15 page)

NOU

Tou slammed down the door of the truck bed and glared at me as he lifted the leaf blower onto his back. At the end of the first week of summer vacation he was not happy to be edging lawns and blowing leaves. He had planned on playing water polo at the YMCA and softball with the church team. But Uncle Shone had tripped over a hose and broken his knee cap and lay in bed with a full leg cast. For the past three years Uncle and Father had been driving to the suburbs six days a week, shoveling snow in winter and tending gardens the rest of the year for ten hours a day. Father had his driver’s license now, but with sixty-two weekly customers he could not handle the work alone. Tou and I, twelve and thirteen now, were recruited to fill in until Uncle Shone healed. Blia and Mee had been excused as they were taking summer school classes. I was just as happy not to have them. They would only ignore me like they always did, and Blia would have complained about doing the slightest bit of work.

I was free to help out bec
ause Mother had improved. Her headaches came less frequently since she had given birth to my brother Nao a few months before. Auntie Yer kept her company almost every day. She brought along Auntie Kia’s boys John and Adam and took it upon herself to keep Mother from slipping away. Mornings they went on outings to the park or market with Nao tied to Mother’s back and the six other children marching down the sidewalk in order of height, holding hands, looking like a flock of baby ducks. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons Mother and Auntie joined the Hmong sewing group at St. Paul’s parish hall to stitch and gossip. Two teenage girls kept the young children busy while the women made quilts and purses to sell at crafts fairs or new clothes for the New Year’s celebrations.

Working with Father was a welcome treat, an es
cape from my chores at home. As we drove back and forth to jobs and ate lunch under a tree, I had time to talk with Father, to share the books I was reading and the things I had learned at school. I loved being outdoors all day in the haven of spacious homes and gardens along clean, tree-lined streets.

The first few years in Minneapolis my family and I had watched television, mesmerized by images of beaut
iful homes and happy families. These families had smiling white faces and ate barbecued dinners on their patios. They played board games and laughed around dining room tables. They drove expensive new cars to the beach or camping in the mountains or to a wondrous place called Disneyland where cartoons came to life. Nothing about my life remotely resembled this world, not our cramped apartment in a crowded, dirty building, the multi-colored faces of our neighbors, or the fear that pervaded the rough, noisy streets. I wanted to know where this television world existed, if these people and places really lived in America. The day Uncle Shone and Father took my cousins and me in our new truck to hand out flyers for their business, I discovered this other world. It was only a twenty minute drive away. This was the life I wanted.

On this Friday
, we worked in a neighborhood I had not seen before. The homes were grander than any all week. Our second stop was an enormous two-story Dutch colonial painted white with dark green shutters and lush gardens of brilliant green lawn, banks of flowering azaleas, and beds awash in a profusion of pinks and purple and white. Father gave me instructions to start on the flower bed that wrapped around a maple tree in the middle of the front yard. I sat down on the soft, damp grass and worked my trowel into the dirt, pulling up weeds and snapping off faded blooms from snap dragons and pansies. The air was still and quiet.

Across the street a woman in a blue suit, carrying a brown leather briefcase and a beige purse over her shoulder, walked down the driveway, her high
heels clicking on the cement. She climbed into a sleek silver sedan and drove away. Next door the garage door opened, and a man driving a two-seater convertible backed out. The car was squat and rounded on the ends. I thought it looked like a shiny red beetle.

Tou, standing nearby fiddling with the
blower, let out a low whistle. His eyes followed the car as the driver revved the engine and roared down the street. He was obsessed with cars, checking out every book he could find from the school library. For his birthday, he had begged his parents to pay for a subscription to Car and Driver magazine.

Tou and I had little in common as
we stretched into adolescence. He’d become moody and distant and was embarrassed to be seen with his sister or Blia and me. He spent his time with a group of boys from the church youth program, shooting baskets at the park or taking the bus downtown to wander the streets. He liked to swear a lot around his friends, as if it made him seem older. Auntie Kia and Uncle Shone let him do whatever he wanted.

Tou turned on the blower and swept leaves and fallen blossoms from between the bushes and across
the lawn, shattering the peace. I finished with the flower bed and found Father in back mowing the lawn. The rear of the house had two sets of sliding doors that opened onto the patio from the big modern kitchen with a counter and stools that divided it from a family room with a fireplace, sofa, chairs, and a huge television. The patio, dotted with chaise lounges, a barbecue, and table and chairs, spread around the rectangular swimming pool. The aqua blue water shimmered in the early morning light. A tricycle and a small bicycle with training wheels sat in the corner of the patio, and in the back corner of the lawn was a sandbox and set of swings.

A wave of envy washed over
me. This family had everything I could ever dream of. I tried to picture my family living in this house, my little sisters and brothers riding the bikes, playing in the sandbox, all of us swimming in the pool. Mother would surely plant the yard with vegetables. But the image didn’t fit. We didn’t belong here.

Father gave me his clippers.
I attempted to trim the box hedge along the right side of the yard, but the clippers were heavy and awkward to use. Two girls about my age, still in their flowered cotton pajamas, stepped outside through the sliding glass doors. One had short brown hair, the other a blond ponytail, and both were pink cheeked and pretty. The blond grabbed a book off the patio table. They looked at me and giggled, then hurried inside. The sliding door shut with a loud bang, and the lock snapped into place. A hot flush crept up my neck and cheeks. I wanted to hide under the hedge so they wouldn’t see me in my worn, faded shorts and t-shirt. I tried to focus on the clippers, but I couldn’t keep myself from looking over. They sat on the stools at the kitchen counter with bowls and a box of cereal, huddled together over the book, sharing secrets and laughing. I wanted to know what they were reading, what they were saying, how they thought and felt with nothing before them but a lazy summer day by the pool. The dark haired girl glanced up and our eyes met. She lifted her hand with a self-conscious, awkward wave and smiled.

I wanted so badly to be these girls. Every year I became more embarrassed of my Hmong heritage and our family’s shabby life, but then ashame
d of myself for these feelings. If only I could start again somewhere else. Become another person.

The school bus stopped and three white girls got on. I recognized the two with long, bleached blond hair from my gym class. The third girl was tall and heavyset and had dyed the top of her spiky hair purple. She wore purple lipstick to match. I had seen them at lunch hanging out with a group of black guys from the south side gang. These girls wore tight, revealing clothes and oozed a sexuality that made me blush. Their eyelids sparkled with emerald green and teal blue eye shadow layered over lashes caked in mascara. I stared out the window, avoiding their eyes as they came down the aisle. I had learned never to invite trouble. The girls plopped down on seats several rows behind me. Their voices carried through the half-full bus as they gossiped about a friend who thought she was pregnant but didn’t know who the father was.

I
had to ride the bus alone to the high school. My cousins had another year at the junior high. At least the bus was better than walking twelve blocks through the worst part of town where drunks slept in the doorways of boarded-up businesses next to porn shops and bars. Groups of kids, headed for school, strutted down the street with their boom boxes blasting, pushing and shoving, looking for a fight.

I pulled
The Outsiders
from my backpack. We were reading it for freshman English class, although I had already read it twice the summer before. I cried every time Johnny died. The book had prompted heated discussions in class with kids who normally didn’t read the assignments and sank into their chairs, hoping to remain anonymous. Even though the story was set in another era and place, it resonated with us all. Our school was rife with gangs, vying for turf and terrorizing everyone else who lived in their wake. I learned the finer distinctions by listening to girls bragging in the bathrooms about boyfriends and brothers. The gangs divided up by race--blacks, Polish, Mexicans, Vietnamese, and Puerto Ricans--depending on neighborhoods and family alliances. Even a handful of Hmong boys had formed a gang. The school district had hired two security guards to patrol the halls and break up fights that erupted without warning. The vice-principal conducted random locker searches each week, unearthing drugs, knives, and guns. The second week of school, a girl had been knifed in the bathroom for going out with another girl’s boyfriend.

I dreaded each day, afraid and lonely as I wa
lked through a field laden with bombs waiting for one to go off. I kept my eyes down and avoided large groups that gathered in the halls or lunch room. I had met a Hmong girl named Ma in my French class. Sixteen years old, she had come to the states the year before and spoke very little English. I felt sorry for her. We gravitated together like inmates in a prison, eating lunch in the back corner of the courtyard. But all she talked about was her life in the refugee camp as if she might be returning soon. There had been a boy she wanted to marry, but now she might never see him again. My memories of Ban Vinai had faded, and my only reality lay in how to survive the present. When the weather turned cold, I escaped to the library and the familiar comfort of books.

Behind me, one of the girls said her boyfriend had been arrested for selling dope and would probably get
sent back to youth detention. Without thinking, I turned to see who was speaking.

The p
urple hair stared at me, holding my gaze and making my breath catch in my throat. “What are you lookin at?”

One of the blonds curled her lip in
a sneer. “She’s one of those gooks.” She raked her bangs with fingernails painted blue and sparkling with little gold stars. “Mind your own business.”

I
spun around, my heart beating. Big puffy flakes of snow drifted down, sticking to the window in tiny crystal patterns, coating the sidewalks and cars with a fine white silt, covering over the poverty and desperation. But it could not cover my despair at the thought of suffering through four years at this high school. Green and red Christmas lights blinked on and off in the window of a pawn shop, the glass painted with a Santa Claus and the words,
Get
Cash for Christmas
.

In August Uncle Boua and the rest of our family h
ad finally arrived in America. The brother of Chor’s wife Lia had succeeded in processing paperwork for their immigration. They were living temporarily with Lia’s brother in a place called Sacramento, California. Phone calls buzzed back and forth every week. Then Father and my uncles would huddle together discussing possibilities. At first the plan was to bring them to Minneapolis as soon as another apartment was available. But one evening in October, Father told me there was a chance, just a chance, we might move to Sacramento. The money saved for our family’s immigration could be used now to lease farmland. It all depended on whether they could get the right price. Uncle Boua said the land was very fertile. And it didn’t snow in Sacramento.

Ever since I had been lighting incense and leaving offerings on the altar in our apartme
nt as I prayed to my ancestors. For good measure, I stopped in St. Paul’s several afternoons to light candles on the altar where a statue of a beautiful woman gazed down with a kind and sympathetic smile. I needed a miracle. Just the word California sent me dreaming. I knew what it was like from watching the shows on television. California was Disneyland and golden beaches, big homes, palm trees, and brilliant blue skies. Beautiful blond men and women ran through the waves along the shore. Everyone had a swimming pool and convertible car.