Across the Mekong River (6 page)

As weeks pas
sed, the rain fell, whipping through the front of the building and drenching our belongings. Sleep eluded me. I lay awake for hours, listening to the old grandfather next to us snore and moan in his sleep as he tossed and turned. Babies coughed and cried. A woman two rooms down woke screaming each night. Yer crawled into the farthest corner of the sleeping mat in a tight ball, her spine a knot of barbed wire. The tremors of her sobs rippled around me, but when I reached out to her, she shoved me away. Rats scurried in the rafters. I cradled Nou in the crook of my arm. Mosquitoes droned endlessly in the sticky, fetid air.

My heart ached with the overwhelming guilt that I had not saved my boy
s, a guilt that grew each day. Yer turned cold, accusing eyes on me. I wanted to hide in a corner and weep. I could not even give my children a proper burial. I feared their souls might be forced to drift between worlds never reaching the heavens. Uncle Boua and I did our best. We burned incense and candles to light their way to the heavens, provided food for their journey, and made offerings to our ancestors to assist them. Yer stood apart, her face swollen from crying. Our words seemed to float above her.

There was no
comfort. Uncle Boua retreated into stony silence, walking for hours through the camp, his head down, drifting between worlds. He paid no attention to his own son. Poor Gia, thirteen years old, ran free with a gang of wild boys, sometimes going to the makeshift school, sometimes getting into trouble.

And Yer, it was li
ke living with a ghost. She did not notice or hear me. She shopped and cooked and filled the water buckets. She washed our clothes. But she never spoke a word. One afternoon I found her with Nou at the front gate of the camp, waiting for the buses with new refugees. She strained her neck to search the faces, starting each time a boy stepped off. I found myself looking as well, even though I knew better. Each day she seemed to slip farther away. I thought of the scenes in French films that I used to watch as a student in Vientiane where the screen slowly faded into darkness. I could not find a way to reach her. Sometimes at night I heard her whisper the boys’ names as she held her hand out in the darkness. It was possible the ghosts of our boys beckoned for their mother to join them. I was terrified I might wake one morning and find she had answered their call. I performed a
bai si
to protect her, tying strings to her wrist to keep her soul safely with her body. She paid no attention.

Each morning I forced myself to go out, meeting with camp officials to learn anything, something to bring hope,
to find a future for my family. Once a week I received a permit to leave camp and work in the surrounding fields for Thai farmers. It didn’t matter how little I earned. If I kept busy, I could push the anguish from my mind for a few hours.

Only
Nou brought moments of relief. When I returned to our place in the late afternoons, she raced into my arms, touching my cheek with hers.
Comme ca
, I would say, pointing to the other cheek. At night I played games with her to teach her how to count on her fingers and say words in Lao and French.

I could hardly bear to watch her with her mother as she des
perately sought her attention. She fussed over and cared for Yer, brushing her hair and helping her dress. As the weeks slipped by, and Yer retreated into her own world, Nou tried to fill the void. Somehow she carried the heavy water buckets one at a time from the tanks when her mother forgot. She gathered wood for the fire and struggled to cook the rice and vegetables for our meals. Yer lay at the back of the sleeping mat, lost to us. Nou tucked a cover carefully about her.

In September, after two long months, at last I received good news. Thai officials had found my brother Shone and cousin Soua at another refugee camp called Ban Vinai. We could move there soon to be with them. My relief was great. When they had left our village three years before, I feared we might never meet again. Shone was the baby of my family, born when I was six, only two months after our father had died. Our mother thought he must be the soul of our father reborn. I looked after him and taught him to hunt and fish. He was an easy, cheerful child who grew into an easy, agreeable man. I never heard him speak badly of anyone. And Soua, my best friend through childhood, had given me the courage to ask Yer to marry me. All this time, they had been in Ban Vinai.

I slipped away one afternoon to a quiet spot on a knoll at the edge of camp where a thick stand of bamboo provided shelte
r and the illusion of privacy. From time to time I took refuge there when I could no longer continue my charade, when the veneer of strength threatened to dissolve. Alone in this place, I did not have to hide my grief. I brought a pad of paper and pen to write Shone about our pending arrival at Ban Vinai. Scattered clouds sailed across a deep blue sky. The monsoon season’s blanket of gloom had at last lifted. I settled on a tree stump and gazed through the barbed wire fence at the Mekong River, a fluttering rust-colored ribbon in the distance. The turbulence had ebbed and the waters narrowed, receding from the banks and leaving a trail of broken branches, rocks, and a new layer of mud. Four fishermen had tied their long, narrow boats to trees along the shore. They bobbed in the water and cast nets into the river. Not far beyond lay Vientiane and the communist government with their ever tightening grip over Laos. The life we had once known no longer existed.

I took a deep breath, wondering where to begin, how to tell Shone about the last three years, the losses in our family, and the terrible toll this ha
d taken on Uncle Boua and Yer. Slowly, I wrote the briefest account. I paused again and began to write the names of those who had passed to the other world--our brother Tong, Auntie Nhia, Uncle Boua’s daughter and son, Lia and Blong, cousin Chao, my boys Fong and Fue. The stark reality of their deaths burned on the page in front of me. My hand began to shake until the letters became scribbles and tears turned the ink into blue splotches. I put my head into my hands and sobbed. I cried as hard as I had ever cried in my life. The tears flowed until at last I was spent. The burdens and fears of the past few months lifted. We would join our family. We would start again.

Two weeks later,
we boarded a bus with five other Hmong families for Ban Vinai. We bumped along a dirt road past small villages and rice paddies full of green-gold stalks swaying in the breeze nearly ready for harvest. Several farmers paused, leaning on their hoes, peering at us from under their bamboo hats. The driver stopped to let a man and his geese cross the road. Over and over he slowed to a crawl to avoid giant potholes. As we got farther away from Nong Khai Camp, a few farmers smiled and waved. My anticipation grew until I wanted to yell at the driver to hurry. After close to three hours, we climbed a steep hill and rounded a bend in the road. A huge town, much larger than Nong Khai, sprawled across the low hills in all directions.

Bamboo poles, loosely strung together fanned out on either side of the wooden gate that mar
ked the entrance to Ban Vinai. A barbed wire fence circled the border of the camp. The driver stopped to talk to the guards then continued down the main road. The buildings and the layout were much like Nong Khai. Off to the right, dozens of long wood sheds in lines spread up the knolls interrupted by small thatched lean-tos, which had been added on the fronts and sides. On the left, two women sold vegetables, sodas, candy, batteries, flashlights, and bolts of cloth from a small thatched hut. A man walked between buildings carrying two plastic buckets of water on a bamboo pole across his shoulder. A woman with a baby tied to her back grabbed two half-dressed boys and pulled them out of the bus’s path. Another woman was hanging her laundry on a rope tied between two banana trees. Everyone stopped and stared, studying our faces through the bus windows. Perhaps they too were searching for the missing.

The bus turned into a large square across from a field where dozens
of boys and men kicked soccer balls back and forth. We stopped in front of two flat-roofed, one-story wooden offices, the first painted with
Thai Ministry of Interior (MOI),
the second with
United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)
. Six Thai soldiers marched up and down in front of the buildings, looking bored and tired. Our family huddled together like a flock of ducks, waving and calling out to us. I spotted my cousin Chor, who I had not seen in five years, and young children who had been babies when they left. My heart jumped.

For the first time since we had arrived in Thailand, Yer turned with a flash of re
cognition. The pain reflected on her face seemed to ease. We got off the bus, the women hugging and crying, the men slapping backs and fighting back tears. Nou hid behind my leg and stared at the ground, unwilling to look up or speak. When the officials called our names to check us into camp, most of the family left to prepare a welcoming meal. But Shone sat on a bench outside the building and lit a cigarette. He would wait for us, he said.

Inside the MOI office a line of Hmong waited patiently to talk with
a half-dozen harried officials. A Thai man with MOI, a Dutch woman representing UNHCR, and a young translator led us to the back corner where we sat at a wooden table. We spoke in a mixture of Thai and Lao, with translations into English for the Dutch woman. Nou stared with obvious amazement at the woman’s yellow hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and long bulbous nose, a sight she had never before seen.

I handed our papers from Nong Khai to the middle-aged Thai official with his carefully trimmed hair and cri
sp, neatly ironed white shirt. I felt self-conscious in my tattered clothes. His face remained neutral, asking the same questions we had been asked over and over at Nong Khai. We gave the same answers that were listed on the papers in his hand. He started with Uncle then turned to me as the Dutch woman took detailed notes on a pad of yellow paper. Occasionally she asked for clarification. The translator nodded at me every time I answered as if encouraging me to give the right answer.
When did you arrive in Thailand? How did you get here? Why did you leave Laos? Who did you fight with during the war? Where was the prison camp where you were held? How long were you there? Did they charge you with any crimes? How many others prisoners were there? How did they treat you? Where were you born? How old are you? Is this your wife? Do you have any other wives? How many children do you have and how old are they?
How much education do you have? Do you have other relatives here or in a third country? Do you plan to apply for relocation to a third country? What skills do you have for finding work?
For over an hour we circled round and round the same stories. My anger and frustration grew, but I remained calm, polite. Everything depended on these people. The Thai official’s voice grew weary, as if I were trying to trick him with my answers. I thought of my endless interrogations and beatings in the prison camp in Laos.

At last, the man signed the forms
once again verifying our refugee status and passed us off to the translator. The younger man repeatedly licked his lips as he pointed to a map of the camp with his pen.
Almost a 1,000 people are coming each month now so it is very crowded. You must live together here in Center 3, Quarter 2, Building 5, Room 6. It is near your family. The central market opens early each morning. Water is available in tanks at each center in the morning and evening. The food trucks come twice a week. Check the schedule. You may not leave the camp without permission from this office.
He shuffled our papers and recited the instructions in a monotone, as if recounting multiplication tables, carefully memorized and repeated every day. I wanted to laugh at the irony. Ban Vinai means village of discipline.

He assigned camp numbers, entitling us to U.N. food ration
cards, and wrote the numbers one at a time on a small blackboard with chalk. He snapped our photographs as we held the board in front of us.

After an hour, we emerged from the office. Shone was pacing up and down, a cigarette burning in his hand. I thought how much older he looked, more like a midd
le-aged man than his twenty-seven years. Lines rimmed his eyes and mouth. His skin had turned splotchy and dark brown, his body gaunt. Weariness marked the stoop of his shoulders. He had never liked smoking before, but now tobacco stained his teeth and fingers.

He checked o
ur building number and grinned. “Older brother, I will show you the way.”

Shone stopped briefly to tell his wife Kia the location of our new home, then led us to ou
r room only two buildings away. The long, narrow barracks were similar to those in Nong Khai only constructed of wooden poles and slats and tin roofs. We had a room, three by three and a half meters, near the end of the building, which was open to our neighbors and the front walkway. The same kind of sleeping platform, raised off the ground, filled the back half of the space. A thatched roof extension had been added on the front over the cooking pit and metal grill. The smell of urine and sweat and food cooking filled the air. A baby wailed at the other end of the building, and small children ran past, pausing briefly for a look at the new arrivals. Yer sighed and looked distraught, as if this was worse than the filthy space we had occupied at Nong Khai.

“Welcome to the royal palace,”
Shone said with a short laugh. “Over a hundred neighbors to share your home. I’ll make you some bamboo screens to put up.”