Across the Mekong River (8 page)

“They treat us like dogs,
” Kia spit out the words. “Some people are so desperate they boil weeds and grass to eat. I see old people too weak to walk and little children with swollen bellies and arms and legs like matchsticks. We have to fight for every grain of rice.”

“What about the gardens?” I asked.

Yer shifted her basket on her back. “All the spots along the stream are taken. When a family leaves, sometimes it is possible to grab a space. I watch every week.”

“We have to make money to buy food,” Kia said.

I nodded. “Pao will hear tomorrow about the translating job.”

“We are luckier than most.
But still, Soua is always searching for a way to earn money,” Yer said. “Kia and I make money with our sewing. We will show you.”

After lunch we settled on stools in front of their room with lengths of fabric and cotton thread in rainbow
colors. Kia unfolded a quilt. “These are story cloths. The foreigners like them.”

The
sewing looked like a drawing. Kia had used reverse appliqué and single and cross stitches to create a scene. Hmong families danced across the blue cloth, dressed in traditional clothes for a New Year’s celebration. Young men in black pants and white shirts with sashes and vests in bright patterns of red, green, yellow, and blue gathered in a line. Women in colorful skirts and jackets stood opposite them and tossed a black ball in the courtship game of
pov bov
. In another corner two bulls fought as people cheered. A man leaped in the air, playing a bamboo
qeej
. Children chased across an open field. The only traditional form of sewing was a tiger-tooth pattern around the border.

“What about
paj ntaub
?” I asked. For centuries Hmong women had made flower cloth with patterns that interpreted the shapes of plants and animals from our daily lives. A woman skilled in this art was highly prized. We sewed our best clothes, quilts, and ceremonial costumes to highlight these patterns.

“They buy this too, but they like story cloth best.” Yer shrugged her shoulders.
“Who can say why? We sell them in the Thai market outside camp or the aid workers take them to Bangkok. We get a good price.” She held up a half-finished piece depicting the story of the origin of Hmong clans.

I ran my fingers ove
r the bright yellows and blues. “How did you think of these? They are wonderful.”

Kia smiled.
“Some of the men are sewing too.” My mouth fell open at such astonishing news. “They have nothing else to do.”

“So many problems,”
Yer said, threading her needle. “The men are depressed and bored. There is a lot of drinking and smoking opium. And watch your things or people steal them.” She shook her head slowly.

“Right now we need to work,” Kia said, handing
me a scrap of paper and pencil. “Draw a picture. Then you know what to sew.”

I had never imagined anything so strange. As I puzzled over what to draw, angry voices floated from
the other end of the building. The argument grew louder. I looked at Kia and raised my eyebrows.

“That is Sia’s wife
. They fight all the time. He drinks too much and treats her badly,” Kia said.

Yer leaned in.
“Everyone knows Sia trades opium smuggled from Laos. He thinks he is so clever with his motorcycle. He spends money everywhere while people are hungry.” She clucked her tongue. “They say he has another woman in Center 4. What a stupid man. As if he doesn’t have enough trouble at home.”

I leaned over my paper once more, searching for an
idea. A breeze fluttered down between the buildings. Swirling dust around our feet. I closed my eyes and felt the warmth on my cheeks. Fong and Fue danced before me. They were not lost. They were here.
Mother, tell us the story of the orphan and the monkeys
. I sat up, startled by the Kia’s hand on mine. Her eyes questioned me. A small shiver snaked down my back. But I smiled and began to sketch.

NOU

I liked Ban Vinai. The drafty shed that served as our home, the dozens of people crowded around, none of this bothered me. I could play with my cousins and buy treats at the market. One or two evenings a week we ate with all the family, and Uncle Soua told silly jokes that made me giggle until my sides hurt. Best of all, Mother returned to me in small ways.

At
Ban Vinai, she slowly emerged like a new moon growing fuller and brighter each night. Once more she brushed and braided my hair and fussed over my clothes, complaining the whole time about the dirt. The camp was smelly and noisy and full of bad spirits she said. Her chatter made me smile. Mornings, we shopped at the market and gathered firewood. She instructed me on how to clean and chop the vegetables for the soup and steam rice, as if she had forgotten that I had cooked many meals over the past months. We washed laundry and hung it up to dry. She bathed me in the tubs by the well, scrubbing my skin and hair until I was nearly raw. On special days, she suddenly crouched beside me, as if surprised to find me there, and hugged me until it knocked the air from my lungs.

Yet, her moods
shifted abruptly. I never knew one day to the next when she might fade away again. Tears erupted without warning and disappeared as fast. She grew distracted by the wind, smiling to herself, as dust swirled about the room. One morning I raced back to tell her about a brown and white puppy I spotted playing under a mango tree outside the camp fence. But my voice did not seem to reach her ears. She sat on stool, leaning against the pole and staring into the distance. Another time I found her holding my cousin Ger’s slingshot that he had left in our room. She caressed it and muttered to herself. Once she yelled at me because I had not reminded her to get batteries at the market, which Father had asked her to buy. I couldn’t understand when she put the plastic bucket of water over the fire instead of the soup pot. I had to tug on her arm until she realized what she had done. And sometimes when smoke drifted up from the fire, she ran her hand gently through the gray haze.

Father remained
the only constant in my life. He always found time to play a game with me or tell a story or simply listen to me prattle on. But his schedule was full, and he was often out. Five days a week he translated for the French doctors at the clinic, and evenings he often met with the Center 3 council, sorting out troubles among neighbors.

When Father, Uncle Boua, and Ghia returned for the evening, Mother became more attentive and joined in the conversations that ac
companied our meals once more. But I think it was my aunties who helped the most. They kept her busy with their activities and drew her back to the circle of family. Almost every afternoon, Mother sewed quilts or clothes with them. My days soon revolved around my cousins--Ger who was six, and Blia and the twins, Mee and Tou, all five. We ran loose through the camp as I tried to find an opening in their tight circle. I envied them: brothers, sisters, cousins, all living together. I only had cousin Gia, a teenage boy with little patience for a young girl.

On a warm afternoon, a few weeks before my sixth birthday, we joined my
aunties and cousins as usual. Mother unrolled her fabrics and neatly arranged her scissors, needles, and thread on a mat. I sat next to Blia and Mee, watching the boys play a game throwing rocks, which they had collected by the stream. I couldn’t understand the point of the game as Ger changed the rules every time he took a turn.

Auntie Yer reached in a jar and
pulled out coins. She handed one to me and each of my cousins. “For a treat,” she said smiling. She eased herself down on a stool, holding her growing belly. She was heavier these days, and her face rounder than ever.

“I want lemon drops,” Blia said, j
umping up. “Come.”

The boys were not ready to leave the game and handed their coins to Blia and Mee with req
uests for sticks of sugar cane. I could already taste the dried mango strips, sweet and tart all at once.

M
other put her hands on her back and stretched. For the first time, I noticed the round bulge in her abdomen. I ran to her side and whispered the question. Would I too have a new sister or brother? She smiled and nodded.

I clapped my
hands and jumped in a circle. Mee pulled on my arm, and we raced to the lean-to at the end of the next building where an old grandmother with no teeth and a huge grin sold sweets and drinks. We placed our coins in her arthritic, bent hands. I was so excited by Mother’s news, I could hardly wait. What would it be like to have another brother or sister, to hold a tiny baby?

The boys had finished thei
r game by the time we returned. Ger grabbed his sling shot and headed out. As the oldest boy, he was the undisputed leader.

“Remember to stay together and don’t go outside the Center,” Auntie Kia called.

We promised, knowing very well that our adventures would take us far beyond. We crisscrossed the rutted path up the hill past a group of men playing cards and smoking. At the bathing well, two women were washing their toddlers in bamboo tubs. A volunteer cleaning crew worked its way down the path with brooms and long handled dust bins, clearing stray garbage. We stopped for awhile to watch the man in Building 12 who was making a
qeej.
He cut and sanded six bamboo tubes of different lengths, tied them together in an arc, and slid them sideways through the holes of a wooden wind chest. At last he attached the metal reed mouthpiece at the top. The instrument was longer than me.

Ger punched my arm.
“Bet you can’t catch me.” I chased him and the others through the banana trees and lines of drying laundry. When we reached the latrines at the back of Building 14, Ger stopped and grinned as a man walked inside. He and Tou took off their rubber sandals and threw them at the side of the latrine.

“You’ll get in trouble,” I said.

“What do you know?” Ger scoffed. The man inside howled and threatened to beat whoever he caught. Ger and Tou quickly retrieved their sandals, and we raced past the next two buildings. Ger slowed down at last, laughing and panting.

“What now?” Blia asked.

“I want to play soccer,” Ger said.

“They won’t let you.”
I knew from past attempts that the older boys would tell Ger and Tou they were too little and chase them off.

Ger glar
ed at me. “They will too!” We continued through the buildings and to the field at the center of camp. The older boys, just out of school, raced across the lawn kicking soccer balls back and forth. It didn’t take long before I was proven right. Ger grumbled and scuffed his foot in the dirt as he slinked away. He glanced over at me as if it were my fault.

Blia suggested the spot behind the school on the edge of Center 1. Camp officials had
designated a grove of kapok trees, palms, and bamboo off limits for cutting firewood. It was like a secret forest full of possibilities. Ger threw a rock at a branch and two doves disappeared in a flurry of wings. Ger and Tou grabbed sticks, pretending they were swords and making a loud clatter as they banged them together. Blia, Mee, and I sat down to weave pieces of grass into tiny cages. We liked to capture crickets and beetles in them, although they always escaped.

“You are lucky,” Mee said as she twi
sted strands of grass together. “I wish my mother were having a baby.”

“Our baby will be first,” Blia said with satisfaction.

I shrugged. “I don’t care.”

Blia and
Mee became bored and joined Ger and Tou for a game of hide and seek. I remained sitting, thinking about the baby. A touch of apprehension edged its way into my happiness. Would Mother give all her attention to this new little one? Would she have any time for me?

Suddenly, Ger was standing over me,
his stick pointed at my face. He narrowed his eyes. “Bang!”

Three months after my birthday, everything changed. On a sweltering June morning, I dressed in the new white blouse and blue and green striped sarong that Mother had made for me. She brushed my hair smooth, wove it into a long braid, and tied it with a blue ribbon.

“You must look your very best for the first day of school,” she crooned, standing up awkwar
dly with her expanding abdomen. In a few more months, my brother or sister would arrive. Auntie Yer had delivered a stillborn baby seven months into the pregnancy. Mother said we must never speak about it as it made Auntie too sad. I worried every day about our baby.

We
walked to our family’s place. As we entered, Auntie Yer patted Mother’s stomach with a wan smile.

Ger scowled at me, pulling the tails of his new shirt out o
f his navy shorts. His face was clean and his hair plastered down with water. Tou, Blia, and Mee sat atop the sleeping mat, their legs dangling over the edge, eating bowls of noodle soup.

Ger kicked at the ground.
“I don’t want to go to school.”

“Of course you do,” Auntie Yer said, tucking
in his shirt again.

“I want to go,” Blia said. “Can I go instead?”

Auntie Yer laughed. “Not yet, little one. Next year.”

“I’ll be able to help you with your studies,” I offered, proud of my status as the oldest girl and first to go to school.

Blia’s face darkened. “I don’t need your help. I can learn by myself.”

Mee and Tou called goodbye, but Blia had turned her
back to us. We left for the central square. Soldiers marched stiffly up and down in front of the camp offices. Ger began to imitate them, strutting with straight legs and arms until Auntie grabbed his hand and dragged him away. Across the main road three wooden school buildings formed a U-shape at the far side of the soccer field. Mother gave me a hug before Ger and I joined the orderly lines of students standing out front.

The monsoon season had started, but this day the sun was out and the air pressed hot and humid
even at eight in the morning. As I waited, the girls in front of me whispered to one another, smoothing their shirts down and giggling. The soldiers across the road stood at attention as music began to blare over the loud speaker. The principal, an older man in khaki pants and an orange silk shirt, raised the striped red, white, and blue Thai flag. We filed inside.

The classroom was slightly larger than our space in the barr
acks with wooden plank walls on three sides. An open doorway on the left led out front, and on the right, light poured through open windows above a bamboo half-wall. Little starlings sang in the oleander bushes outside as if welcoming us to class. Five rows of long, narrow wooden tables and benches faced a blackboard on the front wall. A series of squiggly lines had been drawn in white chalk on the board. My skin tingled. Soon I would know how to read the mysterious marks.

I counted twenty
students, twelve boys and eight girls. Ger plunked down on a bench in the back with the other boys. I chose a spot in the first row next to a girl with a broad, flat face and wide set eyes. She smiled at me, revealing a gaping hole where her two top teeth had fallen out. My legs hung off the edge of the bench, too short to reach the dusty, dirt floor. I clasped my sweaty hands together against my fluttering stomach.

The Lao teacher smiled and stood before us.
“Sabai dee,”
she said.

Watching
the other students, I put my hands together under my chin and bowed my head in a
nop
.
“Sabai dee,”
I murmured.

The teacher
returned the greeting once more and began, speaking first in Lao and then Hmong. “I am your teacher, Mrs. Khamvongsa. In my class you will learn to read and write Lao and do basic arithmetic. After the morning break, Mr. Boonruang will teach you Thai. As I read your name, please put your hand up.” She began the roll call.

I held my breath, terrified that somehow I mi
ght miss the sound of my name. My heart jumped when she called Ly Nou, and my hand shot up. Ly Ger, she said. I turned to see my cousin hunched in his seat, his arms wrapped around his middle. He would not look up or respond. She called his name again.

“Ger, answer the teacher,” I said.

“No talking,” Mrs. Khamvongsa said.

I spun around to face her.
“But that is my cousin Ly Ger.”