Daring (37 page)

“What happened to your family?” I asked.

The child spoke in a soft monotone, quickly but without inflection, digging the nails of one hand under the nails of the other, then flicking them apart with a high, clicking sound.

“Her father a soldier,” the translator conveyed. “He fight on side of United States. When Pol Pot come, father return with soldiers and white flag to . . .”

“Surrender?”

“Yes, surrender. Her mother first one Pol Pot soldiers take.”

“Why?”

The girl clicked her nails.

“She doesn't know why.”

“
Slap
,” said the girl.

“Slap?”

“She mean kill,” the translator said.

“
Slap
,” the girl repeated.

Did she have brothers or sisters?

Click click.

“Small brother and sister, very sick, only eat roots.”

“Dysentery?”

“Yes. Then soldiers take her away. Send her work in forest. Send older brother away.”

“Did she see her small brother and sister again?”

“She sneak in fields at night to dig crab for them, but when she lie to go home see her sister, the sister die three days before.”

“And her little brother?”

“He starve.”

“Did she see that?”

Click click.

“She see.”

“Did she—did she see anybody beaten or killed?”

“She see woman and man, for love.”

“For love?”

“They punish woman and man in public. Beat with stick.”

Horror flickered in the child's eyes.

“Beat them to death?”

“Yes. To death.”

“And she saw this, too?”

“She saw.”

“Oh, God, what did she think?”

“She think of her parents, maybe they die like this.”

Tears began to smear the girl's expressionless eyes, but they did not spill over. She held up her arm in front of her face and dropped her head to the table. Soundless moments passed, a slight trembling in her back the only visible sign of distress. The sobs I heard were coming from the translator.

“I never see her like this before,” Darvy whispered.

“She's never told her story before,” Margie said. “We don't have time to ask.”

I massaged the child's back and waited for her to compose herself. The Thai guard demanded to know when I would leave.

The girl lifted her head. Her face was bland as a Buddha's.

I asked for permission to take her picture. Through the lens of my camera she looked like the
apsara
, shapely young celestial nymphs in Buddhist mythology that dance seductively in stone around Cambodia's ancient temples. I mumbled endearments to the child.

“She thank you from her heart, and she—” The translator broke off in midsentence.

“What else did she say?”

Click click.
The child worked her nails.

“Nothing. She confuse.”

“Please, what is it?”

“She think you take her to free country.”

“Oh my God—can you explain, I mean, this is for a newspaper story . . .”

The child immediately entreated the translator to put things right. “She very sorry she make mistake.”

The child backed away. The spell was broken. She stood straight and dry-eyed and bowed her head to her hands, forming the Khmer good-bye, waxen and closed. Outside I was besieged by a new crowd of letter bearers.

“What's her name?” I shouted over the heads to Darvy.

“Who?”

“The last one.”

Darvy shook her head; she didn't understand.

“The girl who couldn't cry.”

Darvy's lips formed the words
Srey Mom
. Surviving children had had their family names wiped from their memories to avoid being victimized as offspring of the intelligentsia.
Srey Mom
in Khmer meant simply “beloved girl.” It was not a name. Frantic grown-ups pressed in from all sides until I couldn't see a thing. Only an airborne observer—one of those crisp officials in a UN helicopter—might have seen below the figure of a pale-skinned woman, blowing a kiss to the girl who could not cry.

MY STORY CAME OUT
in the
New York Times Magazine
in June 1982. The refugee children haunted my dreams. In particular, I could not forget Srey Mom. I had decided I must find a way to adopt her. On a crusade to spread awareness about the survivors of the Cambodian genocide, I persuaded Don Hewitt, the producer of
60 Minutes
, to do a story on them. But personally, I was frustrated. How could the letter I sent to Srey Mom—the only name I had—ever reach her? Calling around to social agencies, I could not find anyone who could help me to sponsor a Cambodian refugee. It looked hopeless.

That summer, when Maura and I returned from Scotland after our last vacation together before she left for college, neither Ella nor I could bear to let her go. We made all her favorite dishes and ironed all her clothes, even jeans, anything to stay connected awhile longer. Before the designated day of letting go, the nineteenth of September 1982, Maura asked me to drive her to Brown University two days earlier than planned. I lied to myself: maybe she was just anxious to get a head start. That rationale didn't stick. Feeling unloved and unappreciated, I had one of my flashes of temper. I scolded Maura in the cold, censorious voice she hated. She walked out of the apartment. I called Clay to tell him my life was over. I remember him saying, “Listen to yourself and you will realize that, rationally, none of the things you've just said are true. It's all an overblown neurotic reaction to your daughter leaving home.”

What came out of this was an emotional collision with my daughter. She let me know how her self-confidence could be corroded by my outbursts. She didn't get enough of me. Sure, I took her on trips across the country and halfway around the world while I did stories on famous people, but how often did I hang out with her, in her room, listening to her music, wanting to be there just for her?

Of course, I knew she needed to separate. Still, I was devastated. Instead of just listening with my heart, I offered excuses. It wasn't easy being a single mother. I hadn't chosen it. I had to work all the time to pay for our lives. On and on. It was Maura who patched up the rift, suggesting that I stay over in Providence for a day or two so our parting would not be so abrupt. We shopped for a bedspread, books, a pair of black Reebok Freestyles. By the time I left, she said she felt confident and enthusiastic about doing well at college.

“Would you like me to walk you to the car?” she asked on that parting day.

“No, darling. It's time. It's your time.”

A FEW DAYS LATER,
a two-sentence letter arrived from the girl who couldn't cry. Over her handwritten Khmer, a translation had been penned:
I miss you. I want to live with you in America.
Even after nine months, she remembered. Our connection was profound.

Clay and I were not living together in 1982. By then, he was in Hollywood half the time, working for Twentieth Century Fox, occupying one of those movable chairs given to producers whose movie projects seldom get a green light. I hadn't seen him for several months. When I called him with news about the letter, I hoped that he would share my delight. After all, he was the originator of the compassionate idea of adopting a Cambodian refugee. He was not happy.

I had found a rent-stabilized apartment on Fifth Avenue, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the then-miraculous price of $1,300 a month. It had a terrace overlooking Central Park. A small glass cubicle sat on one end of the terrace, where I wrote as if suspended in the sky. I could watch the leaves turn from scarlet to lemony pale and sit snug in a winter storm like being enclosed in a snow globe. It was as close to a writer's heaven as one could get.

Unheated, the cubicle was also ideally suited to keeping the neurons jumping. In winter I typed in a hoodie, my feet encased in Alaskan mukluks. In spring, the terrace became my first garden. I filled the window boxes with swaying tulips. Tubs held bonsai mimosa trees and dwarf crabapple trees that bore fruit in the fall. It was a magical place to invite friends for drinks and outdoor supper.

“
CLAY? OH, YOU FRIGHTENED ME.
” It was after midnight. “C'mon up.” Buzzer, dash for the bathroom mirror, splash of cold water on sleep-puffy eyes; I wasn't expecting Clay to be in New York. He came in with his rakish smile and his clean male smell. It was months after our Asia trip, but the magnetism had lost no pull. My heart turned over. The part of him that lived within me, impervious to time or events, was a separate and authentic thing—love. We couldn't finish a glass of wine before we came together.

In the after swoon, he said he couldn't stay over. My bed, the way it stuck out in the middle of the room—he knew would make it impossible for him to get a decent night's sleep. I said I would have a hard time sleeping, too, with his coming and going whenever the mood struck him.

“I thought you were glad to see me,” he said.

“I was, I mean, oh, God, Clay”—spilling it now, not having meant to—“they're going to keep me from getting her out.”

“Who?”

“The State Department, the immigration people, I don't know who exactly. Our former ambassador to Cambodia told me the Reagan administration is going to punish me for my
Washington Post
op-ed about the refugees American bombs created and now want to forget. They won't let me bring her out.”

“Bring who out?”

“You know. Srey Mom.”

“Agghh, God, Gail.” He was up and pulling on his pants with that air men get when something is revealed as out of their control. “You can't expose a traumatized child from a primitive background to the lack of acceptance she'd find in New York.”

“Compared to a childhood spent in a refugee camp?”

“You have no idea what traumas she's been through. Why would you take such a chance?”

“Because I want another chance to be the right kind of mother.”

I remember Clay stuttering with concern. “Gail, this, I mean, it's noble, but it's not a good idea.” He couldn't find his sock. Our dog Ms. had a thing for smelly socks. I put on Clay's shirt and walked barefoot out onto the terrace. The night had deepened into silky last-of-the-summer black with a veil of clouds, a night when love should not be uninterrupted.

“What're you doing out there?”

“Planting tulip bulbs.” Oh, I was on a tear now.

“I just want to say good night.”

I looked up the terrace steps at him: maybe he was not, after all, the man of my life. “Who was it who got me started thinking about adopting a Cambodian orphan?”

“The reason that I—”

“Push-pull, push-pull, there's a real fear for you in getting close, Clay.”

“You're wrong about that. I can't reason with you.” Suddenly he was talking about premenopausal panic.

“Of course. I'm just a woman!”

“It shows how desperate you are, to consider taking in a teenage child from another culture.”

“Desperate? Because I fell in love? With a child? She's only twelve.”

“Everyone knows that women get irrational when they're afraid of losing their looks.”

“I don't need middle age to be irrational.”

“Not that
you
, I mean you're prettier than ever—”

“It's not about looks—it's about the family you would never agree to have!”

“Don't attack me!”

He ran for the door. We had exhausted our tolerance for open warfare. I had to rip off his shirt and hand it to him.

He said at the door: “It's really very simple.”

“What?”

“The reason we haven't gotten married. You know.”

“I don't know.”

“I need you to pay more attention to me.”

It hit me. Hard. Thinking about Clay took up more of my time than sleep.

“So y
ou
want to be the child!”

These last accusations were too true to be forgiven. We had unmasked each other's fears. Standing there in nothing but my panties, arms folded angrily over my chest, I finally replied. “Clay, you once told me that if I make a major decision on my own, I do it fine.”

He grunted assent.

“I'm going to make this decision on my own.” I saw his startled look. “I think we ought to take a vacation from each other,” I said.

“Fine. Good.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

EXACTLY NINE MONTHS AFTER
I had met Srey Mom in the camp, I walked across the street after a dinner at the typewriter and sat beside the rowing lake in Central Park. I gazed at the lovers enjoying their postprandial idylls and felt my aloneness. Back in the apartment, a quick check of messages on my answering machine turned up an unfamiliar voice.

What? Who? When? WHEN? I listened again. Yes, I must have heard the astonishing message correctly:
Srey Mom arriving tomorrow night, September 30, Northwest Airlines, flight 8, JFK, 8:30
P.M.

Just like that, a new life began.

“
EXPECT LICE.
”

“Assume she's been raped repeatedly.”

“They're very manipulative, refugees are, maybe even violent.”

These were warnings from resettlement workers. I knew nothing. Who was this child who had lost her name, her family, her country?

Maura was thrilled, yet concerned for the child. Were we really doing her a favor with such a drastic dislocation? I wondered myself.

My mother was wonderful. She had demonstrated that the best way to defeat the numbing ambivalence of middle age is to surprise oneself. “Don't let anyone talk you out of it,” she said over the phone from Florida. “Listen to your heart.” At forty, my mother seemed old. At fifty, divorced by my father for a much younger woman, my mother had bounced back, begun a new business, dropped three dress sizes, and within a few years had been courted by and married to the love of her life. More than once she had pulled me out of anomie by chirping, “If I could start a new life at fifty-three, why you, honey, with what you have to offer [etc., etc.]—and besides, you're still young!”