Versace Sisters (10 page)

'So,' said Sera. 'Spill it.'

Chantrea stared into the flickering candle on Sera's kitchen
table. Sera watched as as a mask of blank indifference slid
over her friend's features and finally she began to speak as
though in a trance, her voice a monotone.

'In April 1975, I was five years old. We lived in Phnom
Penh,' Chantrea began. 'I was just little, so I was oblivious
to the civil war. I knew the grown-ups were worried; I
could hear my parents talking until late at night. Sometimes
I heard bombs in the surrounding suburbs and gunfire was
commonplace but I didn't take much notice. I was more
interested in my dolls and my best friend, Phinny Ung,
who lived in the apartment next door.

'Then the government surrendered to the Khmer
Rouge. My parents were worried because my father had
been an official in the old government's military department,
so we knew our family could be targeted by the new
regime. My mother was a famous musician: she played the
Khmer flute. The Khmer Rouge was against traditional
Cambodian culture and many well-known artists and musicians
were being taken into custody. Many were never seen
again.

'One night Phinny Ung and her family were taken away
by soldiers. Her father was a minister of the old government.
We woke up to the screams. I can still hear them
sometimes. My parents said we had to leave the city and go
to my aunt's house in the country. We packed everything
we could into our car and left before dawn. I can remember
feeling excited, it was like we were going on a holiday
– I had no idea.

'But everyone in Phnom Penh was trying to do the
same thing. The new government had decreed that every
person in the city must return to the village of their birth.
The noise of the traffic and the chaos on the streets was
deafening. I just sat in the back seat clutching my doll. The
car inched forward only a few metres every hour. Mother
forced me to lie down and not look out the window
because people were being beaten up by soldiers and left
for dead. It took us twenty-four hours to drive the short
distance to the outskirts of the city, but then the car ran out
of petrol and there was nowhere to get more.

'We walked for hours. My feet bled and I remember
falling asleep standing up several times. My father carried
a bag with water, rice, a cooking pot and other essentials,
but he still managed to carry me a few times. He was a
very strict man but he never once yelled at me or got angry
when I fell down. My mother was pregnant and white with
exhaustion by the time we stopped to rest.

'She used her bag to make me a bed under a tree and as I
fell asleep I remember seeing my parents making a small fire
to burn all their documents. We started out the next day
before dawn, joining hundreds of thousands of others. It
was like a great sea of people; of pain and death. I will never
forget the smell that filled my nose and mouth.' Chantrea
stopped to wipe away the tears that streamed down her face
and Sera clutched her hand.

'It was the smell of rotting corpses; the people who
weren't strong enough to continue, or who had been killed
by soldiers. It was over 40 degrees every day and the smell
got worse as each day went past. I fainted a few times and
my father had to pick me up and keep me moving. I think
by then I had stopped feeling anything; the horror and the
pain of it all just floated over me.

'One day I watched as a soldier ripped a woman's tiny
baby from her arms and threw it against a tree. It was as if
it wasn't real; it just couldn't be real. Then he dragged her
into a hut as she screamed for help. We just kept walking.
What else could we do? I can only talk about this now
because I did years of therapy in my twenties. I had to; the
nightmares were ruining my life. I'd wake up screaming
and desperate for water.'

'Water?' Sera asked.

'It was maybe the most horrific part,' Chantrea replied.
'The thirst. Our water ran out after the first few days. We
survived on stagnant water in puddles, but it was never
enough. As we passed village after village that was burnt to
the ground and deserted, I knew my parents had given up
hope of finding my aunt.

'We were with a group of about eighty-five people all
heading in the same direction, all hoping for something or
someone to save us. One evening at twilight, about five
days after we'd left the city, some of the men left the dirt
road we were travelling on to go and look for water.

'We were so hot, waiting there as the sun went down,
being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Suddenly there was a huge
explosion. Mother threw herself over me and I started to
cry from shock. The men had triggered a land mine, which
killed several of them. The three who returned with a can
of dirty water had to look into the faces of the women who
had just lost their husbands. One woman threw herself into
the dirt and lay there for hours, tears running out of her
eyes, but making no sound at all.

'And that night the soldiers came.' Chantrea shivered.
'We were all asleep in the field when we were woken by
teenagers with AK-47s. They pulled us up and made us
walk; I don't know where. They wouldn't let us stop all the
next day and into the night. Some people dropped onto the
side of the road with dehydration or sheer exhaustion.'

Her voice deepened and slowed.

'When anyone fell the soldiers would laugh and spit at
them, and then . . . then they rammed the butts of their
rifles into their skulls and left them to die.'

Her voice cracked. 'My mother fell and the soldier was
there so fast. I screamed and tried to protect her. He . . . he
hit her . . . hard with the rifle butt . . . hit her stomach. She
doubled over in pain. I was so scared. My father leapt to
her side and helped her to stand. I kept screaming, screaming
. . . I didn't want her to die. Then they made us stop
to make a camp, and forced all the boys and men to go with
them. I didn't know that when my father kissed my mother
and me it would be the last time I would ever see him.

'Thirty husbands, fathers and sons left with the soldiers
while we, the women, children and old people, waited by
the side of the road. That night my mother lost the baby.

'Later the soldiers returned without the men, but
covered in blood. They hauled us all back onto our feet and
pushed us along the road. My mother could barely walk,
but she whispered to me that she recognised the area we
where travelling through – it was where she'd spent many
happy years as a child.

'We marched until midnight, when we reached a
destroyed Buddhist temple. The soldiers gave us a few
spoonfuls of rice to eat and we collapsed onto the hard
stone floor. During the night mother woke me. She had
played in the deserted temple as a little girl and knew there
was a hidden room behind the altar. The soldiers were
outside smoking and laughing. We sidled slowly to the
altar and squeezed in between the desecrated stone Buddha
and the hard wall. What had seemed to be an alcove was
actually a very thin opening that led into a cold, windowless
room. We sat there, squashed, holding our breath until
dawn. After the soldiers herded the group away, we snuck
out, crouching to avoid being seen.

'For the next two weeks we crept along the roads and
snuck into villages to steal food, until eventually mother
managed to slip us past the border guards into Thailand.
We travelled for long, hot painful days again until we
reached Bangkok and mother found a Red Cross centre.

'Then my mother showed me a secret she'd been carrying
the entire time. She'd sewn a small package into the
hem of her dress. "These emeralds and diamonds are from
the necklace your grandmother gave me," Mother said.
"They are our ticket to the promised land, Australia."

'It was the first time she had even hinted that we might
have a future. Even though there were only the two of us
left, for the first time in almost two months I saw a trace of
hope in her eyes. She exchanged the stones for ten thousand
baht, which was a pathetic amount, but enough to
save our lives. She had heard of a ship's captain who would
take us to a wonderful city called Darwin, where we could
get food, a house and jobs.

'There was a boat waiting for us at the jetty within days.
But it was just a fishing boat, not fit for passengers. Instead
of a hold full of squid, the hold was full of refugees like us.
It was a living hell and I don't know how we survived it,'
Chantrea's voice wavered again. 'The captain kept us locked
and cramped in the hold and handed out tiny serves of rice
and fish. We had cans for toilets that we had to empty out of
the portholes. Most of us had severe gastro and seasickness.
And the promised passports were just another lie.

'One night the captain unlocked the door to let us out,
telling us we had reached Darwin. In the darkness all we
could see were monstrous waves. I can remember looking
out in terror at the swell, the black shoreline and then at
my mother. I didn't have to say a word. She nodded at me.
We had to swim from there.

'A few people couldn't swim and held back in fear but the
captain and crew just tossed them in like scrap fish guts.'

Sera gasped and tears filled her eyes, but Chantrea continued
without pause.

'The water was surprisingly warm and by complete fluke
a wave picked Mother and me up and pushed us towards
the shore. For a few seconds I felt euphoric – suddenly it
seemed like this new country was reaching out to embrace
us and welcome us.

'Of course, knowing what I'm sure you do about how
welcome refugees were back then – and still are for that
matter –' she added bitterly, 'you'll know that my joy was
short-lived. Soldiers were waiting for us on the beach. I
expected them to start shooting at us; but they loaded us
into trucks and drove us to a refugee hostel for the night.
The next day they took us to a place that looked to me like
a jail – the detention centre.

'But at least we were safe and alive and we spent
the next few months recovering somewhat. My mother
lobbied furiously for us to be granted residency visas, which
took nine months, but eventually we were on the bus to
Sydney to start a new life.

'We had seen Sydney a lot on the television in the
detention centre and Mother and I knew it was the city for
us. She said its vibrancy and beautiful people reminded her
of Phnom Penh, before the war began.

'Thanks to
Sesame Street
and
Playschool
I had picked up
English pretty quickly in the detention centre, so my mother
thought I would fit into the local school system easily. But
honestly, Westville Primary was more like torture.

'The group that ruled the school made the Ku Klux
Klan look like the Martin Luther King fan club. They were
out to get anybody who wasn't Anglo. My friend Kimmy,
who'd just arrived from Vietnam, was found hanging from
a tree by her foot one day. The cops weren't even called.
The teachers couldn't or wouldn't do anything.

'My friends and I did everything we could to avoid
them, but they wouldn't leave us alone. Once, Bill, who
was the biggest one, with thick red hair and a AC/DC
tattoo he'd done himself, hissed into my ear what he and
the other boys were planning to do to me in his bedroom
that afternoon. I went ice-cold with shock – all I could
think about was the woman and the soldier I'd seen on the
road out of Phnom Penh.

'So I played up in class from then on to make sure I
always got kept in after school, so I could be safe. I couldn't
tell mother. She was so proud to have a little Aussie schoolgirl
daughter and she was working such long hours at a
grocery store just to feed and clothe us.'

'Oh darling,' Sera murmured.

'So I decided to become a fighter,' Chantrea said grimly,
squeezing her hands into fists. 'I learned street fighting and
pretty soon the taunts stopped and for the first time I started
to feel safe and in control. After I finished school, I worked
odd jobs here and there for five years and then finally decided
a uni degree was my chance to get ahead. That was where
I met Danny – Danny O'Leary. He was studying medicine
and had all the girls on the campus swooning at his feet.'

Sera sat up with interest; she had never heard Chantrea
speak about Sally's father before.

'I think it destroyed his fragile ego that I wasn't immediately
taken by his blue eyes and charm.' She sighed. 'Sera,
it's already been a long night, are you sure you're up for the
whole messy saga of my life?'

'Absolutely,' Sera nodded. 'You can't stop now.'

'Okay, well, Danny . . . the more he tried to catch me,
the more I ignored him. I think it just became a contest
to him . . . I dunno . . . anyway life at home with mother
was mental. I wanted to be free of any reminders of our
life in Cambodia, of our "heritage", but she kept insisting
I should speak Cambodian, be proud of coming from such
a beautiful country.

'I tried to tell her that Australians hate Asians; that she
should stop announcing where we were from to the world,
but she said I was the one who should be ashamed.

'So I started going out with Danny, and figured marrying
him would be my ticket out of my culture. Not very
feminist of me, but there you go,' she grimaced.

'I got pregnant within about five minutes of our very
drab little registry office wedding, and after working so hard
to catch me, Danny lost interest and formed a pretty close
relationship with dope. He was stoned more than he was
straight and it was downhill from there. He failed his exams
and then just quit uni altogether. He wouldn't get a job to
support us, so I had to give up study just after Sally was born.
It all still makes me so freakin' angry,' she said quietly.

'I can understand that,' Sera said sympathetically.

'So I worked in a travel agency during the day while
Danny was supposed to be caring for Sally – but even that
was too much effort for the lazy arsehole.' She began to
shake with anger, and wiped away more tears. 'One day
during my lunch-break I went home to check on them.
Danny was passed out on the couch and there was bong
water spilt all over the floor. Poor little Sally was lying in
her cot, purple with screaming.