World and Town (17 page)

And even now he talks about his first wife as if she is their real mother, it’s like Sophy’s mom just somehow ended up giving birth to them by mistake. Like he talks about how things would be different if his first wife had lived—like how Sarun would not be involved with gangs and how instead of asking why why why, Sophy and her sisters would be asking stuff like how they could be more polite and how they could show more respect. As if any kids in America ask that! But that’s what he thinks. He thinks that if his first wife had lived, everyone would be, like, looking at them and asking, Whose family do those children belong to? Because they were so shy and perfect and obeyed every single thing in the
Chbap Srey
, which is, like, this stupid book of rules for girls. A lot of kids said their moms used to laugh at the
Chbap Srey
back in Cambodia, but Sophy’s dad’s first wife must not have laughed, because she was the book for real. Like she didn’t go from sweet and shy to loud and bossy as soon as she got married. Instead she talked softly and walked softly and covered herself and didn’t show off, and sat the way you’re supposed to sit, with her legs to the side. She was so perfect that sometimes even Sophy thinks if she were alive they would somehow all still be living in Phnom Penh, in the fancy concrete house with two floors that Sophy’s dad bought himself. He still talks about it sometimes. Like about the roof garden, and the garage for the car, and the big gate in the garden wall with a guard to open and shut it. Which, like, Sophy and her sisters can’t really imagine, because their mom cleans houses and they are poor and dark, even Sophan who looks like their dad is sort of dark. Not as dark as their mom, who is what they call
sra’aem
, but they don’t have skin like cotton either, because their mom is pure Cambodian. Meaning brown skin and round eyes and curly hair, though people always said she was pretty, and pretty rich too, for someone who lived in the countryside. Which was why she was originally married to Sophy’s dad’s brother. Because her family had, like, a hut with a tile roof instead of straw, and a mango farm, besides; they weren’t just, like, rice farmers. Of course, it’s sort of wack to think about how Sophy’s mom was married to Sophy’s uncle before she was sort of married to Sophy’s dad. Like Sophy’s mom still remembers when Sophy’s dad and his first wife and some other people came to live with them after everyone had to leave Phnom Penh, which was pretty rough for everyone but especially for the first wife. Because on the one hand it was pretty lucky that they could go live with Sophy’s uncle, like if it weren’t for him, Sophy’s dad probably wouldn’t be alive to remember how great his first wife was and everything. But on the other hand, they all had to sleep in one room and cook their food outside, and eat a lot of things you couldn’t really call food while the soldiers threatened to send them to
Angka. (Angka
being what they called the people who were running the country, they were kind of like the government except that nobody voted for them, in fact everyone probably would have voted against them if they could have.) Do you want to go see
Angka?
the soldiers would say. I think it’s time you went to go see
Angka
. The soldiers took Sophy’s dad’s first wife for one of the Khmer Rouge to marry even though she was already married, and when she refused to marry him, the Khmer Rouge buried her up to her neck and left her to die. Which she would have, except that Sophy’s dad found her and dug her out, and that was so happy! Except that then she couldn’t make herself eat, and died anyway. It was the sort of stuff a lot of kids wrote about in their old town, because the teachers wanted them to, all the stories. But if the teachers didn’t ask, the kids never would. Because, like, who wanted to write about eating bugs and rats? And people not dying and then dying anyway, or disappearing. Like
Angka
would take people out for a walk and no one would ever see them again. Or sometimes they’d get killed right in front of your eyes, like a soldier would strangle someone with a plastic bag, or hit them on the back of the head like their dad does to Sarun, only not with a newspaper but with a shovel. Right where the soul was, they would hit them, and then they would bury them even if they weren’t dead yet. Like they would just shove them into a pit with, like, a bunch of other bodies and start shoveling.

Even with everything going wrong here, Sophy’s glad she didn’t live there. It was, like, too wack.

B
ut anyway, after a while all that was left of the family were Sophy’s mom and dad, and Sarun. Of course, her mom was not her mom yet. And she didn’t know that Sophy’s dad (who wasn’t her dad yet) was still alive, and he didn’t know she was alive either. So they were, like, so happy to find each other in the refugee camp! Because there they were, looking for the same people and crying over the same people. And because she was a woman she had a food ration she could share with him, and once he got stronger he could protect her from the Thai robbers and do a lot of other brave stuff besides. Like he would sneak out of the camp and go to the Thai villages and come back with rice, rolling it up into a piece of cloth so it was like a tube. And he would, like, tie that to his body and run run run past the Thai soldiers, and then he would sneak back into the camp and sell the rice so he was, like, a hero. And then he and Sophy’s mom found Sarun, who had nobody left to take care of him—like there he was, all by himself, this baby toddling around with all the other orphans, Sophy’s dad probably wouldn’t have even realized the kid was his sister’s son except that he had this scar on his cheek, like a bullet hole. And then even though Sophy’s dad had barely seen his family for a long time, Sophy’s dad remembered hearing about that scar, and how his sister had said her baby must have been a soldier in his last life. And then it turned out that Sophy’s mom had heard about the scar too, though she had never seen the baby either, because he was born during the fighting. And she agreed that it was, like, their fate, to find the baby and save him. So she and Sophy’s dad rescued Sarun, and fed him rice so he wasn’t starving anymore, and got him medicine so he wasn’t sick anymore, and after that they stuck together, the three of them. Because no one else was crying for their family members, and before they found each other they were completely alone in the world, and couldn’t even cry. That’s what Sophy’s mom always says. She says she couldn’t even cry until she saw Sophy’s dad, a familiar face. And then when she finally cried, she cried so much that when she stopped crying she couldn’t see for a long time. Until Sophy’s dad told her he had found Sarun, and then she tried to see him, and then she did! And now they have to stick together because they’re all that’s left, and because it’s too complicated to explain to people how Sophy’s mom couldn’t see for a while, or why she never really married Sophy’s dad, or why Sophy and her sisters call Sarun their brother when he isn’t their brother. Like who even knows if there are names for what they are, or for their kind of family?

Like what do you call a person who is, like, twins with someone who isn’t there? Sophy doesn’t think her dad will ever really accept that her mom lived instead of his first wife, it’s like Sophy’s mom lived by mistake. So that everywhere she goes is somewhere his real wife isn’t going, and everything she does is something his real wife isn’t doing. And Sophy’s dad also lived by mistake, because he was the educated one
Angka
was trying to kill, the only reason he lived was that
Angka
messed up and killed the wrong brother. So that even though Sophy’s dad didn’t die, he sort of got reborn anyway as his brother, into his brother’s life, and everything he does is something his brother isn’t doing, except that he is sort of doing it, depending on how you look at it.

It’s all, like, wack.

Now Sophy’s dad is old and has diabetes, which isn’t so bad yet, but is going to get worse unless he watches out. Like he should not eat so much white rice, as Sophy knows because she went with him to the health clinic in their old town, and the doctor said to tell him about white rice, it was really important. So she did, she told her dad how white rice will turn right into sugar, and how that’s bad for diabetes. And she told him that he should eat brown rice instead, because brown rice does not turn into sugar right away and that’s, like, good for diabetes. Of course, even though she was supposed to be translating the hard parts of what the doctor said, she said a lot of the words in English, because she speaks Khmer the way he speaks English, meaning barely, and anyway who even knows if they exist in Khmer, words like
simple carbohydrates
and
complex carbohydrates
. Like even if she knew those words in Khmer they would still be in English. And she told him that he should think about it for a while and then look in a mirror and then decide what to eat, because once he told Sophy that that was what it meant to be Cambodian. Like being Cambodian meant everyone living together, and not killing things, but it was also not reacting to things. Like if someone does something to them, he used to say, they should consider that thing. They should ask why did that person do this thing? And what did they do, that this person has done this thing? They should ask that, he used to say. And then they should look in a mirror, and only after thinking about it for a long time, should they decide if they should do something. He used to lean forward with his legs apart and shake his finger in the air at them as he said that, and then sort of swoop his finger quick to the side, as if he was lopping off the head of somebody saying the wrong answer.
You shouldn’t just react!
he would say. Lop!
You should think!
Lop!
You should think!
So now she asked him if he would please think about what he eats the way he thinks about what to do. Like she asked him if he would please ask himself why the doctor said those words.
Simple carbohydrates. Complex carbohydrates
. And, like, she asked him in the very most polite way, with her head down, and in a soft voice, using sweet words, she was, like, all
piek p’aem, piek pi’rouah
. And she, like, used the respectful form for “eat,” and did not call him
Ouv
but
Pa
. But he just said he did not like brown rice.

“
It’s expensive,
” he explained.

She nodded.

“
It doesn’t taste like rice,
” he explained.

She nodded.

“
Cambodians,
” he said, “
eat white rice.
”

And that was that. Lop! He kept on eating white rice, two bowls with every meal, because he doesn’t believe in diabetes, though he does worry about his heart. Like he thinks his heart goes too fast, he’s afraid the arteries of his neck are going to explode from blood overload. Or else his chest. He’s afraid his chest is going to explode from blood overload. The doctors say chests don’t just, like, explode like a bomb, no matter how overloaded they are, but her dad used to so insist and insist his was going to anyway, that in the clinic in their old town Sophy would sometimes just stop translating what he was saying. Like sometimes after a while she would just say, He feels dizzy a lot, and can’t breathe. And Dr. Blitzman would nod sympathetically and readjust the end of his tie so it lay flat on his stomach. He wore these special ties with funny things on them like rubber ducks and basketballs, but when he looked down he mostly just frowned and said things like sure, her dad could certainly take herbal medicine from the
kru
if he wanted to. Two visits later, though, he would not be surprised to hear it didn’t work. He was always telling her dad not to smoke. Like if he wanted to feel better, Dr. Blitzman would say, he should stop. Because that, he said, would work. But then he would just go on to the next patient, because what else could he do? Once he asked Sophy if she knew what
burnout
was. He wasn’t talking about himself, he said. He was talking about the other people in the clinic, and why there weren’t enough of them—why the clinic was
understaffed
. But she still thinks of
burnout
whenever she thinks of him. She remembers him saying, “Do you know what burnout is?” And then laughing a little laugh. “It’s what can come of inspiration, if you’re not careful.”

It’s what can come of inspiration, if you’re not careful
.

M
ost days Sophy’s dad puts on the big TV and watches sports, yelling and cheering if things are going good and slumping down if things aren’t. Like if his team loses he’ll turn off the TV and go get himself another beer, and then sometimes he’ll sit back down in front of the screen as if he has something to ask it. Of course, the TV does sort of look like a temple altar, Sophy’s mom having covered the whole entertainment table with, like, figurines and plastic flowers and incense holders and Buddhas. There’s doilies and little bowls of candy too, and some Marys and Josephs and baby Christs someone gave her, and a picture of Sarun in a baseball uniform, so it’s not as weird as it sounds that her dad will sometimes just sit there and sit there with his eyes moving around, looking as though he’s expecting Buddha to come talk to him out of the screen. Because the whole thing is like something between an altar and a computer that went down, it looks like any second it could
ding
and come back up, first with a blank screen, and then with that noise that means the computer is thinking. So that if you’re patient, there it’ll be, pretty soon, the answer.

Why why why why why
.

Other times her dad’ll play with his slide rule or his drafting tools—like he’ll draw a little bridge while he’s sitting there, just make up a river and put this bridge over it for fun. Or else he’ll sit there and smoke and ask, like, how did he get to be the educated one who moved to the city and had a fancy house and a car? Where did his good karma come from? And then what happened to it? And was there something the matter with the karma of the whole country, that Pol Pot came? Did they do something wrong? That’s when he isn’t drunk. When he’s drunk he’ll say mad stuff, like that he ate the livers of his enemies during Pol Pot time just like the Khmer Rouge (which Sopheap says the Khmer Rouge really did, though she sort of doubts that their dad did too). Or else he’ll wave a kitchen knife in the air and tell Sophy and her sisters that they’re going to be hookers and that if he ever hears they are going around with boys he is going to kill them. Lop! Which is, like, one reason why Sophy didn’t exactly run and tell him about Ronnie the minute she started seeing him.