“You should never have borrowed money from Rith,” Pich shouted at Ryna.
“Then how do we buy our food?” said Ryna. “And where were you for three days?”
Pich looked around the room, his eyes red and wild. “We’ll have to sell some of our land. What else can we do? Do you see what stupid Mae Wea has made us do?” he said, pointing his finger at Ryna.
Ryna sat down on the bamboo floor with her hands covering her face. Thida knelt beside her mother and put her arm around her. “I’ll get a job,” whispered Thida. “I’ll get a job in the garment factories.”
“I won’t let you,” Ryna said gently. She held Thida’s hand.
“Pisey did it,” said Thida.
“No,” Ryna said firmly. But Thida could see confusion and fear in her mother’s eyes.
Pich was sitting on the floor next to an almost empty bag of rice. “Let her go,” he said.
“We can’t do this thing,” Ryna said to her husband.
“If stupid Mae Wae hadn’t put us in debt . . . Daughter can send us forty dollars a month.”
“Please,” said Ryna, all of her defiance now gone. “I’ll go to the garment factory myself.”
“We need you here,” said Pich. “And you’re too old.”
Thida stood up. “I’m going,” she said. She hugged her mother. Then she turned to her father. “I want to go.”
The bus dropped Thida off in the Meanchey district of Phnom Penh, half a kilometer from Glory Bless. Immediately, she was bombarded by noise—the honking of cars, the shouting of street sellers, the roaring of motos gunning their engines. And the crush of people, far more people than she’d seen at Praek Khmau.
“My precious daughter,” said Ryna. “I have no more tears.” Standing in the crowded aisle of the bus, she held her daughter tightly as she’d done the night before. “You are my heart. Come back to me.”
“I will come back,” said Thida. “I will come back. I love you, Mae.”
She hugged her mother and got off the bus. She mustn’t cry. She must be strong. She was the chosen one. As the bus drove away, she watched her mother’s face in the window grow smaller and smaller. Her two bags, tossed out of the bus by the driver, had landed in a pile of broken glass and discarded food wrappers.
“Thida? Are you Thida?” Several factory girls were standing at the bus stop. They wore orange bandanas covering their hair. “You look scared to death, sister,” said the tallest one. She picked up Thida’s bags and smiled. The factory girls were all pale, Thida thought to herself. But pretty. “Your skin is so white,” said the tall girl, whose name was Sivlong. “Do you use cream?”
“No,” said Thida. “I’m just lucky. My mother’s father was Chinese.”
“I wish I had skin like yours.”
“Don’t ever let Mr. Liu take you alone into his office,” said another girl, whose face was splotched with acne. “He likes girls with light skin.”
“He’s a pig,” said Sivlong.
“If he tries anything, tell him you’re having your period,” said the girl with the acne.
They began walking, but to Thida it seemed as if they were running.
The street smelled of urine and beer. After a few minutes, they entered a building as tall as five houses stacked on top of one another and began walking up the stairs, stepping over empty bottles and wrappers and food. Up and up. On the third floor, they went down a hallway and opened a door. “This is ours,” said one of the girls. “Three of us sleep here. You’ll make four.” It was a small room, empty of furniture. Damp clothes hung from strings crisscrossing the room. In the corners were more piles of clothes, a rice cooker, sleeping mats, and a television. The walls were covered with pictures of movie stars. Immediately, the girls flopped on the floor and turned on the television.
Thida called her mother once a week. She said she was happy and safe. She told her mother about her roommates, Sivlong and Sreypich and Chandy, the huge buildings and shops, the assortment of foods and items for sale, the cars that occasionally went by with rich people inside. She did not tell her mother that she had to work eleven hours a day, six days a week. Or that the factory was crammed with hundreds of girls sitting elbow to elbow, so that there was no room to walk when she stood up, or that the air was stuffy and laden with fumes so that she got headaches and red welts on her face and sometimes fainted. She did not tell her mother what Mr. Liu called her whenever she didn’t produce her day’s quota.
Thida had entered her dream. She worked at her small sewing table in the dream, trying to let her mind remain vacant. Her hands were not her hands anymore, but little pink stones darting about. Under her table, her legs went numb. In the tiny room on the third floor of the apartment building, she watched television with her roommates without seeing. On Sundays, her day off, she washed clothes in her dream. It was almost pleasant, the dream. She drifted and drifted and didn’t feel her body or her mind. Wakefulness came for a few minutes at the end of each month, when she carefully wrapped forty-five dollars in a piece of cloth and gave it to Davuth, a family acquaintance, to deliver to her parents in the village. Davuth, whose own daughters were married, always patted her on the head and said “kon srey laor.” Good daughter. As soon as he left for the bus, the landscape lost color again, and Thida floated back to her dream. Sometimes, she saw her mother in her dream and herself brushing her mother’s hair, and it was silent and calm. Let it stay, she said to herself. I am nowhere. At the edge of the dream was a small light that was home. It, too, would stay. Days and weeks went by. Then months.
When Pchum Ben came, the ancestor holiday, the factory closed for a week, and Thida took the bus back to Praek Banan for a short visit. But nothing seemed real. She didn’t feel at home. Her house felt like someone else’s house, her sleeping mat that of a stranger. As she recited the ancestor prayers with her family, it seemed like someone else was reciting the prayers. Even her dear mother did not seem like her mother. Her mother’s words and her touch seemed automatic, as if repeating a memory. Thida had muddied her dream. She had jumbled the past with the future. Somewhere ahead was the future, when she could quit the factory and reunite with her family. In between was the dream. Better to stay in the dream. She should never have gone home. After the holiday, the weekly calls with her mother grew shorter. After a year, Thida could not remember a life other than the walls of the factory and the tiny room on the third floor.
Sometime in Thida’s second year at Glory Bless, Cousin Boran met her as she was walking out of the factory. Thida didn’t recognize him at first. It had been a long time since his last visit to her village. For a few moments, she stood back. Was it Boran?
“Thida. Little mango. You’re all grown up.” His eyes wandered from her head to her feet. He walked closer and smiled. Cousin Boran was as old as Thida’s father, but he had a much younger face, with perfect, straight teeth. None of the men in Praek Banan had teeth like that.
Thida was trying to remember where Cousin Boran lived. Was it Siem Reap? Prey Veng? “Cousin,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”
“Your father told me. I’m visiting Phnom Penh just for a few days and thought I’d say hello.” He picked up his leather travel bag. “Let’s get something to eat, little mango. I’m hungry. It’s been a long time. We can talk. You’re a good daughter, working here to help Pich and Ryna.”
Thida was remembering more. She recalled some of Boran’s visits. He told jokes in the evening and once helped her father repair his oxcart. Memories far away. They walked to Sovanna’s Café across the street. It was dusk, and a string of lights dangled from the awning over the white plastic chairs.
After they’d finished a big meal of fried fish and bok choy, more food than Thida ate in a day, Cousin Boran took a piece of paper out of his pocket and put it on the table. Thida was fully awake now. Cousin Boran was telling her something. “Little mango, your father owes me money,” he said. “A lot of money.” Thida studied the piece of paper. She couldn’t read ev
erything, but she did recognize her father’s thumbprint and mark. “To pay back this debt,” said Boran, “you’ll start working for Madam Chheng. She’ll give you a place to live and plenty of food.”
“Is it a garment factory?” said Thida.
“No.” Boran paused. He moved aside one of the plates. “You’ll be with men. But Madam Chheng will take care of you. She won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Thida began crying. But she wasn’t inside her body. She saw herself from outside of her self. She saw herself crying. She stared at Cousin Boran, and then she stared at the other people in the café, strangers, and at the dangling lights overhead. She stared at her hands.
“You have to do this, little mango.” Boran reached out and touched Thida’s shoulder. “Madam Chheng will pay a lot for you, enough to settle your father’s entire debt to me. And you can still send a little money home every month. It won’t be forever, your job there.” Boran lowered his voice. “It’s a gambling debt. Your father gambles. He shouldn’t do it. It causes him trouble.” Boran carefully wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I wouldn’t be bothering him, but I need that money. This has been arranged with him.”
He paused and looked at Thida. “Don’t you want to help your family?”
In her mind, Thida saw her father slumped over the ladder in the middle of the night, drunk, missing his shirt, calling up to her mother for help. So many times. She knew that he gambled, like Soma’s father. He did crazy things when he was drunk. He yelled and said bad words. But this? How could he agree to this thing with Cousin Boran? Didn’t he love her? He used to go walking with her by the river when she was a child. He held her hand. She remembered. She was his daughter. He was her father. He had brought her into the world, made a home for her. There must be some mistake, something she wasn’t understanding. She took out her phone.
“I wouldn’t call,” said Boran. “Your mother doesn’t know. Do you want her to know?”
Thida kept her eyes closed while Madam Chheng stuck her fingers inside her to verify her virginity. Two other girls sat beside Thida on the bench, naked like her from the waist down. One clutched a teddy bear. “You aren’t pretty,” Madam Chheng said as she wiped her fingers on her scarf. “But you’re fresh. And you have nice light skin. What a sweet thing you are, Thida. Our Thida. Our kon srey.” Madam Chheng began laughing. Her teeth were stained red from chewing betel nuts. When she was finished with her examinations, one of the older girls brought in a plate of mango and sticky rice and put it on the bench.
Thida was thinking that her life was over. Over for her, but not for her parents. They would live on, perhaps another twenty years or more. Dear Mother. Sweet Mother. And Father. She knew that their debts caused them suffering. Now their sufferings would end. Nita would continue with school, perhaps even go to high school. Sreypov, little Sreypov would grow up. Kamal would get married and have children. They would all eat good food. What did her life matter? She was nothing. In the next life, things would be better. But in this life, she was already a ghost, who had to play her part. She was the one the spirits had chosen. Now she understood more than ever. This was the way she must help her dear mother. Still half naked, she swallowed a piece of mango without tasting it.
How long had it been? Three months? Four months? Thida and two other girls squeezed around a table with a man who gave his name as Arun. His face was swollen and red from three rounds of beer. Beer for everyone at the table. Thida mixed hers with ice and drank slowly. Bits of noodle and tamarind fruit littered the floor beneath them. Another man, a Westerner wearing a hoodie, sat in the corner with a girl on his lap facing him. At Thida’s table, one of the ladies had drunk too much and put her head down. What was his name? Arun? You had to remember their names. His nose curved like a rice sickle. Curved into the curve of his face, which was a dim red moon in the dark night. Thida stared at the moon. He put his arm around one of the girls, who moved closer and slid her hand between his legs. A red sash hung on the wall and dipped down to the bar. Across the room, several girls perched on the bar stools wearing high boots and blouses bulging weirdly from cheap padded bras. A voice in the night fields: “Are you ladies feeling good?” Thida’s eyes went to the mouth. The teeth gleamed with gold. What was it he said? One of the girls: “Doesn’t she have nice boobs,” and she pulled up Thida’s blouse. Thida looked down. A hand fondled her nipples. “Who wants it? Or maybe I’ll have all of you.” The shape in front of her swung on the swinging steel chair and called to the woman tending bar. “How much for all three? I don’t have much money.” Thida looked at the man in the way that Madam Chheng had taught her. She smiled, but just a very slight smile with the corners of her mouth, and she looked directly into his eyes. Hold that for four, five seconds. Then look down at the table. Madam Chheng had taught her in the first week. Yesterday, Madam had come into her room and brought her perfume in a rose-colored bottle and some movie star magazines. “You keep your room nice,” Madam had said. The black centers of her eyes were huge. “Honey, you have a bruise.” She touched Thida’s arm. “You’re a brave girl. I got some ointment for your bruise.” “Please,” said Thida. “I’m OK.” She was brushing her mother’s hair and wanted to be alone. She liked being alone. She didn’t smoke shabu with the other girls in the late afternoons. Shabu made them skinny and loud and the blacks of their eyes huge. Madam Chheng returned with the ointment and put it on Thida’s arm, rubbing it back and forth. Madam began softly singing an old Khmer lullaby. “You have such pretty light skin,” she said. “We have nice girls here.” She began singing again. Deep from the cave of her dream, Thida’s voice: “When can I go home?” “Go home?” said Madam. She kept rubbing. “You’ve been here only a few months. I paid a lot for you.” Someone spoke. Was it the man at the table? The red sash dipped down to the bar. Thida smiled, as Madam Chheng had taught her to do, and she gave the man the look. Another round of beer. He’d already spent thirty dollars on beer. Madam Chheng sat at the bar in her tight “New York” T-shirt and signaled that the man could last one more round and then they should take him upstairs for boom-boom before he was too drunk to take off his pants. He would have to pay twenty dollars apiece.
Thida couldn’t remember when she first started calling Madam Chheng by the name Auntie. A few of the girls, the ones allowed into Madam Chheng’s room, called her that. The light from the declining sun struck the draperies in Auntie’s room, streamed from one end to the other, and lit up the porcelain vase on the table. It was a large room, several times the size of Thida’s room. It had a standing closet with beautiful clothes.
Thida sat on the sofa brushing Auntie’s hair.
Below the draped windows, two young girls not older than eleven or twelve sprawled on the floor putting nail polish on each other, giggling, taking turns with the dozen or so tiny glass bottles on Auntie’s bureau, the purples and oranges and reds. The bottles tinkled when they touched, making a musical sound. Another girl, wearing only her underwear, fluttered about the room dancing to the radio. Satya. She was the prettiest of all of them, and she let everyone know it. Even so, she was constantly putting her arm next to Thida’s, comparing color and complaining about Thida’s good luck. Satya came from a family of nine siblings in Mondolkiri. Auntie saved Satya for the wealthiest clients. They took her to the Intercontinental, and sometimes to the Raffles, where she ate fancy food in a room with chandeliers and swam in a pool. Or so she said.
These special girls, the ones allowed into Auntie’s room, were now Thida’s new sisters. Kimhuoy, Soren, Satya, Chanra, Sreyrath. They sometimes ate together in Auntie’s room. They watched television in Auntie’s room. Thida thought that she loved her new sisters, but she didn’t love them completely. They made her think of her real sisters at home, in Praek Banan. When she talked to her mother, she didn’t ask about her real sisters. That was the life of the past. She didn’t tell her mother about Madam Chheng’s. “Mr. Liu has gotten us new sewing tables,” she said, lying. After each call, she couldn’t reme
mber anything that had been said.
“Look what I found at the riverside,” said Soren, the oldest of Auntie’s pets. She held up her arm to show off a bracelet.
“Found? Or slipped from some dumb cow?”
“Did you get my cigarettes?” murmured Madam Chheng from her place sprawled on the couch. One of the girls opened her purse and handed Auntie a package of cigarettes and a thousand-riel note.
Thida had twice been to the riverside herself, sent to lure rich clients, the ones with Apple phones and real leather sandals who paid fifty or even one hundred dollars for sex. Sometimes, the men came back to the brothel; more often they went with the girls to the Niron Hotel on Sisowath. Auntie let some of the girls out from time to time, the ones she trusted, the ones in great debt. They knew that if they tried to escape, Auntie would find them and have them beaten.
“You’re pulling my hair,” Auntie barked. Thida stopped brushing. She felt bitten. Auntie loved her special girls, but she still bit them.
“I want a cigarette,” said Soren. She puckered her lips.
“No smoking in my room, honey,” said Auntie. “Mr. Hang comes here, and Mr. Hang doesn’t like the smell.” Auntie’s special girls, her pets, knew about Mr. Hang. He’d been Auntie’s boyfriend for the last year. Thida once saw Mr. Hang late at night. She saw them together, Auntie and Mr. Hang in the hallway walking toward Auntie’s room. Mr. Hang had looked at Thida in the male way and touched her breasts as he passed. Auntie whirled around and slapped Thida hard. “Don’t you fool with Mr. Hang,” she shouted. “Do you hear me?”
Before Hang, Auntie had been married for a while to Mr. Mok. He had once owned a moto dealership on Russian Boulevard and could recite most of the Reamker, Auntie said. One day, Mr. Mok disappeared into thin air. “I think he had another family in Kratie the whole time he was fooling with me,” said Auntie. “Men are cow shit. Even Mr. Hang. He slobbers all over me.” These stories and more Auntie freely told as she lay drunk or drugged on her couch, the red betel juice dribbling from her mouth and her pets gathered about her. According to Auntie, her father had been a tour guide in Siem Reap and could speak English and French. In the late 1960s, before the war, he moved the family to Phnom Penh. How he earned money there, nobody knew. During the Pol Pot time, when everybody was forced out of the city, the family was split. Auntie was just a little girl then, but she still had sores on her legs from standing in water for hours. In one of the camps, Auntie’s mother and two brothers died of starvation. Her father was last seen at the Thai border. All that remained of the family were her older sister and her. After the war, they came back to Phnom Penh and lived on the top floor of Lovely Molina’s Bar on Street 172. Then her sister took ill with malaria and died. Every time Auntie told the story of her life, it was a bit different. In one version, her father was killed in the camps and it was her mother who fled to Thailand. In another, one of her sisters survived and was now living in Long Beach, in the United States. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” Auntie would say at the end of each rendition, and raise her head to see who was listening. “We have a family here. This is my family.”
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