Children of the River

by Linda Crew

  “Please don't run off to be a soldier,” Sundara begged him. “If you were gone when I came back, I couldn't bear it. Say you won't do it, or I don't want to go!”

  A screaming shell split the night. Sundara tensed. Boom! Boom-boom!

  “Ahh” Samet breathed. “That one sounded closer.”

  Boldly, Sundara seized Chamroeun's hands. “I'm frightened for you when you talk of fighting. I'm afraid we'll never see each other again. Never in this life.”

  “Better that than to have you fall into the hands of the Khmer Rouge.” Seeing her terror, he softened his voice. “But don't worry, Pretty One.” He smiled. “I will come find you wherever you are. Someday when the war's over.”

  He had sounded so confident that night, of course she believed him. Chamroeun could make her believe anything. Remembering his smile now, she knew it was true. Someday he'd come.

  And until that day, the wonderful day when she stood at the airport and watched her handsome, grown-up Chamroeun step off the plane, she would just have to wait faithfully. And surely being faithful did not mean involving herself with an American boy. Shame. Was this the way to honor Chamroeun after the promise he'd made?

  She would see Jonathan no more. But how to tell him? The next time she was to meet him, she decided, she would simply not be there. That would be the least painful, most face-saving way for both of them. When she didn't come to the courtyard at break on Monday, he would surely understand, without her saying so, that their meetings must end.

  Wouldn't he?

  CHAPTER 12

  Pretending she didn't see Jonathan hurrying down the hall, she stooped at her open locker, primly looped braids swinging forward.

  “Hey, what's wrong?” he said, puffing a little. “Why'd you take off so fast after international relations?”

  She stood up slowly.

  “And you weren't in the courtyard at break.”

  She still didn't meet his eyes. “I'm thinking it would be better this way.”

  “What way? What are you talking about?” He leaned against the lockers.

  “I'm sorry, but it's better for everyone, I think, if we don't see each other anymore.”

  “Sundara.” He stood upright. “You don't mean that. You can't.”

  She frowned. “I think you make this difficult.” She glanced around; she didn't want anyone watching. “I don't want to talk so hard, but like I tell you so many time, in my country a girl doesn't go out with a boy. That the reason I'm in so much trouble.”

  “But you've never gone out with me. How can you be in trouble?”

  She sighed. It was so hard to explain.

  “Does this have something to do with Saturday? Me coming to your house?”

  She nodded. “They very angry I let you inside.”

  “Oh, corner ”

  “And then when you mention about the sailing ” She trailed off, shaking her head, still unable to believe the magnitude of his blunder.

  “But that's so unfair! I mean, I'm sorry I don't read sign language or eye language or whatever it is I'm too much of an American clod to pick up on, but I was trying to say the right thing. You're always saying how important families are, right? So I thought if I mentioned mine she'd at least realize I wasn't just some lone punk cruising the streets.”

  “But it was a secret. They don't know I go with you. They would never allow it.”

  “A one hundred percent chaperoned family outing? You have to sneak out for something like that?”

  She started walking down the hall. He followed.

  “If it was such a terrible thing to do, why?”d you do it?”

  She stopped and faced him, hurt. “Now you're mad with me because I'm risking a lot of trouble to be with you?”

  He reached to touch her shoulder, but she backed away, notebook for a shield. “Even I like you,” she said softly, “some thing that are okay for you are not okay for me. I must follow the wish of my family.”

  He shifted from one foot to the other and looked down the hall away from her. In the silence between them, she heard the dull hum of voices, the clinking of dishes from the cafeteria. The bell rang.

  “I must go,” she said.

  “No, don't. We've got to get this straight.”

  “jonatan ”

  “Mostly it's just because I'm white, right? Your aunt would like me better with black hair and brown eyes.”

  “It's not just the color. You see, if you are Khmer, you would not ask me to go out with you in the first place.”

  “Will you stop making that sound like such a crime? I can't believe all this is happening because I asked to take you for one lousy drive in broad daylight.”

  She sighed. “You see why I rather not talk about this? America is your country. You know how to act here. It's not right for me to tell you.”

  “Just tell me why two people can't be friends.”

  “I don't know. I only know we are taught that our elders know best.”

  “But they don't! Not this time. Can't you see that?”

  “Jonatan! I don't like it you make me talk this way and argue. I warn you many time about this.”

  “I know, I know.” He shook his head. “I guess I just never figured you'd try so hard to stick to your old customs now that you're here. I thought you wanted to be more American.”

  “I do, but I must obey my aunt and uncle.”

  “But you're not in Cambodia anymore.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “You think I need you to tell me this?”

  He sighed. “I'm sorry. But the whole thing makes me so mad. It's so unfair. Why should you be in trouble? You haven't done anything wrong. God, compared to most of the girls I know—”

  A picture of Cathy flickered through her mind. Cathy, with her hand in the back pocket of his jeans

  “What am I supposed to do? Just let you walk away? Oh, well, I didn't care about her anyway—”

  “Jonatan ” She never dreamed he'd be so upset, make such a scene. “You have everything. You don't need me and all my sad story.”

  “But Ido”

  Heaven help her, if she let herself look into those eyes any longer, she'd be giving in again. “This is bad for both of us,” she said. “I think now they right in the beginning. When you ask me will I eat lunch with you, I should say no. Then we wouldn't have a hurt like this now.”

  “But Sundara—”

  She began to back away. “No use to argue! Too late. They make me promise.” She took a breath that burned her lungs. “They make me promise I never talk to you again.”

  She turned and pushed blindly into the girls’ room, her heart thudding.

  CHAPTER 13

  Holding her braid wound on top of her head, she stood under the hot shower, eyes closed, still uneasy with this American school custom of forcing everyone to shower together after gym class. She didn't want to see other people naked. She'd grown up with warnings against even looking at herself naked. “You must cover your body in the shower,” her mother always said. “It's better that way.” And these customs were hard to break. Look at Soka. Even now, in an American bathroom with a lock on the door, wearing a sarong to shower all by herself! Sundara had given up that part of it easily enough, but she would never get used to an audience.

  Opening her eyes, she inadvertently caught a glimpse of Cathy Gates through the steam clouds. Those tan lines of hers! Did she really wear a bathing suit so tiny? Sundara shut her eyes again.

  It had been hard, these last weeks, seeing the American girl walking the halls with Jonathan once again. Cathy seemed to have everything. This was ber country, ber language, and most of all, Jonathan was ber boyfriend. She always looked like a girl in one of those Coke ads on television.

  But Sundara could tell Jonathan wasn't so satisfied.

  Once, in the hall at school, their eyes had met. Before she glanced away, she caught the flicker of embarrassment in his, an apology. Another time he'd followed her, tried to talk.

  “Just let me explain ”

  “Explain?”

  “About Cathy.”

  “Jonatan, y
ou don't have to explain anything to me. That not my business.” And resolutely she'd turned away. No use fighting Cathy Gates for a boy she couldn't have anyway.

  Another time, as she was leaving the post office after mailing a package to Valinn, she'd run into Mrs. McKin-non just inside the door.

  “Sundara” Mrs. McKinnon stopped shaking the rain from her umbrella. “What a nice surprise.” Then she cocked her head, her eyebrows going together in a way that saddened her smile. “We were hoping we'd get to see more of you.”

  “Ohh ” Sundara watched the last leaves trembling on a tree beyond the glass doors.

  Mrs. McKinnon waited, then spoke hesitantly. “Sundara, I— Maybe this is none of my business, but did something happen between you and Jonathan?”

  Sundara glanced at her through lowered lashes. “He doesn't tell you?”

  She frowned. “Tell me what?”

  Sundara stared at the marble-tiled floor. “My family won't let me be with him.”

  “Oh. I see. No, he didn't say anything.” She straightened her stack of manila envelopes. “Is it—do they not want you to date whites?”

  Sundara bit her lip. “I cannot date anyone. It is— Oh, I feel so bad. Your family so nice to me. And then my family—”

  “No, no, no, now Don't you worry about that. We understand.” Then she sighed, shifting her umbrella and envelopes, pulling her purse strap up over her shoulder. “I knew something was eating at him, the way he's been dragging around lately .”

  Don't think about it, Sundara scolded herself now, taking a towel from the stack on her way out of the shower. He'd get over it. He'd forget all about her before long.

  She should be ashamed, letting him put his arm around her that way, allowing him to untie her hair. Chamroeun might not want to marry her if he knew of this.

  How she ached to have once again all that was rightfully hers. The boy promised to her. Her own land and people, the customs that had been passed down for centuries. Maybe she should ask Soka if she could study the traditional royal ballet here, in the new land, dance at the statewide New Year's celebration in a golden-spired headdress. The trips to Portland for lessons would require time and money, it was true, but maybe Soka would think it worth the cost, to have everyone see Sundara making graceful poses next to the daughter of Pok Sary, her niece no longer excluded from this upper-class tradition as she would have been at home.

  Sundara only wanted something of her own. Why hadn't she paid more attention when her parents tried to pass it all on to her? Why hadn't she listened when they visited the ancient temples at Angkor? “Look at this, children,” her father had said over and over. “Remember what is carved in these stones: ‘Of the qualities acquired, the highest is knowledge.’” She and Samet had obediently read every temple inscription he pointed out to them, but Sundara could think only what a bore it was, having to be solemn under the unseeing eyes of the huge stone faces. The esplanade seemed made for running, the twisting hallways and inner chambers perfect for hide-and-seek. What a lighthearted child she'd been. How little she'd understood of religion, of the world and war .

  After school, the rowdy boys on the bus shoved each other and sent wads of paper whizzing past her as she gazed out at the gray sky. The sun now seemed something only dimly remembered from the past, and it was easy to believe there had never been any lunches under the trees with Jonathan, no sailing on the lake. She sighed. Just as well, perhaps. Her only thought now must be to remain true to the ways of the Khmers, become a doctor and help people. And when she married, it would be in the Khmer way, with a beautiful ceremony like that of Moni and Chan Seng.

  How happy they had looked together in their rented silks—like ancient royalty. Moni had never been prettier, and slimmer, too, having confided to Sundara that at last she felt sure of having enough to eat. It was a lovely party, a pleasant respite from the gloom of so many recent Khmer gatherings.

  Soka had even surprised Sundara with a length of silvery blue silk to wear. Why would she do such a thing? Silk was expensive in America. They couldn't raise the worms and spin it themselves as they had at home. The kind they liked had to be sent from Thailand. Why would Soka bestow such a treasure on her?

  All week after the wedding Sundara had been imagining herself in rustling bridal clothes, resting on the ceremonial pillows, her wrist bound to that of her groom with a silken cord. And when she shyly smiled up at him, the man she pictured was, of course, Chamroeun. She tried to bring this vision to mind each time she saw Jonathan and Cathy together. It helped.

  Now, stepping off the bus, she flipped up the hood of her new jacket. Deep down she longed for Kampuchea every day of her life, but winter always made the longing worse. She'd grown up with only two seasons: warm-dry and warm-wet. Here, in the cold-wet of an Oregon November, you could not even hold your head up. The rain had a way of beating you down, making you hunch your shoulders and feel the spiteful heavens were trying to break your spirit, opening up on you alone, even though plainly it poured on everyone.

  Once the heavy leaden clouds began rolling over the Coast Range mountains in the last weeks of October, the rain never seemed to stop. Naro's fretting that the constant dampness was sure to rot the strange soft wood of their American-style house was bad enough, but Grandmother's mutterings were worse. “Someone must have died last week,” she kept saying, listening to the drops drumming on the windows. “Now they are weeping because they realize they are dead.” Maybe so. You had only to turn on the TV to know that enough Khmers were dying to flood the earth with tears from heaven.

  Magazine covers showed hollow-eyed Cambodian children; television networks carried nightly film reports of the sick and starving refugees dragging themselves across the Kampuchean border to Thailand in the wake of the Vietnamese invasion.

  Even people at school were becoming aware of the situation. Once in a while a sympathetic classmate would ask Sundara if she'd seen the news. And while Mrs. Cathcart never mentioned it directly, she did ask Sundara how things were going in a way that made it clear she understood how difficult this must be for her.

  Now the bus pulled away with a blast of stinking diesel exhaust. Sundara stepped off the curb into a puddle. Ye! Chamhaue! She pulled back her foot, cold and soaked. If only she could get some decent boots. Maybe next year Oh, Soka was right. How ungrateful. She finally had her plum-colored jacket and what difference did it make? Already she was wanting something else. Shameful, fretting about a little thing like wet feet when people were suffering their lives away in Kampuchea.

  At home, the grown-ups whispered about it all the time, falling silent when Sundara and the boys drew near, wanting to shield them. But they couldn't resist gathering around the TV each night.

  Sundara had heard all the Khmer Rouge horror stories before, the forced-labor camps, the brutal massacres. But now these tales came not just from an escapee here or there, but from every one of thousands upon thousands of refugees, the stories varying only in the specific details of suffering. Genocide, they were calling it. The killing of a people.

  Sundara and her family stared at the screen images of spindly children, weak with hunger and exhaustion, some of them newly orphaned. Soka would cry; Naro clutched the amulet around his neck; the boys watched round-eyed, uncomprehendingly. They knew these were Khmers who were dying, their own people, but they did not feel it as Grandmother did. Naro sometimes urged the old woman to go in the other room, but she insisted on watching. “We can never go home,” she would moan. “My bones will be scattered in this foreign land, and how will my spirit ever find its way to be reborn?”

  Once again the ghosts of starving children haunted Sundara's dreams. She saw their faces, their rolled-back eyes, felt their limp, skeletal weightlessness in her arms as she fought her way through crowds of people, stepping over dead bodies whose bony fingers snatched at her ankles. Come back, they wailed. Come back But she kept running, heart pounding. Hurry, get away, far away Then, just when she'd made it to safety, just when she had taken her first easy breath, she'd o
pen her krama and find the child inside shattering into ghastly flakes, hot ashes rising in a whirlwind. Her mouth would open in a dry scream. Noooo! Nooooooo! She'd lurch awake, burning, a sick thudding in her chest .

  Now, taking off her wet shoes in the covered entry alcove, she noticed Soka's white work Nikes on the mat. They were not neatly paired as usual but askew, one on its side. Lining them up properly, Sundara wondered what her aunt was doing home already.

  “Oh, Niece/’ Soka cried, opening the door, “the news is bad, very bad.” She pulled Sundara inside.

  “What, something on the television? Why have you come home?”

  “I was so upset after lunch they told me to leave work. You see, I came home for the mail and look, letters from the camps. You don't remember this family, but we knew them in Ream. They escaped to Thailand. Oh, it makes me cry in my heart, all the people the Communists have massacred. Whole families, she says. Even the babies.”

  Grisly scenes rose in Sundara's mind. She braced for the worst.

  “Oiee! They say my good friend Theary—she and her family, all killed. I last saw her sitting on her steps the afternoon we left. Ah, Theary! Why didn't you come with us? I wish I could have convinced her.”

  “But Younger Aunt, please, what of our family? Was there news of them?”

  “No, no. Nothing about family. Thank God we can still have hope for them. Ah, but Theary! Remember her sitting there as we passed going down to the ship?”

  “I'm not sure, Younger Aunt.” Sundara was trying to breathe again. No bad news of her family! Just the thought of it had dizzied her. What if bad news ever actually came?

  “Don't you remember?” Soka pressed her, as if somehow Sundara's memory of her last parting with Theary could alter the outcome. “Why, I begged her to come with us.”

  “Yes, of course,” Sundara said, remembering only her aunt's own screaming protests at being forced to leave. What tricks one's memory could play.

  “Oiee! Your letter is sad, too, I'm afraid. I opened it thinking it might tell about your mother. I'm grateful it's not bad news of her, it's not family. But still, it's sad. Someone who lived on your street.”