Children of the River

by Linda Crew

  Grandmother, too, looked strained to the breaking point, unsteady on her feet but refusing to sit down.

  Sundara touched Soka's shoulder. “She'll be here soon, Younger Aunt.” She glanced around her at all the other faces, varying mixtures of anticipation and grief. The Khmers had filled an entire section of the terminal, and the white people nearby were watching them with frank curiosity.

  “I wish your mother could be on the plane too,” Soka said, overcome, beginning to weep with the stress of waiting. “She was my favorite sister. I don't know if she ever knew that.”

  Sundara thought of Mayoury. She sniffed. The little monkey She could still see her with a red hibiscus blossom behind her ear, dark eyes dancing with secret mischief. Had she ever told her sister how special she was? Oh, wby did people have to be separated before they understood how much they meant to each other? She glanced at Soka, who suddenly seemed small and vulnerable and not a person to fear at all. Would Sundara and her aunt find they cared for each other if they were separated?

  She watched the children at the window. In their innocence this was still a party, but the adults could not help thinking of all those who would never step off a plane in the new land. Now it could never, ever be Chamroeun.

  A strange thing, losing someone after such a long time of not knowing. Like the red cord binding the wrists of a wedding couple, the hope of finding him again had been one of the cords binding her to the old life in Kampuchea.

  “Someday,” Soka said now, “when I save up the money, I want to get a bonze to perform a ceremony for all our relatives who died. Someday when we find out for sure ” She shuddered. “But why am I feeling this way? This is a day to be happy. Yet somehow ” Suddenly she turned with a stricken look. “Sundara, what did you do with her? The baby, I mean.”

  Shocked, Sundara closed her eyes.

  “I never wanted to ask before, but now I must know.”

  Sundara took a breath. “Younger Aunt, it's hard even to say it.” She whispered to soften the words. “They made me throw her into the water.”

  “Oiee,” Soka whimpered. “As I suspected, but oh, my baby. No ceremony. It's just not right Her little spirit wandering all this time ”

  No ceremony. Just a small bundle splashing into the waves, just the screech of flocking gulls.

  “Younger Aunt? I did pray for her.”

  Soka didn't answer for a moment. “I'm glad,” she said finally, choking on tears. “That's better than nothing.” She sniffed and looked at Sundara. “You know, you really are a good girl.”

  Soka's face went blurry before Sundara's eyes.

  “This is the one” Ravy yelled. “Western Airlines!”

  Suddenly the group surged toward the gate, Sundara shuffling blindly with them. Soka bad called her a good girl. Hastily she rubbed her palms up her cheeks. Tears were not the way to welcome Valinn.

  The Khmers formed a human chute through which all the new arrivals would pass. The children pressed to the very door, kneeling on the blue carpet, peeking around the doorjamb. Naro motioned the group closer in one spot, back in another, nervously in charge. As the first passengers stepped out to the sea of brown faces, the Khmers leaned forward.

  Two huge men in cowboy hats swaggered through. “Waiting for somebody,” one drawled. “Sure as hell ain't us” They laughed; someone whooped them a greeting.

  Behind her, Sundara heard a white woman. “These orientals must be meeting a big group,” she whispered.

  No, Sundara thought, just one. Forty Khmers had gathered for the arrival of this one survivor. She wept openly now. No one cared, all were lost in their own emotions. If only her parents, Samet, little Mayoury Through tears she read the same longing on every other face. They could have filled the entire plane with the loved ones they'd left behind.

  More people came down the hall, the Khmers parting distractedly to let them pass. Somebody's grandmother, a weary couple with a whining child, a soldier with a star pinned to his uniform

  What if there had been a mistake? What if Valinn had missed the plane?

  Then Naro whirled and started the applause. Standing on tiptoes, Sundara saw a flash of black hair and someone falling into Soka's arms. Sundara was pushed forward into the solid crush of people completely blocking the door.

  “I was so scared,” Valinn kept gasping in Khmer. “So scared no one would be here to meet me” She was laughing, crying, frantically bowing to everyone, joined palms to her forehead. Sundara embraced her in turn, surprised to find her cheek pressed against the rough new denim of an American-style jacket. Where in her journey had she picked that up?

  “Oh Soka,” Valinn cried, “I never thought I'd see you again in this life.” She embraced Soka once more and for several minutes simply cried.

  “You're safe, you're safe now,” Soka kept saying.

  Finally, when the sobbing subsided, Valinn blinked away the tears and looked around at the children. “Which is little Sundara? I don't know her anymore.”

  Sundara smiled as Soka, grinning and sobbing at the same time, pulled her forward.

  “But you're all grown up! And such a beauty! Oiee! I hugged you not even realizing who you were! What four or five years can do .” She shook her head. “Oh, but never mind all that.” She placed her palms together in front of her, eyes shining.

  “Little Niece,” she said, “I bring news for you.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Sundara hurried past the city's brightly lit Christmas tree toward the riverfront plaza, hands stuffed in the pockets of her plum-colored jacket, her breath making puffs in the misty air. When she saw Jonathan waiting for her at the fountain, she broke into a run, hood falling back, hair spilling out and flying behind her ai she darted between the shoppers crisscrossing the brick-paved avenue.

  Jonathan looked up and spotted her. He stared as she swiftly covered the distance between them.

  “Sundara,” he said as she ran up and lurched to a stop, grabbing his hands. “What's happened?”

  “My sister” She was breathless, almost bouncing. “My little sister, Mayoury. She safe in a Thailand camp!”

  “She's alive? That's incredible!”

  “It's a miracle.”

  Heads turned and they dropped hands self-consciously, grinning.

  “Come on,” he said, and they hurried to the end of the mail, passing the fountain, skipping down the steps to the wooden view deck jutting out over the river. “When did you find out? And how? Tell me the whole thing.”

  “Well, yesterday we pick up my other aunt at the Portland airport. Right before she leave the Thailand camp she find Mayoury, but she cannot bring because Mayoury does not have paper yet. But some missionary promise to take care. And look.” She pulled a snapshot from her jacket pocket. “See? They take a picture to prove for me she there. You know, one of those camera where the picture pop right out, you don't wait?” The print showed a child of ten or so, in a T-shirt and tattered sarong. “Look at her poor little arm and leg. She is all bone.” Sundara studied the picture again. “We see so many picture of children, nothing but skin, almost stop thinking about it. But this my sister. ”

  “She's there all alone?” he asked. “What about your parents?”

  Sundara hesitated. “I don't know. Maybe we find them, maybe we don't .” One sad moment, then the joy flooded over her again. “But right now I just want to have this good news. Mayoury alive! A hundred way to die but she alive! Can you believe} Somebody put her on the back of a bicycle and ride her across Cambodia. Somebody not even family. Mayoury say a man just see her, lost and little, and he want to help.” Her eyes filled.

  December's early dusk was falling. With hunched shoulders and hands thrust into pockets, they watched the twinkly lights sparkling in the bare branches of the plaza's trees, thinking of a man who would help a little girl like that. No promise of repayment, no guarantee his effort would do any good. Just to help for the sake of doing the right thing.

  “Already I start writing letter,” Sundara went on. “I have to bring her out of there. And until I can do that, I want t
o send money for clothes and food through the Red Cross. Soka know how. I've got to get a job at Burger King or McDonald or something. I must prepare for her. She depending on me.”

  “My dad,” Jonathan said. “Let's write him. Maybe he can find her.”

  “Ah, that would be good!”

  “We got the first letter from him just today. He says your tapes are really helping.”

  “Oh, I'm glad. What does he say? Is it as terrible as it look on the TV?”

  “It's bad, but the death rate's gone down. Says it feels good just practicing basic medicine for a change without all the tests, being able to save people.”

  She nodded. “You know, I think about your father and what he do. Leave your nice house where he safe, fly off. Those sick, hungry people pray to God for help, but help doesn't come from the sky, it come from the people who say, I think God want me to help.’ People like your father and the man who help Mayoury, they kind of the answer to the prayer.”

  “Hmm. Maybe so.” After a moment he cleared his throat, glanced at his watch. “Well you better head home before somebody gets suspicious, huh? Wouldn't want you getting in trouble.” He turned around and grabbed the damp wooden railing, bracing his foot against the lower bar. “I it's nice of you to let me know about this.”

  “Jonatan!” She was looking at the back of his denim jacket; He didn't understand. “Don't you know you the first person I want to tell? Why you think I call you, ask you to meet me here? Why you think I run down like a crazy girl?” Still he didn't look at her. “You the one cry at my sad story, you the one gonna be happy when the good news come! You understand?”

  He nodded, but when he turned back to her, his smile was still sad. “I really am happy for you, Sundara.”

  “Then why you look your face down like that?”

  “Can't help it. It's so good to be with you again, but in a way it makes it worse, knowing things have to go back to the way they were. I just wish it wasn't so hopeless. For us, I mean.”

  She smiled, tilting her face. “Hopeless? You talk hopeless to me? Jonatan, you cannot talk hopeless to someone who just get a miracle. No such thing! That why I want to come share my feeling with you. It make me think, you know, anything can happen.”

  Faint hope lit his face, then faded. “Does your aunt know you're here?”

  Sundara took a deep breath. “Yes. She know.”

  He straightened up. “And it's okay?”

  Sundara watched the river churn. “She cannot stop me. I'm here.” She turned to him. “Jonatan, I have to come, because I learn something now. Not from my family, not from the American. Just by living.” She stared at the roiling brown water below them, trying to gather the courage to speak plainly.

  “I learn,” she whispered, “that if you love somebody ” Slowly she lifted her face and looked straight into his eyes, the American way. “If you love somebody, you just better let them know while you still can.”

  “Sundara.” He took her hand, and this time she did not pull away but entwined her fingers with his.

  “Five year ago,” she said shyly, “I never dream that someday I stand on the bank of a river so far from the Mekong, holding the hand of an American boy. So who can ever tell about the future?”

  The future was a long time, she thought, all the way down the river.

  Sometimes it would be a river of deep whirlpools and treacherous shallows; she'd come too far not to know that.

  But now she saw that it could also be like this, a river stretching before them clear to the horizon, broad and inviting, shimmering with hope.

  Published by

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  Copyright Š 1989 by Linda Crew

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-51728-9

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