The Language Inside

by Holly Thompson

      I open the door to my dreams

      and see the face

      of the one I love

      gazing back at me

      in fear

      and adoration

      and wonder

      then I know

      this is the face

      of the one who is

      my daughter

  and I’m surprised by her last line

  expecting something instead about her

  s-e-x-y m-a-n

  I ask if we’ve finished the poem

  but Zena doesn’t look up

  and I realize it’s my turn

  so I think

  then add the line

      to be

  Zena looks up

  when I add that

  but doesn’t look up

  when I ask

  if she wants to keep going

  Sam tells me

  to read the whole thing

  again

  and I do

  nice he says

  and Zena looks up

  by then it’s nearly dark outside

  so I tell Zena I’ll see her next week

  and I’ll type this one up

  for her notebook

  Zena spells t-h-a-n-k u

  and I say there’s a short way to do that

  and show her how to spell

  39 for sankyu—

                 san for three

                 kyu for nine

  which is how thank you sounds

  with a Japanese accent

  I put on my sweatshirt

  tell her I’ll bring poems

  and we’ll write

  more masterpieces

  and Zena

  looks up again

  it’s after five when we sign out at the nurses’ station

  tell them to tell Lin that we’re leaving

  head down the corridors

  to the elevator

  sign out in the lobby

  and step outside

                           to the slap

  of cold autumn air

  Sam says that Chris is coming

  they can give me a ride

  and Chris already called YiaYia

  to tell her she doesn’t have to come

  since my grandmother’s house is

  sort of on the way

  we can wait over there Sam says

  so we cross the bridge

  over the darkened river

  which we can’t see

  so much as smell

  and which Sam says is

  not a river

  but a canal

  from the mill days

  and we stand in the red and green light

  of a pizza sign

  you live with your uncle—Chris? I say

  and aunt he says

  is that good? I ask living with them?

  yeah, it’s good

                 and I wonder if he’s adopted

                 even though he calls them “uncle” and “aunt”

  but before I can ask he says

  how about you?

  how’s living with your grandmother?

  and I say

  it’s okay

  for now

  that’s all

  because I just don’t want to go into everything

  and he says

  I hear you

  we’re standing there

  angled toward each other

  with the neon pizza sign

  splashing red and green swaths across his face

  the smell of pizza reminding me I’m starved

  and right now I don’t want to go home yet

  to my same old music

  and my grandmother and brother

  and my mother and her upcoming surgery

  I just want to go inside this pizza place

  and talk with this guy Sam

  and pretend even briefly

  that everything is normal

  but Chris pulls up in the car

  and Sam gets in the front

  and I get in the back

  and that’s that

  in the car we talk about Zena and how she called me a dodo

  and when I tell them she spelled s-e-x-y m-a-n

  they both crack up and Sam says he bets he knows who it is—

  her sexy man

  who? another patient? I ask

  no he says a poet guy

  I ask about Mr. Sok and Mr. Pen and

  and Sam says that Leap Sok, who he calls

  Lok Ta Leap—Grandfather Leap

  is writing a memoir

  but his hand doesn’t work now

  because of a stroke

  and Lok Ta Chea is writing some letters

  for his grandchildren and a little bit

  about the refugee camp

  but he hasn’t been well lately

  refugee camp? I ask

  Sam says yeah, in Thailand

  after he escaped Cambodia

  when the Vietnamese

  drove out Pol Pot

  and from that one sentence

  I realize that even though I’m good at geography

  and even though I know those countries’ capitals

  I know hardly any Southeast Asian history

  which seems unforgivable

  having grown up in Japan

  but I nod when Sam turns to look at me

  nod thoughtfully as if I get it

  and I promise myself

  to learn something

  before I see him next

  to figure out

                 what is this language Khmer

                 that he and Mr. Sok and Mr. Pen speak

  for now I say

  that sounds tough

  and Sam says yeah, it can be

  some days I help them with English

  things they don’t know how to say to aides or nurses

  most days Lok Ta Chea can’t get out of bed

  he can barely see and his feet are swollen

  Lok Ta Leap is the one I work with more

  and it’s mostly his memories

  of his village and his parents

  and the temple he lived at

  and the work he did later

  and how he made it through Pol Pot times

  and stories of his grandparents

  and sometimes ghosts who do things

  like break someone’s neck

  because the person did something bad

  Sam is then silent

  ghosts, I’m thinking from the backseat

  and I’m reminded of a story that Shin once told

  on a school trip to Kyoto

  the story Shin told us in the dark when he and Kenji

  snuck into our room

  was about students sleeping on the second floor of the inn

  where our class was staying and how one student woke up

  and saw a figure walking back and forth

  past the room’s window

  at first the student didn’t think anything of it

  and fell back asleep

  but he woke again and saw the figure still going back and forth

  so he thought someone was on the path outside the window

  but then he remembered there was no path outside the window

  so he thought someone was on the balcony outside the window

  but then he remembered there was no balcony outside the window

  and they were on the second floor

  the student woke the others

  who didn’t see any figure

  so the next night when it appeared again


  he went outside to check

  but never came back

  now at the inn they say that sometimes guests

  see the shadowy forms of two figures

  walking back and forth

  outside the windows

  and if you go outside to check, who knows

  maybe soon, there’ll be three

  I remember Shin sitting near me

  and I start to think about him

  and what he said on the seawall

  and how I shouldn’t have

  called him baka

  then to stop myself from thinking of Shin

  I tell that ghost story

  to Sam and Chris

  Sam and Chris laugh when I finish

  Chris says good one!

  and suddenly we’re at YiaYia’s house

  much sooner than I expected

  and I feel like a fool for babbling

  not asking more about Leap Sok and Chea Pen

  at least I remember

  to ask for Sam’s cell-phone number

  before getting out of the car

  they back down the driveway

  Sam rolls down his window

  you sleep up there?

  pointing to YiaYia’s second story

  I nod

  he says watch out!

  and I laugh

  the next day after school

  I recall the bit Sam said

  about the refugee camp in Thailand

  and something about Cambodia and Vietnam

  so I search on the Web

  and read about

  the killing fields

  and how over a million Cambodians were killed

  from 1975 to 1979

  by execution and torture

  by Cambodians led by Pol Pot

  and how a million more died

  of starvation and malnutrition

  brought on by policies of forced labor

  families uprooted

  separated

  moved around the country

  digging ditches, building roads

  cultivating crops with crude tools

  made to toil and grow food

  as they starved

  educated city dwellers

  teachers

  doctors

  artists

  dancers

  were all targets

  you had to pretend to be a peasant

  to have always been a farmer

  to act illiterate

  to keep silent

  to hope

  to survive

  I learn that the Vietnamese invaded

  and drove Pol Pot out of power

  but there was famine and still more fighting

  I learn that people fled to Thailand

  lived in border camps

  and eventually the lucky ones

  were sent on to third countries

  like the U.S.

  I learn that Massachusetts took in refugees

  I learn that Lowell is nearly

  one-third Cambodian

  I learn that Cambodians speak Khmer

  and Khmer is pronounced Khmai

  when it means the language

  and I realize that Sam Nang must be

  at least part Cambodian

  and now I have a hundred questions

  I want to ask him

  a couple days later my mother borrows the DVD

  The Killing Fields from the library

  and one night after Toby and YiaYia

  have gone to bed we keep the volume low

  and she and I stay up and watch

  the harrowing true story of Dith Pran

  how he wasn’t allowed to leave

  how he tried to escape

  and then was made a slave

  laboring in the mud

  how he survived by a mix

  of luck and sharp wits

  I almost wish we hadn’t watched

  it’s so grim

  and long past the end

  and the haunting music

  even after we have ejected the DVD

  we sit there stunned

  finally Mom says

  well, I guess I can’t feel sorry for myself

  can I?

  we tiptoe into the kitchen

  to make yuzu citrus tea

  from a big jar of preserves Mom bought

  at a Korean market in New York

  over the tangy aroma

  as the tea is cooling

  she whispers

  we’re lucky, Em—

  even now

  with my lousy breast

  I know I’m losing my Japanese—

  words aren’t there

  when I reach for them

  and I have to check the dictionary

  when I write letters to Madoka

  even though I practice kanji

  in the workbooks she sent me

  I’m already behind Madoka

  because I switched to international school

  where the native-level Japanese classes

  are a year behind the national curriculum

  ninth grade was a review year for me

  tenth was supposed to be new material at last

  my goal was always just to keep up with her

  now my goal is just to keep myself

  from going backward

  but without seeing kanji all around me

  without hearing Japanese each day

  without writing Japanese in class

  I know I’m slipping

  in YiaYia’s kitchen

  my mother’s stirring soup

  and telling me to stop worrying—

                 my foundation in the language is solid

                 we’ll return eventually and

                 I can study it again in university

  you don’t have to rely on Madoka or her mother she says

  you can hire a tutor and take the proficiency tests

  you can pick up and continue the language anytime

  here or there

  but I’m so on the verge I say

  the verge of what? she asks

  complete fluency I say

  what I’d need to enter a Japanese university

  I didn’t know that’s what you were thinking she says

  I’m not necessarily

  I don’t know yet

  but I want that option

  then study she says

  don’t lose it

  like it’s as simple as that

  Mom’s not as fluent as I am

  she doesn’t know how hard it is

  to hold on to those kanji you learn

  and use in high school

  if you’re not surrounded by them

  I sigh

  loud

  and that sigh seems to set her off

  I don’t have a magic wand, Em

  to make everything just right

  so here—

  you stir

  and she storms out

  I apologize to her back

  and to YiaYia

  who’s looking at me like

  what was I thinking

  and I stir the soup

  until YiaYia turns it off

  and tells me I can stop

  she’s so sensitive

  I complain

  I’ll say Toby adds

  she explodes at anything

  well, of course she’s sensitive!

  YiaYia snaps

  scowling at us both

  so give her space

  and hold your tongues

  upstairs after sulking

  about holding my tongue

  and tiptoeing around Mom

  I think some more

  on what’s strange

  about being here

  and I realize

  it’s not just losing

  Japanese words
/>   and phrases

  it’s as if I’ve lost

  half of myself here

  but no one knows

  because I’m a white girl

  here

  I don’t look like I belong in Japan

  here

  I don’t look out of place

  here

  everyone thinks I must be glad

  to be “back” in Massachusetts

  as if this were home

                 but it’s not

  I think of all the cleanup in Tohoku

  the endless stretches of mangled homes

  the tangled mountains of debris

  and all the broken towns and families

  that’s where I should be, I think

  that’s where I’d be of more use

  not here with Mom who doesn’t need

  me or Toby making her days harder

  with our back talk

  YiaYia is gentle

  she’s experienced

  able to comfort her

  better than us

  but I hold my tongue

  and don’t say a word

  on my bed Toby and I lean back against the headboard

  and watch a Ghibli movie on Mom’s computer

  as the movie ends I try to discuss it in Japanese

  but lately when I ask Toby something in Japanese

  he answers in English like he’s happy

  to shed the language as if it were an extra coat