by Cate Kendall
'Wooo,' the girls teased as Sam returned to the room.
'What's all this, then? What are you talking about?' he asked suspiciously as he helped himself to a Fluffy Duck. He reached forward to the platter of asparagus canapés but caught Chantrea's eye as she shook her head slightly, so he sat back without the food.
'We're talking about you, not to you,' said Mallory.
'What?' he said. 'You can't do that to me, what are you saying?'
'I spoke to Phoebe,' said Mallory, grinning like an imp.
'Oh yes,' Sam replied, sitting back and faking nonchalance.
'She's keen to go out with you.'
'Really?' he squeaked and sat forward. 'I mean . . . really?' and he lowered his voice to a manly baritone.
'Yep, she thought you were cute.'
'Holy macaroni, I won't know what to do, what to say!' he said, looking around at the group with a scared expression.
'Well you can start by not saying "Holy macaroni",' Chantrea said dryly, pouncing on the party pies as soon as Jacqueline entered the room.
'It'll be fine, just be yourself,' said Sera, patting his knee and feeling like an old married woman.
'We're just sorting Sam out with a date,' Mallory explained to Jacqueline. 'He wants me to come and style him beforehand.'
'No I don't!' Sam protested.
'Yes, you do,' Mallory said, patting him on the knee too and ignoring his protests.
'But . . . ?' he blustered, looking to Sera for support.
'You do,' Sera agreed.
'Now, where to take her?' Mallory pondered.
'Hang on, this is my date,' protested Sam.
'Not now that you're with a group of women,' Sera smirked. 'But seriously,' said Chantrea, 'where will you take her?'
'I know, what about The Lounge?' Mallory suggested excitedly. 'It's the most happening club at the moment.'
'What about the Park Hyatt?' Jacqueline suggested. 'So refined.'
'Oh, you're such a grown-up, Jacqueline,' said Mallory. 'Honestly, that's far too stuffy.'
'Fine,' Jacqueline declared, then changed the subject abruptly. 'What about a brunch?'
'For Sam's date?' Sera asked, confused.
'No, but wouldn't it be delightful if all of you brought your families here for a brunch? We could have it Sunday week. I'll cater; you just need to bring yourselves and your families.'
No one spoke for a moment, as they considered the logistics of children, parents and in-laws.
Jacqueline took their silence to mean approval. 'It's all settled, then,' she said, delighted to have another social event to plan. 'With this dreadful weather I think I'll do a chartreuse and white theme.'
The group members finally reached into their bags to retrieve their knitting projects.
After an hour or so of diligent handiwork, slightly slowed by the effects of the Fluffy Ducks, they packed up their craft items and farewelled their hostess.
Sera walked down the front steps with Chantrea. 'Do you want to pop in for some salt to balance tonight's sugar-fest?'
Sera joked lightly, knowing her friend still needed to talk.
'Are you sure it's not too late?' Chantrea asked.
'Of course not,' Sera replied.
When they entered the house, Sera saw to her great relief that mother-in-law had gone to bed.
They raided the kitchen for some blue cheese and crackers, accompanied with a nice dry chardonnay, then installed themselves at the kitchen table.
'So,' said Sera. 'Spill it.'
~ 15 ~
Chantrea stared into the flickering candle on Sera's kitchen table. Sera watched as as a mask of blank indifference slid over her friend's features and finally she began to speak as though in a trance, her voice a monotone.
'In April 1975, I was five years old. We lived in Phnom Penh,' Chantrea began. 'I was just little, so I was oblivious to the civil war. I knew the grown-ups were worried; I could hear my parents talking until late at night. Sometimes I heard bombs in the surrounding suburbs and gunfire was commonplace but I didn't take much notice. I was more interested in my dolls and my best friend, Phinny Ung, who lived in the apartment next door.
'Then the government surrendered to the Khmer Rouge. My parents were worried because my father had been an official in the old government's military department, so we knew our family could be targeted by the new regime. My mother was a famous musician: she played the Khmer flute. The Khmer Rouge was against traditional Cambodian culture and many well-known artists and musicians were being taken into custody. Many were never seen again.
'One night Phinny Ung and her family were taken away by soldiers. Her father was a minister of the old government. We woke up to the screams. I can still hear them sometimes. My parents said we had to leave the city and go to my aunt's house in the country. We packed everything we could into our car and left before dawn. I can remember feeling excited, it was like we were going on a holiday – I had no idea.
'But everyone in Phnom Penh was trying to do the same thing. The new government had decreed that every person in the city must return to the village of their birth. The noise of the traffic and the chaos on the streets was deafening. I just sat in the back seat clutching my doll. The car inched forward only a few metres every hour. Mother forced me to lie down and not look out the window because people were being beaten up by soldiers and left for dead. It took us twenty-four hours to drive the short distance to the outskirts of the city, but then the car ran out of petrol and there was nowhere to get more.
'We walked for hours. My feet bled and I remember falling asleep standing up several times. My father carried a bag with water, rice, a cooking pot and other essentials, but he still managed to carry me a few times. He was a very strict man but he never once yelled at me or got angry when I fell down. My mother was pregnant and white with exhaustion by the time we stopped to rest.
'She used her bag to make me a bed under a tree and as I fell asleep I remember seeing my parents making a small fire to burn all their documents. We started out the next day before dawn, joining hundreds of thousands of others. It was like a great sea of people; of pain and death. I will never forget the smell that filled my nose and mouth.' Chantrea stopped to wipe away the tears that streamed down her face and Sera clutched her hand.
'It was the smell of rotting corpses; the people who weren't strong enough to continue, or who had been killed by soldiers. It was over 40 degrees every day and the smell got worse as each day went past. I fainted a few times and my father had to pick me up and keep me moving. I think by then I had stopped feeling anything; the horror and the pain of it all just floated over me.
'One day I watched as a soldier ripped a woman's tiny baby from her arms and threw it against a tree. It was as if it wasn't real; it just couldn't be real. Then he dragged her into a hut as she screamed for help. We just kept walking. What else could we do? I can only talk about this now because I did years of therapy in my twenties. I had to; the nightmares were ruining my life. I'd wake up screaming and desperate for water.'
'Water?' Sera asked.
'It was maybe the most horrific part,' Chantrea replied. 'The thirst. Our water ran out after the first few days. We survived on stagnant water in puddles, but it was never enough. As we passed village after village that was burnt to the ground and deserted, I knew my parents had given up hope of finding my aunt.
'We were with a group of about eighty-five people all heading in the same direction, all hoping for something or someone to save us. One evening at twilight, about five days after we'd left the city, some of the men left the dirt road we were travelling on to go and look for water.
'We were so hot, waiting there as the sun went down, being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Suddenly there was a huge explosion. Mother threw herself over me and I started to cry from shock. The men had triggered a land mine, which killed several of them. The three who returned with a can of dirty water had to look into the faces of the women who had just lost their husbands. On
e woman threw herself into the dirt and lay there for hours, tears running out of her eyes, but making no sound at all.
'And that night the soldiers came.' Chantrea shivered. 'We were all asleep in the field when we were woken by teenagers with AK-47s. They pulled us up and made us walk; I don't know where. They wouldn't let us stop all the next day and into the night. Some people dropped onto the side of the road with dehydration or sheer exhaustion.'
Her voice deepened and slowed.
'When anyone fell the soldiers would laugh and spit at them, and then . . . then they rammed the butts of their rifles into their skulls and left them to die.'
Her voice cracked. 'My mother fell and the soldier was there so fast. I screamed and tried to protect her. He . . . he hit her . . . hard with the rifle butt . . . hit her stomach. She doubled over in pain. I was so scared. My father leapt to her side and helped her to stand. I kept screaming, screaming . . . I didn't want her to die. Then they made us stop to make a camp, and forced all the boys and men to go with them. I didn't know that when my father kissed my mother and me it would be the last time I would ever see him.
'Thirty husbands, fathers and sons left with the soldiers while we, the women, children and old people, waited by the side of the road. That night my mother lost the baby.
'Later the soldiers returned without the men, but covered in blood. They hauled us all back onto our feet and pushed us along the road. My mother could barely walk, but she whispered to me that she recognised the area we where travelling through – it was where she'd spent many happy years as a child.
'We marched until midnight, when we reached a destroyed Buddhist temple. The soldiers gave us a few spoonfuls of rice to eat and we collapsed onto the hard stone floor. During the night mother woke me. She had played in the deserted temple as a little girl and knew there was a hidden room behind the altar. The soldiers were outside smoking and laughing. We sidled slowly to the altar and squeezed in between the desecrated stone Buddha and the hard wall. What had seemed to be an alcove was actually a very thin opening that led into a cold, windowless room. We sat there, squashed, holding our breath until dawn. After the soldiers herded the group away, we snuck out, crouching to avoid being seen.
'For the next two weeks we crept along the roads and snuck into villages to steal food, until eventually mother managed to slip us past the border guards into Thailand. We travelled for long, hot painful days again until we reached Bangkok and mother found a Red Cross centre.
'Then my mother showed me a secret she'd been carrying the entire time. She'd sewn a small package into the hem of her dress. "These emeralds and diamonds are from the necklace your grandmother gave me," Mother said. "They are our ticket to the promised land, Australia."
'It was the first time she had even hinted that we might have a future. Even though there were only the two of us left, for the first time in almost two months I saw a trace of hope in her eyes. She exchanged the stones for ten thousand baht, which was a pathetic amount, but enough to save our lives. She had heard of a ship's captain who would take us to a wonderful city called Darwin, where we could get food, a house and jobs.
'There was a boat waiting for us at the jetty within days. But it was just a fishing boat, not fit for passengers. Instead of a hold full of squid, the hold was full of refugees like us. It was a living hell and I don't know how we survived it,' Chantrea's voice wavered again. 'The captain kept us locked and cramped in the hold and handed out tiny serves of rice and fish. We had cans for toilets that we had to empty out of the portholes. Most of us had severe gastro and seasickness. And the promised passports were just another lie.
'One night the captain unlocked the door to let us out, telling us we had reached Darwin. In the darkness all we could see were monstrous waves. I can remember looking out in terror at the swell, the black shoreline and then at my mother. I didn't have to say a word. She nodded at me. We had to swim from there.
'A few people couldn't swim and held back in fear but the captain and crew just tossed them in like scrap fish guts.'
Sera gasped and tears filled her eyes, but Chantrea continued without pause.
'The water was surprisingly warm and by complete fluke a wave picked Mother and me up and pushed us towards the shore. For a few seconds I felt euphoric – suddenly it seemed like this new country was reaching out to embrace us and welcome us.
'Of course, knowing what I'm sure you do about how welcome refugees were back then – and still are for that matter –' she added bitterly, 'you'll know that my joy was short-lived. Soldiers were waiting for us on the beach. I expected them to start shooting at us; but they loaded us into trucks and drove us to a refugee hostel for the night. The next day they took us to a place that looked to me like a jail – the detention centre.
'But at least we were safe and alive and we spent the next few months recovering somewhat. My mother lobbied furiously for us to be granted residency visas, which took nine months, but eventually we were on the bus to Sydney to start a new life.
'We had seen Sydney a lot on the television in the detention centre and Mother and I knew it was the city for us. She said its vibrancy and beautiful people reminded her of Phnom Penh, before the war began.
'Thanks to Sesame Street and Playschool I had picked up English pretty quickly in the detention centre, so my mother thought I would fit into the local school system easily. But honestly, Westville Primary was more like torture.
'The group that ruled the school made the Ku Klux Klan look like the Martin Luther King fan club. They were out to get anybody who wasn't Anglo. My friend Kimmy, who'd just arrived from Vietnam, was found hanging from a tree by her foot one day. The cops weren't even called. The teachers couldn't or wouldn't do anything.
'My friends and I did everything we could to avoid them, but they wouldn't leave us alone. Once, Bill, who was the biggest one, with thick red hair and a AC/DC tattoo he'd done himself, hissed into my ear what he and the other boys were planning to do to me in his bedroom that afternoon. I went ice-cold with shock – all I could think about was the woman and the soldier I'd seen on the road out of Phnom Penh.
'So I played up in class from then on to make sure I always got kept in after school, so I could be safe. I couldn't tell mother. She was so proud to have a little Aussie schoolgirl daughter and she was working such long hours at a grocery store just to feed and clothe us.'
'Oh darling,' Sera murmured.
'So I decided to become a fighter,' Chantrea said grimly, squeezing her hands into fists. 'I learned street fighting and pretty soon the taunts stopped and for the first time I started to feel safe and in control. After I finished school, I worked odd jobs here and there for five years and then finally decided a uni degree was my chance to get ahead. That was where I met Danny – Danny O'Leary. He was studying medicine and had all the girls on the campus swooning at his feet.'
Sera sat up with interest; she had never heard Chantrea speak about Sally's father before.
'I think it destroyed his fragile ego that I wasn't immediately taken by his blue eyes and charm.' She sighed. 'Sera, it's already been a long night, are you sure you're up for the whole messy saga of my life?'
'Absolutely,' Sera nodded. 'You can't stop now.'
'Okay, well, Danny . . . the more he tried to catch me, the more I ignored him. I think it just became a contest to him . . . I dunno . . . anyway life at home with mother was mental. I wanted to be free of any reminders of our life in Cambodia, of our "heritage", but she kept insisting I should speak Cambodian, be proud of coming from such a beautiful country.
'I tried to tell her that Australians hate Asians; that she should stop announcing where we were from to the world, but she said I was the one who should be ashamed.
'So I started going out with Danny, and figured marrying him would be my ticket out of my culture. Not very feminist of me, but there you go,' she grimaced.
'I got pregnant within about five minutes of our very drab little registry office wedding, and af
ter working so hard to catch me, Danny lost interest and formed a pretty close relationship with dope. He was stoned more than he was straight and it was downhill from there. He failed his exams and then just quit uni altogether. He wouldn't get a job to support us, so I had to give up study just after Sally was born. It all still makes me so freakin' angry,' she said quietly.
'I can understand that,' Sera said sympathetically.
'So I worked in a travel agency during the day while Danny was supposed to be caring for Sally – but even that was too much effort for the lazy arsehole.' She began to shake with anger, and wiped away more tears. 'One day during my lunch-break I went home to check on them. Danny was passed out on the couch and there was bong water spilt all over the floor. Poor little Sally was lying in her cot, purple with screaming.
'So I packed up and left, went back to live with Mother in Westville. Of course she was over the moon to have Sally in her clutches; thrilled that my marriage to an unsuitable skip was over and that I was back where she could nag and hassle me all bloody day long. I never heard from Danny again. Bastard.
'But look, it's been okay living with mother, at least she helps me out with Sally. I could never have become a flight attendant without her support, and I need a good job so I can save for Sally's education and buy a bigger house one day. It's only when she starts shoving all the Cambodian crap down Sally's throat that I really get angry. I can't believe that she's been doing it behind my back all this time.' Her voice was choked with emotion.
'Being Cambodian has only ever brought me pain and suffering and I always vowed that Sally wouldn't have to go through anything like that,' she said.
Sera wanted to say that Australia was a different place now, a place of racial tolerance and inclusion; but from her sheltered perspective how would she know? Was the country any fairer or more tolerant than it had ever been? Maybe Chantrea was right to try to prevent Sally identifying with a part of her culture that could set her apart from her peers.
