by May-lee Chai
On the final leg of the trip, for the last five hours to California, I still couldn’t sleep, even though I’d been traveling for well over twenty-four hours. I couldn’t even concentrate to read the paperback I’d brought along. But as we entered California, the world began to change. Looking out the window as the bus lumbered along the highway, cars and trucks and trailers passing us by, I watched the scenery grow more lush as we emerged from the desert. I stared at the glaring green of the oleander shrubs and palm trees, the stoplight reds and yellows of the McDonald’s arches, the billboards for Marie Callendar’s and Shell stations. As we followed the sun westward, the shadows grew longer, stretching black and oily across the median like an inky tide chasing our wheels.
The world seemed too bright, too vivid. My heart began to beat too fast. I didn’t want a panic attack to come on, not here, not now, so I closed my eyes and counted forward by fours to a hundred, then backward by sixes.
I always pictured the Little Hell for Ungrateful Daughters to be like the dark closet in the trailer that the First Baptist Church had rented for us. Ma locked me inside it once after a particularly heated argument. I no longer remembered how it started, but I remembered how it ended: with Ma dragging me by the arm and pushing me into the closet, the lock turning from the outside, a chair shoved against the knob just in case, although I didn’t rattle it. I was too proud to try to escape. The whole time I was locked in the closet, I could tell exactly what my family was doing on the outside. I could smell Ma’s cooking, hear Sourdi’s laughter, listen to the cartoons on the TV, yet my family couldn’t see me, couldn’t hear me above their daily din. I’d never felt so lonely before, knowing my family could eat and laugh and watch Looney Tunes without me. I was like a hungry ghost at a family banquet, unable to partake of any human thing.
The whole episode probably lasted ninety minutes, two hours max. An eternity.
“How do you like that?” Ma asked finally, rapping on the door. “Are you ready to behave?”
“You’re going to number ninety-nine, the Little Hell for Mean Mothers,” I shouted through the door. “It’s filled with mean old ladies, like the crazy lady across the street. And every day, she’s going to come out and yell at you, ‘Be quiet! Don’t run on my lawn! Don’t touch my dog!’ Then you’ll go back into your dark room that smells like medicine and bananas and—”
Ma surprised me then, throwing open the closet door. I expected her to drag me out and beat me, but instead she was laughing.
“Is that what you think? You’re a funny kid. But maybe there’s a small heaven for me when I’m old. I’d like my own place, all by myself, me and some mean old ladies with no kids to bother us.”
Ma smiled, and I felt even worse than when she’d tried to lock me in the closet for eternity. To know that she could imagine a small heaven for herself and no place in it for me.
As the bus took the exit for Santa Bonita, I wondered if I weren’t heading straight to the actual real-life little hell for ungrateful daughters, the one where I broke my mother’s heart by looking for my father’s family, the one where I acquired secrets I couldn’t ever share.
It was possible, I thought, as I breathed in and counted backward, ninety-four, eighty-eight, eighty-two, seventy-six.
Possible, but also necessary.
I exhaled very slowly.
PART TWO
In the water are alligators; on the land are tigers.
—traditional Cambodian proverb
CHAPTER 4
Uncle
The Santa Bonita bus station was small, a squat building with a dusty Christmas wreath nailed over the doorway. I walked across the asphalt, hitching my backpack over my left shoulder as I followed the other passengers. The light in California was different from that in Nebraska, yet it seemed oddly familiar. And then I remembered this feeling of entering a bright but unknown world. When we first arrived in Texas, coming off the plane to the refugee processing center in Houston, I held on to my older sister Sourdi’s hand so tightly that she pinched my arm to make me stop. I tapped my feet on the asphalt, amazed by the springiness of the black tarry ground beneath my sandals, and Ma told me to stop behaving like a monkey. I was embarrassing her. If I misbehaved, she said, the Americans might send us back.
After that, I walked very carefully, stepping in Sourdi’s shadow all the way across the tarmac.
Such a long time ago.
Before I left, I’d written a letter to Uncle, telling him I was coming to see him in California. After I bought my bus ticket, I called his donut shop from the phone in the hallway of my dorm. Some woman had answered and I’d told her to give my uncle a message: his niece was coming to visit for winter break. “Be sure to tell my uncle when I’m arriving,” I’d said. But Uncle hadn’t called me back and I left without knowing if he’d be happy to see me, or if he’d even meet me at the station.
Stepping from the sunlight into the shadowy interior of the bus terminal, I found myself straining to see as I scanned the empty rows of orange plastic seats, the straggly line at the newsstand, the families gathered in awkward clumps beneath a giant green plastic Christmas wreath and a drooping “Happy Holidays” banner. A few children carrying metallic helium balloons chased each other, whooping and shrieking as they wove their way around the arriving passengers. A young blond woman squealed and threw her arms around the thick neck of a soldier in camouflage. The soldier dropped his duffel bag and swung the woman around like the world’s largest toddler. Then I noticed the older Asian man standing by the wall under the giant sign with the bus schedules marked in block letters. He was staring anxiously at the passengers filing into the station.
I recognized Uncle immediately, although it had been almost eight years since we’d last seen each other. He didn’t look as old as I remembered, even though he had to be in his late fifties by now. He still had the prominent cheekbones, the burnished, coppery skin, and the thinning hair, but he’d filled out—he wasn’t half as skinny as he used to be. He stood straight, shoulders back, holding himself with the posture that had been drilled into him by the nuns in his Catholic lycée in Phnom Penh before the war. He was the only Cambodian man in the station.
Uncle was staring past me at the line of people emerging through the door. I walked right up to him.
“Uncle,” I said, politely. “It’s me. Nea.”
He startled and stared. I wondered if it was my hair; I’d tried streaking it blue in the dorm earlier in the semester, but the home kit hadn’t quite worked out. Or if it was that he didn’t recognize me because I no longer looked like my twelve-year-old self.
“You’ve grown so much,” he said after a pause.
“Ma always said I ate like a boy.”
Uncle nodded and turned away quickly, as though he couldn’t bear to look at me. “I’m parked out front. Follow me.”
He didn’t even ask me why I’d come, I noted. Whether that was a good or bad sign, I did not know.
As we walked across the parking lot, I had to peel off my winter coat.
Uncle wiped at his face with a handkerchief, then folded it neatly and placed it back in his pocket. He stopped at a dusty Toyota and opened the trunk for me to put my backpack inside. Finally Uncle spoke. “I was so surprised. You look so much like her when she was young.” He wiped his face on the back of his hand. We both pretended it was just sweat he was wiping away. “You look just like my wife. When she was young, I mean. Before the war.”
The woman I’d met had her face divided in two by a long purple scar, one half dark from the scar tissue, the other too light. Auntie had tried to blend the two halves together with makeup, but I could always tell. I’d once seen a picture of Auntie, my mother, from before the war, before Pol Pot took over, before the minefields took their toll. She’d looked young and beautiful and happy. Nothing like the woman I’d known. She’d also looked glamorous, her permed hair floating in perfect waves about her face, the studio lighting making her skin glow. I looked nothing like thi
s woman either.
“Thank you,” I said politely, and waited. Uncle didn’t say anything more. He opened the passenger-side door for me and then walked around to the driver’s side. And I thought, So this is how it’s going to be. We’re going to continue to lie to each other.
On the drive into town, Uncle seemed more at ease. He rolled down the windows and let the wind and golden sunshine blow around us.
“So you’re a college girl now,” he exclaimed. “I’m very proud of you. A good example for your brother and sisters.”
“Sam’s not going to college. He wants to enlist in the Army,” I said. “And the twins want to be Miss Nebraska. They want to run for prom queen. Together.”
“There’s still time for them. You can become a doctor and show them—”
Suddenly, he was Mister Gung Ho for Education? If he hadn’t helped to arrange Sourdi’s marriage—at fifteen, while she was still in high school—she might have been able to go to college. Maybe she would’ve been the doctor. She always liked science more than I did. She liked the fact that she could observe things quietly. I was the noisy one who liked to talk in class all the time.
My heart started racing, the way it’d been doing recently, and I tried to remember what the counselor had said about breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth, calmly, while counting, until I could breathe normally again.
I tried to keep my anger at bay. I hadn’t come here for a fight. Not straight away, at least.
Sunlight glinted off the hood of the blue Toyota, and I squinted, shading my eyes with my hand. Palm trees and oleander shrubs rushed by on both sides of the highway.
One hundred, ninety-six, ninety-two, eighty-eight . . .
“Can we listen to the radio?” I asked.
“Certainly. Yes.” He turned on the radio, and the dulcet tones of Christian Muzak filled the car.
I closed my eyes to concentrate, sensing a panic attack coming on. Somehow I hadn’t imagined that Uncle had become religious.
“Do you mind if we stop at the pâtisserie first? I need to check on business.”
“I’m here to help,” I said, forcing my voice to sound flat, calm, nothing like I felt inside. I didn’t want him to hear the roaring yet. I didn’t want the first things I said to him to be embarrassing. “I need to earn some money.”
“For school,” he said, nodding.
“Yeah.”
“Ah,” he said, pleased, as though I’d answered a question he hadn’t asked aloud. Apparently I’d answered correctly.
Eventually Uncle pulled up to a small donut shop in a strip mall next to a nail salon, a photocopy place, a video rental store, and an Asian grocery with Thai, Khmer, Chinese, and Vietnamese writing on the handmade signs in the window. Uncle’s shop had a yellow plastic sign on the red roof with the words “Happy Donuts #3” in large, friendly letters. I recognized Uncle’s fussy handwriting on the paper sign that ran the length of the top of the front window: “La Petite Pâtisserie Khmère.”
Inside, a tattooed woman of about forty with long auburn hair pulled beneath a hairnet was working behind the counter, boxing chocolate-sprinkled donuts for a woman and her two children. The tattoo on her forearm was a traditional Khmer design to ward off evil, a yantra depicting two tigers and the Sanskrit words for power and authority.
When Sam had spent the summer in Des Moines at a Buddhist temple to gain merit, he had also gained a lot of new friends, boys from cities around the Midwest. Some of them had been in gangs. They had tattoos like this, too.
Sam said it was cool, but Ma wouldn’t let him get one.
I wondered why this white American woman had a yantra on her arm.
We waited while she rang up the purchase on a large, old-fashioned cash register, the kind with a cashbox that opened with the clang of a bell. “That’ll be five twenty-five, sugar,” she told the woman with the kids, and they thanked her and left.
“Hi, Anita,” Uncle said. “This is my niece.”
“I’m Nea.” I held out my hand and waited while Anita wiped her hand on a dishtowel and then shook mine. She had a firm grip. She also had a tattoo of a naga snake with a fanned-out hood arching on the inside of her wrist.
“I’ve heard so much about you. Your uncle is very proud of you. It’s nice to meet you finally,” she said. Then she put her hands together in a sompeah, the traditional Cambodian greeting, and bobbed her head.
I didn’t know what to say. I wondered where she had learned such good manners, but didn’t dare ask, as I thought it might seem rude.
“I’m just picking up the next load. I’ll take Nea along with me,” Uncle told Anita, and they disappeared into the kitchen.
I waited in the front. The shop was less prosperous than I had imagined. There was a single booth, a refrigerated case that held a sparse selection of soda, a Formica counter top that circled in front of the pastry cases, and four swivel stools with cracked, brown vinyl seats. I almost felt sorry for Uncle. He’d never been good at business. I’d somehow assumed that his lack of acumen was due to his constant worries. When Auntie was alive, she was never healthy, always complaining about this or that pain, the side effects of her tranquilizers, about Ma and me. I looked into the empty parking lot, the asphalt colorless under the relentless sunlight. Now I wondered if perhaps running a business was just not his calling.
Anita returned, laughing. She opened one of the pastry cases, pulled out a couple of perfect shell-like madeleines, and popped one into her mouth. “Mmm, mmm. Honey, you’ve had a long journey, must be feeling a little tired. How about a sugar fix?”
I shook my head, but Anita insisted. “I’m sure there’s something to tickle your fancy.” She gestured for me to come behind the counter to see the cases up close.
Every kind of pastry I’d ever imagined was crowded along the metal trays: first there were donuts—baked, plain, glazed, powdered, sprinkles, holes (chocolate and glazed), and jelly-filled—then jelly rolls, bear claws dusted with cinnamon and almonds, crisp palmières, éclairs drizzled with dark chocolate and oozing dollops of fresh custard, tiny fruit tarts with glazed berries like fresh kisses preserved in aspic, chocolate-dipped strawberries, crepes in the shapes of small animals, profiteroles made with dough so flaky I could almost taste the butter in the air, croissants, pastel macarons in Easter basket shades, and butter cookies drizzled with chocolate, crushed almonds, hardened caramel sauce, dark cocoa, and powdered sugar.
“If you’d come on a Wednesday, we’d have had mousse—strawberry and chocolate.” Anita popped a donut hole—chocolate—into her mouth.
“Do you make all these with Uncle?”
“Oh, no, sweetie. Not me. Your uncle’s got his groupies.” Anita winked at me.
Uncle emerged from the back room, carrying several large cardboard boxes. He set them on the end of the counter, then opened a case and pulled out a long baguette. “You must be hungry, Nea,” he said. He sliced it openly neatly, slathered it with butter, and handed it back to me.
I accepted the bread, my stomach suddenly growling. “You know, Uncle, this would be a big hit in a city someplace. Have you ever thought of moving to a better location? Maybe L.A., or Hollywood even?”
“No, no. This is the perfect place for me.” Uncle nodded, as though confirming this to himself.
“Oh, they love your uncle here, darling,” Anita said.
I looked at the barren parking lot, the customer-less shop, and didn’t know what to say.
“Well, time for church,” Uncle said. He picked up his boxes.
“It was sure nice to meet you, Nea.” Anita waved good-bye.
I followed Uncle out to the parking lot, where he loaded the cardboard boxes into the back seat of the Toyota. I got into the car, trying not to drop baguette crumbs all over the upholstery.
I felt awkward and unhelpful, an intruder. “I’d like to help out, really,” I said. “I can start working any time.”
Uncle nodded, turned on his religious music channel aga
in, and drove us past strip mall after strip mall until we came up to a small, white, stand-alone building. The sign out front proclaimed, “The Church of Everlasting Sorrow.” My heart fluttered uneasily in my chest.
“I want you to meet everyone, Nea,” he said happily.
I nodded, a knot in my throat. Ever since I’d been baptized publicly by our sponsors, I’d been wary of the religious. Their aid came with long strings attached, in my experience.
Uncle picked up one of the boxes, and I followed him through the gravel-covered parking lot to the back of the church, where a straggly line of homeless people waited to enter the soup pantry. Uncle rang the bell beside the door, and a tanned priest peered out. He smiled when he saw Uncle.
“Father Juan,” Uncle said. “I brought a donation.”
The priest slapped Uncle on the back, thanking him and taking the large box. He handed it to a layperson, or a very casually dressed nun, I couldn’t tell, and turned back to Uncle. “Your donations are always a big hit around here.”
“I want to introduce you to my niece, Nea. She’s in college.”
“Congratulations,” Father Juan said. “Visiting your uncle?”
I nodded. At least he didn’t ask me what I was majoring in. Undeclared wasn’t much of a major.
“We love James,” the priest said. “He’s one of our most loyal benefactors.”
James? I thought.
“No, no,” said Uncle modestly. “I just do what I can. Well, we have more donations to make.”
“You’re welcome to come to Mass any Sunday, you know,” Father Juan said.
“I will come someday,” he said. “You know I will.”
Then I was following Uncle back to his Toyota.
“Was this a special early Christmas donation?” I asked.
Uncle shook his head. “My usual rounds. You’ll see. There are so many good people here. They are trying to help many people.”
That afternoon we continued making our pastry drops and I met Uncle’s grateful beneficiaries: Azaela, who worked at a battered women’s shelter; Grace, who volunteered for hospice; Thahn, who ran a youth center; Sophany, who translated at the hospital, and on and on. Everyone thanked him, but no one but me seemed particularly surprised by his generosity. We made several more stops back at the donut shop to pick up more boxes and then spent the rest of the day delivering the boxes until the pastry cases were nearly empty.
