by May-lee Chai
“Have you tried at the Church of Everlasting Sorrow? He’s usually helping out in the soup kitchen in the afternoons. You can talk to the father and see when he expects James.” Anita was writing down Father Juan’s number on the back of a cash register receipt.
“Why do you want to see James?” I asked bluntly.
“He is my father,” the gangster said.
“What?” I blinked.
He tried to say something fast in Khmer, but my Khmer was a child’s language, and his was eloquent, sophisticated. I hadn’t heard someone talk like this to me since I had to wait on Auntie. I didn’t want to be confused. “You have to use English for Anita,” I said, my heart beating too fast.
The young man nodded and stepped back, holding his hands at his side, as though he were a schoolboy called upon to recite a lesson. “I am Chhouen Ponleu. I am the owner’s son from Cambodia. He is my father. I saw the picture in the paper. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. But I read the article over and over and I’m sure. It’s him. His Khmer name is Chhouen Suoheng. He was married to my mother, Chhang Sopheam, in Phnom Penh in 1962. They had five children. I am the oldest son. When I was ten years old, the Khmer Rouge sent me away from my mother to another work camp. In the article in the newspaper it says I disappeared. But I am here now.” He spoke without pausing for breath, as though he’d rehearsed his speech many times, the words like the dots and dashes of a special kind of Morse code.
Anita let out a loud squeal. “Oh, my god! My god!” She ran around the counter and hugged the young man. He seemed startled, blinking, as though he were trying to wake from a deep sleep and was not yet certain if he were still in a dream. “I must call your father right away! Oh, this is such a beautiful thing!” She hugged him tightly and started to cry. “He’s been looking for you. He’s been looking for you for years!”
“He looked for me?” The young man blinked.
“Oh, he sure did. I’m going to call him. Right now!” Anita reached over the counter and pulled the phone to her. She dialed quickly, then held the receiver tight as it rang at the other end. “Oh, Mrs. Garcia, is James there? . . . Not yet? You must tell him to come right back to the pâtisserie. Something important’s come up. A miracle! . . . A young man is here to see him. Please tell him to come right away when you see him.” She hung up. Then she squinted at the speed dial and tried another number.
I leaned against the back cabinet, the coffee pots percolating behind me and throwing heat against my skin, as Anita called all the possible places she thought Uncle might be. She left messages for him all across town.
I felt faint, neither happy nor sad, just shocked. I stared at this stranger in front of me, this young man staring shyly at the counter top. But maybe he wasn’t shy, I thought. Maybe he’s hiding his eyes. Maybe he was lying. But then I felt guilty. Why did I need to be cynical? Why couldn’t I be happy? I’d come all this way to see Uncle again, to get to know my real father, to ask him to accept me as his daughter again, to find my family, and here was this young man claiming to be the older brother I thought had probably died under Pol Pot. I should have been overjoyed. In a movie, I would have cried and laughed at the same time. The actress who played me would have jumped up and down and thrown herself into her long-lost brother’s arms. He would have spun her around and around, as they laughed with all their teeth showing. But I was shivering despite the heat from the coffee pots, both regular and decaf, hissing behind me.
I didn’t remember him at all. Not one thing.
He must have been in the family picture. Auntie showed it to me exactly once, just before she and Uncle moved away from Nebraska to California. It was a beautiful photograph, like something out of a fairy tale, certainly not like anything I associated with my own life. The people in it were elegantly dressed, calm, perfect. I told Auntie she was beautiful, her skin silky-smooth, pale, her face round as the full moon, her black hair bobbed and permed in soft waves that framed her face. I’d barely glanced at the children. I’d been too startled to see my aunt looking whole and glamorous, nothing like the woman I knew, whose face was scarred, her soul dark.
This was before Sourdi told me that this woman was my birth mother.
In the picture, there had been a baby in a bassinet, two boys dressed in expensive clothes, and a girl with a bow in her hair. The eldest boy wore a Western-style suit—a jacket, a tie, a button-up shirt. I didn’t remember his face. I hadn’t looked carefully.
I’d been impressed by the fancy studio, the overstuffed divan upon which Auntie lounged, the beribboned bassinet to her right. It must have been taken shortly after my youngest brother was born. Uncle was wearing a suit that matched the eldest boy’s.
This was all I remembered of the family that once was mine.
Should I quiz this man now? Should I say, Do you remember getting your photograph taken? What did you wear? Where did you stand? Whose hand did you hold? A trick question to trip him up.
The anger welling up inside my chest surprised me. I clenched my fists so tightly that my nails left dents in my palms and my fingers ached. I clenched my jaw, too, and my teeth hurt.
I felt as though I’d been thrown and had struck a wall, hard.
The young man watched eagerly as Anita talked on the phone, trying to track down Uncle. His face now unguarded, was eager, hopeful.
I wanted to hurt him then. I wanted to hit him for standing there and openly showing the hope for reunion that I’d been hiding deep inside my heart and never dared to reveal.
Here he’d come, and now I was nothing.
He was the lost son. I was the abandoned daughter.
Suddenly, I bent over double, my stomach seizing up. I crouched, then had to sit on the floor, my back against the cabinet, its knobs poking the sweaty flesh of my back. I felt hot and cold simultaneously. I couldn’t support the weight of my head. I had to lie on the cool floor. I noticed the spots I’d missed with the mop, the dark collection of dirt and dust bunnies and bits of paper and chewed gum and crumbs and a bus ticket stuck together under the counter, where the mop couldn’t quite reach. Then the world went black.
Gradually, I became aware of the young man—my brother—trying to revive me, calling out, “Are you okay?” His dark eyes peered into mine. I waved him away and tried to prop myself up on one arm. My head still felt heavy. I scooted across the floor until I could lean my head against the back wall. Anita offered me a cold bottle of water from the case.
Anita took my hand, squeezed it. “Just think how happy your uncle will be! The answer to all his prayers! First his niece comes to visit, then his long-lost son finds him. After all these years.”
I gulped the water, trying not to feel anything, trying to let calm and quiet wash over me. I practiced breathing and counting.
“Her uncle?” the young man said. “She’s part of the family?”
“That’s right, sweetheart. She’s your cousin Nea.”
The young man stared at me hard. “Nea? I don’t remember any Nea. I don’t know who this is.” He seemed genuinely alarmed.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t remember you either. And Nea wasn’t my name before the war. They changed my name in the work camp. They called me Neary, gentle girl. I go by Nea in America. It’s easier.”
Then the young man smiled. “Ah! Then you must be . . . Sourdi.”
The name struck like a fist in my gut. “You remember Sourdi?”
“Of course! My little cousin. You used to come to our house for the new year celebration. I pulled your hair once and made you cry.”
“Then the servants were punished instead of you,” I said, recalling a story that Sourdi had told me once.
He laughed, delighted.
“Sourdi’s my sister,” I said quickly. I was lying the way I’d been lied to, but I didn’t know what else to say. Once the lie was out, I felt relief. Maybe it was better to be the forgotten cousin. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be this person’s sister. I wasn’t sure I liked him. I didn’t t
rust him. He hadn’t been part of any of my reunion plans.
“Does Sourdi work here, too?” He seemed nervous, licking his chapped lips again.
“No, she’s married now. She lives in another state far away.”
He nodded, relieved, which made me think he had something to hide.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember you either, Ponleu.”
“It’s okay, Nea,” he said. “And you call me Paul. I’m more used to that name.” He smiled as though genuinely pleased. Relieved again.
Anita decided “the happy reunion” necessitated closing the donut shop so that she could find Uncle. She said Paul and I could get “reacquainted” while she was gone. “But there are going to be a lot of customers, I bet,” I said. “And I can man the register.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Anita said. “I know your uncle would want you to get reacquainted with your cousin. Some things are more important than business.”
I thought, That is exactly why this business hasn’t been doing very well till I got here, but I didn’t say it.
Before she left, Anita set out a baguette and a large root beer. “For you, Paul. Have a bite while you’re waiting.”
He sat in the booth and wolfed down the baguette, taking enormous bites, practically swallowing without chewing. Then he gulped down the soda and chewed the ice.
I got up from the floor and dusted off my jeans. “Would you like a donut?” I asked. I still recognized genuine hunger when I saw it.
“Yes, please,” he said. After I gave him three on a napkin, he said, “Thank you, cousin.”
He had nice manners, I granted him that.
“I won’t ask you any questions, Paul,” I said. “I’ll let you tell Uncle everything. He’s been looking for you for so long.”
He nodded and started eating the first donut. He ate methodically, starting at one edge, then munching steadily until it was gone. Then he ate the second, and the third. “They taste like . . .”
“What?”
“Like food I had a long time ago. When I was a boy. Like you tiao.”
I filled his glass with more root beer and brought it back to him. He thanked me and drained it again quickly.
His hunger seemed intimate. Watching him eat, I felt as though I were violating his privacy. I forced myself to look away, out the window into the parking lot, where the bright California sunlight bleached the cars and the pavement into the same steely shade of gray. A minivan pulled up to the curb, and a woman jumped out and ran to the door. She tried opening it before she noticed the “Closed” sign and returned to her van and drove away.
“Looks like business is good,” Paul said.
“It’s starting to pick up.”
“How much you pull in here a day?” he asked.
That startled me. “Why? Looking for a job?”
He glanced away, his eyes scanning the shops around the strip mall, the grocery, the tanning salon, the copy shop. He squinted, and I wondered if he was disappointed to find his father wasn’t the rich man he remembered, or if he’d even figured that out yet.
“So you live around here?” he asked.
“No. I go to school in Nebraska.”
“Nebraska,” he repeated as he might an unfashionable brand of sneakers, like something that sounded vaguely familiar but undesirable.
We fell into a silence. More customers drove up and then, disappointed, drove away. Finally, the phone rang and I jumped up. It was Anita. She said she’d found Uncle—he’d been translating for a family at the elementary school, but he was coming back right now.
I turned to the young man. “Good news. She found him. They’re coming soon.”
Paul nodded. Then he stood up and began to pace in a tight circle between the door and the refrigerated case, mouthing something I couldn’t make out. Maybe he was saying his prayers, or maybe he was rehearsing his story. I couldn’t tell and it didn’t seem my place to ask him. Sweat collected on his wide, tan forehead. A vein throbbed at his temple. He patted at his hair, adjusted his shirt. His nervousness was real. He began to look less like a gang member and more like a lost boy, a missing son.
Finally I recognized Uncle’s Toyota pulling into the parking lot. “He’s here,” I said.
Paul froze, standing at attention. He stared out the glass door, watching as Uncle stepped out of his car and made his way across the lot. He opened and shut his mouth without saying anything.
Uncle rushed in the front door, his eyes wide. He stood before Paul. I scanned their faces. Both men looked startled, as though they had caught their reflections in a fun-house mirror and weren’t sure what they were looking at.
Paul stepped forward, standing before Uncle, then stopped, suddenly panicking, and searched his pockets frantically. He unfolded the newspaper clipping and held it out to Uncle as though Uncle might not have seen it. “I saw this picture. I recognized you. They don’t have your real name, but I knew it was you.” He stopped. He swallowed and straightened his shoulders. He ran a hand over his hair. Then he said quickly, reciting from memory the same speech he’d said before, “I am looking for my father. His Khmer name is Chhouen Suoheng. I am the oldest son, Chhouen Ponleu.”
Uncle let out a low moan.
“He married my mother, Chhang Sopheam, in Phnom Penh—.”
Uncle’s mouth dropped open as though he were going to howl, or maybe as though he were already howling silently. His eyes filled with tears. He stepped forward and grabbed Paul, clutched him to his chest. “My son! My son! It’s you!”
Paul closed his eyes and held Uncle’s shoulders.
Uncle was crying openly now. “Your mother—all these years she looked for you. She refused to give up. She wrote to the Red Cross. She wrote to Refugee Services. She wrote to churches and schools. We drove up and down the state . . .”
Uncle couldn’t continue. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
Paul’s face crumpled like a child’s, folded in upon itself as though he were made of paper. He folded his broad shoulders inward and put his arm up around the side of his head, a child’s gesture, as though he could make himself suddenly invisible, as though he could hide himself from all our eyes while we stared at him and watched him cry.
Then, at last, I had to turn away. It felt obscene to be watching a scene so intimate. To see two men crying, their tears running down their faces. I fell against the counter top, hid my face on my arm, and cried despite myself, felt the hot tears pouring from my eyes against my skin. I should have been happy, I should have been relieved, but I suddenly felt overwhelming grief that Auntie had not lived to see this moment, this homecoming. It would have meant the world to her. A sign that some god had finally taken pity on her after all her suffering. Surely it would have been enough to keep her alive. But this homecoming had come too late.
CHAPTER 12
In the Days of the White Crocodile
Uncle insisted we close up the shop immediately. He said we should celebrate, although we were all crying. I washed my face in the bathroom sink and tried to smooth down my hair. We drove over to a Chinese restaurant that Uncle liked, where he said he knew the owners, and when we walked in, the waitress stared and turned, then stared again. I knew we all looked like we’d just been in some kind of car wreck. Anita and I were in our work clothes, I had flour on my T-shirt, Anita’s nose was red from blowing it, and Uncle and Paul’s eyes were swollen. Uncle was smiling now, but in an eerie, detached kind of way, as though he’d just walked out of a rollover and was in shock, surprised to be alive and able to move all his limbs.
It was an old-fashioned diner. The menu still offered chop suey and egg foo young, as well as hamburgers and something called “Oriental Fries.”
“This place is a dinosaur,” Anita said, “Only the old-timers come around anymore. And they’re one of the few places that still allow smoking.” She pulled out her pack.
I wasn’t hungry, but it didn’t matter. We weren’t here for the food, but t
o have someplace to celebrate, though I didn’t feel like celebrating either. I felt numb.
Uncle smiled and ordered for everyone, picking dishes as though choosing from an elaborate banquet menu.
As we waited for the food, Uncle gradually grew more animated, as though he were awakening from a long sleep. He beamed and touched Paul’s arm as though to make sure he was solid, not a dream. They spoke rapidly in Khmer, too fast for me to join in, describing things I couldn’t imagine.
“Do you remember the Chinese restaurant we used to go to when you were young?”
“Every Sunday we had a banquet. I never knew how many people you’d invite—”
“You always had a friend or two from school.” Uncle laughed.
“We had fresh steamed crab, stir-fried eels with black-bean sauce, clay-pot chicken with fungus. The rice was so soft and white, like pearls. And you always ordered a fish. You’d fight with your friends, turning it back and forth—”
“The head must point to the most honored guest—”
“You plucked the eyes out with your chopsticks and gave them away. It was a sign of respect, giving away the best parts of the fish.”
“What a good memory you have! I’d forgotten that.”
“After dinner on the drive home, you once took me and my friends to a French café just to have ice cream. Chocolate. With a long, round, crisp biscuit with a hole in the center.”
“You can remember all that?” Uncle was delighted. At last, someone to share his nostalgia, someone who could remember the prosperous life he’d left behind and lost forever.
“But I don’t remember my cousin.” Paul pointed his chin at me. “I don’t remember your real name,” he said to me, unapologetically. “But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you. You look like my mother.”
Uncle shook his head then, hard. He wiped his hands over his eyes. “I have something to tell you.”
I waited. My whole body tense. The smells from the kitchen too strong, too oily, making me want to choke. Anita’s cigarette smoke curdled in the air around us. The hairs on my arms stood up, the skin on the back of my neck goosepimpled.
