Lucky Child (37 page)

The hut owner lived with her nine-year-old son and her thirteen- and nineteen-year-old daughters. Every day, Kim felt grateful to this kind and compassionate woman. He knew that if she were caught harboring an illegal, whether dead or alive, she and her family would face the same punishment as Kim. Though she knew the risks, the woman still chose to help him, a stranger. When Kim asked her why she was doing it, she told him that she’d lost her husband to the Khmer Rouge and now lived only to fight for a better future for her children. She confessed that as soon as she’d helped her children find safety, she would shave her head, become a Buddhist nun, and devote her life to the gods. Until then, she would pave her way with good karma by doing good deeds and helping her countrymen.

Even though he had nothing to offer them but his word, Kim promised the family that he would repay them when he received money from Meng. For the first few months, Kim lived with the family and shared their food like he was one of them, with no letters from America or signs of payment in sight.

During the day, Kim was free to walk around the camp, make friends, and play volleyball with his neighbors, as long as he didn’t wander too far from his hiding place. Once a day, the Thai soldiers tried to surprise the refugees with a search at an unspecified time. But the refugees always helped one another, and somehow a warning was sent from one location to another, allowing Kim and the other illegals to go into hiding. At night, while the woman shared her bed with her two daughters, Kim slept next to the son and thought about his own family.

Every week, he borrowed money to send letters to Meng and Aunt Heng in France. He wrote about life in the refugee camp, the family he
lived with, and the growing risks of getting caught by the soldiers. As the human smuggling trade became more sophisticated, and more refugees were smuggled into the camp, the Thai soldiers began stepping up their searches. Kim’s hand shook as he described how a friend suffocated to death while hiding in a metal water tank; he’d run out of air because the soldiers questioned his host family for too long. Now every time Kim crouched in his hole and allowed himself to be buried, he feared this would be his fate as well.

In his third month, Kim had received a letter and three hundred dollars from Meng. When he saw the money, he’d thrown his arms in the air, yelped with happiness, and promptly paid the host family for their protection. That night, the dark hiding hole hadn’t felt so suffocating. While the soldiers had terrorized the family above, Kim heard Meng’s voice telling him to hold on and be patient because help was on the way!

But then two months went by, and with each passing day the hiding hole became more cramped as the Thai soldiers took longer and longer to complete their searches. One day, lifting his mouth to the bamboo post yet again, Kim got a mouthful of falling dust instead of the air he so desperately needed. He felt his chest constrict and explode into a stifled coughing fit. Kim’s head flashed white with pain. His breath shallow, he started to scratch at the plywood to get out. Kim had heard the soldiers leave what seemed like an eternity ago but the family still had not returned to rescue him. He raised his arms and pushed at the wood with his open palms, but the trap door refused to budge. With all his might, he pounded his fist at the wood but succeeded only in showering himself with falling dust. Realizing that his efforts were useless, he thought of his family.

Please, Pa, don’t let me be buried here,
he pleaded silently.
Don’t let me die alone.
Just then, Kim heard the unmistakable sound of spatulas digging him out from his grave. Minutes later, they moved the bed and pulled out the plywood. Kim burst from the hole like a drowning rat.

“The Thai soldiers were very careful today,” the woman told Kim.

“Yes, very long. Thank you,” Kim rasped, kneeling on his knees, thankful he was safe for another day.

That night, he clutched Meng’s letter in his hands and called out to him. “Eldest Brother, please come soon. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.”

The next day while he was playing volleyball, a man dressed in civilian clothes came looking for him.

“Kim Ung?” the man asked, but sounded as if he already knew it was Kim. His pronunciation of Kim’s name gave away that he was Thai.

“Yes?” Kim replied uncertainly and approached. For a moment, Kim’s knees almost buckled with fear that the man might be an undercover patrol soldier. He glanced to his right and left and wondered whether or not he should run away. But the man was much older than Kim, had a slight build, and didn’t have the menacing look of a patrol soldier. And he was alone.

“Kim Ung,” the man repeated under his breath, almost as if he were confirming the name to himself. He then reached into his pocket and fished out a letter and a picture. He looked at Kim and then at the picture again. Satisfied, he put the picture back into his pocket.

“Kim Ung, your aunt in France has sent me to get you. Come with me now,” the man announced, then turned and left without waiting to see if Kim understood.

Kim’s knees went weak as he followed the man out of the volleyball court without as much as a word of explanation. As he snaked his way out of the camp, he said silent good-byes to his new friends, the woman and her family, and the camp. In front of him, the man walked on, the afternoon sun casting long shadows behind him. Stepping on his shadow’s head, Kim bravely marched onward to the next leg of his journey.

When the sun lowered in the sky, the man led Kim out of the camp on a hidden foot trail not guarded by Thai patrols. For the next three hours, Kim kept pace with the man as he wove in and out of roads, trails, and villages until they arrived at their destination. From there, he was passed from one guide to another and finally made to wait without an explanation by the roadside. After an hour’s wait, a green military jeep came to a stop in front of Kim and his guide. Through the glass windows, Kim saw that the driver wore large gold-rimmed sunglasses, a green military uniform, and a hat befitting a high-ranking official. The rest of the jeep was shut out by heavy green tarp wrapped all around its body. After a few words, the guide lifted the tarp in the back and motioned for Kim to climb in.

“Go Bangkok, many stops, you no talk,” the guide instructed him. Again, Kim entertained a brief thought that he didn’t know these men
and that if they were to kill him, no one would know about it. But he quickly cleansed his mind of the thought and climbed into the jeep.
It’s too late to think now,
he told himself and resigned to put his future in the hands of these strangers.

For the next eight hours, Kim sat on the floor of the jeep while the captain drove, stopping only to buy food and use the bathroom. With his back against the green tarp, Kim took in only sounds and smells. As the sun speedily crossed over the sky, the roads turned from dirt to pavement and the sounds of cows in the fields to the sounds of cars. The sputtering exhaust from the traffic made the air hot and stale. Kim’s eyelids grew heavy with fatigue and his body became sore and stiff from all the bouncing. While the world moved forward, time stopped for Kim as he nodded into an exhausted sleep. When he came to again, the jeep had stopped and the captain was holding the tarp open for him. When he climbed out, Kim saw that they were out of the city. On the horizon, even though the sun was setting, the sky was still bright from all the neon lights. But where Kim stood, the streets were narrow, the houses were only one or two stories tall, and there were no neon lights in sight.

“Wait, sit.” The captain pointed to a stall selling snow cones a few meters in front of them. “Long hair girl come.” The captain lightly tapped Kim’s right shoulder. “If tap, follow her.” And with that, the captain got back into his jeep and sped away, leaving Kim standing by the road alone.

Kim obediently walked over to the stall and sat on the grass. For the next twenty minutes, he watched children run up to the vendor with their crumpled bills and leave with their blue snow cones. Kim stared at the fallen shaved ice, and his throat tickled from dryness and thirst.

Then out of nowhere, a hand tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up to see a pretty, slender Thai woman with long braids. Kim exhaled deeply, deflating his chest of worries as his shoulders went limp.

“Come,” the girl smiled.

Kim nodded and followed her. As he tried to keep pace with her, he marveled at how a smile could still lift the heart, even in such strange circumstances. After another thirty minutes’ walk, the girl entered a one-story large concrete house. Again it struck him how blindly he trusted her—and everyone else on this journey. As he crossed over the threshold,
he prayed that Pa and Ma would look after him and not let him die here. Moments later, all thoughts of his dismembered body being tossed into the garbage disappeared as he was greeted by a man speaking Chinese.

“There are ten of us here now,” the Chinese guy said in a whisper as he led Kim into the kitchen where a bowl of rice and stir-fried vegetables waited for him. “Some guys have been here for many weeks; others like us have just arrived.”

“How long will we be here?”

“I don’t know. Like you, I am Khmer-Chinese and I don’t speak any Thai. Some of the others are Vietnamese, Khmer, and even Thai. The Thai guy speaks Chinese and tells us that the smugglers are waiting until they have at least sixteen of us before we go to France.”

“France,” Kim repeated. His heart sank to his clammy feet. “I had hoped I was going to America. My brother wrote that he wants to bring me to America but that it’s easier to get into France. But he said he’d try.”

“Ai, Kim. America is very hard to get into. Many people try and get caught. They come back twenty thousand dollars poorer.”

“How much is France?”

“France is easier to get into and it’s only ten thousand dollars.”

Kim felt as if someone had taken his intestines and wrung them out like a piece of wet cloth.

“Whoever sent for you has already paid five thousand dollars; when you arrive safely in France, the smugglers will get another five thousand.”

“Ten thousand dollars,” Kim repeats. The number weighs heavily on his tongue and conscience. He knows that neither Eldest Brother nor Aunt Heng can possibly have that kind of money. And in Cambodia, Khouy, Chou, and Uncle Leang most certainly had to borrow money to support his journey. When he began, Kim didn’t know his dream was going to cost his family so much. At that moment, he vows to find a way to help his family when he gets to safety.

Over the next few days, more and more people arrived until they had their group of sixteen men. For the next twenty days, while the world woke and slept to the journeys of the sun and moon, the sixteen spent their time quietly watching TV and playing cards in small, cramped, windowless rooms. Some residents would occasionally disappear to seek privacy in whatever space they could find to dream their dreams, while others
swung their arms wildly like winged birds and leapt like frogs for exercise. With the exception of the cook who made their meals every day, the host and his team of counterfeit passport maker, tailors, and shoemakers, the residents never saw or met anyone from the outside world. To make sure that they stayed a secret, the host padlocked the door from the outside each time he left the compound.

On day twenty-one, the host arrived with armfuls of custom-made suits of many colors, winter coats, and hats.

“It’s time to go to France!” the host announced in Thai. The Thai man translated it into Chinese, and Kim translated it into Khmer. The residents clapped with restrained excitement.

“Here are your fake passports and suits.” The host walked around the room and handed each resident his papers and clothes.

“I’m Malay!”

“Singaporean!”

“Chinese!” Kim exclaimed with glee and opened his fake passport to the picture page. In it, he wore the same blue suit the host had just handed him.

“I’m also Chinese,” his friend shared with a laugh.

“Settle down.” The host calmed them with his upright hand. “You leave in an hour so go gather your things!”

The next two days, Kim lived as if he were a spirit while the world around him moved at fast-forward, breakneck speed. From the compound, a van picked up its well-dressed passengers in their winter coats and took them to the airport. Outside the windows, the scenery changed from residential homes to tall shiny buildings jutting up into the sky like crystals. At the airport, a middle-aged man met them and quickly got them through security as a tourist group. On the plane, while the clock moved backward at thirty-five thousand feet above sea level, the residents slept their way to Russia and woke only to change planes to Germany. In Germany, they disembarked and covered their rumpled suits with their thick winter coats to go through customs. Since they were ostensibly traveling together as tourists, the guide did all the talking for them. Kim noticed the sweat leaking out of the guide’s pores on his balding hairline. But before long, the customs officer stamped their passports and let them
through. They passed through the gate with nothing to declare, not even the smallest of travel bags.

Outside the world felt like one big freezer as cold air blasted at Kim’s face and hands. He tilted his head to the falling snow as the flakes melted into his skin.

“Falling ice,” he murmured before the guide rushed him into yet another van.

All the next day, the group slept off their jet lag in a damp, cheap motel while the sky covered the city in pure white powder. Soon after the sun fell behind the horizon, a car and new guide arrived to pick up Kim and three other Khmers. While the stars sparkled brightly in the dark sky, the car drove all evening to reach the border of France at two A.M. Kim and the other “tourists” pretended to sleep while the guide talked to the customs officer.

When Kim heard the customs officer leaf through their passports, he knew the officer was also staring at their faces. He concentrated to still his facial muscles and calm his breathing. Under his coat, his hands were damp and cold.