Lucky Child (41 page)

“Chou, I’m going to visit Second Brother’s house,” I tell her.

“I’ll come with you.”

Together we walk the two minutes on the red dirt road to Khouy’s house and are greeted by Morm.

“Khouy has already gone to work,” Morm informs us. “But sit down for tea with me.”

As we sit on the chair swing under the tree, Morm tells me her family is doing well now. Between Khouy’s salary and her joint business with Chou, selling sugar and whatever else they decide will be profitable, they have more than enough to eat, clothe themselves, and send the children to school. As we swing in our chair, I tell them about Kim.

After he arrived in France in 1985, Kim started writing to Huy Eng and asked her to wait for him. When he got his French citizenship in 1993, he returned to Cambodia and they married with Amah’s and the rest of the family’s blessings. When he left, he took Eng with him back to France, where she gave birth to a son, Nick, and a daughter, Nancy. In France, Kim took a French name—Maxine—made plastic glasses frames by day
and learned how to make French bread and pastries at night, dreaming of one day opening his own French bakery in America.

Meanwhile, in America, Meng filed many immigration forms, and in the spring of 2000 Kim finally received his papers to come live with Meng. But after two years, Kim and Huy Eng decided they didn’t like the Vermont winter; they moved to Los Angeles to live with Huy Eng’s brother and his family. In California, Huy Eng is a stay-at-home mom while Kim has found work making French bread and pastries in a five-star hotel. After four years of hard work, Kim had saved enough money to open his own bakery. Now Max Bakery opens seven days a week.

“Are his cakes good?” Chou asks.

“They’re delicious!” I exclaim, my mouth watering. “When I visit, he always makes me my favorite, these great cream-filled cakes the French call éclairs. Mmmm.” I smack my lips, rub my belly, and make Chou and Morm laugh.

“Come over for dinner tonight. We’ll feed you your favorite Khmer food,” Morm tells me. By now, everyone knows I love to eat but do not know how to cook. In Vermont, Eang even calls in advance before my visits to work out a menu so that she can be sure to prepare all my dishes during my stay.

“All right. We’ll be here for dinner,” I agree quickly.

“Second Sister-in-Law,” Chou laughs, “Loung will never learn to cook if we all keep on cooking for her!”

From Khouy’s house, Chou and I walk next door to visit Amah, who at ninety-four is no longer able to walk or move unassisted. However, in my prior visits, I got to spend time with this wonderful woman who asked me only for great-grandchildren and a good bottle of Hennessey. I laughed and delivered only the Hennessey, and she told me in all seriousness that a shot a day kept her blood warm and moving, thus giving her long life. Before a stroke last year caused her mind to digress, she was our living history for four generations of the Ung family.

“Amah,” I call her and sit by her. Lying on her bed, she reaches out for my hand.

“Ay Chourng,” she calls me by Ma’s name, her eyes squinting and squeezing out tears. “You look good. You have been gone such a long time.”

As I stroke her bony, wrinkled hand, Amah tells me about her life, the family, and her aches and pains as if I’m Ma. When she’s exhausted herself with words, I leave her sleeping and dreaming of Ma.

Chou and I cross the road from Amah’s house to visit Uncle Leang and Aunt Keang. With their children grown and able to take care of themselves, Aunt Keang finds joy in being a grandmother to her many grandchildren while Uncle Leang spends his time turning the land in back of his house into a lush garden. After Uncle Leang shows me his flowers, chili pepper bushes, cane sugar stalks, guava, papaya, coconut, palm, pomegranates, and mango trees that are all heavy with fruits, we join Chou and Aunt Keang on their concrete chairs around a table in the shade.

“Your land is beautiful like the jungle,” I tell him. Then I realize that jungle was probably not what he was trying to create, and add, “I mean a beautiful garden.” When I share with him that I’m writing another book about Chou, me, and Cambodia, he nods his head in approval.

“The young children, they don’t know,” he says, and pauses. “And it is too hard for us to tell them. The little ones, it is good they read your book.” Even though my book is published in Khmer now, I know Uncle Leang, Chou, Meng, Kim, and the adults in the family found it too painful and therefore have only read sections of it. But many of my nieces, nephews, and cousins have read it, and then gathered together to discuss it.

“Did you know the book was read over the radio?” Aunt Keang asks.

“Yes,” I reply. I’d given permission for two Khmer daily newspapers to serialize the whole book, and for it to be broadcast.

“Many friends told us they cried from beginning to finish,” Aunt Keang reports.

“I still think about your ma and pa,” Uncle Keang says somberly. “I loved them very much. They were very good people.” Then he looks up at Chou and me and continues. “That’s why they had such good kids.”

As Aunt Keang brings out our lunch of rice and stir-fried vegetables, Chou cuts up ripe mangos and a papaya from Uncle Leang’s garden for our dessert. While we eat, I fill them in about Meng and his family.

In 1997, Meng and his family moved into their newly built four-bedroom, three bathroom, beautifully furnished dream home. After many
years at IBM, Meng and Eang now work the day shift, which over the past few years has left their evenings free to watch cheerleading captain Tori at her games and to take Maria out to dinner for making the National Honor Society. Now Maria has graduated from Saint Michael’s College and is a chemistry teacher in another town, and Tori is off in college studying to be an architect. Meng and Eang are planning their retirement, which they hope to spend splitting their time between Cambodia and America. Until then, Meng continues to watch the many hours of videotapes I’ve made for him of Cambodia over my twenty or so trips back.

We are finishing up with our lunch when Chou suddenly says, “I would love to see America and your home one day.” Her voice is soft and wistful. “I’m very happy here in Cambodia. I love it here and would never think to leave it and my family, but I would love to see where you live.”

While Kim, Meng, and I have visited them many times, none of my Cambodian family has ever been to America to see us. Through the years, they haven’t been able to make the trip—first for political reasons, then it was the poor economy, their small children, the Asian market crisis, 9/11, and SARS. Now, however, their children are old enough to care for themselves, Cambodia’s political situation is stable, and the planes are flying. Meng’s next big dream is to bring Khouy and Chou to America for a visit.

“Eldest Brother and I would love to show you around America someday,” I assure her.

“Meng,” says Aunt Keang. “He’s very kind and gentle like your pa.”

The four of us lounge on the outdoor plank bed under the cool shade, talking and eating fruit off Uncle Leang’s trees until the sun lowers itself in the sky. When Pheng arrives, he finds us lying on the bed in a state of food coma, letting our stomachs do all the hard work of digesting our food.

“Pheng, it’s late afternoon,” Chou calls. “Let’s take Loung to look at her land!”

And together we’re off again, with me straddling the back of the bike, while Chou sits sideways next to her husband. Five minutes out of the village, we arrive at the 2.5 acres of green, flat land I just bought last year, after Pheng informed me it had been de-mined.

“It’s beautiful,” I tell Chou, staring at my green grass, thick shrubs, and prickly bushes.

“When you build your house here, we’ll only be a few minutes’ motorbike ride from each other,” she smiles and leads me deeper into the field. “And here is your own water well already.” She points to a crumbling ring of gray concrete sticking two feet out of the ground. My first thought is that the well wall is too low.

“Someone can easily fall in,” I say to her.

“Not in Cambodia,” she laughs. “Here we are careful about everything.”

I stand at the edge of the well and stare down into the black hole, briefly expecting to see a dead body floating in the water and smell decaying flesh up my nose. But there is no ghost in my well.

“The well is deep,” Chou states. “The water is very clear and tastes good.”

I nod to her.

“Your water is right here so you don’t have to go to the pond. All you need is a pail and a rope and you have all the water you need for your house!” Chou tells me excitedly.

I smile and say nothing, but think to myself,
When I build my house here, I’m covering up the well and putting in a pump and a flushing toilet.

“It’s not only beautiful land but very rich earth,” Chou informs me. “Anything will grow on it!”

I turn from the well to survey my land. In the dusky sunlight, the long grass looks like it’s been colored with a green Crayola crayon, and moves like waves in the breeze. Hand in hand, Chou and I walk on my very own little piece of Cambodia, and in my mind I envision a jungle garden like Uncle Leang’s shading my future small wooden house.

When we arrive back at Khouy’s house, I find him in the kitchen, one hand on his hip, the other holding a ladle to his lips.

“Second Brother.” I greet him. “What smells so good?”

“Sour fish soup with morning glory vegetables,” he replies.

“Mmm, my favorite!” I exclaim as Khouy smiles knowingly. As the man of the house, and a deputy police chief, Khouy rarely makes their meals, yet he is a surprisingly good cook. And when I’m in town, for
a few nights he can be found in the kitchen making his special soups for me.

Over dinner, I slurp down Khouy’s soup noisily while little black bugs fly into the strips of clear tape hanging below a long fluorescent tube. Between mouthfuls, I answer questions about my college sweetheart, Mark, whom I married in 2002 after many years of friendship and courtship. When we came together to Cambodia for our honeymoon, the family accepted him as one of their own. By the time we finish dinner, the tape strips are black with bugs.

After dinner, I return to Chou’s and to her comfortable bed. As I drift off to sleep, I travel back to 1998—the year of the Ung siblings’ big family reunion in Bat Deng. That summer, while the rest of the world focused on Pol Pot’s death, Kim flew in from France while Meng and I came in from America to meet Chou and Khouy. With all the siblings together for the first time in eighteen years, we organized a big Buddhist ceremony to honor Pa, Ma, Keav, and Geak. On that day, over five hundred relatives and friends old and new came to our gathering from the surrounding villages. In between the loud Chinese and Cambodian ceremonial music, Ma’s childhood friends told me how she loved to ride bikes and an old friend of Pa’s laughed about Pa’s love of eating stir-fried clams and day-old rice.

When it came time for all the siblings to pray to them, I kneeled in front of Ma and Pa’s picture. With three burning incense sticks pressed between my palms, I raised my hands to my forehead. I stared into their faces, thinking there was so much I wanted to tell them. While the monks chanted and blessed me with holy water with a flick of their wet fingers, my eyes stung and my chest swelled. To Ma, I wanted to beg forgiveness for thinking she was weak and for being angry that she’d sent me away. To Pa, I wanted to thank him for not abandoning us, even though it might have meant his survival. I wanted to tell them that even though I’d witnessed the worst of man’s inhumanity to man, in my family and my life experiences I’d also seen the very best of man’s humanity to man.

To Keav and Geak, I wanted them to know that sisters are forever. I touched my hands to my forehead three times and bowed once to the
Buddha for wisdom, to Dhamma for truth, and finally to Sangha for virtue. But in my silent prayers, I told my lost family only that I loved them and missed them. Suddenly Chou was praying beside me. As I stood up and placed the incense into the bowl, I looked at Chou and she smiled at me reassuringly, just as she still does every time our eyes meet. Then she rose, took my hand, and we walked together back into the crowd.

Resources and
Suggested Reading

To learn more about the Khmer Rouge genocide contact:

Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam)

70 E Preah Sihanouk Blvd.

P.O. Box 1110

Phnom Penh, Cambodia
www.dccam.org

Email:
[email protected]

To inquire about speaking engagements for Loung Ung contact:

Creative Well Inc.

P.O. Box 3130

Memorial Station

Upper Monclair, NJ 07043

E-mail:
[email protected]

Tel. 1-800-743-9182    
www.creativewell.com

For updated information about the Ung family, Max Bakery, or Loung’s scheduled appearances and work with other charitable organizations:

www.loungung.com

For information on the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation’s Campaign for a Landmine Free World, contact:

WAF

1725 I Street, NW

4th Floor

Washington, DC 20009

Tel. 202-483-9222    
www.waf.org

Suggested Reading

Becker, Elizabeth.
When the War Was over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution.
New York: Public Affairs, 1998.

Chanda, Nayan.
Brother Enemy: The War After the War.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Chandler, David P.
Brother Number One: A Political Biography.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999.