Part 13 (2/2)

M'day daem meant his former mother, from another life.

”Do you think she maybe is?” Sophy asked.

”No!” her mom said.

But she worried anyway. She worried the neighbor might get a kru to do voodoo on Gift, and she worried in general about losing her kids, because she'd lost her sons before, and because that was just what Sophy's mom worried about. Like she worried the kids would leave, like they weren't really hers, but just borrowed or something. Sophan always joked that there was no one with an easier life than the old women hanging around the temple, because people like their mom gave them so much food and money. ”I give because that woman has no one to take care of her,” their mom would say. ”Look at her. All alone. No one to take care of her in her old age. No children. Look at her.”

And once Sophan said, ”Look at her. Look at her,” too, imitating their mom.

But Sopheap who thought more about stuff, like she'd been a teacher in her former life or something, said, ”It's the ghosts of our brothers that make her like that,” and then Sophan stopped and felt bad.

Before the monks started fighting, Sophy's mom went to the temple all the time. And her mom is still Buddhist now, like she doesn't believe in killing bugs or going fis.h.i.+ng or anything, Buddhism is very strict. But instead of giving oranges and rice and amok to the fighting monks, now she sends money to this other monk, who sends it to Cambodia, or at least that's what he says. Of course, being American, Sophy and her sisters don't care about karma that much, which their mom wishes they would but says is okay. Because while she thinks it is better to die than to give up the teachings of the Buddha, she also thinks kids don't have deep thoughts yet-like they don't know themselves yet. Knowing yourself-dung khluon aeng-being this big deal to her. She thinks that they'll turn more Buddhist when they are, like, thirty or fifty, and know what life is. And in the meantime she's trying to build up her own karma, because in her next life, she definitely does not want to live when pretty much everybody else in her family is dead, in her next life she wants to die with them or, better yet, be one of the first ones to go. Because how lucky her father was, that he got killed right away and didn't have to watch a single other person get killed or beaten or starved, while here she's still seeing it and hearing it in her dreams. Like it never ends. ”Kit ch'ran,” Sophy's dad says-she thinks too much. As if he doesn't? In their old town, Sophie's mom went to the kru sometimes and got medicine, but it didn't help. She still dreamed about having to drink cow p.i.s.s, or walk over dead bodies, or sleep with dead bodies. Or about being covered with flies, or suffocating in the mud, or about ghosts. K'maoch who promise her food to eat, when actually they're going to eat her. K'maoch who want to be buried, but then pull her into the grave with them. Or baby k'maoch who want her to feed them but then grow up into giants that crush her. She had three children before, in Cambodia, by Sophy's uncle, but they all starved.

That was bad.

Now Sophy's mom has a new baby she is so happy about. She named him Gift because he is like her boys come back to her, a gift. But she still sits up at night a lot, afraid to go to sleep, because of the k'maoch and because she thinks Gift's mother from his last life really might come get him, that's why she puts scissors under his pillow, to scare that other mother away. How does she know Gift's m'day daem is afraid of being cut, Sophy says, but her mom says she just knows. She tries to make sure he never cries, because that might worry his m'day daem and make her come, and she keeps a light on too, because his m'day daem doesn't like light. And who knows if she's right or wrong, all Sophy knows is, it's not like sleeping with her sisters. There are two bedrooms in the trailer, so Sarun and her dad sleep in one, and her mom and Gift and Sophy sleep in the other. And Sarun and her dad have their own mattresses, but her mom and Gift and Sophy have one big mattress that they use sideways, which is okay because they're all small and fit fine. Mostly, though, Sophy lies down while her mom sits propped up against her wall, holding Gift all night, which he really likes and is fine with Sophy, except when her mom does finally fall asleep herself. Because then Gift rolls off her lap and starts crying, and that wakes everyone up. Sophy tries to sleep facing her wall, because noise coming from in back of you isn't as loud as noise coming from in front, and she blindfolds her eyes with a knee sock to block out the light, but lets her mom put her feet under her, if she wants, because her mom's feet get so cold. Her mom's hands get cold too, if she's not holding Gift, and sometimes she sweats and shakes and gets dizzy or pibak chet nah-like, just gets really, deeply sad. Her sadness is hidden inside, so you can't really see it, except that it kind of shrinks her up and sucks her into it, kind of like a k'maoch, which is messed up, seeing as how she's so tiny and skinny to begin with, like the kids are all two sizes bigger than her at least. Not that they're so tall, but they're definitely full-size people, while their mom looks like maybe she is or maybe she isn't.

Anyway, Sophy is just hoping that one day her sisters will be living with her again, the three of them sharing one room the way they used to. She doesn't care if it's Cambodian or not, because it was just the best! It was, it was, like, love or happiness, or heaven, or something. She sees now that she was bad, and that that was why things happened the way they did. Because in Khmer there's an expression, One bad fish spoils the whole basket, and that's what people believe-that if a girl is bad, it shows that that whole line of the family is bad. So that what Sophy did made everyone look down on her sisters, until finally they couldn't take it. Like it shattered their face, which is why they went bad and got into trouble too.

But probably she should just say what happened, right?

Okay.

With Ronnie, it was a lot like being with her sisters. Like they shared stuff and hung out. The downtown being full of fancy stores, and the whole city being, like, this showcase, Cambodian kids were not supposed to hang around downtown-Latinos either. Because the merchants didn't like the way it looked. They didn't like all the black hair, and they thought everyone was, like, in a gang. So you could wait for your bus downtown, but if the bus came and you didn't get on it, you got arrested for loitering, or for disorderly conduct, something. Even if you weren't doing anything, the police would come and hara.s.s you until finally you gave them the finger and then they could arrest you for that. They were tough-Irish, mostly, or Greek. And in the evening there was a curfew to keep kids off the streets, eleven o'clock, which a lot of people said wasn't even legal. But the town had that curfew anyway, and that p.i.s.sed Ronnie off. ”What is this s.h.i.+t?” he'd say. ”Are we second-cla.s.s citizens or what?” He was short, but he had this big way of talking, and Sophy loved that, even Sophan said like Leonardo DiCaprio, and he was! Like he wouldn't have just stayed downstairs in the t.i.tanic and shut up and gotten drowned, he would have broken through the gate and escaped. And he didn't care he was short. ”You're Cambodian, you're short,” he used to say, laughing at guys who wore elevator shoes and stuff. You could tell he was used to being on a stage, being the lead singer of his band, and the lead guitar too, because he'd, like, spread his arms so wide you could see the bony sides of his body through the droopy armholes of his basketball jersey, and he'd turn his head from side to side, looking everybody right in the eye and showing off his earring, which was real platinum. Ronnie had the only real platinum earring anybody'd ever seen, and it really was real, like he'd bought it off a rock star who was getting a new one, and that was, like, so Ronnie. He was ahead of everyone, and not just in his jewelry. His thinking was ahead too. Like he'd say, ”Pretty soon there's going to be a p.o.o.p scoop law, so if Cambodians s.h.i.+t on the streets we'll know we should clean it up ourselves,” and he called the police Angka. ”Watch out, here comes Angka,” he'd say. ”Watch out. They're going to send you to see Angka.” The whole point of school was to keep Cambodians off the streets, he'd say, which was why he, for one, was not going to school. ”Because what is this s.h.i.+t?” he'd say. ”Aren't these our streets?” He liked to walk down the middle of them sometimes, which of course brought Angka running. Downtown, but also where they all lived, in the Yard, because that was the trouble area where shootings happened. And when the blues came running, Ronnie'd run too, ducking and feinting, and having a good laugh later. ”Angka is like a pineapple,” he'd say. ”Angka has eyes everywhere, but we got by the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Can you believe this s.h.i.+t?”

Ronnie used the same words for a lot of things, only changing his voice. Like he was into Cambodian culture. He was into playing roam vong, and roam k'bach, and saravan, and not just rock, and whenever he found some new way of mixing them with rock, he'd say, ”Can you believe this s.h.i.+t?”-kind of pleased, like. And with Sophy too, he'd say it. Like if she said her mom and dad didn't want her to date until she was engaged, he would say, real gentle-like, ”I don't believe this s.h.i.+t.” And when they'd go sit down by one of the ca.n.a.ls and make out, he'd put his hand up her s.h.i.+rt and say, ”Now this is some s.h.i.+t,” and she'd think that too. Like she'd say, ”Put your hands on me, Jack,” like Sophan did when she was imitating Rose in the movie, and he'd do that. And sometimes he'd put his whole head inside her s.h.i.+rt and pull it down like a tent, and like, nuzzle and touch her, and it'd be like she had a baby in there, something really hers. And they could do that for a long time in the beginning. But then she started nuzzling him back, and then they could not stand it, it was just some s.h.i.+t! And one day she had to have him not just in her s.h.i.+rt but in her, she didn't care they were outside, she didn't care what happened, she didn't care about anything. Or maybe she did, because she made him pull out in the beginning. But then he pulled out later and later, until finally he said, ”Oh, what is this s.h.i.+t, my love, what is this s.h.i.+t,” and even though they had been planning to get some rubbers that very day, she couldn't say anything except, ”I'm flying!” like Rose in t.i.tanic.

And he said, ”This is some s.h.i.+t.”

Then they did it again, and afterwards they watched the water go gold in the ca.n.a.l, even though they knew that meant it was way after school hours, probably supper time or something. She felt like that s.h.i.+t just didn't matter anymore because they were, like, a man and a woman. And they were starting a new life, they were. Like they were going to leave this place and forget about Cambodia. First they were going on a honeymoon with all their brothers and sisters on, like, an island where there were beaches and you could jump off rocks into the water and stuff. And then they were going to make every day count. They were. They were going to make every day count. Maybe she would have gone home, if it wasn't already so late she knew she was going to be beaten. But that late there was no hope, her dad was definitely going to beat her with a broom handle or get drunk and yell at her with a knife in his hand, and so she didn't go home. Instead she sat with Ronnie and watched the water, which was moving fast and kind of weaving around, the way it did when the locks were open, making all these complicated patterns that changed and changed. And then she hid at Ronnie's house. She hung out with him in the daytime and slept with his sisters at night and, like, n.o.body in his family really cared. Because his dad had, like, two jobs, and his mom had three, and they were too busy to notice. And his sisters liked her, and she liked them. And, like, Cambodian kids ran away all the time anyway, that was just a normal thing for them, it wasn't until Sophy got to the foster home that she found out other kids thought it was wack.

But so what. Ronnie and her just hung out and thought. He gave her his old guitar and taught her to play, and in between lessons they tried to figure out what to do with their lives. Like she thought he should do music at night and computers in the day, but he said that was because she was half Chinese. He thought that he should just be a rock star and that she should just be a model, that would be perfect. She hadn't even convinced him that becoming a model was not realistic for a Cambodian, which she was, actually, and anyway would be a lot of stress even if she was beautiful, which she wasn't, when the blues showed up. They'll never know who ratted on them, but Ronnie thought it was the Bloods pulling s.h.i.+t as usual. Like here he wasn't even a Crip, just a friend of the Crips, who played at their parties and that was all, and still the Bloods had to go showing disrespect. The last thing Sophy said to Ronnie as the officer was putting handcuffs on her was please, please, not to go looking for anyone, but she knew what he was going to do.

And meanwhile, there she was, a runaway and a ”stubborn child,” as the cops liked to say. And a shoplifter, because she didn't have any clothes when she moved in with Ronnie, and Ronnie's sisters were smaller than her, and she tried on this T-s.h.i.+rt that made Ronnie whistle. Probably if Ronnie hadn't said he took s.h.i.+t all the time, she wouldn't have. But he did, and n.o.body thought the store owner would prosecute, but he did, too. And for a while she thought she was going to have a baby besides, but in the end she didn't, and that was a good thing, since things were bad enough. Like she was not only in for shoplifting, she was in for resisting arrest, because she'd tried to keep Ronnie from punching the cop who arrested her, and when the cop looked like he was going to grab Ronnie anyway, she'd blocked him.

So there she was, all of a sudden, in this big room with everyone looking like they were on TV. Like even her dad and mom looked they were on TV, and when they told the judge she was no good, that was like TV too. She kind of liked the judge because he chewed gum in court, and because once he came down from the bench and sat with them, scaring her mom and dad so bad she almost thought they were going to change their minds about her. Like, her dad closed his eyes while the judge talked, as if he was really listening or meditating or something, and even afterwards he sat so still he looked like a statue, it was as if he had gone somewhere and just left his body to keep his place. And when he opened his eyes, you almost couldn't tell whether he was going to say anything or not, which made her feel proud of him in a way. Because it was like right then he wasn't the dad whose eyes moved around and who smoked cigarettes and drank, but somebody else-it was like right then he was the dad he would have been if he had never left Cambodia. A dad with answers inside him. Like looking at him sitting there, she remembered how he once said that if you put a bird in a cage, it wants to fly out. And she remembered how true she thought that was, and how she wondered then if deep down he understood her. But when he finally opened his eyes in the courtroom he didn't say anything about what happens when you put a bird in a cage or anything like that. Instead he said, ”We don't want her. She is not our daughter, she is no good.” Just like that, in about the clearest English she'd ever heard him speak. And then her mom nodded too, as if she understood him perfectly even though he was speaking English, and as if she agreed. And even when the judge made everyone take a break and gave them both time to think about what they were saying, they came back to the courtroom and said the same thing. We don't want her-her dad, like, lopping the air with his finger as he talked. And then Sophy just wished her sisters were at least there to say they'd missed her when she ran away and would miss her now that she was going to a foster home. But they were in school.

So she went by herself with the lady from DYS, her name was Fatima, to a foster home behind this big wire fence with, like, plastic woven through it. And Sophy was sent to a new school, and given a probation officer and a thousand rules, rule number one being that she was completely forbidden to see Ronnie. Of course, Ronnie tried to visit her there anyway, and once she really did see him, like, right on the other side of the fence. Like she could see the top of his head pop up, she thought at first she was, like, seeing things. But then he sent a paper airplane note saying that really was him, on a pogo stick! Leave it to Ronnie to even know what a pogo stick was. And then she loved him even more, and tried to write and tell him that that was some s.h.i.+t he'd pulled. Like she sent a letter to his house, disguising her handwriting. But she never knew if he ever got that note or not, because just when she thought she was going to get to see him a lot like that, bouncing up and down, he fell off the pogo stick and broke his leg really bad, and had to have an operation. Everybody else at school, when they got hurt it was because of car accidents. Only Ronnie would get hurt on a pogo stick, he really was some s.h.i.+t. But then stuff started happening with the Bloods when they realized they had a sitting duck, people said because Ronnie had already wet someone, to retaliate for the ratting. And that made Sophy feel terrible, because Ronnie had never wet anyone before, and wasn't even a real member of the gang, he was just someone who played for them at their parties, it was only because of all this that he had to get jumped in. Anyway, she didn't get the whole story, but she did hear how the situation got so dangerous that when Ronnie finally got out of bed, he had to go straight back to school, for the protection.

Of course, everyone was surprised to see him back, like, all of a sudden in the middle of the year. Like there he was with his textbooks in a backpack hanging off his wheelchair and everything. Sophy told Sopheap to take a picture for her, and Sopheap did, and snuck it in when she came to visit. And Sophy did laugh every time she saw it, and hid the picture in the math section of her school notebook, where n.o.body ever found it. And that was, like, a miracle because her foster parents were the nosiest people alive.

She hated the foster home. The kids smelled like B.O., and the house smelled like B.O., and she didn't like Wayne and Jane, who instead of making people use deodorant, made them all go to church, like, three times a week. And you couldn't just say Praise the Lord quiet-like when you were there either, you had to say it in a big voice so that everyone could hear you. PRAISE THE LORD! Every time someone came to visit her she felt worse. Like when her sisters came and brought pictures of what they were wearing and everything, she couldn't believe that no one wrote even once how they remembered that that was Sophy's s.h.i.+rt and what a ten she looked in it. Not that people had forgotten about her completely. In fact, Sophan said people were talking so night and day that she and Sopheap couldn't get away from it, one time they even tried to hide in a stall in the girls' room, but people looked under the door and found them. Because they could see there were four legs in there, and because everyone knew everyone's shoes. Sophan said lunch was so terrible, she couldn't wait to get back to cla.s.s. And all because of the talking! That was one thing Sophy did not miss. People say, ”The Vietnamese have their tricks, the Thais have their schemes, and the Khmer have their gossip,” and it's true. Like it just would not be possible to gossip more than Cambodians.

And then one day Sopheap told Sophy how Ronnie had a new hottie wheeling him all around. Like she was bringing him ice packs and rubbing his back with a coin when it got sore from the chair, Sopheap said, and Sophy didn't even need to hear the rest.

She just thought about it all for a long time afterwards. Like she thought about what people were saying and doing, and she thought about what she had said and done too, just like her dad used to tell her. She looked in her own heart and in Ronnie's heart, and she cried, and when finally she acted, it was just what her dad would have wanted, an action, not a reaction. Like she did not run away and make Ronnie tell her who this girl was and where she was coining him. She acted like Ronnie was dead, and ran away to her own home, to her own mom and dad, and to the bedroom she shared with her own sisters, so she could light some incense on the t.i.tanic altar and be in the pictures wearing her own stuff sometimes and her sisters' stuff other times. And sure enough, Sophan and Sopheap were, like, so happy to see her! And if you don't know anything about law, you would probably think, Great. Like you would probably never believe it could be against the law to run away to your own home, but it is. Forget that you're with your mom and dad where you belong, the police will still issue a warrant for your arrest. And if you think that parents are parents and love their kids by instinct because of being mammals, well, Sophy's dad was still mad. Her mom was not as mad, but her dad was so mad she couldn't show how she felt. Like she ignored Sophy in front of him, Sophy only knew what her mom thought because she cooked sour soup, Sophy's favorite, for supper. And Sophy enjoyed it very much, because then she knew her mom's heart.

It was great to be home, but Sophy wasn't snuggled up happy with her sisters for two days before an officer turned up to get her. Because, like, her own dad had turned her in! Her mom cried, her sisters cried, her brother banged his fist on the wall, and still the officer just stood there like a statue. Threatening to bring down more men until finally Sophy let him put those handcuffs on her again. Of course, handcuffs are not as bad as almost anything that happened in Cambodia, but she did think then that they had to be close. She cried and cried and couldn't wipe her own eyes and couldn't wipe her own nose, her mom and sisters had to wipe them for her. And through the whole thing the officer just stood there with his big belly, drinking his coffee, if she could have she'd have thrown that pink cup right in his pink face.

Instead she got put in the kind of girls' group home that's like a training program for wh.o.r.es, the pimps just sign you up. She was glad she knew that thanks to Big Erica, who told her back at Wayne and Jane's, and she tried to tell some of the other girls, but they were too gone. Like they'd show her some necklace and say they were in love and feel sorry for her that she wasn't in love too, it got to be so bad that after a while she had to pretend Ronnie and her were still in love, so the other girls would leave her alone. But that was bad, because his picture just killed her.

And then before you could say wack, her sisters were getting in trouble too. Like kids at school were looking down on them to the point where they knew trouble was coming and that they needed protection, and so Sopheap starting seeing a Latino guy, which was bad, and Sophan started seeing a Vietnamese, which was worse. And pretty soon after that they both ended up running away too. Like Sopheap was with the Latino guy when he borrowed a car, which was wack, especially as it turned out he had a gun on him. And Sophan and the Vietnamese got involved in drug dealing and got caught with a piece too, right about the same time as they heard Sophan's best friend's big sister was going to be valedictorian of their cla.s.s. Like there she was, Cambodian and everything, but she had beat out all the Indian kids, and now she was going to college on a scholars.h.i.+p and was going to be a nurse. And then Sophy thought that it probably really was true, there really was something the matter with her and her sisters and their whole line. And she thought that their dad should really beat them the way he beat Sarun, because none of them was ever going to be, like, straight A.

Sarun was the lucky one back then. Like most days he came home beat up or else got beat up by their dad, but that was at least that. Like at least their dad knew what Sarun's problem was, at least he knew that Sarun would be fine if he just had some monks and teachers to beat him. Because in Cambodia, that's how kids became civilized. People here think monks are so gentle and enlightened, but when people in Cambodia give their kids to the monks, they say, Do what you want, just leave us his eyes. Meaning that the monks can go ahead and whip the kids until they bleed, or put those p.r.i.c.kly skins of durian fruit on the floor and make the kids kneel on them, or make them stand outside in the sun without water until they faint. Like the monks did those things to Sophy's dad all the time when he was little, and now he thought someone should do them to Sarun. He thought the teachers should do it. Because in Cambodia, it wasn't just the monks, the teachers did the same kinds of things, because they were all trained as monks to begin with, and because it worked-like Sophy's dad said if they ever went to Cambodia they would see how people are so respectful and polite, not like here. Here the teachers don't beat anyone, which is why the kids are wild and the parents have to beat them even if the police come. He said they have to do it because it's the parents' responsibility.

And all that was bad, but at least Sarun never got put in a foster home the way Sophy did and then her sisters too, which she didn't even know right away because, like, no one told her. Like Sophy didn't even know until she ran away a second time, just to visit home, she couldn't help it, she hadn't heard anything from anybody in such a long time. So that in she walked, and right there was, like, the most wack thing of all. Because Sopheap and Sophan were who knew where, and there were just her mom and dad by themselves, sitting real quiet-like on the couch. She had never seen them sit together like that, as if they actually liked each other. But there they were, and he was smoking and drinking but not drunk, and, like, the room didn't even smell like Hennessy or beer. And they didn't have a Thai soap opera on, or The Killing Fields, or a kung fu movie. Instead they were watching some shopping channel she had never seen them watch-one of those channels where you walk through this fancy house, starting with the big front door and the doorbell that plays music. And then, like, there's this curving staircase, and you hear how the floors are heated, and how the kitchen has two ovens and not just one, which her parents thought was amazing. But, like, how empty that house seemed, they were saying, and wouldn't burglars come and steal everything, when in walked Sophy. And this time they started crying-her dad even, like, put out his cigarette, they were so glad to see her again. Because their apartment was feeling so sad and empty without the girls, and the new thing was, they thought they might lose Gift. Because Gift was throwing a fit one day and Sophy's dad was so drunk that he held Gift out the window and threatened to drop him. So now that crazy neighbor who was always trying to steal Gift when she wasn't making eyes at Sophy's dad was going to report him-charge him with being an unfit parent, and maybe Sophy's mom too, or at least that's what they heard from another neighbor. Because their old town was like that, everybody reporting on each other as if they were still in Cambodia, and with the same wack results. Because even if the crazy neighbor was just mad that Sophy's dad wouldn't look back at her, if she filed a 51A and Sophy's mom and dad really did get called unfit, she just might find a way to get her hands on Gift after all. Like what if she registered as a foster parent, right? It was like voodoo, it really was. It was worse than voodoo.

”We are losing them,” cried Sophy's mom. ”The children. We are losing them.”

Them, she said, not you, as if Sophy wasn't one of the children anymore. But Sophy knew what her mom meant and felt bad for her anyway.

”Soon we are going to be all alone,” cried her mom.

And her dad said, ”I made everyone disappear.”

He was so upset he couldn't breathe. So Sophy sat with him while her mom made supper, and when he sat down to eat, he looked at his rice and said, ”This is my last bowl of white rice. After this, brown rice.”

And Sophy said, in the politest way she could, ”We respect your wishes.”

Then they talked about what to do, and it wasn't like any conversation Sophy had ever had with her parents before. Like she said she could see how she had brought shame to her whole line, and how she came from the bottom of the market, and how she must have been a wh.o.r.e in her last life, and how she should kill herself. But her dad said, ”Please don't kill yourself. Let's just think what we should do.” And so they thought and thought instead, and finally decided that they should leave town before the 51A was filed. Because Sophy was pretty sure that once it got filed, they couldn't leave anymore-like once it got filed the police could come find them even if they left the state, because the police from different states worked together, and they had computers. And now that Sophy had run away again, there would be a warrant out for her arrest too, which sounded bad, but the kids in the group home talked about stuff all the time, and she was pretty sure the police wouldn't chase a kid across state lines just for shoplifting and running away. So that made two reasons for them to move, in a way it was sort of lucky. Because everything was clear, they just had to figure out where to go. Sophy talked and talked, and her mom and dad nodded and nodded like she was an expert or something.

”This is our fate,” her mom said.

Then in walked Sarun, and you could see he was, like, whoa! to find Sophy there and everything so different. He was so surprised he just sat down, and n.o.body even told him to get cleaned up or demanded to know where he'd been, especially since he wasn't high for a change-like you could see his pupils were normal. So their mom just put a plate of rice and chicken in front of him, and gave him a fork and spoon, and he just, like, started eating, agreeing between bites that it would be good to get out of this place. Because even if the gangs tried to stay out of trouble, they got talked about like troublemakers, he said, and then they did end up in trouble. And to everyone's surprise, their dad agreed with him just like that. This was what happened when the older people all fought, he said.

”The older people set a bad example. And then things keep going, around and around in a circle. So now we have to break the circle,” he said.

But how were they going to do that? Their dad said they could try using the church, which made Sarun groan because he really couldn't stand the whole path-to-Jesus thing. And here no one had ever even made him say Praise the Lord once. But he listened anyway because there had just been a shooting involving the kid brother of a friend of his, and, like, he had just found out. And while that kind of thing happened all the time, it was different when someone you knew pulled the trigger, especially since Boreth was, like, fourteen, and the kid he killed was sixteen. Of course, that kid was no good, but still. What was Boreth doing with a gun at all? That was an Asian Boyz thing, that wasn't Sarun's gang, and at least Boreth used a revolver, so he didn't leave sh.e.l.ls. So maybe he wouldn't get caught. Still Sarun was realizing this town was ugly. And so he listened to what their dad had to say about how someone had said something about someone else a church agency was trying to help. He was just saying how the issue there too was a girl who had run away to her own home, when Mum suddenly looked up and said, ”I am going to learn to speak English.” And then Sophy started crying, and Sarun starting hooting, and their dad started smiling. No one had to say they'd made a decision, they all just knew. They were going to move somehow, and as soon as they could they were going to come back and get Sophan and Sopheap.

The bus ride was long, but they didn't care. It was their fate to be going, even the three transfers were their fate. And how lucky it all was! It was lucky that the church agency had arranged for this other family to move, and it was lucky that that family changed their minds at the last minute. Because of Cambodian New Year, and because of, like, the cold-like that other family was afraid their blood might freeze. But Sophy's family was not afraid of the cold, because Sarun had been north before with his friends and knew that everything was heated. And her dad wasn't worried either. ”Do you know what the monks say?” he said. ”They say every thousand years we return to places we've lived before.” His finger moved back and forth, not violent-like, but more like a winds.h.i.+eld wiper. ”We will be comfortable. We will be used to it. We have lived there before.” He said he didn't think the agency even realized they were a different family than the one they thought they were moving, like they were a Cambodian family with a girl who had run away to her own home, and that was enough. What kind of good karma was that? They brought their lunch and dinner to eat on the bus, and a deck of cards too, that was Sarun's great idea. Because besides the bus ride they did have a lot of sitting around bus stations to do. Sophy didn't even know her dad could play cards, but it turned out he'd learned in the refugee camp, and that Sarun could play too. So it didn't matter that her mom only knew how to play a little, her dad just taught her mom and Sophy some games, like gin and French-style blackjack. They gambled with pennies, with Sophy and Sarun leaning over the back of their seats, and for a while it looked like Sarun was going to clean up, but in the end it was their mom. No one could believe it, but there she was with over three dollars! While they played they took turns taking care of Gift, who just wanted to be carried up and down the aisle all the time. Up and down, up and down, up and down, sucking on his fist and grabbing his ears and wrinkling his nose. Of course, there was a lot of flirting with people, too. Like people would play peek-a-boo with him and he would make goo-goo eyes at them, if he had been running for president of the bus, he definitely would have won. As it was everybody searched in their pockets for candy and cookies to give him, so by the end he was almost as rich as their mom, only in goodi

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