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
Titanic
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.
I
nstead she got put in the kind of girls’ group home that’s like a training program for whores, 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 class. 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 scholarship 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 prickly 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 whore 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 nobody 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 shells. 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.
T
he 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 windshield 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 goodies instead of money.