They could have stayed on that bus forever, and they weren’t the only ones—like some people had their territory all staked out, and had made themselves these little nests. If there was someone who looked uncomfortable, it was Sarun, because even on the bus people could see he belonged to a gang. And they didn’t like that, especially since he did stuff that made them look at him, like touch all the tops of the seats as he came down the aisle. His hands in general looked huge and sort of in the way, except when he was holding the cards. Then they looked at home, in fact expert-like. Sophy had never thought him anything like her mom before, but they did both have this beautiful way of holding things, and could do stuff like push one card apart from the others without using their other hand. It was interesting. Because she was not his real mother, and yet there was this thing they could both do, and Sophy was her real kid and couldn’t do anything like that. Maybe it was just that Sarun had played a lot of cards, so he could do what their mom could do naturally because of having practiced.
Anyway, between games Sophy’d look out the window, look and look. Because her mom and dad and brother had been other places before, but she hadn’t, and so she thought it was pretty interesting that the roads were full of people going places. Like where were they all going? In the beginning she thought they were going to work, but there were people driving around all day, not just in the morning. So what were they doing? Then the mountains started, and she was amazed. Like what exactly was a mountain? She liked the way you had to go around them, like they commanded so much respect. And they didn’t get smaller the closer you got to them—like a lake will do that, sometimes you have to back up to realize how big a lake is. The mountains just got bigger. And they hid a lot. Not like they had something to hide, it was more like they had so much going on, you couldn’t see it all. There were a lot of trees growing where you wouldn’t think anything could grow, like right out of a rock cliff, and she liked all the ice falls too and lost a couple of hands of cards because of them. Because she knew water could do that and had seen that before in her old town, but had never really thought about it. And now that she thought about it, she almost couldn’t believe pouring water could just get stopped right in the middle of pouring down like that. Like it was almost scary.
“Gin!” said her mom, and Sophy’d never seen her look so happy in her whole life. Her mom looked up and laughed, and her dad smiled as he checked her cards to see if she really did have what she thought she had. Her dad knew how to shuffle the cards by making this little bridge with them, then letting them fall down like they were in a factory, and of course Sophy’s mom and Sophy wanted to learn to do that too, and by the end of the trip, he had taught them. But he started by teaching Sophy’s mom first, and that made her beam like he had just brought her flowers or something.
One thing bad about the mountains was that it got dark early because of them, that was kind of a surprise. So that when they finally got out of the bus for the third time, at their stop, it seemed like it was the dead of night even though it was actually just supper time, and because of the dark, Sophy’s dad was afraid of losing a bag. So they made the driver wait while they counted them twice. Thirteen bags. The driver wasn’t too happy about it, but somebody else said they should ignore him. “People leave things on the bus all the time, it is just so easy to do,” said the man. And later on that night, Sophy kept hearing the man’s words.
People leave things on the bus all the time, it is just so easy to do. People leave things on the bus all the time, it is just so easy to do
. Like how confident the guy was, that he could say something so definite. She’d never heard anybody talk like that before.
People leave things on the bus all the time, it is just so easy to do
.
Church people met them, and took them to a house where the people weren’t home but had said Sophy’s family could stay, so they had all three bedrooms to themselves, and could even use the kitchen if they wanted. The woman in charge of them was named Ruth. She had white hair like an old lady, but she braided it in two braids like a girl, and her face was like a girl’s too, open and interested. She was very fat but got around okay, and everything she wore was fleece. Like she had a fleece hat and a fleece jacket and fleece mittens and fleece pants. And she had a cozy personality too. “Is there anything else I can get for you?” she kept saying. And “How can I help?” And “If you think of anything else, just tell me.” She sang all the time, or at least hummed, because that was her job. She was a song evangelist, she said, whatever that was, Sophy would’ve asked except that she had so many questions already and didn’t want to be asking something every minute. Like Ruth told them the church had other people coming too. “From Somalia,” she said. “They’re Bantus. Muslim.” And Sophy would have asked about that, except she didn’t have to, because Ruth had just figured out what
Bantu
meant herself, and told them. “I never knew that,” she said a couple of times. But the way she said it still made Sophy think about the guy who said that about how easy it was to forget things on the bus.
The house was so comfortable and warm, they would not have minded moving in for keeps. Like there were soft beds and a soft carpet, and pretty curtains and all kinds of wicker furniture. There was heat you could turn up or down in every room. And hearts—there was kind of a heart theme, with heart-shaped candles and heart-shaped pillows, and hearts stenciled on the walls. And of course there were Bibles, a Bible in every room, though nobody told them they had to follow Jesus or asked them to say Praise the Lord! even once. Every day Ruth would come take them to church, and every now and then some lady would say how glad she was that they were being saved from temptation, but that was all. People were just really friendly. Like they made sure they were saying your name right and asked a lot of questions about Cambodia, and even sort of liked it that Sophy’s mom didn’t speak English and paid her extra attention because of it. And even Sarun liked hearing Ruth sing, he said she had such a great voice it was almost worth sitting through the religious shit to hear her, though he thought she should open her eyes when she sang. But Sophy thought she just did that because she didn’t want people to watch her when they were supposed to be watching the screen with the words.
They stayed in the heart house for four great days. Playing cards and looking at the people’s stuff, and walking around and telling riddles. Like it turned out Sophy’s dad knew all these riddles that her mom did too. Like he would ask,
What has a stem like a candle but opens up like a cup?
And her mom would answer,
A lotus!
Or else he would ask,
What cup of water can the wind not find?
And her mom would answer,
The milk in a coconut!
And then they would laugh until they cried because of how much the riddles reminded them of Cambodia.
Meanwhile Ruth kept coming to visit, and every time they learned something new from her, like about maple trees, or about hypothermia, which was kind of scary, but they were glad she told them. The whole thing was like a family vacation, which they had heard of but never had before. Of course, it was cold. And it wasn’t pretty, if you looked outside. Like there was still snow, but the snow was all dirty, and everywhere there wasn’t snow, there was mud. Everything was a different shade of gray, it was like someone had forgot to flip on the color switch for this town. You especially noticed it after the church video, because the video was, like, so much more bright and real. But they were all happy anyway, talking to each other about the cold and staying in this warm place. They were even starting to like the services and the way everyone talked about love, even if it made them miss Sophy’s sisters. Like there was this big mirror in the downstairs foyer, right inside the front door, and every time they passed it Sophy looked at them all together and thought how great it would be if Sophan and Sopheap were here too, planning and walking around, and eating and joking. But the rest of them were still happy. Once she even saw her mom and dad hold hands, and once her dad said Sophy was a very polite girl, something he had never said before. None of them missed home at all. It was like they were a regular family.
I
f only life in the trailer was like the heart house! It was going to be. But that first night in the trailer they realized, not right away. The trailer smelled. The trailer had mildew. The trailer was cold. They were excited to think that it was, like, theirs! But they couldn’t sleep. First some kind of animal came right up to their window—like you could hear it outside, clawing around—and after that they kept hearing other sounds too. Like Mom kept hearing
k’maoch
, and Sophy kept dreaming her sisters had run away from their foster homes like she did, only to find out there was no one there. If she knew where there was a pen and some paper, she probably would have written them a letter right that very second. But instead she had to try to go back to sleep in this strange bed with, like, her mom sitting up, and the light on, and Gift fussing, and on top of it there was this big storm the next day, and the trailer turned out to leak like the
Titanic
. Sophy’s dad said it could be fixed, and that getting used to the trailer was nothing compared to getting used to the Khmer Rouge or America. But still when they went outside and saw the mountains all around them like walls, they just came back in.
They had their cabinets to fix and a lot to mop up, and in the middle of it all, their new neighbor came over, and that was Hattie. And Sophy was glad because she thought the kitchen looked bad with one drawer missing, and the cookies were good. But her dad said they should not be too friendly because Hattie said she was half Chinese and grew up in China, but he thought maybe she was Vietnamese. And why would she bring them cookies unless she wanted something? he said.
Of course, that made Sarun laugh. “What could anyone be wanting from us?” he said. And behind their dad’s back, he said, “He be dreaming, man. Dreaming.”
But their dad kept insisting that they should be careful. That woman might not even be a human, he said. That woman might be a
k’maoch
.
Sarun laughed and laughed.
Anyway, pretty soon he and Sophy’s dad were working on digging a drainage ditch because the ground was too wet to grow anything. And while you obviously couldn’t grow mangos here, if the soil was drained they thought they could try to grow apples and pears, and if that didn’t work Sophy’s dad had heard you could grow Christmas trees. Of course, there were hardly any other black-hairs here, but they didn’t care. They were all doing better. Sophy’s dad even seemed to like her mom, now that she had these tapes and was really trying to learn English, and Sarun wasn’t sending anyone IMs, because there was no cell service. And Sophy was perfect as an angel, so polite and hardworking, her dad looked at her one day and said, “
Now if you go to Cambodia, people will say, Yes, that is a Cambodian girl. So polite! Whose family does she belong to?
”
“I thought you told the judge you didn’t want me,” she said.
And her dad just laughed then like Sarun, and that was about the happiest moment of her life.
“
Someone must have borrowed my mouth and made strange words come out,
” he said. And when he did that lopping thing with his finger then, it was like he was trying to lop his bad words out of her memory, so she wouldn’t hear them anymore.
Life wasn’t perfect. Like there were all these flies! And her mom missed her friends, and the temple too, messed up as it was. And when they got Sophy’s sisters back, it wasn’t going to be easy to convince them they were going to like it here, because there was, like, no movie theater or mall, or anything. And it was a lot easier to make money in their old town because everyone knew from everyone else where to find work. Like there were factories making medical supplies and airline seats and stuff, and at night you could always, like, make key chains, or bag up parts for a kit. Doctors were easier to find too, and food and medicine. And you could walk places. Here you needed rides for every single thing, which was hard because they weren’t on, like, any kind of program. Like they were just this special case some pastor had thought should be part of his ministry but that other people wondered about, especially when they found out that Sophy’s family wasn’t even the Cambodian family they thought they were. Like the one time Ruth came to visit she said that the pastor in charge of them wasn’t the church pastor anymore, and that some people were glad, but that she was so upset she was leaving too, which was why she came, to break the news. It made them feel so bad. And who was going to help them figure out what to do about school and stuff now? Because what a good student Sophy was going to be this time!
An A student
, she’d always liked how that sounded.
An A student, straight A’s, all A’s
. Ruth said they shouldn’t worry and that someone would help. But in the end, she just disappeared like Carla and nobody else showed up, and the first thing that happened in school was that this boy offered to help Sophy figure out what was going on. Hershey, his name was, like Hershey chocolate, he said everyone called him that all the time. And she felt sorry for him because it wasn’t his fault that he was named Hershey, and he felt sorry for her back, and wanted to show her stuff like how to sign up for free lunch and how to get her locker to stay shut. It was the kind of help she had to make sure her dad never knew about, but she didn’t, like, know how to explain it, and before she could Hershey came by the trailer because she left her protractor at school and he knew she couldn’t do her homework without it. And that was the end of school.
And that was too bad, because even going for a little while made Sophy realize that she actually missed school. Like she even missed their old school, with the wack teachers and the wack kids and the wack stories, it was lucky they had the whole summer to figure out what to do next.