Then Hattie came over with the wheelbarrow, and they all liked her more after that, Sophy especially. She liked Hattie’s dogs and Hattie’s cookies, and she liked the way Hattie said,
Ants do like peonies
. And then Sophy’s dad changed his mind about Hattie and wanted her to teach Sophy Chinese, and maybe do home schooling, since Hattie used to be a teacher.
But then he hurt his back. And then he asked for white rice. Sophy said, “
You’ve stayed off white rice all this time. Do you really want to go back?
” Like so respectfully. But he said yes, just a couple of bowls until he felt better. Then he didn’t get better and didn’t get better, until he was not only eating white rice but drinking again too, and smoking weed. Which everyone smoked in Cambodia, or at least the men did, in fact Sophy’s uncle used to grow it on his farm—pure stuff, not like the stuff Sarun used to bring home. Sophy’s dad didn’t smoke it in their old town because it was illegal in America and someone could report you, but here there was no one to report you anyway. So he was not only smoking it again now but making Sophy’s mom put it in chicken soup, the way they used to in Cambodia.
“
We should move somewhere else,
” he said sometimes, when he was high.
“But, like, where? Where can we move?” asked Sophy.
“
What about Long Beach.
”
“Dad, there are, like, so many gangs in Long Beach.”
“
Cambodia,
” her dad said after that. His eyes were even more jittery than usual when he was high, and huge-like. “
We should move back to Cambodia.
”
But how could they go back to Cambodia when all they had there was, like, an uncle who could get blown up by a land mine anytime? And what would the kids do? When they only half spoke Khmer if they spoke it at all, and couldn’t read or write one word?
But that’s how he would talk, and all Sophy could do was be really gentle and polite, hoping he would stop. And sometimes that worked, sometimes he stopped if she talked sweet enough, or if she prayed.
T
he praying was a new thing she knew her mom and dad wouldn’t like. Because she wasn’t praying to the Buddha, and she knew what they would say. They would say she was forgetting her culture. Never mind that she was half Chinese, actually, they would say to be Cambodian was to be Buddhist, and that, like, would be that. But the blue car was coming to their house all the time, and her mom would never get in it, and so sometimes Sophy did, because wasn’t it rude to keep saying no to the driver when she was so nice? Sophy knew how the driver might feel because her mom was
ting moung
with everyone sometimes, even Gift. And hadn’t the church been really nice to them too? Of course, it turned out later that this church was actually different from the other one, but Sophy didn’t realize that in the beginning, like she thought they had to be the same because why else would the car be coming? And she really liked the driver, Lynn, who was short and, like, couldn’t talk for some reason—like she could understand and she could write, but she couldn’t talk, it was almost like she was from Cambodia or something. And she never looked offended when they said no, they weren’t going anywhere, she always just shrugged and held up this piece of paper that said
NO PROBLEM
, and winked. She was so nice that one day when Sophy’s mom was out housecleaning and Sophy was alone watching Gift, she decided to try going. Why not? She asked Lynn to wait a minute while she ran out to ask her dad if it was okay. And he was, like, drunk, and he and Sarun were digging, and the way she asked, so quiet-like, she wasn’t sure he even heard her, exactly, or gave his permission. He just kind of moved his head then went on digging while she, quick, asked Lynn to wait just another minute while she put Gift’s diapers and stuff into a grocery bag. And then they got in. The blue car had a carseat for Gift that you wouldn’t think he’d like but that he actually loved because everything was so interesting, even she thought it was interesting. Not that the drive was so different from the drive to the grocery store, but somehow she was just more noticing. Like Sophy didn’t see one other trailer with crates for stairs like her family had, she thought they should really get rid of theirs. And she saw that a lot of other people had whirly things or flags or little decks with planters on the railings, and of course that some people even had, like, real houses. Sophy didn’t like the ones that were falling down with sinking porches and peeling paint, but some were neat. Like the car stopped at this blinking red light, and right there on the corner she saw this little white house with blue shutters and a flag with a flower on it hanging over the door, and a little walkway between two little squares of lawn. And the more she looked at it, the more her eyes filled up with tears, it kind of reminded her of the heart house. She even tried to show it to Gift, but he was too busy playing with his feet to care.
The church center was two towns over, and in a white house too, only bigger and older, and with a giant cross that took up pretty much a whole wall. The entrance had a half-moon window, and a big curving staircase with a little door under it, and a lot of old wood paneling, but there was also a new wall of hooks and cubbies for the kids’ stuff. A short lady with frizzy hair welcomed them right as they walked in and asked, “First time?” And when Sophy said yes, she said, “Wonderful!” as if Sophy had just said the best thing ever. Then she showed Sophy where to put her stuff, and the funny thing was that she seemed just the right height person to be doing that. Like she was the perfect height for the hooks and cubbies, and hardly had to bend down to show them. And the other funny thing was that Gift got it right away that this was a place for him. Like he looked at all the shoes lined up in the other cubbies, and when Sophy took his shoes off and put them in his cubby, he crawled over and patted them. They were the only ones who brought their stuff in a grocery bag, but the lady didn’t seem to care, and Sophy at least put the bag in the cubby neatly, so it wouldn’t mess up the whole thing.
In their old town there were all these youth centers where you could hang out and get free food, but it never occurred to anybody to see if there was a center where you could bring babies, since between Sophy and her sisters and their dad, there was always somebody who could watch Gift while their mom worked. But now that Gift could crawl so fast and was pulling himself up and cruising, this was so great. Like they had this play space in the basement with carpet, and there were blocks and balls, and a little picnic table with paper and markers, and even, like, a little playhouse with a little play kitchen. And a corner that was all trucks! Gift practically jumped out of Sophy’s arms when he saw the trucks, and when Sophy had to change his diaper, she could only get him to lie down by letting him play with a truck at the same time.
There were other babies there too, and other people taking care of them, which was the part Sophy liked. Like it was great when the short lady introduced her to brown-haired Renee, and black-haired Simone, and blond-haired Kate, who were, like, from all over! Like Renee was from Detroit, and Simone was from Vietnam, and Kate was from a farm pretty close by, but they all helped take care of a baby, like Sophy. Or babies, in Kate’s case. She had twins to watch after! Which was why she came as often as she could. Because how could she even let them out of the house back at the farm, when one could go one way and the other another and there was, like, dangerous equipment and pitchforks and fertilizer everywhere? Simone had two kids to watch too, but hers were one older and one younger, and that was easier in some ways, but harder in others. Like the older one was old enough to know she should not just run off, but the younger one would pull the older one’s hair, and then the older one would get really mad. So Simone had to kind of keep them apart, which wasn’t so easy at home because they lived in a trailer, like Sophy’s family. And so she came as often as she could too. Lucky Renee was like Sophy, with just one kid to take care of, she said she hadn’t even realized before coming that she was so lucky, and that was how Sophy felt too, like she hadn’t even realized. “We are so blessed,” Renee said, cooing at Gift and trying to teach him to give a high-five, and when she said that, Sophy felt like she knew just what Renee meant.
We are so blessed
.
None of them could believe Sophy had never been to a Bible study class before, or that she hadn’t even realized that that was where she was going, really. But they were excited she was going to be in their group! They got her a pamphlet about their church that said “Where friends become family” on it, and they got her a Bible to keep too, and made her put her name in it. Then they showed her how it had two halves, the Old Testament and the New, and explained how even though the pages looked really thin, they didn’t tear as easy as you’d think. Class didn’t start for another half hour, so they just hung out for a while, and that was fun, because the three of them were already, like, a team and did what Kate called zone defense. That meant that you didn’t follow your kid around, but just kept an eye on any kid that was near you. Like you tried to notice if someone had a smelly diaper or was acting funny—like if they were taking a nap under the picnic table or something, the way one of Kate’s twins was one day. That turned out to be a virus, but there were all these other things it could have been, Renee said, like a staph infection, or meningitis, stuff Sophy had never even heard of. And that alone was probably a reason to come back to the center, to find out about viruses, and how it was bad to put soda in Gift’s bottle. Like Renee said that right away, that juice was one thing but soda was bad, and that Gift shouldn’t be eating so much candy either. And Simone said that if he was a boy he should probably wear boys’ clothes, and not just any clothes because that was confusing for Americans. And Sophy figured that Simone could probably say that about what was confusing for Americans because she was Vietnamese and had been through it herself. Of course, Sophy wasn’t going to go telling her parents she’d learned anything from a Vietnamese! Though now that she was talking to Simone, she could see that every Vietnamese was different, the same as Cambodians. Like wasn’t Sophy different from her mother and father and brothers and sisters even though they were a family? She was, she was different.
And it was a good thing she liked Simone, because people put them together right away. Like when the short lady came down, she said, “I see you’ve found Simone”—because somehow Sophy was meeting Kate and Renee, but was finding Simone. And they really did have a lot in common, because they both had black hair and so on, but Simone was actually a lot older than everyone else. Like she was nineteen. She looked sort of like Sophy and Kate and Renee, but they were all fifteen or sixteen, and Simone was hipper, that was the other thing. She did her nails, and her hair was feathered, and she carried these cool silk bags in beautiful colors that her aunt sent her from Vietnam, Sophy could never look at those bags without thinking what it would be like to have an aunt back home who sent you things, and to get little silk bags in the mail. Like that just seemed so great.
She was lost in that first class, and a little worried whether the short lady could really watch Gift and all the other kids by herself even for just an hour, but she liked it. Like she liked the room, which was originally the dining room of the house, they even sat around the original dining room table, like a family. The leader was this woman named Ginny, who had blond hair and wore a chain with a cross draped over the collar of her turtleneck like a lot of the girls did. And everyone was really nice, but especially Ginny. Like she would always make sure Sophy was on the right page, and she would look at her special a lot, so that Sophy would know if she had any questions, she could just ask. Sophy didn’t ask any, though, because the whole thing was, like, so surprising. Like she thought it surprising that someone who looked like Simone would hunch over a book like that, so studious. And that the class would spend so much time talking about just, like, a couple of sentences—that was surprising too. And that they talked about all these people—like Paul and Peter and Jesus—like they knew them, even though they were all dead. Or at least she thought they were dead. Anyway, the time went by fast, because the story was interesting. Like they were talking about some king named David, who promised a cripple he was going to give him back all the land he had lost, and told him he’d be welcome at his table forever, only to have the cripple say, “What is thy servant, that thou shouldst look upon such a dead dog as I am?” And the group all agreed that that was probably how they would feel if someone said that to them. Like dead dogs, and like they just couldn’t believe it.
“Except that you can believe it,” said Ginny, looking at everyone with her green eyes. “You can. Believe it. You don’t feel worthy, but you are. In God’s eyes you are worthy.”
After class, the center had a singing group back in the basement, where the kids played in the middle and their caretakers sang songs about lambs. It wasn’t as interesting as the Bible study class, and Sophy could hear what Sarun would have to say about that kind of song almost more than she could hear the song itself. Like she knew how he’d sing the words his own way and roll his eyes and say, They are, like, on something. And she felt funny because she didn’t know the words, and Gift wouldn’t stay in the middle the way he was supposed to either. But still they stayed the whole session because Lynn was expecting them to stay, and because the room was so much nicer than the trailer, and because of the doughnuts and the soda and the cookies. The cookies weren’t as good as Hattie’s, but they were good enough that Sophy started going twice a week after that, on Mondays and Thursdays. And she really looked forward to it, and found that even when she went home she could still see the center in her mind—like she could still see that arched window, with this little crystal ball that threw rainbows all over, and she could still see the neat little entrance area where people stashed their stuff. On rainy days all the kids’ rain jackets would be hanging there, and that just amazed her, because some of the kids had such beautiful little jackets, with ladybugs and cats on them. She tried not to stare at them, the same way she tried not to stare at the special bags people had for their baby stuff. But after a class where they talked about prayer and the part of the Bible where it says, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss,” she tried praying, not with evil, selfish motives, but with right purpose, the good purpose that Ginny talked about. And right the next day, the most amazing thing happened. Like Sophy came into the center and this lady just walked right up to her and said, “Would you like a jacket for your baby?” And even though Sophy said he’s not my baby, the lady reached in her bag and said, “Please take this. I was about to give it to the church to give away.” And it was this yellow jacket with a patch pocket like a bumblebee, just the right size for Gift. Sophy was so amazed, she couldn’t even say thank you. It was just, like, so wack! But the lady didn’t seem to mind, she just smiled and left.