Mam-mam-lehla-la!
agrees Gift.
Ratanak Chhung, the lucky one.
The one who got sent to the temple school; the one who lived.
Hattie turns her headlights back off as they roll by.
T
he coming of Sophy’s sisters, three days later, is not subdued. What with the blue car in the shop, Sophy asks if Hattie will pick them up at the bus station; and so it is that Hattie gets to behold Sophan and Sopheap teetering down the bus steps. Shouting, Mum! Sophy! Gift! Sophy! as they try not to trip in their high heels. Their knees are too high, their thighs are too short. The railing’s in the wrong place. They are carrying too many bags—some three or four bright bags each. Which mostly have shoulder straps, a sign of some sense, except that several of the straps have slipped off the girls’ shoulders and are fanning out midair. Sophy and Hattie try to help take the bags, Sophy shouting, Sophan! Sopheap! at the same time—making enough of a commotion that people stop to watch. But of course, the girls would be a sight anyway—three Sophys, it does seem—the three of them almost exactly the same height, as if that were the fashion, with the same flat behinds and the same narrow waists. And the same shy energy—as if they could either bubble up or disappear, depending. They are smooth-skinned, bright-eyed, live-bodied; their hands seem to be everywhere. Sophan looks more like Chhung, and Sopheap and Sophy more like Mum, but Sophan and Sopheap look like each other, too, with chipmunk-red hair they’ve had straightened; it falls silken and perfect, awaiting a ruffling wind. Sophy’s hair, in comparison, is bedlam. And yet anyone would know the three of them to be sisters by their happiness. Sophan and Sopheap play with Sophy’s short hair, amazed; and when she cries, they wipe her eyes for her, crying, too, then cup her radiant face in their hands—their fingers on her cheeks, in her hair. They fondle her earringless ears. No hoops! Sophy shrugs and laughs through her tears. And look—Mum is crying, too. The girls hug their mother gingerly. With Sophy they are babble and arms. With Mum they seem worried they could squeeze her into another shape by mistake. They move their warmth out of their limbs, into their faces; it’s what hippies say energy workers do. Move their energy. Still their bodies. The sisters’ eyes get large and liquid; they tilt their heads. Nod. Say something in Khmer, consult with Sophy, say something else. Their smiles grow and grow—their mouths widening, their cheeks lifting, their eyes crinkling. Then they nod again, lowering their gaze, until time itself seems to be blossoming with joy. For there is Mum, looking for once unbuffeted by the world. No larger than she was, but more firmly here somehow. Not a half-being whose other half may still be hiding out from the war; not a half-ghost undecided about her commitment to this moment and place. Instead, she is the slightly undersized, perfectly whole being on whom the natural order of things lightly rests—reserved, as always, except for her face, which has something of the look of an extra bus headlight.
Now Gift is threatening to cry, excited to be held by Sopheap and Sophan, but scared of them, too. You don’t remember us! they say. You’ve forgotten us! Sophy tries to take him back, but Sophan and Sopheap will not let him go until he starts out-and-out wailing. Then back he goes to Mum, his crying stopping so abruptly that everyone laughs, even Gift himself, after a moment. And who’s this? Ginny? ask the sisters.
Ginny
. No, Hattie, says Sophy. This is Hattie. So nice to meet you, say Sophan and Sopheap then. So nice, Hattie!—never mind that a bus station official is telling them to move out of the way, please, no one can get by. Sophan and Sopheap and Sophy come together for a moment. Then Sophy is hoisting Gift onto her hip, and Sophan and Sopheap are flanking their mother, each insisting on taking an arm even as they refuse to let Hattie help with the bags. The group keeps having to rest, rehoist, rearrange, reseat. Rest again. Yet still they refuse Hattie’s help—half shuffling, half tottering through the bus station like some newfangled pushmi-pullyu. They rest. Then it is across the parking lot to the car, where Sophan and Sopheap can finally quiz Sophy some more. Why’d you do that to your hair? I told you. No, you didn’t. And you didn’t tell me, either! I did! You didn’t! They pull and tease until Sophy finally swats their hands away. Happy to be annoyed, happy to be swatted back, happy to return the return swat. A sister, still, though wisps of hair play about Sophan’s and Sopheap’s eyes and necks—a sister, though they are wearing makeup and chains and hoops, and cute tops with tight jeans. Sopheap’s hoodie is red with
AMOUR
printed across the front; inside she is wearing a white top with red trim. Sophan’s top is sparkly—midnight blue with metallic trim. Only Sophy, the country mouse, is wearing a plain blue sweater and plain blue sweatpants. Still, she swats at them, a sister. Who does still wear a necklace, at least—her sisters play with the cross—and though she never takes it off, she takes it off now and lets them try it on. First Sophan, then Sopheap, who wants to wear it awhile. She wants to see if it makes her feel anything, she says, and so Sophy lets her borrow it for the whole drive back to the trailer.
It’s a squeeze, getting the three girls and Gift into the backseat of what is, after all, a subcompact car, but they don’t mind. They insist that Sophy sit in the middle, Gift on her lap. Everything is in English. In the front seat Mum faces forward, but with her chin lifted high and her head tipped back.
“Can you understand them?” asks Hattie.
Mum moves her head in something like a nod, though not a nod, either—picking up words, Hattie guesses, a phrase here and there. Every now and then the girls say something in Khmer, but Sopheap and Sophan do not speak as much Khmer as Sophy; mostly it is English, English, English. What is there to do around here? they want to know. They don’t like Sophy’s Christian radio station; Hattie happily shuts it off. Wow, cows, they say then. Why do they have those yellow things in their ears? And what’s that smell? They roll their windows up; they hold their noses and point. What’s that? They are impressed that Sophy knows what a pony is. A llama.
“They have mad ears,” says Sophan. She asks if dogs pull people on sleds around here.
Sopheap and Sophy laugh. “No, no,” they say. “That’s Alaska!”
Sophan, though, is still curious. “Do people here burn wood to keep warm?”
It is a few minutes before Sopheap finally says, “So, like, Sarun is in the hospital?”
Sophy nods.
“And, like, what happened? Dad beat Sarun up and somebody called the police?” Sopheap asks lightly, in a just-wondering voice.
“Yeah, except it wasn’t somebody.” Sophy noses Gift’s back. “It was me.”
“You?” says Sophan.
Silence.
“Because there was blood everywhere, you should have seen,” says Sophy, finally. “And, anyway, I didn’t call the police. I called 911.”
More silence. The windshield darkens, then brightens—the car passing through the shadow of a cloud.
“Wow,” says Sopheap.
“Those are cool cows,” says Sophan.
The cows are black except for what look like huge white cummerbunds fitted around their bellies.
“They’re called Dutch belted cows,” says Sophy. “Because of, like, their belt.” She lays Gift down flat across her knees, so that his head is on Sophan’s lap and his feet on Sopheap’s.
“You shouldn’t feel bad that you called,” says Sopheap.
“He was going to die,” says Sophy.
“It was a good choice,” says Sophan, playing with Gift’s hands; he grabs her earrings anyway. “Ow.”
“Definitely,” says Sopheap.
Sophy, in the rearview mirror, is blinking hard, her nostrils red; she looks as though she might cry.
“Actually I made a lot of bad choices,” she says. “Like a lot of them.”
“Still,” says Sophan. “That one was good.” She nods supportively.
“And then what happened?” Sopheap pulls Gift’s feet up to her cheeks; she kisses his toes.
“He got to the hospital and was bad but then he woke up and was talking. And everything was good until he had this big drop in blood pressure. Because of the bleeding in his head, I think it was called ‘subdural.’ Because it was, like, under his skull, and I guess
sub
means, like, ‘under.’ And that’s why you guys were allowed to come visit. Because he was unconscious again and they thought he might die.”
Sopheap stops playing.
“We were, like, mad scared,” says Sophan. “When we were, like, informed.”
“I guess it was pretty serious.” Sophy jostles Gift on her knees. “But now he’s okay, except that they had to drill these holes in his head.”
Gift chortles.
“Holes?” says Sophan, finally. “In his head?”
“To drain the blood out.”
“That is so wack,” says Sopheap.
“It was,” says Sophy. “It was wack. Anyway, it’s still great you came. Because he has to stay flat on his back now and can’t even, like, sit up to eat, and his head is half shaved and half regular. And he has this huge bandage and these things that, like, squeeze his legs all day. Wait till you see. And his roommate cuts these farts you will not believe.”
The girls giggle. Sophy sits Gift back up straight.
“So Dad went wild?” says Sopheap.
“Because of the
puak maak?
” says Sophan.
“Yeah,” says Sophy, handing Gift up to Mum for a visit. “Because, like, Sarun was supposed to stop seeing them when he came here, but he didn’t. Like first they got us this TV and then they were e-mailing all the time and then Sarun was taking off with them in this van and doing shit. And that made Dad mad. Sarun gave him money, but he was still mad. And then the police came just to talk, but Dad, like, went wild. Because they came.”
“Wow.” Sophan folds her arms.
“Was he like an animal?” says Sopheap.
“I guess. I mean, that’s what he said. That he was like an animal.” Sophy stops. “It was actually really complicated, I wish I could explain it.”
“You explained it.” Sopheap’s arms are folded, too.
“I don’t know.” Sophy’s arms are jammed between her knees and her shoulders scrunched up. “Anyway, it made a big mess. Like there was blood everywhere. I thought we’d be cleaning forever, but Hattie hired somebody to come clean it for us. Like even though Mum does cleaning she hired someone anyway. So we could use that room when you came, and because it took, like, special carpet cleaner.”
“That was so nice of you.” Sophan leans forward, grasping the headrest.
“It was nothing,” says Hattie.
“She saw everything.” Sophy looks straight at Hattie in the rearview mirror.
Hattie feels herself flush.
“That’s so great,” says Sopheap.
“When can we go see him?” asks Sophan.
“Tomorrow,” says Sophy. “If anyone asks, you’re supposed to say it was break and entry. Like it was a stranger, we don’t know why.”
“We don’t know nothing,” says Sopheap.
“
Nada,
” says Sophan.
“Zip,” says Sopheap.
“He couldn’t remember anything when he first started talking, and that was lucky, because that way we got to tell him what he should say. Of course, he said he wouldn’t have told the blues nothing anyway. He said even if he had no brain left, he’d know better than to talk.”
“
Meh-meh-a-lala!
” says Gift, standing up in Mum’s lap. He bends and straightens his legs; they really need to get him a carseat. “
Beh-bahb-ba!
”
“And one good thing is that the hospital saw him for free,” Sophy goes on. “I mean, they knew he didn’t have insurance but they saw him anyway. Free care, they call it.”
“Cool,” says Sopheap.
“
Babababehbehbeh,
” says Gift.
Hattie makes Sophy take Gift back to the relative safety of the backseat.
“So how do you like school here?” asks Sophan.
“Are you really going to a church school?” asks Sopheap.
Hattie helps them bring their stuff in but does not see them again until they are gathered outside a little later, around Sophy and her guitar. Sophy plays “I Surrender All”; Sophan and Sopheap listen with their arms folded, then start doing dance routines.
Flaunting their fertility
, Lee would say.
Grinding their gynecologicals
. Sophy focuses for a while on her playing, her eyes on her fingers as she reaches for certain tough chords. In the end, though, she breaks into a tune Hattie thinks she recognizes from the radio but can’t quite place—the theme to that
Titanic
movie, maybe?
T
he blue car does the driving the next couple of days. By the time it breaks down again, Sophy’s sisters, to Hattie’s surprise, have already gone back to their foster homes. Her lone passenger is Sophy, who sports Sopheap’s sparkly hoodie and big hoop earrings. It’s misty out; corkscrews of steam rise from the engine hood like genies.
“I’ll have to give you Sarun’s earrings,” says Hattie. “The wires are a little bent, but we can fix them easy enough.”
“You can give them back yourself if you want,” says Sophy. “I mean, like, Sarun’s been asking, when are you coming, anyway? Like yesterday he said, ‘Where’s the Vietnamese lady? Isn’t she going to come spy?’ ”
Hattie laughs. “Tell him the Vietnamese lady will come in with you soon.”
“He says he wants cookies.”
“Will do,” says Hattie.
Sophy cracks open the window. Cool air charges in but their feet stay warm, thanks to the heat—the blower blowing on them like a mini–desert wind.
“How’s he doing?” asks Hattie.
“He hates that neck thing.”
“The collar, you mean.”
“He says it’s like Dad’s brace came off and got wrapped around his neck instead. But anyway, his hair’s growing in already, and they’re taking the bandage off pretty soon, and the stitches are supposed to, like, melt by themselves.”
“And what’s the prognosis?”
“Is that, like, prediction?”
“Exactly.”
Sophy tucks her hair behind her ear; the earring catches in it. “His
prognosis
is great. Like he can see okay and his memory is fine and he talks as terrible as ever—I guess he talked ghetto to the doctors and scared them, but then he switched to normal and they laughed.”