Somewhere in the Unknown World Page 16

  By the time the war was over, I had finished college. I’d been trained as a teacher. I was working as a supervisor on a dam project. In 1978 I met your father. Saymoukda, your father was a water buffalo gangster boy with some college but no degree.

  Your father was working on the dam as a construction worker. He was tall, dark-skinned, and had strong, thick shoulders. In the field, he did not stand out from the rest of the hardworking men toiling beneath the hot sun. It was not until your father and his crew needed more gas and oil for their machines and he came into my office to make the request that I noticed him. That day, he was happy, so he smiled at me. I saw the small space between his two front teeth and the lines that fanned out from his eyes. I noticed that the top of his left index finger was missing. He allowed his appreciation for the strong bones in my face and my athletic form to show. This was post-1975, the world we belonged to had toppled; the old walls had crumbled. We took a strong liking to each other, so much so that after a short period of seeing each other at work and after work, we married.

  Aroundeth. Where is Aroundeth? Where is my son, my good boy?

  The government was slowly seeking out and killing anyone affiliated with the old administration. They had begun interviewing neighbors and friends, keen on finding who my father’s children were. We couldn’t stay and keep our baby boy Aroundeth safe, Saymoukda.

  Your father likes to say that we left Laos on a boat. He is wrong. We swam across the Mekong River. He doesn’t remember like I do.

  Saymoukda, we never drugged your brother on the run toward the refugee camps. Aroundeth was such a good baby. He was a year and a half old only. Each time there were soldiers nearby, all I had to do was pull him close and whisper, “Shhh, don’t make a sound.” He listened to me.

  All of us made it out alive, and we didn’t have to drug your brother, Aroundeth, like so many others traveling with little ones.

  And you were born on December 24, 1981, in the refugee camp in Thailand, my beautiful baby girl, with my bones on her face, my shoulders, my arms and my legs. My daughter who will one day become an athlete, not play basketball like me, but fall in love with volleyball, and become so good at it she will get a scholarship to go to college. You made me proud from the moment you were born, Saymoukda.

  There was Nok, little bird, little boy, little one who came after you. He was only six months old when he died in the refugee camp. I gave him a name with wings and he flew away from me, from us, all of us.

  * * *

  There’s a bird chirping across the still, winter’s night. Is he calling for me?

  Saymoukda, can you hear him, calling for me, his mother and your mother?

  Saymoukda, your birthday is coming. The day you were born is almost here.

  * * *

  Saymoukda had fallen asleep beside the bed. She cushioned her head on half of her mother’s stack of pillows. Her husband, Akiem, nudged her gently. The shadow of him, tall and bulky, stood over the bed. Akiem wanted her to go to bed. But Saymoukda was now wide awake and the first thing she said was, “I’m fine here. You take Akara to bed.”

  Akiem assured her—as he had many nights these last several months—that Akara had long been asleep. He offered to sit with her mother, but Saymoukda shook her head. Her mother’s breathing had been particularly labored. She would stay up and keep watch. Akiem honored her wishes. He gave her shoulder a squeeze, then made his way toward the stairs to the little boy asleep in the big bed waiting for him.

  In the soft light of the Christmas tree, Saymoukda focused on her mother’s face, traced with her eyes the strong bones that rested beneath the skin. The family was Buddhist. In the beginning, she’d asked for a cure to the cancer and a recovery for her mother. Now she found herself asking for grace and mercy, kindness for her mother’s journey, for herself, and for her child. She was sad. The feeling was all too familiar, too old.

  When she was a child, Sanouthith had often told Saymoukda, a gentle hand brushing at her bangs, “You were so sad when we got to America, Saymoukda. Do you remember any of it?”

  Saymoukda had no memories of her own sadness, only her mother’s.

  * * *

  I was seven years old.

  It was a lovely spring weekend near the end of the school year.

  My mom and dad liked taking us on these short road trips in our family’s tan Isuzu truck.

  We’d explore Minnesota, drive through the fancy neighborhoods full of white people, head to the west side of St. Paul to practice reading Spanish on the storefronts along Robert Street, cross the Mississippi River on Highway 52 going south, and climb the surrounding hills, looking at the old, crumbling neighborhoods in Frogtown where the Asian grocery stores and restaurants lined the avenue.

  On these drives, we stopped at local parks and playgrounds. Sometimes, Mom and Dad would sit in the car and listen to music, mostly Lao and Thai singers whose names I’d never known but whose voices I’d recognize anywhere.

  That particular day, Dad took us to Highland Park. The car had just stopped when Mom got out suddenly. She slammed the car door behind her. Dad was silent. He took a deep breath and leaned into the steering wheel. Aroundeth looked surprised.

  I felt I had to chase Mom.

  Dad and Aroundeth watched silently as I opened my door and raced after Mom.

  She climbed the hill. I climbed after her.

  I called for her. She turned toward me.

  I stopped, waiting for her to gesture me close or perhaps even to walk toward me. She turned away and started walking again. I could see she was crying. I chased after her some more.

  At the top of the hill, Mom folded. Her legs seemed to have given out from under her. Her breathing was ragged when I got close enough to hear. She’d come to a sitting position, but did not look up at me. I stood in front of her. I didn’t know what to say. I crouched down on my heels. I started picking at the grass with my hands.

  Mom said, “Bury me here.”

  I said, “I can’t. I’m only seven.”

  She said, “When you are older.”

  She started weeping then, freely. Her hands were at her side. Her head was bowed. Her shoulders shook. I allowed myself to sag into the grass beside her, my hands grabbing at the blades of grass and pulling them from the earth.

  Mom never told me what she was sad about.

  * * *

  I was still seven years old.

  It was a dark autumn night. The wind howled outside. Cold rain fell on the roof of our house.

  The house was full of people, our family of four and Dad’s younger brothers.

  I had fallen asleep calmly that night, tucked warmly in the knowledge that despite the weather outside, we were comfortable and dry inside. By the time I fell asleep, Aroundeth was already asleep, breathing deeply from his bed in the corner.

  I was awakened suddenly. The overhead light was on. Mom was in the room, standing at the foot of my bed. Her hair was a mess around her face. My brother and I were not prepared for the glare of the lights or the sight of Mom this way. We both sat straight up in our beds in the mess of our room, toys and clothes, his sports gear and mine, strewn about the carpet.

  Mom said, “Get up! Pack! We are going to Uncle’s house!”

  We nodded in dazed surprise. She had clean garbage bags for us. She put one on each of our beds.

  She rushed out of the room, yelling behind her, “Get into the car when you are packed. We are leaving your dad.”

  In my disturbed state of sleep, I obeyed the sound of Mom’s pain. I started packing my sleepover bag. I put in underwear. I put in an undershirt. I thought I needed jeans but I also wanted to wear a dress. I was very confused. It took me a long time, long enough that my dad’s youngest brothers woke from their sleep, realized there was commotion, and came to investigate.

  From the doorway, I watched Mom sitting in the car in the pouring rain.

  I heard my young uncles telling Mom to return to the house, to sit down so the family could
all talk. I remember my dad wringing his hands, not saying a word, standing silently by my mother’s car, drenched and shaking.

  He has never said anything to Mom in the wake of her anger and her pain. Not once in any of the moments I’ve ever witnessed.

  I stood there, my garbage bag in one hand, until I heard the engine of the car go quiet, saw its lights go dark. Aroundeth was sitting on the floor beside me. I told him that we could return to our room.

  In our room, Aroundeth fell asleep quickly. I listened to his deep sleep, saw the dark of his empty garbage bag on the floor. I waited for the sound of the front door closing before I curled into a ball in my bed, unsure how to process Mom’s overwhelming sadness.

  * * *

  If there was a single reason I feared growing up, it was the simple fact of what my mother had said to me that day, her request that I bury her when I grew older. I tried to stretch out my childhood.

  * * *

  One summer, Saymoukda spent every minute she could lying down in a blue plastic pool her mom and dad had gotten for Aroundeth and her. She’d just lie there and leave the hose running until the pool filled with water, until the water spilled over the sides, soaking the grass, inviting the fat worms out from underneath the ground. She would look at the bright sun and, when it grew too intense, close her eyes and stretch out her arms wide on either side, pretending she was in the ocean floating away.

  Growing up, Saymoukda made friends with other refugee kids around her neighborhood, lots of Hmong kids and some Vietnamese kids, the other poor kids of color who lived in the houses with peeling paint, lots of African American and Latino American kids. They came up with elaborate schemes for fun and food. In the summers, they walked to neighborhood cherry trees and crabapple trees, picking bagsful of the small, hard fruits. They kept watch over each other, coughing out warnings and signaling precaution with hands and feet when there were passersby. In different kitchens, they took handfuls of salt and chili pepper flakes and mixed them in their palms. They ate from each other’s hands, dipping the tart, sour fruits into the salty-spicy mix, making faces at each other until their mouths grew numb. When the food-pantry trucks came, the children ran to line up for small bags of rice, expired baked goods, and chunks of yellow cheese. Once the trucks were gone, they went through their brown grocery bags and traded their foods for the things their families liked best. In Saymoukda’s case, it was rice and rice and more rice. She gave all the cheeses away. With their bags full of the things they loved, they walked home to their families full of pride.

  Saymoukda’s parents wanted Aroundeth and her to do well in school. They sent the kids to St. Mark’s Catholic School for a couple of years. It went horribly. The children didn’t speak English well. They were learning, but they were learning with kids and teachers who could only see their difference. At parent-teacher conferences, the teachers often asked Saymoukda to interpret things for her parents. “Saymoukda is a nice kid but she likes to talk and make other people laugh too much.” Instead of a clean interpretation that would cause her parents to worry, Saymoukda would interpret the hidden messages in the teacher’s words: “Saymoukda is a wonderful kid who takes time each day to talk to the children around her and make them happy.” The conferences went well, so her parents were happy.

  However, when Saymoukda got older, she urged her mother and father to register her for public school so she could be with her friends from the neighborhood. They agreed. Catholic school, even with a scholarship, was expensive.

  In public school, Saymoukda was placed in English as a Second Language support classrooms. She had a teacher named Mr. Smith. He was a nice man who enjoyed books. His favorite activity was to have his students read out loud for one another. Saymoukda did not like books, so reading was not her thing, but one day when it was her turn to read Charlotte’s Web, she heard a few of her classmates snickering. The sound made her angry. Usually, a kid read no more than three lines. That day, Saymoukda read nonstop, subjecting all those other refugee kids in the room to the sound of her voice for the entire class period. She read two chapters of Charlotte’s Web. It didn’t matter what was happening on the page or in the story. What mattered to Saymoukda was the message she was sending: you don’t laugh at Saymoukda Vongsay unless she wants you to laugh with her.

  Laughter became Saymoukda’s answer to everything boring, everything scary, everything sad, everything that had anything important to do with her life. She spent the rest of her education working on her ability to make people laugh, saying the things she knew would surprise people, or share some perspective with them.

  For example, during a lunch break in high school, a Hmong girl told a scary story about a ghost in her family’s home. Saymoukda is Lao and also believes in ghosts, so she was not questioning the girl’s reality, but while all the other kids sympathized with her fear and nodded over her story with awe and interest, Saymoukda offered some advice. “If that ghost has any power at all, you better tell that damn ghost to give you the lottery numbers.”

  Saymoukda became a popular girl. She was athletic like her mom—in fact, her athleticism got her into college as a proud C student. Her ability to smile like her father drew people in—all kinds of people, white kids, brown kids, black kids, other Asian kids. At the end of high school, she was awarded letters in volleyball, track, and basketball. Saymoukda could not stop time; she could not stop herself from growing up and going places.

  * * *

  I hated my time at the University of Minnesota–Morris. I hated that there was nothing to do in that little town. We had a cemetery on campus but I was not dead yet, so it wasn’t useful. To fill my time, I started becoming active on campus. I joined the Asian American Student Association. We didn’t do much and it was a shitty waste of time, but we wasted time together talking about Asian American spirit and Asian food and things like that. I even campaigned to become the group’s president. I ran on a platform that we would focus on growing our membership, bring more people of Asian descent on campus to present, and explore Asian American identity on campus through planned programming. Although we were all young, I was beginning to build a network of political artists and activists. When we could, I had us come down to the Twin Cities to attend the open mics. There were no Lao poets, but I heard people like Bao Phi, David Mura, and Ed Bok Lee. They were all men, but they were the ones making the noise so I crowded close to hear what they had to say. My continually wanting to leave Morris and my hunger to hear more diverse voices was how I met my partner, DJ Kool Akiem.

  It was my junior year of college. It was a Friday or Saturday night. I knew I had to study for midterms. My friends wanted to go to a concert. I thought that maybe the concert would be in town or in Minneapolis, maybe on First Ave. I loved hip-hop and they said that it was a Rhymesayers tour, so I was in. I said good-bye to my books. I grabbed a jacket and got in a car with them. We drove and drove and drove, and by the time I knew we weren’t anywhere close to the Twin Cities, we were good and settled in North or South Dakota, in a hotel banquet hall with big old chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and the lights turned low. Akiem was in that room, a DJ on that tour.

  We got into the banquet hall and my friends dispersed. We were hard core, so we had our own preferences for positions at concerts. I always stood near the back of the venues. In the event of a fight, I wanted an easy escape. I was just settling into the vibe when I noticed that someone was staring at me. I moved farther and farther from the gaze. Half an hour later, I found myself still moving and this person still following me. I decided to go outside for “a breath of fresh air.”

  It was a hip-hop concert. Lots of people were outside, everyone taking “a breath of fresh air.” I found a place where I could lean against a wall, hear a filtered beat thudding through the cement. I was just preparing to take my own “breaths of fresh air” when Akiem stepped close. He asked if he could have “a fresh air” with me. I shrugged and shared. We started talking.

  He noticed the stamp on
my hand.

  He asked, “Why do you have a stamp?”

  I didn’t know it then but he was ten years older than me. If he’d ever gotten such stamps, it was too far away for him to remember. I wasn’t yet twenty-one.

  I asked, “How come you don’t have one?”

  He shrugged and said that he liked my stamp. I licked my hand and I stamped him. He laughed. Then he said he had to go back inside. His “fresh air” break was done.

  Ten minutes later, I returned to the banquet hall. I saw Akiem was onstage. I realized who he was. I knew his work. I knew he was a music producer in the Twin Cities. In fact, we had a common friend, my boyfriend at the time. After his set, he came down and found me at the merchandise table.

  He asked, “What do you want?”

  I said, “Everything.”

  He said, “Fine.”

  He got a bag and gave me one of everything from the merchandise table. The, he handed me the bag. The air in the banquet hall had grown thick and hot. The chandeliers above sent shimmers of light across his face. He asked me for my number just as I noticed that my shoelace was untied, so instead of answering him, I handed him my purse and bent down to tie my shoelaces. By the time I got up, my friends had found us and it was time to return to Morris.

  He said, “Can I have a hug?”

  I asked, “Why?”

  He said, “I might not see you again.”

  I said, “Sure,” and spread my arms wide.

  In the hug, he again asked me for my number, and in that hug, I gave it to him.

  A few days later, back at Morris, sitting at my desk, I got a call from Akiem. He told me that he was on his way to go to a movie with a friend, another rapper whose work I knew.