Tiger Girl (19 page)

“Well, I didn't ask. He didn't say good-bye. It seemed like he was just going out for a bit.”

“Maybe he's been injured. Maybe something has happened.”

“He'll come back. He found you. He gave your number to his friends to call, didn't he? That means he wanted them to know he was here.” I didn't add, So that after he cased the place, he could signal for them to rob us. But then I felt guilty for even thinking it. Again.

“I'll pray. The Lord has been so good to me. I won't be ungrateful.”

On Christmas, Uncle insisted I go with him to church.

“But won't Father be expecting Paul? He'll be disappointed if it's only me.”

“No, the miracle is the same even if Ponleu is not here today,” Uncle insisted. “I am still thankful. I am still grateful. And if we don't come, then Father will be disappointed.”

I hadn't brought any fancy clothes. So for Christmas morning, rather than my usual jeans, I put on the one pair of khakis I'd packed in my backpack. They were a cotton-poly blend and not too wrinkled. And I had a snap-up Western-style blouse with red embroidered roses on it that the twins had given me for my birthday. I tried to put more attention into my eye makeup, as though that might help, but after my best efforts, the woman peering back at me from the bathroom mirror still looked kind of like a rodeo queen on a bad day. I sighed. It was the best I could do on short notice and no money.

Uncle emerged from his bedroom in a baggy gray suit, not the nicer one from the newspaper photo. He'd lost weight since Auntie's death. I imagined him wearing the same suit at her memorial service, and tried not to shudder.

“You look good,” Uncle said, smiling.

I thought about all the ways I could refute that, but instead I simply said, “Thank you.”

Then we left for church.

The last time I'd been in a church, my older sister Sourdi was a teen bride in an arranged marriage. Just thinking about it made me angry again. As Uncle drove, I tried to concentrate on my breathing, in through the nostrils, out through the mouth, like the counselors in school said to do. I focused on the present, not the could-have-beens. Sourdi was happy. She loved her three children. It was her life, her choices, not my decisions to make.

Uncle pulled in to the gravel lot behind the small white church, nodding as though he'd decided something, come to a kind of agreement with his conscience or God or whatever voice in his head that he talked to and expected answers from. Meanwhile, my heart beat faster, my palms went clammy. My attempts at positive thinking weren't working. I had bad church memories.

After we were sponsored by the First Baptists in a small town in Texas, the Church Ladies would come to the trailer park to pick us up and take us to church. People nudged each other in the pews, recognizing the clothes on our backs as we walked down the aisle. Everything we had in those days had been donated from the congregation. Later, Ma would refuse to go, claiming headaches or mysterious illnesses; she couldn't bear the stares, the way they made her feel guilty. Sponsoring our family had been the minister's idea. Not everybody in the church felt America needed another refugee family, but now the congregation was responsible for us—for renting the trailer we lived in, for finding Ma the maid's job at the Motel 6. Without their sponsorship, the government wouldn't have granted
us visas. Ma said we should be grateful to them, but that didn't make everyone in the church any happier. We were clearly a burden.

I didn't know any English at first, didn't know what people were whispering, but I could understand the suspicion in their sidelong glances, the ridicule in the way kids tugged at the corners of their eyes, the condescension from the Minister's Wife when she clapped her hand on our shoulders tight as a vise. Like we belonged to her, like we were her pets or exotic animals to display.

As I followed Uncle through the heavy wooden doors, the smell of incense and sweat mixed in the air. The somber organ music was heavy like a hand on the back of my neck. I felt my chest tighten and my throat constrict. I recognized the signs that I might be going into a panic attack. Breathe, breathe, breathe, I thought.

Uncle was still muttering to himself as he walked up the middle aisle, seemingly oblivious to the gaze of the congregants. They evidently had all heard the good news. Row after row of families decked out in their Christmas best turned toward Uncle, toothy smiles lighting up their faces. They could have been sunflowers at dawn, the way their heads rose and turned as he approached. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see their puzzled looks as we passed, the nudges. They were waiting for the son. They were wondering who I was. And suddenly the panicked thought came to me that maybe they thought I was the son. I was thin, my hair short still. Did I look like a really effeminate guy? I wondered. Were they staring at me?

I hadn't felt this uncomfortable since my first day of school in Texas, when all the kids stared at me and Sourdi. A girl in ESL turned in her seat to make a face at Sourdi. The fights on the schoolyard. That feeling that I was walking with a target on my forehead. Now I forced myself to look straight ahead
and ignore the people, staring only at the altar bedecked in red poinsettias. Their foil-covered pots scattered the candlelight like so many tears falling at our feet.

I reminded myself that I need not feel afraid anymore. In this church, the congregants were Uncle's friends, or at least people who knew him, people he'd helped. If they were staring, it was because they were excited for him, his good news printed in the bulletin for everyone to see: “James Chhouen has been blessed by God. His eldest son, missing since the takeover of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, is alive and well and is reunited with him. Join us in prayers of thanks at the 11 a.m. Mass, Christmas Day.”

Uncle took a seat at the very front of the church in the first pew. If Father Juan was surprised to see only me seated next to Uncle, he did not let it show on his face. He smiled and nodded at Uncle as he said the Mass. We rose and sat and knelt and rose again, the ritual of the movements soothing my nerves.

Then, during the homily, I saw Father Juan look right at us and smile, and my heart tightened. I thought he would make us stand up in the glare of everyone's eyes, but he only talked about “God's miraculous love,” and spoke in the most abstract terms about Uncle finding his son. Perhaps Uncle had not told him the details, or perhaps they were not important. It only mattered that Uncle's faith in God had been restored.

When I was ten, just before Ma decided to leave our small town for a better job in East Dallas, she insisted that all of us children become born-again. She wanted to pay back our sponsors. In exchange for their kindness, she was giving them our souls. We were baptized before the entire congregation. I remembered standing on the side of the altar, dripping wet in a borrowed white robe and blinking the water out of my eyes, as all those smiling faces came up to congratulate the Pastor and his wife. Teeth snapped at the air, sharklike, circling round
us children. This is what bait feels like, I thought. This is what it's like to be a worm on a hook, waiting to see which fish will bite first.

Now I held my body rigid with expectation, with the fear of being observed and judged for some deficit that I'd been previously unaware I possessed. This was what it felt like to be a refugee. To be on display, uncertain of myself, in a room full of staring people. I clenched my jaw so tightly that even my teeth hurt. I had hoped that I'd outgrow this feeling someday, that college would somehow change me, transform me into the confident American who always felt she belonged, but here I was, reliving my ten-year-old self all over again.

I was lost in my memories, not paying attention to Uncle, when I heard a strange gasping sound. I turned and discovered he was crying, his eyes squeezed shut, tears pouring down his face, falling over his sharp cheekbones. I didn't have any pockets, I couldn't offer him any tissues, but another parishioner was fast on the draw, digging in her purse for a pack of Kleenex and then surreptitiously pushing it into his hand. I watched Uncle wipe the tears away.

After Mass, people came up to Uncle, smiles on their faces, congratulating him. “I'm so happy you found your son!” “What a blessing!” “Alleluia! God has answered your prayers!” They patted his back, grabbed his sleeve, grasped his arm.

Uncle nodded, smiling.

Before anyone could approach and attempt to strike up a conversation, I stepped back from the crowd and pretended I was fascinated by the rows of votive candles. I didn't want to have to explain who I was, and I didn't want to lie to strangers.

And, for a moment, I could actually believe that everything would turn out perfectly well, that this happiness could last, and that there might somehow be enough left over to encompass me.

Kneeling before the flickering flames, the smoke and incense filling my nostrils, I had the curious sensation that I was floating, observing everyone from the high vaulted ceiling. I looked down on the heads of the people below me as they flowed toward Uncle like a river, splitting and dividing around him as though he were a rock in their path. The light from the stained-glass windows spilled around me in bands of blue and green and yellow. I dipped my open palm into a stream of red light from the sunlight pouring through the image depicting Christ carrying a cross on his shoulder, his face twisted in agony. The red glass panels around his head might have been blood or flame, I couldn't be sure, but I held the light in my hand, then squeezed my fingers into a fist, as though I could capture the light and save it for later use. I floated overhead, watching the people patting Uncle on the back, shaking his hand. An old woman with blue-white cataracts clouding her eyes marched up to him and grabbed hold of his jacket, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger as though she were a character in a parable, expecting to be healed by the power invested in the hem of a prophet's garment.

That night, I decided to call Ma from the pay phone near the bus stop. Uncle had been talking on the phone nearly nonstop since we'd come home from church. Everyone was calling him to offer congratulations, to wish him a Merry Christmas, to share their own stories. He talked on and on, apparently having the same conversation over and over. Finally I decided not to wait for the calls to end, stuffed my wallet in the pocket of my hoodie, and slipped outside.

The night air was chilly, and I wrapped my arms around my chest as I ran down the sidewalk. There was very little traffic out—everyone was at home with their families—and the night seemed darker and somehow colder for the lack of cars
and people. I could see the blinking lights wrapped around the front of the apartment building, and a few Christmas trees lit up the dark windows. A bench by the phone booth advertised the latest holiday blockbuster, but the stars' teeth had long been blackened by vandals, the smiling Santa tagged. The giant “Ho, Ho, Ho!” no longer seemed festive now that it was surrounded by obscenities and a giant arrow that suggested it was a slur against any woman who should happen to sit on the bench.

I pulled out my quarters and laid them carefully atop the metal phone. As I dropped them into the slot, I practiced what I would say in case Ma wanted to know how preparations for the internship interview were going (“Busy!”) or what I'd done that day (church and then dinner with my roommate's family) and a wild card—what if she asked to speak to my roommate's mother? Ma was pretty confident in her English nowadays. She might just want to check to see if I was behaving myself. I decided I'd tell her that the parents were opening presents and that's why I'd stepped away to call her.

I waited while the phone rang and rang. Then Marie's cheerful voice answered: “Hello?”

“Marie! Merry Chris—”

“You've reached the Chhim residence. Sorry we had to miss your call, but please leave a message! We'll get right back to you!”

There was a long beep.

“Hi, Ma! Marie, Jennifer, Sam! Merry Christmas! It's Nea!” I realized that sounded stupid. I tried again, “I miss you all! I hope you had a great day. It's really cool out here in California. I mean, it's actually kind of warm, but that's what's cool. There's a big palm tree right in front of me and—” The phone beeped a second time and cut me off.

I decided to call the Palace and fished out more quarters. Ma used to keep the restaurant open every holiday when I
was growing up. She'd backed off after the twins started high school, allowing them to take one major holiday off, but maybe she'd changed her mind this year. I pressed the phone to my ear, hoping, as I listened to the familiar ring.

Then it was Sam's deep voice: “You've reached the Silver Palace. Leave a message after the beep.”

“Merry Christmas, everybody!” I called into the answering machine, just in case they were screening the calls. But nobody came to answer. I left my greetings, then hung up.

Walking back to the apartment, I practiced my smile in the dark. I didn't want Uncle to see how I felt. I didn't want my loneliness to ruin his happy day.

If you see a tiger crouching, don't assume it's kowtowing to you
.

—traditional Cambodian proverb