Oh, the world you would have known, Shrey Mom. There are still times now, thirty years after you left us, when I look up from whatever I am doing and search for some sign from your spirit. Is that you, that slight soothing pressure on my face? Are you hiding in the clear fresh water I use to clean my client’s feet? Did you slip into that little girl’s giggle? For just a minute, she sounds so much like you.
So many times I ask my husband, “Where are the spirits of all the children who starved to death during the Khmer Rouge? Are they still waiting in Cambodia for their families to come home? Do they know we are here in America?”
He says he does not know. I never tell him how I wait for you. How I worry.
The women who come into my salon, Shrey Mom, carry huge leather satchels that probably cost more money than all the rice we harvested during five years at Pou Chrey. Sometimes they bring their children with them, pale little children in fancy soccer uniforms and hundred dollar sneakers. They will never know the joy of playing a simple game of Leak Kanseng in their dirty bare feet. The dogs that wait for them in cars much grander than the Anghar tanks go to special shops for shampoos. Akmow would not be welcome here, with his dusty black coat and half an ear.
What stories I could tell you about this strange world of America, daughter. But there are no words in the Khmer language to describe such things. It is like a story I once heard about a very old tribe who had never seen a boat before. And so, when they looked out over the ocean, where many, many enemy boats were arriving, they only saw the water. What did they know of something besides a bird that could float?
As much as I want to tell you about my life in America, things are so very different here that there is no space in your little mind for you to even imagine their existence. I can tell you that I own a small shop in a very, very rich town in America, that I clean people’s hands and feet and paint their nails different colors. Sometimes I grind fake nails for them and paste them on their fingers. Every day fancy women come here and I put rich creams on their faces to make them look younger or use hot wax to strip hair from their body. Not sexy in America to have hair on your body.
I do these things to make them happy but they are not happy, Shrey Mom. Always they have problems. I am sorry with them. I remember to ask them how things are when they return. But deep inside, as I bend over their hands, I am saying to myself: “You think your life is a sad story? You have everything. A home. Food. A job. Education. Why you so sad?”
Sometimes I think, “If only you knew my story. You would understand what sorrow really is.” But I say nothing. They are my customers and I have bills to pay.
I will tell you what their lives remind me of, though. It is another story. Some Buddhist monks came to the largest city in America, a city bigger than twenty Phnom Phen’s with buildings that rise so high into the sky you cannot see where they end. The monks went every day to a famous building where very important paintings and other art is kept, and they carved a very, very big and beautiful sculpture. It took them weeks and weeks to finish. The sculpture was so big it was the size of a small rice field. When they were done they just left it there, and pretty soon this beautiful piece of art started to melt. The days were too hot. But the monks had known all the time that what they had worked so hard to create would not last. They had done it this way on purpose. They had made the sculpture out of butter.
This is what America is like, Shrey Mom. It is not a real place. What they call beauty here is just what they use to cover up what is real. It will not last.
But the story of our lives? Ah, this will never melt, this will last forever. Yes, this is the story I will tell you
