World And Town Part 10

"Are you nervous?" Annie gives a play bow, then runs off; Cato and Reveille lie at Hattie's feet.

"Serena says I should just try not to drool. Which you did teach me, I told her. Of course, it wasn't easy," he goes on. "But I did learn."

Hattie laughs. Though the banter-she sometimes wonders if Josh doesn't hide behind his banter the way he hides behind his reporting. If it isn't a species of talking without talking-of being tough. When he was little, he and Joe would retreat to the woods for weeks at a time-a wonderful thing, except that Joe would sometimes take a retreat from the retreat, leaving Josh alone for a day or two. Hardening him, Joe said. Insisting that Josh could handle it, even when he was just nine or ten. And Josh used to insist he could handle it, too, never mind that he could fit three pairs of socks in the hiking boots Joe got him; his backpack hung down to his knees. He insisted he liked being left alone like that. I did, Ma, except the time a snake came. I did.

As for what Serena likes: "She's crazy about Pushkin-she loves Pushkin. She says it was worth learning Russian just to read Pushkin."

"And where's home for her?"

"She doesn't have one, really, but thinks my thinking about that is outmoded, too."

Hattie moves some copies of Nature off her reclin-o-matic. "Didn't Pushkin have a home?"

"That's what I said. I told her I thought we were programmed to be faithful to a place. Like storks with their-what's that German word?"

"Ortstreue." A Carter word.

"Ortstreue. Thank you." His on-the-air voice. "I told her you developed different relations.h.i.+ps. But she says how do I even know, when my parents could never settle down, and now look at me."

"That was your father."

He pauses then, as he always does, at the mention of Joe. And for a moment, they share the short silence; it's like a hallway they both use.

"She says we have Listserv to keep in touch with people," he goes on, "and that we journalists are like a floating village anyway. You ever see those? In Cambodia?"

"I have new neighbors from Cambodia."

"No kidding. And here I just did the decimation of the catfish in the Tonle Sap."

Would he have said more about his new girlfriend if she hadn't brought up her neighbors? Anyway, she explains about the trailer. The Chhungs.

"But you like the girl-this So-PEE."

"I like them all. But the girl, especially. Yes."

"Let me guess. The daughter you always wanted."

Joe's bluntness.

"Though why would you want a daughter when your son is everything you'd ever dreamed of?" he goes on.

"Oh, Josh," she says. "You're not so bad."

"As best you remember, you mean."

She tries to think what to say-still improvising with Josh, after all these years. Still feeling her way. "I do understand that coming home involves travel."

"Getting on an airplane, you mean."

Is that what she means?

"I'll come soon," he continues. "I know it's been over a year-"

"You're welcome anytime, Josh." Hattie doesn't mean to cut him off, but maybe she has? And is that stonewalling? "Anyway, good luck with your dinner."

"It's time for me to get married, you mean."

"I mean, don't drool and enjoy your food. If you like her."

"I like her."

Ah.

"Then, go. Live," she says.

"Don't waste time, you mean."

She sighs. "I mean, live." She stands back up and opens a window; outside, a half a dozen b.u.t.terflies have crammed themselves into a nook between some rocks. "I mean, try and listen to your mother."

"You mean, the unlived life is not worth living."

She laughs. "Exactly! You remember! What Lee used to say."

"I thought it was what you used to say."

"No, no." Misattribution-the most common error of the memory. "It was Lee. Lee used to say that."

"Lee was great."

"She was. Lee was great."

She reaches down to pet Cato and Reveille at the same time, one with each hand.

Hattie does not visit the Chhungs for a week. Thinking to invite Sophy to the farmers' market again, though, Hattie finally tromps down their way, through the ferns. Which are, of course, pus.h.i.+ng up everywhere now; the hillside's a veritable sea of curls, some of which will produce a trillion spores in their lifetime. As Hattie used to tell her kids in school, ferns are prolific. She'll have to take the same route repeatedly if she wants to have a path-encourage Sophy to take it, too.

That is, if there's going to be visiting.

The daughter you always wanted.

Why would they have moved to Riverlake if they were thriving?

Well, either way she's going to pick some fiddleheads to steam up. In the meanwhile, there's her tribute of cookies to present, and her compliments to pay on the pit. She produces, too, a new kind of insect repellent-a local product with a pen-and-ink mosquito on its label. Chhung nods in thanks, smiling and smoking.

"You speak Chi-nee," he says abruptly.

"Yes," she says. "I do."

"Grew up in Chi-nah."

"Yes. I grew up in China."

"Speak Chi-nee like English. Good."

She laughs. "Once upon a time I spoke better Chinese than English. But yes. Now I speak both equally poorly." She waves at Gift and Sophy.

"My grandparents Chi-nee. Come from Chi-nah. My father speak-Teochew dialect. But me, no ..." He waves his free hand in front of his face.

Hattie stops; but of course. The oval face, the pale skin. How could she not have seen this? "Your grandparents were from China?"

"From Chi-nah." He holds up four fingers, all with Band-Aids; one has enough curve to qualify as a bandy leg if it were a leg. "All from Chi-nah."

"All four of your grandparents were from China. That makes you Chinese Cambodian, right? Overseas Chinese?"

He nods, smiling.

"Like me, sort of." She almost never thinks of herself as "overseas Chinese"-who knows what she is, or what she's made of, either-but never mind. It's a helpful enough category right now. "You don't speak Chinese, though?" She tries to ask in such a way so as not to make him feel bad.

"In city, children go to Chi-nee school. But where I grow up, no Chi-nee school."

"It's hard to hang on to a language you don't use."

He nods again, his cigarette ash growing into a fine little log; his hand is surprisingly steady. " 'Human strr-en cannot chain destiny,' " he says, enunciating carefully.

"Human strength cannot change destiny?"

He nods a third time. "Fate sent you for teach Sophy."

"Chinese? To teach her Chinese?"

"Chi-nee." A glowing hunk of ash falls from his cigarette onto a pile of leaves, but he does not seem unduly concerned.

"Is Mandarin okay?" Hattie keeps an eye on the leaves.

"Okay."

"I'd love to. But would she like to learn?"

He waves his hand. "Sophy smart. Learn fast. You teach her no problem."

Not exactly what she asked, but all right. He offers to pay her; Hattie insists it would be her pleasure. And in truth, she's been thinking of adding some calligraphy to her bamboo anyway-afraid as she is that she's losing her Chinese. Her characters, especially, in which was found guo cu, her father used to say-the essence of China. Though what does that matter here?

Who knows? Pretty soon she and Sophy have a routine. First they go to the farmers' market. Then they have their Chinese lesson. Then they play with Annie and have cookies. Sugar cookies, snowdrops, snickerdoodles-always something different, which Sophy likes even though Hattie is using whole-wheat flour now, trying to stay in step with their health-crazy time. Over the cookies, Hattie tells Sophy all kinds of things: How Annie is doing with her house-training. How little color dogs see. How Hattie once had a half-wolf dog, and how he really did wolf down his food. And how she got here, starting with how she came from China-Hattie tells Sophy that, too. How it was like being carried out to sea by a riptide. How she's been swimming for sh.o.r.e for fifty years.

She does not explain how she found an island in Joe and Lee.

Sophy nods thoughtfully in any case, and tells Hattie stuff in return, pulling at her hair. Her hair is straight like Chhung's, but she likes to pull it even straighter, then twirl it around her finger, then straighten it out all over again as she describes how her dad flips out sometimes, and how her mom misses Cambodia.

"My mom's family had a mango farm when she was growing up," she says. "They were, like, the mango family-people would come buy whole trees from them, because mango trees are easy to take care of and don't take a lot of water. And they sold mangos at a stand outside their house, too, and my mom and her sister were in charge of the selling. So, like, one of them could lie in the hammock under the house but not both of them, or if both of them did, one of them was supposed to at least stay awake. So they had all these tricks to keep awake but fell asleep all the time anyway."

"What do you mean, under the house?" asks Hattie, sipping coffee.

"I guess the whole house was, like, raised up on stilts. Because they had all this rain there, like in the monsoon season. So the fields were fields sometimes, but other times they were lakes. Like you couldn't ever just say something was land, it was only, like, land sometimes. That's why the house was on stilts. So it was always a place you could sleep, no matter what. But anyway, it got destroyed."

"It wasn't permanent, either."

"No, it wasn't. It wasn't permanent." Sophy leaves off playing with her hair in favor of playing with Annie. "I guess the whole village got, like, destroyed in the end, my mom says because of their karma."

Annie pulls so hard on her chew toy, Sophy lets go.

"One thing I never understood," she says, tugging again, "is who Pol Pot was anyway. Like everyone's always saying during Pol Pot time whatever, and there's that movie."

"The Killing Fields, you mean."

Sophy nods. "But was Pol Pot like a regular person, or was he, like, a k'maoch?"

"Is a k'maoch a ghost?"

Sophy nods again.

Hattie explains as Sophy frowns, nods, wonders, then frowns some more. Her head is down, her brow flattened by the light of the open window. She plays with her hair, slips a sneaker half off, claps it against the callused heel of her foot.

"Whoa," she says at the end. Trying to take it in, but seeming to realize she can't, really. "n.o.body ever told me that. I mean, I guess I sort of knew. But it's, like, so hard to believe."

"It is. It is hard to believe, you're right. It's so hard that some people have spent their whole lives trying to understand it. What humans are, and how it could happen."

Sophy picks up the chew toy, throwing it for Annie to fetch. Then she waggles her head thoughtfully and goes on. "My mom's family were farmers, but they were rich," she says. "I mean, not as rich as my uncle, who she was married to before she hooked up with my dad, but they had, like, a tile roof on their hut and ..."

Hattie stops her. "Your mom was married to your uncle?"

"Yeah, it's kind of wack, but they were married until he died and then my dad's first wife died, too. Then my mom and dad sort of got stuck together."

"I see."

"It was, like, fate. Like I guess in the beginning they were just happy to find someone they knew in the refugee camp. And then they found Sarun, too, and had to take care of him, because of, like, the Thai soldiers and the mines." Sophy tries to make Annie walk on her hind legs.

"I see."

"And because, like, n.o.body else could, because everyone else was dead. Like one of my mom's brothers had a gold chain, and another had a gold ring, which was why they both died. Like they got killed right in front of my mom by some kid who'd always been jealous of them, and who took the chain and the ring, I guess he was Khmer Rouge. And then he got killed by somebody else jealous of him."

"That's terrible."

"And other people died other ways. Like, some starved. I don't know. They died a lot of ways. And on top of everything, my mom says if her family still had their house and their land, it would be worth, like, a million cows now. But anyway, they don't."

"Who does?" Hattie reseats her gla.s.ses on her head, one pair toward the back, one toward the front.

"I don't know. My dad thinks his family's house is probably worth a lot now, too, because everyone in Cambodia is, like, buying everything. But there's no way of even proving that it used to be his house because the Khmer Rouge took it over and everyone who knows whose it was before is dead now. And all the papers were destroyed, and anyway, my mom is sort of backward so it doesn't matter." Sophy dangles the chew toy so that Annie has to jump up for it.

"What do you mean, backward?"