Kou: Sisophan

Every day the same. I am the maid. I go to lake, carry back water. My knees still not better. I cannot bend down and come up. I take one pot at a time. Carry on my shoulder. Back and forth two or three times. Then Fix food. After she eat, sleep.
I have no place to go. I know she not want me anymore.
One day I am carrying water. Just so tired. I hear a someone call out my name.
“Bong!”
I turn and see a young man hurring towards me. “Remember me, Bong? Remembe me? From Phnom Phen?”
It is my aunt’s son Sealion, the boy who once drove around the city with us in a fancy car, eating ice cream by the lake.
Oh, I start to cry. Finding family. They like my family.
We are both so happy to find each other.
“Come with me, I take you to meet my mom.” He grabs my pot of water and we walk together. My aunt lives just behind the temple. When I walk in she cry so hard. We all cry.
“Where your family? “She ask.
I tell her about Mi and Pa, about my two children. About my sisters’ children. About the camp. She lost 3 of her seven children.
I tell her about where I am living in the temple, about how I am working for this woman. Trying to find a place to stay. That is all over now, she tell me. You come to live with me now. You come and you be like an older sister to Siphal.
Oh my life is so happy. Aunt has a lot of gold. I take care of them, cook, watch Siphal.
Country full of Vietnamese army. We see them everwhere, when we goto the wells to clean our clothes, when we shop in the markets for food and clothes. Siphal is 18 now. Her skin is so white and the soldiers love her skin. Soldiers are always staring at her. I have to protect her, be her body guard.
We are in Batambang for a few months when Sea Lion starts talking about a camp for all us near the border of Thailand. He says he hears maybe if you are lucky you get to leave and go to the United States. Every day there is more news. Aunt decides we leave for Sisophan near the border. She rents a horse with a wagon for the three of us. Sea Lion is already there.