Sisophan: Arrival

Every day the same. I am 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 young man hurry toward me. “Remember me, Bong? Remember me? From Phnom Phen?”
It 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 both so happy to find each other.
“Come with me, I take you to meet my mom.” He grab my pot of water and we walk together. My aunt live just behind temple. When I walk in she cry so hard. We all cry.
“Where your family? “She ask.
I tell her about Mae and Ba, about my two children. About my sisters’ children. About 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 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 so happy. Aunt has a lot of gold. I take care of them, cook, watch Siphal.
Country full of Vietnamese army. We see them everywhere, when we go to the wells to clean our clothes, when we shop in markets for food and clothes. Siphal 18 now. Her skin so white soldiers love her skin. Soldiers always staring at her. I have to protect her, be body guard.
We in Battambang few months when Sea Lion tells about camp near border of Thailand. He say maybe if you lucky you get to leave and go to United States. Every day more news. Aunt decides we leave for Sisophan near the border. She rent a horse with a wagon for three of us. Horse so wild knock me out of wagon into mud.
Sea Lion already there.