MY MOTHER’S PARTY

My mother invited me to a party with Cambodians the night before they move in.

I go only for the purpose of establishing control with my mother and grandmother. I’ll tell them what time to come. Tell them where they can and cannot park. They have been staying with another Cambodian family in the next town, and the house where I go smells like garlic and ginger and fish paste.

In the kitchen, my grandmother spreads open wrappers for egg rolls. The men are drinking beer in one room. The women work and talk in another.

“I tell the police, take him. He is my son, but I cannot control him. You take him.”

“The police will send him back to Cambodia.”

“He will die.” The women fall into the Khmer language.

Then the mother returns to English. “Only half die,” she says. “The other half, they grow crazy. I turn my back on him. I say to my son, why are your eyes red? Why do you steal the dollars I earn helping old people bathe their bodies?”

“You be careful,” my grandmother says to me.

“What?” I say, startled. Her eyes frighten me. They are an emergency. Everything she looks at could be on fire.

“Be careful.” She raises the volume. “Stay away from boy who do drug like they say. Boy who drink too much.” She speaks sharply at me while the women talk in the language I don’t understand. I back away. I’m wearing khakis and a tank top because I told Vincent I could fill in after this and am half dressed for work. I can fly out the door.

The host of honor hasn’t come. Now, I think. I’ll go now. “I’ll be home from school by four tomorrow. You can come then,” I say to my grandmother.

She hands me a mango with something in the glint of her eye that says, This is what’s important.

“You are Cambodian, too,” she says. She gives me a knife.

“Where’s my mother?” I say. “Isn’t this her party?”

“It is not today. It will be another day.”

No one knows what day. No one knows where my mother is. Why are Cambodians so crazy? How long have these women been in this country and they still don’t speak English?

“You are hungry,” my grandmother says. The women are looking at her and me. “You eat before go to work.” Her eyes turn agitated.

A woman looks at me and demands to know, “You are Leap granddaughter?”

Leap is my grandmother’s name. “Leap’s,” I say. “I am Leap’s granddaughter.”

“Do you know what they do to Leap mother?”

“Sophea, I tell you later,” my grandmother says.

“What did they do?” I say. I know they mean the soldiers, the Khmer Rouge. Maybe old people have told this story before. I don’t remember. Maybe I wasn’t there. Maybe I didn’t listen. Today I listen. Luke makes me want to understand what happens to people far away in war. With Luke, I am a Cambodian girl. Someone brings me a Cambodian beer. I take a very long drink.

My grandmother continues to slice vegetables for the egg rolls. I slice the fruit from the mangoes, very clumsily.

“Like this,” she says. She guides the sharp blade with her thumb, lifting the skin along the curve of the mango. I continue, following her example.

The storyteller begins. “Her mother, in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge say she too old, she do not work. Do not feed her. If you feed her, we will not feed you, too. They starve her to death.”

My grandmother’s and my fingers hold the knives with skill as we cut.

“Every day she brush Leap hair until she cannot lift her hand. She still miss her.”

This makes no sense to me. “Why didn’t you take her food when they weren’t looking?” I ask my grandmother.

“The guard is a boy with an ax. He starving, too. They promise him rice if he will guard. His life or Leap mother. He can choose.”

My grandmother stirs pork that sizzles in a black skillet.

“Every day she do Leap hair. The boy watch.”

I drink the Cambodian beer. “You are telling folktales,” I say, heavy-headed instantly from the beer.

“Is not a tale. This happen.” The woman is angry. She shouts, “She beg for food. She say, ‘If I could just taste food one more time.’

“Your grandmother bring her rice she hide in her scarf and the boy is sleep. Mother eyes shine with happiness to taste the rice. She eat it all, even if her body look like sticks and she does not stay alive. For this, she love your grandmother.”

She said this very loud, a few inches from my face. I shut my eyes. I see the image of sticks on the ground, one stick holding a brush. And I have stepped out of this world. I make myself open my eyes and be here in this kitchen in New Hampshire even though I am spinning with the beer.

I turn to my grandmother, who swiftly grates gingerroot across the tines of a fork. But her face is unchanged. It is as if she did not listen. Or that story is in her bones and tissues and the air she breathes and she lives in that other world all the time. I don’t know what to do with this. My grandmother touches my hair. I feel the pressure of her hand on my head and I spin. I fill the egg roll wrappers with the sliced cabbage, ginger, and a little of my blood because I am not fast enough for my grandmother and I have rushed the knife. I toss in the pork in small pieces.

My grandmother folds them and drops the egg rolls into boiling oil. In the fryer, the oil bubbles around them. The smell makes a burning in my throat. “When I come,” she says, “I tell you more folktale.”