Forever a Foreigner

Author’s Note: This short story was written in 2019 when I was taking a Creative Writing course at university. It was intended to be a little window into the experience and culture of a Cambodian girl from a poor farming background.

Up to now, very few people have read this story, and it has been gathering dust in the depths of my computer files. I hope you enjoy.

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Desolation lurked in the dust of the dike-path, in the plop of frogs into the rice field before her bare feet, in the blackness of the palms silhouetted against the flaming sky. Navi hefted her sister a little higher on her hip, tightening her grip on the muddy lead rope in her other hand. Janna stirred, moving her head on Navi’s shoulder. The three cows, hump-backed and spindly-legged, ambled after them with a dull clink-clut of bells—a lonely sound, echoing back from Navi’s soul.   

They reached the yard fence. Navi stood there and looked at it all: the one-roomed house on stilts, the outhouse, and the kitchen lean-to. So Cambodian. So ordinary. How tired she was of coming back to this!

She climbed the ladder up into the house and laid Janna down on her mat.

Navi went back down. All was silent, and the silence cared nothing for her. She tied the cows up under the house and fetched water for them. While they drank, she filled the red plastic dipper with water and splashed the cows’ backs and heads, rubbing the wetness into their short-haired hides.

When she went to the cooking-fire, he was standing there. Sokran. She looked at him, afraid that she would cry.

“It’s hot,” he said. What sort of a greeting was that?

She sniffed. “Cool your head.” She nodded to the cistern under the corner of the roof.

He complied, splashing water over himself. Droplets lingered in his black hair, and little streams ran over his bare back and chest, soaking into his shorts.

Navi tended to the cooking fire, trying to disregard him, swallowing the tightness in her throat. Crickets chorused abruptly, loud in the dark.

He came up behind her in the flickering light. “Your cows look good.”

She smiled, pretending the world was unchanged. “If only there were more of them.” Her voice wavered, and she stepped away from the fire and looked out on the night. The stars hung brightly in the blackness, each as large as an almond, so bright and near they looked like they could be picked.

He was close behind her; she could feel his breath.

She spoke. “I will sweep the stars up in my shawl, and we will sell them and be rich.” It was a mad thought, but Sokran—he would not scorn it.

“How rich?” he asked.

“Fifty cows,” she said, expanding the thought. “A legion of horses, which we will sell to the king. And we will have servants to train them.”

“No,” he said to the night. “We will take those stars, and I will put one in each of your ears and hang a string of them round your neck. I will thread seven in your hair; three for an anklet on your foot. Then we will go dancing in the dark, and you will be so beautiful that all who see us will take us for gods and worship us.”

“Does worship put food in your stomach?”

He laughed, burying his nose in her hair. “No. But the offerings do.”

She spun away from him, laughing, but her breath caught suddenly, like a sob.

Sokran sighed. “Navi, listen. I have two cows, and I am working in other men’s fields as well as my father’s. I am trying—”

Navi tightened her hands into fists. “The time grows short?” she asked, as she often had before.

He looked at her. “It grows short,” he said, but he lied, and she knew it.

She turned away from him.

“You are worth the bride-price, but Ton—and I…” He tried again. “I know your parents mean well. We will find a way. For love, Navi…”

A tiny light showed on the field-paths in the distance, weaving as a man walks.

“My mother,” she murmured.

“I go.” He hesitated. “Your engagement is not for another month,” he said, and then vanished into the dark, silent as a spirit.

Navi quickly swept where his footprints had marked the dust and put the rice on to cook.   

Mother had brought pork and no-nong, and together they cooked a stir fry. Janna woke up and came down, and Father came home. He was not drunk this time.

Navi turned on the little lightbulb under the house, and the sickly light sent shadows all over the ground, the hammocks, and the eating bed. They sat down and had dinner in the usual hot silence, with nothing but the scrape of cheap spoons on plastic. The cows chewed their cud. Father went upstairs. He switched on the TV, and pretty soon she heard the blast of an Angkor Beer commercial: ‘Alcohol! Beer of Cambodia! Happiness and fun!’

“I was talking to Om Po,” Mother said, picking rice off of Janna’s shirt.

Navi felt rice turn cold and soggy in her mouth.

“We said the engagement could be in just three weeks, as things are going.”

Navi stared at her. The words hurt her, hurt her badly. She had not known how much hope still clung to her heart. “No, Mother, I beg you. Yesterday it was five! You have to give us time—”

“Hey! That’s enough!” Father yelled from upstairs. Navi pressed her lips together. A karaoke song started playing.

“Yes, you listen to your father. Time.” Mother snorted. “Hah. For what? That Sokran will never be anything.”

The song beat turned up louder, and the boy began singing his confession of love to his girl.

Her mother spat. “Sokran will make you work and soon your skin will be as black and wrinkled as mine! This is a good arrangement. I want grandchildren, with fat cheeks and little running feet. I want a strong roof over my head in my old age, and food on my plate.”

The music blared. Have mercy on my heart, love, I’ll swear, forever until the river turns to stone, until the sky breaks its chains, my faithfulness, white to you.

“Think of your father’s debts—your sister.”

Navi set her jaw and stared between the slats of the eating bed. A chicken’s head bobbed in the shadows, pecking at fallen rice.

“You listen to me when I am speaking, girl!” Her mother grabbed her arm.

Navi resisted. “Let go!”

Janna stared at them both, a spoon in her mouth and her eyes round.

Her mother pinched tighter and shook her. “I never heard of a worthless daughter like you. You know what you are? Selfish. Selfish!”

Navi wrenched away and jumped to her feet, heat rising into her face. She stared at her mother. “No!” She spat the words out, each one hot and bitter on her tongue. “You are selfish! I love a man, and you do not wait. You think only of yourself. May the demons curse you! You too!” she yelled at the thin floorboards above. There was a thump, and the TV switched off.

Mother stared at her. Navi stared back.

The boards creaked as Father headed for the door.

Navi ran, her heels thudding into the hard earth.

Father shouted after her, and a beer can flew at her head. It missed, bouncing and rolling down into the ditch.

Navi ran straight through the fields and down the road to Sokran’s house. Her throat burned, her eyes stung with tears, and she thought she could hear spirits laughing and whispering in the rice stalks. It is all hopeless, she thought. I want to die.  

Sokran’s cousin was out in the yard. “Hey! Sokran! Your girlfriend’s here!”

Sokran came out of his shed, motorcycle oil staining his fingers.

Navi told him everything, fast and angry. She knew she was shaming herself, him, her family—she knew it, but she kept talking. Then she put her hands to her face. “I’m sorry!” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“My heart,” he said, helplessly, “what can I do?”

“Every morning,” she said, “I light the incense, and I pray against my parents. Do you think I am very wicked?”

Sokran just looked at her.

Navi put out a hand and touched his arm, quickly, timidly. “How much more do you need for that cow?”

Sokran sighed. “Some fifty dollars.”

“Ai,” Navi said softly. A thought whispered in her mind. “That’s not so much.”

Sokran shook his head. “Navi. Ton has more money.” He shrugged his shoulders. “He will make a good husband.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that she knew this, that she wasn’t deceiving herself, but her eyes fell upon Sokran’s sister-in-law and her children, who were standing under the house, watching, and she realized she was still holding Sokran’s arm.

She let go of him as if he had burnt her fingers. She stepped back. “Watch for me tomorrow.” Sudden hope raced through her blood.  

Navi stole up into her house many hours later, her bare feet noiseless on the floorboards. She stepped around her mother and father. They were already in deep sleep. Navi had waited long to postpone her beating. If she was lucky, perhaps there would not be one at all.

Faint light from the fingernail moon shone in on the sharp edge of the paring knife in Navi’s hand. She hesitated and looked at Janna, sleeping on her mat. Her sister’s mouth was a little bit open, and her tiny, perfect hands were in fists. Her pretty black curls framed her forehead, and she had those chubby cheeks that Grandmother loved to pinch. Navi swallowed.

She knelt quietly and slit the corner of the mat. Carefully, with nimble fingers she drew out the money. Many bills, all rolled into the tiniest of rolls. She had started to save them the day Janna was born, and Dee-yah from town had come, showing off her son and her motorcycle. Dee-yah had asked Navi if any of the village boys were after her.

“Too bad you’ll never get a rich man,” Dee-yah had said. “Poor Navi, you can’t even read!”

Navi had not cared before that day, but then she had. And then she had begun saving for Janna, so Janna could go to school.

Navi counted the money carefully, even though she already knew how much was there. One hundred seventy-two thousand riel. Once she had figured it to forty-two dollars, already enough to get Janna started with a uniform and supplies.

Navi smiled bitterly. This would get Sokran that other cow. Her father would relent.

She looked over at Janna. The money lay crumpled and creased in her cupped hands. She could see Janna, in pigtails and a new white and blue uniform, going off to school, reciting her multiplication tables and copying letters on a new slate. Janna, grown, smart and pretty, with boys chasing after her, Janna, maybe even learning English—becoming a teacher, marrying up, going to the city, away from the fields and the beer…

Slowly, one by one, Navi slipped the bills back into the mat.

Kneeling on the rough floor, she looked up—out the window at the sky. There were the stars, bright and large, and tomorrow—

 Sokran would wait for her, wondering.

But Navi looked away from the distant stars and lay down, next to her sister.