Empty Beds
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Soun’s father, brother and two sisters were hacked to death in the kitchen and out in the field. The boy was thrown unconscious into a pit of limbs. His mother searched, bent down to grab him and together they hid in the thick forest. There would be no turning back for the faces mangled like twisted stalks, broken and slashed by teenage guerillas on the front. These young men stomped through looted temples and courtyards where skin smoldered in search of new recruits.
But Phum and her son were on their way to Thailand, running past trees filled with monkeys whose howls interrupted their sleep. In the refugee camp, they lingered on tension wires strung from one fence to the other. Little Soun played soccer with kids whose scars proved they were caught in the same twist of fate. Within a month, mother and son were shipped off to California where they were given no time to cry over the damp bones of loved ones. Must work, must eat, had to work and eat in the presence of people who couldn’t tell them their future because they refused to look into their past. It was slow, the return of trust in anything that moved like a leopard or stood like a soldier.
Soun turned into a hunter of wounded flashbacks, tracking their blood trails into the bush, spearing them in the gut and disemboweling them of every steaming memory. But these animals kept creeping up on him in his sleep and they were the same ones he thought he had killed the night before. Covers thrown on the floor, he sneaked out of the apartment. His bed was still empty the next morning.
Fast food caused indigestion, but at least they were alive and free from terror, or so Phum thought. She knew her son was filled with the sparks of youth, but inevitably charged with the duties once reserved for her husband, his father. Now, it was her son’s turn to play forgiver, redeemer, idol, provider and charmer of venomous snakes that still could strike at any moment. Welfare and broken English kept him humble, until Soun embraced the code of the streets. The Big Brothers swelled his chest, made him proud to be a survivor, told him that he would never be alone, told him he was made of the thickest iron, showed him that with a loaded 9mm people would make way for the young rooster.
For Phum, if hell had supplanted Cambodia, then the U.S. had to be the Promised Land tilled by the resolute. She demanded that Soun do the dishes, study to make her proud and bring back the girls he met for her close scrutiny. But, all she got was a small, green check, her son’s empty bed and the pictures of her family smiling back at her. Anchored in her place along an unwelcoming shore, she could only cry when Soun threatened to beat her if she continued to pester him about his absences from school and the knife she found underneath the mattress.
One night, Phum got a call from the San Jose police telling her that they had a Bonset Soun in custody for the crime of murder. The officer asked her was this her child, her only son. There was not a hint of remorse in her voice when she lied, “Yes, of course, a bright, courageous boy, a model son. My flesh and blood, my only key to heaven.”
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