“Now we welcome you also!” they declare, pulling Teera into their midst. “You’re one of us!—Our foreign sister.” Through their eyes, Teera begins to glimpse the melding of her divided self, the stranger to this land and the child who never left.
True to their words, they treat her like family, like she’d always been part of their clan, drawing her into competing conversations, as they dash about orchestrating a traditional country feast—food of the peasants, they say—to welcome her back to her Khmer roots. M’rum! M’reah! M’ras! They take turns holding up to Teera the edible leaves, flowers, and buds sprouting wildly on their land, singing the names for her benefit in case she’s forgotten, before tossing them into the various pots simmering over the clay braziers in the outdoor cooking area off the side of the house. Teera takes out the journal she carries with her everywhere in her shoulder bag, asks whether it’s all right for her to jot these names down, and, when they chorus their consent, begins to scribble, feeling strangely at home with her thoughts, as if it’s a natural thing, writing in such company. Romdaeng . . . romduol . . . kjol rodek . . .
There is music to their words, a rhythm connecting a familiar spice to a rare mountain flower and the flower to the harvest wind, whose name bears the resonance of a child’s laugh. One day, she tells herself, she wants a family as large and boisterous as this, a home open to all who pass. She notes the rows of solid round teak columns holding up the house so that it appears an abode rising from the earth, an indestructible entity, protected through the years of war and abandonment by the surrounding trees, by the spirits and ghosts that took up residence. “You’ve dug a pond since I was last here!” she hears Narunn exclaim, and, turning, sees him pointing to a field of lotuses blooming in one corner of the property. Ravi, the eldest of Yaya’s granddaughters, explains, “Yes, to give our land a breath of water”—dangherm tik.
Teera echoes the words in her mind, writing them down lest they escape her completely. And as she does so, one explains to the others that this scribbling of hers is the way of the sas sar, something she must’ve developed living among the “white race.” Another agrees, “Yes, they read and write all the time. They record everything, not like us; we don’t know our own history.” Ravi’s husband, the palm climber, retorts, “Oh, we know, but we’d rather not! We choose to forget.” His cousin interjects, “Min bomphlich kae bomphlanh,” harking back to the adage of the Khmer Rouge years. “What we can’t forget they will destroy. It’s self-preservation, pure and simple. We’re like prahoc, rotten to the bone but prepared to last.” Laughter erupts, and the rowdiest of the bunch offers Teera a jar of the pungent pickled fish—the quintessential condiment in Khmer cuisine—and, gesturing to Narunn, advises, “Make sure the doctor has the courage to stomach this thing raw before you trust him with your heart.” Narunn grabs him, and they tussle like boys—“You water buffalo, I’m going to make you eat mud!”
Amidst the continuing jest, Yaya beckons Teera to her. On the way here, Narunn told her that during the Khmer Rouge, Yaya, by virtue of her peasant background, was ordered to identify who among the city people exiled to her village were enemies of the Organization. She refused, instead offering her tongue to be cut off. Better, she told the soldier, than telling a lie.
Beholding this whisper of a woman on the wooden platform, Teera is amazed that Yaya not only survived that ordeal but that she has lived to such an age, her skin so deeply grooved and veined that she seems inseparable from the land. What’s even more amazing is that the elder has long outlasted the soldier who grazed her tongue with his razor-sharp knife that day, who was later purged, a victim of the revolutionary cleansing he had instigated in the village.
Teera takes a seat on the wooden platform facing Yaya, her legs folded to one side, feet tucked beneath her, a gesture of propriety and respect toward the elder. Between them sits a bamboo tray of fresh spices—a profusion of scents, textures, and colors. Yaya looks past it to the journal, nodding for Teera to read. Teera is unsure if she’s understood correctly. Narunn catches her eye and winks.
“It’s mostly in English,” she tells Yaya. “Except for a few Khmer words here and there.”
Yaya smiles. It doesn’t matter the language. The creases in her forehead, the delight in her eyes, the crosshatched lines around her mouth, the stillness of her hands—Teera has never met anyone who speaks with every part of her body, who conveys so much with silence.
She opens the journal to where she’s tucked her pen, clears her throat, and reads—“?‘A breath of water’ . . . So many expressions I’ve forgotten. I am like this land, each word recalled, excavated, lends me its breath, its life, and I hear a voice echoing the story I want to tell . . .”