Bloodlines: Conversations with my Mother

To my mother, Vanny Pat who is a survivor of the Cambodian Genocide that took place under the Khmer Rouge regime in the years 1975-1979. At nineteen, she escaped on foot to the Thai-border carrying me within her, and my six year-old uncle Lay on her shoulders.

I was born in a refugee camp on the Cambodia-Thai border in December 1979.

Our family arrived in the United States in 1981.

She is naked. I smell the menthol from the door as I walk into the house. Her body is wrapped in one of the sarongs she came back with on her trip to Cambodia last August. The peacocks encircle her frame; the fuchsia cloth's brilliance dulls the color of the maroon stripes she marks into herself. Gha kchal. Scrape the sick.

Growing up, when the cough medicine or pink tablets that tasted like chalk couldn't break my fever, she would do this: Gha Kchal. I would sit, bend my body toward the floor, as my mother with a coin in her hand, would gha. I remember that it sounded like that across my bones: gha gha gha. Like a deep echo in my ears. It wasn't the same in English tongue: scrape scrape scrape. It didn't feel like a scrape. Some things just don't translate.

When I was sick, I would have to wear long sleeves to school. In first grade, during square dancing, I felt myself heating up. She had told me not to go to school, but I was determined. I would have missed the first day of square dancing. Miss learning the steps. Miss holding Eric Miller's hand—I didn't tell her about Eric.

"Okay Anae, but drink water all day," she said. When she calls me Anae, I know she means it.

In the gym, my face began to burn, and my stomach was full of the water I had promised my Mom. I felt weak and needed the bathroom. I tried to run, but the sickness grabbed my legs. It made me slow. Before I could reach the bathroom, the heat of my head no longer mattered. My jeans became hot and the liquid stung as it spread across the fabric. Going to the nurses meant changing, meant stripping off my clothes. Instead, I tucked myself into a stall and waited for the bell to ring so I could go home.

By the time I got off the bus, my pants had dried; although, a slight itch remained as a reminder. When I got home, I could hear my Mom in the kitchen. I wanted her to ask me how my day went, undress me and clean my soiled clothes. Instead my feet walked me to the stairs and up to my bedroom. I shut the door.

"Anae, you home?"

"Chye Mai," I yell through the wood.

In the shower, I see little droplets form, my skin covered in the mint oil. Clean, I climbed on top of the bathroom counter and wiped the wet steam from the mirror. My toes curled to feel the cold porcelain sink; I studied the markings upon my chest, then still as flat as my back. I felt like Halloween. I felt like a tiger. A brown tiger with blood for stripes. I would wear the scent of menthol on me for a week.

Gha kchal. I remember how it looked as if a tree had bloomed on my back. Its thick trunk, two lines down my spine. Its branches stretched across my back. My blood separated. The sick blood, I could trace with my fingers. The coin: rub, rub, rub, scrape, scrape, scrape, gha gha gha, bruising till I was well again. Seeing pain on the surface was healing.

My Mother caught me with my new tattoo last week—my Christmas present to myself. I tried to hide it, knowing she would not be happy. Because of the...