A History of the Present Illness (2 page)

A nurse's thick brown fingers land on the doctor's forearm. The red sticker means
do not resuscitate
, and the doctor cannot put it on this or any other chart without the family's approval.

The wide-angle lens again, this shot offering a sunset bird's-eye view of jutting, pallid buildings in the middle of a forested city hilltop, cars like forgotten toys in a giant parking lot, ceramic pots huddled as cockroaches might in the shadows on the terrace of the main entrance, and a huge swath of surrounding land, dark and menacing in the dusk. Invisible at this hour are the institution's raisons d'être, the residents grouped in the eleven buildings by disease and functional status, as if they'd been apprehended at the end of their lives striving for something large and ugly, a defining theme of the sort that would be accompanied by a very modern symphony, its scraping, screeching, and pounding punctuated at regular intervals by a prolonged and disturbing silence.

Long after his usual departure time, Quingshan opens a folding chair and sits down beside Jiao. Her bed has silver bars along both sides, but there's space enough between the slats
for him to reach in without taking off his suit coat. For a while he sits quietly, stroking her hair or shoulder, and then suddenly he leans forward and, at a just-audible level, begins to hum. As darkness replaces the grounds and city beyond the window across the room, he moves fluidly from one melody to the next, choosing ballads of love and longing that decades and continents ago he used to tease her for singing, calling them silly and sentimental.

Except when he sings to her, the room is quiet. Except in the late mornings when he wraps her in blankets and takes her outside, Jiao lies in this bed, bars up, wearing nothing more than a blue-and-white gown that ties at the neck and waist and a blanket the aides tuck beneath her chin. When she first moved to the institution, she sometimes also wore a vest that was green and yellow, zipped up in back, and had long straps that the nurses knotted around the silver bars, holding her firmly in place. But she hasn't needed the vest for a very long time.

Jiao and Quingshan did not ask to come to this country. They came for their children and their children's children and their grandchildren's children. They came willingly and without complaint. If he had to do it over, Quingshan would do the same again, and he has only to remember the respect with which the doctor and nurses and social worker listened to Charles to know this much about his wife for sure: so would Jiao.

The water dreams began the summer before third grade. In the dreams, Bopha ran through hot rain in crowds of muddy, naked legs and blurred grown-up faces or tumbled like garbage in the gutter runoff that coursed down Eddy Street outside her family's apartment after a big storm. Eventually, the cold and wet got so real she woke up. Until the water dreams, she thought she'd forgotten the trip across Cambodia in her mother's stomach and the refugee camp where she'd learned to crawl and talk and play.

The first time it happened, Bopha removed her nightshirt and underpants and curled herself up on the top half of the mattress, hoping the wet would be dry by morning. It wasn't, but she made the bed anyway, and then she forgot all about the stain until her sister pulled back the covers that night. Neary paused and sniffed, then dragged their mother into the room by her arm and pointed.

Bopha's mother covered the wet sheet quickly and without comment while her father sat in the other room in front of the
television, picking at his teeth with the very long nail of his left fifth finger.

“
Ot ban
,” her mother said, lowering her voice—
it doesn't work
—and Bopha promised not to do it again.

The next morning her bed was dry, but the following night the water dreams returned. They came again two nights later, and three nights after that, until by mid-July they were nightly occurrences and Neary moved onto the mattress across the room to sleep with their two little brothers.

At first, Bopha's mother took the wet sheets to the Laundromat on Turk Street, finding money for the machines in places that made Bopha and Neary laugh: behind the big can of rice under the kitchen sink, in a plastic bag floating inside the toilet's tall back, in the stomach of their baby brother's single toy, a little red monkey with a long, curly tail.

“You must stop,” Bopha's mother whispered one morning at the end of the month, dropping the soiled items into the bathtub and turning on the hot water. Before shutting the bathroom door, she glanced over to where Bopha's father lay snoring on the couch, one
krama
cinched around his waist like a skirt and another thrown over his eyes.

In early August, a moist summer fog hung over the city, retreating to the coast for only a few hours at midday. As a result, Bopha's sheets and nightshirt, thrown over the fire escape railing each morning, didn't always dry by bedtime. For three nights in a row, she climbed into a damp bed in the evening and out of a wet one the next day. On the fourth night, she dreamed she fell into a bucket of boiling water and couldn't get out. She woke screaming, kicking the covers away. Her mother came running and turned on the light to reveal an angry red rash from Bopha's waist to the middle of her thighs.

There were tears that night, her mother's, not Bopha's—Bopha never cried—and from her father, lots of yelling. His face turned the dark purple of grape juice, and he used his hands for emphasis, waving them wildly and occasionally aiming his tobacco-stained fingertips at Bopha's face. While he shouted about bad behavior and wasted money and letting the family down, she compared his bare feet, so broad and flat and pale, with her own tiny brown toes and high, rounded arches. She stood with her legs apart because the air felt good on the burn beneath her nightshirt.

Suddenly, Bopha felt a tight, pinching pain in the upper parts of her arms, and the floor pulled away from her feet. Her father lifted her until their faces were nearly level. “Pay attention,” he yelled, his mouth leaking the familiar sour smell of old curry and ashtray bottoms and whiskey. Bopha held her breath until she got a funny feeling in her head that made her eyes want to close.

Across the room, her mother repeated a single word like an incantation. At first, Bopha couldn't make out what she was saying, and then she recognized that it was a name:
Vanak
. Her father must have heard it too. Without warning, he let go, and she fell to her knees. For a second, the apartment was perfectly quiet. Then her father grabbed his coat and left, slamming the door behind him. Immediately, the baby wailed, and soon enough, the others joined him. Bopha too felt something hot and hard in her throat, like a small animal trying to get out, but she swallowed again and again, until she made it go away.

Later, she asked about Vanak. Her mother said he was a cousin who'd been arrested in Rhode Island after treating his son's backache with cupping and coining. A teacher had seen the large round bruises and long red lines under the boy's shirt and called the police. Vanak had spent nine months in
prison, and when he came out, no one would give him a job. In America, her mother explained, a man could discipline his wife, but he must never leave marks on his children.

The next morning, Bopha's mother put Pheak in a sling on her back, handed Heang to Bopha, and took Neary's hand. Bopha thought they were going to the market, but her mother turned right, not left, outside their building. At the Tenderloin Family Health Clinic, she told the Khmer assistant about Bopha's rash, and an hour later they saw the doctor.

With the assistant translating, Bopha's mother explained the problem and did her best to answer the doctor's questions, even though most of them had nothing to do with water dreams or rashes: Did Bopha like school? How was she spending her summer vacation? Was everything okay at home? Finally, he checked and poked Bopha all over, including her private places, and the nurse escorted her to the bathroom, where she peed into a clear plastic cup.

When she returned to the exam room, Neary and Heang were playing in one corner and Pheak hung from their mother's left breast, one tiny hand suspended in the air behind him. Her mother seemed to be studying something just over the baby's head, but when Bopha walked farther into the room and looked at the same place, all she saw was a wall.

“Well, look who's back,” said the doctor. He smiled at Bopha, then wrote something on one of his papers before turning again to her mother.

“So,” he explained, “I'm sending some tests, but I expect the results will be normal. Usually, the cause is stress. You need to talk to your daughter and get help for your husband if that's where the trouble is. There are brochures in the waiting room and hotlines open twenty-four hours.”

When he finished, the Khmer assistant turned to Bopha's mother and said in Khmer, “An American problem.”

The doctor looked at the assistant. “You told her everything I said?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, of course,” said the assistant.

The doctor sighed. He wrote a prescription for a cream to treat the rash and a referral to the clinic social worker. “They probably won't bring her,” he said to the assistant, as if Bopha wasn't there or as if she, like her mother, couldn't understand English. “And even if they do, she only gets three visits. I doubt it'll be enough.”

That night, during a commercial break, her father's face already dark and shiny but the red lightning rods not yet visible in the whites of his eyes, Bopha asked if she could go to the clinic for the appointments the doctor had recommended.

Her father's eyes narrowed. “How much?” he asked.

“Free.”

“What do they want?”

“To fix me.”

Her father poured himself another drink. He still had on his work clothes, a blue jumpsuit splattered with grease. His fingertips were stained too, and the bottle shook in his hand so some of the brown liquid jumped out of the glass and onto the table.

He wiped at the spill, and little drops flew onto the carpet. “Your mother's too busy to take you.”

“It's only three blocks,” Bopha said. “I can go by myself.”

Her father waved her away.

Bopha took a deep breath. If the water dreams were an American problem, then only an American could make them go away.

She stepped between her father and the television. “The doctor wrote on a paper,” she said. “If I don't go, we might get in trouble.”

“Come here,” said her father.

She took one step, then another.

“Come,” he repeated.

When she reached the couch, he pulled her toward him, then sniffed her head and tickled the smooth skin between her t-shirt bottom and skirt top.

“Smart girl,” he said.

The following Wednesday, Bopha walked to the clinic, crossing only on green lights, and gave her name at the big desk. She read
Highlights for Children
while she waited, studying the drawings of children playing in sunny backyards on lawns with daisies and dandelions, jungle gyms and swing sets.

“Bo-fa?”

The speaker was a woman with blond braids, long feather earrings, and a smile that took up the lower third of her face.

“Boe-pah,” corrected Bopha. “
Bo
like bow and arrow, and
pa
like father.”

The woman extended her right hand. “I'm Lenore,” she said, still smiling. “And I'm terrible with names, even American ones.”

Bopha felt Lenore's warm, bony hand encircle hers. Their arms went up and down, and when Bopha didn't let go in time, Lenore laughed. But Bopha didn't mind because she'd made an important discovery: handshakes meant grown up; they meant you counted. She could tell that the other patients, even the adults, were wondering who she was and why she was getting such special treatment. When their turns came, the nurse just stood beside the desk and called out a name. It was
as if Bopha had come to the clinic not as a little girl who acted like a baby at night, but on important business. Whatever she did when she grew up, she decided, it would definitely require lots of handshaking.

Lenore led the way down the hall and into a room crowded with stuffed animals, dolls, cars, blocks, and kid-size furniture. At first Bopha played while Lenore pretended not to be watching and making notes. Then Lenore asked questions that Bopha answered politely but not always honestly. Sometimes, she outright lied: no, she didn't remember her dreams; no, her parents never discussed what happened in Cambodia. Other times, she told half-truths. She talked about how proud she was that her father had a job, but not about how on paycheck days he came home late and made her mother cry. And she mentioned their big television but not the time her oldest cousin had put on a program about the Vietnam War recommended by his teacher and all of a sudden her mother started screaming
murderers
and twisting the skin of her own arms and thighs, creating bruises that took weeks to fade.

The session seemed much shorter than forty-five minutes. Bopha had only just begun tidying the dollhouse when Lenore stood and said, “Time's up, but I'll see you next week, same bat time, same bat place.”

“Bat?” Bopha asked. “Like the animal?”

“A joke,” Lenore said, a hand on Bopha's back to guide her toward the door. “I'll explain next week.”

After the door closed behind her, Bopha stood blinking in the hallway. She felt certain she'd disappointed the social worker but had no idea why.

At their second session, Lenore watched Bopha play for only a short while before suggesting that they sit down on the chairs
at the small table with its neat rows of crayons and markers and butcher paper.

“Why don't you draw me a picture of your family,” Lenore suggested.

Bopha thought that sounded like fun. She pulled crayons out of the box, choosing a different color for each person as she drew them: yellow for her mother, pink for Neary, bright green for Heang, and Pheak in baby blue. She wasn't sure what color to make her father, but it didn't really matter since the paper was so small, she'd run out of room.