We felt afraid, I said. We knew we lived on the shore of thespirit-world.
The translator winced. “The producers,” he said, “want me totell you that it’s not really that sort of film. They appreciate thelocal color, and they would love to hear your stories. But not during theinterview.”
“Why?” I said.
“They say,” Kao replied, looking mortified, on my behalf ortheirs I couldn’t guess, “that we’re trying to preserve your dignity.”
So I stopped talking about ghosts, which meant I alsostopped mentioning Sopha.
Since my sister disappeared, my ming had lost the color inher hair, the sight in her right eye, and her faith in the monks who used tobind Sopha with red strings, but she still believed in ghosts and she refusedto stop talking about them on camera. Her working eye focused hard on the eyesof the man filming and he flinched beneath her gaze. She said the word curseas many times as she could. She got the same admonishment I did, about localcolor and dignity. She ignored it.
I don’t think many people in America speak Khmer; I’m surethe filmmakers captioned our mouths with whatever words they wanted. They onlyneeded enough audio to create the impression that we said what they wanted usto say.
◊
Her third day of filming, Ming came home dragging a sack ofrice and scowling. She said she had been dismissed by the crew, which meantthis handout would be both her first and her last. “Stay away from thoseforeigners,” she snarled as she dumped a portion of rice into a basin forwashing. “They’re not here to help us.”
They’d never said they were here to help, but I could seewhy she’d been confused. The filmmakers were not our first foreigners. Othershad come, to build schoolhouses that the monsoons later destroyed or to holdclinics that healed us once and then never again. When we failed to smile intheir photographs or come to their English classes, they would pack up theirthings and go abruptly, saying no goodbyes, making no excuses. We were agraveyard of failed charities.
They can sense the ghosts around us, Ming used to tell me. Ithought maybe they could sense that we were too haunted for their week-longprojects to do any good.
“Did you talk about Sopha today?” I said.
“Of course I talked about your sister. What else can yousay, when they ask what awful things have happened here?”
I could guess how she must have disappointed the foreigners,who wanted a domestic tragedy and instead got a ghost story. “How much did yousay?”
Ming slammed the basin down. Grains of rice sloshed onto thefloor. She huffed in frustration and rocked back on her heels to survey themess. I knew her fingers were too stiff to pluck rice from the floor, so Iknelt beside her and retrieved the fallen grains myself.
“It’s not what I said,” she told me. “They alreadythink they know everything. They tell me back their own version like I wasn’tthere, like I don’t know what happened to my own family. Then they tell me tocalm down when I say they’re lying.”
“They’re foreigners. They don’t understand.”
“They’re going to put lies in their movie. Everyone willsee.”
I doubted anyone we knew would see the film, but I didn’tsay so. “I will talk to them,” I said. “I will tell them that they aren’tallowed to mention Sopha. Let’s take the rice back.”
Ming stared at the sack of rice with undisguised longing.She told me once that if you’re hungry long enough, your stomach never feelsfull again. You’re always wondering when your next meal will come, trying tokeep the sting out of your belly.
“Will you make enough money this season?” she said.
We both knew I never made enough. I said, “Of course.”
When I dragged Ming’s sack of rice back to the foreigners, Ifound the cameramen standing in a clump with cigarettes sticking out of theirmouths, staring at their clothesline.
An ap, I thought, seeing the dark red streaks across thewhite linens. But aps only went after those who wronged them.
“Whose blood?” I said to the translator.
“We think a production assistant,” Kao said. “We’d thoughthe went into town this afternoon. Maybe not. Do you know of anyone fromPsaodung who might want to—?”
“No,” I said, though Ming and I would be last to know ifanyone in the village intended to hurt the filmmakers. I felt the crew’s staresshift to me, guarded, suspicious, and I decided to let the foreigners deal withtheir own haunting. I motioned with my chin to the sack of rice. “My aunt askedme to leave this with you. She doesn’t want any of her interviews used in thefilm.”
Kao did his best to look surprised, though I doubt he was,and heaved the sack over his shoulder. “And your interviews?” he said. “Shouldwe strike them off the record?”
Ming would want me to say yes, destroy my tapes, I won’t addmy voice to the lies. I wanted not to starve halfway through monsoon season,when the roads would flood and I wouldn’t be able to set up my phone card shop.
“No,” I said, watching the foreigners as they watched me.“You can keep my interviews. If you let me find a way to earn back the rice.”
I saw pity on his face and embarrassment burned my cheeks.The bloodied clothes flapped heavily on the line behind us. The foreignerswould want an intercessor, I said. They didn’t believe in ghosts before, butthey believed now.
“They don’t believe yet,” Kao said. Then he whispered,though none of them understood our Khmer, “But I could tell them some stories.”
◊
Apart from hunting for snakes, Sopha’s and my favorite thingto do was wire-hopping.
Sopha and I first climbed the powerlines to get away fromthe boys who chased us home from school. She was seven then; I was ten.Someone’s mother had lost a baby to an ap the night before and they thoughtSopha was to blame. They followed us down the riverbank, through the ricefields, until the stilt-houses at our backs looked like miniatures. When weclimbed the chain link fence surrounding the power plant, they did
