University of Northern Iowa

Driving into the LightAuthor(s): Elizabeth ThomasSource: The North American Review, Vol. 272, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), pp. 44-45Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124815 .

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4-MINUTE FICTIONS

DRIVING INTO THE LIGHT

ELIZABETH THOMAS

A brought my children to this country for safety. My husband was killed after the war was over?and we had lived through it all?because he had worked as a driver for the American embassy. It was just a job to him?better than driving a cyclo or a taxi. But they killed him for it

anyway, dragged him out of the house and shot him in the head. I saw it from a neighbor's house. I started to scream and would have run clawing at them?but my neighbor and her son held me down and covered my mouth or the

men would have shot me too. I thank god that our chil dren didn't see it?they have seen so much else.

I told them the truth, because the truth finds its way out anyway, and because I had to talk to someone who loved him too. I told them "Baba is dead. The men from the new government came and killed him. We are all we

have left now, we must try to be good to each other." I was sitting on the edge of our bed, my husband's and

mine, and the children were all gathered around my knees looking at my face with staring black eyes. I remember my daughter had mud smudged on one cheek and on her neck and dress?probably from playing near

the rice paddies. The day before I would have scolded her for it.

The children said nothing, but just stood huddled around my knees. They knew dead and they knew father but I don't think they really knew yet what it meant?

your father is dead. They knew only the sad tone of my voice.

They know now, but still they know only the loss of what they loved and depended on?a quiet careful man

who made them things, carved them boats out of wood and folded grasses into green braided crickets. They do not have to hold the memory of him fighting and scream

ing and calling my name in the dirt road outside our

house. I am glad for that. Inside our house here is not so different from the

house we had at home. It has cement walls and floors,

only here the floors are covered with streaky brown linoleum. The house there was dim and the cement floor

and walls were cool in the hot afternoons. My husband was very proud to move us out of a bamboo house on stilts and into a real cement one.

Once he stopped at the house in the middle of the day in his embassy car. He was very proud of it, long and black

with dark tinted windows and a small American flag flying in the front. He wouldn't let anyone touch it. The chil dren crowded around and wanted to get in. He waved them away and polished off their dusty hand prints with his white handkerchief. The grownups hung back?the men spat betel and asked him questions and wanted to

get inside too, but did not say so. He showed us how the windows slid up and down by buttons in the front, and told us how the whole car, glass and doors and all, was

plated with lead which made it bullet proof. He had on the starched white short-sleeved shirt I pressed for him the night before, and a black cap with a shiny brim that

matched his shoes which he shined every night. He looked so cool and clean that day?no sweat marks under

his armpits, no crumpled sticky shirt, like the rest of us, because of the air conditioning in the car.

I wish, sometimes, we could have put the children in that cool, safe, shiny-black, bullet-proof car, and driven

away that day. I see myself sitting in the front, with him? his cap is off and we are talking. And the children are

playing noisily in the back seat area, which is as big as our small kitchen. I wish we could have driven for miles and

miles?till we reached Thailand. We could have driven all night, my husband and I talking in the dark front seat, the children sleeping in the back.

We live on the fifth floor of an apartment building here. Our windows face away from the sun. It is dark and colder than we are used to. Even in summer my hands and

feet are always cold.

The two boys walk like American boys. They slouch into their jackets, keep their arms close to their sides,

even when they talk and, although they are only nine and

eleven, walk on the streets as if they were very brave.

They wear tee-shirts printed with the names of rock stars

44 March 1987

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4-MINUTE FICTIONS

and drink cow's milk all the time. They are growing so

fast their pant legs always seem to be up above their ankles. This embarrasses them. They are like garden flowers that, moved to new soil, suddenly grow like

weeds.

When I was pregnant with my daughter the old ladies at the market would say, "See how low it rides. It will be a

boy." And my friends all said, "See how it kicks, it will be a boy." She used to try and play like the boys, wrapped like a little monkey around the trunk of a papaya tree?:

trying to shinny up as high as her brothers. She would tumble off back into the dirt so that she was as brown faced and -armed as a monkey. She would tear her clothes. I scolded her more than I ever scolded the boys. I took her to market with me, tried to teach her to sew and

cook, but before we left she could wriggle all the way up to the top of the papayas.

Now I scold her "Go to the playground with your brothers, little buffalo face." The boys roll their eyes and look at each other, but they love her and would take her

down the fast, dangerous streets and watch her play. But she shakes her head and sits by the heating vent looking out the window. She is like a baby bird stranded high up in a banyan tree.

Some days she draws: pictures of mud-crusted water

buffaloes, luna moths, tattered chickens. Things she used to see every day. We have no photographs and I think these drawings are her photographs. She lies on the floor right by the heater until the skin on the back of her neck turns red, as if from sunburn, and draws. On my days off sometimes I sit and watch her?the picture taking form on the floor between her bony elbows, below the thick hair that falls covering her eyes from me. Sometimes I know where she is.

We had chickens in the backyard?one rooster and some hens. The rooster was rust and greeny-black and the

hens were speckled dirty white. She used to like to lie on her belly in the dirt and watch them peck for food and

squabble. Sometimes she would chase them, waving her

arms like the wings of a great mean bird and screeching. I would call "Stop that?come inside now" out the kitchen window and her wings would disappear down to her sides and she would disappear off to play somewhere else.

There was also a vegetable garden, melon vines crawl

ing across the ground and beans up on stick frames that

my husband built. Huge pale green luna moths would float above the garden and praying mantises would crouch on the leaves, moving their front legs up and down, up and down. She used to like to lie in the sun, like a little

lizard, completely still, following anything that moved with her eyes.

My cousin lives in Stockton. He has a house with a

garden and his wife raises ducks and chickens. He says in summer it is hot like Cambodia and tells me I should

move there. But I have a good job here as a maid for a lady who lives in a big house in the hills. When her children are

not at school I eat lunch with them. She gives me their old clothes and once an old radio which I brought home to the

boys. They listen to it at night when they should be

asleep. I hear it whispering and whining through the bedroom walls and pretend it is cicadas singing in the

garden outside.

Cousin says I should send my daughter to live with him since she is so unhappy in the city. But I can't. She

sleeps with me, curled up against me at night warm, like she used to be.

If my husband were here maybe we would have a car

and some Sunday in the summer he would drive us down to Stockton. As it got warmer we would sweat on the

plastic seats. We would keep the windows open and the air would blow in like from a giant heater. And on both sides of the road would be big green fields and I would

say, "See monkey face, they look like rice paddies," and she would stare out the window. I would make her broth ers give her a window seat, and the wind would brush the

hair back out of her eyes. And when we got to cousin's house I would open the dark car door and she would hurtle out, running into the light.

"I started to scream ... but my neighbor covered my mouth . . ."

March 1987 45

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