Chapter 11
Chanda woke up to the best news that she had ever received. The US had approved her visa! It was waiting for her in the mail, in its official air mail envelop. She whooped and shrieked before calling Chris with the excellent news. Chris bought her ticket and said that she would be cleared through customs and able to join him in Los Angeles on the fourth of May. It had been over nine months and their marriage was like a baby, slowly growing in gestation, finally coming to reality with a bang.
“We must go out!” Yun told Chanda when Chanda called her with the thrilling news.
“We must.” Chanda grew sober. Her joy evaporated like a puddle of water in the hot sun when she realized that her new life was about to start without Yun in it. Yun was her best friend and the only family member who didn’t disown her for wanting to move to America. “I am going to miss you so much.”
“Well your rich husband better fly me there so that I can meet one of his friends!”
Chanda grinned at the idea. It would be so nice to be able to get her best friend into America too. “Of course you will visit. And we will visit you. Now where are we going tonight?”
“You had better put on something extra sexy! We’re going clubbing!” Yun shrieked. “It will be your bachelorette party!”
“Bachelorette party?” Chanda felt faint as she clutched her heart. “I never imagined I would have one!”
“Yes! It will be like in the movies. We will get into so much trouble.”
Despite the city’s third-world status, Phnom Penh had many amazing and fun clubs. When Chanda was younger and did not have to work as much, she would come out to the clubs all of the time with Yun and some other girls from her school. They would stay out until four in the morning, drinking and partying. Then they would stumble home and go to school the next day. Alcohol barely affected them then. Now that Chanda was broken and overworked, however, she never went. The idea of going out tonight excited her.
She went out and bought a sparkly sequined dress with Yun. It smelled like a bright and young flower, from the store’s perfume. Chanda spun around and around in it before finally buying it. “I’m so glad that I can buy these things,” she commented, giddy that she had never before been able to swipe her credit card and get whatever she wanted.
“Yes, I am happy for you.” Yun looked sad. Though she had been raised with much more money than Chanda and didn’t have to work as she waited to get married, she still couldn’t just buy a dress when she wanted.
Chanda paused. “Would you like something?” She nodded toward the massive aisles and racks of the dress shop. “You should buy a new dress too.”
Yun’s face lit up. She scurried back toward the racks of dresses to pick one out. Chanda helped her choose another very sparkly pink dress that flattered her pale pink cheeks.
Then they returned to Yun’s house to do their makeup and hair. Chanda embraced her aunt and uncle. “When do you leave?”
“I leave next week,” Chanda admitted.
Her aunt sighed. “We will miss you. You are a good woman, Chanda, and you will make a good wife. I am happy that you will not be alone anymore.”
Chanda smiled despite the tears springing up in her eyes. “I am glad too. He is a good man.”
Her aunt nodded slowly, trying to hold back tears of her own. “I want to give you something.”
“Come on!” Yun yelled from her room, where she was laying out her makeup things.
“Hang on!” Chanda yelled back. She and Yun mostly spoke English to each other to practice. They learned American phrases from TV shows and movies. Chanda felt pleased that she knew a lot of American slang and Chris would teach her more. She was starting to feel more prepared for her new life.
Her aunt went into the family room and opened a china chest. She produced a tiny doll with straw hair and a roughly sewn dress. The doll’s cheeks were painted red in two little circles and she had black bead eyes that seemed alive. “This was your mother’s when she was a little girl.”
Chanda gently took the doll and stared down at it, transfixed. Since her mother had died, Chanda had had few pieces of her to remember her by. She had no photographs and very few clear memories. Her mother was always busy, selling vegetables and noodles at the market. She was often gone.
“When I married your uncle, I was very nervous. I knew that I was heading into a new life, one of more money and status. I worried that I was not good enough for this new life. Your mother gave me her favorite doll to comfort me. Now I pass it onto you. Hold onto this doll when you begin to miss this life and this family. Always know that your mother’s spirit and the spirits of your ancestors are with you, at all times, protecting you. This doll will watch over you.”
Chanda sniffled. “Thank you, Aunty,” she finally managed through the thick block in her throat.
“What are you doing?” An indignant Yun appeared in the doorway, looking cross. “Let’s get your makeup done! It’s time for us to get ready!”
Chanda gave her aunt a final hug before returning to her cousin’s room. Yun was very creative with her makeup brushes. She painted Chanda up to look like the doll that lay in Chanda’s arms. Then she dusted pale blue over Chanda’s eyelids. Chanda stared in the mirror for a minute, before snapping a picture for Chris. “Chris would want to kiss me so bad right now,” Chanda said dreamily.
“He would want to do more than kiss you,” Yun giggled. “How is he in bed?”
“Yun!” Chanda cried. “We don’t talk about things like that.”
“Oh, come on. I know that he stayed with you. I know that something happened.”
Chanda blushed. “It was nice,” she finally said.
“That’s it? It was nice? I’m so disappointed in you, Chanda! You need to tell me details. What is an American man like?”
Chanda sighed. “He was…gentle. He held me like he was afraid to lose me. And when I whimpered with the pain, he stroked my hair and kissed me to make me feel better.”
“You mean that you were a virgin?” Yun seemed shocked. “I guess I knew that you were, but I am still surprised! You never tried sex before with a boy from school?”
“Never,” Chanda swore. “He was my first lover.”
“It hurt you badly?”
“Not very badly. It was more pleasurable than anything.” Chanda took a last longing look at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t her own face that she longed for, but the beauty that Chris made her feel. “He made me feel beautiful. And loved.”
“Aw.” Yun stared at her for a few minutes, before turning to do her own makeup. “I want that. I want a rich man to swoop into my life and make love to me and take me away.”
“It will happen, Yun,” Chanda promised her.
The two young women emerged from Yun’s room looking like supermodels. Their dresses and eyelids sparkled brilliantly in the light from the naked hall bulb. Yun’s father watched them uncomfortably from his usual seat, a book propped on his knees. While Yun and Chanda were both in their early twenties, only now did he see that they were grown women, heading out into a life of love and marriage. “You look like goddesses,” Yun’s mother purred. She was half-asleep with the radio on in the seat across from Yun’s father.
“It is my bachelorette party,” Chanda beamed.
“Oh? Well, have fun.”
They headed out into the night and caught a taxi that took them to the clubbing district. From the street, they could hear laughter and hip-hop or rock music spilling out of the clubs. Clutching their purses, they spotted some girls from school down the street. “Over here!” Yun screamed.
The girls thronged around Chanda, embracing her and offering her little gifts as congratulations on her impending wedding. They picked at her dress and earrings, amazed at how well Chanda was dressed. “I am so happy for you!” a girl named Akara cried out joyfully.
Chanda beamed. “You girls are so sweet!” she exclaimed. “The girls at the factory are all very jealous of me. They have been so mean the past few months! I have had to stop wearing new clothes and jewelry to the factory just to make them stop harassing me. Now they think my new boyfriend dumped me.”
“How did your boss like it when you quit?” one of the girls asked with a huge grin. She happened to be cousins with the boss and had gotten Chanda the job.
“He yelled at me that I was making a big mistake.” Chanda looked down at her sparkly heels. “It was horrible, but I won’t miss him or the factory. I was supposed to get a promotion, too, but they never gave it to me! I suppose because they knew I would be leaving.”
“Well, now you’re onto a better life. Of course we would be overjoyed for you,” Yun said, placing a comforting hand on Chanda’s back.
“Let’s go,” Akara said, indicating a hip-hop club with a long line.
“Let’s try to get in like in the movies!” Yun suggested. She led the group to the bouncer at the top of the line and posed prettily. “It is our dear friend’s bachelorette party. Would you please, please let us in?”
The bouncer stared at the dazzling six girls in front of him. He had never seen such pretty, hopeful, excited girls in his life. With a small smile, he lifted the cord, letting the girls into the club.
Chanda was immediately enveloped in the high energy of the club. They ran to the bar to order drinks and pose for selfies. Yun kept posting them on Instagram, tagging all of the girls with the caption, “Chanda’s bachelorette party!” Chanda sent some of the pictures to Chris.
“Wow! My beautiful bride,” he kept texting her, sending her rows of hearts and grinning faces. He also sent a picture of a man fainting from an arrow to the heart. For a cowboy, she was impressed at how generous he was with emojis and how open his heart was to her.
“Let’s dance,” Yun suggested. They waded out to the dance floor and began to dance together. Several men tried to dance with them, but they would refuse them with giggles. “You only have eyes for one man!” Yun declared, pulling Chanda close and jumping to the rhythm of the music with her.
Chanda had never felt so happy. As the night progressed and she became drunker, she realized how much she loved her friends and her cousin. Perhaps she had missed out by working so much and taking care of her dying father and neglecting her friends. But now that she was about to leave, she realized how much she would miss them.
When they finally took a taxi home, she hugged each of her friends before they stumbled out of the vehicle, giggling and happily drunk. “I will keep in touch,” she promised each of them.
“You better!” they all told her.
Finally they arrived at Yun’s house. Even though Chanda was spending the night there, she stopped for a moment in the back of the cab to hug her cousin. “Life is not going to be the same without you,” she sniffled tearfully.
“You can’t turn back now, Chanda. You know that this is what you want,” Yun replied, wrapping her warm arms tight around Chanda. “I am going to miss you, but I’m happy for you. This is the dream for all of us.”
They fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow. In the morning, they went out to get Chanda’s nails done and to try to soak the dye and calluses out of her tough hands in the warm manicure oil. As the nail technicians painted their nails, they chatted about school and growing up together as best friends. But they didn’t discuss how Chanda was leaving in a week. They just wanted to enjoy their last days together.