Lucky Child Read Online Free PDF

was so dark and ugly that Pa felt sorry for her and adopted her. They said that was why she has the darkest skin of them all. While the others laughed, tears flooded her eyes and slid easily off her cheeks. Since then, her tears always flow easily when she is sad, angry, sleepy, hungry, or scared. They flow especially freely when she is missing her family. Andafter the war, there were so many people to miss that her face was rarely dry. In the beginning, the family was wary because they never knew when the tears would start or stop. They looked at her with fleeting glances when she pulled the corners of her sarong to wipe her eyes. She wiped so hard and so often that her eyes became itchy and infected, and instead of tears, yellow mucus came out of her ducts. But as the days turned to months, the busy task of surviving stopped her eyes from leaking and slowly she began to heal.
    As Chou’s thoughts drift and float in her head, the moon disappears and the sun climbs above the horizon, painting the sky pink, red, and orange. As if on cue, the neighbors’ roosters crow loudly and the dogs bark everyone awake. Tied to a tree beside the hut, the pigs snort in annoyance at having to wake so early. Inside the hut, the family answers the animals’ calls with yawns, coughs, and cries as they slowly come to life inside their mosquito nets. One by one, the cousins wake and saunter to the water jar. While the boys take turns washing their faces, Chou and the girls take down the mosquito nets, roll them into small balls, and stuff them in wooden crates under the bed. Then Chou walks to the front door, removes the wooden bar, and pushes the door open.
    In front of the family’s hut, a small, red, dusty wagon trail passes their home and serves as the only road in and out of Chou’s village. Over forty families have built their homes in the thick forest of this remote town. Half a day’s walk to the east is Ou-dong, a thriving village of over three hundred families. Although Ou-dong has more people and a large market, the uncles feel it isn’t a safe place to be if the Khmer Rouge return to power. The uncles continue to believe that the Khmer Rouge would kill and target city people and leave the farming peasants alone. After Meng and Loung left, the uncles packed everyone up and moved them into the woods, hoping to be left alone by the continuing civil war.
    Chou steps out of the hut to feel the sunshine. Across the trail, her neighbors are already up and putting a heavy wooden yoke on a pair of cows. The cows moo at the burden but stand fairly still, only swishing their tails at the hovering bugs. A few feet away in another hut, a young woman balances her naked baby on her forearm and with her other hand pours water on the child’s butt. The child screams and cries as the mother gently washes her cheeks and legs. When the baby is clean, the womanunfolds a black-and-white checkered scarf from her neck and wraps it around the wet baby. Beside them, a young child sits on the steps, rubbing her eyes awake as her mother places the baby in her arms. In their small town, everyone knows one another.
    During the day, the neighbors’ conversations are easy, friendly, and full of superstitious tales and outrageous gossip as they collect water and work together. At night, the voices are quiet and the villagers quarantine themselves in their homes, afraid to go out for fear of being kidnapped by Khmer Rouge. Every once in a while, even though they are not in power, the soldiers still come down from their hideouts to raid a village, and take women, men, bicycles, cows, pigs, ponies, and rice.
    For even though it has been almost two years since the Khmer Rouge’s Angkar government was defeated by the Vietnamese troops, Chou is not sure who rules Cambodia in their place. Outside their small village, there is much talk about the Vietnamese intentions and whether they invaded or liberated Cambodia and are now refusing to leave. But here in the