Free World and Town by Gish Jen

though, have already come around the side of the trailer to greet her. They stand side by side—the boy half a head taller than Chhung—resting their shovels in just the same way, as if per some regulation. Then Chhung says something, and the boy goes back to work. He doesn’t slow down until Hattie actually approaches, and then it’s the gauged pause of the underling: Chhung may be taking this chance for a break, but his son is aware that his interest is not called for, and certainly no excuse to slack off. Chhung, on the other hand, unties his net and flips it back over his hat. He casually lights up; the cigarette tip flares, the bright ring travels. A large crow flaps through, cawing way up high above them, where there’s sun; Hattie can see the light on its wings when it banks, but it doesn’t cast a shadow because they’re already in shadow.
    “Hello,” she ventures. It’s colder and damper down here than at her place; enormous white toadstools gleam in the dark woods. She shivers. “Excuse me. Sorry to bother you. But can I give you this?”
    The boy watches, his fingers and clothes streaked with dirt. He sports dirt-edged Band-Aids on his hands, like Chhung.
    “Thought maybe you could use it,” she says.
    “Tank you,” says Chhung.
    “I hope it will be a help.” The flies are worse down here, too, with no wind. Hattie waves her hand in front of her face, but even so a no-see-um flies smack into her mouth. Of course, if she chose to reconceive the thing, she could probably find it not unlike a sesame seed. Instead, she spits it out.
    Chhung takes a drag on his cigarette and, in a kind of answering gesture, blows smoke out his nose. Two wispy streams float up, obscuring his face. “Tank you,” he says again.
    “You’re welcome.” Hattie has a look at the work-in-progress. The layers of dirt are clear as the layers of a cake—an icing of topsoil atop a gravelly mix, then clay and clay and clay such as Hattie knows well. If you pick that clay up, you can squeeze it into a ball; and if you let go of the ball, you will behold a beautiful impression such as could make a real fossil find in a few million years. For now, though, the clay is mostly a premium seal-all. The bottom of the pit is about as dry as the floor of a car wash.
    “That soil is heavy,” Hattie starts to say. Before she can broach the subject of sand, though, Chhung has signaled to a window of the trailer. The girl peeks out from behind a lilac curtain; Chhung barks something, giving a swipe of a finger. The girl’s head disappears then, only to materialize, complete with body, from around the corner; her mother and the baby accompany her. They present Hattie with a cardboard box of raisins, as well as a clear plastic box of something that looks like orange peels packed in sugar. The red Khmer script on the cover is all loops and squiggles, with an English translation below, in green: SWEET CHILI MANGO STRIPS .
    “Thank you.” Where the plastic box is sealed up with tape, Hattie pockets it and opens the raisins instead; she offers the girl and woman some. Naturally, they will not accept any until she’s had one herself. But then they each take a couple, shyly. The girl rolls several between her fingers, as if making spitballs; the baby leaves off its bottle, leans out of the woman’s arms, and opens up its molarless mouth. Aren’t they concerned about choking? Apparently not. The baby kicks; the girl softens a few more raisins; the baby placidly picks the raisins out from the girl’s outstretched hand. Not cramming them all in or hoarding them, as Josh would have, in those soft chipmunk cheeks of his. Just calmly picking them out, one by one, as if demonstrating the use of an opposable thumb; and what fine focus we Homo sapiens have! Courtesy of the foveal cells of our maculas.
    Hattie watches, amazed.
    “ A-muhmuhmuh, ” says the baby. The baby’s drool is brown with raisin juice.
    The woman is shy and still; her spirit