Free The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam Page B

earning much money. But Heung was still selling herself on the street, though she didn’t have many clients. She could barely pay for the shack she rented from another woman, Phaly, who was also a prostitute. Their shack was on a rooftop, and it was falling apart, barely even a shelter.
    I used to bring Heung presents and stay with her for a few nights. Or I’d visit Chettra, a girl who had left Aunty Peuve to be the live-in mistress of a Khmer shopkeeper. Chettra was from an ethnic minority, like me. She was Stieng, from the hills about eighty miles south of the village where I grew up. She and I liked to eat the same food, and I loved to go to her place, when her shopkeeper was out, to cook spicy chili dishes.
    After a few weeks had gone by, Dietrich stopped renting hotel rooms and started taking me back to his house. He lived in a big villa near the Calmette Hospital, with a gate and a guard to open it. There was a porch with French columns and silk cushions on the sofa and a cleaning woman. When I first saw it I could not believe it. I was used to clients who took me to moldly rope beds on the street.
    I didn’t “love” Dietrich. He was nice, though. He was kind, he didn’t hit me, and he did his best to communicate, although he never learned much Khmer. We spoke in gestures. I was nineteen years old and I learned a lot from him. The first time Dietrich took me to a restaurant for white people, I made a fool of myself. It was at the Thailan Pailin, a really nice hotel now. I could smell chicken—it smelled unbelievably good. I had a pretty, shiny pink dress on—I had recently had it made, but I could tell my date didn’t like it.
    And when I asked for chicken, it came roasted—a whole thigh in one huge piece, with a knife and fork on either side. How would I know how to eat with a knife and fork? In Cambodia, we cut meat into tiny pieces and we eat with a spoon or with our fingers. I knew that if I ate Cambodian style here, people would take me for a savage.
    So I bravely wielded my utensils, but at each attempt to cut the chicken, it wandered off to one side of the plate or another. The more I tried, the more difficult it became. While I waited to capture it, I swallowed my rice. I couldn’t ask Dietrich to help, because we could hardly speak to each other and he seemed to notice nothing. My frustration grew from one minute to the next. Dietrich made a sign asking me, “Aren’t you going to eat your chicken?” I shook my head. Time passed and at last the waiter took away the dish, which was literally making me salivate. That night, I dreamed of the poor chicken I hadn’t managed to eat.
             
    One night when I was with Dietrich in his Land Cruiser, I caught sight of my adoptive father, the schoolteacher, and one of his young sons. They were riding on a motorbike beside Dietrich’s car and gesturing to me. Father looked wrinkled, exhausted, and really poor. I asked Dietrich to stop the car and I got out. Father told me he’d been looking for me—he had heard I was in a brothel. He said he had sold his fishing nets and his boat so he could come to Phnom Penh and search for me. He wanted to take me back to the village with him, where I’d be safe.
    I was flooded with shame. I was dressed indecently, in a foreigner’s car—I looked like a whore and I was one. I couldn’t go back to Thlok Chhrov with this good man, whom I had shamed, and face the villagers there as a Phnom Penh prostitute. I couldn’t do it, and I couldn’t face Father. I got back in the car as fast as I could and told Dietrich to drive away. I was so ashamed, I didn’t even think to give my adoptive father any money—I didn’t even say a word to him. As we drove off I was crying.

    Dietrich gave me money, and I enjoyed the freedom it gave me and the clothes I bought with it. They were just trousers and T-shirts, but they were clothes that didn’t say “whore”—the kinds of clothes a nice person might wear. Still,