Choking afternoon heat my dedeh on his weathered porch stares down Goddard Street Cambodian children languish as the lemon ice truck turns the corner, genocide refugees leaning on paint-chipped railings in their underwear. My dedeh fishes for a Marlboro from the soft pack sips from a mug of sourj that could fill four demitasse cups, and fishes a fistful of change from his trouser pocket. In the other are his worry beads, the shape of broken landscapes, a lost country, leb-lebi. The lemon ice truck hobbles and lurches like a drunkard keeping terrible time. The air thick like old flower water. My dedeh descends the broken cement steps he had once spackled with cheap plaster, the wrong shade of gray, and the child refugees gather in a knot, trailing towards the tin-can drone and my dedeh, holding out their hands and waiting for the loose change in his fist, which spills like water into their tired palms.
