There was a pot of soup bones on the floor, oxtail and chicken neck, underneath the archway that divided the dining area of our kitchen space from the cooking area. I wondered if Pa was angry that the kitchen was in disarray, so I blamed that pot of bones, averting my eyes from the scene unfolding as he stood at the dinner table where we’d all just had a normal, almost pleasant even, meal together. Most dinners included sticky rice and papaya salad and stories about Laos or old friends in youth and their antics; Pa was always the storyteller, and he was good at taking you on a journey and making you laugh along with him. But tonight, Pa was yelling, which meant that we all had to stay frozen in place until he was done. It felt like days would pass before his rage-rant would end.
I was 10 years old and maybe all of four feet tall, so small in frame that people would gawk, too melancholy for my age, and always cold. I wasn’t starved of sustenance, just of warmth from love and the freedom to express it. I didn’t dare look at Mae’s or my siblings’ faces. Mae had instilled in me belief in the universe’s magic and power and belief in the old world and motherland superstitions from as soon as I could understand stories, and I had developed some of my own. Sometimes they made more sense than the world I inhabited. If I stood as still as possible, back then, I believed and desperately hoped that magic would be activated and I could become invisible or quite possibly disappear into thin air, becoming space dust, becoming a part of the universe that was untouchable but ever present.
But the world I lived in was all too real in that moment, stuck in my earthly vessel, no way to disintegrate. Tuning back in, I worried: What was he talking about? Why was he yelling that no one respected his wishes? That none of us loved him? That his daughters were disobedient? What did my sister’s car being parked on the street in front of the house have to do with anything? Why would Pa threaten to line us all up and shoot us before killing himself? Except in my memory, this was a scene that repeated itself fairly regularly. I wondered why I still wondered. I still do.
Somehow, part one of the “episode” (as I call them) ended. We were ordered to complete our post-dinner tasks: the youngest, me, swept the floor after dinner. My sisters cleared the table and washed the dishes. Mae put away leftover food. She threw away the bones. My brother pushed in the mismatched chairs, picked off of curbs just like the table was, and wiped all of the surfaces clean.
Pa had his own task after dinner that night: he loaded the shotgun that he kept in the old wooden dresser that we used as a TV stand in the living room. It was quiet in the house. No talk or chatter.
The eeriness that came between scenes during these episodes descended upon the house, and Mae ushered me out the back door and told me to hide in the family suburban. She assured me that she would get everyone else out of the house as quickly possible. We were building the plane as we flew, cobbling together our escape plan as quietly and quickly as we could.
I hid behind the front seat rather than sitting in the open, trembling with the terror of being caught attempting to leave. Moments or perhaps an hour later, Mae came to get me out of the car, and walked slowly behind me to the back door of the house. It felt like a death march. My feet were heavy. Pa was waiting.
“Do you want to die?” he asked his youngest daughter. I was frozen. I felt my mother, distant but near, behind me. She must have been watching him with despair darkening her eyes. My eyes.
“No,” I murmured, shivering, jacket-less, a forgotten article of clothing as I’d hidden in haste, standing on the bottom step of the three that would lead inside the place where I just might become space dust that dreadful December night. Looking down the barrel of a shotgun and at my father, I wondered again, if the pot of bones had been the catalyst for this episode. But Mae had thrown them out and that didn’t reset the course of the evening or fix anything. I was disappointed in the lack of magic in this world. I knew he could pull the trigger and blast me into oblivion. Maybe oblivion was the magic. Maybe my mother would go with me.
Wordlessly, Pa directed us inside by pointing the shotgun barrel towards the dinner table, stepping aside. I don’t remember if I ran or not. But I remember finding and hugging my brother for what felt like the first and last time in the middle room that served as a bedroom for most of us. We were common sibling enemies, but in that moment, I felt like he might be able to protect me, and truly wanted to. We transformed into common sibling allies that night.
End scene.
We awoke abruptly to all of the house lights being turned on. I wondered again if this was the night that our patriarch would make good on his threat, his promise, to take the entire family out with him in death. Oblivion could be sweet.
The interpreter over the landline phone was muffled, but father was agreeing, speaking Thai because a Lao interpreter couldn’t be found so late at night during the time known to young Lasamee as “winter break.”
There might have been a knock at the door, but it wasn’t answered. The phone conversation seemed to go on and on as I stared at my father, wishing for comfort from someone, but we were all unable to move, invisibly bound and glued in our places.
And then it seemed to come to a close so swiftly. My father opened the front door. He was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car. Red and blue lights flashing in the black night.
I sat in the back of a police car with Mae and my sister, Samout, stifled by the car’s heater. Samout wrote a statement. I watched. I wanted to write one too. I had a lot to say. But I was just a child to them. “How could I know what to say or recount from the night?” They must’ve assumed. I had seen a lot for 10, and I knew very acutely and confidently then that no magic could remove me from this reality.
—
It was documented that my father had pistol whipped my other sister, who was pregnant at the time, after a disagreement about her car being parked on the street. This may seem irrational, but I have long been advised by my therapist that there is no rationalizing my father’s behavior caused by mental illness.
After this scene ended and my father left, my sister’s husband had called the police, and he warned them that my father was a veteran and that he had guns.
It turns out there was a SWAT team preparing for the worst on our block that night. The entire neighborhood must have been watching. Later, I had nightmares that men in bullet-proof vests were climbing over the back fence and all over the roof. I take that to mean that I did actually get some sleep.
—
In the winter, at least once during the season, the heater humming and the lights being too bright and the scents of pho lingering and the bitterness of the winter air seeping in through our poorly insulated windows wash over me like I’m 10 years old again. December always brings this night back to me – whether through nightmares or subconsciously choosing to make a pot of pho or wanting to listen to the emo chart-topper of that year “I’m With You” by Avril Lavigne to get a good cry in.
That night is the night that I return to when I think about when my life, and my family’s life, changed drastically. Our story is not unique, however, as my family was part of the Southeast Asian Diaspora as a result of war and civil unrest in that region of the world. The wars that started the fleeing of thousands of Southeast Asians gave them much to carry mentally and emotionally despite having to leave with very little and often just the clothes on their backs. As a result, mental illnesses such as complex PTSD and depression took root. Today, 70% of Southeast Asian refugees in mental health treatment are diagnosed with PTSD, and a staggering 75% of Southeast Asian Americans who try to access mental health services do not receive appropriate services. Even for those who are able to access mental healthcare, Lao and Lao Americans often do not see themselves represented; only 70 AAPI mental health providers are available for every 100,000 AAPI in the United States. (SEARAC)
Musings 
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