Chantou

Short Non-Fiction By Kathy Whipple

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In a small village in the Cambodian countryside, ten-year-old Chantou sits behind a wooden loom, weaving an intricate pattern in silk. She smiles a shy grin as I stop to admire her work.

The cloth is the same orange as the monk’s robes, rusty and rich. The clack, clack of her foot pedals, and the whoosh of her bamboo shuttle accompany the crowing cocks pecking at the ground around her. A slight breeze does nothing to ease the stifling heat of morning in the dry season.

Chantou picks up the pace as I watch her weave, seeming to want to show off her skills on the complicated machine.

“Fourteen hundred strands, total,” her uncle tells me in broken but impressive English.

I nod, mesmerized by the percussive rhythm, the girl’s fluid movements between pedal and shuttle.

“Does the girl go to school?” I ask.