First They Killed My Father (23 page)

Met Bong picks a rifle from the pile, the same kind I have seen many times before on the shoulders of the Khmer Rouge soldiers. “This is a weapon I wish we had more of but they are very expensive. The ammunition for them is very expensive too, so we have few rifles to waste. The rifle is easy to shoot. Anyone can learn to use them—even a child can shoot it.” She calls me from the circle of forty girls. “This is one way to carry it,” she says as she puts the rifle on my shoulder, its butt digging into my chest. It rests heavily on my shoulder, perhaps a fifth of my weight. Met Bong then instructs me to sling one arm over it, balancing its weight with my arm. I do this easily but against my will. She then takes the rifle and slips the strap on my shoulder. The rifle hangs on my back a foot from the ground, its butt bouncing lightly on my calf. “Obviously, it is too long for Sarene to carry this way,” Met Bong says.

I focus on it, realizing that this is the weapon that made Kim bleed, the same weapon that smashed into his skull. My hand shakes slightly, but I steady it by clutching the stock tightly until my knuckles turn white. “Your extended left hand holds and balances the rifle. Your right hand aims and squeezes the trigger. See, it’s easy!” Met Bong’s voice sounds enthusiastic and jubilant, but I feel neither her joy nor passion, only my hatred for her and Pol Pot. “When the bullets come out of the rifle, they travel in a straight line. Many soldiers say they can escape the bullets by running in a zigzag.” She calls each child one by one and teaches her how to hold the rifle. After our first lesson, Met Bong assures us that this is only one of many lessons to come.

During the day, no one can hurt me, but at night, as I drift off to sleep, sandwiched among forty girls, away from Chou, my mind wanders and dreams of my family, keeping me awake. In the morning, my head throbs and I am drained of energy. I cannot allow this weakness to control me, or let it seep into my spirit. If this happens I know I will die because the weak do not survive in Kampuchea.

The nights when I do not dream of my family, I have nightmares of something or someone trying to kill me. The dream always begins the same way. The sky is black and echoes with the thunder of monsoon storms. I am crouching in a bush and sweat runs down my forehead and stings my eyes. Shivering, I bring my knees closer to my chest. I hold my breath when I hear leaves rustling all around me, then footsteps. Instinctively, I know something is after me; it is looking for me in nearby bushes, looking to kill me.

Two giant hands separate the leaves and expose me. My body is paralyzed when I see what stands before me. It is both a man and a beast. It hovers above me, coal black eyes bulge out of its sockets, and large, flat nostrils flare from his fat, furry face. Fear grips me as I notice the silver machete in its hand, gleaming sinisterly in the moonlight. As the beast bends down to grab me, I run and make my escape between its legs. It turns around and slashes at me with the machete, barely missing my leg. As I run I hear the blade landing nearer and nearer to me, slicing through the bushes around me. The faster I run the faster it runs after me. It chases me until I am cornered.

Then the jungle closes in on me, forming thick walls. There is no escape. The beast raises the machete over its head, aimed directly at me. I am sick of it now. I’m sick of being chased and tired of running. My blood boils with rage as I hurl my body into it, knocking it off balance. It drops the machete. I ram my body into it once more and it crashes down onto the ground. I get up and grab the machete. Time freezes as I chop off its hand. Its stump squirts blood all over me, but I do not care. Again and again, I raise the machete and hack off pieces of its body until it lies motionless, dead. In the morning I wake up soaked in sweat and fear, yet strengthened by the nightmare since I turn out to be the victor.

The dreams are always the same, but the character changes. The “enemy,” a Khmer Rouge soldier or a wild beast, a monster or a ghostly man-creature, comes after me with knives, guns, axes, machetes. There is always a struggle until I obtain control of the weapon and kill the enemy before it can kill me. In the end, I, the hunted, turn and become the killer.
Each night before we can sleep, Met Bong gathers us together in the hut for another hour of propaganda reports. She lights one candle and holds it in her hand. The orange glow lights up her face while the rest of us are in the dark. At one meeting, as I lean against the straw wall and slowly fall asleep, a loud scream shocks me awake. With my heart pounding, I wonder if it was me who screamed. But then I see that the girls have closed in tightly around Met Bong.

“What happened?” Met Bong asks the girl who screamed.

“I felt … it was a big hand. I was leaning against the wall. A hand reached through the straw and grabbed my arm, then my throat. It was wet and cold. I know it’s a Youn coming to get us.” The girl’s lips tremble, her face is yellow in the light, looking very much like an apparition. Met Bong turns to the older girls and tells them to go look.

“Take the guns—make sure they are loaded. Shoot anything that moves.” After the older girls leave, the group huddles together in the middle of the room, facing the walls. Images of the Youns attacking and killing us run in my mind, filling me with fear. In Phnom Penh, Pa once told me the Youns are just like us but with whiter skin and smaller noses. However, Met Bong describes the Youns as savages who are bent on taking over our country and our people. I do not know what to believe. The only world I know beyond this camp is the one Met Bong describes to me. Sitting in the dark, I find myself starting to believe her message about the enemies.

A few minutes later, the girls return and report that whatever was out there is now gone. In the moonlight, they saw large footprints around the compound. “The Youns are attacking us,” Met Bong informs us. Her hands grip the rifle tightly to her chest. “When they take over the towns, they infiltrate them and open up the prisons. The Youns are running around raping girls and pillaging towns, and the prisoners who are against Pol Pot are with the Youns. We have to protect ourselves,” Met Bong rambles on frantically. After that night Met Bong institutes a new policy and we now take turns guarding the camp at night.

I am asleep when a hand roughly jerks my shoulders. “Wake up, it’s your turn to stand guard,” a voice says to me from the dark. Grumpy, I sit up and rub the sleep out of my eyes. She puts the rifle in my hand,
which is heavy, and I cradle it against my chest because my fingers are not long enough to wrap around its stock. I walk over to the doorway and sit down.

The sky is dark and cloudless, allowing the full moon to shine through, giving everything an eerie, silvery glow. The cool wind blows quietly. All is quiet, except for the crickets. I live with forty others, but I am so alone in this world. There is no camaraderie among the children, no blossoming friendships, no bonding together under hardship. We live against each other, spying on one another for Pol Pot, hoping to win favors from Met Bong. Met Bong says Pol Pot loves me, but I know he does not. Maybe he loves the other children, the uncorrupted base children with their uncontaminated parents. I came to this camp under false pretenses and lies. They think I am one of them, one of the pure base children.

I have never seen Pol Pot in person or in pictures. I know little about him or why he killed Pa. I do not know why he hates me so much. In the night when my defenses are down, my mind flashes from one member of my family to next. I think of Ma, Keav, Chou, and my brothers. My throat swells when Geak’s face floats into my mind. “No,” I tell myself, “I have to be strong. No time to be weak.” But I miss Pa so much it hurts to breathe. It’s been almost a year now since I held his hand, saw his face, felt his love.

The night sky looms ever more black in front of me. “Oh Pa,” I whisper to the air. As if answering me, something rustles loudly in the tall grass. I hold my breath and look around the compound. I know I heard something! My heart races. Everything out there is moving toward me. The tree trunks expand and contract as if they are breathing. The branches shake and swing, transform into hands. The grass sways like waves heading toward me. They are coming at us! My finger squeezes the trigger and the shots go everywhere! The rifle jerks back, hitting me hard against my ribs. “I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them!” I scream.

Then a hand grabs the rifle from me while another slaps my face. With my eyes open wide, I put my arms up to shield against another assault.

“Wake up!” Met Bong screams at me. “There’s nothing out there! We have no bullets to waste!” I flinch as she raises her hand again but then decides against hitting me.

“But Met Bong, you said—” I plead in a small voice.

“I said shoot when you see something real, not ghosts,” Met Bong interrupts me as laughter erupts from the girls.

“Don’t forget about the bodiless witches,” a voice calls out to me as they all head back to sleep.

Many claim she’s only a myth—the bodiless witch, an ordinary person by daytime and a witch at night. The only way to tell if someone is a bodiless witch is by the deep wrinkle lines around her neck. At night when these witches go to sleep their heads separate from their bodies. Dragging their intestines along, they fly around to places where there’s blood and death. The heads fly so fast that no one has ever seen the faces, only their shiny red eyes and sometimes the shadow of their heads and entrails. Once she finds a dead body, the bodiless witch nestles against the corpse all night. Their tongues lick blood and eat flesh while their innards writhe around them.

That night I clutch the gun tight to my chest, my finger resting on the trigger, alternately aiming at the sight of the Youns and up in the sky for the witches.

Seven months have passed since I left Ro Leap. My fingers tremble as I button my new black shirt. I want to impress Ma with my new clothes. I wish I had a mirror, but there isn’t one around. Since there are no hairbrushes or combs, I run my fingers through my greasy hair to smooth it out. Nervously, I walk out of the compound of the camp; in a couple of hours, I will be with Ma.

The Youn scare is over for now and all is quiet again at the camp. Every few months, Met Bong allows all the children to have a day of rest. Many take the opportunity to visit their families. My breath quickens as my feet take me closer and closer to Ro Leap. Since Met Bong believes I am an orphan, I say I am visiting Chou but instead will go see Ma. Ma does not know I am coming; she might not even be home. She told me not to come back. What if she doesn’t want to see me or won’t see me?

Following the same path Chou and I took out of Ro Leap, I march crisply toward the village. The surroundings seem to have changed very little since I last saw them. The red dirt trail winds and dips behind small foothills, shaded by tall teak trees. When I left I was a scared kid who cried and begged Ma to let me stay with her. Though I tried to be
strong, I was weak and did not know how I could fend for myself without Ma’s protection. But I am no longer that scared child. My only fear now is that Ma will not be happy to see me. The memory of her hand swatting my behind to make me leave Ro Leap still burns in me. On today’s journey, the trees look smaller and less haunted, and the path has an end—a destination.

Finally I see the village. It looks familiar yet it’s changed. The town square is deserted and quiet as I cross it to face the rows of huts. My lungs expand and contract rapidly as I remember Pa lifting me off the truck when we first arrived. I freeze his face in my mind, his warm eyes beckoning me to him, his arms holding me, protecting me while a base person spits at him. Inhaling deeply, I force myself closer to our hut. Like entering a ghost town, images of Keav telling Pa she will survive, Kim’s swollen cheeks, my hand reaching into the rice container, earthworms writhing in a bowl float before my eyes. The memories haunt and follow me like my shadow as I climb slowly up the steps to our hut. Ma is not there. My knees ache as I force my feet to move to the village’s garden.

There I see them. Their backs are to me. Ma’s squatting in the garden, pulling out weeds. Her black pajama clothes are gray and faded. The noon sun burns down on her, but she keeps working. Stiffening my back, my eyes skip over to Geak, who is sitting under a tree, watching Ma. She is still so little, so thin. Her hair is growing out again, but it is still very fine. She is almost five and looks much smaller than I did when I was that age. Ma says something to her, and she laughs a small, frail laugh. My heart leaps. They have each other. They will always have each other.

“Ma,” I call out loudly. Her back stiffens. Slowly, she turns her head, her eyes squinting in the sun. It takes her a few seconds to recognize me, then she stands quickly and runs toward me. Tears fall from her eyes as she puts her hands over me, touching my head, my shoulders, my face, as if to make sure I am real.

“What are you doing here? What if you get caught?”

“Ma, it’s okay. I have a permission slip.”

She takes the slip and quickly reads it. It is only a piece of paper saying I can leave my camp and no mention of a designated location.

“All right, you stay here with Geak while I take this to the chief and ask for some time off.” Before I can say anything she’s gone, leaving me standing there by myself, already missing her. I feel a gentle hand tug on my little finger and I look to see Geak’s face staring up at me, her eyes big and wet. She barely reaches my chest. Though she is five, I always think of her as a baby. Maybe because she is weak and does not fight. I smile and reach my hand out to her. Together we walk to a shady tree and wait for Ma’s return.

Sitting under the tree, I hold on to Geak’s hand. It is small in my palm, brown from the sun with black dirt burrows in her nails and the wrinkles around the knuckles. Her nails are brittle. I continue to stare at her hand, too afraid to look at her face and see my guilt in her eyes. I do not know what to say to her. She has never been a talkative child; she is the sweet-natured one and I am the cranky one. Leaning over, I put my arms around her tiny shoulders and rest my cheek gently on her head. She does not move or struggle but allows me to hold her.