When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback (14 page)

“Athy, who else is coming with you? Only yourself?” Aunt Rin inquires.

“Only me….” I break down as I think about the parting from
Mak.

“Athy, stop crying. I’ll tell your sisters to look for you tonight. Stop crying.”

Tears flood Aunt Rin’s eyes as she gazes into mine. I feel Cheng’s hand touch my arm—she’s crying, too. Her ragged sobs and Aunt Rin’s make me cry harder.

Suddenly I hurt for
Mak.
She wanted to believe what they promised her. Maybe in her desperate hope she had to believe it. And now this.

“They lied to us, promised that the work camp was close to the village,” Cheng sniffs, wiping her tears away with her scarf.

“They told us,” I cry, “that there’s a lot of food here.”

Aunt Rin knows. “They lie, they lied so you’d come. There isn’t a lot of food. They give everyone rice rations just like in the village. They work you to death. I’m terribly tired and just want to rest.” Her mouth moves slowly, as if there’s no energy left in her. A stern woman in a new black uniform approaches Aunt Rin’s work group. I alert her. Aunt Rin looks horror-stricken. She wipes away her tears and says, “She’s my
mekorg
,
*
Athy, I have to work. I’ll tell Chea and Ra to look for you….”

“Comrade, go back to work NOW! This is not a place for you to talk. Who gave you permission to stop working?”

“I just want to talk to my niece, that’s all,” Aunt Rin answers submissively.

The
mekorg
looks at Cheng and me, then hisses, “Comrades, both of you go to the children’s camp, over there! Go there now!” Cheng and I scurry away.

We wander among makeshift tents. They sprout like mushrooms rooted under the shade of trees at the edge of a small mountain, which I think is called Phnom Kambour. So this is a labor camp, the place where mobile brigades are sent. Suddenly, a woman pauses in front of us and points to a large tent as if she knows where we’re supposed to go. Cheng and I look at each other, bewildered but relieved. When we get to the tent, it’s full, crowded with crying children. Their wails rise in the twilight, calling for their mothers like a sad, chanting prayer.

Chhlops
shout at the crying children, ordering everyone to stop. The distraught children only wail harder. Even informants can’t stop our cries. Recognizing defeat, they leave us alone with our tears.

Without warning, cooks appear bringing steaming rice and watery soup in round black pots. As soon as we realize they have food, everybody, including Cheng and me, rushes toward the cooks. We swarm around them. My mouth waters, and my stomach roars. Like the other children, I ready my plate for a ration as I stare hungrily into the watery, milky soup and the rice pot. I can almost eat the food with my stare, for the only food I’ve had all day since leaving Daakpo village was a taste of Cheng’s yam, a piece the size of my toe.

After receiving the rice ration, I scurry with Cheng and other children for our soup ration, surrounding the cook, who is stirring a milky broth swirling with flat little fish, with heads and eyes peeking out at us.

The cook drops a plastic bowl on the ground in the middle of the circle, then pours the cloudy broth with a few fish into it. The minute she’s done, every spoon collides in the soup bowl. Everyone has the same idea—we all want fish and we all know there are not enough. Whoever is quick gets the fish and whoever is slow cries. We learn to ignore others’ sad eyes and eat the fish ravenously.

Surprisingly, the cook gives us another soup ration. Before she finishes pouring it into our bowl, a girl cries out, “Don’t take all the fish.” Her words freeze me and those who’ve gotten their share of fish. We don’t reach for the bowl until she and two others in our group get their fish. I feel sorry for her, and for us all, that it’s come to this, grappling like dogs over a bone. But I’m relieved knowing we’ve each got a fish. Despite starvation, we haven’t completely lost our sense of sharing, a human courtesy the Khmer Rouge have yet to take away.

After our meal, Cheng and I rest, sitting on the ground beneath tall trees since there’s no shelter for us. Tonight is the first night in my life I realize that I can lose
Mak
as easily as I’ve lost
Pa
. Never have I been separated from her, and the distance pains me. Closing my eyes, I can see
Mak
preparing dinner, bending before the flames, coaxing the water to a boil, dropping in leaves. Her words would be a low murmur, gentle instructions to get a bowl for a brother, to wash your face. Ordinary words, but delivered with a kindness that I will never know here.

Once I remember
Mak
daydreaming about food, telling us what she would be grateful to have. She used to say, “Having solid rice and salt is like going to heaven.” Tonight I have solid rice and fish soup, even more than her heavenly wish. I’ve only had one meal, but already I am full of regret, feeling guilty, wishing I could somehow have shared it to ease her starvation. But she’s too far away—even my ability to imagine her is fading away.

Out of the darkness, I hear a familiar voice. I look up and see a shadow of a person calling my name. It’s Chea! Aunt Rin did tell her that I’m here! And now she has come for me.

I get up, oblivious to everything around me, Cheng and the sobbing children. She runs and puts her arm around me. I can see little in the dark, only that she seems thinner. We walk away together, almost like in the good old times.

“Athy, when did you get here?” Chea sounds concerned.

“A while ago.” I’m comforted by Chea’s presence. Her sisterly role.

She wonders why I came to the camp, and worries that I should have stayed with
Mak
. “You shouldn’t have left
Mak
. Who’s going to look after her? The older children are gone.”

I explain to Chea why
Mak
wants me here.

“They lied to you so you would come. They lied to everybody. You should have stayed with
Mak
. You’re too small to work here. It’s hard work even for older people like me,” says Chea, sounding distraught.

Now I’m frightened about what could happen to
Mak
, and I’m scared for myself, whether I’ll survive this hard work and live to see
Mak
.

“Chea, I want to go back to
Mak
, I want to go back. How can I go back?” I cry, wanting Chea to help me, but she doesn’t answer except to hold me tight.

Chea takes me to her shelter, and I wait there alone while she goes back to finish her assigned task. Everyone must dig a prescribed number of cubic meters of soil each day, no matter how long it takes. I cry until Chea and Ra return to the shelter.

“Athy, I heard my
mekorg
say they will send all the children to a camp in Oh Runtabage tomorrow. Did they tell you?” Chea asks softly.

“No,” I sniff, gasping for air.

The words Oh Runtabage literally mean a stream struck by lightning. I’m scared all over again. Chea comforts me, saying I’ll be closer to
Mak
than if I were to stay at Phnom Kambour with her and Ra. But I can’t imagine seeing
Mak
, so the words don’t comfort me. Already I miss Chea and Ra, even though Ra has spoken little. She seems exhausted, used up. They are my sisters still, but worn-out versions of the girls I knew. And I’m too caught up in my fears and sadness. I cry until it wears me out; I fall asleep beside Chea, drifting into dreams about seeing
Mak
.

“Athy, Athy, wake up! Wake up,
p’yoon
[younger sibling].”

I open my eyes and it’s still dark. The voice is familiar, and for a sleepy moment I think I’m back in Daakpo.

“Wake up, Athy. You have to go,” says Chea, her hands lifting my head.

My body aches. Reluctantly I rise and Chea takes me back to where she found me. I don’t even have time to say good-bye to Ra.

I hold my tears when I hear a fierce voice ask “Which one of you, comrades, wants to be the brave children of
Angka Leu
? Stand here.” I’m shocked, spellbound by the voice of the man and the ghostly shadows of little children standing silently by the fire.

Suddenly I feel a tap on my shoulder. “Athy,
bang
has to go back. May
p’yoon srey
[young sister] encounter only good things as you go to Oh Runtabage. Take care of yourself.
Lea Haey
[Good-bye],
p’yoon
.” Chea murmurs her blessing, then her voice is gone. I turn to watch her. She disappears into a grove of trees, and I’m left with heartbroken children.

As we depart from Phnom Kambour, the Khmer Rouge have the “brave children” march on the road under construction, the earthen bridge being built by those we leave behind. The Khmer Rouge launch into a marching chant. Around me, small hands stab the air and obediently repeat the song. Over and over, they call themselves “the brave children of
Angka Leu
.” They shout, they sing, they dance.

The journey to Oh Runtabage is tiring and cold. By the time we arrive at Oh Runtabage it’s late afternoon. The remote camp is as secluded as Phnom Kambour. Trees create a thick barrier on each side of a stream, casting their tangled shadows over the milky brown water, making it look shallower than it really is. Near the stream, tall yellow grass grows in an open field that stretches far into the distance. There are no huts, only the shelter of trees. I’m hungry and exhausted.

Already there is work. They order us to look for tree branches for the cooks to use as fuel. Some of us have to dig big holes for the cooking pots. Others go to the stream to retrieve the milky brown water for cooking. I help other children to dig cooking holes. I dig until my body trembles. Suddenly I feel dizzy. I pause and take a deep breath.

Softly I say to myself, “I’m feeling sick.” A few children glance at me as I sink down to the ground. I close my eyes, resting my head on my knees, hiding behind a row of working children who block the
chhlops’
view of me. Though I fear the informants will see me, I’m too exhausted to care.

Eventually it is time to eat, and I have not been found out. After we eat, the Khmer Rouge direct us to a grove of trees along the stream in which we are to make our shelters. First we have to clear the brush to make a space, then the “walls,” nothing more than little branches. Those who have brought extra clothes use them for a sleeping mat while Cheng and I gather leaves for ours. The local children, the “old people,” get to choose where they want their shelters to be, and whatever they don’t want belongs to us, the “new people.” All is done to keep the peasants on the side of the Khmer Rouge.

Being new to this task, Cheng and I agree that we should watch the “old people” build their shelters. We decide to find tree branches near their area, where they’re making their makeshift tents. As we study them working, they catch us.

“What are you looking at?” a local girl snarls, speaking in
rurdern
, a distinctive northwestern drawl. In the past, such an accent would have made me laugh. Here, I only risk a giggle under my breath. It is hard not to mock people you don’t respect. The trick is not to get caught.

Cheng and I turn away. I murmur to Cheng, and softly drawl what the girl said, “What are you looking at?” Cheng mocks her, too, and we laugh quietly to ourselves. For a moment I feel as if we’re back in school, laughing our girlish laughs.

Cheng and I build our tiny shelter away from the other children’s, close to the edge of the stream. Like the “old people,” we use vines and branches to assemble our roof and walls, so low that we must crawl in and out. But I grin to myself at our small achievement, and I’m glad Cheng is here to help. And I wonder if what I heard back in Phnom Penh is true. Cambodian elders used to say, “At home there’s a separate mother, in the forest there’s only one mother.” In the wild, you have to cling together. Here, Cheng is my family. Hope is our invisible mother, the presence that comforts us.

At night we are like a family, but we can’t be while we’re working. Every morning at about four o’clock, our brigade leader, along with her “pets,” shrill in the air, “Wake up, wake up. Go to work, go to work….” Our leader’s voice is annoying, and her face is perpetually angry. She always frowns when ordering us, as if we’re not worth looking at. But the feeling is mutual. I don’t like her either. She’s thin, with short, curly black hair and dark skin. Cambodian elders would say her heart is darker than her skin. She seems to be yelling at us all the time, even after we wake up and march into the field. As our eyes close, open, and close again, her venomous words are all that we hear.

In order to curry favor, our
mekorg
wakes us earlier and earlier.

“Evil woman!” Cheng hisses under her breath. “This creature wakes us up early for work, but it and its evil people go back to sleep. Dogs!” Cheng growls.

“How do you know they go back to sleep?” I ask, astonished.

“I’ve sneaked out to the cooking area to get fish heads. Then I hide them by our shelter,” says Cheng softly. “And I see them sleep. Those dogs!”

Now I know why Cheng always disappears during the lineup time for food rations. I have often noticed how she goes away to eat by herself, or eat with her back to me and other children.
She’s brave
, I think, gazing at her toiling in the morning’s shadows.

The next day as she waits in front of me for her rice ration, I assume Cheng has fish heads in her scarf. I want to ask her for some fish heads, but I’m scared of the
chhlops
standing by the cooks. I glance at her, then at the
chhlops
, anxiety making my hunger gnaw deeper. I’m nervous, but bold. I walk over to Cheng and whisper.