First They Killed My Father (6 page)

“What do you do?” the soldier curtly asks Pa.

“I work as a packer in the shipping port.”

“What do you do?” The soldier points his finger at Ma. Her eyes focus on the ground, and she shifts Geak’s weight on her hips. “I sell old clothes in the market,” she says in a barely audible voice.

The soldier rummages through all our bags one by one. Then he bends down and lifts the lid of the rice pot next to Pa’s feet. Gripping Pa’s finger even tighter, my heart races as the soldier checks the pot. His face is close to mine; I concentrate on my dirty toes. I dare not look into his eyes, for I have been told that when you look into their eyes, you can see the devil himself.

“All right, you are cleared. You may go.”

“Thank you, comrade,” Pa says meekly, his head bobbing up and down to the soldier. The soldier is already looking past Pa and merely waves his hand for us to hurry on. Passing the checkpoint safely, we walk a few hours more until the sun goes to sleep behind the mountains and the world becomes a place of shadows and shapes once again. In the mass of people, Pa finds us a spot of unoccupied grass near the side of the road. Ma puts Geak down next to me and tells me to keep an eye on her. Sitting next to her, I am struck by how pale she looks. Breathing quietly, she fights to keep her eyelids open, but in the end she loses and falls to sleep. Her growling stomach talks as mine grumbles in return. Knowing there will be nothing to eat for a while, I lie down on a small bundle of clothes next to her and rest my head on another. Quickly, I too fall asleep.

When I wake, I am sitting upright on the straw mat and Keav is pushing food into my mouth. “Eat this,” she says. “Rice balls with wild
mushrooms. Khouy and Meng picked the mushrooms in the woods.” With my eyes still closed, the rice ball works itself slowly down my dry throat and quiets my hunger. After I finish my small portion, I lie back down and leave the world of the Khmer Rouge soldiers behind.

In the middle of the night I dream I am at a New Year’s parade. The Cambodian Lunar New Year this year falls on the thirteenth of April. Traditionally, for three days and nights, we celebrate the New Year with parades, food, and music. In my dream, fireworks crackle and boom noisily, rejoicing in the New Year celebration. There are many varieties of food on the table: red cookies, red candies, red roasted pigs, and red noodles. Everything is red. I’m even wearing a new red dress that Ma has made for this special occasion. In the Chinese culture it is not proper for girls to wear this color because it attracts too much attention. Only girls who want attention wear red and they are generally viewed as “bad” and “improper,” more than likely from a bad family. But New Year’s is a special occasion and during the celebration everyone is allowed to wear red. Chou is next to me clapping her hands at something. Geak is giggling and trying to catch up with me as I run and spin around and around. We all have on the same dress. We look so pretty with red ribbons in our ponytails, red rouge on our cheeks, and red lipstick on our lips. My sisters and I hold hands, laughing as fireworks boom in the background.

I wake up the next morning to the voices of my brothers and father whispering to each other about what went on in the night.

“Pa,” Meng says in a frightened voice, “a man told me the noise last night was the Khmer Rouge soldiers opening fire on all the people who registered for work. They killed every one of them.” Their words push at my temples, making my head throb with fear.

“Don’t say anything. If the soldiers hear us we will be in danger.”

Hearing this makes me afraid and I walk over to Pa. “We’ve been walking and walking for five days now. When can we go home?”

“Don’t talk anymore,” he whispers and hands me over to Keav. Keav takes my hand and leads me to the woods so I can go to the bathroom. We have only taken a few steps when Khouy stops us.

“Turn and walk back! Don’t go any farther!” He yells.

“She has to go.”

“There’s a dead body in the tall grass only a few feet from where you are. That’s why this spot was left empty last night.”

I grip Keav’s hand tighter and suddenly notice the smell that hits my nostrils. It is not the smell of rotten grass or my own body odor but a smell so putrid that my stomach coils. A smell similar to that of rotten chicken innards left out in the hot sun for too many days. Everything surrounding me becomes blurry and I do not hear Keav telling me to move my legs. I hear only the buzzing of flies feasting on the human corpse. I feel Keav’s hand pull at me, and my feet automatically move in her direction. With my hand in hers, we catch up with the rest of the family and begin our sixth day of marching.

On our walk, the soldiers are everywhere, prodding us along. They point and give us directions with their guns and bullhorns. In the scorching April heat, many older people become ill from heatstroke and dehydration, but they dare not rest. When someone falls ill, the family throws out his belongings, puts the sick person on someone’s back or a wagon if the family is lucky enough to have one, and march on. We walk all through the morning and afternoon, stopping for food and to rest only when the sun goes down.

All around us, other families also have stopped to rest for the night. Some stagger into the field, picking up firewood to cook their meals. Others eat what they cooked earlier and fall asleep as soon as they lie down. We walk around the curled up bodies to find an empty area of our own. Exhausted, Ma and Keav struggle to set up our resting spot and start a fire. From one of the plastic bags we carry our remaining belongings in, Keav takes out a bedsheet and spreads it on the ground. Ma unrolls the straw mat and lines it up next to the bedsheets. While I sit with Geak on small bundles, rubbing my burned and aching ankles, Chou and Kim move our other bags onto the bedsheet. Holding her hand, I attempt to lead Geak to sit on the sheets, but she pulls out of my hand and toddles over to Pa. He picks her up and holds her to his chest. Her face, brown and blistered from the sun, rests at the nape of his neck as his body swivels left and right. Before long, she is asleep.

Our food supply is reduced to only a few pounds of rice so Meng, Khouy, and Kim have to forage for other food to supplement the rice.
They walk half a mile to the nearby town of Ang Snur and return an hour later. Their figures move toward us slowly; Kim carries an armful of dry wood and in Meng’s hand is a small branch piercing two small fish and some wild vegetables. Khouy walks toward us with a small pot and an ecstatic grin on his face.

“Ma, look!” he calls to her, barely able to contain his glee. “Sugar!”

“Brown sugar!” Ma exclaims, taking the pot away from him. Though I am tired, those two words bring me running in the direction of the pot.

“Brown sugar!” I repeat quietly. I never knew how two little words could bring me so much happiness. “Ma, let me have a taste! There’s almost a quarter of a pot of it!”

“Shh. Don’t say it so loud,” Keav warns me, “or people will come and beg us for some.” I notice a few of our neighbors look in our direction.

“Here everyone, have a small taste. We have to save some,” Ma says as we gather around her. My siblings stick their fingers into the sugar and lick what they are able to pull out.

“Me … me … me …” I beg Ma as she slowly lowers the pot to my level. I know it is my one chance to get as much sugar as I can, so I wait a few seconds to form enough spit in my mouth. Then I put my finger in my mouth and swish the spit around my finger to make sure I wet every millimeter of my finger. When I am satisfied that my finger is wet enough, I take it out of my mouth and slowly roll it around on top of the sugar. My finger rolls so slowly that I can feel the rough grains bonding to it. When I pull it out of the pot, I am happy to see what I have achieved. I have more sugar on my one finger than anyone else does! Carefully, I place my other hand under my treasure to catch any grains that might fall from my finger. Slowly, I walk my finger back to my spot on the mat and begin to eat each grain of the sugar.

After dinner, Ma takes us girls to a nearby pond, which is already crowded with people washing their clothes and naked children, tentatively putting their heads under the muddy water. The children all look too tired to bop up and down, laugh, or splash at one another. Ma instructs us to strip off our clothes. I remove my brown shirt, a shirt that was yellow when I hurriedly dressed six days ago. Naked, Chou, Geak, and I wait while Ma removes her clothes from under her
sarong and hands them over to Keav. With no soap, Keav takes the clothes to the edge of the river and scrubs them against the rocks to get them clean.

With Geak balanced on one of her hips, Ma takes my hand and walks Chou and I into the pond for our first wash in six days. Hand in hand, we stop when the water reaches my waist. The water feels cool and soft on my skin, slowly peeling away the layers of grime that has collected. The slippery grass in the water sways back and forth to the rhythm of our movements, gently brushing against my legs. Some of the blades slither around my ankles, sending chills up and down my spine. I jump and fall into the water, pulling Chou with me, who is still holding on tight to Ma’s hand. When I resurface, they are all laughing at me. I am happy to have all of us laughing together again.

In the morning, Ma wakes everyone and we get ready for our seventh day of walking. The road ahead of us shimmers in the heat, and the dust swells are everywhere, burning my eyes. In the distance, my eyes focus on a lone bicyclist. I cannot tell how tall he is, only that he is very thin. It is strange that he is traveling against the flow of traffic. All of a sudden, I am startled by Ma’s scream. Between loud, halting sobs Ma manages to say, “It’s your uncle Leang!”

With our hands in the air and bodies jumping up and down, we wave excitedly to our uncle. Uncle Leang waves one hand back and peddles his bike faster in our direction. He comes to a stop a few feet from us, and all at once we rush toward him. Blinking his eyes, he takes Ma into his arms with Pa standing quietly beside them. All the worries and fears of the past few days are now over, for at last he has found his sister. Uncle Leang hands Ma a package from his front bike rack, and while she opens the cans of tuna and other food he tells Pa that this morning other people from Phnom Penh arrived in his village. The new arrivals told him of the evacuation and how the Khmer Rouge forced everyone to leave all the cities, including Phnom Penh, Battambang, and Siem Reap. Hearing this, he got on his bike and has been looking for us all morning. He then shares with us the glorious news that Ma’s oldest brother Heang is on his way to pick us up in a wagon. A smile of joy crosses over my face, knowing I will not have to walk anymore and that in a few days we can ride in their wagon home.

Standing next to Uncle Leang, I have to tilt my head back as far as I can to see his face because he is so tall. Even then all I can see is the shape of his thin lips and wide, black nostrils that flare once every few seconds as he talks to Ma. At almost six feet tall, second Uncle Kim Leang hovers above all of us. His long thin arms and legs make him look like the stick figures I used to draw on my schoolbooks. Uncle Leang lives in a village called Krang Truop. Both Uncle Leang and Uncle Heang have lived in the countryside since before the revolution and have never lived in a city. The Khmer Rouge considers them uncorrupted model citizens for their new society. Pa says we will go and live with our uncles in their village.

The wagon, pulled by two yellow skinny cows moving very slowly, arrives later that evening. While Pa and Ma talk to my uncle, I quickly claim a seat in the wagon with Chou and Geak. Our trail takes us on a gravel road along Route 26 westward until we reach the Khmer Rouge-occupied village of Bat Deng. No matter where we go or in which direction we turn, there are people marching ahead and behind us. In the midst of the crowd, our wagon passes the Khmer Rouge village without stopping. We veer westward, leaving our roadside companions far behind. Somewhere between Bat Deng and Krang Truop, I fall asleep.

On the morning of April 25, eight days after leaving our wonderful home in Phnom Penh, we arrive at our destination. Krang Truop is a small and dusty village surrounded by rice fields as far as the eye can see. All around the rice paddies, little red-dirt roads wind like snakes slithering through water. In the fields, gray buffalos and brown cows graze lazily on the grass. Many have bells tied on strings around their necks, which chime when the animals slowly move their heads. When they run, they remind me of the sound of the ice cream cart in Phnom Penh. Here, instead of concrete city buildings and houses, people live in huts made out of straw that squat on four stilts above elephant grass in the middle of rice paddies.

“The kids are even messier than I am!” I exclaim, as one runs across our path, oblivious to my own ragtag appearance. “Ma’s always complaining about me—just look at them.” The children are red and dusty all over, crimson earth clinging to their clothing, skin, and hair.

Chou frowns at me and shakes her head. Though she is only three years older than I am, Chou often acts as if she knows many more things than I do. I have the larger build and can beat her up easily, though I rarely do it. Because she is shy, quiet, obedient, and doesn’t say
much, all our older siblings assume what she chooses to say is of some importance and usually take her side in our fights. Because I am loud and talkative, my words are thought trite and silly. Chou looks at me now with her brows wrinkling close together, as if trying to figure out my thoughts. I stick my tongue out at her. I don’t care. I am thrilled to be here and able to return home in a few days.

After a joyous reunion with my aunts and many cousins, Pa disappears with Uncle Leang to meet with the village chief and request permission to live here. Uncle Leang and Uncle Heang say that since the Khmer Rouge have won the war, the soldiers removed the old village chief and replaced him with a Khmer Rouge cadre. Now the villagers have to seek permission for the simplest of human desires—to have family members live with them or to leave the village to visit another area.