When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback (20 page)

Finally Ra shows
Mak
the white medicine tablets. Small, round.
Mak
takes a few, swallowing them greedily. She tilts her head as if trying to help them down. I watch her, my heart constricting as I observe her bloodless, swollen face, her wiry hair. Slowly, her hand reaches toward Ra.

“Give
Mak
more, maybe it will make
Mak
better soon.”

Ra holds her scarf out to
Mak
. “
Mak
, that’s too many,” Ra cries, alarmed.

Ra cringes as she watches
Mak
toss the tablets in her mouth. I don’t see how many pills
Mak
is holding in her cupped hand, but later in the night, I can only imagine how many she must have taken.
Mak
grows very ill, her body writhing, agitated, gagging. The sound of her dry retching makes me sick to my own stomach. I’m relieved to have taken only two tablets for my own malaria. Silently, I say a prayer. I pray to
Preah
that she’ll survive the overdose of this medicine. In the morning I’m relieved to see her looking better.

A month later, Chea returns. Miraculously, she brings food: uncooked rice and dry salted fish. She also has a container with cooked rice and cooked dry fish, a luxury long past. I didn’t recognize Chea at first. She looks so different, her complexion healthier, her face crimson with robust color. Her hair is thick, now touching her shoulders. She has gained weight, looking more like she did before the Khmer Rouge’s takeover.

With her, Chea brings us more grim stories. Weeks ago, while clearing the dense woods in Phnom Korg Va for a cotton plantation, a tree branch cut her foot, resulting in a small wound that quickly became infected. She couldn’t walk and therefore couldn’t work. Chea knew her days were numbered—her brigade leader now had a chance to incriminate her, scold her for not “fulfilling her duty to
Angka.
” With this in mind, Chea devised a way to save herself.

Alone in her shelter, she composed a fight song for her brigade leader. A song about nature, green vegetation, and fruit, on which she had been laboring all these months. It’s a song of hard work at Phnom Korg Va.

“One evening I went to see my
mekorg
,” Chea recalls. “I asked her how she was doing. She was surprised. Then I flattered her, complimenting her on how attractive she was. I told her that if it were during
sangkum mun
[the previous society], men would be crazy about her. They would whistle at her, flirt with her. Do you know what? She relaxed.” Chea smiles, her eyes bright, satisfied. “Then I sang her the song. She liked it!”

My eyes widen, a mirror image of Chea’s animated face. “She’s pleased that I wrote it, especially for her. After that she never gives me a hard time. She treats me nicer, giving me food to eat. She let me come back to the village when she saw my foot. It doesn’t matter which era,
p’yoon srey
,” she says, looking at me, “people want others to compliment them. And many like bribery.”

But now, in 1977, more changes are taking place.
Angka Leu
sends us a clear signal, letting us know that we will have no privacy at all. We’re told in a meeting that there will be no rice, salt, and vegetable distributions as before. Everything will be sent to the commune kitchen. Foods such as vegetables and chickens, which any of us might raise, belong to the commune.

With the new rule, we move to a new hut half a mile away from the old one. It is similar to our first hut, built from bamboo poles and palm leaves. It’s even a little bigger, about eleven by thirteen feet. It is situated among a scattering of other huts, all of which seem to have more space in front and back—open land on which we can cultivate vegetables, the fruit of my family’s labor which I want no Khmer Rouge commune to have. I brace myself for the day they come to harvest it.

I have almost recovered from malaria and so has
Mak
, but she grows steadily worse in a different way. In our new hut she’s with us, eating our dinner of rice with yam leaves and salt, but she stares into the distance, her eyes fixed on something invisible. I know
Mak
is mourning. It was May 1975 when
Pa
was executed. It’s been nearly two years since his death, and she has never spoken of him until now—spring 1977. Reminiscing, she talks about
Pa
, saddened for him. She wonders out loud how painful his death was, talking to herself more than to us. Since Avy’s death, she has changed. She has become disheartened, complaining of headaches, dizziness, and fatigue. Being sick for nearly a month, she feels useless, and simply eats and sleeps. It’s all she can do. Her face spells out her frustration.

One morning I wake up to
Mak
’s voice. “I’m going to weed, do some physical work,” she murmurs to herself. “I don’t want to be cooped up in the hut.”

Mak
hops off the hut. Chea and Ra have gone to work, only Map remains on the hut platform. With a knife in her hand, a tool she uses for everything,
Mak
tills the dry soil in front of the hut, weeding, pulling the grass. Maybe being outside in the sun will help her, but I’m fearful of her being exposed to the watchful eyes of informants.

“Comrade, why aren’t you at work?” a voice snarls. My heart quickens as my mind recognizes this familiar demand. “Everybody works and you’re staying home! Do you want me to take you to reform?”

“I’ve been sick, and I’m swollen all over.”
Mak
’s voice rises, softly, protesting. “I’m hungry. I just want to weed a little, perhaps my children can raise vegetables. It’s hard just sitting in the hut,”
Mak
pleads. “I can’t work like others when I’m still sick.”

The informant snaps, “Go to
peth
if you’re sick! Don’t stay home.”

“Two of my children died there. No one could help them. If I go, who will take care of my children? I’ve a baby son who needs me. I’d like to stay home and take care of my children. Would
Angka Leu
please understand and let me take care of myself at home? If I go, I’ll die there like my children.”

Mak
’s imploring words don’t reach him. He gives her an ultimatum. “If you don’t go to
peth
, I’ll have people take you there. If you can’t work, you stay in
peth
!”

In the evening when Chea, Ra, and Ry return,
Mak
announces the bad news.

“They want me to go to
peth
and die. They won’t let me stay home. All of you take care of your
p’yoon proh
[young brother]. He’s little and doesn’t understand. Don’t get mad at him. Take care of each other. I don’t know when I’ll come back. I don’t want to go, but the
chhlop
threatened me. I don’t want him to harm us…. Life is so hard…. I’ve asked
Preah
to let me live for one more year….”

Mak
’s voice subsides. Inside the hut, silence. For a moment we’re all lost in despair, our own words suffocated by her acceptance. Quietly, we’ve feared the day when
Mak
would die, but none of us has spoken of it. Chea finally breaks the silence. “
Mak
, don’t worry about us. You take care of yourself and we will take care of each other.”

“I’ve asked
Preah
to let me live one more year.” A wish so modest, so small, so unselfish. Only a year, so short. I wish that she hadn’t told us this prediction of her fate. I don’t want to know, am not ready. Her wish reminds me of
Pa
’s years ago.

Back then, our world was already in chaos—the invasion of the Viet Cong,
*
our Takeo house decimated, our dog Aka Hom killed, Tha dead, then Bosaba.
Pa
was afflicted with appendicitis, worsened by the lack of medical care in a time of war. His simple, desperate wish, he told us, was, “to live until forty-two so
Pa
can see you grow up.” He got his wish. At forty-two, he was executed by the Khmer Rouge. Now I fear
Mak
’s wish will come true. That
Preah
will grant it. One year, and no more.

The day
Mak
goes to Peth Preahneth Preah, my mind is crowded with thoughts and fears. As I work in the woods, my hands slowly clearing away plants and grass, my mind is absorbed only with
Mak
. The family separation is now reversed. Instead of my brothers, sisters, and I being separated from her, she’s the one who’s taken from us. I dread going back to the hut, picturing Map waiting in the hut by himself.

Without
Mak
, Chea becomes his surrogate mother. At night he cuddles next to her, his arms thrown wide embracing her or hers embracing him. In these moments I see a child’s desperate need for comfort, and a sister who dispenses all the love that she has. Since our mother’s departure, we’ve drawn close to each other, hearts and minds bound by an invisible thread. When we come together from work, we read one another’s eyes, as if checking to see if the other misses
Mak
or is sad about her. We serve our evening meal of rice and weeds on plates like small adults, passing food to the others, polite, respectful. We keep our thoughts to ourselves, swallowing words. To speak of our fears only reinforces them, opening up a dark path of possibilities.

In the hospital, patients must struggle to find the self-reliance to survive. Those who succeed learn the tricks. Their competitors in the game of survival are mice and rats, the hospital’s residents who remain hidden during daylight. They range in size, as little as a toe and as large as a papaya. At night the games begin. From somewhere beneath the hospital, they emerge, the sound of their soft moving feet magnified in the silent night. They crawl, then pause.
Mak
, like many starving patients, mirrors their behavior—pause, be still. With a cloth draped over her head and body, a few grains of rice scattered beneath as bait, she waits, her hungry hands prepare to pounce. The rats smell the bait. Hunger draws them to their death as
Mak
’s hands grab them. Quickly she kills them, snapping their necks until they’re motionless. It is a strange cycle—the rodents come to gnaw on the weak and dead, the dying wait to trap those who would feed upon them. They will be her next day’s meal only if other patients sharing the crowded floor space don’t steal them.

Ry tells me about
Mak
, her tricks to survive in the hospital. But I already know. This is what I’ve been doing in our own hut—covering myself at night with a blanket and baiting a small tin can with a few grains of unhusked rice, waiting for mice. Lately I’ve traded my sleep for food, dozing lightly until I felt movement or heard their feet on the can. Sometimes I get two or more, even four on one occasion. In the morning I skin them, taking the guts out and tying their small bodies to a stick. Each mouse is a small, savory bite, and I try to eat the bones and all. In the evening, at the commune, I roast them on the fire. There, some boys steal envious glances, whispering among themselves. They wonder how I catch mice at this time of year.

At first there are many. Then my supply becomes scarce. I no longer have them to supplement my ration like
Mak
at Peth Preahneth Preah. A few weeks after arriving there, her edema worsens. Her stomach grows larger, swelling like that of a pregnant woman. Ry describes it to me, her eyes reddened.

Another week passes. Ry comes back with more news. A hospital worker has suggested that she take
Mak
to a hospital in a village called Choup. Unlike Peth Preahneth Preah, it has modern medicine, the worker promises Ry. We’ve never heard of it. Even though it’s painful to imagine our mother being at an unknown place, the prospect of
Mak
being treated with modern medicine eases that pain. It gives Ry hope, and she wants to persuade us. She waits for family consent.

The day before
Mak
leaves for Choup, Ry takes Map with her to Peth Preahneth Preah. Map spends the night there with Ry and
Mak
. The next day they say their good-byes, Ry recalls, her words painting the scene:

Beneath the shade of a tree, hidden from the hot afternoon sun,
Mak
squats on the dusty earth in front of the hospital, waiting to be taken to Choup.
Mak
bids Ry good-bye, her mouth slowly articulating advice, her arms embracing Map.

“
Koon
,
Mak
doesn’t know when
Mak
will see all of you again. Take care of each other. If Map does something wrong, please let him finish eating before you discipline him. He’s little, doesn’t understand—pity him….”
Mak
’s eyes are red, burned by gathering tears.

When her last word leaves her mouth, her head turns, eyes on Map. Her tears spill over. Map’s arms break free from her embrace, wrapping around her neck. Finally a high, ringing cry tumbles out of his mouth. Their good-byes are brief. A horse cart approaches.
Mak
’s head turns, her arms releasing Map. His cry rises to a wail, his legs wrapping around her leg. Ry pulls him away from
Mak
, then two black-uniformed strangers from the cart take
Mak
away.