When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback (8 page)

I shake my father’s hand. “
Pa
, people sit on the ground.”

“
Pa
knows.”

We are struck by this churning mass of people sitting on the ground like mushrooms. In the bright pulsing sun we squint, blocking the rays with hands shelved above our eyes, an unintended salute. I gaze at the bulging body of people, sweeping over the scene again and again like a surveillance camera taking snapshots of intruders. In my wildest dreams, I could never have visualized such a meeting, a goofy, dressed-up tribal gathering, a trip back in time.

I glare at
Pa.
Why must we sit on the ground and obey the Khmer Rouge?
We can’t just obey them. We don’t owe them our respect
. Deep in my heart, there’s a fire. I feel that if I sit down, I will forever give in to the Khmer Rouge. In my mind I shout,
You cannot tell me what to think!

For the first time, I’m defiant, very angry at the Khmer Rouge who are shaping my life as well as my family’s. I am no longer sad or afraid. Now I know the taste of anger, for I know I don’t want to be in this whirlpool of darkness without reason, yet I get sucked into it.

Behind a mile of people,
Pa
squats, sitting on his heels, and I stand by him. The rest of my family squats near us.
Pa
tells me to sit down. I answer with a single sharp shake of my head.

I don’t want to dirty my clothes, I don’t want to listen to them, I don’t like them.
Anger boils in me. Internally, I take it out on my father as I squint defiantly at the makeshift stage, glaring at the Khmer Rouge in their stupid black uniforms and ugly tire sandals. As much as I loathe their backward revolution because it has threatened my safety and security, I dislike their stage even more. A deck covered with gray roofing with two beams in front, each mounted with bell-shaped loudspeakers. It seems a false altar to their power.

Finally the loudspeakers squawk, followed by a man’s commanding voice: “Comrades, now we are all equal. There are no longer rich and poor. WE ARE EQUAL. WE ALL WEAR BLACK UNIFORMS.”

Black?
I look at my clothes, then at
Pa
. He cracks a smile.

“We fought the ‘American imperialists’ with bare hands, and took victory over them. We’re brave….
Chey yo
[Long live] Democratic Kampuchea,
chey yo, chey yo…. Para chey
[Down with] the ‘American imperialists,’
para chey, para chey.
”

Since we are merely the Khmer Rouge’s puppets, we are supposed to do the same, shouting “chey yo” with our fists stabbing upward into the air. Then “para chey” with our fists stabbing downward.

Even at nine years of age, I recognize that this meeting is deceptive. How can these Khmer Rouge leaders blindly say things that many of us, even children, already know to be false.
What are their intentions?

After a few hours of listening to numbing chants under the hot sun, I know only that I feel a defiant seed sprouting deep within me. The entire time, I never sink into the dirt. It is a small act, but an important one.

The next day my asthma returns. As always,
Pa
is my doctor—he’s there for me, checking my breathing, listening to my lungs, trying to make things better as my chest rides up and down, struggling for air. At night before going to sleep,
Pa
listens to my labored breathing again, then gives me medicine one more time. As always,
Pa
has a way of putting things right. Good father that he is, he smiles warmly, then says, “
Koon
, when your medicine is gone, let’s stop getting sick, okay?”

I look into
Pa
’s eyes and know what he means.

Since I’ve been sick,
Pa
has me sleep outside downstairs, sharing the oak bed sandwiched between him and
Kong
Houng. The next evening as I sleep, I hear
Pa
’s voice calling my name, and then his hand gently touches my face.

“Athy,
koon
, do you have difficulty breathing? Sit upright if you do.”

I open my eyes and
Pa
’s silhouette is beside me. He pats my head, then rests his ear against my wheezing chest, listening to my lungs. Knowing
Pa
’s near, I groan a little just to let him know I hear him, then my eyes shut. When I open them again,
Pa
disappears, and I sink back into my restless sleep.

“Please sit down. Yes, please,” a voice says.

“Yes, yes,” a chorus of three voices exclaim.

My eyes open. And there, opposite me, at the end of the bed, are two men and a woman, whom I have never seen. All are dressed in black uniforms with red-and-white-checked scarves draped around their necks. Greeting them is
Kong
Houng, whose voice I heard earlier. He’s sitting near me, illuminated by a dim oil lamp beside him. Feeling delirious and anxious, I get up abruptly. Then I see
Pa
make his way down the stairs.

“
Pa
,” I cry out. I feel warm and shaky.

“Stay there,
Pa
’s coming.”

After he greets the strangers,
Pa
sits near me, beside
Kong
Houng, facing the strangers, with his legs folded casually on the oak bed. He strokes my hair and tells me to go back to sleep. I obey and close my eyes. But I can no longer sleep. These three people have come to ask
Pa
many questions regarding Uncle Seng’s whereabouts and
Pa
’s previous occupation, as well as Uncle Surg’s and Uncle Sorn’s. I lie facing them, finally understanding what this meeting is about.

Kong
Houng has told
Pa
and all my uncles about local people wanting to meet them. Back then, it sounded harmless, a neighborly get-to-know-you meeting. But now it feels sinister. These people are interrogators. Their unwavering, direct gaze burns into
Pa
—an unrelenting eye contact uncommon in Cambodian culture—as
Pa
dutifully explains his own work history and the other uncles’ previous jobs.

As soon as
Pa
finishes, the woman quickly attacks, asking
Kong
Houng about Uncle Seng. “Where is your other son, the one who flies an airplane?”

“I don’t know why Seng hasn’t come home. Most of my children and their children came,”
Kong
Houng says gently, appearing genuinely concerned and curious. He turns to
Pa
and says, “Atidsim told me that they got separated on the way here. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Pa
comes to the rescue. He explains that Uncle Seng was separated from us during the chaotic evacuation from Phnom Penh, lost in the madness of those final days. It is the only lie he utters.

He tells them we waited for Uncle Seng, but that he never showed up. “I figured he can find his way here, so we decided to continue our walk. I don’t know why he isn’t here yet. We hope he gets to see all the relatives.”
Pa
speaks politely and convincingly.

Pa
’s fabricated story conjures up memories of Uncle Seng leaving our home and
Pa
’s helplessness as he watched him walk away. As I stare at these Khmer Rouge, Uncle Seng’s last words replay in my mind:
The Khmer Rouge are my first enemy. I won’t stay to see their faces.
This is the delicious power of the mind—they can’t stop me from my silent thoughts. They can’t interrogate my memories.

Another day, another new thing to learn. Since there are no markets, we constantly have to improvise. It’s the frustrating New World Order, the Khmer Rouge way. Ra and Ry are sent to the lake to catch fish for our daily soup. We don’t have a proper fishing net, so
Mak
suggests they use mosquito netting. The only fishing they’ve ever done was for fun back in Takeo, using string and hooks in the water to chase slices of silver fish by my uncle’s home. The hardest challenge was touching the earthworm. But what they are now asked to do is to walk through the lake with the open netting, sweeping through the water to trap fish and debris.

Since I’m feeling better, I’m asked to help. I don’t want to, but Ra and Ry tell me it’s easy. All I have to do is carry a woven basket and follow behind them as they fish. The morning is overcast, a bit chilly. Ra and Ry stand on the bank overlooking the lake, now shrinking in the summer heat, and wonder exactly how they will go about fishing. “Where do we start?” they ask each other. They stare at the water, and I at the tiny green leaves floating on the surface of the lake, then at the tall grasslike plants and dead tree snags poking out like skeletons. Now my task doesn’t look easy anymore. I will have to follow my sisters into that water, and I dread stepping on things I can’t see, the lurking dangers of thorns.

We start at the lower bank, where there are many tall grassy plants. The water is cool as I tiptoe into it barefoot. It feels strange as the soles of my feet sink into the mud, squeezing between my toes like cool, soft rice dough. I dread going further, but must follow my sisters, who are already far ahead, delicately lifting the netting above the grassy plants. Ra and Ry clumsily try to negotiate timing, deciding when to put the netting down to fish, becoming cross. Like me, they are squeamish but determined. The responsibility of survival rests on everyone.

In time, their voices die down and the only thing I hear is the slurping sound of our feet parting the still water, stirring up sediment from the bottom in a crazy dance. Like the bits of lake bottom, I can almost feel the random collision, the political whirlpool touching us all, occluding the future. Like sediment, I know that life will never fall into the same order again.

Already I’m learning to survive, catching fish as small as anchovies and as large as cucumbers. I cringe at the strange, slimy things that brush against my feet. Inasmuch as I dread walking and carrying the basket, it’s exciting to see the captured silver fish flop and shimmy in the netting. Amid all the excitement, something bites my leg. I lift my leg up and on it is a soft dark creature, the size of a string bean, that clings to my shin, bent in a semicircle.

“What’s on my leg?” I ask Ry and Ra curiously.

“Ra, leech, le—leech,” Ry stammers. She lifts her legs up, one right after another, checking for leeches.

I shriek a long-drawn-out “Ow!” as soon as Ry says the word “leech.” The word means nothing to me, but her terrified face and the sight of her dancing in the water, stamping her feet like a scared little child throwing a tantrum, frighten me. I scream, stamping my feet and splashing water, dancing in a mirror image of her hysteria.

“Help me, get it off me!” I run to Ry and Ra.

Ry runs away. “Don’t come near me!
Ay, ay,
” she cries.

“Stop moving!” Ra shouts. “Stay still.”

I look away, crying, as Ra scrapes off the bloodsucker with the netting.

After all the hysteria, Ra decides that we’re done fishing. On our way back to
Kong
Houng’s house, I ask my sisters about leeches. Leeches suck blood—the blood of humans, cows, and buffalo, they tell me. Ry laughs, her face red. Now she’s amused as she remembers how silly I looked, stamping in the water, screaming at the top of my lungs. Only now is it funny. I chuckle at the image of Ry running away from me, too. Like schoolgirls, we laugh at our silliness, our new experience, our new way of life.

Now it’s a routine. After fishing, I wash up at the well. I’ve learned not to be scared by it. I lower the bucket, then scoop up as much water as I can carry. Only after fishing and cleaning myself up do I hurry off to breakfast. Usually I have meals with
Mak
and my siblings, cousins, and aunts.
Pa
,
Kong
Houng, and my uncles eat by themselves, but sometimes the women join them.

It’s been two weeks since we entered this strange world and new life. Now
Pa
and my uncles are required to report for “orientation” with
Angka Leu
. They will learn about the new government, they are told, and will be gone for a while—exactly how long no one knows. They must attend and will be picked up in oxcarts. The news is unsettling to everyone, but little is said. By now we’ve learned to take our worries into our own quiet corners.

The morning for orientation finally arrives, and I’ve planned to have breakfast with
Pa
before he leaves. Though I never shared my plan, I thought this would be a way to show him how much I will miss him.

After fishing, I go to the kitchen and place the day’s meager catch by the clay stoves. I’m disappointed to find
Pa
already eating with my uncles and
Kong
Houng. All I hear is the sound of spoons scraping plates and bowls. Each man studies the spoon as he brings it to his mouth. I can almost feel the weight of their thoughts, even if I can’t hear them. Though together, they seem alone, like strangers who have never met. Their stillness sends a strange air through the house, a sadness so heavy that it radiates like thick smoke, choking me. Suddenly I feel lonely, as if something will be taken away from me. I dash down the stairs from the kitchen to the well. I quickly rinse the lake off my legs, then run back to the kitchen. The men are done, the kitchen empty. I want to look for
Pa
, but figure I have time to get a bowl of rice and soup to ease my growling stomach. With the bowl of food in my hand, I run looking for him in the house while shoving a few bites in my mouth. I see only
Mak
and my sisters and aunts.