When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback (33 page)

I’m happy to volunteer at Phase I. When I’m there, I look forward to helping patients. I work like an eager salesperson. Through the rectangular barred window of the pharmacy, I watch for the customers: Cambodians, Cambodian-Chinese, Vietnamese, and Chinese. As soon as I see them coming, I dash out to the front-desk area, inquiring as to their needs. If I’m not sure they’re Cambodians, I ask, “May I help you?” If they are Vietnamese, I let Dr. Tran know. With the Cambodians, I inquire about their medical problems, gathering information before they see whoever is on duty.

After translating, I help fill the patients’ prescriptions. I get good at reading the scribbling from Mary, Dr. Sophon, or Dr. Tran. When we are not busy, I stay in a pharmacy. I look out the window or read the labels on the medicine vials, boxes, and bottles, wondering about the ingredients in each medicine, and how they help patients feel better.

Sometimes I take my badge off my blouse and look at it admiringly. It has a small picture of me smiling which I cut out of a bigger picture taken at the party after I finished ESL. At sixteen, I’m proud of myself. I look at the badge again and again, so happy about the work I’m doing.

I sit on a stool in the pharmacy waiting for the Vietnamese patients whom Dr. Tran has just seen. A few young Vietnamese men approach the barred window of the pharmacy. They talk among themselves, smiling. Each gives me his prescription, peering at me earnestly. I pick one prescription. I read the name of the medicine. I search for it on the shelf. As I wrap up the white tablets, I hear the words “beautiful” and “I love you” spoken by one of them. As I hand the patient his medicine packet, my gaze rests on his sheepish, smitten face. I take refuge in another prescription, looking for the name of the medicine. When I’m done helping everyone, the smitten patient says to me “I love you” in Vietnamese. Though I understand the words, I simply give him a friendly smile, pretending I’m not aware of anything out of the ordinary. Suddenly he steps toward the window and says “I love you” in English. I don’t know how to react to that, so it is easy just to say nothing. His friends laugh softly, then say something to him in Vietnamese.

Strange yet fascinating to notice men being attracted to me. Maybe
Om
Soy is right. That even though I’m young, I look mature beyond my years. Thus people take me for a woman, not a girl, a teenager. I don’t want to be rude to anyone, but I don’t have any guidance on how to deal with men at this unsettled time.

Phlor Torrejos, my CO teacher, takes the whole class to a beautiful stream three miles from the camp. She is Filipino, short and a little chubby with straight black hair that comes to her chin. Her bangs drape down above her eyebrows. Her face is always ready to smile. She’s kind and personable. For this trip, she has brought food for the entire class. I admire her for sharing her personal life with us, telling us how she has persevered through hardships. Now she’s a senior writer/editor for the Communication Foundation for Asia.

In class, she says if we fail to accomplish our goals the first time, we have to try again. Many times it takes more than one attempt. She says it’s kind of like falling and getting up. If we fall, we have to get up. Sometimes we fall more than once, and we have to get up more than once. Sometimes getting up is hard, but we must do it, no matter how long it takes—we have to be strong, she says.

After a long hike, we take a rest on large rocks beneath the trees. When we are having lunch in the shade, I look at Phlor, grateful. She wants so much for us to succeed in our new lives in America. I think about the life that awaits me in America. I wonder how many times I will have to get up from falls when I’m there.

But I know myself—I will get up if I should fall. I always have. My mind relaxes. My ears tune in to the voices of my classmates, hiking along the stream. The sound of water running between rocks is soothing. With her eyes closed, Phlor rests peacefully in the shade. Her clothes are still wet from swimming in a clear pond. Lying on a flat rock near her and other women classmates, I feel the precious solitude of the Morong Bataan. I feel as if I’m connected to the calm, still earth. I feel as if today is a dream. The cool breeze touches my face. My arms. My soul. It has been a long time since I felt a sense of inner peace. Being in this camp has made that possible, for we’ve been given enough food to eat. We have running water. Electricity. We have school. We have clean, pretty apartments to live in. I don’t have to worry about the Filipino soldiers. I feel protected. I feel safe. I feel loved, accepted by the local people who work in the camp. I am finally free of life-threatening situations.

Ratha tells me that a doctor needs a translator. I hurry down the hall and check one examination room, but no one is there. I walk to the adjacent one, and the door is ajar. I hear a voice trying to speak Cambodian. I take a peek. Suddenly a set of big, dark eyes stare back at me.
A new doctor?
I ask myself. I’ve never seen him before. He wears a stethoscope around his neck. He looks Filipino and is cute—young with shiny black hair and dark eyes with long eyelashes.

Getting caught peeking, I need time to recoup. I take a deep breath, regain my composure, then knock on the door.

“Yes?”

I introduce myself, telling him my name and who I am. He stands up and says, “I’m Dr. Tanedo, Achilles Tanedo.” He reaches out to shake my hand. I shake his hand, and I’m not even embarrassed. Not a bit. Marie would have been proud of me.

I translate for the patient, but mention to the doctor that I haven’t seen him here before. He says that he works mostly at the hospital.
A hospital?
I didn’t know that this camp had a hospital. But I don’t ask for further clarification. All I want is to establish a rapport, and it isn’t hard to do so. I acquire the information from the patient regarding her illness. In about ten minutes, Dr. Tanedo writes her a prescription, and my mind is already at the pharmacy, trying to locate her medicine on the shelves.

Ry is excited, calling my name as if memorizing it. “Athy, Athy, I’ve got a letter, I’ve got a letter. We’re going to be with Uncle Seng.”

I look at her, overwhelmed by her exuberance. I’m between excitement and confusion. Ry catches her breath, calming down to explain. She says, “Do you remember I told you about my friend helping me write a letter? About
bang
Vantha saying he wanted us to go anywhere?” She pauses as if letting me digest what she has just said.

I reach for the letter in her hand, remembering what she is talking about. She asked a friend to write a letter on our behalf so that we could go to Uncle Seng in Portland and not be randomly placed, as
bang
Vantha has threatened. I open the thin letter and read the response: “Please tell these kids that the P.A. listed Mr. Leng Seng as a possible sponsor and did not say ‘anywhere.’ [signed] TP.” I gape, eyes widened. A burst of joy tumbles out of my mouth—I scream.

We didn’t have many patients today, yet I’m tired, and hungry. I slowly walk toward home. The day is still bright. Some families sit outside in front of their apartments. Then a person, a woman wearing a long skirt, darts out of an apartment, my apartment. She runs as if she is in a race with herself, heading toward me.
Ry?

Smiling, I pause, watching her run. I’m amused—my older sister runs like an excited little girl. Her face beams radiantly. She is jubilant. Ry grabs my shoulders, she shakes me, she croons: “We’re going to America, we’re going to America—”

“Really?”

Ry nods, then hops, and so do I. We don’t care how foolish we look in front of our neighbors. We are oblivious, absorbed in ourselves. As we calm down, I ask her if she heard our family name and our BT number (a number assigned to each family) called over the loudspeakers. She nods repeatedly.

Facing the sky, I close my eyes and smile. Suddenly I’m in a whole new world, a world that gives me hope and makes me float. Every part of my body savors these exalted, indescribable feelings. My feet lift me up. I dance on the concrete sidewalk. Ry watches me, grinning…. Today I just want to shine, to celebrate.

I look forward to our new life, yet I’m nervous, scared. Everything seems hopeful, yet abstract. The unknown scares me. It doesn’t help thinking of American or Cambodian girls my age who have parents. In America I won’t have
Mak
or
Pa
. I feel uncertain, unstable because my life has been so different. I wish I could plan it, laying it out like a calendar.

It’s only six more days until we leave for America. I make a mental list of friends to whom I want to bid good-bye. For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about this sweet old woman, a patient who has problems with her eyesight and legs. She can’t see or walk well. When I translate for her, she calls me “daughter” in a gentle tone of voice. I address her as
Om
, great-aunt, since she is, perhaps, older than
Mak
. When she saw Mary Bliss, she complained of a numb sensation in her legs. Since I haven’t seen her for a few weeks and she has missed her follow-up appointment, I have to visit her.

It’s about seven o’clock in the evening. I arrive at her apartment and peek inside. There she is sitting. Her legs folded on a mat, her face dark but pale. She looks up. She says, “Oh, there you are. Good. You’ve come. Come on in. You can sit anywhere you’d like. Sit down, sit down. I’ll get some cakes.” She gets up with difficulty, her legs seem heavy.

On the wall of her apartment is a poster of Buddha sitting on the lotus blossom beneath a tree in a beautiful, colorful forest. In front of him are angels in golden clothes, their legs folded, the palms of their hands pressed together reverently. Below the poster is a can of burned incense and four candles that have melted down to half their original length.

Om
staggers toward me. Her mouth widens to form a weak smile. She hands me a bag of steamed cakes, made of sweetened sticky flour and beans wrapped in banana leaf, which she sells in the makeshift market in the camp.

At Phase I, when I last saw her, she had urged me to look for her in the market or to go to her home so she could give me cakes. She kept thanking me and God after I translated for her and filled her prescription, then brought it to her and helped her out the door. Today I’ve brought her a package of medicine which she would have gotten if she had gone to her follow-up appointment.

“Here, daughter,”
Om
says. “Take these cakes to your family. Thank you so much for bringing me medicine.
Om
is sad because
Om
can’t walk well. My husband is old. He’s always at the temple. We don’t have children, so nobody gets the medicine for
Om. Om
doesn’t know who to ask. It’s difficult.”

Understanding her circumstances, I tell her that I’ve been thinking about her, wondering if she’s all right.
Om
presses her palms together, raises them to her forehead, then faces the poster of Buddha and says, “
Sa thook, sa thook
. May God in heaven take care of you. Daughter, you’re so thoughtful, thinking of
Om.
”

After visiting with her for an hour, I’m tired. She seems very lonely, and shares with me her problems in Cambodia and in the refugee camps both here and in Thailand. When I begin to get up and say good night, she says, “Why hurry, daughter? Stay a little bit longer. Here, have some more cakes. Stay until my husband comes, then he can do fortune-telling for you, find out about your life in America. You don’t have any kids to worry about, visit with
Om
a little longer.”

When her husband comes, she gets up with difficulty, introducing me to him. I’ve been waiting for him to do fortune-telling, she tells him. When he has his back to her, she places fifteen pesos in the chalicelike container.

Her husband hands her an oaken stack of bound sheets, which she then hands to me. I look at it, then I remember. It’s called a
kompee
, a Buddhist sacred treatise that I saw at a temple in Phnom Penh.
Om
hands me a stick of incense. She tells me to wish in my mind, then raise the
kompee
to my forehead and insert the tip of the incense somewhere in the
kompee
. As soon as I insert it, she tells me to open to the spot where the tip of the incense lies. She says, “Now read and find out what fortune waits for you in America.”

I read the fancy print in Cambodian, my mind half asleep. It says something about going to hell. Suddenly
Om
stops me from reading further. Both of her hands clap mine to close the
kompee
. She says I didn’t concentrate hard enough when I wished for good fortune. “Let her try one more time,” she says to her husband. Before he says anything, she tells me to concentrate and wish for a great fortune. Her hands wrap around mine and lift them to my forehead, then she says, “Now concentrate. Wish for a good fortune.”

I wish for good fate, good fortune. God, please help me in America
, I say tiredly in my mind. Somehow I find myself pouring my soul into my wishing. I hold the
kompee
up longer so
Om
thinks I am wishing hard, concentrating hard. I just want to see her happy. I hope I have some luck tonight and the incense lands on a good page.

That’s enough,
Om
says lovingly. She tells me to turn to the page and read, coaching me like I am a little girl. I read from the page and it says that I will have a good fate, and that a
sathey
, a wealthy person, will find me and support me in every way. Before I finish reading,
Om
interrupts, “You see, daughter? When you focus your mind, you get a good fortune.
Om
believes that daughter will have good luck in America as the words say in the
kompee
.”