When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback (6 page)

We grab her brother’s small hands and run. We methodically clean dirt off Thavy’s brother, brushing off his hands and knees to erase evidence that would lead to any suspicious questions from adults. We try to calm him and bribe him with promises of candy, gum, crackers—anything that comes to mind. Anything to get his terrified mind off the school and the decaying corpses, to return him to a normal state of mind as we near our separate homes.

As they leave me at my home, I watch Thavy walk away, an arm snaking around her little brother as she murmurs reassurances. I see their small backs moving up the street. It is a rare parting. The last time I will ever visit my school. Perhaps the last time I will ever see Thavy.

Once home, I try to be as normal as I can, acting like I’ve just come back from a typical visit at a friend’s house. No one suspects my spying, nor the horror that has visited our playgrounds. I keep it to myself and it seems to eat me up, devouring me from the inside out.

The next day the news reaches us—the Khmer Rouge are ordering everyone out of the capital city. The Americans will bomb us, we are told. We have to be three kilometers (about two miles) away from Phnom Penh to avoid the bombing. Since we are not going far from the capital, we are told we shouldn’t take too many belongings, just enough to last until we are allowed to return.

Upon hearing of the imminent evacuation,
Pa
asks Uncle Surg and Than to get his mother,
Yiey
Khmeng, and his sisters’ families near Olympic Market. His plan is to leave the city together. If we are not allowed to return, we’ll head to his birthplace in Year Piar village, the Khmer Rouge’s “long-liberated” area where my grandfather,
Kong
Houng, lives. The trip to pick up his mother shouldn’t take long, only about ten minutes to reach the families’ houses. Maybe an hour or two to pack belongings. But two hours turn into three, daylight turns to cool night, and still we don’t see or hear the car or voices of Than or Uncle Surg. Nothing.

Everyone is worried, especially
Pa
and Uncle Surg’s wife, Aunt Heak.
Mak
worries about Than, but feels he’ll be okay since he’s with Uncle Surg.
Pa
decides to go after them.
Mak
insists he wait until morning.
Pa
doesn’t say anything to
Mak
, but gets ready, tugging on his shirt and pants. He retrieves his keys and asks me to unlatch the gate. The scooter starts up with a pop and growl, then headlight and taillights wink on and in a few seconds
Pa
disappears up the dark road.

In a short while, he’s back. “These Khmer Rouge are difficult to deal with. They pointed rifles at me and made me turn around.”

The following morning, April 19,
Pa
walks to a nearby street. After a few hours
Pa
returns to tell us more Khmer Rouge are pouring into Phnom Penh. Their skins are dark from being in the sun, their appearance crude, as if they need a good bath. Their heads are wrapped with scarves like a farmer’s turban. Sitting defiantly atop tanks, military jeeps, and trucks, they form a strange victory parade. Renegade floats decorated with ragtag humans. Their uniforms look like black pajamas. Many wear red-and-white-checked scarves wrapped around their necks like mufflers. Their sandals are odd, with soles fashioned of car tires and pieces of inner tube strapping them into place. It fits with their bare-fisted philosophy of combat.

That doesn’t really concern my father. What catches his eye is their physical condition, their malnourished bodies. They act tough with guns and rifles strapped onto their shoulders, but their sallow complexions betray their suffering.
Pa
sees not only with his eyes but with his heart. In the evening
Pa
takes a bottle of multivitamins to these malnourished Khmer Rouge. To them, he looks like a Chinese merchant.

A man with good intentions holds a bottle of medicine and a flashlight. He is not fearful of the ones he seeks to help. Aware only that their newly seized turf is being trespassed upon, the soldiers roar and growl like hyenas, puffed up with false bravado to intimidate
Pa
. They stab their rifles at my father as they close in on him.

Pa
shines the light on the white vitamin bottle and explains his intention. But an explanation will not suffice. They don’t trust him, they accuse him of trying to poison them. One snatches the bottle away. To ease their suspicions,
Pa
pops two red-coated vitamins into his mouth, chewing them like candy. Only then do the Khmer Rouge put their hands out, and
Pa
feels like a child sharing his goodies with bully kids.

Now he has their trust, he asks them if Hou Yuon and Hu Nim,
*
high-ranking Khmer Rouge members, are already in Phnom Penh. My father knew these men when he was a young boy, long before they became Communists. Perhaps they could pull some strings for him, allow a passage to Olympic Market to retrieve Uncle Surg, Than, his mother, and his sisters’ families before we evacuate. But none of these Khmer Rouge men know of them.
Pa
finds out later from other Khmer Rouge coming through the street that Hou Yuon and Hu Nim won’t be coming to Phnom Penh.
Pa
’s heart sinks.

The next morning brings more hopelessness and we brace for the unknown. The Khmer Rouge come by to remind us to leave. They ask if
Pa
has weapons. He turns over his pistols, requisitioned to him long ago for work.
Pa
gives his word that we’ll leave tomorrow, the twenty-first of April, holding out as long as he can in the hope that Uncle Surg and Than will return. For now, we must pack. Everyone has a chore, and we dully follow our duties: prepare meals for the road, hide money and any valuables: watches, jewelry, house title, birth certificates, etc.

Ra hastily assembles cloth belts with compartments where bundles of money will be hidden. Some of us fold clothes and pack them. Others cook rice, cut vegetables, boil a pan full of eggs, which have been incubated by the hens we raised.
Pa
has to kill the hens for us to eat, ten of them.

Tonight is a night of togetherness, the last wisp of freedom. The night presses on. Fatigue creeps up on me. I fall into a deep sleep, drifting off to the sound of chopping.

Day has come. The morning steals upon us with a heavy, overcast pallor. It is as if nature is in mourning. The weather has been dreadful since the Khmer Rouge took over the country. Black clouds have covered the sky above Phnom Penh.

Leaving our home this morning are
Pa
;
Mak
; Chea; Ra; Ry; myself; Avy, seven; Vin, three; Map, one; Aunt Heak, Uncle Surg’s wife; Ateek, their two-year-old son; their baby son, who is not yet one; and our dog, Akie. We are one of the last families to leave, setting out on foot. We lock our gate behind us and begin to walk.

I am struck by how slowly we move, held back by the weight of our sorrow. Suddenly
Pa
stops walking the scooter as if tugged back by it. He scurries back to the house without saying a word to anyone. I follow him while everyone else stands on the road, waiting.

Pa
unlocks the gate. Dashes to the door, unlocks it. The door swings open.

“Where do we keep chalk?”
Pa
murmurs to himself. “Where is it?”

“
Pa
…”

I want to tell him where the chalk is, but he disappears into the house. We’ve only left it for a few minutes and already it feels abandoned.

Pa
reappears wearing wrinkles on his forehead. He leaps onto the deck and begins to scrawl Uncle Surg’s name in huge strokes on the wall of the house. Then Than’s name is marked in place, followed by a message for them to meet us in Year Piar. In the wall note he tells Uncle Surg not to worry about his wife and two children—that he’s caring for them, taking them with us to Year Piar. They’ll be fine and he’ll see them soon.

“Let’s go,
koon
,”
Pa
says softly as he steps off the deck.

The exodus resumes. Main streets are closed, patrolled by the Khmer Rouge. Our family walks in a tight cluster, joining a slow trickle of people that becomes a tide. Around me, people move sluggishly, as if slogging through thick mud. Everybody carries something, except the littlest children.
Pa
walks the scooter, its tires squashed under the weight of suitcases and bags strapped to the backseat. Map and Vin stand at the front of the scooter, on the footrail. Chea and Ra walk bicycles with cooking ware and blankets strapped to them. Underneath Chea’s, Ra’s, and Ry’s blouses are three cloth belts containing our money.
Mak
and Ry carry cooked foodstuffs. Aunt Heak carries a handbag of baby clothes on her shoulder, her infant son in one arm, her older son’s hand with the other. She frowns as she stares into space, transfixed by the invisible.

Out of the heart of the city, along the roads and streets, everywhere there are Khmer Rouge. They police everyone, tell us where to go. Merging onto a main thoroughfare, my family joins a chaotic mass of humanity. More people than I have ever seen, stuffed onto a paved street never meant to absorb these numbers. We are among a throng of about 2 million Cambodians who are forced from the city in a matter of days. Lines collect at the Sturng Mean Chey Bridge like solid matter jamming the neck of a bottle. From the mouth of the bridge stretches a massive river of humans with their belongings strapped to motorcycles, bikes, pedicabs, cars, carts, anything they’ve got. It is too crowded to drive. Anything motorized must be pushed. The human river flows on, as far as the eye can see. Around me I see city people, country people, recent refugees. Outsiders who fled here only weeks ago have little. Those who don’t have vehicles to transport their belongings carry them, baskets and bundles of possessions tied to both ends of a long stick and balanced on their shoulders. To me the scene seems like a page out of history, though schoolbooks and lessons seem worlds away right now.

Intermingled with the humans are a group of frenzied pigs, dogs, and chickens. I can hear the fear in the incessant squeals of pigs, the protest of chickens carried under arms and tied into baskets. Stationed on shoulders of the street, and on military trucks along the route, are young Khmer Rouge soldiers, mostly men. All dressed in black uniforms with dark blue-checked scarves tied on their heads or wrapped around their necks. Around their waists are loose belts of grenades and bullets. And in their hands and on their shoulders are machine guns. They point them at us, ordering us to move forward, to keep on moving, toward the bridge, not back into the city. There is only out, no in.

Amid this mass of people is a little boy, about three, in gray shorts and a shirt. He cries at the top of his lungs. He is being moved along by the crowd while his little hands are raised in the air, shielding himself from the people passing. As we move forward, I no longer see him. But his cry still pierces the air, and I think of him and his little bare feet.

I notice a sobbing couple fighting against the crowd, trying to wrestle their way back into the city. They look dressed up, as if they’ve just come from an office. But they’re stopped short by Khmer Rouge soldiers on the street. Rifles point toward them like accusing fingers. The couple quickly press the palms of their hands against each other, a gesture of respect and supplication. Pleading for mercy, they implore the soldiers to grant them passage to their home to retrieve their children.

“You can’t go, comrades,” a Khmer Rouge barks, “It’s not allowed. Go!”

Comrade
. The word sounds strange to me. I do not understand it. And these young soldiers, younger than the couple they’re ordering about, don’t use the proper courtesies in addressing elders, don’t call them “aunt” or “uncle.” The way they speak to the couple suggests they consider themselves their equal. That’s not the way we greet our elders, especially in a time of crisis. The lack of respect shocks me. Authority is reversed. Guns now mean more than age and wisdom.

“Athy, Athy!”
Mak
calls out to me. “Keep walking.”

My feet move faster, propelled by the tone of
Mak
’s voice.

“Walk by your father. Stop looking back,
koon
.”

Mak
frowns as she gestures with her head. I notice her stealing a glance at the distraught couple. She walks behind me as if trying to shield me.

Finally we reach the bridge, but still the mass barely moves. My family is mashed against the metal railing of the bridge. I can’t see ahead beyond the wall of people, so I look down at the river. It is low, slow-flowing this time of year. Many things float in it, including corpses.

“
Pa
, look.” I tug
Pa
’s shirt gently.

“Athy, come here.”
Pa
gestures with his head.

We now look ahead, only ahead. As the human river flows out of Phnom Penh, the water carries away the garbage of war. It is as if everything is being washed away.

Then I hear the continuous barking of a dog. It sounds like a cry of frustration, a cry for help. The familiar sound jolts me back to reality.

“
Pa
, where’s Akie?” I blurt out. “I don’t see him.” I bend down, searching for him among the moving feet. Then I see him whimpering, trying to pass through the moving feet. His head tries to forge an opening among them.

“
Pa, Mak
, Akie’s behind us!”