When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback (9 page)

“
Mak
! Where did
Pa
go?” I ask, feeling scared.

“They brought oxcarts to take your father and uncles.”
Mak
speaks softly as she sits on the floor folding clothes.

I storm out, running down the stairs, one hand gripping my rice bowl, the other clutching the railing. I want to catch up with
Pa
, to see him again. I run to the path behind
Kong
Houng’s house, but he’s nowhere to be found. My uncles are gone, too. No oxcarts. No one there.

My mouth no longer chews the food, but simply releases a sound of immense sadness. I run to the banana grove. I sink down onto the dirt.
Only a moment ago I saw
Pa,
and now he’s gone
. I wail, cupping my face, my agony, in my hands.

Looking at the canopy of banana leaves, I beg, “
Pa
, come back. Come back,
Pa
. Come back to your
koon
.…”

With each breath, I plead for
Pa
to come back.
No, it’s too soon. You left so soon. You didn’t wait for me. No, don’t leave.

Never before have I felt so much pain inside my body. My chest, my eyes. My throat. My grief encompasses every cell, touches every limb, every organ. For
Pa
has never left me for more than a day. Never. Now he’s gone, and I have the deepest intuition that something is wrong.

Along with sorrow come the companion emotions of frustration and anger. Only nine, I already find myself furious at the Khmer Rouge for taking my father away. I take my burning anger out on the banana tree. I tear at the wilted, papery layers along the trunk, yanking them away and striking the tree with my fist. I rage at the Khmer Rouge. I cry until I’m drained of tears, until my body is limp from exhaustion, in need of the beat-up tree. I lean against it, my head resting on my knees. I feel utterly hollow.

Days have gone by since the Khmer Rouge took
Pa
and my uncles away. I’ve counted the days until
Pa
is due back, noting them carefully with pen and paper. I draw my own calendar, recording each day without him. A month,
Mak
told me, which was what the Khmer Rouge had told her. During the day I return to the orchard. I cry alone, calling out to
Pa
. Like the earth without the sun, I’m drifting in the dark, thinking of him, wondering where he is, what he’s doing. Whether he misses us, misses me.

After the sun surrenders to the night, I’m still thinking of
Pa
. I’m no longer scared of the informant hiding below us. I sit on
Pa
’s scooter, parked under the house where the informant used to eavesdrop on us. Holding on to the black rubber handles,
Pa
’s last handprints, I’m connected to the world as it was when
Pa
was with us. As painful as it is, I journey back in time, revisiting the past as my wet eyes gaze at the tachometer, the red needle aligned at the zero mark.

Zero. Our lives are at zero
.
Year zero.

I reminisce about better times, when
Pa
took us out to restaurants and to the palace where the royal family lived. I remember nights in Takeo.
Pa
would wake everyone up for pâté sandwiches. He’d carry me from my bed to the dining table. He’d feed me until my mind woke up, then my eyes would open to find a platter of meats, cucumbers, and French bread. My memory speaks until it hurts. Until I break down.

“Athy, why are you crying? Are you okay?” Chea comes to rescue me.

“Chea, I miss
Pa
. I miss
Pa
very much.”

“Stop crying,
p’yoon srey
. I miss
Pa
, too.”

Chea reaches out and pulls me close to her. In her arms, I cry harder, letting out pain that I’ve hidden from my family. Chea hugs me tight. Her hand massages my head, a soothing touch that softens my sorrow. It allows me to sleep, lying in the room beside my sisters, hugging
Pa
’s shirt. I hug him in my mind as I inhale his odor from his shirt. I inhale it deeply and hungrily. I love
Pa
—words I’ve never actually uttered. I miss him; the way I would miss a piece of my own body. I am adrift.

One month has gone by. Still
Pa
hasn’t returned. Now the Khmer Rouge order
Mak
to a meeting with the other women whose husbands were taken away. At the meeting the Khmer Rouge ask everyone if they want to go to their husbands and work with them in an “office.” All of them say yes.
Who wouldn’t want to be with their husbands? Mak
wouldn’t. She tells the Khmer Rouge that she would rather stay in the village and work for
Angka Leu
.
Mak
would have told them otherwise if it weren’t for Som, whose husband had worked for
Kong
Houng before the Khmer Rouge “liberated” Year Piar. Som secretly came to
Mak
the day before the meeting and told her what to say. Even though there was no reason given,
Mak
obeyed, repeating her lines to Khmer Rouge leaders.
Mak
’s intuition to trust Som’s words saves my family. In time, those women who volunteered to be with their husbands are taken away.

Walking in the village days later,
Mak
sees a man wearing
Pa
’s shirt—a cream-colored short-sleeved dress shirt with one pocket. In this village of poverty, a simple office shirt stands out. Without fear, she follows the man and demands to know where he got it. Baffled by
Mak’
s abrupt confrontation, he mutters that it has been distributed to him.
Mak
rages at the idea of someone giving away her husband’s belongings. Biting back her anger, she turns and heads to Som’s hut in search of the truth.
Mak
figures Som will know since her husband is one of the local people who now works for the Khmer Rouge who took
Pa
and my uncles to “orientation.”

Som whispers urgently to
Mak
, asking her to tone down her voice. In her hut, lit only by the rays of sun that sneak in, she confides to
Mak
, revealing what happened to
Pa
—a truth that shakes the core of
Mak
’s already wilted soul.

Pa
, Uncle Surg, Uncle Sorn, and the other men were not taken to an orientation. They were taken to a remote field outside Year Piar to be executed. Upon their arrival, they were unloaded off the oxcarts and forced to dig their own graves. After they finished, the Khmer Rouge cadres tied them up, then killed each one with a hoe. The bodies tumbled into the very pits they had readied to catch them.

“Your husband fought back while being tied up,” Som whispers. “He called them liars and traitors. They killed him right away.”

Mak
’s face gorges with blood, burning with sorrow and anger. The women who wanted to be with their husbands, along with their children and elderly parents, were also executed. Their bodies were buried in the empty field, but their personal belongings were brought back to Year Piar to be distributed among the villagers—
Pa
’s belongings as well as my uncles’. Possessions of the dead passed out as a gruesome prize to the living.

Mak
returns, telling us all at once. She is composed, unraveling the bad news carefully. There is no outward grieving, even as a family. Like other emotions, it must be tucked away. She delivers the news in a tone of resignation—relieved that Som has told her. There is no more wondering. And in a dull way, I am not surprised.

But inside, questions bubble up. More confusion than rage.
What has Pa done to be killed this way?
He has never been anything but a caring father, a responsible husband, and a devoted son. Contemplating it all, I’m first baffled by this senseless killing, rather than sad. In this era, the rules are twisted: having education is a crime and honesty doesn’t pay.
What will?
I wonder. I answer this question myself. I recall a Cambodian proverb that I heard grown-ups quote among themselves:
Don’t give up on the winding road, but don’t tread the straight one.

Mak
had treaded the winding road and lied to the Khmer Rouge. Her false act of patriotism prompted by Som’s secret warning saved our lives. Despite her fear and her new loyalty to the Khmer Rouge, Som recognized her human obligation, her old loyalty to
Kong
Houng, her former employer, and thus his family, his children and grandchildren.

The Khmer Rouge leaders in the village want to see
Yiey
Khmeng (
Pa
’s mother) to interrogate her regarding the whereabouts of Uncle Seng. To prepare her for this, she,
Kong
Houng,
Mak
, and other relatives discuss what
Yiey
Khmeng should tell them. Already we’re playing within their rules, hoping we’ll survive this life-and-death game. This order to interrogate
Yiey
Khmeng provokes
Kong
Houng: “I already told them about Seng. Atidsim also told them. Now what do they want? These people are impossible.”

Yiey
Khmeng comes home distressed, agitated and shaking. Slowly she whispers, “They asked a lot of questions. After one of them asked me, the others continued interrogating. They kept asking ‘Where is Seng?’ One of them addressed me as
Mae
.
*
He said, ‘
Mae
, where is your other son and what did he do in the city?’ He questioned me sarcastically. ‘Tell
Angka Leu
where he is and what he did—that is, if you don’t want your son to be in a gas barrel.
†
Do you want your son to be in a gas barrel,
Mae
?’”

“Why do they speak of such a thing?” she goes on. “These people are cruel. All I told them was that I don’t know where Seng is or what he did. All I knew was that I saw him carrying his books to school every day. One of them was furious and said: ‘What kind of a mother are you? Don’t you know what your son did? Comrade, you lie! Stop asking her more questions. When her son is here, put him in a gas barrel.’ And then he stormed out of the hut. These people are coldhearted.”

Yiey
Khmeng sighs, staring at the floor.

Silence. The Khmer Rouge’s dark power renders us speechless, makes us paranoid. We’ve learned to watch over our shoulders for the
chhlop.
It becomes second nature. Our tightly drawn family community numbers forty-three people, all supported largely by my grandfather’s orchard, which is beginning to bear the signs of our dependence. The banana trees are nearly stripped bare; papaya trees and pineapple plants are overused. Still, we find things to eat, to survive.

“Athy, do you want to eat pickled
armmiage
?”
Mak
asks me one day, seemingly in good spirits.

“
Mak
, I like to eat pickled
armmiage
with broiled fish. It’s delicious, isn’t it,
Mak
?” My mouth waters as I think about it, a green plant resembling watercress.

“Do you want to look for it so
Mak
can pickle it for you? It grows wild along the paths, by people’s huts.
Mak
picked some yesterday on the way to work. This is what it looks like. Please go find some more for
Mak
.”

I eagerly ask my mother for something to put the
armmiage
in.
Mak
ties knots at both ends of a scarf; draped around my neck, it creates two pouches. She gives me a plant of
armmiage
to take with me in case I don’t remember what it looks like. From hut to hut, my eyes take in all the plants and weeds growing on the paths or in the yards.
Mak
is right about a lot of
armmiage
growing wild. It grows everywhere, along the pathways and in front of people’s huts. After I pick a patch of it, I look up and see more
armmiage
ahead of me, some growing in clusters, others scattered randomly. Both of the pouches fill quickly, but I am still picking. I know how good it will taste once it is pickled and ready to be eaten.

I am stooping down by the path at the corner of a house when I hear a chorus of women’s voices.

“Who else dropped the bombs?” An angry voice demands. “It was him, Aseng, who dropped them. Our families and children were savagely killed because of him. When he comes, we’ll torture him and make him feel pain.”

Her anger makes me look up. The name the woman spits out sounds familiar. I realize they are talking about my Uncle Seng. The woman who made the first angry remarks was
Yiey
Chea, a woman who I found out later to be related to us—she’s actually Uncle Seng’s biological aunt. When I saw her before, she seemed nice and friendly to
Mak
. Now I’m startled, scared by the vicious tone of her voice, as well as that of the other women. But the Khmer Rouge have been at work, turning family against family in the name of
Angka Leu
.