When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge

by Chanrithy Him

  These days, we clear small plants, weeding out grass in open fields surrounded by trees, one of which is wild, a mango tree. During lunch break under a generous shade of trees—while the Khmer Rouge leaders sit among themselves away from us—Mak and the other women reminisce about old times. Following their meals of rice gruel with edible leaves and salt, they talk about their favorite foods. It sounds like cruel torture to talk of things we cannot have, but there is a comfort in these conversations.

  Rice ration is at its lowest point again. Edema is also widespread. Avy’s body is swollen, her eyes nearly shut. Sprouting between her eyelids are her long eyelashes, her hair wiry. Her skin is wan, inflated with fluid that seems ready to burst through her thin skin. The rest of us have edema, but not as bad. This is the randomness of starvation. She has been spared the rigors of labor camp, but still her body is protesting, giving up.

  To supplement our small ration, Than sneaks out to fish. Only thirteen, two years older than I am, Than seems to have taken on the role of a grown man, head of the household. Late at night, he walks a long way to a lake where he has planted a fishing net, staked out in the shallows and hidden away where no one can see or steal it. One night he brings home a dozen fish, each the size of a tablespoon.

  Mak asks Ry—who usually comes back from the hospital to see us at night—to clean the fish. I pour water for Than as he washes mud off his skinny legs. Mak gathers the firewood to cook the fish. We have not had fish or any real meat for weeks, aside from occasional toads, crickets, tadpoles, or tiny lizards in the woods.

  The fish is ready, brown, shriveled, a small spread on a plate before Than. Than hands Mak a few fish; Map two, Avy one, Ry one, and me also one. He keeps four for himself. I savor the fish, biting a little at a time as if I’m licking cold ice cream. Than also eats it slowly, his mouth busy telling about his trip to the lake.

  Mak watches Than, proud of him. Avy has already finished her fish, her hand reaching, her swollen eyes imploring. She interrupts, “Than, can I have a little fish?”

  Than’s distracted but goes on with his adventure. I notice Avy’s patience, her ability to stifle her hunger. I can’t remember the last time our family really sat down together and just listened to one of us.

  “Than, can I have a little fish?” Avy persists, her hand weakly reaching forward.

  Than breaks off half of a fish and murmurs, “She eats everything, ants, anything, that’s why her face is like that,” Than says, irritated. “I tell her not to, but she’s stubborn. She doesn’t listen.” He looks at Mak as if wanting her to agree with him.

  Mak tenderly suggests, “Don’t be mad at p’yoon. She’s hungry, koon.”

  Than glares at Avy, then spits out, “Stubborn!” He throws half of the fish at her. It falls through the crack in the floor. Avy scrambles. She hops off the hut, her head moving, her eyes searching hungrily. I can’t fathom what Than has just done, the cruelty. We are all shocked. Yet Than is somehow enraged, his body almost trembling, seemingly for no other reason than the mild disrespect of his young, starving sister. His face churns with emotions even as we watch.

  “Why did you do that, koon?” Mak finally says.

  Avy cries, sobbing desperately. Ry and I help her find the fish beneath our hut. Gently, we lift small tree branches, one by one, from the pile of firewood where the fish fell. When we find it, she desperately blows away the dirt that has coated it. She eats it, and she cries, trembling, as if losing and finding this scrap of fish would make the difference between life and death. As soon as she finishes her fish, her body relaxes. Her disfigured legs, now blown up to absurd proportions, slowly carry her into the hut. She says little, accepting her condition and treatment.

  Than is quiet, but we can feel remorse in his silence. Tonight has brought us brief joy, then grief. Agony at the realization that the Khmer Rouge have shaped us, made our tempers brittle and our hunger sharp. Led us to the point where we could be as cruel to one another as they are to us.

  The rice distribution comes to a complete stop. Starvation revisits us. Avy’s edema gets worse, the fluid seeping out from pink cracks between her toes. She walks slowly, like a turtle, her body stiffened with the fluid that continues to build behind her thin, bloodless skin. One day Mak and I return home from the woods and she’s gone, disappeared to Peth Preahneth Preah with Ry. There, she gets a food ration, not much, but better than nothing. She’ll die there, I fear. I don’t know of anyone who has ever returned. To our knowledge, there’s no proper medicine, yet we send her there, to this crude excuse for a hospital—filthy and unsanitized, humming with flies that congregate on patient’s eyes, the sick squeezed onto the floor between rusty twin beds. However, Ry’s there to take care of her.

  Time passes. It’s been a month since Avy left for Peth Preahneth Preah. At home, we fight our own battles. Mak, Map, and I are also afflicted with edema. Than has again been sent somewhere to work, but my thoughts don’t stray to be with him. Starvation has blurred my mind too much to care for anyone. Each day I barely have the energy to keep my heart beating.

  Ry returns to Daakpo, her eyes empty, her stomach protruding with sickness. With the weariness of an old woman, fifteen-year-old Ry sinks to the floor of our hut. Her eyes are dry, her face guilty and sad as she reports to us Avy’s death. Softly, she explains: “Last night I noticed the change in Avy’s body. Her jaws locked, her body stiffened. I wondered about it, but I didn’t understand why she was that way. This morning I got up and looked at her, she’s changed. Stiff, very thin. Her edema’s gone. When I looked at her feet, I saw ants around the webs of her toes. The fluid oozed out of her burst skin, through her feet. I gazed at her bony face and I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I don’t understand. I couldn’t even cry when the hospital workers took her to be buried. Maybe I’ve seen too many deaths.”

  Mak doesn’t cry, her eyes fall upon Ry. Map looks on, too young to speak and too little to understand death. Listening to Ry’s description of Avy’s death, I fear the fluid building even now within me, within Mak—our arms, faces, and hands grow taut. I can feel panic rise in my throat. Avy’s death cements my determination to live. In my mind, I tell myself that I must search for edible leaves, toads, mice, crickets, whatever I need to stay alive.

  Avy’s death lingers in Ry’s mind. Her inability to mourn continues to haunt her. In desperation, she turns to Buddhism, an institution long since destroyed and disdained by the Khmer Rouge. In spite of that, she finds a way to make things right for herself. She remembers reincarnation, the idea that after death we are re-born. She reconciles her internal conflicts this way, as our parents and elders did before the Khmer Rouge’s takeover. She talks to Avy’s spirit.

  “If bang lives to get married, may p’yoon’s spirit conceive in bang’s womb. Bang wants another chance to take care of you.” Ry finally sobs, her heart beseeching, her soul comforted. Her mind is at peace, she tells me.

  I find myself thinking about Buddhism, too. I think of those who’ve died and hope they will be reincarnated to make up for this life, returning when freedom and peace have been installed in Cambodia. Like Ry, thinking this way, I’m more at ease, comforted that I’ll see my family again.

  Mak and I become very ill. In addition to edema, malaria has returned. The day is warm, but Mak and I shiver with cold that seems to seep from inside our bodies. I lie behind her watching her back tremble as my own body shivers. Three-year-old Map sits by us baffled, as if he wants to help us but doesn’t know how. Now and then, I fall asleep.

  “Mak and Thy are sick.” My mind picks up Map’s soft, small voice.

  I vaguely feel the vibration of feet climbing into the hut. It seems like a dream.

  “Mak, I’m back…. Athy, Athy, wake up,” a voice commands, stern but anxious. I feel a hand shake my shoulder. It’s Ra, my mind acknowledges, feeling delirious.

  Ra lifts me and Mak, assuring us she’ll “coin” our backs, a traditional remedy in which a coin is rubbed repeatedly along both s
ides of the spine and other areas to promote healing. Then she performs another procedure, a remedy Cambodians call choup. Placing a small ember of burning wood into a vial, Ra presses it horizontally against my forehead, above my eyebrows. Being so sick, I can’t feel the hot vial. But my forehead is burned badly, leaving a permanent scar.

  Energy gradually comes back to me. Looking at Ra tending to Mak, I’m grateful. Deep down I think that Mak and I would have died, but Ra has come, pulling us back from the hands of death.

  Ra tells us grim stories of Phnom Korg Va, a disease-stricken place where many laborers have died from exhaustion, inadequate rest, and lack of medicine. The work camp had become a mountain of death. Among those who have perished is Aunt Rin. I’m sorry to hear this news, yet in an odd way I’m not really sad. Death is a constant, and we’ve become numb to the shock of it. People die here and there, all around us, falling like flies that have been sprayed with poison.

  I brace for more bad news, news about Chea, but Ra quickly assures us that she is still alive, but being forced to work hard. She is closely watched by her brigade leader, the same woman who has viewed Chea as an enemy since the day Chea defended the quiet chatter of Ra and Ry at the work site in Daakpo.

  A premonition prompted Ra’s return. Her conscience kept telling her something bad was happening to Mak. She knew she needed to leave. For days she stayed at a clinic, asking for malaria medicine, with our family in mind. Modern medicine? Does it still exist? I’m surprised that the Khmer Rouge endorse its use when they loathe everything modern. Ra talks like a storyteller, with great animation in her eyes and gestures, almost like a small child sharing an exciting story. Mak asks how she was able to leave Phnom Korg Va and why Chea couldn’t come with her.

  Ra smiles, a warm smile, her eyes bright. She reports, “I forged a letter saying my mekorg allows me to return to the village because you’re very ill. I signed her name.” Ra smiles again. “I ran from Phnom Korg Va at early dusk and showed the letter at every checkpoint. They let me through, no questions asked. I hitchhiked, riding on oxcarts from village to village, until I got close to here.” Ra takes a deep breath, her face relieved, her eyes gazing into Mak’s.

  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.