First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [24]
“Can’t we tell them we have to go to Battambang? That they have taken us to the wrong place?”
“No, we cannot argue with them. We will go wherever they choose to take us.” Pa sounds fatigued as he puts me on the ground. He tells Kim to look after me while he tries to find out when we will be leaving. As he walks away into the crowd of people, I watch until his figure disappears.
Kim tells me that from now on I have to watch out for myself. Not only am I never to talk to anyone about our former lives, but I’m never to trust anyone either. It is best if I just stop talking completely so I won’t unintentionally disclose information about our family. To talk is to bring danger to the family. At five years old, I am beginning to know what loneliness feels like, silent and alone and suspecting that everyone wants to hurt me.
“I am going to go look around,” I tell Kim, bored.
“Don’t go far and don’t talk to anyone. We might have to leave very soon and I don’t want to have to go looking for you.”
I want to obey my brother’s warnings not to go far, but I’m curious. When my family is looking elsewhere I sneak away from under their watchful eyes to explore the “waiting station.” The farther I walk, the more I see of the hundreds of people at the camp. They talk, sit, or sleep anywhere they can. Many tents have wet clothes hanging all over their lines, piles of wood by the crackling fire, and homemade wooden benches. Looking as if they have been waiting for a long time, some lie so motionless I wonder if they are alive. I stop to look at one old woman. Dressed in a brown shirt and maroon sarong, she lies on the ground with her arms at her side and her head propped up by a small bundle. Her eyes are half closed, white hair strewn in all directions, and skin yellow and wrinkled. The young woman next to her spoon-feeds the old woman rice gruel.
“She looks dead to me,” I say to the young woman. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Gram’s half dead, can’t you tell?” she says to me in annoyance.
The longer I stare at her, the more my skin sweats. I have never seen anyone who is half dead before. Ignoring me, the young woman continues to feed her grandmother. One side of her mouth swallows the rice gruel while the other side drools and spits the food back out. I never thought this was possible. I just thought you were either completely dead or alive. I feel sorry for the old woman but am fascinated at the prospect of being caught between the two worlds. My fascination overrides my fear of her.
“Are there any doctors or anyone who can help her?”
“There are no doctors anywhere. Go away! Aren’t your parents looking for you?”
She is right, of course. I hear Ma calling my name and beckoning me to return. Luckily, my family is too busy boarding yet another truck to be angry with me. As Pa lifts me onto the truck, I notice two very thin middle-aged men in loose-fitting black pajama pants and shirts standing next to us. While one writes something on small brown pads of paper with his black pen, the other points at our heads and counts as we climb onto the truck. I find myself a seat where I can watch the countryside. Quickly, four other families clamber onto the truck and fill up the empty space in the middle. Once all the families are on board, the two men take their notes and count again, without smiling or greeting us. After they are finished, they get into the front seats with the truck driver and we begin to move.
The truck rolls away from the waiting area and onto a bumpy narrow road crossing the mountains. The families are quiet and somber, the only sounds come from the branches brushing against the side of the truck and the slush of mud sticking to the tires. After what seems like forever, I become bored with the scenery and climb onto Pa’s lap.
“Pa,” I say quietly, so the others cannot hear us, “the people at the place we just left, why were they there?”
“They are waiting for the base people to come and take them.”
“Take them like they’ve taken us?”
“Yes. The men wearing black clothes are representatives from rural villages.