First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [83]
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. They went with soldiers,” the woman says quietly and looks away. She stares into the distance, refusing to look back at me.
We both know what it means when the soldiers come to the village and take someone with them. Part of me cannot believe what the woman says, but the other knows it is true. Yesterday I could not explain the mental anxiety and physical pains I woke up with. Now I know it was Ma and Geak telling me about the soldiers.
“Ma, where are you? Ma, you can’t do this to me!” I scream into the empty hut. They cannot have survived three years of starvation and the loss of Keav and Pa only to be taken now! The last time I saw her she was doing okay without Pa. I believed she was going to make it. She fought so hard to live! She cannot be gone. Poor little Geak, she never got anything good out of life.
At the sound of her baby’s cries, the woman goes into her hut. Inside, the woman hums her baby back to sleep. A memory of Ma singing me to sleep in Phnom Penh flashes before me. I cannot be strong anymore. My wall crumbles and collapses on top of me. Tears run uncontrollably down my face. My chest compresses, my insides gnaw at me, eating away at my sanity. I have to run away, I have to leave. Somehow my legs take over and carry me away from the village. “Ma! Geak!” I whisper to them. Their faces flood my consciousness. My mind races, remembering the time I stole rice from the container, out of their mouths. She never knew how it felt not to be hungry. My mind will not leave me alone. My body goes weak when I wonder which one the soldiers killed first. My mind projects pictures of the two of them together.
I see them marched slowly in a long line of twenty people collected from other villages in the province. A group of five or six Khmer Rouge soldiers walk on either side of the villagers. The soldiers’ rifles point at the prisoners. The rain three days before has left the field wet and slippery with mud, making it difficult for the villagers to keep their balance. Besides the grunts, moans, and whimpers of the villagers, all is quiet. Both the soldiers and the villagers have on black pajama clothes and red-and-white checkered scarves with mud stains on their bottoms and knees. The men walk with their fingers locked behind their head. Sweat drips from their forehead and stings their eyes. But they dare not unlock their hands to wipe them. The women, children, and old villagers are allowed to use their arms to balance while they work their way on the uneven ground. Whatever their history, whatever their past, they are marching now because the Angkar branded them traitors to the government.
Trailing along at the end of the line, Ma carries Geak on her back. Ma cries softly, her body tense with fear and her hands holding on to Geak. She feels Geak bounce slightly on her back as she catches her balance and prevents herself from a fall in the mud. Biting her lips, she thinks of Pa and wonders if he was this afraid when they took him away. She shakes her head, not allowing herself to think of him as being dead. Parts of her will always believe he is alive somewhere. It has been almost two years and still she misses him every minute of the waking hour. In her dreams, he is so real that she wakes up hurting more than the day before. Sometimes, while she pulled weeds from the vegetable gardens, her mind wandered to their first meeting by the river, when she first caught his eye. She thought he was so handsome but knew her parents would not approve of him. She loved him and despite her parents’ objections, she ran away and they eloped. She just wanted to be with him. Maybe she would be with him again soon.
The soldiers lead them past the rice paddies, past the swaying palm trees, to a field at the edge of the village. There, away from all eyes, they make Ma kneel with the other villagers. Sinking in the cool mud, Ma and Geak