First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [96]
Suddenly, the grandmother screams a loud, shrill cry. Up above, the sun hides behind the clouds. My body still protected by the tree, I peer out to look at her. She is on the ground, lying in a fetal position on her side, both hands clutching her leg as thin, red blood pours out from a wound above her ankle, staining her skirt. The blood forms a pool around her feet, mixing with dishwater as it seeps into the earth. She screams and cries for help, but I crouch in my hiding place. In the hut, the children scream and cry as the mother hushes them. Seconds later, the father jumps frantically out from the hut and picks her up off the ground. Then he carries her off to the camp’s hospital with his son trailing behind him.
I do not come out of my hiding place, afraid that if they see me they’ll blame me for not helping the grandmother. Long after they have gone, and after the mother has calmed down the little kids, I am still behind the tree. I sit there, scratching the dry mud out from between my toes and then looking up at the sky, wondering when more bullets will rain down on us. Though my heart is beating wildly I feel nothing. My mind still makes pictures and creates thoughts, but I do not have any attachment to them. I am sorry she got shot, but she is mean and often slaps my face and pinches my arms and ears. Now I will not have to see her wrinkled face or hear her poisonous mouth for a while. I stay behind the tree, deep in my own world, until Chou and Kim return from gathering wood.
Three days later, the mother sends me to bring food to the grandmother in the hospital. I take the packet wrapped in banana leaves and head toward the hospital. It takes me an hour to walk the two miles. The small, well-traveled, red dirt footpath cuts through the town and is usually quite safe. On this day, all is quiet and yet I nervously put one foot in front of the other, my eyes scanning the trees and bushes around me for signs of the Khmer Rouge. Neglecting to look down, I kick something and hear it roll away from me. It is rusty-green and shaped like an egg with little square boxes on the surface. I freeze and suck in my breath. My knees are weak and my feet sting as if I have been electrocuted. It is a grenade. “Stupid girl! You have to be more careful,” I curse under my breath.
It is noon when I see the hospital. Taking short steps, I proceed slowly toward it, dreading going in. The abandoned makeshift hospital looks sicker than its patients. The one-level warehouse is gray with age, crumbling from the destruction of war. Dark green mold eats through the cracks in the wall as wild trees and vines threaten to overtake the building. Stepping out of the sunlight into the dark building temporarily blinds me. Inside, the temperature is uncomfortably hot and the air hangs heavy, unmoving. The shrill cries of babies, the repetitive moans, and the echoes of shallow, labored breathing bombard the large space. The stench of human waste, urine, rotting wounds, and strong rubbing alcohol surrounds me, permeating my clothes, skin, and hair. My throat tightens and I swallow hard to suppress a gag. I want to run out of the building. My eyes twitch, wanting to shut so I do not have to look at the bodies lying on the floor. During the Khmer Rouge rule I saw many dead bodies. Having lost all hope of escaping the Khmer Rouge, many went to the infirmary to die. They did not have families to hold their hands and swat away the flies when they became too weak. Like Keav, they wasted away and laid in their own feces and urine, completely alone. In a Khmer Rouge hospital, people moaned and whimpered in pain but did not scream. Here at the hospital in the newly liberated zone, people scream in pain because they’re fighting to live.
Taking small, cautious steps I walk past rows of people lying on cots and mats on the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, something scurries away. I jump, then relax. It is only a mouse. Walking on, I look at each patient, searching for the grandmother. I hate having to bring food for some old lady I don’t care for.