First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [99]
One of my daily chores is to wash the family’s laundry. Many villagers are wearing colorful clothes now, including our new family. I look wistfully at the mother’s dark orange sarong and marvel at her sky blue blouse. I remember the red dresses Ma made for Chou, Geak, and me. Our first red dresses.
One New Year’s morning, I remember Keav, with big pink, yellow, blue, and green prickly plastic rollers in her hair held in by a hundred small black bobby pins sticking up everywhere like porcupine quills, as she combed my hair and tied it in ponytails. Next to her on our bed, Chou worked on getting Geak dressed. After Keav finished with my hair, she put red rouge on Geak’s lips and cheeks as Chou and I slipped on our new dresses and stood in awe of each other’s beauty. On our bed, we bounced with glee as our mattress squeaked, prompting Keav to yell at us. On the other side of the hallway, Ma picked out gold necklaces and bracelets from her collection for us to wear. She set aside a pair of red ruby earrings for Keav because she was the only one of us girls with pierced ears. In the kitchen, our helpers cut brown roasted ducks and arranged white moon-shaped cakes on a large blue plate. In the living room, Pa, Khouy, Meng, and Kim, dressed in their best clothes, lit orange incense sticks. After bowing three times before the red altar decorated with gold and silver Chinese symbols of peace and happiness, they inserted the incense into a yellow clay bowl filled with rice.
The baby in my arms pulls my hair and brings me out of my reverie. Looking at the mother, I assume she feels happy and joyful wearing her colored clothes. Glancing at my own, I wonder when I will also get out of the Khmer Rouge uniform and into some colorful clothes. I dream of one day owning a red dress to replace the one the soldier burned.
The mother interrupts my reverie when she takes the baby and asks me to do the laundry. After too many green mangoes, the three kids have had diarrhea all over their sheets. I roll the dirty clothes and sheets into a wicker basket and walk down to the river. With the basket balanced on my hip, I wade into the river until the water reaches my knees. I take out the sheets and spread them open on the surface of the water, allowing them to sink slowly while the diarrhea floats to the top. while doing this, little fish swim over and eat the mess. Some nip at my legs. With no detergent or soap, I must beat the bedsheets against rocks to try and clean them. This chore disgusts me, but I do it without complaining, afraid that if I don’t, the new family will send me away.
Sometimes the mother sends me to the forest to gather firewood. I meet Pithy along the way and we set off, making sure to stay clear of the Youn base. One day while walking, a stench attacks my nose and I begin to cough. It resembles rotting chicken livers left out in the sun for too long. Coming around the path into a clearing, I know what the smell is before I even spot the body. The corpse lies decomposing in the sun. I hold my breath and walk toward it.
“Come on, let’s go back,” Pithy urges, looking pale. I wave my hand at her and proceed forward while she stays back. Pinching my nose, I approach it. The face looks as if it has melted, exposing the cheekbones, the tip of the nose cartilage, and teeth in a lipless mouth. Beneath decomposing lids, the eyes are sunken deep into the skull. The eyelids and mouth are covered with small white eggs, some already hatching to become maggots, which crawl and disappear into the skin. More maggots wriggle around on the lids and out of the open mouth. Long black hair sinks into the grass, becoming one with the dirt. The chest cavity is caved in beneath the black clothes, home to hundreds