When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [102]
In the house, the wooden floor is the color of oak. Smooth. Clean, as if there are no grains of dust on it. The slabs are tightly sandwiched together, well built. It’s almost as pretty as Kong Houng’s house, though much smaller. I study the wooden walls. This room is more spacious than our hut, two times larger.
A woman’s voice erupts from the nearby room. “If you want to take, go ahead, take all.” The voice sounds hoarse. Old. Irritating.
Footsteps vibrate on the floor. Suddenly Ra’s husband, Na, appears holding three pillows in his arms. Na is about Ra’s height. Compared to some men in the village, he looks fit with a slightly jutting chin. He looks healthy and strong. He’s different from what I had imagined—not ugly or scrawny. He’s quiet and seemingly gentle. Now I’m more at ease, not as worried for Ra as I was before.
“Here,” he says. His voice is soft, his eyes look at Ra. Ra looks at the pillows, then takes them from him.
Pillows with cases? My eyes widen. I haven’t seen pillows since we left Year Piar.
Ra places a pillow by the front door. Then another one near it. The third pillow she drops far away from the one in the middle. It’s near the room where the old woman’s voice came from.
“That’s your pillow.” Ra points to the middle one. She lies down sideways, facing away from us, on the pillow by the front door.
I stand there, puzzled, and glance at him. He says nothing. I lie down beside Ra, facing her back.
Ra has me spend several nights sleeping beside her. Most of the time she ignores Na. When he talks to her, she scolds him, angry. He’s confused, frustrated.
Ra is mostly at our hut with Than, Ry, Map, and me. Sometimes she brings us food from Na’s house. Rice and yams. Though it’s not much, I’m glad she does this. It is as if she’s trying to take a motherly role now that Chea’s gone. But I fear that she will put herself in jeopardy because she has an obligation to Angka to be with Na. When she’s with us and stays overnight, I’m reminded of the man’s stern voice in that dark barn.
“The rifles will be the judge when comrades betray each other or break Angka’s rules.”
When Ra and I return to Na’s house, as we climb the stairs we hear the bellow of a drawling voice. “What kind of a wife are you, never staying home with her husband? Coming and going as you please.”
Ra and I turn, and there by the trellises is Na’s mother, a short, gray-haired woman, glaring. Ra looks hurt. Resuming the climb, she sighs as if shrugging off the blame. Looking at her back as we climb the stairs, I ponder how changed Ra has become. Angry. Resentful. Even though she is this way, Na has never raised his voice to her. His face shows only frustration, not anger.
Having seen Ra’s aversion to Na, I don’t think Angka will succeed in its goal of increasing the population. A marriage sanctioned in such an evil way will never bear fruit. Even though I’m young, I can’t imagine that babies will be produced by these men and women who are made up of bones and sheets of skin, whose physical appearance reminds one of the living dead. Months ago, Angka could have spared a baby and its parents. Instead, Angka destroyed them.
It was nearly noon, perhaps in November 1975, when my brothers, sisters, Mak, and I, among hundreds of other people, arrived at a place near Peth Preahneth Preah. It was a large, open ground studded with tall trees shielding us from the blazing heat of the day. Men, women, and children were gathered to witness a judgment on two people. Their crime, Angka said, was loving each other without Angka’s permission. Thus they were our enemies. “When Angka catches enemies,” a leader had announced in the previous mandatory meeting, “Angka doesn’t keep them, Angka