When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [121]
I can’t stand seeing Ra’s sad face and decide to give her all the money I have left from selling my gold. Ra’s eyes glow when I hand her the money. She holds the money close to her heart and smiles. Ry gazes at me, surprised, happy. Later we all go to the market and buy whatever Ra is hungry for, and she is the happiest pregnant woman I’ve ever seen.
One sunny day Savorng, Map, and I are waiting in line for our water rations. Two girls, one about my age and the other about Savorng’s, walk up to us and call Savorng “Peang.” The younger one touches Savorng’s hand and smiles. Savorng pulls back, striding toward me. The girl asks Savorng where she’s living. Savorng squints, staring at the two girls in bewilderment, then looks at me with a frown on her face, as if asking me to help her.
Curious, I ask them how they know Savorng. The older girl tells me a story about Savorng’s family. Back in a village in Cambodia, after Savorng’s parents died, a Khmer Rouge family took her in and raised her. When the Vietnamese soldiers invaded Cambodia months ago, this family fled to the jungle, leaving Savorng behind. Later, as the other families in the village were leaving for the New Camp, she followed them and came to live with an old woman in the camp, who asked her to beg for money and food, and it was then that Ra and bang Vantha met her and brought her to our shack.
Now Savorng is okay, I tell the girls. She lives with my family and we have renamed her. The girls are happy to see her and hear that she’s doing well. Savorng steal glances at them, then her eyes return to the gravel ground.
As we wait for the water to be distributed, I think about Savorng’s life. About her dead parents, and the Khmer Rouge family who took her in and raised her. It is interesting how fate has brought her to us, who are also orphans. I’m sad to learn of her story, but relieved that she’s with us, and hope that perhaps she’ll get to go to America, too.
Khao I Dang quickly expands. New huts have been built to accommodate the influx of people being brought in. Lately, rumors spread among us that a lot of people are leaving Cambodia and are now living on the border. I am sad that Cambodia has become a hollow shell with fewer people in it, even though I understand the need to abandon our homeland as war and oppression have been in our lives far too long.
Some people, who either can’t wait to be brought into Khao I Dang or who will never have a chance to come here because of their arrival status on the border, have paid other Cambodians to smuggle them in. One of them is Uncle Aat, bang Vantha’s cousin from Kompong Cham province. For each Cambodian smuggled in, a fee must be paid to the Thai soldiers who patrol the camp.
To supplement our meager food rations, Than, at sixteen, decides to go with some older men to the frontier and smuggle people in. Later he operates on his own, since he knows the way to the New Camp and has learned enough Thai to communicate with the soldiers. When he is gone longer than he told us he would be, I worry. I can see him being shot, and having his money taken from him. When he returns, I’m relieved, gazing at him with admiration for his bravery and his help in acquiring more food for our family. Later, when Uncle Aat and bang Vantha go with him, I sleep better.
My efforts to learn English don’t stop when I can no longer pay my former teacher. I study English on my own. I review the translations of words from the Essential English Book I I bought and my notebook. I practice combining words to form sentences, speaking out loud to myself.
I find another way to learn English as well. Wandering around the camp, I once overheard English words spoken through a window overlooking an