When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [13]
Amid this place of death and ghosts, there is more destruction.
Something drops down loudly. The house shakes. I open my eyes. It drops again and again as if a big fist were pounding on the ground. Ry runs out of the mosquito netting. I follow behind her. It’s dark. When Ry and I reach the hallway, Pa, Mak, Aunt Cheng, Than, Chea, and Ra are already crowded by the front window.
“Putho [Mercy]!” Mak cries out, wincing with each strike.
I want to see what they’re looking at, and squeeze through them to reach the window. Gigantic tongues of fire and smoke lick the black sky, lighting up the landscape in the distance, somewhere on the other side of the Bassac River. Silhouettes of planes loop in the darkness with sequins of light pouring from them. The sequins dissipate in the brushy shadow of distant trees, then erupt in enormous explosions, bright fire on the earth. We see it before we hear it, the explosion arriving as a delayed echo. Each burst concludes with a huge mushroom of smoke.
“Pa?” I squeeze my father’s hand, looking up at the shadow of his face. He doesn’t say anything, but keeps on looking at the burning sky, trembling. I stand there with Pa watching it after everyone else has gone back to their beds.
Never before have I seen men cry, so much, like Pa tonight.
A few days later, news circulates. Pa and other adults talk about casualties reported in different villages outside Takeo province. He says that B-cinquante-deux (B-52s) bombed those areas, and many Cambodian civilians were killed in villages where his aunts live, near Srey Va village. Some were killed by direct hits, others perished in the intense heat created by the bombs. Pa’s young sisters’ families have had to leave their homes since the bombs dropped near their villages. Like other families, they seek refuge in Takeo City, staying in a house close to us. I don’t understand that these are planes from across an ocean. I don’t understand they are in pursuit of escaping Viet Cong soldiers, who have infested Cambodian border provinces like stubborn cockroaches, refusing to leave.
After this destruction and death comes a new life.
My baby brother, Bosaba, is born in June, two months after the bombing. He is named after the month of February, the rice-ripening season, when the land is lush and the rice heads golden and heavy and ready for harvest. Mak caresses the dark, fuzzy head of her eighth child. “We lost the older one, and now we have a little one,” she tells us. Mak gazes at Bosaba’s closed eyes and his tiny mouth, which moves as if he is nibbling. His small pink fingers open and close, and I insert my index finger into one of his fists. A snug, perfect fit.
I am glad that Bosaba is born because it makes Mak and Pa happy, but my youngest brother is only a brief gift. Perhaps he was born prematurely, his health compromised by the trauma my mother endured during the pregnancy. He falls ill and cries constantly. No one can console him. Pa can’t help him, and neither can the doctor.
Medical help is becoming so scarce that many people fall back on traditional folk ways. Pa begins suffering sharp pain in his abdomen. He says he is suffering from appendicitis. A friend of his, or perhaps a doctor, cautions him, “If you don’t get medical intervention to break the “turtle neck”—the inflamed appendix—you will surely die.” But the hospitals are not manned. Only time and fate can help him. Somehow, Pa lives. But life has become so tenuous. Real medicine is increasingly out of our reach, and the consequences are frustrating and deadly.
After a few weeks, my new brother Bosaba dies.
More displaced villagers and refugees are pouring into the city, including Mak’s mother and six brothers and sisters. Her father remains in Prey Ronn village to take care of his farming business. Our second-story home is becoming crowded. We