When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [32]
Another day, another new thing to learn. Since there are no markets, we constantly have to improvise. It’s the frustrating New World Order, the Khmer Rouge way. Ra and Ry are sent to the lake to catch fish for our daily soup. We don’t have a proper fishing net, so Mak suggests they use mosquito netting. The only fishing they’ve ever done was for fun back in Takeo, using string and hooks in the water to chase slices of silver fish by my uncle’s home. The hardest challenge was touching the earthworm. But what they are now asked to do is to walk through the lake with the open netting, sweeping through the water to trap fish and debris.
Since I’m feeling better, I’m asked to help. I don’t want to, but Ra and Ry tell me it’s easy. All I have to do is carry a woven basket and follow behind them as they fish. The morning is overcast, a bit chilly. Ra and Ry stand on the bank overlooking the lake, now shrinking in the summer heat, and wonder exactly how they will go about fishing. “Where do we start?” they ask each other. They stare at the water, and I at the tiny green leaves floating on the surface of the lake, then at the tall grasslike plants and dead tree snags poking out like skeletons. Now my task doesn’t look easy anymore. I will have to follow my sisters into that water, and I dread stepping on things I can’t see, the lurking dangers of thorns.
We start at the lower bank, where there are many tall grassy plants. The water is cool as I tiptoe into it barefoot. It feels strange as the soles of my feet sink into the mud, squeezing between my toes like cool, soft rice dough. I dread going further, but must follow my sisters, who are already far ahead, delicately lifting the netting above the grassy plants. Ra and Ry clumsily try to negotiate timing, deciding when to put the netting down to fish, becoming cross. Like me, they are squeamish but determined. The responsibility of survival rests on everyone.
In time, their voices die down and the only thing I hear is the slurping sound of our feet parting the still water, stirring up sediment from the bottom in a crazy dance. Like the bits of lake bottom, I can almost feel the random collision, the political whirlpool touching us all, occluding the future. Like sediment, I know that life will never fall into the same order again.
Already I’m learning to survive, catching fish as small as anchovies and as large as cucumbers. I cringe at the strange, slimy things that brush against my feet. Inasmuch as I dread walking and carrying the basket, it’s exciting to see the captured silver fish flop and shimmy in the netting. Amid all the excitement, something bites my leg. I lift my leg up and on it is a soft dark creature, the size of a string bean, that clings to my shin, bent in a semicircle.
“What’s on my leg?” I ask Ry and Ra curiously.
“Ra, leech, le—leech,” Ry stammers. She lifts her legs up, one right after another, checking for leeches.
I shriek a long-drawn-out “Ow!” as soon as Ry says the word “leech.” The word means nothing to me, but her terrified face and the sight of her dancing in the water, stamping her feet like a scared little child throwing a tantrum, frighten me. I scream, stamping my feet and splashing water, dancing in a mirror image of her hysteria.
“Help me, get it off me!” I run to Ry and Ra.
Ry runs away. “Don’t come near me! Ay, ay,” she cries.
“Stop moving!” Ra shouts. “Stay still.”
I look away, crying, as Ra scrapes off the bloodsucker with the netting.
After all the hysteria, Ra decides that we’re done fishing. On our way back to Kong Houng’s house, I ask my sisters about leeches. Leeches suck blood—the blood of humans, cows, and buffalo, they tell me. Ry laughs, her face red. Now she’s amused as she remembers how silly I looked, stamping in the water, screaming at the top of my