When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [45]
“Mak…Mak, please let me sleep by you. I’m cold,” Vin beseeches, his voice small, soft, and sad. “I’m cold, Mak. Let me sleep with you for one more night.”
“Koon proh Mak,* Mak doesn’t want you to make your brothers and sisters sick. Please sleep over there, my son,” Mak begs.
“Mak, let me sleep with you one more night. Only one more night, Mak. Tomorrow I’ll go to the hospital and then I’ll feel better. Please let me, Mak, I’m cold,” Vin cries out once again.
“Mak is sorry, koon.” Never before has Mak been so helpless. So apologetic.
This child whom she brought into the world cannot be satisfied. And this raw fact is slowly killing her.
For the rest of us, it is like listening to the soundtrack of a sad movie that has no end. Lying cuddled beside Mak—my brothers and sisters sharing blankets and our warmth when the cool night wind blows, wriggling through the cracks into our hut—I weep for Vin. Our sniffles become a melody in the night as each of us suffers with him. He is only three, but the revolution ages us all. Already Vin can articulate his need, his desperate need to survive.
Long into the night, Vin cries as the chilly December wind blows. It beats the leaves of the tall trees behind our hut, creating a chorus of noise akin to Vin’s shuddering. Even beneath a blanket, I’m touched by this invisible wind.
When the morning comes, Ry gets Vin ready for a trip to the Khmer Rouge hospital, called Peth Preahneth Preah, a name left over from an earlier time, which means “Hospital of the Sight of God.” It is probably three miles from where we live.
Vin’s pale, shrinking body lies still as Ry wraps him in Mak’s sarong. Sadly he gazes at our mother. Vin’s bloodless lips slowly part. “Mak, I go to the hospital. Soon I’ll feel better, then I’ll come back home. I’ll come soon, Mak.”
His words and sad eyes suggest a pensive parting. As small as he is, Vin seems to understand, absolving her, comforting her. His empathy in the midst of his own suffering strikes me to the core. Vin is little, yet so curiously wise. Perhaps it is a wisdom born of a young life that has straddled so much—our life before the revolution, the retreat from Phnom Penh, the life of forced labor. Too much living to cram into too few years. A three-year-old in a boxcar. A three-year-old scavenging for food. He has known so much pain that I can’t bear it. I want to drop to the dirt, fall to my knees to beg Buddha to stop his suffering.
I want so much.
“Yes, koon proh Mak, go to the hospital and you will get better soon. Then koon comes back to Mak.” Mak chokes up, speaking the ragged words she knows will not come true.
“‘Koon comes back to Mak,’” Vin says, repeating Mak’s phrase as if it comforts him.
Weeks go by, and Vin is still in the hospital. His condition worsens, Ry reports to us. She is stationed at the hospital taking care of Vin, a role that would otherwise have fallen to Chea and Ra, who are older than her. But they are gone, having already been taken off to a forced youth labor camp. They left a day after an informant leader, Srouch, came by, ordering them to a meeting. They obeyed immediately, like soldiers called up for combat. Their responsibility to our family is no longer relevant. Through no fault of her own, Mak has lost custody of her children—Angka Leu has appointed itself sole parent. With their departure, Ry steps in, taking upon herself a motherly role.
Back in Phnom Penh, at age thirteen, she was slim but strong. Her black silky hair fell below her shoulders, cut evenly. She looked cute, I thought, in her blue miniskirt with her white and blue blouse. When she biked to school, her legs pumped her bike pedals like an athlete’s.
Even then Ry was nursing us, taking care of Chea when she came down with typhoid and a blood condition. Ry was a natural nurse, staying with Chea so Mak could take care of us at home and Pa could work. Though Ra was