When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [46]
At fifteen, mature for her age, Ry takes on the caregiving task again. Just as she used to care for Chea, she now stays days and nights with Vin. She works in the hospital, a hall that used to be part of a temple. The floor is dirt, patients lie on slim metal cots. Others are scattered on blankets or plastic sheeting on the floor. It has the atmosphere of a field hospital, scarcely an aisle to walk through. Vin is luckier—because of the crowding, he has been moved to an annex, a nearby building with a wooden floor. He is allotted a narrow space a few scant feet from the nearest patients. Medical scrubs are replaced by the eternal Khmer Rouge uniform—black shirt and pants, a simple scarf. If these hospital “authorities” have a medical education, it isn’t apparent. The only treatment readily dispensed is “rabbit dung,” the term adopted for crude “pills” made from bark and honey. Sometimes people request the “rabbit dung” just for the honey alone, something to fill their empty stomachs. It seems that food, simple nutrition, would cure much suffering here.
Like a mother, Ry feeds Vin his meager food ration. Since there is no one else to administer care, she bathes him, dresses him. She gives him comfort and warmth, cuddling close to him at night. But as hard as she works, he is empty. Every day he cries for Mak, begging Ry to ask Mak to come and see him. Ry passes along the plea, imploring Mak until Mak cries, “Don’t torture, Mak, koon. I can’t walk to the hospital. Mak would if Mak could.”
She speaks the painful truth. Mak’s face and entire body have swollen up, inflated by the fluid building up inside her. Her face is an ugly mask of what it once was, as pale as pigskin with puffy jowls. Her eyes squint out from this fleshy landscape, cloudy and dull. No one knows why this is, what is making our limbs so heavy. My mother has a theory. “We don’t have salt,” she says, shrugging. Before long, she has company. In time, we all get it—the new people. At first it seems like bad fortune, a curse on the most recent arrivals. It takes a while for us to associate this condition with our own starvation. The word is hamm, swollen (edematous). I too am swollen. My legs. My arms. My face. Suddenly, a simple task like walking feels like slogging through mud. Like Mak and me, Avy and Map also swell up like inflatable dolls, their faces tight and stretched, their legs fat beyond their years. The skin between Avy’s toes scares me—so taut and transparent, it looks as if it will surely burst. Still, she is stronger than me, able to walk to retrieve water. I feel helpless, ashamed, weak by comparison. My strong little sister surprises me.
Around us we watch the drama unfold. Sickness touches so many huts. Even the ill-tempered “Grandma Two Kilo” is humbled, her tongue temporarily silenced by the sickness, which robs her of the last delicacy of her fading beauty.
One day Ry returns from the hospital to report that Vin is dying. As soon as she spits out the words, she convulses, doubled over with grief.
“Mak, Vin begs for you to see him. He wants to see you one more time.”
“Mak can’t go, koon. Mak can hardly walk to get water to drink and cook. Mak cannot walk that far.” Her words are slow, without hope or animation. She is beaten down by her own body.
“But Vin is dying, Mak! He asks for you, he misses you.…” Ry breaks down.
“Koon, did you hear what Mak said? Mak wants to go see your brother, but Mak just can’t walk that far.” She is too weak to argue. Ry must understand this. And yet the roles are oddly reversed. Ry is like the mother, ordering her child to obey. Mak must be there. Doesn’t she understand? Her voice rises again, desperate.
“What should I tell him when he asks for you again? What do I do, Mak?”
“Tell your baby brother that Mak cannot walk that far yet. When Mak can walk, Mak will see him.” Her answer is a long sigh.
“But he’s dying…” Ry wails.