When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [59]
It’s so quiet. Cheng is already dead. She must be. She has made no sound since the children passed by on their way to the fields. I call out her name. Every part of my body braces for an answer. Finally a faint groan. I’m relieved, but my body feels strange, numb. It can no longer hold itself up, and I fear that the lack of circulation in my limbs will kill me.
When night comes, the same chhlop releases us. He warns us of tougher punishment if we repeat our offense. After he leaves, a shadow appears. It’s Larg. She brings us rice rations, placing them by the stump. Slowly my legs and arms awaken, burning, as blood and oxygen find their way back. Cheng and I go to our shelter. In the dark, we devour our food. I thought I would never again know the taste of rice. Or salt.
We are now watched closely. Working conditions get worse. Every day we are awakened long before sunrise and return only after the sun surrenders its light. Their goals, our leaders stress in mandatory meetings, are for us to beat the “set date.” To exceed the quota. To compete with other brigades digging irrigation ditches that will join ours. I measure our progress in inches. The few feet of the elevated roadway and the depth of the canal in which I work every day. Almost around the clock, dirt is my landscape.
The long days of forced labor have taken its toll on us. Many children grow ill. Some come down with malaria. Others with fever or diarrhea. At night I hear the sounds of pain, of sickness. Near the shelters are signs of diarrhea covered with flies. Soon I too have diarrhea, then it gets worse. I have what Vin had, amoebic dysentery. Every day I lie in the empty shelter, which is built close to the open field near the work site. I’m drained, weak from days of losing fluid. I constantly soil my pants. Two pairs, that’s all I’ve got. Every night I think of Mak, Map, and Avy. I close my eyes and imagine lying in the hut beside Mak. The longing is a physical ache, competing with the pain in my own belly. I try to console myself, I’m lucky to have Cheng. She takes care of me.
At mealtimes I wait for Cheng to bring me my ration. At our shelter, she kneels down, reaching out to help me up. Pointing at a plastic cup, she reminds me that she’s also brought water, cloudy like a light milk-chocolate drink. In a short time, a chhlop’s voice roars, ordering children to return to work. Cheng obeys, but I know she will be back—the one thing I’ve come to count on. In the evening she washes my soiled pants, then covers me with her only scarf. She leaves her own head bare, working in the hot sun. Never once has Cheng complained. Her silent sacrifice fills me with a deeper gratitude than I have ever known.
The follow night Cheng wakes me. Her footsteps storm out of the shelter. In a few minutes she returns with stomach cramps. She curls up behind me, groaning. Her body feels unusually warm, a sign of illness. I’m scared for Cheng, scared for both of us. How will we survive if both of us are sick? Who will get us rations? Certainly not the mekorg, even though she’s in charge of us. She is indifferent, only interested in us when we have strength. If you are weak, you are useless. I know we can’t rely on Larg. Since our punishment, we’ve seen less and less of her.
The next morning, as always, the mekorg wakes everyone. She peeks into our shelter and orders Cheng to work, not me, since she knows I’ve been sick. Cheng tells her that she has diarrhea. But she says Cheng has to work.
Cheng obeys. Quietly, she gets up, then disappears among the shelters. At lunch, her face drawn and pale, she appears with my ration. At night she has to get up several times with diarrhea, the next symptom of amoebic dysentery. The next afternoon Cheng brings my ration and explains to me what she has been plotting since last night.
“Athy, we’ve got to escape from this place,” she begins softly. “You’re very sick, and I’m getting sick like you. If we stay here, we’ll die. We need rest and medicine.”
Cheng speaks like an adult, the kind of strong, comforting tone I would hear Pa