When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [63]
Infection develops quickly. It gets worse every day, from the long walk through the woods to the field and back to the hut. Sand, soil, mud. From standing in the manure-soaked rice field, transplanting rice seedlings all day. The infection ignites like a flame. At night I can’t sleep. It becomes itchy and painful. So painful that I scream out at night. Over and over, I call out to Pa. To ease this pain. To stop my tears. To be my doctor. Or just to be here with me. In my mind, he is so close, almost within my grasp. I yearn for his strength.
Soon the pain becomes unbearable, erasing everything else. I cry out, begging, “Mak, help me, please help me.” Her shadow comes to me. Softly, she scratches around the wound. Her gentle touch soothes me to sleep, but the pain wakes me again, as if a large fierce bird is tearing at my foot, pinched tight in its claws. My throat hurts, raw from my own cries. I bang on the wall made of bamboo and palm. For one week, I cry every night. I’m used up, and Mak’s getting ill from lack of sleep and fatigue. I can’t help it. I keep calling for her, begging her to rub around my wound; she helps me many times, but when she is exhausted, she goes back to sleep, leaving me to scream alone.
The sharp stabs throb from the inside out, pulsing up my leg to my waist and head. Mak can’t sleep. She asks me to sleep away from her, Avy, and Map. All alone like Vin before he died, I’m banished to a small alcove. I realize now how helpless he must have felt. With no medicine, I know that I too will die. My wound is caked with pus. At night I study my foot, scratch around it, try to massage it, and cry. I beg for Mak again and again. But she doesn’t come.
In the morning the fog of pain lifts long enough to allow me to make a decision. If I am to live, I must find slark khnarng, sour leaves, an ivylike vine that grows wild in the woods. It’s a valuable leaf, typically used for cooking. But I have my own ideas. When boiled, sour leaves produce a sharp acidic juice that used to sting my fingers when I had an open scratch. It reminds me of the rubbing alcohol that Pa used to clean out my scraped knees. Maybe the juice of the sour leaves could work a little of Pa’s magic as a disinfectant. At the same time, I can’t rely on Mak, can’t expect her to find sour leaves. The leaves grow in the woods, not in the rice fields. She barely has the strength to work for the Khmer Rouge and keep up with her trips in search of edible leaves to supplement our scanty rice rations. She’s doing all she can to keep our hearts beating.
I cannot walk—since my left foot can’t take any pressure—so while others work in the field, I crawl on my hands and knees away from the village, past a grove of mango trees to a hill where the dead are buried. I follow a tight path carved to fit oxcarts. Past guava and bamboo trees I crawl, searching for sour leaves, the leaf of life.
Finally I see some. Big green leaves sprawling on the ground, climbing up over other shrubs on the other side of a thorny fence. I try to reach them but can’t. Tree branches armed with sharp thorns shield the sour vines. I crawl around the bank until I see a small hole in the fence, through which I wiggle into the field.
In joy, I grab the thick stem, stripping away all the leaves into my