When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [68]
I need to get up to pee. My legs are numb and weak. I gingerly stretch them out, then limp over the sleeping children and down the stairs. Outside the shop, tree branches, coconut leaves, and other debris are scattered in disarray, still wet from the rain. This is a real village, a place where people actually used to live. Real houses, real shops, not makeshift huts. Now empty.
I limp back up the stairs and go back to sleep.
“Wake up. Wake up, comrades. It’s time to go to work. WAKE UP!” a female voice yells from the bottom of the stairs.
I want to obey, but I can’t. My wound is throbbing and my body feverish. I steal glances at three children on the floor by the corner of the wall. By the sounds of their groaning, I know they’re very sick, and I’m relieved that I’m not alone.
After most of the children have left, the brigade leader demands, “Comrades, why aren’t all of you going to work?”
“I’m sick. My foot swells and I can’t walk,” I say.
“I have a fever,” another girl reports humbly, her voice soft and small.
The other two sick children roll over to face her and report their illnesses.
“That’s enough. That’s enough! All of you stay in here and don’t go anywhere. Later, a comrade will take you to peth [clinic]. Nobody leaves this place,” she emphasizes.
We go back to sleep. Later in the day, I’m awakened by a soft, gentle voice.
“Ey, wake up. Wake up. I’m taking you to peth to give you medicine. Wake up!” A woman mildly shakes a girl’s shoulder.
I sit up, gazing at her. Dressed in a black uniform, she has short black hair that hangs no lower than her earlobes. She’s gentle. A lady, a doctor, disguised in the Khmer Rouge uniform. Her hand touches the girl’s neck as if checking her body temperature.
“Are all of you sick?” she asks gently, looking at us.
We answer by saying yes or nodding our heads.
“Come with me and you’ll stay in peth until you get better,” she replies.
“I can’t walk that well. My foot is hurting me. It swells up,” I announce. I show her my foot, and she is aghast at the sight of the raw wound. She is the first comrade who has ever reacted to the sight of my foot with compassion.
She carries me to a small hut nearby. Her warm arms embrace me against her chest, holding me as if I were her little sister. She looks young, perhaps in her late twenties. Her complexion is light, as if she has never been exposed to hard labor, to the sun.
She squats next to me and touches my shoulder while I lie on a shelflike bed made of old slabs of bamboo. She asks, “P’yoon srey [Young sister], how long have you had this wound?”
I’m touched by the tender way she addresses me. It’s a term I have never heard from a Khmer Rouge. For the first time, I wonder if some Khmer Rouge are actually nice, quietly hiding among the ranks of the cruel.
“I’ve had it for a while. It almost healed before I came to work in Phnom Srais because I cleaned it every day with the juice from slark khnarng. My father used to put penicillin powder on my knees when my wounds got really bad. Does bang [elder sibling] have penicillin?”
It is an outrageous request, considering how far we are from civilization. She gazes at me briefly with a trace of a smile, amused, perhaps, that I even know the word.
“I’ll go and look. I’ll be back,” she promises.
She disappears into a cubicle at the other side of the hut. She returns quickly, holding something in her hand.
“I have penicillin. I’ll put it on your wound for you.” She shows me the vial.
I can’t believe my eyes. It looks just like what Pa kept in his medicine drawer—a vial with a rubber cork and a shiny metal band wrapped tightly around the top. The last time I saw modern medicine used was before my father’s execution, during Lon Nol’s time. It seems like another world.
She opens the vial and holds it above my left foot. She warns, “It will sting.” Again, I’m surprised by her knowledge of medicine. But I welcome the pain