When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [7]
This was the girl Pa fell in love with—a bright, headstrong young woman who spoke her mind. Hardly the demure, traditional Cambodian bride. But Pa, too, knew his own mind. He waited patiently for his parents to fulfill their promise, to make the arrangements for him to marry Mak. Tradition required them to approach Mak’s family for a formal engagement. Investigations would follow, including interviews with others about the class and behavior of the groom and his family. But they took too long. Pa couldn’t wait. He went to his favorite aunt, Yiey Om, in Srey Va village. He begged her to serve as his guardian, to ask Yiey Srem and Kong Lorng for Mak’s hand. Understanding the depth of both her nephew’s love and his fear—that any man could come at any time to claim Mak’s hand—she took a boat to Prey Ronn village. She was an unlikely messenger of love, but effective.
Mak’s parents agreed to speed up the marriage. But Cambodian tradition still must be followed. His parents, Kong Houng and Yiey Khmeng, were required to formally seek the approval of Mak’s parents. Permission was granted. At seventeen, Pa finally got his wish, marrying Mak, a slightly confused fourteen-year-old bride.
Pa brought her to Year Piar to live with his parents. Either from fear or simply because she was too young to adjust to married life, Mak immediately ran away, scurrying back to her parents. To her surprise, her mother shipped her right back. Later, Mak laughed about it. But she remembered, too, the heavy expectations of her new mother-in-law.
Yiey Khmeng must have expected a lot of Mak, forgetting that she was so young. In Cambodian custom, the scalps of newborn babies were traditionally marked with a mashed root called paley, the saffron color of turmeric. This denoted the baby’s “soft spot,” and the root was thought to help harden the skull. You knew an infant was maturing when the powder fell away. When Mak married, you might say her paley had not yet fallen away. But it made little difference. High expectations were common among many mothers-in-law, whose words ruled. A woman isn’t just married to her husband, but to his whole family. But Pa didn’t see it that way; he was a man who had the courage to turn away from cultural expectations with which he disagreed. In time, they had two children, both of whom died. Their third child was a skinny, sickly baby. They held little hope for her survival, but she surprised them, earning the nickname Chea, which means “heal.” With a frail new baby, Pa and Mak left Year Piar.
They embarked on a journey, abandoning the financial security of their families to seek their own way, to make a life on their own. They went to Phnom Penh. Bitter about his parent’s unyielding expectations, Pa and Mak made a vow on the Preah Monivong Bridge: If they didn’t succeed in life, they would never return to Year Piar to see his parents. They would kill themselves first, jumping into the deep, flowing waters that ran beneath them.
Now in their early twenties, they were no longer troubled by this vow. Together they built a home in Takeo. Pa was a good husband and father. At twenty-five, he was successfully supporting a growing family. In truth, my father and mother surprised not only his parents but also Mak’s. A home was a status symbol, a measure of making it. Even their parents wondered, Where did they get the money to build a house this big?
They didn’t know of the vow that burned deeply in Pa and Mak. The home was