When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [73]
The fish is ready, brown, shriveled, a small spread on a plate before Than. Than hands Mak a few fish; Map two, Avy one, Ry one, and me also one. He keeps four for himself. I savor the fish, biting a little at a time as if I’m licking cold ice cream. Than also eats it slowly, his mouth busy telling about his trip to the lake.
Mak watches Than, proud of him. Avy has already finished her fish, her hand reaching, her swollen eyes imploring. She interrupts, “Than, can I have a little fish?”
Than’s distracted but goes on with his adventure. I notice Avy’s patience, her ability to stifle her hunger. I can’t remember the last time our family really sat down together and just listened to one of us.
“Than, can I have a little fish?” Avy persists, her hand weakly reaching forward.
Than breaks off half of a fish and murmurs, “She eats everything, ants, anything, that’s why her face is like that,” Than says, irritated. “I tell her not to, but she’s stubborn. She doesn’t listen.” He looks at Mak as if wanting her to agree with him.
Mak tenderly suggests, “Don’t be mad at p’yoon. She’s hungry, koon.”
Than glares at Avy, then spits out, “Stubborn!” He throws half of the fish at her. It falls through the crack in the floor. Avy scrambles. She hops off the hut, her head moving, her eyes searching hungrily. I can’t fathom what Than has just done, the cruelty. We are all shocked. Yet Than is somehow enraged, his body almost trembling, seemingly for no other reason than the mild disrespect of his young, starving sister. His face churns with emotions even as we watch.
“Why did you do that, koon?” Mak finally says.
Avy cries, sobbing desperately. Ry and I help her find the fish beneath our hut. Gently, we lift small tree branches, one by one, from the pile of firewood where the fish fell. When we find it, she desperately blows away the dirt that has coated it. She eats it, and she cries, trembling, as if losing and finding this scrap of fish would make the difference between life and death. As soon as she finishes her fish, her body relaxes. Her disfigured legs, now blown up to absurd proportions, slowly carry her into the hut. She says little, accepting her condition and treatment.
Than is quiet, but we can feel remorse in his silence. Tonight has brought us brief joy, then grief. Agony at the realization that the Khmer Rouge have shaped us, made our tempers brittle and our hunger sharp. Led us to the point where we could be as cruel to one another as they are to us.
The rice distribution comes to a complete stop. Starvation revisits us. Avy’s edema gets worse, the fluid seeping out from pink cracks between her toes. She walks slowly, like a turtle, her body stiffened with the fluid that continues to build behind her thin, bloodless skin. One day Mak and I return home from the woods and she’s gone, disappeared to Peth Preahneth Preah with Ry. There, she gets a food ration, not much, but better than nothing. She’ll die there, I fear. I don’t know of anyone who has ever returned. To our knowledge, there’s no proper medicine, yet we send her there, to this crude excuse for a hospital—filthy and unsanitized, humming with flies that congregate on patient’s eyes, the sick squeezed onto the floor between rusty twin beds. However, Ry’s there to take care of her.
Time passes. It’s been a month since Avy left for Peth Preahneth Preah. At home, we fight our own battles. Mak, Map, and I are also afflicted with edema. Than has again been sent somewhere to work, but my thoughts don’t stray to be with him. Starvation has blurred my mind too much to care for anyone. Each day I barely have the energy to keep my heart beating.
Ry returns to Daakpo, her eyes empty, her stomach protruding with sickness. With the weariness of an old woman, fifteen-year-old Ry sinks to the floor of our hut. Her eyes are dry, her face guilty and sad as she reports to us Avy’s death. Softly, she explains: “Last night I noticed the change in Avy’s body. Her