When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [74]
Mak doesn’t cry, her eyes fall upon Ry. Map looks on, too young to speak and too little to understand death. Listening to Ry’s description of Avy’s death, I fear the fluid building even now within me, within Mak—our arms, faces, and hands grow taut. I can feel panic rise in my throat. Avy’s death cements my determination to live. In my mind, I tell myself that I must search for edible leaves, toads, mice, crickets, whatever I need to stay alive.
Avy’s death lingers in Ry’s mind. Her inability to mourn continues to haunt her. In desperation, she turns to Buddhism, an institution long since destroyed and disdained by the Khmer Rouge. In spite of that, she finds a way to make things right for herself. She remembers reincarnation, the idea that after death we are re-born. She reconciles her internal conflicts this way, as our parents and elders did before the Khmer Rouge’s takeover. She talks to Avy’s spirit.
“If bang lives to get married, may p’yoon’s spirit conceive in bang’s womb. Bang wants another chance to take care of you.” Ry finally sobs, her heart beseeching, her soul comforted. Her mind is at peace, she tells me.
I find myself thinking about Buddhism, too. I think of those who’ve died and hope they will be reincarnated to make up for this life, returning when freedom and peace have been installed in Cambodia. Like Ry, thinking this way, I’m more at ease, comforted that I’ll see my family again.
Mak and I become very ill. In addition to edema, malaria has returned. The day is warm, but Mak and I shiver with cold that seems to seep from inside our bodies. I lie behind her watching her back tremble as my own body shivers. Three-year-old Map sits by us baffled, as if he wants to help us but doesn’t know how. Now and then, I fall asleep.
“Mak and Thy are sick.” My mind picks up Map’s soft, small voice.
I vaguely feel the vibration of feet climbing into the hut. It seems like a dream.
“Mak, I’m back…. Athy, Athy, wake up,” a voice commands, stern but anxious. I feel a hand shake my shoulder. It’s Ra, my mind acknowledges, feeling delirious.
Ra lifts me and Mak, assuring us she’ll “coin” our backs, a traditional remedy in which a coin is rubbed repeatedly along both sides of the spine and other areas to promote healing. Then she performs another procedure, a remedy Cambodians call choup. Placing a small ember of burning wood into a vial, Ra presses it horizontally against my forehead, above my eyebrows. Being so sick, I can’t feel the hot vial. But my forehead is burned badly, leaving a permanent scar.
Energy gradually comes back to me. Looking at Ra tending to Mak, I’m grateful. Deep down I think that Mak and I would have died, but Ra has come, pulling us back from the hands of death.
Ra tells us grim stories of Phnom Korg Va, a disease-stricken place where many laborers have died from exhaustion, inadequate rest, and lack of medicine. The work camp had become a mountain of death. Among those who have perished is Aunt Rin. I’m sorry to hear this news, yet in an odd way I’m not really sad. Death is a constant, and we’ve become numb to the shock of it. People die here and there, all around us, falling like flies that have been sprayed with poison.
I brace for more bad news, news about Chea, but Ra quickly assures us that she is still alive, but being forced to work hard. She is closely watched by her brigade leader, the same woman who has viewed Chea as an enemy since the day Chea defended the quiet chatter of Ra and Ry at the work site in Daakpo.
A premonition prompted Ra’s return. Her conscience kept telling her something