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“Koon, Mak can’t eat tamarind paste. I have dysentery,” she softly whispers. “You and your brother eat it. Mak will have corn, just give Mak corn.”

My hands untie the knot on my scarf, my heart aching. I wish I knew magic. For a moment I am a small child, back on our sofa watching movies about Cambodian magic, wanting to go to the Himalayas to find some of my own. But the only thing I see here are tears, building up behind my eyes.

“Mak, here is corn for you.”

“Only corn, koon Mak.” Her voice is sweet and longing.

“Athy, koon, this corn is not cooked. It’ll make Mak have more diarrhea,” Mak says, her tone frustrated. Slowly, she hands it back to me.

Heat from my body emanates up toward my face. I am hurt, frustrated, mad at myself that the corn is not cooked. I look at the bite she’s taken from that corn and check the rest—they’re uncooked. I’m so mad at myself. How stupid! I cry. Why do I have to make Mak suffer more, why didn’t I check them better? I thought I had.

As Mak requests, I go to the back of the barn looking for embers to cook the corn, passing by groaning patients, the casualties of padewat (the revolution). In one dug-out cooking hole, I find a few small, fading embers. I gather tiny sticks of firewood nearby, piling them up gently. Kneeling on the ground, I blow at the pile, coaxing streams of smoke. I add larger firewood, then bury the corn in the ash, below the burning fire.

When I return with the roasted corn, Map is sitting beside Mak on the bed. While he eats rice with the tamarind paste, she strokes his hair, her eyes closed. For the first time, I see Map’s face shine. His body relaxes. He looks at ease, sitting with Mak—even here, on a rusty, dirty bed.

I clean up the stench below Mak’s bed, covering it with ashes from the fire pit while listening to her conversation with Map. It seems as if we’re home; her voice sounds gentle, motherly, and caring. Despite her own suffering, her words march along calm and normal. If she shares my fears, she doesn’t show it. “Mak misses koon proh Mak,” she says, her hand patting Map’s back. “Do they give you enough rice to eat, koon proh Mak?”

“Otphong [No], I’m hungry every day,” says Map, his eyes gazing briefly at Mak.

Mak is silent, her mind working.

I come to her rescue. “They never give us enough, but Map picks chili and mint to trade with Yiey Om for food. He’s smart, Mak. He knows how to find Yiey Om’s house after I showed him just once.” I see a glimmer of Mak’s smile, just a hint of it. Her face remains as swollen and as still as a statue’s. Her eyelids hang closed much of the time. She reminds me now of a blind woman, of Yiey Tot, my great-grandmother.

“Do they give you modern medicine, Mak?” I ask, happy to see even a glimpse of her smile.

Suddenly Mak weeps. “Koon Mak,” she sniffs, “they haven’t given Mak water for four days, and I can’t walk. Koon, life here has been difficult without anyone taking care of me, not even my own children.” Mak sobs.

Gazing up at her, tears well in Map’s eyes. “Many times I wished that one of you were here, just to get me water. That’s all I’ve wished, koon srey Mak.…”

Mak’s tears squeeze out from between her swollen eyelids, streaming down her cheeks; her mouth stops chewing the corn. Map’s hands cling to her arm, his head leaning against it, his face reddening.

My eyes are blurred by my tears, but my mind clearly remembers how beautiful Mak once was. I remember her all dressed up one day, wearing a slim, shiny black silk skirt with embroidered flowers at the bottom. Her ivory-colored sleeveless blouse rested lightly against her smooth, youthful honey-colored skin and her soft chin-length dark hair. Even at age four, I was taken by my mother’s beauty. But now I hurt as I gaze at her, my tongue tied, my heart aching. In her swollen face I can see her destiny. Already I feel myself bracing for the day when she’ll be gone.

When she dies, how much will I cry? I’ve asked this question before and I ask it again. Now the answer seems close. The only