When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [91]
Mak appears, sitting across from me and Map at the end of an oaken table that resembles Pa’s medicine desk at our Phnom Penh home. Below hazy fluorescent lights, I’m spellbound by her presence—her complexion is pretty and healthy, just like it was back in Phnom Penh.
As she gazes at me, I notice the deep sadness in her beautiful face, framed by her neatly combed black hair. I stop feeding Map rice gruel, place the spoon on his plate, and get up from the chair. I pad gently toward her, but before I can say anything, she floats away toward the ceiling. She begs:
“Athy, please take care of your little brother. Feed him food, koon Mak. Look after p’yoon for Mak…. Saniya Mak [Promise Mak].”
“Mak, I want—”
“Saniya Mak,” Mak interrupts me before I can finish what I wanted to say. Her face is despondent, and I look at her searchingly.
“I promise…” I answer, wanting so much for the deep sorrow in her face to disappear. I want to tell her why I couldn’t go take care of her at the Choup hospital. But as soon as I make my promise to her, she vanishes as suddenly as she appeared.
“Mak, please come back…” I cry, looking for her.
Eyes open, I awake in the darkness. Where am I? I ask myself. As I turn my head, the soft sound of the crushing hay beneath my back speaks. Then I know: I’m in a shack, not in my Phnom Penh home with Map or Mak.
Mak was real. She talked to me! Mak, did you come to tell me what you couldn’t before you died. Oh, Mak, please talk to me again. I’ll be waiting.
But she doesn’t come; instead, a firm voice awakens me.
“Get up. It’s time to work.” The shack is rattling.
The familiar shadow of Comrade Thore Meta, my brigade leader, peeks into my shack. When I crawl out of the shack, she disappears. It is early in the morning, still twilight. Another day running along the rice fields, I think tiredly. At least there are no informants to police me. I’m on my own all day with the other children.
Thore Meta, a neradey, the Khmer Rouge from the southwestern part of Cambodia, is unlike my former brigade leaders. She has never scolded me when I’m slow to wake up for work. She is lenient and understanding. She is, perhaps, in her early twenties, with a calm face and chubby cheeks. Her eyes are big and dark. Her complexion is white, in striking contrast to her new black uniform, lighter than many neradey women’s. Hugging her cheeks and earlobes is her naturally curly black hair. She’s short, and so is her neck. It looks as if she doesn’t have one, as if her head is attached to her shoulders. Though she’s not pretty, her kindness makes her more approachable.
Months ago, rumors spread of vicious killings that took place soon after the neradey arrived in Daakpo and other villages around Battambang province (in the western part of Cambodia). Their aim was to take over the leadership here and to purge local Khmer Rouge leaders. Even though Angka forbids people from talking, word of its orders to execute these leaders spread like the pungent smell of rotten rats. This killing calls to mind a Cambodian saying: Domrei gnob khom yok chong-ey tao kroob. “An elephant dies, and one tries to cover it with a flat basket.”
That “elephant” was Ta Val, people said. He was the top Khmer Rouge leader who oversaw the building of irrigation canals and dams in the western part of Cambodia. He, among others, was captured, placed in a sack, and then run over by a tractor. His crime, the neradey charged, was building a dam toward Thailand so that he and his conspirators could escape. Shocked by the news, I wondered why Ta Val and others wanted to escape. What did they fear? How terrifying it must have been for them in their last moments, as the muffled sound of the roller approached, quivering the earth, then crushing them to death. The neradey are brutal, people say, but I’m grateful that Thore Meta doesn’t fit that description.
Many rice fields turn golden. The head of the rice weighs down the stalks. Women have been sent