First They Killed My Father Part 5

Dreaming of food makes my stomach growl with pain. I'd give anything now for a tiny piece of moon cake or a leg of roasted duck. My mouth waters at the thought, and a wave of sadness washes over me. I know that no matter how hard I dream, I am only wis.h.i.+ng for the impossible. I hope Ma and Pa don't know what we kids think about all the time. They want us to forget about our past lives and to survive in the present. It is no use thinking about food knowing you will not get any. Still, it is hard to think of anything else. Hunger eats at my sanity.

Many people in the village are risking their lives to steal corn from the nearby fields. I see the way they sneakily eat food, quickly hiding it when they see me walk by. I want to ask them to share some with me, but I know it is useless for then they will have to admit their crime. As much as I want to become a thief myself, I do not have the courage to do it. It seems a lifetime ago when I was rich and spoiled in Phnom Penh, when children stole from me and I did not care. I could afford to be stolen from, but I judged them harshly for doing so. I thought thieves were worthless, too lazy to work for what they wanted. I understand now that they had to steal to survive.

On New Year's eve, I have my greatest dream and my worst nightmare. I am sitting alone at a long table. The table is covered with all of my favorite food in the world. There is food everywhere as far as my eyes can see! Red and crispy roasted pig, brown and golden duck, steaming dumplings, plump fried shrimp, and all kinds of sweet cakes! Everything looks and tastes so real that I do not know it is a dream. I shove everything into my mouth at once with both hands, licking my fingers deliciously. Yet the more I eat the hungrier I become. I eat with great anxiety and urgency, fearing the Khmer Rouge soldiers will come and take it all away from me. I am so greedy, I do not want to share the food with anyone, not even with my family. In the morning, I wake up feeling depressed and guilty. I wake up wanting to scream, yell at Geak, and beat up Chou because I do not know what to do with my despair. Always the hunger pains are there, never ending, never leaving me. Often, I feel guilty because in my dream, I gorge and hide the food from even Geak.

Every minute of the day, my stomach grumbles as if it is eating itself. Our food ration has been steadily reduced to the point that the cooks are now only getting a small twelve-ounce can of rice for every ten people. My brothers' food rations are so small that they have very little to give us when they visit. They try to come often, but the soldiers make them work harder, leaving no time to visit.

The cooks continue to make rice soup in a big pot and serve it to the villagers. During mealtime, my family lines up with our soup bowls in our hands along with the other villagers to receive our ration. The cooks used to serve us rice gruel, but now there are only enough grains in the pot to make soup. When it is my turn to receive the food, I watch anxiously as the cook stirs the rice soup. Holding my breath nervously, I pray she will take pity on me and scoop my ladle of soup from the bottom of the pot, where all the solid food rests. Staring at the rice pot, I let out a breath of hopelessness when I see her take the ladle and stir the soup at my turn. Both hands tightly gripping my bowl, I take my two ladlefulls and walk to my shaded spot underneath a tree, away from all the others.

I never eat my soup all at once, and do not want my own family to take mine away. I sit quietly, savoring it spoonful by spoonful, drinking the broth first. What's left at the bottom of my bowl is approximately three spoonfuls of rice, and I have to make this last. I eat the rice slowly, and even pick up one grain if I drop it on the ground. When it is gone I will have to wait until tomorrow before I can have more. I look into my bowl, and my heart cries as I count the eight grains that are left in my bowl. Eight grains are all I have left! I pick up each grain and chew it slowly, trying to relish the taste, not wanting to swallow. Tears mix with the food in my mouth; my heart falls to my stomach when all the eight grains are gone and I see that the others are still eating theirs.

The population in the village is growing smaller by the day. Many people have died, mostly from starvation, some from eating poisonous food, others killed by soldiers. Our family is slowly starving to death and yet, each day, the government reduces our food ration. Hunger, always there is hunger. We have eaten everything that is edible, from rotten leaves on the ground to the roots we dig up. Rats, turtles, and snakes caught in our traps are not wasted as we cook and eat their brains, tails, hides, and blood. When no animals are caught, we roam the fields for gra.s.shoppers, beetles, and crickets.

In Phnom Penh, I would have thrown up if someone told me I would have to eat those things. Now, when the only alternative is to starve, I fight others for a dead animal lying in the road. Surviving for another day has become the most important thing to me. About the only thing I have not eaten is human flesh. I have heard many stories about other villages where people have eaten human flesh. There was a story about a woman in a village nearby who turned to cannibalism. They say she was a good woman, not the monster the soldiers portray her to be. She was so hungry that when her husband died from eating poisonous food, she ate his flesh and fed it to her children. She did not know that the poison in his body would kill her and her children as well.

A man in our village came upon a stray dog in the road one day. The poor dog did not have much meat on it, but the man killed and ate it anyway. The next day, the soldiers arrived at the man's door. He cried and begged for mercy, but they did not pay any attention to him. He raised his arms as a s.h.i.+eld, but they did not protect him from the blows of the soldiers' fists and rifle stocks. He was never seen again after the soldiers took him away. His crime was that he did not share the dog meat with the community.

I feel sorry for this man's fate, for I would have done the very same thing to my dog. In Phnom Penh, our family had a friendly little puppy with a wet nose. It was a tiny thing with s.h.a.ggy long hair that dragged on the ground. The dog loved to hide underneath big piles of clothes on our oriental rugs. Our housekeeper was quite fat and did not know that the dog liked to hide. It was a terrible sight when she stepped on and killed the dog. Pa threw the body away before any of us girls saw it. It shames me now to know that I would eat it if it were alive today.

Thinking about food makes my stomach growl with hunger. Pa tells me today is New Year's. Though my feet ache I decide to go for a walk in the nearby fields. Pa has been granted permission from the chief for me to stay home because I am sick. After a few hours of lying in our hut, the growls in my stomach demand that I search for food. My eyes probe the ground, hoping to find some food to fill my hungry stomach. It's a hot day and the sun burns right through my hair, searing my greasy scalp. I run my fingers through my hair feeling for the lice that make my head itch. With no shampoo or soap, it is a constant battle to keep myself clean, and as a result, my hair clumps together in greasy knots, which makes it hard for me to catch the lice. I pause in the shade underneath a tree for a short rest.

In Phnom Penh, I could run very fast around our home, barely avoiding the corners and sharp edges of furniture. Even on school nights, I would seldom go to sleep until late. I am now always so tired. Starvation has done terrible things to my body. After one month of having very little to eat my body is thin all over, except for my stomach and my feet. I can count every rib in my rib cage, but my stomach protrudes outward, bloated like a ball between my chest and hips. The flesh on my feet is so swollen it glistens as if it will pop open. Curious, I push my thumb into my swollen feet, pressing the flesh inward and creating a big dent. Counting under my breath I wait to see how long it takes for the dent to fill itself up. After a while, I make more dents on my feet, legs, arms, and face. My body is like a balloon. The dents I make reinflate slowly. Even walking is a difficult task because my joints hurt whenever I move. When I do move, seeing where I am going becomes a challenge because my eyes are nearly swollen shut. When I do see well enough to walk, my lungs yearn for enough air, and being short of breath, it takes a laborious effort to control my balance. Most days, I have neither the energy nor the desire to walk around, but I must walk today to search for food.

Slowly, I make my way to the blackened forest in the back of the village. A couple times a year, the soldiers set sections of the forest ablaze to create more farmland. I don't know why they do this since we haven't the strength to work the land already cleared. This part of the forest has just been burned a few days before and the ground is still hot and smoking. I search the ground for animals and birds that might have been trapped or killed in the fire, providing me with ready-cooked food. Last month, in another part of the forest the Khmer Rouge razed to create more farmland, I found an armadillo curled up in ball, its sh.e.l.l burnt and crisp. Still, it took some work on my part to uncurl the ball and get to the tasty cooked meat inside. Today, I have no such luck.

A long time ago Pa told me that April is a very good luck month. In the Cambodian culture, New Year's always falls in April, which means that all the children born before New Year's become a year older. In the Cambodian calendar year, Kim is now eleven, Chou is nine, I am six, and Geak is four. In Cambodia, people don't celebrate the day on which they were born until they've lived past their fiftieth year. Then families and friends gather to feast on sumptuous food and honor the person's longevity. Pa told me that in other countries, people become a year older only after having pa.s.sed the exact day and month that they came into the world. On this day every year, friends and families gather to celebrate with food and presents.

"Even children?" I asked him, incredulous.

"Especially children. Children get a big sweet cake all to themselves."

My stomach swishes at the thought of having a sweet cake all to myself. I pick up a piece of charcoal from the ground. Tentatively, I put it in my mouth and chew it. It does not taste like anything, just chalky and a little salty. I am six years old and instead of celebrating with birthday cakes, I chew on a piece of charcoal. I pick up a couple more pieces for later and put them in my pockets as I head toward home.

Pa.s.sing through the village, the stench of rotten flesh and human waste hangs heavily in the air. Many of the villagers are getting sicker and sicker from disease and starvation. They lie in their huts, whole families together, unable to move. Concave faces have the appearance of what they will look like once the flesh rots away. Other faces are swollen, waxy, and bloated, resembling a fat Buddha, except they don't smile. Their arms and legs are mere bones with fleshless fingers and toes attached to them. They lie there, as if no longer of this world, so weak they cannot swat away the flies sitting on their faces. Occasionally, parts of their body convulse involuntarily and you know they are alive. However, there is nothing we can do but let them He there until they die.

My family does not look very different from them. I think how I must appear to Ma and Pa. Their hearts must break at the sight of me. Perhaps that's why Pa's eyes cloud over when he looks upon us. As I near my hut, the stench and heat overwhelm me, causing my temples to throb. The pain in my feet travels up to my stomach. Showing no mercy, the sun burns through my black clothes, scorching the oil on my skin. I tilt my face up to the sky, forcing myself to look directly into the sun. Its brightness stings my eyes, making me temporarily blind.

As April turns into May and May into June, the leaves shrivel, the trees turn brown, and the river streams dry up. Under the summer sun, the stench of death is so strong in the village, I cover my nose and mouth with my hands and breathe only the air that filters through my fingers. There are so many dead people here. The neighbors are too weak to bury all the corpses. Often the bodies are left in the hot sun, until the smell permeates the surrounding air, causing everyone pa.s.sing by to pinch their noses. The flies come buzzing around the corpses and lay millions of eggs on the bodies. When the bodies are finally buried, they are nothing more than large nests of maggots.

For lack of anything else to do when my body gets too sick to work in the garden, I often watch the villagers dispose of the corpses. I see them dig a hole underneath the hut of the dead family and cringe as they push the bodies into the hole. The dead families are buried together in one grave. There were times when such scenes terrified me, but I have seen the ritual performed so many times that I now feel nothing. The people who die here have no relatives to grieve for them. I am sure that my uncles do not know of our whereabouts either.

One of our neighbors in the village is a widowed mother of three. She has been alone since soldiers murdered her husband. Her name is Chong and her girls Peu and Srei are five and six, and she had a baby boy of about two. The boy has become the village's latest victim of starvation. I saw him before he died: his body was all swollen, very much like mine, with bloodless skin that looked like white rubber. Chong held him in her arms everywhere she went. Sometimes she carried him in a scarf tied diagonally across one shoulder and her back, his lifeless feet dangling in the air. Once she tried to breast-feed him at our house, but nothing would come out of her body. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were empty sacks hanging against her ribs, but nevertheless she lovingly put them in the boy's mouth. He never responded to his mother's nipple. He moved or cried but lay in her arms as if in a coma. Every once in a while, he jerked his head or moved his fingers to show that he was still alive, but we all knew he would not make it. There was nothing we could do for the baby. He needed food, but we had none to spare. At our house, Chong held her baby and talked to him as if he weren't dying, just sleeping. He died quietly in his sleep a few days after they visited us. Still, his mother continued to carry him with her, refusing to believe he was dead until the chief forced the baby from her arms and buried him.

The two girls and Chong have taken a turn for the worse since the death of the boy. A few days after his death, his two sisters decided to go to the forest and look for food by themselves. They were so hungry they ate mushrooms that turned out to be poisonous. After they died, Chong ran hysterically over to our house. "They were shaking all over! They kept calling me to help them, and I couldn't! They kept crying. They didn't even know what happened to them!" Ma catches Chong in her arms as she falls to her knees.

"They are resting now. Don't worry, they are sleeping." Ma holds Chong in her arms.

"They turned all white, the hair on their bodies stood up and blood came out of my babies' pores! My babies shook and cried for me to help them, for me to take their pain away. I couldn't do anything for them. They rolled on the ground screaming in pain, asking me to make it stop. I tried to hold on to them, but I wasn't strong enough. I watched them die! I watched them die! They died crying for me, but I couldn't help them." Chong sobs uncontrollably, sliding to the floor, and lays her head on Ma's lap.

"There is nothing we can do now. They are resting." Ma strokes Chong's arm, trying to soothe her pain. But no one could save her from the pain; she cries in howls. She reached her hands into her s.h.i.+rt to ma.s.sage her chest as if trying to exorcise the pain from her heart.

Standing beside Ma, I watch the girls being buried near their house. I cannot see their bodies, but earlier two villagers had brought out two small bundles wrapped in old black clothes. The bundles looked so small that it is hard to imagine they were once the girls I knew. I wonder if the Angkar cares that they are dead. I remember when we first arrived at Ro Leap, the chief told us the Angkar would take care of us and would provide us with everything we need. I guess the Angkar doesn't understand that we need to eat.

I turn to look at Geak, who is sitting under a tree with Chou, away from the burial procession. She is so small and weak. The lack of food has made her loose so much of her beautiful hair and it is now little more than wispy patches on her head. As if sensing my stare, she turns her head toward me and waves. My poor little sister, I cry silently, when will it be your turn to be bundled up like them? Geak waves at me again and even attempts a smile, baring her teeth. A wave of heaviness descends upon me. By smiling, she only manages to stretch her skin back even more, and I can see what she will look like when she is dead and her skin dries over her bones.

Chong sobs loudly as the villagers put the girls in a little hole. When she sees the villagers cover her girls with dirt, she runs over to the grave and attempts to climb in. Tears, phlegm, and drool from her eyes, nose, and mouth drip all over her s.h.i.+rt. "No," she cries. "I'm all alone. I'm all alone." Two male villagers pull her out of the grave and hold her back until the last shovel of dirt is piled on top of Peu and Srei. When the job is done, the villagers walk away to the next hut to dig the next grave. "This one will be easier," a man says as he shakes his head. "No survivors in the family."

After the deaths of her children, Chong has now gone crazy. Sometimes I see her walking around still talking to her kids as if they are there with her. Other times her eyes clear up and she realizes they are dead, and screams, beating her fists on her chest. A few days later, Chong comes to our house with great news for Ma. "I have found the perfect food-don't know why I didn't think of it before! It's safe and it doesn't taste bad either," she says excitedly to Ma. Then her eyes fog over, her hands wave about her in agitated motions, and she whispers, "I could have saved my children."

"Wait, what is it? What is it?" Ma asks anxiously.

"Earthworms! They're fat and juicy. You take the dirt off, cut them open, wash them, and cook them. It isn't bad, cook 'em like you do noodles. I've tried it! Here's a little bowl." She hands her bowl of earthworms to Ma.

"Thanks," Ma manages to say.

"I have to go. I have to go find my children." Chong smiles at Ma and rushes off.

I feel like retching at the thought of eating them. Earthworms feed off of dead things in the ground. For me, eating them would be like eating dead people. I try to picture a nice clean bowl of worms, but the picture changes to worms crawling on the rotten flesh of the dead we bury, writhing and squirming their way into the body by the thousands. "Don't worry, I still have some jewelry left that we can trade for food. We won't have to do this," Ma says to me.

We are some of the few very fortunate people in the village who have possessions to trade with the base people for food. Our situation is not as bad as others because we still have gold, diamonds, and precious gems. At Uncle Leang's hut, Ma managed to hide them from the soldiers by sewing them in the straps of our bags, which we kept even after they burned our clothes. This jewelry, though beautiful, is now almost worthless because of the war. An ounce of gold buys only a few pounds of rice, if we're lucky. Most of the time, we get less than that. Among the many crimes that exist in the Khmer Rouge society, bartering for food is viewed as an act of treason. If caught, the trader is whipped into confessing the names of all parties involved. The Khmer Rouge believes one individual should not have what the rest of the country does not have. When one person secretly acquires more food than the others have there is an inequality of food distribution in the community. Since we are all supposed to be equal, if one person starves, then all should starve.

A few weeks ago, Kim told me that maybe the Angkar isn't to blame. He says the name Pol Pot is pa.s.sing through many lips in the rice fields and village. Many are saying that Pol Pot is the leader of the Angkar but still no one knows who he is. They whisper that he is a soldier, that he is brilliant, and that he is the father of the country. They also say he is fat.

They say he has kept his ident.i.ty a secret to guard against a.s.sa.s.sins. They say that he liberated us from foreign domination and gave us independence. They tell us Pol Pot makes us work hard because he wants to purify our spirit and help us achieve beyond our potential as farmers. The say he has a round face, full lips, and kind eyes. I wonder if his kind eyes can see us starving.

After the villagers buried her children, we see less and less of Chong now. She has come to be known in the village as "the crazy lady." She eventually ate some poisonous food and died the same way her daughters did. Her body was found by one of the villagers the next day, all contorted and b.l.o.o.d.y. They buried her in the ground next to her children.

We survive this period because Pa is friendly with the chief. The base people do not eat at communal kitchens but cook for themselves. Among them, the chief's family is the fattest and wears only new black, s.h.i.+ny clothes, not the faded gray rags we have on. Pa is able to get extra rice in exchange for the gifts he gives to the chief. Pa lies and tells the chief that he was only a shopkeeper in Phnom Penh, that he found the jewelry in the deserted houses during the evacuation. Pa gives him Ma's ruby bracelets, her diamond rings, and much more in exchange for a few pounds of uncooked rice. Pa puts the rice in a bag, inside a container, and hides it beneath a small pile of clothes so that the other villagers cannot see it. On some nights when we really need it, Pa allows Ma to cook a tiny portion of the rice and mask the smell by burning damp, decayed leaves in the fire. This extra rice is our family's defense weapon against completely starving to death.

One morning, Chou wakes all of us with her loud cries. "Pa, someone was in the container last night!" All eyes turn on the exposed rice container, the lid lies crooked on top and slightly ajar.

"Maybe some rats got into it and stole some. Don't worry, tonight I will seal it very tight," he says. "This rice belongs to all of us."

As Pa speaks, I know that he thinks someone in our family has stolen the rice. The story of the rat is not true and everyone knows it. Convinced that he realizes it was me, I hide my eyes from him. Shame burns my hand like a hot iron branding me for all to see: Pa's favorite child stole from the family. As if to rescue me, Geak wakes up and her cries of hunger interrupt the incident. "It was me, Pa!" my mind screams out. "I stole from the family. I am sorry!" But I say nothing and do not confess to the crime. The guilt weighs heavily on me. I had gotten up in the middle of the night and stolen the rice. I wish I had been still in between the sleeping and waking worlds when I did it, but that is not true. I knew exactly what I was doing when I stole the handful of rice from my family. My hunger was so strong that I did not think of the consequences of my actions. I stepped over the others' sleeping bodies to get to the container. With my heart pounding, I slowly lifted off the top. My hand reached in and took out a handful of uncooked rice and quickly shoved it into my hungry mouth before anyone woke and made me put it back. Afraid that the crunch of uncooked rice might wake the others, I softened the grains with saliva. When it was soft enough, my teeth ground the rice grains, producing a sweet taste that slid easily down my throat. I wanted more, I wanted to eat until I was full and worry about the punishment later.

"Bad! You are bad!" my mind scolds me. "Pa knows."

A long time ago, Pa told me people should be good not because they are afraid of getting caught but because bad karma will follow them through their lifetime. Until they make amends, bad people will come back in the next life as snakes, slugs, or worms. At six years old, I know I am bad and deserve whatever low life-form I will be reincarnated as in the next life. Who else but a bad person would cause the starvation of her family for her own selfish stomach?

From that day on, I stay more and more to myself. I stop going to Pa to ask him questions or to just sit near him. I stop looking at Geak, my four-year-old sister, slowly disappearing from malnutrition. My only constant companions are the growls in my stomach. Mean-spirited and restless, I fight constantly with Chou, who is older and more timid than I, and she only fights back with words. On the other hand, I often push her to fight with me physically. I want to be punished for the rice I stole from them, for someone to hurt me. Ma, however, allows our fights to go directly to her temples, giving her headaches. Pa is the only one who still has self-control, and our constant fights do not drive him over the edge.

During one fight, I push Chou too far, and she pushes me back. That was all the reason I needed to charge at her. Knowing she is no match for me, she screams to Ma for help. Angry, Ma picks up a coconut sh.e.l.l and throws it at me. The hard sh.e.l.l hits my head with a bang, as a flash of white pain explodes in my skull. Dizzy, I lean against the wall for balance, breathing slowly. Then something drips down my forehead, running down my cheek. Raising my hand, I wipe my cheek as droplets of blood fall onto my s.h.i.+rt. Staring at her with vehemence, I sit down and yell at Ma, "I am going to die because of you!"

Her face darkens with worry as she realizes what she has done. Quickly, she rushes over to me and tends to my wound. "Look at what you made me do," she says, her voice breaking. "You kids just would not stop and you, Loung, always start these fights. You get on my nerves too much." My lips quiver with shame for being bad. Ma is crying because of me, because I am bad and can do nothing right. Later that evening, Pa comes home and tells me I am not going to die, that it is only a bad cut. I trust Pa and believe him. He leaves me and goes to speak to Ma.

Ma avoids looking at him as he approaches her. My parents almost never fight. Pa is always so much in control of himself that. I have never seen him lose his temper. This time he speaks loud, angry words to Ma. She sits in the corner of the room, arranging and rearranging our black clothes and our food bowls. Standing, Pa hovers over her. "Why did you do that? You could have hit her eyes or worse. Then what would we have done? How would a blind child survive here? You have to think of things like that now!" Saying nothing, Ma quietly wipes her eyes with her red scarf. Pa says many other things to Ma, but I stop listening.

When Pa leaves for work, Ma, holding Geak, comes to me. "I didn't mean to hurt you. You kids fight too much and I lost my head. Why are you always fighting with everyone?" That is as much of an apology as any child will get from an adult in Cambodia. I look at her, grit my teeth, and turn my head away. When I don't want to listen to anyone, I go inside myself to a place no one else can reach. As Ma talks on, I ignore her. Noticing this, she sighs and finally walks away. When she and Geak leave the hut, a tornado of anger rises up in me, quickening my breath. Black and strong, I direct this anger at Ma for making me feel all this pain. Staring blankly at my empty rice bowl, I act as if I do not care what she said to me. For a brief moment, I even wish her dead. I wish her dead for showing me that I am bad. Inside, I hate myself for not being good and for always being the troublemaker in the family.

Moments later, Kim calls Chou to return to the communal garden for our work a.s.signment. Seeing me, he glares and marches on ahead of us without a word to me. Chou runs over to me and grabs my hand. I bow my head down. I know our fight was my fault, and yet Chou is not angry with me. For her, the fight is over; she has already forgiven me. I wonder if she knows that I choose her to fight with because I know she will always love and forgive me. With our fingers entwined, we walk together to the garden.

That night, lying on my side between Chou and Geak, I stare at Ma sleeping next to Pa. My anger subsides and the bottom of my stomach opens, drawing me deeper and deeper into a pit of despair. I remember her in Phnom Penh, her laugh as I bounce on her lap as we ride in a cyclo. She was so beautiful. No one from our past would recognize her. Her red lips are purple and dry, her cheeks are sunken, there are deep shadows under her eyes, her porcelain white skin is brown and wrinkled from the sun. I miss the sound of my mother's laughter in our house. I miss my mother.

Unlike Pa, Ma was never used to hard work or labor. She was born in China and moved to Cambodia as a little girl. After they were married, Pa took care of Ma in every way. Now he urges Ma to work harder than the other new women in the community. Ma also has to be extra careful because she speaks Khmer with a Chinese accent. Pa fears that this will make her a target for the soldiers who want to rid Cambodia of outside ethnic poison. Ma is proud of her heritage but has to hide it before it proves dangerous to us all. Pa says that the Angkar is obsessed with ethnic cleansing. The Angkar hates anyone who is not true Khmer. The Angkar wants to rid Democratic Kampuchea of other races, deemed the source of evil, corruption, and poison, so that people of the true Khmer heritage can rise to power again. I do not know what ethnic cleansing means. I just know that to protect myself, I often have to rub dirt and charcoal on my skin to look as dark as the base people.

keav

August 1976

Six months after Keav left our village and sixteen months since the Khmer Rouge took power, a young girl arrives at our village in the morning looking for Ma and Pa. "I come with a message from Keav," she says. "You must come to the hospital. She is very sick and she wants to see you."

"Why? What's wrong with her?" Ma manages to ask, s.h.i.+fting Geak on her hip.

"The nurse believes it is something she ate. She has a terrible case of diarrhea. You must come now. She has been sick all morning and asking for you all this time." Pa cannot get off work to go see Keav, and we do not know how sick she is. After receiving permission from the chief, Ma leaves with the girl to see Keav.

Keav still lives in Kong Cha Lat, a teenage work camp with about 160 laborers. The teenagers are separated in two houses, one for the boys and one for the girls. At the camp, they work from dawn until dusk in the rice fields. The girls are given less food than the boys but are expected to work just as hard. Both their food rations consist only of watery rice soup and salted fish.

After Pa and Kim leave for work, Chou, Geak, and I wait for Ma to return. Since we have no instruments to tell us the time, and we're no good at guessing it from the sun's position in the sky, the wait feels like forever. While Chou fans the flies off Geak, who is asleep beside her, I pace the ground in front of our hut. Each step I take, the earth beneath seems to s.h.i.+ft, throwing me off balance. Each breath I take, the air rushes quickly down my throat, choking me. In my mind, I envision Keav at her camp.

Keav woke one day to notice that her stomach was bloated and rumbling, making sounds as if something was swis.h.i.+ng around inside. She ignored it, believing it was merely hunger pains. She took a deep breath, tears welling up in her eyes. Always there are the hunger pains. Sometimes the hunger pains hurt so much that they spread to every part of the body. It has been a long time since she'd had enough to eat. She rubbed her hand on her stomach, telling it to settle down.

Following the rules, she rolls her straw mat off the floor and leans it against the wall. The dirt floor is hard and full of black ants and other bugs. At night, she always makes sure she closes her mouth tightly and pulls her blanket up above her head, hoping to leave no openings for the bugs to crawl in. She looks around her camp, her eyes focusing on a few faces she recognizes among the eighty girls she lives with. She smiles at them but is greeted with blank stares. Clenching her teeth together, she turns away from them and inhales deeply. She knows she cannot show her emotion, or the supervisor will think she is weak and not worth keeping alive. Unlike our family's hut in Ro Leap, she does not have the privacy of her own s.p.a.ce to let go of her emotions. At the camp, if she cries she will be judged by 160 pairs of eyes that will think her weak. And she misses us so. This time the tears spill over and she quickly wipes them with her sleeves before anyone sees.

In my mind's eye, I see Keav breathing deeply and trying to fill the void in her heart. Her lungs expand and take in more air as she chases our images away. This loneliness. How is she to survive this loneliness? To live in a place where no one cares about her and everyone is out to get her. She has no protection there. She is utterly and completely alone. She misses Pa so much, misses his protection and the way he looks after her and worries about her. She misses Ma's arms around her, stroking her hair.

She walks over to the water tank and scoops out a bowl of water to wash her face with. She uses a piece of her old black pajama s.h.i.+rt to try and clean her teeth, remembering how Pa wanted her to take care of herself. She rubs the cloth across her teeth a few times, but her gums are too sore and she quits. She looks at her reflection in the water and gasps. She is ugly. Would anyone believe that she was once a very beautiful girl? She is fifteen and looks no bigger than a twelve-year-old. Her fingers gently touch her protruding cheekbones. In Phnom Penh, she often protected her skin with cleanser and moisturizers. Now damaged by the sun it is marked with scars and pimples. Her oily hair is so thin that her scalp peeks through. It is cut short, in the same block style as the rest of the eighty girls, and makes her look like a young boy. She glances at her body and she recoils. Her arms and legs are like sticks, but her stomach is fat and bulges out like she is pregnant.

Tears flow easily from her eyes, but it is okay. She could disguise them by splas.h.i.+ng water on her face, pretending to wash her eyes. She is fifteen and has never held a boy's hand, never been kissed by a boy, never felt a lover's warm embrace. There are a lot of nevers in her life, not that it matters now. She only longs for them because she wanted someday to experience the love Ma and Pa have for one another.

She wraps her red scarf around her head and walks toward the rice fields. Every day she works in the rice fields, planting and harvesting rice. Everyday, it is backbreaking work. It is only five A.M., but today she could see that the sky is hazy and cloudless. The air is already hot and humid. In an hour, the haze dissipates to expose a white sky. Her black pajama pants and s.h.i.+rt absorb the sun's rays and sweat drips out of all her pores. With the sun beating down on the top of her head, the heat and humidity make it difficult for her to breathe.

An hour pa.s.ses and her stomach continues to growl, making loud, angry noises. She ignores it, hoping it will eventually settle itself. Talking and singing isn't allowed during work. Planting rice now has become an automatic, physical action, requiring no concentration. Thus, she has lot of time to spend with herself in her head, too much time even. Her mind grows lazy and wanders around too many topics-her schoolwork, a cute boy she met in Phnom Penh, movies she saw-but always it comes back to our family. She misses us so much.

Another hour pa.s.ses, and her stomach is now in great pain, causing her to double over. She wraps her arms around her stomach, runs to the bushes, pulls her pants to her ankles, and lets the poison run out of her. She pulls her pants up and walks back to the fields but soon has to rush to a bush again. After several visits to the bushes, she finally walks over to the supervisor.

"Please, I am very ill. It is my stomach. May I take the rest of the day off and visit the infirmary?" She pleads with the supervisor. The supervisor looks at her with disgust and contempt.

"No. I do not believe you are sick. We all have hunger pains. You are just a lazy, worthless city girl. Go back to work." Keav's heart shatters at being so denigrated.

Another hour pa.s.ses, but her stomach refuses to settle down. In that hour, she spent ten minutes in the rice field and the rest of the time in the bushes. She is then so sick and weak that she has to drag her body to the supervisor.

"Please, I am very sick. I cannot stand up anymore." As sick as she is, Keav's face burns with embarra.s.sment as she follows the supervisor's gaze to her leg. On her last trip, Keav soiled her pants.

"You smell terrible. All right, you have permission to go to the hospital." Finally, with permission slip in hand, Keav staggers back to her camp and collapses.

An hour after she leaves the field, Keav finally arrives at the makes.h.i.+ft hospital where there are many patients waiting to see the nurses. The hospital is a decrepit old building with many cots lined up on the ground. When Keav approaches a nurse and reports her illness, the nurse takes her arm and leads her to a cot to lie down. Without taking her pulse or touching her, the nurse asks Keav a few brief questions about her symptoms and hurries away, saying she will return later to check on her and bring some medicine. Keav knows this is a lie. There is no medicine. There are no real doctors or nurses, only ordinary people ordered to pretend to be medical experts. All the real doctors and nurses were killed by the Angkar long ago. Still Keav is glad to be out of the sun.

At Ro Leap, when the sun hovers directly over my head, the lunch bell rings at one P.M. P.M. Rus.h.i.+ng out of our hut, Chou, Geak, and I meet Pa and Kim at the communal kitchen to receive our ration. Sitting in the shade, we eat our meal of thin rice soup and salted fish in silence. Chou feeds Geak from her own bowl, being careful Geak doesn't spill or drop anything. Her round stomach, small head, sticklike arms and legs look disproportional to the rest of her body. All around us, groups of five to ten people sit together and quietly consume just enough food to live for another day. Rus.h.i.+ng out of our hut, Chou, Geak, and I meet Pa and Kim at the communal kitchen to receive our ration. Sitting in the shade, we eat our meal of thin rice soup and salted fish in silence. Chou feeds Geak from her own bowl, being careful Geak doesn't spill or drop anything. Her round stomach, small head, sticklike arms and legs look disproportional to the rest of her body. All around us, groups of five to ten people sit together and quietly consume just enough food to live for another day.

I look up and see Ma's figure returning. Her face is red and puffy from crying. We know something is seriously wrong, yet none of us are ready for the shock of the news. "She's not going to live, she's not going to make it," Ma weeps as she whispers the words. "Keav is not going to survive the night. She is very sick and has a bad case of dysentery. They believe she ate poisonous food. She is so very thin and sick just from one morning of diarrhea." Ma drags her palms from her eyes down to her cheeks as she describes Keav to us. She tells us there is no flesh left on Keav's body. Keav's eyes are sunken deep into their sockets, and she can hardly open them to look at her. When she first saw Ma, she did not recognize her. Keav wheezed and gasped for air just from trying to talk to her. Ma breaks down and weeps loudly.

When she finally did speak, she kept asking for Pa. "Ma, where's Pa? Ma, go get Pa. I know I am going to die and I want to see him one last time. I want him to bring me home to be near the family," Ma tells us. "That is her last wish, to see her family and be near them even after she's gone. She said she is tired and wants to sleep but will wait for Pa to get there. She is so weak she cannot raise her hand to wave the flies away from her face. She is so dirty. They didn't even clean her mess up until I got there. They just let her lie there in her sickness and dirty sheets. No one is taking care of my daughter."

After Ma and Pa receive permission from the chief to go get Keav, they hurriedly leave together. I sit on the steps of our hut with Kim, Chou, and Geak, watching our parents disappear to bring my oldest sister home to us. Kim and Chou sit quietly, lost in their own thoughts. Geak crawls over to me and asks where Ma went. Receiving no answers from us, she climbs down the steps to sit on the ground. Picking up a branch, she draws circles, squares, and crude pictures of our hut in the dirt. As we wait, the minutes turn into hours, the hours into eternity, and the sun refuses to lower in the sky to make time pa.s.s faster.

I follow them in my mind as they travel to the hospital to find my sister. I imagine Keav there, waiting for our parents.

Keav remembers the feel of Ma's hand softly touching her forehead. It is the best thing in the world to have someone love you. Though she can not feel her body much, it is nice to have Ma's hands on her, cleaning, wiping, smoothing her hair. She misses them so much! She misses Ma so much now! The memory brings a small smile to her lips. She smiles again thinking of Ma, but soon the smile turns to tears. She cries silently, finally letting go of her emotions. She wishes Ma didn't have to see her like this, worrying about how she appears to Ma during her last visit. Ma is so shocked and sad to see Keav in this condition. Ma cries a great deal and tells her profusely how much she is loved. Ma gently holds her hands and kisses her forehead. She wants to sit up for Ma, but her body is so weak that the slightest movement is painful. There is so much she wants to say to Ma but talking is difficult.

She is frustrated at being trapped in a body that refuses to move. When Ma leaves, Keav can only turn her head to watch her disappear. "Come back quickly, Ma," she whispers. She knows Ma does not want to leave her, but Keav wants to see Pa one last time. She misses him and the rest of her family so much. A wave of sadness washes over her and seeps into every inch of her body, taking her breath away. A sadness so enormous and overwhelming she does not know what to do with it. A black fly buzzes over and lands on her hand. She is too weak to swat it off. A strange chill runs up her spine. She knows it to be pure fear. Her heart weighs so heavy, and it is getting more and more difficult to breathe. "Pa, I'm so afraid," she cries into the thin air. "Please come see me soon."

When, at last, I see their distant figures return, my siblings and I rush toward them. My heart breaks when I see my parents return without my sister. Their faces are drawn and long. I run to them for news of my sister's condition, though in my heart I know she is already dead. Ma, having lost her oldest daughter, runs to her youngest daughter, four-year-old Geak, and clasps her tightly.

"Keav was already dead by the time we got there," Pa speaks wearily. She died shortly before we arrived. The nurse said she kept asking if we had arrived yet, saying how she wanted to be home and nowhere else. We got there too late. I asked the nurse if I could take her body home, but they no longer knew where she was. They had thrown her body out because they needed her bed for the next patient. We tried to look for her among the dead on the floor but could not find her." The nurse went on to tell Pa that more than a dozen girls died that day from food poisoning. She said it is lucky they were notified at all. Most of the time, they don't know where to contact the parents. Those they have no contacts for, they bury right away. Keav's body must have gotten mixed up with them. "They acted as if we should be thankful we were told. Now she's dead, and we cannot find her." Pa tries to control his anger but his face contorts. His shoulders shaking, Pa hides his tears from us and covers his face with his hands.

"I asked them if I could have Keav's belongings," Ma whispers hoa.r.s.ely. "The nurse went to look for them but came back with nothing. When I saw her, Keav still had the gold watch, a gift from us that she kept hidden. When she knew she was dying she took it out and wore it for the first time. The nurse said she does not remember seeing a watch on her wrist and does not know where it is." Most likely, someone had stolen it off her wrist.

I cannot listen anymore. I run and run, finding myself heading for the woods. There, beneath a large tree, next to a thick bush, I hide from the rest of the world. Hugging my knees tightly to my chest, I rest my head on my forearms. I cup my hands over my mouth and scream out in pain over the cruel death of my sister. The sound burns in my throat, fighting to be released, but I hold it in as tears stream out of my eyes.

People have always said that Keav and I were similar in many ways. We looked almost identical to each other and were also alike in personality. We were both headstrong and always ready to fight. Keav's last wish was not granted; she did not get to see Pa before she died. I wrap my arms around my stomach and double over in pain, falling to the ground. In the thick gra.s.s, my tears pour out for my sister and seep into the earth.

That night, lying on my back, my hands crossed over my chest, I ask Chou what happens to people when they die.

"No one knows for sure, but it is believed that at first they sleep peacefully, not knowing they are dead. They sleep for three days, and on the third day they wake up and try to return home. That's when they realize they are dead. They are sad but have to make peace with themselves. Then they walk to a river, wash the dirt off their bodies, and start their journey to heaven to wait for their next reincarnated life."

"When will they be reincarnated?"

"I don't know," Chou replies.

"I hope she won't be reincarnated here," I say quietly. Chou reaches out for my hand and holds it gently as she wipes her eyes with her sleeve. I think about what Chou has just told me. I imagine Keav sleeping peacefully somewhere. On the third night she wakes up only to realize that she is dead. It saddens me to think of her pain upon finding out she cannot return home. I imagine Keav in heaven, watching over us, finally happy again. I picture her the way she looked before the war, and wearing a white gown and was.h.i.+ng in the river. I see her the way she looked in Phnom Penh, not the way Ma described her.

The reality of Keav's death is too sad so I create a fantasy world to live in. In my mind, she is granted her last wish. Pa gets there in time to hear Keav tell him how much she loves him and he gives her our messages of love. He holds her in his arms as she dies peacefully feeling love, not fear. Pa then brings Keav's body home to be buried, to be forever with us, instead of being lost.

I wake up the next morning feeling guilty because I did not dream about Keav at all. Pa is already off to work. Ma's face is red and swollen, and, as always, she is holding Geak. Ma and Keav never got along well. Keav was wild and temperamental. Ma wanted her to change, to be more ladylike, more subdued. I wonder about the regrets Ma must have over their relations.h.i.+p, regrets about all those times they fought in Phnom Penh over what music Keav listened to or the clothes she wore.

Ma turns and looks at me, her eyes cloud over. For a brief moment I want to reach out to her and give her some comfort, but I cannot and turn away from her staring eyes. Our lives will never be the same again after Keav's death. Hunger and death have numbed our spirits. It is as if we have lost all our energy for life.

"We all have to forget her death and continue." Pa tries hard to encourage us. "We have to go about our ways as if nothing has happened. We don't want the chief to think that we can no longer contribute to their society. We have to save our strength to go on. Keav would want us to go on; it is the only way we will survive."

pa