A Boy Named Rindy, page 14
Pou rubbed his sides. “They were rough and interrogated me, hoping I would talk, but soon they realized I had no information on the Khmer Rouge.”
“The Lon Nol soldiers are all over the village.” Pou Kim looked grave. “They are moving into this region, and I have no doubt, into the paddies to camp. That’s why they were out patrolling the area. The Khmer Rouge will pursue them. It’s no longer safe here.”
We heard someone call from outside. “Are you home, Kim?”
Soon all the neighbors had congregated to argue their side of the fight and grumble about their stolen property. The soldiers had taken rice and riel from everyone. Pou Kim squatted in his doorway, listening, but I knew he had a lot to say.
“The Khmer Rouge will restore the king to his rightful place,” an old farmer speculated, his eyes surrounded by a million, tiny wrinkles.
“They will do more than that,” a younger man interrupted, face ablaze with passion. “They are leading a revolution to restore Cambodia and cut out the corruption that has sunk into its heart.”
“Lon Nol is the corruption,” another man yelled, slamming his palms on his knees. “He’s in the pocket of the Americans and is not looking out for the good of Cambodia. Look how much they just took from us. They’ll rob us all blind before the war is done. Then what?”
The crowd erupted in shouting.
Pou stood to his feet, face weary. “Our lives are all about to change. The Lon Nol soldiers are settling into the area, being pushed back by the Khmer Rouge who have been beating them at every turn. Soon fighting will be all around us.”
“Yes, but what would they want from us? We just want to farm rice,” a woman cried. Another shouted a retort.
Pou raised his hands. “I talked with someone in the next province, where the fighting has been. He said dead bodies fill the paddies, all the animals have been shot and eaten and women are being raped by the Lon Nol soldiers. If you don’t think they’ll steal everything we have or harvest, you’re fooling yourself. If you think we can just go on planting and harvesting like normal, you are wrong. War is here and we can no longer look away.”
He paused, looking at the faces before him. No one spoke. No one breathed. “I’m done just sitting by, hoping Cambodia is restored to Norodom Sihanouk—the rightful ruler. I’m joining the Khmer Rouge to make it happen.”
I looked at Vuthy, and his frightened eyes met my gaze. We both knew what this meant. Life was changing again. I needed to get Vuthy somewhere safe.
25
Chiadun
“She was the backbone of the family.” — Rindy
January 1975
"Mteay?” I called at the closed door, feeling uneasy. “Is anyone here?”
I glanced at Vuthy. He shrugged. We had not been back to Chidaun's since Vuthy and I had run away several months earlier. My stomach clenched with nerves at the thought of seeing Khan again. Would he allow us to come back? I didn’t want to return, but I had no other choice as everyone else we had visited to seek work had turned us away. They had no riel to pay us and no extra food to feed us. We had no other option, except to join the Khmer Rouge. I couldn't allow Vuthy to be put in harms way.
I knocked on the door again. Then I heard footsteps. A pretty, young woman opened the door.
“This is my Chidaun’s house.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Is she here?”
“Yes, but she’s not well.” The last time I had seen her she had been in bed with an illness. Had she not recovered?
Chi Ta had always nagged Chidaun when he was alive to get a maid, as they made plenty of money to be able to afford one and many people had them. But she had always retorted with, “I can do the cooking and laundry myself.” If Chidaun had accepted help she must be very ill. Vuthy and I followed closely behind her, the boards familiar beneath my feet along with the scent of incense. We reached Chidaun’s room, darkened against the afternoon sun.
“Is my mteay here?” My voice sounded hollow in the echoing walls.
“Your mteay is no longer here. She left for Phom Phen with her soldier husband a few months ago.”
I let out a breath, relieved. I wouldn’t have to face Khan, yet. The maid knocked on the door. “Visitors for you.”
“Who is it?” Chidaun’s voice sounded forced and hollow.
“Some family.” She looked over her shoulder, her eyes creasing, as if she enjoyed bringing happiness to my Chidaun. I just hoped happiness is what we would bring to her, and that she wouldn’t send us away.
“Come,” Chidaun wheezed.
Vuthy and I came around her mosquito net, bowing in a sompeah—our hands placed together and heads bowed—to show our respect. Chidaun’s eyes had a strange yellow tint, void of all the usual sparkle. She was especially thin, and her cheeks were shrunken into her face.
“Rindy and Vuthy.” She stretched a knobby hand out toward us. Her whole body wracked in a coughing fit. “I’m so glad to see you here.” I couldn’t help but let the pent up sigh escape my lips.
“Are you still feeling unwell, Chidaun?” Vuthy went to her side and took her hand.
“I’m just an old lady with a cough.” She waved her hand to dismiss his inquiry. “You've both grown tall. Rindy you must be twelve now and that means Vuthy is about ten?"
We opened our mouth to respond but she sped on." What are you doing here? Your mteay said you both left when I asked about you.”
She patted her bed, and sat down and told her all that had happened since we had last been there. We told her about Khan’s angry words, transplanting rice, Pou Kim and me being shot at by the Lon Nol soldiers. Several times, Chidaun coughed into her rag, her frail body wracked by the force. When she pulled her hand away there was blood. Vuthy and I looked at one another, grief settling over us. We were boys, but we knew what the road to death looked like—this was a slow one. A road Chidaun had been traveling alone.
“It’s good you’ve come to stay with me. It will be nice to have young life in the house again. It’s grown lonely since your mteay left to follow Khan, taking Ly and Sotha with her.”
I smiled, so relieved she wanted us to stay.
“Why did Mteay leave when—”
Another coughing fit wracked her body.
“She hadn’t heard from Khan and worried for him”—more coughing—“I’m sure she will be back for the inheritance though. I’m sure all my sons will return as well. Your mteay has resented me since the moment she drew her first breath. She wasn’t going to stay and take care of her dying mteay.” She coughed, blood trickling out of her mouth.
“Chidaun, you said you were going to be all right. That it was just a cough.” Vuthy squeaked. I looked at him, his face was pale. I grabbed his hand and squeezed. I couldn’t protect him from this.
In response Chidaun gave a sad smile and began to speak, but only another fit of coughing came out.
“Come boys, let me get you some food.” The servant grabbed our shoulders and led us from the room. “Let’s let your Chidaun rest.”
I waited until we were out of earshot to voice the question burning on my tongue. “What’s wrong with her?”
“The doctor says it’s lung cancer, but it has spread into her whole body. It’s just a matter of time until she passes into the next life.” The servant’s face was grave. She appeared to care about Chidaun, and I was glad she was looking out for her. “It’s good she will have some family around her in the end.”
She led us into the kitchen and prepared a delicious soup, one like Chidaun used to make before she sent us to the temple, with rice noodles and beef bones. I looked at Vuthy, slurping up his broth, and smiled. We knew where our next meal would be coming from and the following ones after that. Relief mixed with the broth in my stomach, warming me to my toes.
Over the next few weeks, I watched Chidaun grow thinner and thinner, while the wheezing plagued her every breath. She chewed betel root almost continually, to cover up the blood she coughed up and to ease her pain. Vuthy and I would sit with her and tell her stories of our adventures. We only told her the good ones, never speaking of the cruelty of the monks or the fear of the war. Each day she grew weaker and weaker. The time of her death was skulking in the corners of the house, creeping ever nearer to her bed at night. I struggled because I loved her, but I also hated to watch her die slowly.
A monk from the nearest pagoda visited Chidaun every evening with chants to chase away the bad spirits that haunted her, blessing her to recover. Buddhism was like a necklace Chidaun wore that her mteay had tied tightly around her neck when she was born. Some people wore it outside of their clothes for all to see, but others wore it hidden beneath. Chidaun had tied the necklace onto me, but I wore it hidden because I did not understand it but also didn’t know how to remove it. Buddhism was supposed to be about enlightenment, but to me it was like staring into a muddy pond, murky and unclear. Yet I was Cambodian, and Cambodians were Buddhist, as Chidaun had reminded me often.
I watched as Chidaun’s skin changed from yellow to a dull shade of blue, as if the disease was eating her body from the inside out. Her breath sometimes rattled around in her ribs and other times it seemed to stop all together. I couldn’t decide which sound was more terrible.
The monks frequented the house much more often, waiting for Chidaun to die, so they could assist her soul in its journey to the next stage of life. They circled like vultures, draped in orange, waiting for her last breath. Whenever they were around, Vuthy and I retreated into the jungle and waited for them to leave. As they left, they chanted against the evil spirits, but the feeling of darkness seemed more present than ever before. Even in the silence of the night, their chanting haunted my dreams and took the shape of a tiger, pursuing me through the darkness. I awoke each time, gasping and trembling.
About a month after Vuthy and I came home, Chidaun fell into a deep sleep and never woke up. I watched the struggle of pain leave her body with the color that drained from her face to the chorus of chants and wails.
We would wait seven days to begin the burning ceremony, according to the custom, to give her soul time to be reborn. I wondered what she would come back as or if she had enough good merit to escape the cycle and reach nirvana—when the cycles could stop. If she hadn’t, I hoped she wouldn’t have pain in her next life. A strange combination of relief shrouded in sadness wrapped around me.
Later that night, alone in our hammocks, I heard Vuthy sniffling.
“You all right?” I looked straight up at the ceiling, futilely wishing tears would come for me too. Would they help lessen the throb in my chest?
“She took us when neither Aupouk or Mteay wanted us anymore.” Vuthy sobbed. “There is nobody alive now who cares if we live or die.”
I had thought of this but had hoped Vuthy wouldn’t.
“We’ll take care of each other as we always have.”
I reached over and swung his hammock, trying to distract him from his pain.
“I can’t be brave like Chidaun told me to be. I can’t stop crying.”
“I think sometimes crying is brave, Vuthy.”
Except I couldn’t cry, even though I wanted to more than anything to release the pressure within me. Vuthy continued weeping as we swung softly in our hammocks, wrapped in grief. We were boys of twelve and ten, experiencing the pangs of death amidst a war, trying to learn to be men.
26
The Saviors
“People were rejoicing, I rejoiced. I thought the war was over.” — Rindy
April 1975
When the seven days had passed, the women from the village covered Chidaun in a white cloth and scattered incense sticks around her corpse to make her spirit happy, but I could still smell the decay. Vuthy and I avoided the house as much as possible, sleeping on the porch like we used to, with the chanting and the mourners crowding the place.
A neighbor sent word to Phom Phen with her teenage son, to retrieve Mteay, and she made it in time for the ceremony, with Ly, Soth, and her new baby, Tang. So did Chidaun’s other children, three sons, including Pou Ponlok, who I hadn’t seen since the temple. I avoided him, not even venturing into the house if he was inside, afraid he might instruct me to bow and then beat me if I didn’t do it right. The night they arrived they stayed up late and discussed the inheritance. Vuthy and I heard them from the porch, shouting late into the night. I didn’t understand all of it, but I gathered that they were upset with the meager amount of money Chidaun had, after Chi Ta’s passing. He had been a wealthy landowner, they said. Why was this all that was left? They fought until each seemed satisfied, but it was decided that Mteay would get Chidaun’s house.
It took Vuthy and I nearly all the next day to gather enough wood to make her funeral pyre. I stacked branches in a pile in front of the house as instructed. Chidaun was placed in a long wooden box on top of the pile, and Pou Ponlock, along with three of the local monks, lit the dry bark, chanting in a shrill pitch. I hid behind an old lady, so he wouldn’t see me. Minutes passed before the flames licked at the wooden box, but soon the blaze leapt into the sky.
Looking through the flames I watched Mteay’s face distorted in grief, her tears streaking in soot. She held Tang to her chest as she slept, shaking in a rhythmic, unbroken motion. Sotha and Ly stood nearby, their faces ashen as they cried silent tears. Their white dresses curled around their legs like the fire curling in the air. In Cambodia, white is the color of death. Chidaun’s death left us all feeling weak.
I studied Mteay as she mourned. She sounded like she was also slowly dying. There was something else weighing on Mteay though, a deeper darkness reflected terror in her eyes. She looked even thinner, and her face was engraved with premature lines as if etched in by force instead of wearing in naturally with age. After what seemed like hours, her body became still. She no longer convulsed, and her tears stopped falling. She and the baby, Sotha, Ly and some of the women from the village went inside. And my uncles, including Pou Ponlok left, with their share of riel tucked securely away. Vuthy and I sat in our hammocks on the porch, not knowing what else to do with so many people about.
“It has been hell.” Mteay’s voice slipped through the open door.
“What has happened in Phnom Penh?” a woman's voice asked.
“The fighting has been so bad. Khan and the other Lon Nol soldiers have been fighting against the Khmer Rouge near the capital and the Lon Nol are no match. There is so much death, so much suffering. I’ve volunteered at a hospital outside the city, but it’s just a tent really. We’ve run out of supplies and morphine to stop the pain. Most of the dying and suffering are trapped behind the Khmer Rouge, and no one can get to them.”
She paused, taking a breath, as if even the memory was suffocating her.
“About a month ago, the Khmer Rouge surrounded the Lon Nol army a short distance from the city. They cut off all the food and supplies coming and going. I keep hearing stories of soldiers starving to death. I’ve been trying to get Khan food, but I can’t.”
“I haven’t heard from him in six months.” I could hear her crying again, her words shaking and unclear. “I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.”
The women cooed and soothed.
“It will end soon, I think. There is nothing else to fight over, no one can resist the Khmer Rouge.”
The burden of the war sat much heavier on the backs of the cities, where most of the population lived, rather than the rural parts of Cambodia. I tried to imagine what war looked like and how it felt to those enduring it for the past five years. Mteay knew. It haunted her. She couldn’t scrub the look and feel of horror from her face.
An elderly man, head bowed in respect and sorrow, walked from the group of men congregated outside to the open door. I knew he was Mteay’s Pou, Chidaun’s younger brother. He was the family member Kiry had gone to work for.
“It was good of you to come.” Mteay’s steps sounded toward the door. “Please come in and eat; we have food prepared for you.”
Obediently, Mteay’s uncle removed his shoes and disappeared inside.
“Please, Pou, tell me of my son, Kiry.”
“I’m sorry to bring this news, on such a sorrow filled day, but Kiry has joined the Khmer Rouge. He left one night and didn’t return, but some men from the village saw him going with the Khmer Rouge recruiters.”
“How long?” Mteay’s voice was cold, void of all emotion.
“He left about six months ago.”
Moments passed, no one said anything. I looked at Vuthy, his eyes large and frightened. We knew what this meant; Mteay’s son and husband had been at war—with one another.
Within the week, the Khmer Rouge took Phom Penh. News spilled from the radios of the black clad troops marching into the city filled with white flags of surrender and the Lon Nol soldiers surrendering their guns after the nearly five-year struggle. Then the radios went oddly silent. Had the Khmer Rouge stopped the broadcasting on purpose? Had they cut the power to the city? Nobody knew. The uncertainty did little to quell the general celebration, as Khmer New Year was approaching. Vuthy and I could hear the neighbors as they drank and played music late into the night.
“What does it mean that the Khmer Rouge have won?” Vuthy asked, unable to sleep from the noise.
“I don’t know. But it means there won’t be any more fighting and that’s good.”
He didn’t seem convinced.
“Will he come home now?”
I knew he meant Khan. I had been avoiding the question, like pretending rain wasn’t coming.
“I don’t know if he survived. You heard Mteay. The war was bad where he was. Maybe all the Lon Nol soldiers were”—I swallowed—“killed.”
I was conflicted. Mteay relied on him, and his death would devastate her, but I had never liked Khan, and I hated the words he constantly spewed at Vuthy and me. I closed my eyes against the bad thoughts.
