A Boy Named Rindy, page 21
“What’s your name?” She whispered, our hands colliding on the basket handle.
“Rindy.” I kept my face down so as not to attract the notice of the soldier.
Minutes passed and I wondered if she would offer me her own name, or if I would have to ask. I opened my mouth to ask —
“Mine’s Chivy.”
Chivy, I thought. Her name meant “life.”
The name curled in my mind like the dust in the air.
37
Rain
"Only Angkar will provide your needs." —Rindy
April 1978
One evening, I felt a change in the air. I looked at the sky. It was still pale blue and cloudless, but somehow it wore a mystery. We had begun that day like every other: at two in the morning during the time of night when spirits walked around as shrunken men and hallow-eyed girls. It was growing dark; the sun had risen and set, but we weren’t nearly done.
Dust clung to every inch of my body and swept its fine fingers through my hair like a comb, leaving every strand tainted. Running my tongue over my teeth, I felt dirt between each tooth. The dust had eaten me that day, but it was my stomach that seemed full of it. I felt like a walking sandbag.
I wanted water. The two cups we received at mealtime only teased me, like a feather to my nose. I wanted to swim in it—be engulfed in it. I hadn’t had a bath in months, as water was a luxury not wasted on bathing. I didn’t know where the dirt ended and my skin began, as each day my sweat pulled the grime further into my body.
“Keep shoveling,” the soldier called in his strained voice, his boots sounding over my head. I didn’t bother to look up.
I glanced sideways at Chivy. I sensed her suppressed giggle, even without turning my head.
“It’s as if he has a lump of rice stuck…” She didn’t finish her sentence before carrying the basket up the embankment. I smiled. Making jokes about the soldiers was our favorite thing to do while in the trench, the single star in the otherwise black night sky. Whenever we glanced up the embankment, his double chin was especially pronounced and jostled slightly with each step. His chubby fingers were white and clenched around his Mk-47 and his checkered krama had a lot less flapping at the end than most of the other soldiers’ had. We were careful not to get caught talking, because the soldiers would yell at anyone who opened their mouths except to sneeze or cough. Even that could be risky. Chivy and I exchanged about a couple dozen sentences each day, so as not to try our luck. I would replay each sentence she uttered over and over again in my mind until the next one came. Hearing her voice was a luxury.
On days of especially brutal work and searing sun, I watched her eyes fill with hot tears. Somehow, they never spilled over, being locked inside the glass orbs of her eyes. Her eyes were black pools into her soul. They said everything before she did, and they couldn’t lie, not even for a moment. Although she was thin and malnourished, she was beautiful to me. Her eyelashes were long and the color of charcoal, as if they were the only part of her that could afford to grow. Her timid smile, the way she made subtle jokes without hardly changing the expression on her face, always made me happy. Her ability to laugh, even when life crushed us to the ground, made her the sun to my world. The companionship I grew to find in Chivy was the reason I was able to endure each day. I even began to look forward to them.
“Do you think we’ll ever be done?”
I looked up, but it had grown too dark to see anything. So, I just imagined it, the hole we were digging in the dirt that stretched for miles around us. The hole that was supposed to fix all of our pain and suffering. The hole that was going to give us three crops of rice per year. I feared we would eventually hit the underworld of the spirits, and they would start pulling us through, deeper and darker. Would it be much worse than this though?
“Rindy? Did you hear me?” Chivy’s question pulled me from my dark thoughts.
“I suppose we will have to be done sometime. It’s not like we can make all of Kampuchea into a giant hole.” I tried to be funny, but my voice fell flat. I wasn’t convinced that the Khmer Rouge weren’t destroying everything they touched, as we had never known such drought or desolation before. They used all the water to irrigate the rice fields, as they forced them to grow during the dry season. But I kept that thought to myself, like all the others rattling within my chest.
Grabbing the last basket full, I uncurled Chivy’s fingers and carried it up the bank. The soldiers hated when any of the girls received special treatment as “everyone was supposed to carry their own weight in the revolution.”
“Are you okay, Chivy?”
“Yes, I’m just tired.” I could see the outline of her shoulders and the dragging of her feet as we made our way back to camp.
“See you tomorrow, Rindy.”
“See you tomorrow, Chivy.”
I watched her disappear into the darkness, to the girl’s sleeping quarters. I worried about her, as the soldiers were known to force themselves on the woman while they were sleeping. I had heard some of the older women whispering about it in the food lines. Would they bother Chivy? Thin Chivy, who could barely support her own weight? I picked up a rock and threw it. The stone thudded dully into the trench, now quiet and still. I would kill someone if they tried.
I walked to my section of the camp and sat around the blazing fire, as a Khmer Rouge orator filled the night sky with the glories of Angkar and how we needed to “trust the plan.” I had heard it many times and wondered if they could come up with anything new, before nodding off, my head on my chest and my back resting against a palm tree. I dreamed of a tiger jumping from the fire, and I awoke with a start. How had I managed to sleep through the screeching man’s voice? It must have been only a moment. At last, he completed his tirade, yet I couldn’t recall a word. I strolled groggily with the rest of my battalion to my little hut, which I had improved slowly over the months. I lay down and rolled on my side, instantly falling asleep and cascading into a darkness too deep for dreams.
Awaking with a start, I rolled onto my back. Looking up through the little peep hole I’d left in the roof of my hut to see the stars. The stars that had filled the sky when I’d fallen asleep had vanished. A difference stirred in the air and it was familiar. The sky rumbled, rolling like giant black cobra, making the earth tremble beneath me. Sitting up, my heart began to race. It was here. It was finally here!
“Did anyone hear that?” I sucked in my quivering breath to listen.
Excited voices echoed through the night.
Lying flat on my back, I closed my eyes, waiting for the sensation to hit my skin. Then a drop splattered on my face. Then another.
“It’s here.” I crawled out of my head and reached toward the sky. Relief fluttered in the cage of my chest.
“Quick,” someone shouted. Others exited their huts, and we flung ourselves into frenzied digging, so we could catch the rainwater in holes. Then it started to pour. Lying down with my face to the sky, arms outstretched, I let it wash over me. I couldn’t tell if I was crying in relief or if it was the rain dripping off my nose, but either way I didn’t care. The rain pelted me, coming in sheets. It stung my skin at first, but it was the best thing I had ever felt.
After a while of lying still, I decided I had better get clean. I wrung out my clothes and hung them on the poles of my hut, before letting it pelt my bare skin. Someone passed around a homemade bar of soap, made from kapok fruit and fire ash. My hair was clumped like muddy seaweed as I scrubbed it, hoping to erase the months of dust clinging to every strand. I traced a pulsating vein in my arm, as the layers of filth dissolved, leaving only my skin. I felt clean. It was a clean that went past my skin and into my soul, filling in all the cracks and smoothing all the rough places.
I don’t know how long I sat naked in the rain, but my body, long baked by the sun, began to grow cold. So, I slunk back into my hut, dripping wet and exhausted, to try to warm up. The roof barely kept out any water, so I crawled into the corner and mounded up the straw around me, not even minding the hordes of bugs that lived there.
The rain didn’t stop, and I sat shivering in my hut all night, my clothes sticking to my body. I awoke to the feeling of numb toes and the sound of my teeth knocking together. Where were the bells? I hadn’t slept until sunrise since coming to the dam. The sky was cloaked like a crimson monk, showy and proud. Stepping out of my hut, I saw hundreds of holes filled to the brim with water. Being careful not to step on them, I bent down and slurped some of the water up. I wasn’t thirsty, but I wanted some anyway, just because I could.
“Report for the national anthem of Democratic Kampuchea.” The voice boomed from the speakers. I crept my way through the ground punched with holes and congregated with my battalion made of soggy and smiling boys.
“The rain has brought good fortune to the land of Kampuchea.” Vichet shook his head, the rain pelting the nearest boys. “Now that it has come, we’ve been assigned to work the rice paddies.”
A murmur of excitement drifted through the crowd.
“But I want to congratulate all of you—” He paused, waiting for everyone’s full attention. “This battalion—a youth battalion—completed our assigned section before anyone else!”
My smile faded with the sound of excitement. I wanted to work in the rice paddies, because anything would be better than working in the trench, but would Chivy be there too? I looked through the crowd, craning my neck in every direction, but I couldn’t find her from where I stood. I wandered through the hordes of black clothed people, their clothes dusty and bodies frail, but their eyes full of something wild, something intoxicating. The rain had resurrected something I thought had long died.
A will to live.
38
Rice
"Only Angkar will feed you.” — Rindy
May-December 1978
My battalion was moved, along with many others, to the rice paddies surrounding Kamping Pou Reservoir, to transplant the rice seedlings into the paddies now flooded with water from the rains and the canals. We did this to expand the rice production and reduce the number of weeds that grew with the seedlings. While working in the paddies, the soldiers didn’t usually bother us, as they lazed around the road or washed themselves in the canals, giving us the glorious feeling of freedom. Except for Vichet, who always worked beside us, his broad shoulders bent in work like ours while he told jokes to anyone working around him.
I felt like a new person, washed clean and reborn. I loved the feeling of the mud squishing between my toes. It reminded me of my time with Vuthy as we worked in Pou Kim’s rice paddy. Was Vuthy okay? Was he getting enough food? Had he survived this long? The worries buzzed in my stomach. I couldn’t drown them with water or the little bit of food we were allowed, no matter how much I tried.
Then, without fail, my mind would always drift to Chivy. Thoughts of her drifted between everything else like the fish swimming between the seedlings, filling me with a will to live and a confidence that I wanted to. I had even asked Vichet where she was, but he didn’t know. Worry for her was different than worry for Vuthy, though I couldn’t quite understand why. I had always worried about Vuthy because it had been my job as his older brother to protect him. But with Chivy, the worry pulsated deeper through my veins. I wasn’t just worried whether she had enough to eat, although I was. I was worried that maybe she didn’t have anyone to share her questions with or that she didn’t have anyone to make her eyes light up with laughter. Memories of Chivy felt like the sunrise, glowing and burning through the sky. I looked up at it, allowing my back a moment to stretch unbent, before plucking another seedling from the ground. Did she think about me too?
I heard a commotion of feet in the mud behind me as more workers filed in to begin the work of rice. My battalion had been moved earlier that morning to a larger field, and we were barely making a dent in the acre upon acre of rice seedlings ready to be plucked from the soil. I was relieved to hear them approach because I had been hoping more workers would join. After barely a glance over my shoulder, I continued to work, not because someone was barking commands at me, but because I wanted to. Rice wasn’t like digging a reservoir; rice I knew. I didn’t like much of what the Khmer Rouge said, but I did like that “rice is the lifeblood of Kampuchea,” because it was. It gave us confidence in tomorrow.
Something hit my neck. What was that? I swiped at it before continuing to pull and bundle the seedlings. Then something bigger hit my back. Spinning around, I expected to find one of my smiling mets with a grin smeared on his face. But I didn’t. Chivy stood shyly before me, ankles sunk in brown water and a smear of mud across her face. She had never been more beautiful.
I took a timid step forward, then another, before I felt my arms around her slender body, encircling her. I touched the skin on her arms, reveled in the feeling of her closeness. I had never embraced her before, and I lingered a moment, catching the smell of her hair before releasing her. I stood back, awkward after my forward display of emotion. Her eyes shone up at me, asking so many questions I didn’t know the answer to.
“I’ve missed you, Chivy.”
She smiled in reply, her large eyes eclipsed. There I could see it. She’d been thinking of me too.
“Get to work little, love birds, before you get us yelled at,” one of my mets called, grinning at us. “We’ve got a good thing going here without the soldiers breathing down our necks.”
We began to work, Chivy and I, side by side. I couldn’t stop looking over at her though, and she caught me many times.
As the weeks passed, I could tell she was enjoying being near me too. Transplanting seedlings was different from shoveling. It was still backbreaking, but it felt more natural somehow. Dust didn’t choke us; instead, mud ate our feet.
“Ay!” Chivy jumped as I splashed water onto her neck.
Smiling, I lifted my fingers to my mouth in mock surprise, and she responded with shining eyes, before resuming her work. I stole a couple of quick glances at her, bent at the waist. She was still thin, but the inside of her seemed to expand somehow. Nothing made me happier. Working in the rice paddies was much better for her than hauling dirt, as it didn’t weigh on her arms or her soul as much. Breathing in the fresh air, I continued to pull up the tender rice seedlings, deciding I had better focus and work. I caught sight of a plump snail crawling up a rice plant. Grinning, I pinched it carefully and brought it up for Chivy to see.
“Look what I have prepared for you.” My face stretched in the biggest grin I could manage.
“How kind.” Chivy smiled, but her eyes devoured it hungrily. I handed it to her quickly and watched as she chewed it as if it was the best thing she had ever eaten. We hunted for snails as we worked for the rest of the day, never growing tired of the taste of them on our tongues.
By midday, dark clouds began to roll in the sky like a fish caught in a trap. By evening, we were running back to camp as the sky poured. Instead of dirt eating my skin, rain began to. It seeped into my veins and seemed to water down my blood. The deluge battered our thrown together huts, and each morning I tried to improve mine with whatever I could find in the jungle, but it didn’t help much. As soon as my black clothes dried out, more rain came.
The rainy season lasted five months, until the sky was satisfied, and the earth began to bake beneath the sun again. The rice seedlings we had transplanted in the fields grew tall and began to ripen, with acres upon acres of the golden grass swaying in the wind.
Then harvest began, and Chivy and I waded into the field to begin hacking away at the plants, along with the hundreds of others who had previously worked on the reservoir. In the meetings each night, the Khmer Rouge said our hard work would soon be rewarded with heaping bowls of rice—not the watery soup we had eaten for the past years with only a few slimy kernels. I dreamed about what a bowl of plain, white rice would taste and feel like on my tongue. The weight of it, the flowery aroma rising to my nose. Chivy and I even began to talk about the different foods we remembered from our childhood that we would prepare with it. She talked of her mteay’s coconut fish curry, and I spoke of my Chidaun’s Lok Lak—a savory beef stir fry on a bed of fresh cucumber and tomato.
As I gazed out over the acres and acres of rice, the pregnant plants waved back at me like flags of surrender from the enemy camp until the fields in all directions were laid bare by thousands of workers. We had survived, and the seeds we had planted in the mud had survived. The worry of starvation that had long plagued me like a vulture flew away over the stubble of the golden fields. For the first time in three years, since the Khmer Rouge’s takeover, I had confidence in the future. A future that saw flesh growing on Chivy’s bones, a future that held more than enough and a future where we could reap the benefits. Bending at my waist, I continued to gather the felled rice grass scattered over the paddy that had been harvested. Chivy walked beside me, bundling what I handed to her before placing it on the cart we’d take back to the massive storehouses that had been built. Storehouses bursting with rice that had been threshed and processed until it was ready to be cooked. Hearing a commotion, I glanced up and saw a brigade of large military trucks roll down the road. The ground trembled beneath my feet, and every person nearby stopped to stare.
“Keep working,” a soldier barked, waving his gun in the air.
Rubbing my back, I bent over to gather a small bundle filled with the last of the rice harvest. My back burned under the heat of the sun, and my muscles were tight, but the tightness in my chest expanded as a fear I had talked myself out of resurfaced in throbbing victory. It throbbed until minutes turned into hours.
