by Loung Ung
“Yee Ko.” Khouy addresses Second Uncle Leang by his Chinese title. “The Khmer Rouge will use the storm as a cover to attack the villages!” As Khouy talks, Uncle Leang’s hands roll loose bits of tobacco onto a sheet of paper.
“Yee Haer.” Kim uses his Second Brother’s Chinese title. “Why doesn’t the government help us?”
“The Heng Samrin government is very weak and their soldiers are too few.”
The men continue their conversation without stopping as Chou puts steaming bowls of rice and sweet-and-sour fish soup on their table. As soon as she sets them down, the men dig into their food.
“Khouy.” Uncle Leang puts down his half-smoked cigarette and finally speaks. “Whether they call themselves the People’s Republic of Kampuchea or the Heng Samrin government, it makes no difference to us in the village.”
“Yee Ko, it does make a difference,” Khouy persists between slurps of soup. “We need a government to build schools, hospitals, roads, and so many other things the Khmer Rouge destroyed. Without these things, we will always be trapped where we are in this small village.”
As the men continue to eat noisily, Chou sets up the women’s table. The women take their seats and begin to feed the little ones.
“Khouy, we are safe in this small village,” says Uncle Leang. “Ai, you talk like your father. Remember, when the Khmer Rouge took over, instead of leaving Cambodia, your pa stayed to help rebuild the country. Because he was a leader, the Khmer Rouge took him away.” He pauses a moment as he chews another bite. “Look, it’s too dangerous to get involved with any governments because you never know when they will turn on you. All people need is a good family. The government will not feed our family. The government will not protect the little ones from disease.”
“But, Yee Ko.” Khouy lowers his bowl and inhales deeply. “Only the government’s army can stop the Khmer Rouge from taking over again.”
Sensing that Khouy’s plate is empty, Chou gets up to check on their food and to deliver cups of tea to their table. The men quickly gulp down the tea without even looking at the server. When the glasses are empty, Chou fills them up without being asked.
“Yes, but they do this by taking our boys away against their parents’ wishes. You best stop talking all this government talk, Khouy. Your pa talked a lot about the government and they killed him for it.”
“Yee Ko.” Khouy finishes with his meal and lights up his cigarette. In between puffs, he spits out the loose tobacco and continues. “Pa was right for wanting to help.”
At the mention of Pa, Chou returns to her table. Among the women’s chatter and children’s whines, Chou eats in silence.
When she finishes, she walks outside to check on the pot of boiling yams and potatoes. During the monsoon season, when she can, Chou cooks their food at night to leave her more time to do her chores during the muddy day. Chou approaches the fire pit and kneels on her knees. She presses her hands on the dirt, lowers her face to the ground, and blows into the fire. As the fire rages with each breath, her hair fans the ground like a fine palm broom. The rocks and dirt dig into her palms and knees, leaving deep pockmarks. Satisfied with the fire, she brushes debris of straw and bits of wood out of her hair and wipes her hands against her sarong. She squats by the fire as the smoke changes directions, floats directly into her face, and stings her eyes. She wipes the smoke from her eyes and stares into the fire, thinking of Loung. Again she prays to the gods to protect Eldest Brother and Loung on their journey to find a new home. Then she goes back to blowing into the fire.
Suddenly, an old woman’s voice calls out Uncle Leang’s name from the road. Chou can hear wagon wheels and, suddenly frightened, she runs inside the hut. Uncle Leang stands frozen: his cigarette hangs between his fingers in midair and half-inhaled smoke curls out of his nostrils. They can hear the wagon wheels grind to a stop on the dirt road. Uncle Leang suddenly gets up and rushes out of the hut, his long arms and legs swinging like wooden limbs. The family runs behind him in quick little steps. Balancing Mouy on her hip, Chou pulls hard at Kung, who trails on shaky legs.
Uncle Leang arrives just as a man with a wide smile jumps off the wagon. He grabs hold of his wagon yoke to steady his cows from the excitement of the coming rush. In the wagon, a slight, ancient woman slides on her behind to the edge of the cart, her sarong wiping the dust below her. Beside her, a young woman in her early thirties takes the old woman’s hand and gently helps her off the wagon. On the other side of the wagon, two young girls swing their legs over the side and leap to the ground.
“A-ai!” Uncle Leang calls his mother in Chinese, his eyes blinking rapidly. “Children, this is your amah.” Amah, the Chinese word for “grandmother,” creeps into Chou’s mind.
“A-Leang.” Amah stretches her wrinkled arms to him. The young woman smoothes out the wrinkles of the old woman’s sarong.
“A-ai! Is it really you?” Uncle Leang’s eyes continue to blink rapidly and uncontrollably.
As the old woman draws near, Chou searches her memory for traces of Amah, the mother of Ma, her maternal grandmother. But all she can find are loud voices, lychee fruits, and a screaming dog. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she remembers visiting Amah in the village of Battambang and being taught to tie a small, light wicker basket around a bunch of lychee fruit on Amah’s tree. In her loud voice, Amah told her the baskets prevented the fruits from falling to the ground where her mangy dog would swallow them whole, pit and all.
But the old woman who stands before her looks nothing like Ma. This old woman has eyes so black, they look like coals hidden behind layers of folded brown skin. Her lids hang from brows so jutted, they look like they’ve been molded out of clay; her lips are dried fruits that cover only a few resilient yellow teeth stumps. All of her features sit on a face so small, it looks like a shrunken, miniature head.
“A-ai!” Uncle Leang takes her hands, his big palms closing over her small fingers and wrapping them like precious gifts. “We sent people to look for you in Battambang but no one could find you. We thought you were dead.”
“I’m not dead.” Amah lights up with a smile, transforming her face to the beauty she must have been fifty years ago. “And I’ve brought Kim and her daughter, Eng, and your daughter Hong back with me.”
As Chou hears their names, memories of who they are come back to her. Before the Khmer Rouge takeover, Chou had visited Amah in Battambang where she lived with Ma’s youngest brother, Uncle Lang, his wife, Kim, and their daughter, Eng. Also living with them at the time was six-year-old Hong, the daughter of Uncle Leang and Aunt Keang. When Chou asked Ma why Hong was living with Uncle Lang and not her own parents, Ma told her that on a visit with Amah, Hong loved Amah so much that she followed Amah everywhere. At night, Hong refused to sleep with her mother and instead crawled into Amah’s bed. When it was time for them to return home, Amah asked Uncle Leang to let Hong stay with her and be her companion and friend in her old age until Hong was ready to enter school. And Uncle Leang agreed, not knowing that the Khmer Rouge would invade the country and separate him from his daughter for so many years.
“Hong.” Uncle Leang rests his hand over his daughter’s head.
Hong stands there smiling as Aunt Keang caresses her arms and face.
“My child, you’ve grown so big!”
The family rejoices their reunion; of their missing uncle, Uncle Leang’s brother and Aunt Kim’s husband, no one dares to bring up his name. Not yet.
“Come, come, let me look at you all.” Amah motions for the family to gather around her. One by one, Uncle Leang points to the members of his clan and introduces them to their amah.
“And these are Seng Im and Ay Chourng’s children,” Uncle Leang says gently, his voice somber. “Khouy, Kim, and Chou.”
“Amah,” each sibling greets her quietly.
“Khouy, Kim, and Chou,” Amah repeats. Her leathery face darkens but she has not yet the strength to ask of the fates of the other family members.
“A
mah, come, we have much to talk about.” Uncle Leang gently leads her inside to a chair.
Back as the matriarch of the family, Amah sits with her back tall, her hands poised on her knees, and her feet facing straight forward. When Amah smiles, Chou is now able to see the fine chin, upturned nose, and high cheekbones that were once Ma’s. While the daughters-in-law and granddaughters brew tea and bring out sweet lotus seed for her, Uncle Leang tells the family’s story—of who has been lost, who has left, who remains. After he is done, many in the room are quietly wiping away their tears.
Then Amah begins to recount her story.
When the Khmer Rouge took over Battambang, at first the soldiers allowed First Uncle and his family to live on Uncle’s land, but as time passed, Amah suspected that the village chief wanted the land for himself.
In midsentence, Amah’s face crumples.
“The story is too sad. I cannot tell it. Hong, you finish.” With that, Amah and Uncle Leang leave the room as Hong continues.
At eleven years old, Hong still has the body of a young girl, but her voice carries the wisdom and suffering of her grandmother.
“The story is sad but Amah is very strong,” Hong begins. “Her karma must be very good because the gods have protected her life. In our village, no other person as old as Amah was kept alive by the soldiers. Many of her friends died but Amah’s life is very strong.”
Hong remembers clearly the day they took Uncle Lang away. He had just returned from fishing and everyone was so happy he had caught so many fish! Unlike other Khmer Rouge zones and provinces in 1976, the people living in Battambang were still allowed a little bit of independence. But similar to the situation in the rest of the country, food was scarce, hunger was widespread, and everyone’s clothes were black and tattered.
Uncle Lang was so happy with his catch that he built the fire himself while Aunt Kim cleaned the fish. Hong went over to help him. As he blew into the fire, the mud on his clothes caked up on his skin, giving it a gray color. Hong and Uncle Lang were so focused on their fire that they did not hear the five Khmer Rouge soldiers coming at them. The next thing they knew, two soldiers grabbed Uncle Lang’s arms and twisted them behind his back. Hong was eight years old and stood transfixed with fear. She felt as if her limbs had turned to stone.
“Do not resist!” a soldier screamed as Uncle Lang struggled to get free. Another soldier fired his gun into the air. Hong clasped her hands over her ears and screamed.
“We need to take you to reeducation camp. You will return in three days!”
By this time, Amah, Aunt Kim, and Eng had come running to the scene. Aunt cried and begged them to let Uncle Lang go, but the soldiers paid her no attention. Tears streaming from her eyes and nose, Amah pressed her palms together in front of her chest. In her broken Khmer, Amah pleaded with the soldiers to show mercy and raised her hands to her forehead. The soldiers ignored her and pulled Uncle Lang by his elbows to leave. With AK-47s poking at his back, Uncle Lang turned around; with his jaw set, his shoulders stiff, and his eyes unblinking, he stared at his family.
“Pa,” Eng cried, and reached for him. “Pa!” She made as if to run to him but Aunt crouched down and held her body back. The soldiers pushed their guns into Uncle Lang’s ribs, and abruptly he whirled around and left with them. That was the last time they saw him.
As Hong goes on to narrate their lives under the Khmer Rouge, one by one the women come to fan her, touch her hair, or lay a hand on her back. In a corner of the room, Chou sobs as Hong describes their hunger and how Amah became so swollen that her pants would not fit around her waist. Hong tells them about how she saw a young boy beaten to death with sticks because the soldiers said he was lazy. Hong’s words come out in spits and anger when she reports that the boy was slow with his work because he was sick and starving. Her hands twist together on her lap when she remembers how the boy didn’t cry when he was beaten but instead whimpered like an injured cat. When he no longer reacted to their beatings, the soldier pushed his body into the rice paddy for all to see. After that, Hong became the best worker in her unit, even though she was many years younger than the others.
As Aunt Keang chases the flies off her arms, Hong tells them that after the Vietnamese defeated the Khmer Rouge, the family left Battambang to try to make their way to Uncle Leang’s village. After a week of moving, Amah fell ill and could no longer walk. The other refugees marched on, and the family was the only group left behind in the forest. Without the protection of traveling with a big group, they lived in fear of being kidnapped by the Khmer Rouge, eaten by tigers, and bitten by snakes. They waited alone in the forest for many days before a Vietnamese truck drove by and gave them a ride to the nearest city. There they stayed, tried to grow vegetables, roamed the forest for berries, and stole food from others when they had nothing to eat. They were able to trade some of Amah’s gold jewelry for some herbal medicines to heal her. When Amah was well, they sold the rest of the jewels and made their way to Phnom Penh. From there, they were able to hire a cow wagon to take them to the village.
When Hong stops talking, Aunt Keang pours tea and presses it into her trembling hands. Cousin Cheung peels tiny sweet bananas for her to eat, but Hong sobs so hard her tears leak out of her eyes and nose. When it seems that Hong’s sadness will never end, she suddenly looks up and laughs. Through their tears, the other women join in her laughter, their hands covering their mouths to catch flying spit or yanking up their kroma to wipe their faces. Chou watches Aunt Keang embrace Hong with joy and dreams of a day when she, too, will be able to rejoice in her own reunion with Eldest Brother and Loung.
7 square vanilla journal
September 1980
In my bed, I hug my pillow and my brain sends me to a place not even my shadow can follow. In this dreamland, the sun is as bright as a twenty-four-karat-gold disk against a blue sky and cotton-ball clouds. My whole being feels light—like a breeze that cools the world but sticks to nothing as it passes by. With my arms spread out, I skip merrily along a path as a song floats from my throat into the gentle air.
Suddenly, I am far from home and I begin to run, hoping to leave the panic behind. I stop in front of a cemetery where there is a shortcut. I walk up to the black iron fence and peer inside, searching for suspicious signs of trouble. My gaze follows the brown brick path, resting fleetingly on the swaying trees, gray headstones, and thick shrubs. Nothing looks amiss; everything appears quiet and calm. But then the wind abruptly picks up and whips my hair about my face. The gusts swing the iron gate back and forth slightly, as if beckoning me to enter. Slowly I walk in. In the sky, the white clouds grow dark and follow me.
Once inside, I open my mouth to sing, but instead of a song only a nervous hum comes out. My eyes flicker here and there and all around me. In the distance, I see a dark silhouette of a man standing near the path. With my heart pushing against my shirt, I walk closer and closer to him. The dark clouds expand and shut out the sun. The wind blows angrily at the man but he stands as still as the headstones around him. As I draw near, I see that the man is old, unshaven, and dressed in a gray, loose-fitting shirt and pants. Next to him is an erect shovel with its head dug deep into the earth. I tell myself to walk past him as fast as I can, but my feet move like two ironclad, lopsided hooves.
As I am about to pass, he blocks my path.
“Come here,” he hisses between his unseen teeth. “I have been waiting for you.”
“Get away from me!” “Leave me alone!”
“Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I have something you want to see. I have what you’ve been looking for.” He extends his hand toward me as the light catches the white of his open palm.
“I don’t want to see it!” I push past him.
I am surprised that he does not stop me. My legs surge with a new strength and move me quickly away from the man but strangely, after a few feet, I stop and turn to face him. I walk back toward him. He greets me with a nod. Against the dark shadows of trees and stones, his fin
gers direct me to an open grave. Cold beads of sweat dampen my scalp and slide down my forehead and neck. Step by step, my feet take me toward the grave, until I am standing at the edge of it.
Inside the grave, a little girl sleeps in her coffin. She looks about nine or ten years old. Her hair is black and shiny and fans across her face like a veil. Her smooth brown skin is made darker by the whiteness of her dress. From under her puffy sleeves, two arms rest across her chest, holding a bouquet of white daisies. Peeking out of her flared skirt, her small feet are dressed in white socks and black Mary Janes. She has knobby knees just like me. She looks as if she is napping and I do not want to disturb her.
I crouch on my knees and as I stare into her face, a loud scream bursts forth from my throat. The girl looks exactly like me! Like a ghost, she opens her eyes, reaches out her hands and grabs my shirt.
“You can’t leave me. Don’t leave me behind,” she pleads with me from her dead mouth. But her eyes! Like shiny black orbs, they gaze at me with sadness and anger.
“Noooo!” Her white dress is now covered with blood. There is blood all over her chest, soaking into her daisies.
“Noooo!” I thrash at her in panic when I see the hole in her chest. It looks as if someone has cut her open and taken out her heart. I press my palms against her shoulders, pushing her back down into her grave.
“Let me go! Let me go!” I beg.
As I begin to hyperventilate, I float out of my body and hover above the two girls. Like a silent movie, I watch from the clouds as one girl clings desperately to stay together while the other fights to escape.
With this last vision still lingering, I am jolted awake. In front of me the girls continue to struggle. The residue of the ghost girl’s desperation, the tight grip of her hands, her palpable fear as she tries to hold on to me hang in the quiet air like a mist. I lie paralyzed in bed as the girls gradually begin to fade before disappearing altogether into the white ceiling. On the wall the clock ticks past midnight when I close my eyes and drift back to sleep.