Bamboo People

by Mitali Perkins

  “In prison. For resisting the government.”

  “How long has he been there?”

  “Eight months. I’d do anything to get him out of prison. Anything. But now what can I do, with my leg missing?” He flops back on the bed again and winces in pain.

  I don’t know how to answer his question. “How did you end up as a soldier?”

  “They grabbed me and forced me into it. I wanted to be a teacher, not a soldier.” His voice breaks, and he fumbles for the cloth again and presses it against his eyes.

  For some reason I want to keep distracting him. I hold up the other photo in the flickering light. “And this girl?”

  “My neighbor.” His voice is flat, but he peers out from under the cloth.

  “Must be a special neighbor for you to carry her around in your pocket all this time.” I hand the photos back.

  “She is. She was.” He tucks the photos into his pocket and refastens the button.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “No. But I’m sleepy.”

  “The doctor must have given you painkillers. I’m staying here tonight. Wake me if you need anything.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad you’ll be here.”

  It’s my turn to take something out of a pocket. “Here are your glasses. Third time now?”

  He takes them from me, and I catch a trace of a smile. Once again I’m reminded of Oo Meh. This boy can’t be a spy. He’s not even much of a soldier.

  “Tomorrow the camp leaders are coming to ask you questions,” I say suddenly. “Tell them what you told me about your father being in prison and how they forced you into the army. Your life depends on convincing them that you’re not a spy. Can you do it, Chiko?”

  There’s a rustling outside the open window. I hurry to the window and glimpse a shadow disappearing into the bamboo. It looks familiar, and my heart sinks. How long was Sa Reh standing there? How much did he overhear?

  “Who was that?” Chiko asks.

  “Nobody. Get some sleep.”

  18

  I’m so tired that not even the thought of Sa Reh overhearing me talking to Chiko can keep me awake. I don’t stir until I hear Nya Meh and Ree Meh arriving early the next morning. Before they enter the room, I hurry out the back door to splash water on my face and comb my hair with my fingers.

  When I come back Nya Meh is helping the doctor clean Chiko’s wound and rebandage his stump.

  “It looks better,” Auntie Doctor says. “As soon as it’s healed we can get it fitted for a prosthetic.

  Nya Meh, I’d like to teach you how to do this kind of surgery. It can save lives if you do it right.”

  “I’d like to learn, Auntie Doctor,” she says.

  Ree Meh serves me the breakfast Mua sent along. “I am saying a prayer for quick healing, my brother,” she tells Chiko as she puts a plate of rice by his cot.

  Chiko doesn’t answer; he’s gritting his teeth as the wound is cleaned. Auntie Doctor gives him an injection, and he manages to eat once the pain has diminished.

  “Is he going to be ready when they question him?” Ree Meh asks her sister.

  “I hope so,” Nya Meh says.

  It isn’t long before the girls’ grandfather and the three council members enter the room, with Sa Reh at his father’s heels. I brace myself for this second round. I know they’re coming to question Chiko, but somehow I feel like it’s me who’s on trial.

  The four men stand in a semicircle beside the cot, with Sa Reh behind them. The doctor is at the foot of the cot; Nya Meh, Ree Meh, and I are behind her. This means that Chiko’s surrounded by Karenni faces, and he shifts uncomfortably as his eyes dart around the room.

  “Tell us about your mission,” the president asks him in Burmese.

  For long moment Chiko gazes at the healer, as though he’s drawing the strength he needs from her calm expression. Sa Reh frowns as he catches this unspoken communication between a Burmese soldier and a Karenni girl.

  “Speak up, boy!” orders Bu Reh.

  “Our captain didn’t like me much,” Chiko says. “He ordered me to walk ahead and make sure the way was clear for the others. I didn’t do my job. One of my friends was killed—he was a good boy.”

  “Did you have a weapon?”

  “No. The captain didn’t trust me with a rifle.”

  “That’s a lie!” It’s Sa Reh, sticking to Karenni. “Tu Reh had a rifle when he came into camp.”

  “That one was mine,” says the grandfather quickly. “I gave it to Tu Reh. And he used it just as a Karenni man should.”

  “I’m not good with a rifle,” Chiko says. “I was the mine clearer—that was my job. I could never kill anybody, I promise.”

  “He’s lying, I tell you! His father’s a criminal!” It’s Sa Reh again.

  “What? How do you know this?” the president asks, turning to face Sa Reh.

  “I heard him last night. He said he’d do anything to get his father out of jail. Ask him.”

  “Is it true your father’s a criminal?” the president asks in Burmese.

  Chiko looks at me. Slowly he takes the photo of his father from his pocket. “My peh is in prison for resisting the government.” Again he uses the Karenni word for father, a smart move, but his Burmese then grows so proper I can barely understand him. “He is the one who first told me about your courageous fight for freedom. He had a beloved Karenni friend when he was in university.”

  The photo passes from hand to hand until it reaches the grandfather.

  “You look like him,” the old man says.

  “That’s what Tu Reh said, too,” says Chiko.

  Did he have to share that? It makes us sound like we’re friends.

  Suddenly Sa Reh snatches the photo from the old man’s hand and flings it on the floor. “He’s an enemy! A Burmese! Why are we treating him as a guest?”

  “Be still!” It’s Bu Reh. The look he gives his son could make a troop of soldiers put down their rifles.

  Sa Reh takes a step back, eyes on the ground. His mouth is still; he’s stopped chewing for once.

  I feel a twinge for my friend. I’d be ashamed, too, if my peh corrected me like that. But Peh would be just as furious as Sa Reh’s father if I was the one to disrespect an old man like that.

  Nya Meh picks up the photo and hands it to Chiko.

  “Thank you, my sister,” Chiko says, and she smiles.

  The president doesn’t like this friendliness between a Karenni girl and a Burmese boy any more than Sa Reh did. “Step back, girl,” he tells Nya Meh sharply. “Your training center, soldier. Where is it? How big? And who runs it?”

  Chiko obeys with a lengthy description. My Burmese is decent, but I’m finding it hard to keep up. He’s still using a lot of big words I’ve never heard.

  “I know that place,” Auntie Doctor says suddenly. “Used to be a Karenni school, I think. There’s a gym, and it’s near the river, right?”

  “That’s where new recruits sleep,” Chiko replies. “Have you been there?”

  “Yours isn’t the first Burmese leg I’ve amputated, young man. A couple of soldiers I treated in the clinic also told me about that school.”

  “I’m glad to hear your words, Doctor,” the grandfather says suddenly. “Listening to this interrogation, I was beginning to wonder if Karenni ways of hospitality have changed faster than I realized. In my day, we knew how to treat an enemy. It’s in the Book, isn’t it? Please excuse me. I’ll be waiting in the church if you need me.”

  It’s the president’s turn to seem a bit ashamed. The grandfather pats Sa Reh on the shoulder as he leaves.

  The questioning continues. Chiko describes the training regimen, estimates the number of soldiers and recruits who pass through the center, and shares a few details from letters that came from army headquarters. After a while, though, Chiko starts to sweat, and soon he’s clenching his jaw in pain.

  Nya Meh reaches to straighten the sheet over Chiko’s leg and gives the doctor a quick look.
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  “Our patient is suffering,” Auntie Doctor says immediately. “He needs more medicine.”

  “That’s enough for now. We’ll decide what to do with him at our next council meeting. Thank you, Doctor.” The president turns to the girls with a smile, obviously trying to make amends for the crisp tone he used earlier with Nya Meh. “We’re glad you’re safe with us now, my daughters. I hear one of you is quite a healer.”

  “I try, Uncle,” Nya Meh says. “I’d like to train to be a real doctor someday.”

  Auntie Doctor is trying to herd as many people as she can out of the room. “She definitely has the gift. I’d be happy to teach her. Now if you’d kindly step outside, Nya Meh and I can give this boy his medicine.”

  “Your peh was a brave man,” Bu Reh tells Ree Meh as we walk to the threshold. “I fought beside him once or twice.”

  Ree Meh smiles for the first time. “Thank you, Uncle.”

  The men start walking to the council headquarters, and Sa Reh follows without saying a word to me. “Maybe I should go with them,” I say.

  “But your mua said you had to go to school, Tu Reh,” Ree Meh reminds me.

  “School! Hah!” I snort, but I stay where I am. “My peh thought I was ready to skip it—he took me on the mission, didn’t he?”

  Ree Meh sighs. “I know. Come on—maybe I can talk Nya Meh into joining us.”

  Girls. What a mystery. This one stayed beside me in the jungle with bullets flying around her head. Now she doesn’t want to face a dozen or so girls her age.

  19

  Inside, Auntie Doctor is sitting and mopping her face. “I’m getting too old for this kind of pressure. Give the boy his painkillers, will you, Nya Meh?”

  But Chiko props himself up on his elbow, his glasses askew. “If I could get back to the training camp, the army might send me back to Yangon. I’m not much use as a soldier now.”

  “You need to heal from your surgery before you do anything,” Auntie Doctor says, and then she switches to Karenni so he can’t understand. “I hope the council decides to let him stay until that happens.”

  “What are they going to do? Send him back into the jungle like this?” Ree Meh asks. She’s using our language, too. Nobody wants to dim the hope in Chiko’s face. Not even me.

  “The president didn’t seem too convinced that he wasn’t a spy,” I say. “And now he’s seen our leaders and our camp firsthand. I hope they take it to a vote.”

  “What if they do the right thing and let him stay?” Nya Meh asks quietly, handing Chiko a glass of water and three pills. It’s an effort for him to swallow them.

  Auntie Doctor considers this option for a minute. “He might have a chance to get home if that happens,” she says finally. “Once he’s strong enough, we’d have to figure out a way to transport him to the clinic where we make replacement legs. His training camp really isn’t too far from there—a long walk uphill and down again on a good road. In fact, I’ll be heading to the clinic in a week or so. If he heals quickly and they let him come along, I could clear him at the checkpoint. Those Thai soldiers owe me a favor or two.”

  It takes half a day to get to the clinic. The doctor walks it, but how would Chiko make it there with only one leg? Suddenly an outrageous idea leaps into my head. It sounds so much like something Peh would suggest that I wonder for a second if he’s in the room. He’s in my brain, that’s for sure. No, Peh, I tell him silently. I can’t do that. I won’t.

  Chiko is almost asleep now, lulled by the medicine and the sound of low voices in a conversation he can’t understand. He’s shivering, though. “Maybe we could carry him there on a stretcher, like we did before,” Nya Meh says, covering him with a blanket.

  “Tu Reh and I could do it,” Ree Meh offers. “We brought him here like that almost all the way. We can do it again.”

  “No, my daughter,” the doctor says wearily. “It’s not safe for you, even if we could get a clearance. The men leave me alone because I’m old and I’ve treated so many of them—Burmese, Thai, Karenni. They’re starting to seem the same to me. Boys, all of them. Boys in pain.”

  A wave of anger takes my breath away. How dare she say that we Karenni boys are like the Burmese? I’d never storm into a peaceful village to fling a torch on somebody’s roof. But I watched a Burmese soldier do that to my house, and then heard him laugh as I ran.

  “The camp won’t let him stay,” I say. “They’ll probably make me carry him back to the jungle, where I should have left him in the first place.”

  Nya Meh’s voice is gentle. “Don’t look back now,” she says. “You did the right thing.”

  “He’d be dead if you hadn’t brought him here,” Auntie Doctor adds. “The infection was bad, and spreading fast. Now he needs to sleep long and hard, and in the meantime I want to teach Nya Meh a bit more about the surgery. You two—off to school.”

  My fists are still clenched, and I don’t budge. How did I end up in this mess?

  “Won’t you go with me, sister?” Ree Meh asks. She hasn’t moved either, and I can hear the anxiety in her voice. “Please?”

  “I want to spend as much time as I can learning from Auntie Doctor before she leaves,” says Nya Meh. “Grandfather wants you to go, Ree Meh. He told me that I didn’t have to.”

  Somehow, mysteriously, Ree Meh’s worry over school has extinguished my anger like a bucket of water. “You’ll be just fine,” I tell her. “My sister and I will be there, remember?”

  “Maybe I should have stayed in the jungle,” she says glumly.

  20

  Ree Meh and I walk out together, leaving the doctor and Nya Meh consulting in quiet voices over a thick medical book. “School’s that way,” I say, pointing down the path with my pole. Standing tensely on the threshold, she reminds me of a hunted deer.

  “Your mua actually said we had to go after lunch, remember? She’d like it if you gave me a tour of the camp first, Tu Reh, wouldn’t she?”

  Her smile is sudden and sweet. Besides, Mua is always scolding me to be more pleasant, and offering a tour of the camp would be hospitable, right?

  We stroll side by side down the path. The sun is climbing high behind the mountains, and bamboo leaves on both banks shake lightly in the breeze. A bridge spans the deepest, widest part of the river. It’s a good place to fish. We pass the building that’s used for meetings and a smaller one that serves as our school. The two buildings face each other across an open field where a group of kids are kicking a soccer ball, laughing and joking. Just as I told Chiko, two boys are playing with replacement legs.

  Barbed wire borders the camp on one side; the river, edged with bamboo, marks the other side. We’ve built several rickety wooden watchtowers to keep an eye out for invaders. The dense jungle, the threat of attack, and hidden mines keep us away from the Burmese side. An army checkpoint and the threat of arrest block any escape on the Thai side.

  The gate in the wire fence is open, and there’s no guard posted there. “Is it always open, Tu Reh?” Ree Meh asks, studying the dirt road that leads away from the entrance.

  I nod, remembering the hopes I’d had of escaping into Thailand when we’d first arrived. I talked with Peh of blending in, trying to make a living, saving money to buy some land and plant rice. It didn’t take long to find out how impossible that would be. “Thai soldiers have a checkpoint just around the bend,” I tell her. “If a Karenni is caught anywhere outside the camp without clearance, he’s arrested and handed to the Burmese police.”

  Leaning on my pole, I watch the cool, silver river twisting through the valley. It’s the same river that passes through our village. We walked along it to get here. It comes all the way through the jungle, linking us back to the place where I first waded, fished, and learned to swim.

  “Look at all that bamboo,” Ree Meh says.

  “You should have seen our grove at home, right next to the rice paddies.” I say. “We’re not supposed to plant rice here, you know.”

  “But we ate rice
for breakfast. And dinner. Where does your mua get it?”

  “Supplies come twice a month,” I answer. “An American brings rice, oil, dried milk, sugar, soybeans, charcoal—things like that. Another man, a missionary from Europe, brings kerosene, medical supplies, and shoes.”

  “Generous people,” Ree Meh says.

  I shrug. “We Karenni have always made our own way. Now we owe our lives to these foreigners.”

  “My sister would say we owe our lives to God,” says Ree Meh.

  “Even after what they did to her?” I ask.

  There’s a loud exclamation of disgust behind us, and we spin around. Sa Reh is standing there. For a wild second, hope rises inside me—maybe he’s finally giving me the benefit of the doubt. But when our eyes meet, his are burning like coals.

  He turns to Ree Meh, teeth grinding the betel mix tucked in his cheek. “What did they do to your sister?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ree Meh answers. “I can only guess.”

  “Tell me what you know!” he commands.

  I can tell Ree Meh’s getting angry. “Ask her yourself if you’re so curious!” she flings back.

  “I don’t need to.” He takes a step closer to me, and I smell the mix of nuts, tobacco, coconut, green leaves, and limestone paste on his breath. “I can’t believe you’d actually bring a Burmese soldier to a girl who went through something like that. Didn’t you think about the memories she must have about that uniform?”

  “I did,” I say. “But—”

  Sa Reh interrupts. “No excuses. How could you do it? How could you take that soldier to her? Risking your life and theirs—for his?”

  “Our lives were already in danger,” Ree Meh says. “They were coming for us, didn’t you hear that?”

  “He could have left the soldier and brought you here to safety.”

  “That ‘soldier’ is just a boy! He’s younger than you are, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  Ree Meh and Sa Reh are shouting at each other while I’m standing there doing nothing, saying nothing.