“Remember, Raami,” again and again she would tell me, amidst the clamorous directives of the Revolutionary soldiers and Kamaphibal: Forget the old world! Rid yourselves of feudal habits and imperialist leaning! Forget the past!
“Remember who you are.”
Let go of the memories that make you weak! For memory is sickness!
“You are your father’s daughter.”
Whenever she said this, guilt gripped me. I wanted to tell her I was sorry I’d revealed Papa’s name. I’d done so only because I was proud of him. I wanted to tell her I was sorry because even now I wasn’t sure if I understood it—why my pride had taken him away. But “sorry” seemed too small a word, and whenever Mama reminded me that I was Papa’s daughter, it felt more like a rebuke, as if I had failed to keep him close, to cherish him. She never said she blamed me, but once she came close—“However you loved your papa, Raami, you must learn to keep his memory to yourself.”
• • •
One morning at the rice paddies, a group of women known to be the wives of the Kamaphibal came up to us. Standing on the dike so that they were a couple of feet higher than we were, Bong Sok’s wife, Neak Thot—the “Fat One,” as everyone referred to her behind her back instead of “Comrade Sister”—cleared her throat and croaked, “Comrade Aana, we’re quite pleased you’re doing so well. You’ve shown great Revolutionary material.”
Mama straightened up from her planting and, with the back of her hand, wiped the beads of sweat from her forehead. She gave no reaction to the woman’s praise.
The Fat One continued, “Most New People aren’t as adaptable as yourself, you see. They’ve shown no progress at all since they arrived”—shaking her head in dismay—“despite our effort to reeducate them.” She let out a prolonged sigh. “Ah, they’re still the spoiled bananas they’ve always been! All mush on the inside!” Her cronies tittered. She silenced them with a look. “What was it that you did before Liberation?”
Mama separated a section of rice shoots from the bundle she was cradling and, with her back bent once more, pushed the shoots into the inundated soil. “I was a servant,” she replied without looking up. “A nanny.”
“I see. What exactly did you do?”
“I fed and took care of my mistress’s children.”
“Really!” one of the other women exclaimed, unable to hide her disbelief.
The Fat One crooned, “We never would’ve guessed looking at you.” She squatted down on the dike and then reached over to caress Mama’s arm. “Your skin is smooth as eggshell, Comrade Aana.” Her eyes shot to Mama’s hands, which were soiled with mud and plastered with plant bits. “You have the fingers of—how should I say?—a princess. Ah, so delicate and well preserved!” She let out a false laugh.
Mama stood frozen to her spot.
“Let’s hope they don’t get ruined in this muck,” the Fat One simpered. Then, on her feet again, she sauntered away, as though she had only stopped for a brief friendly chitchat while on her way elsewhere. The others tootled along behind her. “You’re right, Comrade Sister, they are like spoiled bananas!” one parroted, and another retorted, “Good for nothing except fertilizer!”
When they were out of hearing range, I turned to Mama and demanded, “Why did you say you were Milk Mother?” I felt inexplicably betrayed. “You’re not her.”
Mama stared at nothing in particular. “I was wrong to insist you remember who we were. I was wrong. None of it matters now, Raami. All we had, what we were. None matters at all. We’re here now, stuck to this place.”
“You’re not Milk Mother.”
“From now on, you’re the daughter of a servant,” she murmured, staring at her murky reflection in the ankle-deep water, “and I’m that servant.”
What about the story of us being fruit growers from Kien Svay? “Papa said—”
“Papa, Papa!” she snapped. “He would still be your father if—”
She stopped herself. But it was too late. I understood what she meant to say. Yes, he would still be with us, if I hadn’t revealed him to the soldiers.
“There’s no Papa!” Tears pooled in Mama’s eyes but she bit them back. “If anyone asks, you have no father. You don’t know him. You never knew him.”
I said nothing. I felt a rift, like a fault line, that suddenly cracked open on the ground between us, widening as it lengthened. You have the fingers of a princess. As if afraid of the Fat One’s words, all of a sudden Mama was choosing to forget, eradicating from her memory all that we had been, bunching up the facts and burying their roots in the quagmire of denials and unattended pain, as I became more determined to hang on to every detail.
She turned her back to me.
As much as I needed reassurance, I told myself I must not go to her. I must stay instead on my side of this divide and separate myself from her because this was the only way I would survive.
nineteen
Harvest was upon us and with it the endless work, the long days cutting and collecting rice in the fields, the late nights threshing. One evening, as the sky turned a dusky grey, we arrived at the communal granary and joined the excited throngs gathered to celebrate the first official festivity of any kind since our arrival in Stung Khae. Traditional music blared from a speaker nestled in the fork of a giant cashew tree, with an electrical wire connecting the speaker to a small black cassette player at the base of the trunk. Both the speaker and cassette player were rigged to—of all things—a car battery. I thought of the camion that had brought us to Stung Khae months earlier. What ever happened to it? Was the battery pried from beneath its hood? A group of seven or eight Revolutionary soldiers, all male, stood guard, keeping at bay a gaggle of children eager for a closer inspection of this strange music box with its mouthpiece high up in the tree, like a dismembered organ, a heart beating with the thum-thum resonance of a folk drum. A couple of the soldiers hooked arms and started dancing, playing off each other’s steps as the sound of a bamboo flute and coconut lute mimicked each other’s melodies. Others sang, chorusing in unison, Oh, the glory and riches of Democratic Kampuchea, the strength and beauty of its peasants . . . It was all very bizarre, like falling into a hole where familiar things—cassette player, car battery, and electrical wire—had been squirreled away and recycled into a patchwork of nostalgia. Still, I was wooed, my mind anesthetized by the traditional melodies dubbed with Revolutionary-inspired lyrics and the atmosphere of camaraderie and merrymaking. It was harvest as we’d celebrated before the war, before all this, when farmers would gather to give thanks to the earth and sky, honor the sun and rain, make offerings of warm rice flakes to—
The moon, I thought, remembering that harvest celebration always had a moon. I looked up and there it was, high above the giant cashew tree, just a faint silhouette of it now, but surely there, round and porous, like a giant bubble suspended in the sky, a hole into which I might slip and find fragments of a story told to me on a night much like this one.
The music stopped, and my reverie was broken. The Kamaphibal had arrived. People stopped whatever they were doing and gathered around to listen. I searched among the faces for Bong Sok and the Fat One, but they were not in the group. One of the other members began to speak: “The work of the Revolution is far from done! We must forge on! We must continue with our struggle! The Organization needs everyone, every single able body, to help make Democratic Kampuchea prosperous and strong! A glorious and shining example to the world, to the oppressed millions out there, the suffering masses that have yet to experience our Socialist regime!”
“Cheyoo, cheyoo!” the Revolutionary soldiers shouted, and the crowds echoed, “Hooray, hooray!”
The Kamaphibal continued, “There’s no better time than now, the first harvest since Liberation, since the emptying of the cities, to show the world we have taken a huge stride forward!” He made a sweeping gesture: “We have all this rice to prove it!”
Again, the crowds cheered, their shouts made more thunderous by a long, res
ounding clap. Then, I saw her—the Fat One, standing some distance away, surrounded by her entourage of portly peers. Dread swept through me and again I broke out in goose bumps.
“At the end of the work night,” the Kamaphibal droned on, “we will celebrate, according to village traditions, with a feast of rice flakes! The Celebration Committee has been set up”—he gestured in the direction of the Fat One and her cronies—“and these extraordinary ladies will see to it that each and every one of you has his fill!”
This time the cheers were deafening.
• • •
Night fell. Mounds of threshed rice surrounded us, their shadows linking, wavering in the moonlight, creating an impression of sea and mountains, the karst topography I often imagined in mythical legends. We’d been working long enough and it seemed we ought to have a break soon. But the bell had not rung. I gathered several bundles of the cut rice, offered one to Radana, and, pulling her along, kept to the path lit by the fire pits dug deep into the ground to keep sparks from flying astray. While we children were required to work, what and how much we did were not strictly defined. Instead the expectation was that we help as much as possible, and in between jobs we could run around and play, provided that when called upon to aid we must immediately put aside our games—“as good soldiers would when called to arms,” said the Kamaphibal—and assume the task demanded of us. One of our duties was to bring the bundles of cut rice for the grown-ups to thresh and in turn take the remaining stalks to the collection saved for thatch and fodder. In general the threshing and pounding, which required more physical exertion than skill, were relegated to the New People, who, according to the Kamaphibal, needed to be toughened up through as much labor and strain as possible. The dehusking and winnowing, which required special handling, were assumed by the Old People, who could easily manipulate the deceptively simple-looking winnow baskets without tipping them over and spilling the rice, or spin the hand-operated wooden chaff blower without grinding the grains into bits. Mama was among those assigned to thresh. She’d taken up her usual place behind a propped-up wooden plank, against which she beat a bundle until all the grains fell out, before taking up another bundle from the pile next to her.
Seeing how utterly absorbed she was in her task, I marveled at her transformation. It seemed her body, rawboned and strained, could no longer support thoughts and feelings beyond food, work, and sleep. Since that day at the rice fields, confronted by the wives of the Kamaphibal, she’d stopped speaking of Papa completely, never once mentioned his name again, not even to remind me not to talk about him to others. I hadn’t understood it then, but I did now, and I no longer resented her for it—this decision to bury him, to blot him out of our memories as if he’d never existed. It was clear that while food fed our bodies, gave us strength to work and breathe another day, silence kept us alive and would be the key to our survival. Anything else, any other emotion—grief, regret, longing—was extraneous, a private, hidden luxury we each pulled out in our separate solitudes and stroked until it shone with renewed luster, before we put it away again and attended to the mundane.
Mama noticed me staring, looked up, and attempted to smile. I went to her, bringing Radana along, and added our bundles to the pile. She paused, her body rigid, as if wanting to grab hold of us and smother us with kisses, but she dared not with the Kamaphibal around. Such wanton display of affection was against the teaching of the Revolution. She nodded for us to keep working. Picking up an armload of straw each, we continued on our way, heading toward the haystacks on the other side of the compound.
• • •
Finally the bell rang. We could stop working now and have our treat. Along with the rice flakes, everyone received a banana and a cone of sweet palm juice. “Come back later,” one of the wives of the Kamaphibal told me when she thought I was trying to get a second helping. I explained I wanted a share for Radana, and on hearing me the Fat One exclaimed, “Oh, is she even old enough to receive her own share?” I froze. Laughing, she scooped out Radana’s portion and offered it to me, along with a banana and another cone of palm juice. Hugging my hoard, I quickly left before the Fat One changed her mind.
I found Mama sitting on a spread of straw. Radana lay in her lap, yawning, looking as if she was about to doze off. At the sight of food, though, she suddenly sat straight up, bouncing with excitement, licking her lips, offering her arms to me in a gesture of a hug—sudden love. Mama seemed unable to bear the sight of Radana’s hunger. She got up and, looking at the queues of people waiting to receive their shares of rice flakes, said, “It might take me a while . . .” She sounded especially tired. “Let your sister sleep when she’s finished eating. Keep an eye on her. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
I nodded, cheeks stuffed with rice flakes and banana. Beside me Radana slurped the palm juice from the leaf-cone I held to her lips, making puppy sounds, reminding me of the twins, and without warning, tears sprung to my eyes, as I wondered if somewhere they too were hungry. I looked up at the full moon, allowing myself to believe the world was indeed small enough for this one orb of light to illuminate its entire surface, that somewhere under this same moon, this same sky, the twins and the rest of my family were safe and well fed, if only for this one single night.
We finished eating. Radana yawned, rubbing her eyes with her soiled hands, spreading the stickiness all over her face. I took the edge of my shirt hem, licked it, and wiped away the broken bits of food from her skin and hair, while she nodded and swayed, her body heavy with sleep. I steadied her and, with one arm supporting her neck, laid her down on the kroma. She fell asleep in an instant.
All around the compound, other children, especially the little ones like Radana, were seeking the comfort of their mothers’ arms, and if their mothers were not available in that moment for one reason or another, then they sought the security of a soft nook at the base of a tree or a whorl amidst the straw. It was late, perhaps near midnight from the feel of it, but I couldn’t be sure, it being so bright. Certainly it was time for sleep. Even the crickets and cicadas had quieted down. A hush now settled over the whole place as people moved sluggishly about putting away tools and baskets of threshed rice, gathering their belongings, readying themselves to return to their villages. We could all leave, but some people had yet to get their treat, many lingered hoping for seconds, and others simply wanted to rest and catch their breath, let food reenergize their bodies before starting the journey home.
Again, I looked up at the full moon, imagining Papa’s face looking down at me. I felt his presence everywhere. I wanted to be alone, gripped with an urge to speak aloud with him in complete privacy. I looked down at Radana. There was no harm in leaving her here, I thought. She was fast asleep. Besides, Pok and Mae were just a few feet away, slouching against a tree trunk by one of the fire pits, eyes closed, leaning into each other, much as the Sweetheart palms on our land leaned into each other, their chests heaving in harmonious snoring.
I got up and weaved my way through the haystacks toward the woods beyond. There I took a familiar path, slipping seamlessly through the waist-high grass, my body light and inconspicuous as if I were a spirit, a shadow capable of moving through space without causing a ripple or break, until the grass reached all the way up to my shoulders. I walked round and round in the same spot, trampling the delicate, yielding blades to create a comfortable sitting place. It looked so inviting, the whorl I’d created, like a nest almost. It would be as good a place to sleep as any, I thought. The spot I’d chosen gave a clear, straight-shot view of the moon, with no tree or cloud in the way, and feeling safely nestled, I began to talk to myself, making no sense at all, testing my voice first before calling out to Papa, saying his name.
Suddenly I heard other voices. I stiffened and lowered myself to hide. The voices came from the direction of the footpath, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. Then came an abrupt swoosh, like someone slipping and falling. “Get up!” said a man, followed by the sound of a kick and a shove, t
hen the footsteps moving forward again, and a second voice, “How dare you steal! Right under our noses!”
“It’s harvest and we are starving,” answered a third.
“Well, you won’t have to starve anymore. We’ll put an end to your misery. How do you like that?”
No response.
“So where will your final resting place be? The well over there, where the landowner and his family are, or the forest beyond, where we have taken all the others?”
Still no response.
“Let’s take him to the forest.”
They pushed and shoved. I dared not move from my spot.
• • •
I don’t know what path I took, whether I walked or ran or crawled, how much time had passed. When I arrived at the communal granary, my arms and legs and face were all scratched up, grazed by sharp grass and whipping branches. Mama grabbed hold of my shoulders and, looking me up and down, demanded, “What happened to you? Where have you been?” She shook me so hard my head wobbled. “Where’s your sister?”
A cry came from one of the haystacks: “Mama!”
There was a whole army of them. They were as big as flies. Radana screamed, her arms shielding her face from the mosquitoes as if she were on fire.
twenty
Back at the hut Mama whipped me. With the spine of a coconut leaf so thin it felt more like hot wire across my back. Pok and Mae pleaded with her. They tried to pull me from her grasp, but she reminded them, “I’m her mother!”—they had no business interfering—then back to me, “I told you to watch your sister. You were supposed to keep an eye on her. Instead you let this happen. Look at her!” She pointed to Radana lying on the straw mat, her body covered with swollen bites. Even so, I knew this wasn’t about Radana, or me alone. This anger she unleashed was meant for something larger, for all that she’d lost. “You were careless. You deserve this. You’ve asked for this. Do you understand? You’ve asked for this!”
In the Shadow of the Banyan Page 21