by CW Ullman
CHAPTER II
Mr. Pok discovered that when he encountered people walking, they were civilians leaving a burned-out town or trying to escape the gangs, but if people were in a vehicle, they were Khmer Rouge.
On one of the roads, he saw oncoming lights in the distance. He pulled the van off the road and drove it into a stand of trees. My Ling got out and went to the back to let the girls out and when she opened the doors was overcome with the stench of vomit.
“Di.u threw up,” Dao said.
Di.u came out of the van woozy. “I can’t sit back there; it’s making me sick.”
Mr. Pok shushed the girls. They had been driving back roads pocked with holes, ruts, and mud. Sometimes he pulled up onto rice paddy dikes and zigzagged across open terrain. He guided the van slowly, weaving side-to-side to avoid the hazards. In four hours, they had barely gone twenty miles. In the back of the van, it felt like they were traveling inside a washing machine. The girls crouched behind a tree and waited for the lights to pass. Able to breathe fresh air made them feel better. Dao squatted next to a tree to relieve herself and then tapped Huyen on the shoulder and pointed. Huyen gasped slightly, tapped My Ling, and pointed.
About twenty yards away, behind a tree, stood a terrified man and two children, but that was not what made Huyen gasp. As far as they could see in the moonlit night, every tree hid one or more people, sometimes as many as six. There were hundreds of people. Mr. Pok ran over to the father with the two children. After a minute he came back to the girls.
“All these people are from Chhuk. The gangs showed up in their town two days ago and went crazy killing people. These people escaped. Those who ran out of town to the north were caught by Khmer rebels and slaughtered. We have a problem,” Mr. Pok said. He stopped talking and scratched his head as he did whenever he was lost in thought.
“What?” My Ling asked urgently.
“I thought we could take these back roads to Phnom Penh, but the city is locked down and they’re either killing people or running them out of the city. If we go east around Tonle Sap Lake, we will end up going through Vietnam. If we go west we run into more gangs and it will take longer. No matter which direction we go we have to cross a river, and this country is nothing but rivers; all the ferries have guards.”
“What are we going to do?” My Ling wondered.
“I don’t know. Right now we have to survive whatever is coming down this road. The man seemed to think it was a couple of trucks.”
The rumble of engines could be heard from miles away and instead of a few trucks there were scores. The gangs had commandeered all the cars, trucks and motor scooters from the city of Chhuk. They proceeded down the road in an erratic caravan. The trees the people stood behind were vibrating with the rumble of traffic. Periodically, someone shot a gun from the caravan and a few of the rounds whizzed by. Di.u, Dao and Huyen huddled next to My Ling with little Di.u again trembling. My Ling told them not to look and to say their prayers.
Mr. Pok looked at the vehicles, then wished he had not. Some of the hoods of the cars and trucks had human heads impaled upon them. Some of the motor scooters had wooden stakes on the back adorned with heads. Opposite the stand of trees was a turnoff to Highway Three that the caravan followed, driving away from the people in hiding.
“I came down from Pak Nhai three weeks ago and it was calm the whole way. No one was doing anything. Then in a matter of days this country has turned crazy,” Mr. Pok lamented to no one in particular.
My Ling wondered, “What happened?”
“I think it’s because the Americans left. The Khmer Rouge now has North Vietnam’s backing, but when the war was going on the North had their hands full fighting the Americans. A friend of mine predicted that when the Americans left that Cambodia would be overrun by communists and there would be craziness. However, I don’t think anyone could have imagined this. When I was down in Kampot, someone told me in South Vietnam they’re putting people in re-education camps. That’s probably where your parents are headed.”
“What’s that?” My Ling asked.
“I’m not sure, but I’m willing to bet it looks a lot like prison,” Mr. Pok surmised.
The thought of her parents in prison was almost too much to bear. Her mother was a daughter of one of the top commanding generals in Vietnam and she had never known anything but a privileged life. Her father, a colonel in the South Vietnam Army, had bought rice farms with his father, and created a large rice growing empire. He was tough and would handle prison better than her mother, My Ling thought. She felt an increased urgency to get back to Vietnam to find them and her sister, Trieu.
“When the last vehicle passes I’m going to get the map out and see if I can find a route home. I’m giving you the gun and if anybody approaches us you tell them to leave and wave the gun at them,” Mr. Pok ordered.
“I don’t speak Khmer,” My Ling replied.
“Then just wave the gun at them and look scary,” Mr. Pok suggested.
My Ling laughed to herself, because at eleven years old and four and half feet tall, she did not believe she would scare grown men.
Mr. Pok unfolded the map and shined a flash light on it. My Ling watched as his fingers traced roads. Each tracing came to a halt because the route meant crossing in a ferry, which they could not, and so he would curse. After ten minutes of map tracing and cursing, he turned off the light and saw people walking towards him. He took the gun from My Ling and waved it at the approaching people who were scared off.
He said to My Ling, “We’re stuck. If we go we’ll probably get caught and if we stay here, either these people will steal the van or the gangs are going to find us.”
“There has to be something else. What if we go to an airport and fly?” My Ling said and Mr. Pok laughed.
“Okay, what if we walk or take a boat. Didn’t you say you lived near the Tonle San River?” My Ling offered.
Mr. Pok interrupted her, “A boat! Yes, a boat. If we can get to the river maybe we can get on one of the barges that goes north,” Mr. Pok exclaimed. He pointed to a blue line on the map. “Do you see that? That’s the Mekong River,” he traced the line north until he encountered a blue line going east, “and that’s the Tonle San, which will put us a few miles from my house. Smart girl. Now, the trick is to get to the Mekong without getting killed.
Dao spoke, “I think you need to take Di.u up front with you. It’s too hard on her in the back.”
“It’s about seventy miles from here to the Mekong. The problem is we have to go into Vietnam,” he grimaced.
“We’re from Vietnam!” My Ling exclaimed.
Mr. Pok glowered at her and threatened, “I could drop you off and then you’d all be taken to an orphanage or a prison, and be gang raped or killed. Is that what you want?”
He folded the map and got into the van. The girls clambered into the back as My Ling and Di.u climbed up front with Mr. Pok. They traveled dirt roads for hours until the rising sun cast an orange glow below the horizon, alerting Mr. Pok that he needed to get off the road, cover the van, and hide.
After three days of bouncing in the small vehicle, the girls were ready to ride in anything other than the van. In their journey from Chhuk, they witnessed a continual parade of people walking with only the belongings they could carry. In addition to human caravans of entire villages, they would periodically see dead bodies along the roadside. While they were able to avoid contact with gangs, they could not avoid the masses of people trying to evade the ruthless murderers. Every night when they hid, they would find people hiding in ravines, on the sides of rice paddy dikes, or behind trees.
They crossed the border into Vietnam without incident. Phuoc Tho, a river city where two channels of the Mekong converge, was a major river port for moving people and merchandise. The river had continual traffic of small boats, large barges, and anchored markets in the middle of some channels, where boats tied onto one another and sold everything from rice to clothes to car parts. Mr. Pok hoped he w
ould be able to find a boat that could carry him north. His two concerns were how much would it cost, and could he even get a boatman to go north.
Mr. Pok was pleasantly surprised at the calm on the Vietnam side of the border. Almost as soon as they crossed, they stopped seeing the march of entire towns and bodies on the road. People were living their lives without any appearance of problems. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched My Ling and wondered if she noticed the tranquility.
He drove the van down into the shipping district to look for portage up the Mekong. He visited a number of piers, talking to boat people until he found a man who could help him. Mr. Pok told the girls to wait in the van. My Ling watched as he went to a small boat tied to a series of boats. While Mr. Pok was gone, men would come near to the van and stare at My Ling who looked straight ahead. After a few minutes, Mr. Pok came back with the boatman and another man.
The other man had a larger boat that could accommodate the van, but to be sure, he wanted to see the van and its occupants. He looked over the van and he looked at My Ling for an uncomfortably long time. He stepped away from the van and talked with Mr. Pok who became animated and kept nodding vigorously. Then, Mr. Pok came back to the van and talked to My Ling and the girls.
“We’re going on this man’s boat, up the Mekong River, to my home in the highlands.”
“When are we going to see our mothers?” little Di.u asked.
Mr. Pok shot a glance at My Ling who quickly answered, “Once we get to Mr. Pok’s home, we’ll call your mothers to come there. Listen to Mr. Pok,” My Ling urged.
My Ling did not know what else to do, except to continue implying to the girls their mothers were still alive. She had been thinking the entire time during the van’s travels how she would tell them their mothers had passed and why she lied about it. She thought she would say she lied for their own safety, their own good. She imagined the girls would react with crying and sorrow and she would be able to handle their distress. Right now, her immediate concern was to get them somewhere safe, away from human traffickers. When they were out of danger, she would put them with their relatives in Vietnam. As long as the girls were calm and had hope of seeing their mothers, she thought they had a better chance of surviving.
Mr. Pok continued, “The Mekong is flowing up-stream right now, so it’s important we leave soon. I am going to drive onto that man’s boat. We should be able to avoid the problems we had on land.”
“Di.u can’t swim,” Dao said.
“The river is safe, don’t worry about it,” Mr. Pok lied.
The Mekong River could be wild and treacherous. Parts were difficult to navigate during the monsoon season because the volume of water in the Tonle Sap Lake/River, near Phnom Penh, determined the degree of hazard. The Tonle Sap has the unique feature of reversing flow twice a year. The first flow reversal happens during the rainy season, which usually ends in June and it was now May.
The Tonle Sap river channel flows through Tonle Sap Lake. The lake is about 1,600 square miles and a little over three feet deep. When the monsoons come, the lake swells to a depth of nine feet and covers 10,000 square miles. During monsoon season the lake covers a vast area of Cambodia and pushes water north instead of draining all to the south. While the river south of Phnom Penh is broad and flat, the Tonle San tributary that runs north and east is narrower with more dense jungle foliage along its banks.
Mr. Pok parked the car on the ramp as the thirty-five foot long boat motored in reverse as close to the slope as possible. The man laid a large plank down from the boat to the ramp, and Mr. Pok slowly inched the van onto the vessel. Once onboard, the boatman ordered Mr. Pok to secure the van to the vessel with ropes and cord. When he ordered the girls below, they all protested, remembering the conditions on the pirated military ship. Mr. Pok interceded and said he would keep an eye on them. The boatman told Mr. Pok if they got stopped in Vietnam for any reason, he would handle it. If they were detained in Cambodia, Mr. Pok was going to have that responsibility. The boatman then revved the engines and floated the craft out of the small marina into the main river channel.
The craft swung to the left and headed north up the twelfth largest river in the world. They moved at five miles an hour so as not to disturb the thousands of boats that lined the river bank and those tied together in the main channel creating floating villages.
My Ling looked into the surrounding boats and even with the boat’s engine obscuring some sounds she relished hearing so many people speaking Vietnamese. She watched the wheelhouse where Mr. Pok and the boatman talked while they looked down the river. She watched the sisters, Dao and Di.u, sitting together with Huyen. Their faces bore looks of a pensive weariness that made them all look older. She became anxious thinking of having to tell the girls about their mothers and worried about Huyen’s deepening sadness and withdrawal.
My Ling saw a boy on another boat that looked like her little brother, Quang, and she was burdened with guilt for not being able to save his life. Her eyes teared thinking of him and the prospect of having to relate to her parents what happened. She missed her parents and longed for her former life of riding horses, running through the estate with her brother, vacationing at the seaside resort of Vung Tau, going to school, and playing her violin. When she wanted to distract herself from something distasteful, she remembered violin solos she played, and imagined the sounds of the notes and her finger positions on the strings and the drawing of the bow.
She leaned back against a strut on the boat, relaxing her hands flat which elicited pain from her right one. She looked at it and remembered she had cut it on the metal tins from the soldier’s neck. Her tears stopped, her expression drew down and her mood changed from melancholy to dark when her gut felt the anger for the redheaded sailor. He was going to pay for what he put her through. She was never going to be satisfied until she could take her revenge. She saw the face of evil and it laughed at her as she was shoved overboard. The inner rage strengthened her and she would need that for what she would face in the coming weeks.
CHAPTER III
In Vietnam, the Mekong River coursed through flat topography. There were little canals that siphoned the flow to irrigate farms and provide drinking water. All along this portion were water buffalo and rice paddies where people tended to rice crops in the calf-high water. My Ling was familiar with the planting of rice because her father made everyone in the family plant on the estate, so they understood the value of the plant and the labor it took to create it. When she planted rice and returned bedraggled from the bent-over labor, her father would put his arm around her shoulders and tell her she did a “fellow’s job.” She would exclaim that she was not a fellow, but a girl. He smiled and changed the phrase to “fellow-girl.”
She became tranquil watching the people rhythmically picking the seedlings out of a pouch, leaning into the water, pushing the seedling into the mud, grabbing another, and doing it all again. The tranquility was negated by the realization that she was headed back into Cambodia, a country that was anything but peaceful. She wanted to talk with Mr. Pok, but he waved her down when in the distance a military boat appeared.
My Ling crouched below the boat’s railing so as not to be seen and waited for the boat to pass. She watched Huyen with her usual despondent expression, although now she appeared to be in thought and did not have the knitted-brow look. She periodically glanced at My Ling and then looked down, almost as though she were trying to figure something out. My Ling thought her expression looked as though Huyen was working out a math problem. She kept this up for a few minutes and then crawled over to My Ling.
“How is my mother going to find me?” Huyen asked.
My Ling was surprised by the question and told her Mr. Pok would call to tell her mother where Huyen was so she could join her.
“Who is he going to call?” Huyen asked making My Ling feel challenged.
“The…captain of the boat gave him the number of the person to call when we get to his farm,” My Ling offere
d.
“Why didn’t he call the number before we got on this boat?” Huyen pushed.
“We…didn’t have enough time,” My Ling answered back. “Also, the phones are not working here.”
“My mother needs me,” Huyen exclaimed.
“I want my mother,” Di.u pleaded after hearing Huyen.
“I miss my mother, My Ling,” Dao said. “Why can’t we call her?”
“We will as soon as we get to Mr. Pok’s farm,” My Ling was distracted answering Dao and Di.u’s plea and did not notice Huyen going to Mr. Pok.
“I want to call my mother,” Huyen demanded.
“How am I going to call your mother?” Mr. Pok retorted.
“We have to go to a phone,” Huyen pushed.
“Now is not the time, Huyen,” My Ling caught up to Huyen and urged.
“I don’t want to go to his farm,” Huyen stamped.
“Me, too,” Di.u added.
Mr. Pok looked at My Ling as if to suggest “what now?”
My Ling tried to gather the girls, but they pushed her away. Di.u. demanded her mother.
He grabbed her by the shirt and slapped her. “Don’t talk to me like that or I’ll throw your Youn ass off the boat.” He then picked her up and held her over the railing. She was screaming and Dao collapsed on the floor begging for her little sister. My Ling went to him, crying and begging for Di.u.
He put Di.u down and she ran to Dao. “The next time one of you asks about your mother, I’m throwing you into the river. Understand?”
They cowed from Mr. Pok who was standing over them. “We’re going back to my farm. I wish I hadn’t come down to the coast and bought you. I’d be safe in the mountains. You’re more trouble than you’re worth. Now, shut up!” Mr. Pok commanded.
The military vessel passed without incidence. The girls huddled together, but there was a change in Huyen. Instead of her moaning or looking forlorn, she wore a deep frown. She was next to the girls, but not with them. Her arms were crossed and she murmured something to herself. During a small interruption in the constant drone of the motor, My Ling heard Huyen repeat, “I want my mother,” as she rocked slightly back and forth.