Excerpt three

From Chapter Six – Half Moon Cake

There are no pictures of Srey Pau; she exists only in the memory of her family. The memories are of a skinny little girl who complained too much, refused to follow directions, and incessantly demanded to wear pretty things. She was a perfectly normal three-year-old whose contrary toddler-ness intensified as she began to starve.

In the mornings before sunrise, Maly could hear her family waking in the dark. The bamboo plank floor where they slept bent under body movements, creaking a lonely invitation to outlive another day. Nine people in a single three-square-meter room, and no one said a word. That’s what mystified Maly. Through the palm thatch wall she could hear the family in the next hut shuffling about, and they never talked either. No one did. Outside the sleeping quarters, chhlops were always lurking. Chhlops were peasant sons, usually nine or ten years old, sent to spy and tattle everything they saw and heard to the Angka leaders, a task which prepubescent boys naturally embraced with enthusiasm. Their job was to be mean. They spied for books, for watches, for radios, and they listened for foreign languages or the educated vernacular of Khmer. Seeking the rewards of power, they’d embellish their discoveries to gain the favor of their Angka big brothers. Maly hated them and it drove her crazy, listening for their footsteps under the floorboards.

Maly gazed silently at her mother in the dawn light and noticed that her face was getting darker and darker from the months of work in the field. She tried to imagine her beautiful mother chopping vegetables and stirring noodles in their restaurant’s kitchen. It was painful to think of food. Her mother picked up the sleeping baby, Atuit, and tied him into a krama tightly bound to her back. Her shoulder bones and ribs poked through the hand-woven cloth. Feeling jealous of her baby brother, Maly rolled onto her back and examined her own skinny arms. Taut skin stretched over her distended belly. Why did her stomach look so full when she felt so hungry?

Srey Pau was still asleep when her mother and Atuit slipped out the door to join the women’s work brigade, walking in a long line toward another hopeless, hot day in the sugar cane fields. Better to be gone before the girl started to complain; the chhlops were always listening.

Maly no longer lived in Cambodia. Now she lived in Democratic Kampuchea, according to the leader shouting at the crowd last night. Sitting in the rain, exhausted and dirty from a day in the field, the workers listened to the drone of Angka logic regarding food production. In unison, everyone pumped their fists into the air and repeated the familiar slogan, “Che’yo! Angka!” (“Victory, Angka!”) They sang revolutionary songs about the greatness of Angka and listened to the commune chief rant, as if anyone needed to be reminded how to cut the sections of sugar cane properly: With a few inches of stalk on either side of the joint, plant it standing up, not sideways. Planting technique wasn’t the reason for the failure.

“Today we work late in the moonlight instead of sleep. Why?” the boss shouted. “Because you did not finish one hectare!” He answered himself indignantly, with one finger saluting the sky. “Do not say the soil is too hard,” he protested. “You must sacrifice for Angka to get one hectare done!” He pumped his fist to the heavens again.

“Che’yo! Angka! Che’yo!” the tired crowd repeated, with feigned enthusiasm. Dani pumped his fist and rolled his eyes, making Maly laugh.

“So now we work late and we finish!” The Angka leader made a proud salute and the crowd sang out in response.

“Che’yo, Angka, Che’yo!”

“You make Angka very happy,” he screamed, with a black-toothed smile. “Tomorrow we make one hectare and a half!”

“Che’yo! Ankga! Che’yo!”

“Where is all the food going?” Maly whispered to her oldest brother.

“Always more and more,” Dani whispered back, “They work us like machines but we never go to take care of what is at the back. Sugar cane grows all year. We cannot just plant more. We must harvest, too.”

The economy of Democratic Kampuchea was flawed from the start. What was not used to feed Angka leaders and soldiers was traded to China in exchange for arms. Failure to produce the quota was easier to blame on the workers’ lack of revolutionary spirit than “the organization.” Some commune leaders simply lied in reports to the leadership about the amount of food produced. Maly caught the eye of the chhlop staring at her from the end of their row. Rather than shyly cast her gaze to the ground, she stared back at him, taking in the full measure of power and darkness behind his eyes. Her own defiant eyes dared him to come drag her away. She felt empowered by the bloodstained welts on her big brother’s hand.

“Comrade, why are you not working hard?” the chhlop had asked Dani earlier that day, when he caught Maly’s brother sitting with his back against a jakfruit tree, taking a break after several hours of planting. “You are supposed to make 10 meters per day. If you don’t make 10 meters a day, maybe you don’t want to serve Angka good!” Dani had stood up slowly, with his head hanging. Two hot lashes from a bamboo switch burned his hand, and the small piece of sugar cane he’d been munching on fell to the ground.

Now, sitting in the evening commune meeting and staring at the boy who was just a few years older than herself, Maly thought, “I hate you more.” The chhlop was the first to turn his gaze and leave. It was a small victory.