Chapter 13 - THE KILLING FIELDS

Often at the end of such busy days, the ladies would sit quietly in my living room. I loved those evenings with a fire burning and slowly learning more about my new adopted family. They were so much more physically closer than American women, touching was natural, not sexual, but sometimes sensual, not awkward. So if I sat on my sofa it was very normal for one to lean on my shoulder, another to lay with her head on my lap, or someone to sit on the floor with her chin on my knee. They rubbed each other’s shoulders, without speaking. If they walked they held hands, or linked arms, it was so natural, and so loving and so normal, I loved that I was included.

They would talk of times in their past, the hard times in hushed tones. First, it was in answer to my questions, beginning with Li. This is how we puzzled together the ear infections. Working dawn to dark sometimes waist high in water, very little food, no clean drinking water or rest, inadequate shelter, and no medicine. Her ear infections and pain were recurring, but she didn’t dare complain, the guards often beat complainers. They also told me of how Li had tried and begged for all her children to be kept with her, but the family had been ruthlessly torn apart. I saw tears in her eyes, when she understood, that Mary, also teary-eyed, had explained that there were two more little ones, babies eighteen months and three years old. Mary told how sweet chubby and playful they were before Pol Pot, a little girl, and a baby boy. Her mother had done everything she could to care for them. Li tried to save some rice from hers extra for them, but she was nearly starving. She had no more milk to nurse, and she had been forced to leave them alone in a hut, while she worked long hours in the fields. At first, they had cried and cried for their mother, but the cries got weaker as time passed. Finally, they lay in the hut, quiet, staring blankly. They were weak from starvation and got very ill, they couldn't fight the sickness. The little ones perished within three weeks of each other. Li had been grief struck, they had to pull the babies from her arms and beat her for holding on to them. She could only weep silently at night, afraid to show her emotion to the Pol Pot guards. She couldn’t get a message to the rest of her family for weeks, she grieved alone. Mary had rocked her mother after they told me, and the room was quiet, and we all held on to each other.

Another evening, Mary explained that she was not allowed to stay in the same area of the camp as her mother, nor with Soy, Moi, and Jenny, but she saw the girls often at work in the fields, and passing. Annie had been sent to a camp with all young unmarried girls. She was in another section of huts, a few miles down the road. The three little girls had to go at dawn to the children’s hut, although often they were also made to work and help the workers. But Mary had found Kan there, in the same camp where she was sent and they shared a hut with some others. She and Kan had been childhood friends. Mary had been married several months before Pol Pot overran their village. She had been very much in love. Her husband could come to sleep in the same hut though he had to run a bit further to get to his work field. Kan was still single, but not for long. One day the soldiers rounded up thirty of the single women, Kan was among them. Thirty single men, brought in from another camp, some distance away, were marched in. They were all told to stand in pairs. They were all pronounced husbands and wives by the ranking guard. Most of them had never seen the other before in their lives. Kan found herself standing next to a young stranger named Hung. He was lean, but still muscular. She noticed how he tried to appear unconcerned but his frightened eyes betrayed him. He was just as scared of the prospect of marrying a strange girl, here, in this way, as Kan was. She wasn’t able to focus on the speech, about duty and the regime, she could only hear her own heart pounding, and her breath shorten. Kan was the much-loved daughter of a wealthy Chinese ethnic merchant. She spoke Mandarin and had always held her head high. She knew, even in normal times, she might not have met her husband before the wedding, but then she would have been secure in the knowledge that her parents would have chosen wisely; that they would have made for her a good arrangement. But now she was being ordered to marry whatever strange man happened to line up next to her. She was being ordered to go to her dirty, leaking hut, and make babies. She moved without thinking, in a sort of daze towards the hut, when she felt Mary link arms with her, and whisper she would help her wash and dress. Mary’s husband, Shen met Hung with a bar of soap, and they left the girls to go wash. Somehow he had managed to get a cup of strong rice wine from a soldier, and gave some to Hung, he was very grateful. Mary had a little too and told Kan to drink. Mary put a flower in her friend’s hair and helped her dress in her only clean piece of clothing, a simple floral sarong. The two couples met in the hut, and sat together for a few minutes, drinking a bit more rice wine, and eating a bit of fish and rice. They talked awhile, Shen told a funny story, and a strange sense of normalcy fell over them for a few minutes, then Mary and Shen went outside to leave Hung and Kan with some privacy.

They repeated pretty much the same sequence for four evenings after work. How Shen could find rice wine in these times was a real mystery, but they were happy to have it. The meals were back to communal meals, and daily rations became less and less. It was a comfort to sit with friends and talk even for the few hours they were allowed. Then the guards came with no notice and took Hung back to his work camp. And Shen was told to go sleep in the men’s work camp. The young woman heard nothing from Hung for months, and very little from Shen, though he managed to send a message to Mary after a few weeks, letting her know he was ok. Then three months later, again with no notice or warning, Hung walked into the hut, with Shen running in behind him. They were now working together! Kan and Mary were so relieved each time they would appear, so many other women were told that their new husbands had died, and would not return, or told abruptly that their husbands were executed for crimes against the party, and that they had been selected to re-marry. Again the rations were reduced to two bowls of rice soup or p'baw per day. They were all thinner, all a bit weaker, each time they met as the next months passed. Hung was suffering from the beginning of malaria and was the weakest of the four. Mary’s struggle had become harder to bear, she had become pregnant. But the four of them, through it all formed a bond and gave each other strength, their comradery at least gave them some solace.

Pol Pot’s guards came in the middle of the night. They grabbed Shen out of his bed and dragged him out of the hut. Mary screamed and followed them. Hung and Kan tried desperately to hold her back. The guards said nothing, no explanation, They reached the edge of the huts, and down a forest trail a hundred meters or so. They pushed Shen to his knees, his hands tied behind his back. His eyes were locked on Mary’s. They pronounced him a traitor, and with no time to react, they killed him, and his blood sprayed on Mary’s face. Shortly after Mary lost her baby.