First They Killed My Father (17 page)

“As long as we don’t know for certain that your pa is dead, I will always have hope that he is alive somewhere,” Ma declares to us the next morning. My heart hardens at her words, knowing I cannot allow myself the luxury of hope. To hope is to let pieces of myself die. To hope is to grieve his absence and acknowledge the emptiness in my soul without him.

Now that I have accepted the truth, I worry about what will happen to Ma. She was very dependent on Pa. He had always been there to make things easier for her. Pa was raised in the country and was accustomed to hardship. In Phnom Penh, we had live-in housekeepers to do just about everything for us. Pa was our strength and we all needed him to survive, especially Ma. He was good at surviving and knew best what to do for us.

I hope Pa comes to me again tonight. I hope he visits me in my sleep and meets me in my dreams. I saw him last night. He wore his tan military uniform from the Lon Nol government. His face was once
again round like the moon and his body was soft. He was so real standing next to me, big and strong like he was before the war.

“Pa!” I run to him and he picks me up. “Pa, how are you? Did they hurt you?”

“Don’t worry.” He tries to soothe me.

“Pa, why did you leave us? I miss you so much it hurts my stomach. Why didn’t you come and find me? Pa, when will you come and find us? If I go to the orphanage camp will you be able to find me?” I rest my head on his shoulder.

“Yes, I will.”

He’s my pa, and if he says that he will find me, I know he will.

“Pa, why does it hurt so much to be with you? I don’t want to hurt, I don’t want to feel.”

“I am sorry you are hurt. I have to go.” Hearing this, I grip his arms tighter, refusing to let go. “Pa, I miss you so much. I miss sitting on your lap like I did in Phnom Penh.”

“I have to go, but I will look after you always,” Pa says softly, putting me down on the ground. I hold on to his finger and beg him not to leave me.

“No! No! Stay. Pa, stay with us. Please, don’t leave. I miss you and I am scared. What will happen to us? Where will you go? Take me with you!”

Pa looks at me, his eyes brown and warm. I reach out my hands to him, but the farther I reach, the farther away he moves until he fades away completely.

My body fights to sleep when the sun shines through our door to tell us it is morning. I want to stay asleep forever just so I can be with him. In the real world, I don’t know when I will ever see Pa again. Slowly, I open my eyes with Pa’s face still lingering in my vision. It is not the face of the gaunt old man the soldiers took away but the face of the man I once thought was a god.

It was during our trip to Angkor Wat that I first thought Pa was a god. I was only three or four years old then. With my hand in Pa’s, we entered the area of Angkor Thorn, one of the many temple sites there. The gray towers loomed large before us like stone mountains. On each of the towers, giant faces with magnificent headdresses looked out in different directions over our land. Staring at the faces I exclaimed, “Pa,
they look like you! The gods look like you!” Pa laughed and walked me into the temple. My eyes could not leave those huge round faces, with their almond-shaped eyes, flat noses, and full lips—all of Pa’s features!

Waking up I try to hold on to these images of Pa even as we resume our lives without him. Ma returns to the field, working twelve to fourteen hours a day and leaves Geak behind with Chou. With Geak toddling after us, Chou and I and the other children work in the gardens and do menial labor in the village. It has been over a month since Pa was taken away. Ma seems to have recovered and is trying to get on with her life, but I know I will never see her truly smile again. Sometimes late at night, I am awakened by the sound of Ma sobbing on the steps, still waiting for Pa. Her body slumped like an old woman, she leans against the door frame, her arms wrapped around herself. She looks out into the field at the path Pa once walked, crying and longing for him.

We miss him terribly and Geak, being so young, is the only one able to vocalize our loneliness, by continuing to ask for Pa. I am afraid for Geak. She is four years old and has stopped growing because of malnutrition. I want to kill myself knowing that it was I who stole the food from her mouth that one night. “Your pa will bring us lots of food when he returns,” Ma tells Geak when she asks for Pa.

The soldiers come to our village more and more often now. Each time they leave, they take fathers from the other families. They always come in pairs—though never the same pair twice—with their rifles and casual excuses. When they come, some villagers try to hide their fathers by sending them off to the woods or having them be conveniently gone. But the soldiers wait, standing around the chief’s house, slowly smoking their cigarettes as if they have all the time in the world. After they finish the pack, they walk to their victim’s hut and loud cries and screams from inside follow. Then there’s only silence. We all know they feed us lies about the fathers coming back the next morning. Still there is nothing we can do to stop them. No one questions these disappearances, not the chief, not the villagers, not Ma. I hate the soldiers now as much as I hate the Angkar and their leader, Pol Pot. I etch their faces into my memory and plan for the day when I can come back and kill them.

There have been rumors in the village that Pa was not killed in a Khmer Rouge mass execution. Rumors spread that the soldiers made
Pa a prisoner on a faraway mountain and tortured him every day. But he survived and escaped to the top of the mountains. The soldiers, hunting for him, have not have been able to catch him. People passing by our village say they have seen someone fitting Pa’s description. They tell tales of Pa forming his own army, trying to recruit more soldiers to fight the Khmer Rouge. Upon hearing these rumors, Ma’s face lights up and her eyes shine once again with hope. For a few days, she walks off to work with a little more life in her step and even twelve hours later the glimmer of a smile is still on her face. At night, she continuously fusses over our appearance, wiping the dirt off our faces, combing the knots out of our hair. She believes the stories wholeheartedly. “If he has escaped, it will not be long now before he comes searching for us. Until we know for sure of his fate, we must never give up hope.” Once again, she devotes herself to sitting on the steps waiting for Pa’s return.

Ma (right) and her sister.

Pa, at right, with his military friends.

My mother, Ung, Ay Choung.

My father, Ung, Seng Im. I always thought his face looked like the stone faces of the gods at Angkor Wat.

Left to right: My mother (holding Keav), Meng, Khouy, my grandmother, my aunt, and Uncle Keang.

Left to right: Meng, Keav, Ma (holding Kim), Khouy, and Uncle Keang.

Left to right: Kim, Keav, Khouy, Meng, Chou, and Ma on a family trip to Angkor Wat.