Read When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback for Free Online

men cry, so much, like Pa tonight.
    A few days later, news circulates. Pa and other adults talk about casualties reported in different villages outside Takeo province. He says that B-cinquante-deux (B-52s) bombed those areas, and many Cambodian civilians were killed in villages where his aunts live, near Srey Va village. Some were killed by direct hits, others perished in the intense heat created by the bombs. Pa ’s young sisters’ families have had to leave their homes since the bombs dropped near their villages. Like other families, they seek refuge in Takeo City, staying in a house close to us. I don’t understand that these are planes from across an ocean. I don’t understand they are in pursuit of escaping Viet Cong soldiers, who have infested Cambodian border provinces like stubborn cockroaches, refusing to leave.
    After this destruction and death comes a new life.
    My baby brother, Bosaba, is born in June, two months after the bombing. He is named after the month of February, the rice-ripening season, when the land is lush and the rice heads golden and heavy and ready for harvest. Mak caresses the dark, fuzzy head of her eighth child. “We lost the older one, and now we have a little one,” she tells us. Mak gazes at Bosaba’s closed eyes and his tiny mouth, which moves as if he is nibbling. His small pink fingers open and close, and I insert my index finger into one of his fists. A snug, perfect fit.
    I am glad that Bosaba is born because it makes Mak and Pa happy, but my youngest brother is only a brief gift. Perhaps he was born prematurely, his health compromised by the trauma my mother endured during the pregnancy. He falls ill and cries constantly. No one can console him. Pa can’t help him, and neither can the doctor.
    Medical help is becoming so scarce that many people fall back on traditional folk ways. Pa begins suffering sharp pain in his abdomen. He says he is suffering from appendicitis. A friend of his, or perhaps a doctor, cautions him, “If you don’t get medical intervention to break the “turtle neck”—the inflamed appendix—you will surely die.” But the hospitals are not manned. Only time and fate can help him. Somehow, Pa lives. But life has become so tenuous. Real medicine is increasingly out of our reach, and the consequences are frustrating and deadly.
    After a few weeks, my new brother Bosaba dies.
    More displaced villagers and refugees are pouring into the city, including Mak ’s mother and six brothers and sisters. Her father remains in Prey Ronn village to take care of his farming business. Our second-story home is becoming crowded. We have to share it with Mak ’s mother and siblings. Signs of war have already begun to trickle into the city. One day I am playing marbles along a street with cousins and neighborhood children. We glance up to see a cluster of grown-ups. Our game is abandoned as we run to discover what has captured their attention, fighting our way to the front of the crowd. There on the street sit the decapitated heads of two men. The blood on their necks is encrusted with dirt and hay. Their faces are puffy and purple, their eyelids bruised. “Here, see, Khmer Rouge heads,” a man fiercely declares. “We captured them. Look at them.”
    My first reaction is to reel backward, my spine slapping into the circle of adults standing around me. I am baffled. Rouge is “red.” Khmer means “Cambodian.” I do not understand what I am hearing. These lifeless faces before me could be those of anyone in the crowd. Quickly, other adults begin to herd us away from the gory spectacle, chastising those who rolled the heads before us like melons at a market. “Don’t you know better?” they bark at them.
    Pa says that there has been more bombing along the Cambodian border, and more people are fleeing their homes to Takeo. In these strange times, after returning my brothers, sisters, and me to school for a year, my parents consider relocating. They decide to buy a