Free First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung Page B

up the bowl and brings it close to the wound to catch all the blood. Put it in a cool place in the shade so it will congeal faster; we can make rice soup with it. Tonight we will have a good dinner,” Ma announces, smiling and finally letting go of the bird. Though dead and drained of blood, its body shakes violently in the dirt.
    “Poor bird,” I whimper, reaching over to softly pet its feathers. Its blood stains my hands, but I continue to pet it until its trembling body becomes completely still.
    Eventually, food becomes so scarce that the village chief sends Meng, Khouy, and the other young men to the top of the mountain to dig for wild potatoes, bamboo shoots, and roots to feed the village. Each week, they leave on Monday and return exhausted on Wednesday or Thursday. On a good week, they come home with many bags of foodand the chief rations it out to all the other villagers. There are times when they return with very little and each person is given only one small potato per day.
    It is our second month in Anlungthmor and we are amid one of the worst rainfalls ever. It starts every morning and rains throughout the day, stopping briefly only late at night. It rains so hard that my brothers are not able to go up the mountain to dig for potatoes and bamboo. What food we had planted in the garden has been washed away by the rain. To survive, my older siblings shake the trees at night, hoping to find June bugs. The younger kids, because we are closer to the ground, catch frogs and grasshoppers for food. The rain makes the ground soft and muddy. Chou, Kim, and I often slide around in the mud even when we’re not looking for frogs. With brown mud covering our faces, hair, and clothes, we laugh and roll in the sludge like pigs. Within minutes, the rain pours over us, washing away the dirt and mud. We pull the wings and heads off the bugs we catch and roast them with salt and pepper.
    Weeks go by and still it rains. The rain floods the village and the water rises to Pa’s waist, drowning many animals. Pa tells us the flood is why all huts are built on stilts, high off the ground. Cold and hungry, the only food we have to eat are the fish and rabbits that float by. Pa ties a fish net to a long stick to catch them as they pass by in the rushing water beside our hut.
    “Pa! Pa! Here comes something!” I scream excitedly one day.
    “That’s a good one. It looks like a rabbit.”
    “Look Pa, here comes another,” Chou tells him.
    Pa extends his hand to catch them with his net. He reaches in and pulls out two rabbits by the heads. The size of big rats, they hang limp and lifeless in his hands, their fur matted to their bodies. He takes the rabbits and places them on a wooden board. Their necks make a small crunching sound as he chops off their heads with his little knife. Kim then pours a bowl of water on the corpses to wash away the blood. Pa cuts open the skin from the neck all the way down to the bottom of the stomach. With that, he grabs the skin from the neck and pulls it off the bodies. Pa then separates the meat from the bones and cuts the flesh into very thin slices to soak in the lime juice that Ma has prepared.Because everything is wet and there’s a foot of water underneath us, we cannot make a fire. Pa feeds us young children slices of the rabbit meat. Though the lime juice cuts the taste a little, I still hate the texture of it. The flesh stretches and pulls in my mouth and it’s hard to chew. My stomach tightens, wanting to throw the food back out. Sucking on a slice of lime, I force the meat to stay down because I know that there is no more food for me if I spit it out.
    Eventually, the rainy season is over and the flood recedes, leaving behind wet, muddy ground. The whole village is in a state of panic for there is no food anywhere. “We have to leave,” Pa tells us one night. “People are discontent. They are hungry. The native villagers are suspicious of everybody, and they are asking too many