When Broken Glass Floats

A year later Mak insists that Athy, now 10 years old, go with the other children to a different labor camp, where there will be more food. Athy doesn’t want to go, but Mak insists. However, the promises of more food were lies, and the conditions in the children’s labor camp are just as bad, if not worse. Athy and another girl from the village, Cheng, stay together, commiserating over their fate and talking about their mothers.

The Khmer Rouge work to keep the children from bonding, pitting peasant children against city children like Athy and Cheng. The peasant children get the choicest spots to build shelter; they often assist the “mekorg[s],” the brigade leaders, and get special treatment. The brigade leaders wake the children earlier and earlier and work them later and later, hoping to exceed the quota for digging irrigation ditches.

Starving, the children fight over the fish heads in the garbage and the burned rice scraped from the sides of cooking pots. Sometimes they can slip away and fish, but they are constantly being watched, and eventually they are caught. Cheng and Athy are tied to a pole in the camp’s center and deprived of food, water, and rest for 24 hours. Soon after, Athy gets sick with amoebic dysentery, which is what killed her brother Vin.

Cheng decides they must escape and return to their mothers. She helps Athy, still very ill, and they make their way back. However, Mak is horrified, and Athy realizes she has endangered her family. Furthermore, though Cheng makes it back to her mother as well, she dies soon after. Athy is grief-stricken by the news, as she stays inside day after day to avoid being spotted by a chhlop.

She is eventually discovered, but she’s “neither tortured or sent back”; instead, she is sent “to work in the rice field close to the village” (153). Athy explains that “the Khmer Rouge’s disregard for the individual” means “they have simply forgotten who [she is] and where [she’s] supposed to be” (153).

Athy plants rice with her mother, working from dawn to dusk. They have very little food, but Athy is glad to be back with her mother. One morning, while planting rice, Athy steps on a stick and cuts her foot. It quickly becomes infected, and the infection spreads just as quickly.

Athy cannot sleep or walk. Mak comforts her as best she can, but she must rest also. Athy decides to go looking for “slark khnarng, sour leaves, an ivylike vine that grows wild in the woods” (156). When boiled, the leaves produce a liquid like rubbing alcohol, and Athy believes it can clean her foot. However, while she’s gathering the leaves, a man catches her and accuses her of stealing. He ties her to a tree, telling her he will return to kill her that evening. Instead, he releases her and she crawls back home. Mak and her sister gather the leaves, which do begin to help heal Athy’s foot.

Athy does not work because she is ill, but as soon as she is back on her feet, the chhlop insists she return to work. He takes her and some other children to a different labor camp, and after a powerful storm, Athy and the other children end up in a nearby village. There, a young woman dressed like the other Khmer Rouge takes care of Athy, even giving her penicillin for her foot. Her kindness confuses Athy, as it’s a type “of personal kindness [she hadn’t] seen among the Khmer Rouge” (168).

Once her foot is healed, Athy returns to work. Soon, another brigade of laborers join them, and among them are Athy’s sisters, Chea and Ra. Once a week, they sneak back to Mak and the other children, and share their rations with them. Athy has developed an eye infection, and Mak tells her how to heal it. She is glad that her vision is no longer impaired but worries about what new horrors she will see. The irrigation ditch nears completion, and Athy and the other children are allowed to return to their families.