Everything else was different in Krung Thep, or as Noi heard it called for the first time, Bangkok. Her cousin gave her clothing, things the cousin had outgrown, two long dark skirts with zippers at their backs and two round-collared flat-buttoned white blouses slit at the hems. Noi had to be taught to pull the tab on the skirt’s zipper to knit its teeth, and hook a piece of metal into a loop at the top. It seemed foolish effort, when the cotton panel of her pha tung could be wound around the waist and so easily knotted up between the knees when needed, for wet work. The farang skirts were heavy and the fabric slippery and dense; Noi mustn’t try to knot them, her cousin cautioned her, or they would wrinkle. Madame didn’t like clothes to be wrinkled.
Noi slept on a mat with her cousin and followed her around the farang house during the days, learning to clean the floors with a hard brush, to swab dust away from surfaces with a cloth, to polish silverware, to use the washing machine. The wringer with its cruel rollers threatened to squeeze fingers along with the garments; they used a stick to push the items through before clipping them up on a line to dry. Noi’s cousin showed her a tall can that held wax for the low wooden tables; she pressed her forefinger down on the top and laughed when Noi jumped at the sudden expectoration. They cleaned every room every day, although the employers were childless and most of the rooms were unused. Noi cleaned the empty bedrooms carefully, fluffing the pillows on the small beds: Come see, how soft and nice. Still Madame’s stomach stayed flat and those rooms stayed empty.
Noi worked for six months alongside her cousin, sleeping on the same mat, before getting her own job and moving across town to a similar wooden building at the double-lucky address 9 Soi Nine. She took the skirts and blouses with her, the black cloth slippers and her faded pha tung. The new madame, Mrs. Preston, gave Noi new skirts and blouses and slippers that were nearly identical to the ones she’d brought; Noi had never had so many articles of clothing at once. She’d also never slept alone before; her back felt cold without the warmth of her sister or cousin. The first night, she lay awake on her mat long after the traffic bleats had given way to a throaty chorus from the dark garden. There was no moon in the little window. After listening awhile, she could detect a low splashing under the voices of frogs and tokays. It was the sound of the khlong that flowed just a short distance away, beyond the garden wall. Hard to believe that it was the same water that ran beside her home in Suphan Buri province. Tee had explained how their river joined the Chao Phraya that ran all the way to the city, where it was dammed and divided into a network of slow-moving canals. The music of the water lulled Noi to sleep; she dreamed of flying high over the glittering brown threads of broken river, seeking the channel that would take her home.
Noi was in the habit of making an offering to the spirit house in the garden, putting a scoop of rice or a piece of fruit in the bowl inside, sometimes lighting a joss stick procured from a bicycle vendor. She always prayed for the health and prosperity of her family, and after a lonely month at 9 Soi Nine, she added an extra petition: for Sao somehow to join her in Krung Thep. Sao would have been delighted by everything that terrified Noi. She would laugh at scoldings instead of cowering, and would venture all over the city, jumping up and down on the paved roads to test their hardness, flirting with vendors to get things for free. Day after day, Noi made the heartfelt, impossible wish for the pebble to tumble toward the city.
Noi had been at 9 Soi Nine for about a year when a new Number One arrived, an older woman called Daeng; indeed her face was often red with anger. Suddenly Noi could do nothing right. No matter how careful her work, it seemed Daeng could always find a flaw. One morning when Noi was scrubbing out the family’s dustbins at the road’s edge in front of the tall gates, Daeng’s voice came close behind her.
“Lazy country girl.” The Number One grabbed the bin and looked into it, then twisted its mouth back toward Noi. “Look there—a black mark right at the bottom.”
Noi looked, saw nothing but clean plastic. Daeng smirked, and Noi suddenly understood: Daeng wanted her to object. Insolence would be an excuse for firing. Daeng probably wanted to fill the Number Three position with a relative, as she had done already with the gardener and Number Two, going to Madame with reports of their poor work. Noi felt a stab of panic. Her family depended on her wages. Her oldest little brother was now studying at the local wat, and soon the yearly taxes on the family property would come due.
Noi took a deep breath and crawled on her knees into the bin. Surrounded by the echoing, smelly bin walls, water dripping from them onto her neck and back, she scrubbed at the nonexistent black mark until her arm ached. When she crawled out, Daeng was gone.
That night, Noi lay in her room with the sour-garbage smell of the bin still in her nose. She’d been reasonably happy with the job at 9 Soi Nine before Daeng had come. Now every day felt like a mountain she toiled up without ever reaching the top; every morning she was at the bottom again. Noi struggled to make her heart calm; self-pity was not jai yen. She closed her eyes and focused on the sound of the nearby khlong, its always-moving water.
Half dreaming, she heard a tinkling noise like amulets rattling along a neck chain, and automatically turned on her side, as she’d used to do at home to make room on the mat for her sister. She felt knees poke into the crook of her own, and then a hand came over her eyes. Awake now, Noi tried to turn back, but the hand slid away from her eyes and arms embraced her; she felt the round chin of her sister against the side of her neck.
You smell, said Sao.
It couldn’t be Sao, of course; it must be her spirit, which should have been frightening but somehow was the opposite.
“P’Sao,” Noi said, tears pricking her eyes. “I’ve missed you. I’ve wished for you to be here.”
You think I’d let you come all this way alone? said Sao. My Nong Noi? The arms tightened around Noi. Now go to sleep, stinky girl, or we’ll both be tired tomorrow.
“You’re a spirit,” said Noi. “How can a spirit be tired?”
She felt a pinch on her arm just above her wrist.
I’m a pebble spirit, said Sao. Stubborn enough to be tired if I want to.
Noi jolted awake at Choy’s soft rap on her door. The window showed the light of early morning. Had it been a dream? She turned to look behind her. The mat’s woven texture would accept no crease to betray a body’s pressure, but when Noi slid her hand over it, the surface did seem warm. She stretched, washed from the jug of bedside water, and dressed, going forth into the garden with a new purpose: to make the day rush by, so that night could unfold over the city and bring her sister again.
That night, when she was sliding into sleep, the rattle came again behind her.
Tell me what you did today.
“I washed the windows,” said Noi. “I swept the roof.”
What did you see when you were up there?
“I saw a traffic jam,” said Noi, “and flower-seller boats all in a row on the khlong, and a man making a giant flower from pink sugar floss. I saw the tall point of the Dusit Thani hotel, and beyond that the golden tips of the Grand Palace where the Emerald Buddha lives.”
Tell me what you ate, said Sao. Don’t leave anything out.
“You are a very greedy spirit,” said Noi, and then the two girls were giggling, Sao’s face against Noi’s back, Noi’s mouth pressed into Sao’s fingers to trap the sound and swallow it, so that it would not escape from between her lips and through the open window.
* * *
After a few weeks of Sao’s visits, even Daeng was moved to comment on the improvement in the formerly useless country girl.
Chapter Six
PHILIP HAD lain in bed all morning, dozing and waking, listening to the noises of the house—the distant clatter of breakfast, the girls shrieking in the driveway—and brooding over a question: Could he credibly fall ill in a rest-in-bed but not visit-the-doctor way, before two o’clock that afternoon?
He hadn’t ever attempted the stunts of other boys, the ther
mometer held to the bedside lamp or the faked cough or sneeze. His mother would see through those in an instant. He had to be more subtle. He’d laid the groundwork by deliberately missing breakfast, to support a complaint of stomachache if he decided to use that. Although stomachache was not historically effective: My stomach hurts was typically met with the statement Some fresh air and exercise will sort that out.
He’d even sacrificed the trip to the toy store, not responding when Laura called his name. In the ensuing silence he’d drifted off to sleep again and a while later was awakened by the bedlam of the girls’ return. After that, footsteps, unmistakably his mother’s, rang across the floor below, followed by the percussion of the front door shutting. A rise of hope in his chest: Was it possible that Mum had forgotten, and taken the car out for the whole day? No, he thought, punching the hope down: it wasn’t even lunchtime. Even if she was going to the salon, she’d send the driver back to collect Philip. She wouldn’t forget.
“Madame say get up,” said Noi, pushing open the door.
“I will,” he said. He threw his covers off, baring his knees to the air-conditioning.
Noi left the door ajar; he could hear soft thumps and swishes of cleaning from his sisters’ room.
Philip kept a mental list of Good Things to tick through when needed, and he reached for it now. He needed something to look forward to, to get him out of bed and through this terrible day.
Songkran, the spring holiday when you were allowed to throw water on anyone without getting into trouble, was well past for this year. Fourth of July, sparklers in the garden and fireworks at the embassy, also past. Horseback riding had happened just the day before and wouldn’t happen again for another week. Tooth fairy. He turned on his side and pushed his hand under the pillow. No surprises there; it had been a while since he’d lost a tooth. Birthday not until December, unimaginably far away. He would be back in school well before then. He tried to push that thought away, but too late: it was already soaking across the list of Good Things like a spreading blot of ink.
School.
It would start up again in two months, horribly different from last year, and also probably horribly the same. Different because Derek wouldn’t be there; he had gone home to America. Perhaps he was even now riding one of the tractors about which he had boasted so much. Or perhaps he was asleep, or just getting into bed. Philip knew the time varied all around the globe; he had observed the calculations before telephone calls home, and remembered his father explaining when they flew here how most of a day had disappeared while they were in the air. It had something to do with the sun, and Philip had nodded as though he understood but was left with only the notion of a giant clock hovering above the clouds, its hands ratcheting endlessly backward.
Philip had told Derek one black day last term, It’s all right if you want to stop being friends too, and Derek had told him not to be silly. He’d kept on eating lunch with Philip and choosing him for teams despite the groaning of the other boys. Because of Derek, school had been just barely tolerable.
Philip never knew why it had begun, but he remembered how. That last innocent morning replayed in his mind regularly, with painful clarity. Class hadn’t yet started and boys were milling about in the aisles of desks when Jeremy Maitland, a boy Philip generally avoided, caught Philip’s eye and smiled. Philllliiiip, he said, in a high voice like a girl’s. It happened in a coincident moment of conversational lull, and everyone heard; they all laughed. For the rest of that day, any word from Philip would start the mocking falsetto ricocheting all around. By afternoon, he had started to wonder if he really sounded like that, and the wondering was like a hand on his throat. When he got into the car at the end of the school day and spoke to his sisters, his unused voice scraped out, uncertain.
That had been just the beginning.
Of course Philip could hope that next term would also be different in nonhorrible ways. Maybe Jeremy would also have gone home. Also there were bound to be new boys in the class; perhaps one or two of them would be friendly. A part of Philip whispered: perhaps one of them might take his place as scapegoat. The thought streaked across his mind like a comet, dragging a long tail of shame.
More Good Things, quickly. He was closer to nine now than to eight; his riding instructor said he would soon be ready to canter; he had recently learned to somersault underwater. His father had promised to teach him to dive. His bicycle’s training wheels had been taken off. His joy in that last was sharply circumscribed, though, as he wasn’t permitted to ride unsupervised on the street and had to content himself with either loops in the driveway or pedaling up and down Soi Nine while a servant, usually Choy, waited for him outside the gate. Choy panicked if he got out of her sight and would call loudly for his return, making the passersby on the sidewalks laugh. So, not really very much of a Good Thing.
His weekly allowance had been raised to twenty-five cents—it now bought him one of the good comic books at the PX, or two candy bars with a bit left over. It got even more from street vendors: five ice creams or five packs of chewing gum, or ten of the little cardboard cubes the children had been buying earlier in the summer—not for the candy inside, tasteless transparent sugar beads that they threw at each other or dropped into the swimming pool to see what happened (nothing)—but for the plastic animal figure in each. Horses were the most desirable. Philip had amassed two horses, nine monkeys, five lions, three elephants, and something that looked like a bear before Beatrice decided the whole thing was silly and the craze abruptly stopped.
He could try measuring himself again. His mother hadn’t yet found the pencil marks on the inside of his closet door. But he’d done that only yesterday—why had he done that yesterday, cheating himself of a possible Good Thing for today? He hadn’t been able to wait, and anyway it hadn’t turned out to be a Good Thing; the line had been exactly the same as the one from the week before. His father had said his own growth spurt had come late, and that when the time came Philip would probably shoot up like a weed.
Philip had overheard the games teacher telling his parents on Field Day that their son’s coordination was quite good, and they might consider tennis lessons for the summer, or perhaps football, which would have the advantage of teaching team spirit. It might help him fit in, the teacher had added, dropping his voice a little bit for that sentence, and the three grownups had nodded at one another in a way that had made Philip feel queasy.
If only Philip had been put into tennis or football for the summer. If it hadn’t been for Andrew Crawford, he would have been, and this summer wouldn’t have been blighted, pocked with bad days, one a week, like a bright apple shot with secret wormholes.
Andrew Crawford was an only child. He had a playroom all to himself, his Tinkertoys his alone and all of them perfect, none of the wooden rods or wheels colored with markers or chewed by a baby sister. The half-built rocket ship Philip had seen at Andrew’s birthday party would stay as it was until Andrew went back to it, in no danger of damage or deconstruction for someone else’s project. For these reasons, Andrew was an object of Philip’s envy even before the Friday last term when he’d gone into the boys’ bathroom at the end of the day and reemerged in a short white cotton robe tied with a white belt over loose white cotton trousers.
Andrew Crawford had begun judo lessons.
Even the older boys had gathered around to watch the demonstration, Andrew narrating as he flailed: That was a throat chop—that one was right in the kidneys. Next year, he reported, they’d be breaking boards and bricks with their feet. Philip went home that day and asked his mother if he could take judo lessons and learn to break things with his feet. The answer was an unqualified no.
Philip had never asked for anything twice; it wasn’t in his experience that his parents’ decisions might be flexible. But after several Fridays of Andrew in his judo outfit, Philip was beside himself. He knew that the Friday classes took place in the same mirror-walled studio near the PX where the girls took ballet on Mondays, an
d he made Laura get a brochure. He brought it out the next day at breakfast, to show his mother.
“You could collect me after shopping,” he said.
“I don’t shop on Friday afternoons,” she said, putting her fingers on the brochure and sliding it toward herself. Of course not: Fridays were for the parties. He knew that.
“I want to take judo,” said Laura through a mouthful of scrambled egg.
“Judo is for boys,” said Bea. “We take ballet.”
“I hate ballet,” said Laura. “I love judo.”
“How do you know?” said Bea.
“I know,” said Laura.
“Be quiet, girls, and eat,” said Genevieve. “The beginner judo schedule is very limited,” she told Philip, frowning down at the brochure’s gridded schedule. “Friday afternoons only.”
“You could send me with the driver,” said Philip.
“I need the driver Fridays,” said his mother. “There’s always so much to do last-minute.” Again, the parties. Every week geared itself to them, grinding into motion on Monday and accelerating steadily toward the weekend. There would be a party at home on Friday and a party out on Saturday, sometimes the reverse. Sunday was the in-between day, when Genevieve had what their dad called “Mummy’s lie-in” and took her morning coffee and toast in the parents’ bedroom with the door closed, and the children were expected to play quietly.
“Daddy could get me.”
“Daddy can’t go all the way across town on Friday afternoon in traffic. I’m sorry,” she said. “It just won’t work out for the summer. Perhaps they’ll have a different schedule in the fall.”
“Andrew goes on Fridays,” he said. “In the fall, it’s still on Fridays.”
“Perhaps you can go along with Andrew during the summer then? I’ll call his mother.”
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