“They won’t be here,” said Philip. Andrew’s family was traveling for the summer. Andrew had complained about that in Philip’s earshot, vowing to practice every day so he wouldn’t lose his skills.
“Then you can go along with Andrew on Fridays after school begins again.”
He didn’t speak, his disappointment a fat bitter plum in his throat. Summer judo was critical in order to catch up to Andrew. Philip didn’t think he could bear to be in the baby beginner class in the fall while Andrew was in another room breaking things with his feet.
“You could take dancing on Mondays,” his mother said, in a teasing voice, still looking at the brochure. “It’s a handy thing to know.”
He wrinkled his nose, willing himself not to cry.
“I’m really very sorry, Pip,” she said, lifting her hand and letting the brochure fall back into its trifold, laying her palm over the side of his face. His ear nestled into the warmth and his vision swam with tears, but she took her hand away and got up from the table. “Time for school. Chop-chop.”
Each Friday after that nourished Philip’s longing, each visit to the PX, where they’d pass the sign in the window that said JUDO BEGINNERS AND ADVANCED. He pleaded again with both of his parents; he swore never to ask for another thing, forsook all future birthday and Christmas presents and every bit of chocolate ever to come, if only he could enroll in judo. The mild initial negative was followed by I Said No, and then by the portentous We’ve Discussed This, Young Man. Philip pressed on into the bleak and scorching territory of Not Another Word, after which he subsided into a long sulk.
Then, one Wednesday afternoon in the last week of term, everything changed. The Preston children stood after school on the grass lawn playing a game of Beatrice’s invention, which consisted of swinging their bookbags at each other and trying not to flinch. “Hold still,” said Beatrice as Laura ducked out of the way, protesting “You’ve got something pointy in there.” Philip bore the impact of the sharp-cornered books without a blink, which should have ended his turn, but the rules of the game were complicated. It seemed Bea’s turn to be target would never come. When it finally did and Laura was gripping the handles of her bag, preparing to swing, Beatrice called out, pointing, “The car’s here. And look, there’s Mum.”
The silhouette of a back seat occupant was clearly visible in the white Mercedes inching toward them in the line of traffic.
“That means haircuts or the dentist,” said Bea. “Or maybe we need shots,” she added, with a wicked smile at Laura.
“None of the above,” said their mother, when the door opened and Laura put the anxious question to her. Her voice was I have a good surprise light, the way it sometimes got near Christmas. “Philip and I have an errand. We’ll drop you girls at home first.”
“What’s that?” asked Laura, climbing into the back seat after Philip, pointing at a large paper-wrapped package on the floor by her mother’s feet. “Where are you going? Can I come?”
“She said just Philip,” said Bea from the front seat.
“Yes, you can come,” said their mother.
“So there,” said Laura, kicking the back of Bea’s seat.
“But you may not,” Genevieve finished. “And you had better stop that if you know what’s good for you,” she said, resting a hand on Laura’s knee.
When the girls had been deposited at home, and the car was turned around to drive out through the gates again, his mother placed the bulky package across Philip’s lap.
“Guess where we’re going,” she said as he pulled the paper apart and saw the folded white robe.
“Now?” he squealed. But it was Wednesday. Had she convinced them to change the schedule? How had he doubted her ability to accomplish it? “Oh, Mum,” he said. “Thank you so much.”
A full minute of bliss, before a cloud moved across the bright landscape of his joy. This might really mean no more presents for the rest of his life; wasn’t that the promise he’d made? His parents had always been very clear about the importance of sticking to a bargain. Even if so, he decided, stroking the white fabric, it would absolutely be worth it. Imagine Andrew’s surprise when they got back to school in the fall and Philip went into the bathroom to change into his own judo outfit. They might even be at the same level by that time, if Philip worked very hard. They could practice high kicks together, and set up bricks and break them one-two-three, in unison. And maybe he’d go to Andrew’s house to play sometimes, and maybe Andrew would come to 9 Soi Nine and Philip could show him how to somersault underwater.
He looked up as they passed the big curved building of the cinema that showed American movies. Instead of turning right, the car went straight.
“We’re going the wrong way,” he said.
“That’s what you think,” said his mother, twinkling with the pleasure of her surprise. “There’s more than one judo place in Bangkok.”
The driver took them farther up the big road than Philip had ever been before, eventually turning into a smaller street. On this street, instead of flat-fronted, multicolored buildings all attached together, buildings were sparse and separate, their corrugated-tin roofs jutting far out; in the deep shadow under the eaves people were sitting at tables or squatting on the ground. An occasional palm tree fountained up from the dirt beside the road.
The car stopped beside a grassless lot. Far at the back was a small building; in the packed dirt of the lot were twenty or so barefoot, shirtless boys spaced neatly, facing the street. An old man, also shirtless, stood in front of them with his back to the street. As the car door opened and Mum got out, the boys went still. The old man turned to look, then started toward the car, and Philip felt a knell of alarm. There was something eerie about the way he walked, his body gliding forward without any up-and-down movement.
His mother knocked on the car window. Fred, come out please. She knocked on Philip’s window too and he cracked the door open, the heat punching in, and got out to stand beside his mother. He kept his head down while she explained in loud, precisely enunciated English—the first time her voice had seemed unpleasant to Philip—how her son was to have judo lessons on Wednesday afternoons, starting in a week’s time, after the end of school. She spoke in bracketed clumps, a sentence or two and then a pause that the driver filled with Thai, then another sentence or two and pause.
Philip sneaked looks at the ranks of silent boys. They were staring at his mother, at how she towered over the judo master, in her wide-brimmed hat with black ovals of glass over her eyes. His mother kept talking; she didn’t seem to perceive the unfriendliness rolling from the boys, or notice how the creases beside the old man’s mouth deepened every time he flicked a glance down at Philip. Finally she stopped speaking and opened her purse.
A long pause, before the old man accepted the bills from her outstretched hand. He held up two fingers, growled out, “Tuk wan phut bai song mong.” Two o’clock every Wednesday, translated Fred.
“Why in the world would they practice outdoors in the heat of the day?” his mother said as they got back into the car. “I’ll have Harriet boil two extra bottles of water and set them aside for you in the fridge. You’ll need to take them with you, and drink them both.”
“It’s only Thai boys in the class,” said Philip in a small voice.
His mother turned toward him, took her sunglasses off.
“Have you changed your mind?” she said. The hard blue of her eyes. “Tell me right now if you have. We’ll go back and cancel.”
Philip closed his eyes. Kicking in unison with Andrew. Fear and respect on Jeremy’s face. He shook his head. “No. I want to take judo.”
“All right,” his mother said, settling back against the seat, the sunglasses folding in her hand with a clack. “You wouldn’t know the boys in the other class either,” she added, in a kinder voice. “You’ll make friends.”
The judo robe was a little big. “Room to grow,” his mother said, pulling it straight on his shoulders and turning Philip to
look at himself in the glass. Delighted by the sight, he put the mean-looking man and the coterie of unsmiling boys out of his mind, and spent some time tying and untying the white belt so that it looked just right, imagining how the yellow, the green, someday the cherished black would look in its place.
* * *
The first Wednesday lesson began with stretches. Philip reached toward his toes, watching the others bend themselves easily double, foreheads against their knees. Then the instructor called a command and struck a pose, and all the boys copied it; Philip copied it too, putting his left foot forward and bending his knees, lifting his arms above him in a broken halo. The man and all of the boys stood there like that, unmoving. After just a minute or two, Philip’s calves began to cramp; his arms shook. How could it be so difficult to stand still? How did this qualify as a judo lesson? He fixed his gaze on a dying bee nearby, its frantic wings rolling it in buzzing circles in the dirt. After some time, he heard snuffled giggling around him, and brought his eyes up to see that the instructor had rolled his weight forward onto his leading leg and lowered his arms. All the other boys had followed suit; Philip’s were the only arms still in the air. Hot-faced, he adjusted his stance, and kept his eyes on the instructor after that.
There was a short break, during which the boys scattered and the judo master went into the small building, overhung with trees, at the back of the property. The patterned cloth bag that Daeng had packed with the water bottles was waiting where Philip had left it before the start of the lesson, but he couldn’t bring himself to go to it, couldn’t imagine taking out the bottles of boiled water and drinking them down while the others watched. He drifted instead toward a knot of boys that had collected in the shade under a tall banana tree beside the road. They were playing a game of some kind, looking at something on the ground and from time to time breaking into laughter. Philip stood on the fringes of the group, straining to peek between the slender tan backs, at the ready with a languageless smile if someone spoke to him. Prompted by a signal imperceptible to Philip, the boys all sprang up and streamed back to the practice area, where they arranged themselves in two facing lines. As Philip straggled uncertainly in their wake, he felt the master’s hand on his shoulder pushing him to stand in one of the lines, across from a small glaring boy.
The master gave a short call, and everyone moved in unison, nineteen pairs of feet stomping into place on the ground, thirty-eight hands rising into position. Philip tried to copy the others’ movements as the master counted neung… song… saam… see… The boys changed positions with each number. It was too fast, Philip couldn’t keep up. Watching the boy to his left, Philip’s head was turned that way when number five came, ha! with that upraised inflection—the way it had to sound, like a question, or it would mean something else—and there was a quick blur in the corner of his vision.
Breathless, staring up at the molten sun of afternoon, an ache deep in his center. Somewhere nearby, that bee was still buzzing. Then a blot came across the sun, resolved itself into the face of Philip’s sparring partner, laughing. A dark pillar rose on Philip’s other side and he turned his head that way, sharp bits in the dirt grinding against the back of his skull. The judo master. Now the laughing boy would be in trouble, for kicking Philip when he wasn’t looking, when he was new and didn’t even know what they were doing; it had been poor sportsmanship of the first order. Philip’s eyes filled with tears in advance of the consolation and sympathy he expected.
“You get up,” barked the master in English. And walked away.
Philip understood then that he had shamed himself. By allowing himself to be felled, or by not getting up quickly enough afterward, perhaps a hundred other ways. And even though a minute ago he had felt incapable of even raising his head, he got to his feet and stood there getting his breath back as the count began again. Neung… song… saam, and by ha Philip was on his back again. Over and over it happened, for the remainder of the lesson, Philip the only one on the ground, no further comment or intervention from the instructor.
When class ended, some of the boys ran to the side of the property to retrieve short pieces of board, and began industriously smoothing the dirt of the practice yard. The rest of them drifted away, up or down the street. No one spoke to Philip. He stood by the edge of the road listening to the scrape-scrape of the boards across the dirt while he drank both bottles of water down, dedicating every particle of his will to keeping the tears inside his eyes. When the Mercedes finally came, he saw to his relief that there was no one in the back seat. If his mother had been there, it would have been impossible not to weep. Philip climbed in and closed the door, saying nothing to Fred, who raised his eyebrows in the rearview mirror briefly before putting the car into motion again. Philip stared out the window, the air-conditioning chilling his scrapes and making them sting. He reached down to rub a bruise on his ankle and prepared himself for what he’d say when he got home. He’d tell his mother, It’s the wrong class. He’d tell his father, They don’t play fair.
Into his mind came his mother’s reply, as clearly as if she were in the car with him. Hadn’t he heard it often before? When the teenage son of another couple was tossed out of school for cheating: He’s made his bed, with a dismissive headshake. The scandal reported in the newspaper, the businessmen imprisoned for embezzlement, which was explained to Philip as a big word for stealing: They’ve made their beds.
You begged to learn Judo, she would say; I moved heaven and earth.
Philip’s father’s face, usually so convivial, would darken at Philip’s whine of not fair. His father’s childhood stories were typically hearty adventures in which he lost a shoe and carried on hiking anyway, or rowed a scull through freezing rain to victory. He’d once pulled up his trouser leg and showed Philip a bibliography of scars. Hearing Philip’s description of the afternoon, he might well deliver one of his own customary admonitions. Bear up, or Stiff upper lip.
The two liters of water gurgled in Philip’s stomach as he reached down with his other hand, to rub his other ankle in exactly the same way as he’d touched the injured one. He let the tears come, just for a private weak moment, remembering his mother’s expression when she’d given him the robe, her eyes like stars, the dimples coming and going in her cheeks. He had forgotten that she could look like that.
If Philip complained to her about judo, especially after he’d agitated so long to be allowed to go, her face would harden into planes, her eyes into buttons of reproach. His father might try to be jolly and encouraging, but that would be a crackling shell of pretense folded around the truth that Philip had recently come to suspect: You’re not the son I hoped for.
Philip decided then. He’d made his bed and he’d lie in it, with his upper lip stiff as iron, stiff as stone. Stiff as the ground he had crashed into with such regularity all afternoon. Philip touched the sore spot on his breastbone with two fingers, and then quickly touched it exactly the same way with two fingers of his other hand. Then he put his hands on the seat beside him, one hand each side. He’d made the touching movements equally light and quick, keeping everything even; now he spread his fingers out on the leather seats of the car, adjusting their placement by millimeters, one and then the other. When he was satisfied that they were exactly the same, a peacefulness spread out inside him.
Peace enough to carry him home and through a brief charade of questions. I drank both bottles, to his mother. The lesson went fine, it’s hard but I’m catching on, to his father. When the bruises blossomed he hid them, declaring to his parents that Noi no longer needed to bathe him, he was old enough to do it himself, and he took to keeping a shirt on until just before jumping into the swimming pool. Only Laura noticed and commented, and she didn’t press the matter after he told her mai pen rai in a harsh big-brother voice he rarely used.
Every Wednesday lesson after had been the same: the stretching and slow-motion exercise like a nerve-racking preamble, the slow creaking climb of a tall roller coaster. The tip-top moment when
the boys were paired up and Philip faced the glare of his sparring partner. Then the terrifying descent, the count neung-song-saam-see-HA, the attack somehow always catching Philip off guard: a foot hooked behind his knee to pull him down while he made a clumsy attempt at a kick, or the stamping foot against his chest that sent him flying backward.
He brought his beautiful judo robe home week after week smudged and filthy, and Choy clucked and took it straight to the laundry, where a prodigious amount of bleach brought it back to the color of snow. Donning the robe each Wednesday, Philip could smell the chlorine residue. In class, the garment blazed in the sun like a target and the smell rose in pungent waves that made his nose run; the boys laughed at the runnels of mucus above his upper lip. They took turns rubbing at their own noses and pretending they were crying.
They called him Nitnoy, a word he knew meant “little bit.” Nitnoy rice, the cook would say, encouraging him to eat more dinner, nitnoy chicken. He was not Philip when he was at judo class. Not the only Preston boy, named for both of his grandfathers, not the fastest runner in his class nor the best mathematics student, not the boy with remarkable coordination waiting for his growth spurt. He was not even Philllliiiip. He was Nitnoy, nitnoy. Nothing.
* * *
It was getting hot now. Noi had turned off the air conditioner in the girls’ room that cooled Philip’s room too through a cutout high up in the shared wall. He swung his legs out of bed, stood for a moment stretching his arms overhead in a yawn, then stumbled to the window and looked down. The driveway was empty. He could see Bea in the pool with Jane, the girl from next door. They’d probably forcibly excluded Laura, who was grim-facedly skipping rope in the driveway. Philip pressed his cheek against the window. From this squashed perspective, his little sister made a fuzzy moving shape at the edge of his vision. He knew she was counting. She always counted when she jumped, sometimes in English, sometimes in Thai. He always counted too, but usually not aloud, and not with any pleasure. And not only when he jumped rope; the counting went behind nearly everything. He turned his face and pressed the other side against the glass, held it there the same amount of time, to make things even.
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