It’s funny. All that time I’d been looking at Pook like she was some kind of servant, and it turned out she was a better trainer than Coat. Thai pad men are revered in the West. Nobody ever told me about pad women.
‘Forget your shadow. You are not fighting that. You are fighting Jorgensen. I will be Jorgensen. You be you. What do you think she will do first?’
‘Uh... try break my head?’
And off we went. She only had three weeks to get me ready for the Lumpinee fight, and she crammed more into that time than Mr. B. had done with me in the years I’d been training in New Jersey. She was full-on.
I helped Pook clean and cook so we’d have more time together. Pepsi teased me that I was ‘not American anymore’ and said ‘at last she do woman work’. I threw my sponge at him.
We dragged out Coat’s Stone Age laptop and looked at all Jorgensen’s fights. We talked, brokenly, about how she would be training to beat me. And then we played out the scenarios, over and over. Pook couldn’t fake being six inches taller than me, but she brought in fifteen-year-old Benz to work with me as a simulated-Jorgensen. He was about the right size.
Benz might be only fifteen, but tell that to my bruises.
‘Learn to take punishment,’ Pook told me. ‘Remember Pink? When you hit her, she didn’t care. You need strong defense, too.’
I’ve been in street fights as a kid. I’ve been on the ground and kicked by a crowd. I know how to tune out pain, how to detach. But working with Benz taught me to take punishment and still fight back. And he taught me to protect my head.
Pook also made me work on my wai kru. Somehow I thought that training in Thailand would include my effortlessly mastering the ceremonial prayer-dance that the fighters do before every match. The reality was that I looked and felt stupid. I don’t know what my Dominican aunts and cousins would say if they could see me doing these fussy poses that have to be exactly perfect, right down to the position of your fingers and eyes. I tried. My aunts probably would have peed themselves laughing at the sight of me trying. Pook made lemon-faces.
‘A Lumpinee stadium fight is a big honor,’ Pook said. ‘You must make respects. Jorgensen has a weak wai kru. You can get the audience on your side before the fight begins.’
‘Audience? Why?’
‘Lumpinee is special, Jade. You need the support of the audience. You will feel it when you get in the ring. It’s a kind of power. Now practice your wai kru again. Make it more sincere.’
Four days before the fight I was trying to sleep, but Pepsi and the kids were playing takraw in the empty lot outside. It’s kind of like hacky-sack but with a plastic ball. I was wrecked from training so hard, but I tolerated the game until the ball came through the window and landed on my head.
‘My ball,’ I yelled in Thai, and the cat pounced on it. ‘Be quiet, I sleep!’
They all came in shyly and sat on my ‘bed.’ The kids made me feel old because even after a hard day’s training they still had the energy to play, and I just wanted to be a puddle. I gathered Waldo in my arms and let his purring soothe me.
‘Hey Jade, tell Coat we want to go watch you fight at Lumpinee.’
‘He know you want,’ I said.
‘Yeah, but he won’t bring us. No money.’
‘I will win,’ I said. ‘Then maybe Coat get more money student.’
‘Jade, why did you come here?’ Pepsi said. ‘Everybody’s rich in America, right? Why do you come?’
I laughed. ‘I no rich!’
Pepsi grabbed my cheapo mp3 player and threw it to Moo, who stuck it in his ears.
‘Why did you really come here?’
‘Train. Get better. Be fighter.’
‘No,’ Moo laughed. ‘You could have gone to Fairtex, Saisinprapa with the other foreigners.’
‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘I here because I got demon. In heart. People say I fight my shadow.’
Moo nodded like it made total sense.
‘I must beat demon,’ I said in my lousy Thai. ‘I keep get disqualify. I fight dirty. I try be good.’
Pepsi shook his head in disagreement.
‘If you are nice in the ring, your opponent will wipe you out,’ he said. ‘What is your demon?’
We were talking in a mixture of English and Thai depending on what words I knew. I struggled for words, and Waldo’s eyes tracked the movements of my hands as I waved them around, gesturing.
I said, ‘Hard to explain. My dad was boxer, American boxer, you know?’
‘Like Muhammad Ali?’
‘Yeah. My dad teach me boxing.’ I mimed. ‘I think he so great, but he got demon, too. He hit mother. We...’ I was struggling for words to explain what had happened. My father’s drinking. The night he almost killed her, broke her neck when he threw her across the room. The hospital, the social workers, the court dates. My mom’s depression. Having to leave the city and move out to Jersey, hide from my father because they hadn’t been able to catch him. In case he came back and she was weak because she still thought she loved him. They convinced her we needed to start our life over. Like witness protection. How do you explain that to a kid? At seventeen I still didn’t understand it.
‘Police come,’ I said. ‘My mother hurt bad. My heart... angry. So angry.’
They watched me with shining eyes. Waldo stretched out and I scratched his belly.
Funny, all the therapy I had, all the talking about it they made me do, I never said it simple like this. I never said it with the words sticking in the back of my throat, the tears so close to the surface.
‘Then I doing bad stuff,’ I said. ‘Get... wrong friends?’ Wrong boyfriend, to be exact.
‘That’s bad,’ Pepsi said. ‘Friends must help you, not make trouble.’
If only Malu hadn’t gone away to school, maybe it would have been different. But she’d gone, and there’d been no one to hold me down.
‘My boyfriend steal cars. I got in trouble police. Then Mr. B start training me. But... I still got demon. Angry.’
They looked at me sweetly. I felt ugly.
‘No big deal,’ said Moo with the air of an 80-year-old. ‘Everybody has problems. You can find a way to live a good life.’
He was only twelve, but I wanted to believe him.
THREE DAYS BEFORE the fight Pook shook me out of that beautiful black pit I call sleep.
‘Day off,’ she sang in my ear. ‘Get up! Hurry!’
I moaned. Sleep dragged me back down like quicksand.
‘Jade! You deaf?’
‘Mmm... day off, why I get up?’
She shoved me with her toe. ‘Get up, girlfriend. Special day. Today you get a tattoo like other fighters.’
I was up!
‘Really?’ She must mean like when the monks tattoo a tiger on a fighter’s back. ‘Cool! Can I get bulletproof tattoo?’
Her mouth twitched. ‘They say you have to be good Buddhist for it to be bulletproof. Are you a good Buddhist, Jade?’
‘Um... OK, what about waterproof?’
The tattoo artist wasn’t a Buddhist monk. In yet another instance of unfair treatment of the ladies, it turned out that the monks weren’t allowed to tattoo women. Apparently we’re lower on the reincarnation ladder than men. But higher than animals. When I found out, did I get mad and attack anybody? Nope. I am the New Jade. I flow with the mai pen rai.
I got my tattoo from a layman, a friend of Pook’s called Mint. He spread out his designs on the pavement in the sun.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mint said softly in English, bending over my right thigh. ‘I can give you an invisible one, with henna. Office workers get them. Nobody will see.’
I laughed, but then said OK to the invisible tattoo. My mom would freak out if she knew—not about the ink, but about the unsanitary conditions. Besides, who can resist a secret power?
I’d decided to put it on my right glute. I’m not really into ink, but a Thai tattoo is special. You get an animal, and if you have that animal tattooed you can call o
n its power. The animal can even possess you, supposedly. Malu would say Grow a brain cell—but me, I like to keep an open mind. And in the Jorgensen fight? I’d take any advantage I could get.
‘I was thinking a tiger,’ I said to Mint in English. ‘Or maybe a monkey. A monkey could be more realistic, like, closer to my animal spirit? You know what I’m saying?’
Mint pursed his lips. Then he shook his head.
‘You need gecko,’ he said.
‘Excuse me?’
Pook intervened. They talked to each other a couple minutes. Then Pook said, ‘This is how Mint works. He can only give you the animal he sees for you. They talk to him. The animal spirit must choose you, not the other way. You need the gecko.’
‘Gecko? They’re just little funny lizards. Who’s going to be afraid of a gecko?’
‘The gecko is a very lucky animal,’ Mint said. ‘Always warn you when there is trouble. Helpful and auspicious. You need the gecko.’
The idea of a gecko did nothing for me. ‘A cat? Waldo?’
They weren’t happy. I could almost see the mai pen rai forming on Pook’s lips, and I knew that in a minute we’d be getting up and leaving and I wouldn’t get any tattoo.
‘OK, OK. Gecko me up. Does it hurt?’
The answer to that was yes.
Kala Sriha
MYA SCROLLED THROUGH phone menus with fierce concentration. She was familiar with Mr. Richard’s smart phone even if he didn’t know how much she’d handled it, but this one was more sophisticated. By the time she found the call register the sound of the lion’s breathing was louder than the insects and birds, and a wind stirred her hair. The lion had dropped the translator on the ground. The man stirred a little, so she knew he wasn’t dead.
She found the last number in the call register and redialled. Please, mother, please, someone, tell me what to do...
Now the man was completely still, but the lion walked around him in a circle. Kala Sriha was the size of a water buffalo, but black and long-haired, with the coiled musculature of a big cat.
‘Mya, you must never call this number again,’ snapped her mother’s voice in Burmese. ‘Don’t even try. Next time no one will be here.’
‘Mother, please don’t hang up,’ she breathed into the phone. ‘I promise not to call again. Please only tell me what to do.’
The voice on the other end sounded anguished. ‘I wish I could. But it’s too dangerous. Trust me as I trust you. Do what you must.’
Could this really be Mya’s mother, who was notorious for telling everyone what to do and expecting to be obeyed? What if the voice was just some cruel trick?
‘I can’t interfere again. This is a turning point. You must act for yourself.’
Kala Sriha’s shadow lay heavy on the prone body. The immortal bent its rough-maned head and nuzzled the man’s neck. Then it lowered its body until the man was covered in blackness.
Luck was excited. ‘Kala Sriha is going to devour the translator!’
Mya turned her face away. She felt sick.
‘I thought Kala Sriha ate no flesh,’ she murmured.
‘He does not eat flesh. He’s going to take the reporter into his shadow. He must have done something worthy of Kala Sriha’s respect to meet this fate.’
To the phone, Mya said, ‘Make it stop. Please.’
‘I don’t have that power, Mya,’ said the voice of the woman who was like-and-yet-unlike Mya’s mother. ‘I’m not even there. You are. If you want it to stop, you must make it stop.’
Mya scowled at the phone. She looked at Kala Sriha where the god lay on the man’s body. The zone where black fur met the man’s filthy clothes was semi-transparent, so that Mya could see the lion through the man and the man through the lion. The lion was so huge it made the man look like a doll.
Mya stepped away from the tree and Kala Sriha’s golden gaze took her in. There was a sensation as though a gong had been struck. Her bones began to vibrate. Her hairs lifted away from one another. The man tried to lift his head, and Kala Sriha opened its jaws to grip the man’s skull.
‘No!’ Mya shouted, and threw the phone. It hit Kala Sriha in the face and bounced off, tumbling across the ground until it came to rest at Mya’s feet again. Kala Sriha turned its attention on Mya. Which of them was the more surprised by what she had done could not be said.
‘What are you doing?’ Luck shrilled. ‘Are you crazy?’
Mya picked up the phone. Leaving his shadow lying upon the fallen man, Kala Sriha rose and surged toward Mya. The immortal brought heat and a musky odor that made fear spark across the surface of her skin. The lion’s breath on her face smelled like Mr. Richard’s workshop when he was brewing drugs. Mya was shaking, but she would not let herself flinch away from the smell. Kala Sriha’s upper lip curled back and she saw the end of a tooth as long as her forearm.
Luck remarked, ‘He probably won’t find you appetizing. But the sound of his roar can kill animals.’
Up close, Kala Sriha was enormous. She fixed her gaze on what was right in front of her: the shiny dark hairs that grew sideways across the lion’s muzzle. Would they feel like silk if she touched them?
‘I pray that you won’t take this man,’ she said to a black nostril. ‘I brought him here. I will bring him back. He must not die.’
‘Why not?’ Luck said. ‘He wouldn’t be the first.’
Mya ignored the ghost. Kala Sriha sat back on its haunches, shifting position in a way that allowed her to see beyond the lion to the fallen man. A rumbling sound moved out of the lion and into Mya until her lips throbbed and the bottoms of her feet hummed. The phone felt hot.
Kala Sriha came into her mind and body in a way that shook her bones like the wind shakes a tree. The immortal mind was vast yet also familiar. Despite the creature’s masculine mane, Kala Sriha’s presence felt female. The immortal probed Mya’s being. Mya’s insides stretched under scrutiny, so that holes appeared in the cloth of who she was.
It is rare to meet a mortal who can come here. You are very old for one who lives on the earth.
Those weren’t the words—there were no actual words, only residues of the immortal’s passage through her, a suggestion of communication. She had the sense of becoming a thin, stringy net of ideas with big empty spaces in between, into which Kala Sriha inserted itself, contemplating what there was of Mya. Like blood through veins, the lion shot through all of her thoughts, until it came upon the question she had been harboring: whose was the voice on the phone?
There was a sense of laughter; not mocking, but truly happy.
You will find out one day, little star. Why do you protect this mortal?
It’s my fault he’s here, Mya answered. Mr. Richard tried to kill him with the night orchid, but he would not leave the world. It was me who brought him here. His life is lost because of me.
There was a pause while the immortal’s mind enveloped Mya’s, holding her soul like it was a baby.
The being belongs to me now. His acts are also my acts. I move in the world in many forms, and he is a part of me, now.
And again Mya felt the vastness of possibility yawn around her until her consciousness became a frail tightrope. The darkness of the lion was an immanence and an emptiness both. When it retreated she found herself looking through Luck, who faded in and out of sight against the seething green background of foliage.
Kala Sriha stood over the man once more. The man stirred and pushed himself from the ground. Around and above him crowded an afterimage of the black lion’s form, like an overcoat. He moved toward Mya. His body seemed to get stronger with every step, and she wondered what the lion had done to him. He trailed a cloak of smoky darkness as he walked away from the lion, and little by little his form filled out so that he was more flesh and less bone. He came to a halt in front of Mya, his chest heaving with the exertion of walking. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and made a deep wai to her. ‘I’m Shea.’
She shook her head. ‘Not me. Please thank Kala Sriha.’
> Shea looked confused.
‘Kala Sriha... that’s just a legend.’
Behind him, Kala Sriha’s tail began to lash at his disrespect. Kala Sriha was becoming larger and diffuse, a black lion cloud. As its annoyance built the immortal emitted a smell like burning hair. Mya’s chest tightened. She pressed her hands together at her breastbone and wai’d to Kala Sriha.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please excuse this mortal’s ignorance. Thank you for his life.
A destiny lies on you both, Kala Sriha said. But he is weak, starving. His strength of will alone sustains him, but it also stops him from accepting me. He will tear himself into pieces this way.
Shea was sizing Mya up with quick, desperate eyes. He shuddered, his skin crawling away from the darkness that surrounded him; but it clung to him like fingers.
‘I can’t die here,’ he said. ‘There’s something I have to do. Help me.’
He is closed-minded. He denies me.
Mya took out the phone and pressed it into Shea’s hands.
‘But—where did you get this?’
‘Mr. Richard took it from you.’
‘He drugged me. I keep seeing things. A black lion and lots of other hocus pocus.’
Kala Sriha rumbled with displeasure.
‘Please don’t say that!’ Mya whispered.
I have shown patience with you both. Enough. There is a form waiting for him in Bangkok. He will be one of my animal servants.
Stricken, Mya said nothing. Animal servant? Was Shea to reincarnate?
‘I would give anything to be an animal servant,’ Luck whined.
‘I have to go to Bangkok,’ Shea said out of the blue, so that she was unsure whether the desire was his own or Kala Sriha’s. He added, ‘I have contacts in the police there. Come with me, Mya!’
He cannot go as a human.
Bangkok. Bangkok. Had she ever delivered anything to Bangkok? There was the time she had delivered cash to Mr. Richard’s wife, slipping through the forest into the roof garden of the luxury high rise over the river...
‘Please, take my hand,’ Mya said. Shea’s fingers were cool and he was shaking, teeth chattering. He staggered, bumping into her. She felt her way through the branches, seeking Mrs. Fuller’s roof garden with its potted trees and its little fish pond...
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