Street Music

by Timothy Hallinan

  But.

  But she has to go in, no matter what.

  She ducks beneath the handrail, her back emitting a startled cramp of protest, and then she windmills her arms, unprepared for the slope of the driveway—steeper than it looks—and, as the door begins to rumble its way back down, she leans forward, against the pull of her back, to slip beneath it. Ahead of her, she sees the car’s red brake lights brighten and die as it comes to a stop, and she ducks behind the car nearest to her.

  She’s panting as though she’s run a mile, and it feels like something is literally swelling toward explosion in the center of her chest. She has a vision of herself dissolving into tiny pieces and then ballooning outward with the force of the blast, and when it doesn’t happen she finds herself wishing that it had. There’s a ragged sound in her ears. It takes her a moment to identify it as her own breathing.

  A woman laughs, the melody echoing off the hard surfaces of the garage. A car door chunks closed, a sound so solid that, for a moment, it offers her a kind of comfort. There are solid things in the world; it’s not all wisps of memory and fear and regret and street music.

  Without being aware she’s doing it, she pats the envelope in her pocket: one, two. Maybe later tonight, when this is finished, but then it seems to be inescapably true that this will never be finished. She has no idea how long she has hung suspended there, dangling from that thought like someone at the end of a rope, when she hears a muffled bell and recognizes it: the elevator, announcing its arrival on a distant floor. It will be empty now. Closing her eyes, she feels her way around the car and then, with her eyes half-closed and her head down so she can see only her feet and a bit of the concrete directly ahead of them, she listens to her shoes rasp as she drags them across the hard gray floor toward the elevator. Toward the eighth floor.

  16

  The Doorbell

  The look Miaow gives him when she sees the name on the takeout bag in his hand almost makes risking his life in traffic worthwhile. “It’s all right,” he says, coming into the living room. “Don’t get up. This isn’t as heavy as it looks.”

  “Good,” she says. “Then you can take it back.”

  “Any word from your mom?” At the counter, he starts removing the food containers from the bag and laying them out in a finicky order that he thinks will irritate Miaow. He wishes he had bought some flowers. It would have been nice for Rose to find them in her room when she gets back. Why does he always think of these things too late?

  “She’s eating,” Miaow says. “Probably someplace good.”

  “Well, you know, it’s just that it’s the first time she and the baby—”

  “And the whole platoon,” Miaow says. “She’s got the squad with her. And it’s two blocks. She’ll be fine.”

  “Worrying is part of my job description.”

  “Mr. Rafferty,” Edward says. “Do you think Leslie Howard is hot?”

  “Aaahh. I’m more of an Errol Flynn man myself.”

  “Errol who?”

  “Flynn, but don’t let it bother you. He’s been under the sod since the last ice age. Hope you’re hungry, there’s a lot of som tam.”

  Edward says, “Oh.”

  “It’s not that he’s hot,” Miaow says. “It’s his voice.”

  “Ahem,” Edward says, pronouncing it as it’s spelled. “Last time, it was his nose.”

  “His nose and his voice,” Miaow says.

  “The nose plays a very important role in the production of the voice,” Rafferty says. “I can see where you’d get them mixed up.”

  Edward laughs but cuts it off instantly. “His nose,” he says, and then he laughs again.

  Rafferty says, “Give her a break. It’s a very distinctive—”

  The doorbell rings.

  “She’s got a key,” Miaow says.

  “Maybe the troops dropped her off,” Rafferty says. “She’s got a baby in her arms, remember?”

  “Like Fon would let her come upstairs alone,” Miaow says. “Like I’m the only one in the world who can possibly open the door.” The bell rings again. “Okay, okay, okay.”

  Rafferty is at the counter laying out utensils and napkins when he hears someone say something that might be, “Miaow,” and then he hears Miaow say, “What? Who—who . . .” and then scream, shrill enough to etch glass. The scream turns into a stream of words, “Go away go away go away,” and the front door slams. Edward says, “Miaow, what’s the—” and then Miaow’s bedroom door slams, so hard he thinks he can feel the floor shake, and from the other side of the door, Miaow is shouting, “Go away, go away, go away.” He charges into the living room, pushing past Edward, who’s shifting from foot to foot, the image of someone who has no idea what to do, and he opens the front door to see a filthy, ragged woman collapsed against the opposite wall, crying her heart out.

  Part Two

  IT’S A GIRL

  17

  Perfect

  The child did not want to come into the world. Perhaps, Hom thought—much later—her daughter had known what was in store for her.

  Hom had never given birth, but the process didn’t frighten her; it was familiar enough. Her older sisters had borne four children among them, one of them in a hospital many kilometers from their village and three at home. She had seen and heard pain and tears and some screams, but at the end of it all, there was a new soul slipping through the doorway into the world, slick and glistening and howling in protest. All those babies were children now, with no memory of their first appearance in life.

  But unlike her sisters, who had been surrounded by friends and relatives who could soften the pain and sometimes perilous passage of birth with familiar faces, reassuring words, and soft, knowing hands, Hom had been forced to abandon her village, leaving behind her friends and her mother and sisters because her mother-in-law had wanted Hom to stay in her village, many kilometers away, to contribute to the harvest and the house; to work, it sometimes seemed to Hom, like an animal in a harness. But her sisters, after huddling together out of her hearing, had joined forces, doing what they could to prepare her for the experience and to put things to her in the most reassuring light. They’d even told her to be grateful for all the work her mother-in-law heaped on her because it was important to be active before the child was born, to walk and to work and move as much as possible. This, they said, would make it easier for the child to settle into the womb in the best position, with its head—the heaviest part of it—facing downward. Babies who were born head-first, they said, were the easiest to deliver, and they got their first breath of air early in their passage. In this position, too, it was less likely that the child would become entangled in its cord. Children born in other positions were more likely to have the cord wrap itself around them, sometimes around the neck.

  There were malicious forces in places where children were born, including mae kamlerd, the spirits of the baby’s earlier mothers, which might want to reclaim their child; and there was the delicate matter of the first appearance of a new khwan, a soul, just recently assigned to the tiny, squalling body. This was a dangerous moment that could draw ghosts, most of them malicious. The idea that these uncontrollable entities might play a role in what happened during her child’s birth made Hom more careful about the things she could control, such as helping make sure the baby was in the best position when the time came.

  So she had worked as tirelessly and as cheerfully as possible, even though she grew weary as the pregnancy wore on, and her mother-in-law was not an agreeable person. Indeed, her mother-in-law seemed to feel that the entire pregnancy was a ruse to get Hom out of some of the heaviest chores, and as Hom thickened and slowed, the grumbling increased. In bed at night, she had heard her mother-in-law complaining to her son that the woman he married was lazy and weak-willed and that he should have known better than to choose the youngest daughter in a family. They were a
lways pampered, babied too long, as a mother tried to hold on to her last child, tried to feel essential to her daughter’s life for a few extra years.

  “You just wait,” the old lady had said, “she’s going to behave like she’s the first woman who ever gave birth. She’ll make it seem like the most difficult pregnancy in history.”

  And, in fact, despite all the work that had been demanded of her, Hom was already worried about the child’s position. Her oldest sister, one of whose two children had arrived through a very difficult delivery indeed, had showed her how to get a feeling for how and where the baby was positioned in the womb. Where did it kick? If she felt it near her ribs, that meant its head was down and its feet were up, and everything was fine. If she felt the kicks much lower, then she should press against her belly—yes, it would hurt, and if it hurt too much, she should get a midwife to do it for her—trying to feel the hardest part of the baby, the head. You want the head to be the lowest part of the baby, she said repeatedly. If it’s not there at first, don’t worry: babies move around in the womb and most of them will eventually take the right position, the position of someone falling headfirst into a pool, arms at her sides.

  But with her sisters miles away, Hom hadn’t been sure her assessment—that the child’s head felt too high—was correct, and when she asked her mother-in-law to help her confirm the baby’s position she’d been told to stop being silly: there was work to do. Babies, she was told, moved around all the time, more, in fact, than Hom did, and there were chores still undone from yesterday.

  But her dreams at night were full of babies who wouldn’t come at all or who, when they finally emerged and peeked at her over the edge of her pubis, had sly, pale eyes full of a bright, feverish malice. In the worst of the dreams, the baby came out and grew to an enormous size, blocking all the windows and doors, and then slowly turned to look at her and bared long, curved white teeth.

  And when, in the waking world, her water broke at last and she was finally put onto a wicker cot, in a room that had tools stored in it, and told to try to keep quiet, her fears proved well-founded: the baby wouldn’t come.

  The labor went on for hours, racking pains and tooth-grinding spasms as her body tried to push the child out. It went on until even her husband became frightened and suggested getting a midwife from a neighboring village or driving Hom to the nearest hospital. But her husband’s mother mocked both notions and kept repeating that babies knew how to be born, that they’d been doing it for centuries, and that she’d had her first one squatting on the footpath between the rice paddies, cut the cord with a penknife, washed the child in the paddy, and gone back to work. Women these days, she said, were weak.

  In the end a woman from the village who could endure Hom’s cries no longer pushed her way in and ordered Hom’s mother-in-law out of the room. Kneading Hom’s belly like bread dough, she said, “How long since the last contraction?” and when Hom said she had no idea, the woman said, “Well tell me when you feel one starting.” Instantly one seized her and made her gasp, and as she pushed against something inside her that felt bigger and harder and heavier than the room they were in, the woman felt her belly again, not gently, and sat back and said, “It’s not sideways. It’s bottom-first. If it were sideways we’d have to take you to have a doctor open you to take the baby out, but this way, I think you can do it.” She looked at Hom, who was completely lost in a wave of pain, leaned in, and said, “Are you listening to me?”

  Hom gasped a yes. “Is this bad?”

  “It’s not exactly what you want. It’s better if it’s headfirst, because bottom-first, like your baby is, makes the child thicker, harder to push out. But I’ve seen babies born this way. One of my sisters’ children said hello to the world with her rear end. But here’s the thing: you’re going to have to help, no lying back and letting the baby do the work. And your mother-in-law and your husband are going to have to help, too. Is that all right with you?”

  She had a hard time picturing them helping, but she said, “If it’s good for the baby.”

  “Fine. Just hold still for a minute or two. Push when you feel like you should. Scream if you have to.”

  Several minutes later, Hom was sitting up, her back against a thin padded mattress, now folded four layers thick, and her mother-in-law was grumbling about the impossibility of washing out the stains and the cost of replacing it. Her husband had hung two lengths of rope from the ceiling beams and tied a loop in the ends that hung just above Hom’s head, and then he’d let the village woman position him on the other side of the folded mattress so Hom would have something solid to lean on. When he was settled, the woman, whose name was Amarin, told Hom to bring her knees up to her chest and to hold on to the ropes, lean back against her husband, and push as hard as she could when she felt the next contraction.

  By then Hom was covered in sweat and smelled, even to herself, like someone who hadn’t bathed in weeks. Her mother-in-law had taken a seat in the doorway, as close to being outside the room as she could while technically being inside, and she looked on disapprovingly as though she planned to write a critical report about the proceedings.

  Rising up from deep, deep inside Hom came something that filled her chest and stopped there and then slowly unknotted itself and emerged as a deep, shuddering “Oohhhhhhh,” and she collapsed backward against the cushion and her husband’s knees, discovering that pulling on the ropes actually did lessen the pain. Amarin, her face inches from Hom’s pubis, said, “It’s going to be fine, you can do this, we can all do it together,” but then the pain waned and Hom lay back, gasping, against the firmness of her husband’s knees. Much to her surprise, he passed a palm gently across her forehead, wiping away sweat. He asked his mother for a towel, and she got up to get one, leaving the door open behind her.

  Like a tide coming back in, the pain reasserted itself, planted a flag in her cervix, and declared itself fully present, and this time the feeling was different, alien, something immense passing itself through her pelvis, and she felt her left hip pop out of its socket, but there was no time to think about that because suddenly all of Thailand was tunneling through her from inside, trying to get out, and she pushed down again, and Amarin put her face back right there, close enough to see everything, and her mother-in-law came into the room, towel in hand, as the pain simply tore Hom in half, and when the red fuzz that was filling her eyes dissolved, she felt the backs of Amarin’s hands pushing her legs even farther apart, and she was saying, “Come on, darling, it’s butt-first but it—come on, come the rest of the way, come on the rest—” and then Amarin was laughing and wiping her face with her forearm, and Hom’s husband and mother-in-law were laughing too, and Amarin said, “She pooped in my face, the little devil, she—she—it’s a girl, it’s a girl, it’s a girl. And she’s perfect.”

  18

  Banana Split

  He’d hauled the old woman out of the building as quickly as he could, taking the stairs because he was terrified the elevator doors would open and there would be Rose and Fon and the baby. In the end, he avoids the lobby completely, going all the way down to the garage, and then out to the only place he can think of to take her: the Baskin-Robbins shop where he’d taught the kid behind the counter not to call it Chocolate Mouse. The boy owed him, he figures, and he is certain that no real restaurant will allow her through the door, much less show her to a booth.

  The two of them walk without speaking, the silence broken only when she sniffled or blew her nose on the inside of her big, loose white dress. She’d been weeping full-out on the stairs, so this is an improvement; he’s never known how to talk to a weeping woman. Still, a talk—however unprepared for it he might be—is obviously unavoidable, and the ice cream parlor is at least neutral territory, and far enough away to give him a little time to attempt to organize his thoughts.

  Since she’s been studying the pavement as though it were some treacherous alien terrain, full of ob
stacles and knee-breakers, he’s had lots of opportunity to sneak glances at her, to try to peel back the years and the layers of clothes and the dirt and the damage to see whether he can find Miaow in her somewhere. The one thing he has identified is so ephemeral he almost dismisses it: the angle of her neck as she scans the sidewalk ahead. When Miaow first came to live with them, she had kept her face lowered, unwilling to meet people’s eyes. He’d been unsure whether it was shyness, shame, or submission, and ultimately decided it was all three, but that the submission was a tactic intended to mislead, because once he got to know her he realized that she was as stubborn as a bloodstain. Looking at the old woman, he halfway believes he sees some kind of connective tissue in this echo, but when she lifts her head, it vanishes. And this is impossibly important, because obviously the first order of business is to verify who she actually is.

  One improbability—that someone so old could actually be Miaow’s mother—has been rubbed away, one furtive glance at a time. Her stoop, he realizes, is at least partly protective, an attempt to be less conspicuous, to present a smaller target, and, perhaps, to shield from attack the vital organs in her abdomen. Take away the bent back, and it’s not difficult to see that her skin might be prematurely wrinkled from endless exposure to the sun, and that the wild swarm of gray hair got its texture from an absolute lack of care and its color from genetics; she’s not as old as the hair makes her appear to be. He wonders for a moment whether Miaow will be gray when she’s in her late thirties or early forties, or however old the woman actually is.

  Halfway to their destination, they pass a sidewalk vendor on Silom who is selling cheap, thin, semitransparent plastic raincoats in anticipation of the wet season. They are ugly but clean, and he buys one in an enervated shade of yellow, the only color she will accept. With it pulled over her clothes and buttoned in place, she’s still bulky and messy, and there is nothing he can do about her hair, but at least the coat covers the multiple layers of clothing, and mutes the stains spattered across the outermost layer like a map of countries no one in his right mind would ever visit.