The building has seen far better days. Nobody has bothered to paint over or wash off the sooty grime that has streaked down the sides of multiple floors.
Worse, the once resplendent old house at the base is falling apart. The roofed terrace around it is slowly being turned to digested crumbs by insects, and large parts of it has been blocked off from use. The wonderful flowery tiles at the ceiling are peeling off one by one and only hot-glued back on by the unexacting hands of the understaffed maintenance crew. On rainy days like this one, parts of the ceiling drip water that has seeped through, and she can count on stomping across muddy puddles in the lobby. She often remembers from her youth viral photos of an abandoned Bang Lamphu department store, where gold-and-orange-scaled fish had flourished in the waters of the flooded ground floor, and how back then she’d found the sight wonderful and out of the ordinary. No matter, she couldn’t help but feel overjoyed on seeing that the elevators were again working.
“Woon,” she announces to a silent apartment. “I bought fish maw soup, the one by the lady with the funny squeaky voice. I’ll leave it out here, with a bowl and a spoon.”
This is the place she feels most alone and terrified, and yet each day she stands in front of her son’s room and tells the door about her day at work, proofing autotranslations for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the crazy prices at the butcher, or what funny things their neighbors on the floor were doing. Mrs. Tadpole was walking her pet guinea pig in the hallway, or Mr. Galvin, the retired Scotsman, was flirting with the food delivery boys, wearing nothing but a loosely tied robe. Still, the door stays shut.
“And don’t you forget we’re going to celebrate your birthday soon. Can you let me know what you want?”
She thinks she hears a noise. Is that the whisper of a song leaking from headphones or the patter of her son’s bare feet? She thinks she hears something crumple. Whatever the sound is, it hints of life stirring and persisting and will spare her from hours of hushed panic in bed that night.
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
She and Mai meet again two weeks later at a floating hotel’s restaurant. Whole-floor windows bathe them with views of the widened river. This time, Mai has brought along Phee—short for Phillipa—who sits across the table with her bowl of basil-strewn noodles.
Pig can’t tell if Phee enjoys listening to her elders struggle to tell apart things that now are from what had once been. Over there almost at the horizon, near the triangular steeple looming over submerged buildings, was where Pig and her mother followed a trail of trampled grass to get to the campus library. The spot where the tips of rotted trees fiddle the air might have been the university pier where they gathered during Loy Krathong to celebrate the last full moon of the lunar year. There, they made a wish and pushed out candlelit flower baskets to join thousands of others floating in the river.
“My candle always went out in, like, two seconds,” says Mai. “Everyone else’s would still be lit, and so I thought mine would be the only wish that wouldn’t come true. I really thought my bad karma would wash back to me, and I’d cry myself to sleep that night.”
It was something the old Mai had mentioned, an admission that would have made their other friends back then roll their eyes. The new Mai is retelling it in an attempt to entertain a daughter visiting from boarding school, but the remark doesn’t seem to register with Phee, who gazes chin-down at her mother, saying nothing.
Pig turns to Phee and asks, “Do you know about Loy Krathong?”
“Of course I do, Auntie Pig. I’ve watched the videos.”
“She knows about the famous song,” says Mai.
Pig takes Mai’s remark as a prompt to begin singing in the high-pitched voice of yesteryear’s singers:
Full moon night of the twelfth lunar month,
the banks brimming with water
They all giggle, looking around to see who else nearby noticed. It pleases Pig to see Phee, who seems more at ease each minute, unable to contain herself. Woon used to laugh so much at her age. How long ago was that? Five or six years? Another life?
“Do they still do Loy Krathong in the city?” Phee asks her.
“Yes, but not as much. Fresh flowers are harder to come by, and the discharge water along the shore grosses out a lot of people.”
At the next table, waiters arrives to seat a South American family, likely tourists who have come to take in the Venice of Asia, as the waterlogged city now bills itself. Aside from the wide views of the river, diners here can enjoy blue langoustine curry and larb rillettes with mint-lime foams. The restaurant reminds Pig of the places where she used to treat Mai as reward for a productive study session or detailed class notes. Friends joked that Mai was a sort of hired friend. “Where’s your lady-in-waiting?” they’d ask whenever Pig arrived without Mai.
Those days, she sometimes felt like she could do without Mai’s constant deferral to her. It was Mai, the awkward, unassured girl, who had always depended on Pig’s guidance through treacherous years of secondary school and university. Yet Pig found pleasure in being the one who knew which house doors opened to secret parties or how to put on makeup like a Korean starlet. When Mai no longer needed someone to pay for everything, Pig had feared their friendship would fall apart, but she and Mai remained close while other friendships faded.
She wonders how Mai sees her now, after so long. Has she simply become Mai’s trusty friend from childhood, the one at the ready on each return to welcome and entertain and sweetly evoke years past?
“Where’s your son?” Phee asks. “Mom said he was going to be here.”
“You know, he was excited to come,” says Pig. “But then he told me he has exams coming up. Advanced calculus of some sort.”
“Phee’s curious about young people here,” says Mai. “She doesn’t know many other Thai kids.”
“I’ve told him all about you, Phee. He’s way sorry he couldn’t make it. Mai, you remember how it was with exams, right?”
“So let’s take him some study treats. I loved getting them back then. Phee also wants to see her grandparents’ old place. Isn’t that right?”
Phee nods and shrugs at the same time. Pig can’t help but surmise, with a tinge of anger, that Mai has tactically pushed her words in front of her daughter’s. It’s a move she herself would’ve made back when she could expect to get her way.
“When Woon’s less busy, we’ll have you both over. I promise to ask him. No guarantees though.”
She takes a long sip of coconut water, hoping the pause would send the conversation elsewhere.
“C’mon, just half an hour,” said Mai. “He won’t fail out of school because of that, will he?”
Pig realizes she shouldn’t have expected Mai to drop it. This Mai has gotten too used to talking to some secretary or underling she knew she could bulldoze over. A feeling surfaces, refusing to be held under. Pig doesn’t immediately recognize it, because she can’t remember at any time feeling that way toward Mai, but there it is: hate. Hate for the mannered, spokesperson-like way that Mai speaks, even among old friends, and that cheery voice, chiming out from a world without worry. Hate for the barely aged face and that satisfied, unforced smile on it.
“Listen, Mai, I’ve already told you no,” she says with what even she finds unexpected sternness. Her stomach sinks when she sees Phee recline to the seatback.
“I didn’t meant to snap like that,” she adds.
“Okay, Pig, we don’t have to see the apartment today. It was just a thought.”
“I’m sorry, Auntie Pig. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“It was my fault, Phee. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s fine. Let’s not talk anymore about it,” says Mai. “I’m going to ask for the dessert menu. That sounds good?”
“Actually, I have to go. I just remembered that I have to pick up basketball gear for Woon
at the sports center before it closes.” She retrieves her purse from the empty seat where he would have sat and reaches inside for her wallet.
“No, Pig, my treat.”
“Mai, I can pay, too.”
“Pig, really, you don’t have to.”
“But I can.”
She picks out two ten-thousand-baht bills, nearly half her weekly wage, and lays them on the table. She would have spent much of it at the market for the usual staples, and whatever remains would have gone into the fund she promised herself she’d have ready, in case she and Woon ever have to leave the building.
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
It rains the entire week that follows, and through the downpour outside the apartment window Pig sees birds in the wild for the first time. At first, they seem nothing more than tiny shadows between her building and the one across, but she can tell they’re not the usual sparrows by the perfection of their dart-shaped formation, seven deep. When the flock changes directions and turns toward her building, she scampers to the window to twist the blinds closed.
“Go away,” she mutters, and returns to the kitchen, where she has just broken eggs into sugar. She hasn’t baked in many years. She took classes before she married, imagining days ahead with a gingham-bordered apron tied neatly across her waist and children reaching across the counter to dip a finger in the batter, like in homemakers’ magazines. After she did marry—to a man who couldn’t stand the smell of butter—the plug-in oven stayed boxed in the closet.
Where is he now? Hong Kong? Singapore? Woon has heard his aunts and uncles curse his father to be reborn a water lizard, a damned monster of hell. She has assured her son many times that he’s nothing like his father.
Her fingers encrusted with dried batter, she lowers the cake pan into the oven and sets the timer for an hour. She searches the cupboards for the nicer gold-bordered plates from when she lived in the old house. She thumbs open the blinds to check if the birds are still there.
Earlier in the week, a coworker shared conspiratorial chatter circulating about the birds. Messages asked why they looked so different from the traffic and weather birds. What is that blue light? Why have they hired a foreign firm? Structural damage, sure, but what are they really looking for? She nodded at the suppositions, never mentioning Mai. They haven’t met since that last meal.
“Woon, did you forget what day it is?” she asks the closed door. “I baked you an entire cake. I’ll cut you a slice and you come and blow out the candles, okay?”
She pictures him bony and pale skinned. She doesn’t know if he’s bothered to shave. She knocks on his door, just to make sure he knows she is there.
“Woon, I said come blow out the candles,” she barks. “Don’t make me sing out here by myself.”
When Woon was a young boy, they celebrated his birthdays at the zoo. Woon, ever so excitable, would scrunch his face and pout and make noises to imitate the animals he saw, at times using his hands and arms to stand in for beaks and horns. From his face she divined the exuberant, spirited heart in her boy. She had feared she would lose him, in time, to the world, to grand ambitions that would take him far away, to young women eager to lay claim on him. But not to a room.
Just above a whisper, she launches into the familiar birthday song. She has picked out a long, outsize candle to give Woon ample time to open the door. The flame descends, one lingering second to the next, and then disappears into smoke.
“Well, I guess there’s a chance he could get better on his own. How long are you willing to wait?” a psychiatrist had asked in the early months. He looked at her with palpable impatience.
“I’m not sure, Doctor, but I’m his mother. I’ll know.”
The sight of the cake and spent candle together gives her a sudden shudder. Earlier in the year, out on the balcony, she lit incense sticks and put out boiled chicken and rice for Mai’s parents, as offerings. She clasped her hands and whispered for the dead to come feast.
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
Hey, Pig taps on the projected keyboard she’s brought up on the wall.
She knows she can’t expect Mai to respond that night. It is already late, and Mai must have suspected that Pig has been brushing her off. Earlier in the week, Mai had sent a note asking Pig if she wanted to grab a bite, and Pig wrote back that the Ministry had been keeping her very busy, best to check back again later. She wasn’t in a very social mood, and she certainly didn’t feel like going to another one of Mai’s fancy restaurants. Mai would have insisted on paying this time, and Pig owes her much more than she could ever pay back. It had felt much less burdensome to feel like she would always be the one to so generously give.
She taps on the wall to refresh her message list. Nothing. She types Hey again and then regrets sending it.
Why should she even expect Mai to reply at all? Maybe every friendship needn’t last forever. The one between her and Mai wouldn’t be the first to fade, at no one’s fault. The inseparable sling out of each other’s orbits. Strangers become friends, then become occasionally recollected names. Out the window, the blue shadow of gulls line the railing. They will soon launch from their perch out on their own separate flights.
Her heart leaps when a message bubble appears on the windowpane: Hi, Pig. Is everything all right?
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
The hall outside is quiet. Through the doors, they can hear the neighbors—mothers yelling at children over the clatter of forks and spoons, the evening’s entertainments through muffled speakers. The two of them lean against the railing and look on the echoing space above the courtyard pool.
“He was doing well, and then he wasn’t. I kept thinking he just needed time. I’m to blame.”
“Pig, believe me, you’ve been nothing but the best mother.”
Pig wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands as Mai rummages through a briefcase for tissues. The evening swelters thickly. Pig dabs her forehead, mixing tears with sweat. A misty light—from windows, headlights, billboard screens—has washed over the sky. On nights like this, the air beading on her skin, the city seems already drowned.
“I’m sorry I’ve kept all this from you.”
“It’s fine, Pig, but please don’t be afraid to talk to me anymore. I’ll help.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve never doubted that.”
She takes a napkin from Mai and blows her nose, unselfconscious now that the most painful facts have already been said.
“Where’s Phee? Did you leave her by herself?”
“I told her I had to run to an emergency meeting. She doesn’t care. All she wants to do is stay up and face-talk to her friends, their daytime.”
“Woon used to do that, too. Now I don’t know if he talks to anyone at all.”
She grabs another napkin, just to have it in her hand. She feels rude for not having invited Mai inside the apartment, but she can’t so easily shed the habit of letting friends enter only tidied rooms.
“Mai, do you think Woon’s going to make it through this?”
“Yes, I think he will.”
“Tell me he’s going to be fine.”
“Woon’s going to be fine.”
“Thank you. For some reason, it’s comforting to hear you say it.”
“I can say it as many times as you’d like, Pig.”
It has been decades since she last cried in front of Mai. They were university students who’d come upon a little publicized campus exhibition of photographs from student massacres in the 1970s. She hadn’t known about these Octobers. So much had been lost or erased from the books, but taking in the faces of young strangers alive and dead long before her, she felt so keenly their suffering that she hurried to a corner of the exhibit and wept. It was Mai who found and consoled her. “It is only so. It will not be so,” Mai said then, her hand on Pig’s shoulder. Many times, many ye
ars after, Pig would chant those words when she needed to believe them.
“I’m glad you’re here, Mai. You’ve been more generous to me and Woon than you’ve needed to be, and I’ve always depended on you, more than I’ve been willing to say. I’ve been such a miserable, ungrateful friend.”
“Pig, you’re the opposite of that,” says Mai, stepping over to put an arm around Pig’s shoulder. For Pig, Mai’s brushing off what was said only confirms its reality, but this isn’t the time to think of her own failings.
“Mai, how are you doing with the birds?”
“Are you sure you want to talk about my work project?”
“Yes, I’ve been wondering about it.”
“We’ve covered over half the city already, from what’s left of Chinatown to the old racetrack.”
“Will all of Krungthep really be scanned?”
“More or less. Right now, we’re focusing on places we think we’re in most danger of losing.”
“To what?”
“To whatever happens.”
Pig can see it. There will be a vast body of water and the shards of a city. There will be falling ruins the waves will turn to sand. Yet on sun-scorched days there will still be children vaulting into their own shadows in that new sea.
She will return Woon to this world, but first she needs to see him. She has only let herself think of the child preserved in the framed photos: the one who chased sea crabs at a Bang Saen beach and the one who played chess for hours at his grandfather’s bedside. She realizes now that, knowing people their whole lives, she can mistake them for a phantom—the mirage of who they once were.
“Mai, I have to ask you something. Have you ever scanned people?”
“Why are you asking that?”
“Tell me, Mai.”
“The birds see everything.”
Bangkok Wakes to Rain Page 23