“You’d dare to go all the way to Bang Saen by yourself? Do you even know how to get there?”
“Piece of cake. It’s the red songthaew bus. To get to Ang Sila is the blue one. They take you right there.”
Consequently, Oan went home by himself. Kampol, meanwhile, boarded the red bus to Bang Saen.
He hadn’t meant for it to happen, but here he was, in Nong Mon, because of his bragging. All the other passengers got off the bus. The famous Nong Mon market was bustling, the shops along its front forming a long golden trail of lights. The bus stayed a while—the driver calling for passengers who wanted to go to Bang Saen Beach. Eventually, it pulled out. Alone, Kampol shrank in his seat on the cushioned bench. His legs trembled; he was rattled.
He had felt lonesome before, many times in fact. But in those moments, even if he didn’t have anyone in the world, he had his familiar neighborhood, with its familiar crevices and corners that he knew so well, which provided comfort. There was the wall outside Chong’s shop, where the jasmine bush stood, marked with dirt from where he leaned against it when he visited. Or there was the wedged fork of the poinciana. Or behind Mrs. Tongjan’s house, his hideout beneath the shrub whose leafy branches bowed down and kissed the ground. When desolation struck, Kampol had these familiar nooks to embrace him.
Kampol pushed the button to indicate he wanted the stop at the beachfront. He saw the ocean; he’d now seen Bang Saen. But his courage had snuck off someplace he couldn’t follow. The sea was dark and the beach was black; how ugly they were. In the murky sky, the sun faded behind a cluster of clouds. Far off there were people walking, but only a few. Kampol was hunched forward, weighed down by the backpack strapped on his back. His large eyes grew sad and his eyebrows hung. He looked left and right as he took short little leaden steps along the road that bordered the beach. He’d made it to Bang Saen, all by himself. But this place had nothing that appealed to him. None of it made him feel like he was having fun. So, he went to wait for the bus to take him back home—or, even if it wasn’t a home, it was at least his turf.
Kampol waited…
A bus apparently wasn’t easy to come by in Bang Saen in the middle of a weekday. They didn’t come all the way down to the beachfront if there weren’t passengers who wanted to come from Nong Mon. With no buses coming in, there were none departing either. The one that had brought Kampol had already headed back.
The sun showed itself again briefly, before truly departing. Kampol no longer cared what kind of vehicle the headlights were coming from, he flagged every one that went by. But the cars and pickup trucks simply zoomed past him.
When a bus finally pulled in to pick him up, its lights washed over him, shining on the tears that glistened all over his face. His mouth was wide and his entire body jerked with each sniffle. When he stepped onto the bus, a pair of passengers, a man and a woman, noticed him. Together they tried relentlessly to get a word out of him. Kampol ignored them the whole way. At most he nodded or shook his head. But, thanks to them, he cheered up and stopped crying. When he saw the TrueWare sign, he beamed and quickly rang the bell.
“He’s back!” Oan shouted at the top of his lungs. “There’s no need to go after him, Hia Chong.”
Seeing his friends lined up waiting for him at the entrance to their housing community, Kampol grinned wide, with all of his teeth on display. Chong let out a sigh and walked away without so much as a word to Kampol. His friends squealed, surrounding him from all sides. Kampol, feeling grand and glorious, told them about his adventure, laughing louder than anyone.
Crickets
Mr. Sanya, one of Kampol’s teachers, lived in a house behind the school, and he sent Kampol to fetch his sneakers, which he’d forgotten right outside his front door. Kampol had the shoes when he heard something, his ears pricking up. He turned left and right, trying to locate the source of the sound. He found a pile of cardboard and Styrofoam boxes and wooden crates—all full of crickets. Each container was covered with a plastic net and tied tightly with rope. Kampol put his face right up to one of the boxes. The many, many crickets were either perched on or crawled over cardboard egg trays. In one corner of the box was a dish of water and a dish of what was likely food, but he couldn’t tell what kind exactly.
Kampol brought Mr. Sanya his sneakers; he was playing kick volleyball with the gym teacher, Mr. Somkiat. While Mr. Sanya was changing shoes, Kampol stood right next to him, refusing to leave.
“Mr. Sanya,” Kampol said. The teacher looked up with one eyebrow raised, implying, “Yes?” “Why do you have all those crickets?”
“Oh, I farm them to sell. A man comes for them every few months, after they’ve reproduced enough to fill up the boxes.” Mr. Sanya eyed Kampol with a little smile. “If you want to try raising some, get a big box ready this evening. Tomorrow after school I’ll give you two pairs of males and females.”
Kampol was on cloud nine. Not only did he find a large box, but he even went to the grocery store in the older housing development to ask for any spare egg trays. He also found a plastic net behind Jua’s house, but when he wouldn’t say what he wanted the net for, Jua refused to let him have it. In the end, in exchange for the net, he had to tell his secret. He also had to give his word that once his crickets mated, he would give Jua a pair.
Kampol monitored the crickets very closely. Their food looked like chicken feed—Mr. Sanya let Kampol buy five baht’s worth of it from his own supply. But crickets were too easy to keep. Kampol didn’t have to do a thing. All he really did was stare at them, which he did relentlessly. His four crickets looked so much alike that he couldn’t tell them apart at first, but with perseverance, he could eventually distinguish all of them. He gave them names to have something to call them by. The first pair he named after his parents, Ratom and Namfon, despite the fact that his name meant “misery” and hers meant “rain.” Both names seemed rather odd now that he thought about them given that their family name meant “bright.” Later on, when the two crickets he’d named after his parents had children, he wanted to call them Boy and Jon. As for the other pair, he named them Somdej and Somrak, after two of his classmates who were always getting teased by their homeroom teacher for being boyfriend and girlfriend. Kampol was thinking ahead: the idea was that when crickets Somdej and Somrak had children, he would ask his two friends to help him name the offspring.
When he went to school, he left his cricket box with Chong. And as soon as school let out, he ran home without even waiting for Oan. Even when he was eating or doing his homework, the cricket box stood right next to him. On weekends, he didn’t play with his friends. He poured his heart and soul into watching the crickets, waiting for the moment he would get to see the children of Ratom, Namfon, Somdej, and Somrak. And Kampol wasn’t the only one. A constant stream of his friends stopped by to check on them. Everybody said that when the new crickets were born, they wanted to buy a pair.
But once the nymphs had hatched and were bouncing around in the box, Kampol told his friends that he couldn’t sell any of them just yet. Mr. Sanya had told him that you had to wait until the crickets grew a bit before you could tell if they were male or female. His eager friends could only bide their time. But even after the crickets had grown, Kampol continued to give them the runaround, drumming up one excuse after another. Jua was the only one whom Kampol gave a pair of nymphs.
The crickets chirped loudly inside the box. At first Kampol named every single one of them. Of course, there was Boy and Jon. He thought they had grown enough that he was able to tell them apart, but within minutes of their christening, Boy and Jon started hopping around and Kampol lost track of them. After that, he was reluctant to make a definitive call as to which crickets were Boy and Jon because he worried that he would mistake new ones for the originals.
“How many crickets have you got, Kampol?” Mr. Sanya asked him one morning. “The buyer’s coming next week.”
Kampol felt his heart stop. He stood numb and unspeaking.
“We
ll, maybe you should hold off on selling them. You don’t have that many yet. It’s better if you keep them for breeding—does that sound like a plan? Or would you prefer to sell now?”
Kampol looked down. “Yes, I think it’s better for me to keep them for now.”
That same day, at Chong’s shop, while Kampol’s orchestra of crickets trilled noisily in the back, Dum and Gaew, Tongbai’s husband, were bantering over glasses of whiskey at the terrazzo table just outside.
“People eat them. You can toast them like grasshoppers. But they’re tastier,” Dum said.
“Nah, people aren’t going to get into it. They feel different. People want to be rid of grasshoppers, which eat all the crops, so people eat them just to be done with them. But crickets make a nice sound. They’re too lovable to be food. When people farm them it’s for animal feed.”
“Oh Gaew, you’ve been living under a rock. A couple of days ago, I was watching that show Fight Hard and Get Rich. They went to talk to someone who farms crickets and delivers them to restaurants. Right on camera, they threw them in a wok and fried them up. Not only that, but they gave a ton of recipes for them that sounded amazing. Stay right there, I’ll prove it to you,” Dum said, and then he walked over to Chong.
That afternoon, Kampol hurried back to the store as usual. As soon as he arrived, he made a beeline for the back of the shop. He lifted up his cricket box—but it was silent. Right at that moment, Chong happened to notice him.
“Oh, Boy, you’re back. I sold those crickets for you. At first, I didn’t think there were that many, but I counted them up and there were actually forty-eight. I got a baht apiece for them. Here, Uncle Dum gave you fifty.”
Kampol felt like he’d been gut-punched. He heard Dum call him over, urging him to come have a taste. He walked woodenly over to the table. His family was lying on the plate, some face up, some face down, their limbs all mixed together. Suddenly, Dum grabbed one and held it right in front of his face—it was Papa! And Mama was about to go in Gaew’s mouth! His friends Somdej and Somrak had probably already been eaten. As for Boy and Jon… He couldn’t even recognize himself. He couldn’t tell if he’d already been eaten.
Birthday Parties
There was a party over at the big house to celebrate Mrs. Tongjan’s sixtieth birthday. All of her relatives, young and old, even some of them from other provinces, turned up early in the morning to wish her a happy birthday. When they stepped out of their cars, they were all bearing gifts.
Mrs. Tongjan, dressed in red Thai silk, greeted each of her guests out front. They waied her with their palms joined, and she returned the gesture, ushering them inside the house. The presents were left on a large table outside, and under the shade of the fragrant ylang-ylang tree, a long table was overflowing with an impressive array of food.
Because Mrs. Tongjan’s yard didn’t have a fence, the children found themselves standing in a group, able to steal glances from close range. To them, though, both the food and the gifts seemed so, so far away. They didn’t realize it, but they kept drifting closer. And closer. Nobody was outside. From inside the house came the humming sound of prayers; monks had been invited to come and bless the special occasion. The children inched toward the tables—to the point where, were they to stretch their arms out, they would be able to touch the food.
They realized that they had drawn too near only after the chanting died down. That’s when the sounds of movement began to pick up from inside the house. The children began to retreat just as party guests were funneling out. For a moment, Mrs. Tongjan’s family members stared, surprised, over the spread of food to the group of dark, dirty children. From their side of the table, Kampol, Oan, Jua, Noi, Rah, Chai, and Od stared back over the food at the handsomely dressed crowd with awe. They had no choice but to concede that they must step back further and make way for that cleanliness and the resplendence, for the deliciousness, for opportunity and good fortune…would such things, they wondered, trickle down to them one day?
Now that the ceremony was finished, the party got underway. When it got to the point where guests were starting to help themselves to food, Noi was struck by a moment of clarity: “Let’s get out of here. It’s pathetic to stand around watching people eat.” The others snapped back to their senses, too, and they all felt embarrassed, so they tore themselves away by turning around and heading to their hangout under the poinciana. There, they found the girls sitting in a circle playing jacks.
“I want a birthday party, too,” Jua said.
“I’ve never had a birthday party in my life,” Kampol remarked.
“Me neither,” Oan said. “My mama neither, nor my papa.”
“If I had the money, I’d have a huge birthday party. I’d get a cake this big,” Noi said, spreading his arms as wide as a washtub, “and eat the whole thing myself.”
“What about the people who brought you presents? Aren’t you at least going to give them a slice?” Ploy asked.
“Who said I was going to invite anyone?” Noi said.
“Okay. Then if I ever have a birthday party, you’re not invited.”
“Don’t forget to invite me!” Kampol and Jua said almost at the same time. Ploy nodded at them.
“I don’t give a damn about having a birthday party. It’s boring,” Chai said. “Last year, my papa had one for me.” The announcement caused a stir among the friends, all of them wanting to know how big the cake was. “There wasn’t any cake. There was only papaya salad, larb, and koi. My papa invited his friends from the factory, and they stayed up partying until dawn.”
Since there was no cake to talk about, his friends—it was obvious from their expressions—lost interest.
“I want to have a birthday party, but the kind with a cake.”
“Hmm…”
“Hey, look!” Rah said and pointed at the garbage can at the base of the utility pole in front of Mrs. Tongjan’s house, into which someone was dumping some trash.
But to the children, the stuff was not trash. Rah, Chai, and the twins, Gae and Gay, scampered over as the other children cheered them on.
They returned with armloads of crumpled and torn wrapping paper. Gay discovered two birthday cards within the ball of paper she’d snagged, so she read them aloud:
“‘Dear Mother, wishing you make it to a ripe old age full of health, happiness, and comfort. You should know that I’ll always love and respect you deeply, and may we enjoy many more decades together.’ Oh, that’s well put. This one says, ‘Have a happy, happy birthday, Grandma!’ That’s it…pretty short if you ask me. He should have written more.”
Because they all wanted to have a birthday party, the kids went down the list to see who in the neighborhood was having their birthday next, in case they could all chip in for a cake and throw a party for once.
Two days later, Old Noi, bent over her cane, came to Chong’s shop with Penporn hanging onto her blouse.
“Can you help me? The kids said this afternoon, after they come home from school, they want to throw me a birthday party. This morning they all gave me birthday messages they’d written for me, but I couldn’t read any of them since, as you know, I don’t know how to read. I had to have Jai read them to me. But there’s still this one left, from the little one here—she wrote it all on her own. Jai said he couldn’t make out what it says. I had Dum look at it, too, and he said she wrote it so small that he can’t read it either.”
Chong took the piece of paper and looked at it. It was some of the wrapping paper, which had been cut into a rectangle. On the back of it were three rows of round, long squiggles, all squished together. Chong pretended to read it aloud:
“Happy birthday, Grandma Noi. Wishing you lots of happiness, good health, and ten thousand more years of life!”
Old Noi bobbed her head, looking pleased. When Chong asked, “Did I read that right?” Penporn nodded with a tight-lipped smile, her eyes shining.
Old Noi hugged her granddaughter and said, “Aw, she sure can write.”
When the rubber-band fad swept through the school, all over the playground or anywhere there was open space in the morning before class, during lunchtime, recess, and after school, girls were executing sideways jumps over long ropes made from the bands and boys were bent over with their butts sticking up in the air, each blowing on a band on the ground, trying to land it on his opponent’s. Shorts and skirt pockets were stuffed full of the bands, which, of course, didn’t simply take over the school but followed the kids home as well. When the craze finally began to fizzle, the kids started talking about bouncy balls. Eventually, Auntie Nian, who ran the toy store, took down her rubber-band display board and stored it away.
New trends had a way of barreling in. Seemingly while Kampol was still bent over practicing his aim with his rubber band, around him the world had already moved on. Little rubber balls, in a rainbow of colorful patterns, were now bouncing up and down all over the school. That afternoon, Kampol headed over to Auntie Nian’s shop. He had to purchase five baht’s worth of snacks to get one bouncy ball as a free gift. You couldn’t choose which design you got, so the kids were always showing off the styles they had in their collections. Kampol spent his money on snacks every day, getting one more bouncy ball every day, one new pattern a day, to add to his collection—except on the not-infrequent days when the designs repeated. Morning, noon, and night, bouncy balls were brought out of pockets for showdowns. The owners weren’t always able to chase down their runaway balls, and often a bunch of kids dove in a pile, thinking the same one looked like it could be theirs.
Kampol went to school with his pockets bulging with bouncy balls. But one morning, everywhere at school, the world had begun to move on again. Bouncy balls were being edged out by modeling clay. For the boys, the battleground was any smooth concrete surface. One kid would pinch off a thumb-sized piece, raise his hand real high, and fling the bit of modeling clay onto the ground. His opponent would take a chunk of equal size and take aim at the first player’s blob. A hit meant the pieces were his for the taking. Whoever ran out of modeling clay but still wanted to play had to rush over to Auntie Nian’s shop and buy some more. Those with good aim could, on a given day, earn themselves a fairly large clump of the clay. The goal was to own a ball that resembled a globe, created from winning and combining nuggets of different colors. Kampol, in his unremitting desire to keep up with trends, was forced to empty the bouncy balls from his pockets into his school bag and procure himself some modeling clay. He won some and lost some, but eventually he had a sizable hunk. He was zealous about honing his skills. At home, he played against Oan. They were evenly matched and basically took turns winning and losing.
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