Her Here

by Amanda Dennis

  —They’ve issued Ella’s death certificate, Siobhán says.

  A shudder passes through me. We knew it would happen. Still, a part of me hoped to find her in time.

  —Have they listed a cause? I ask, to remind Siobhán she still needs me.

  —Dead in absentia, she says quietly. As you know. It’s usual after seven years …

  She trails off. She has forgotten to bring out cups. I go to the kitchen.

  —Thank you, Siobhán says as I begin to pour. You must tell me what happened to Ida.

  The tea spills. Siobhán, sighing, takes the scarf from her shoulders to absorb the liquid.

  I look at her, shocked.

  —You think I’m luring you down some path that isn’t good for you, she says, dabbing.

  —It was irrational, I say, ashamed at myself for having suspected her. I’m sorry.

  —Finish your story, please. What happened to Ida?

  I tell her about my mother’s institutionalization. I can picture both times, crisp and clear. Siobhán absorbs this, asking:

  —You think you’re genetically … predisposed?

  Shaking my head, I tell her about the months after my mother’s death. It’s these months that terrify me most of all. That I could be alive without living—without memory.

  —So you think the journals are dangerous for you, she says.

  —No, it—I had just finished reading them. I just … wondered if you knew that my mother had struggled in similar ways.

  —Oh, Siobhán says.

  She is quiet so long, my mind begins to wander. Aurelia, bleach blond, barely visible, squinting in the sun glare.

  —I didn’t know that she was institutionalized, Siobhán says. Aidan and I were discussing this … her whimsical side. Even when I knew her, she was imaginative and could go too far. She could have trouble deciding what was real. Oh Elena, this has gotten too complicated, hasn’t it?

  —It’s the point, I say, suddenly wanting at all costs to finish the project, to find the instant when Ella’s sanity starts to fray, its etiology, somewhere in the pages.

  —I am sure there is something in the journals, Siobhán says, shaking her head. But the idea is not to put you in danger—

  —I’m not in danger, I say quickly. The death certificate will be revoked when she is found. It would be terrible to stop now. We can’t give up. I’m close to knowing.

  Siobhán sighs and goes to the kitchen. She returns with dish towels and a sponge.

  —Maybe she can’t be found, she says.

  23

  KOI FOUND THE HOUSE—just hours after I’d told Anthony I was looking for a place in the village to share with a foreigner. He’d heard that the cousin of the mother of the woman who ran the comic-book store across from Ban Du Market was looking for foreigners to rent her house.

  —Foreigners keep things tidier, Anthony said, and pay more.

  He winked at us in the rearview mirror. He’d offered to drive Aurelia and me to visit the house. From the passenger seat of the truck, Koi sighed.

  We wandered inside while the owner of the house stood in the yard, throwing grains to the roosters. She would smile as they scuttled in the gravel and dust. She drew circles in the gravel with a stick. She spoke no English, but with Koi as intermediary, it was agreed that Aurelia and I would move in with our things in three days. On the drive back, Koi explained:

  —She lives with her sisters now. She doesn’t have much money. She lost her husband.

  He reminded us to have the house blessed as soon as possible.

  Koi had refused to go inside, waiting on the veranda, ignoring Anthony’s insistence that any bad luck accrued would be retroactively wiped clean once the blessing took place.

  Cursed or not, the house absorbed Aurelia and me and our few possessions, wrapping us in its ambient calm. What did the architect know? Or was it an accident of angles that the rooms glowed colors on bright days, as if a prism were breaking and scattering light into every corner?

  We swerved, passing a motorcycle on the narrow road. Aurelia slid into me. As I reached for a handle to steady myself, I noticed a pattern of white dots painted on the truck’s interior.

  Anthony was testing a shortcut from Ban Du to my place at the university. He was lost.

  —Turn around. Go back, Koi told him.

  —Koi, quiet! Don’t be impatient!

  Gentlemanly once more, Anthony picked up the strand of our conversation.

  —How are they going to arrange a blessing, Koi? They don’t know any monks.

  —I’ll arrange it, Koi said, his breath quickening.

  —He’s spooked because a man died there, Anthony said. The husband of the nice owner we just met succumbed, shall we say, in the back bedroom. Did you not see the Buddhas?

  To overlook them would have been impossible. The back bedroom held dozens of fat, smiling Buddhas in different sizes, robes and rolls of skin lacquered in colors, folds of clay kiln-fired to look like flesh. Unlike Thai Buddhas—eyes closed or at half-mast, thin fingers extended in reverent mudras—these Buddhas looked like fat cabaret dancers, their beady eyes full of mirth. Their purpose was to cheer the dying man in his final weeks and ease the transmigration of his soul to a better body—man once more, but wealthier, or diva.

  —Laughing Buddhas are Chinese, Koi said when I asked. The owner’s family is from China.

  Aurelia, who turned out to be nine years my elder, though she could pass for twenty, took the master bedroom. This meant that the back bedroom, with the laughing Buddhas, would be mine. Full of trepidation, I carried the gaudy god bodies to the storage room. Superstition urged me to replace them with a Buddha head in the Thai style, more to my taste. I bargained for it at the weekend market. Chin like a mango stone, the craftsman said, running his fingers along its wood. Skin so smooth that dust cannot stick. It was a Sukhothai Buddha with a sharp nose and a pointed crown that looked like the stinger of a scorpion. I felt peaceful whenever I looked at it. The laughing Buddhas made me seasick. Life was too strong and sweet as it was, and what use did I have for an ironist’s wit, cut on the sharp edges of despair?

  In the rearview mirror, Anthony’s lips were moving, mocking Koi for propitiating the ghost of the man who’d died in the house. Koi’s eyes flashed with anger.

  —No! The house has to be blessed anyway. It’s usual. Just like your car, eh?

  Koi motioned to the painted white dots on the ceiling of the truck.

  —Oh, you’re right. Koi, you always know best, Anthony said, patting Koi’s knee. Talk about propitiation! My little god.

  —You treat him like he’s a child, Aurelia burst out.

  —On the contrary, Anthony said cuttingly, I treat him like the diva that he is.

  A howl, raw and ragged, escaped Koi’s lips:

  —Chaa bpa na sa thaan!

  He repeated the sounds, again and again, compulsively, as if their syllables might neutralize what terrified him.

  —What is it? Anthony asked, slowing the truck.

  Desperate, Koi gestured to a hut ten paces from the road, from which clouds of smoke were rising in controlled bursts. A vague sweetness reached us through the open windows of the truck.

  —Keep going, go, go! Koi gasped.

  Aurelia looked terrified, and I began to feel afraid, too. Koi kept gesturing to the hut and saying over and over the Thai words with a strangled voice. Whiteness was beginning to envelop the car. Koi rocked violently, from side to side, his body shaking the seat in front of Aurelia.

  —What is it? Anthony said, refusing to drive forward until he’d understood.

  —Chaa bpa na sa thaan. Chaa bpa na sa thaan!

  —English, Koi!

  —Smoke from dead bodies, Koi said, pointing to the hut.

  —But Koi, how could they possibly—

  Anthony paused a moment, then his hand fumbled over the gears, and we shot forward.

  —Crematorium, Koi, is the English word. It’s where they burn the bodies of
the dead.

  Anthony’s didacticism calmed us. But crematoriums were supposed to be hygienic places, where care was taken to keep the dead out of the air, out of the lungs of the living. I gulped in clean air along the long, familiar road. Aurelia had a small scar on her forearm, and her nails dug absently into the skin around its edges.

  24

  ON THOSE FIRST MORNINGS IN OUR NEW HOUSE, I’d set off from Ban Du by motorbike—Aurelia had one and convinced me by example to get one, too. I’d arrive at the university with legs caked in dust from the pyres of trash burning on the shoulders of the superhighway. I’d brush it from my skirt as I crossed the parking lot, my mouth full of ash. The hot season became the taste of the air and the newly brown hills, earth stretched fine and tense like skin over their slopes, each day more cracked and wrinkled.

  I bought water from the convenience store. The bottle perspired on the lectern. A second hand spasmed across a clock face. Students greeted one another, talked. The clock stared with its bald iris. I judged how far the hands had to travel before I’d meet Seb in the parking lot and we’d ride together to Béa’s for dinner. Three hours. Interminable.

  Last week’s lesson was about Faulkner’s melancholia, possibilities dead forever and corpses clung to for years in attic rooms. This week was Hemingway, a tale suffused with the unsaid.

  A student read:

  —The hills across the valley of the … el-bow were long and white.

  —Ebro.

  She looked up.

  —Ebro. It’s a place—a river in Spain.

  —In Spain, she repeated.

  Her eyes grew large, and she turned back to the page.

  —On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun.

  I picked up reading where she left off, exaggerating my cadence so the students would internalize my rhythm. I saw the flies and the bar. I could smell the beer in their glasses. I asked about the American and the girl.

  —Are they lovers?

  —They have nothing to say to each other, a student replied. They are boring.

  —They are bored. Is that what you mean?

  The girl-woman in the story seemed to lean against the back wall under the clock, upset, unsatisfied, twirling the straw in her drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things and try new drinks? The girl had Aurelia’s face and my voice.

  The minute hand jerked forward. The room was very hot. I wanted to sit down, but there were too many eyes on me. I asked:

  —What is a white elephant? Let’s think about the title.

  —It is the dream of the mother, a student said. The mother of the Buddha dreamed a white elephant and the Buddha was born. When she was pregnant.

  —And? I asked, trying not to show surprise.

  —It is a gift you do not want, another student said. It’s probably what Hemingway meant.

  Fatigue hit. My limbs went limp, as if they belonged to a puppet whose strings had snapped. The clock face, glaring in the heat, pulled me upright.

  —I feel fine, I read aloud. Does she mean it? Is she okay?

  —It’s irony. She’s not fine, a student said.

  Anthony, who had taught in Thailand for many years, passed on what I discovered to be a myth: that Thai students were incapable of divining sarcasm in literature or in life. Americans are deficient in this, as well, he added—it was during a lunchtime conversation—then said, Oh, come now, Ella, don’t look crushed.

  —Then why does she say she’s fine?

  Others joined in: She wants to make her boyfriend happy. She doesn’t want him to worry.

  —She wants the world to think she wants for nothing. Perhaps it’s expected of her.

  Silence settled as the class turned to look at the student who had spoken. He said little in class but turned in papers in flawless English. He was tan and slight, with a mole above his lip.

  —Yes, I said. But the reason isn’t explicit. Hemingway forces us to speculate.

  I wrote the word on the whiteboard, watched it scrutinized and copied into notebooks. Speculate, speculum, speculate turned over on my tongue till it lost its taste. It was very hot. I loosened my collar. I could talk about Hemingway’s life, influences, style. I asked instead:

  —What is the operation?

  A student drawing in her notebook sighed. There was a sheen of sweat on her face.

  —It’s an abortion, said the quiet one.

  The other students looked confused. He said the word in Thai. Ohhh.

  We read on. I asked questions. Why does the couple drink so much?

  —Alcoholics. Jig is a party girl!

  Laughter. The bead curtain and the railway tracks replaced the classroom and the courtyard outside the window. Later with Seb, on our motorbikes, I saw the hills around Chiang Rai, rough and cracked like the skins of pachyderms.

  On Béa’s patio, we sipped pastis from tall glasses and watched the sun redden along the village road. Aurelia had declined my invitation. They’re your friends, she’d said. I told her it was ridiculous to think that way. My choice. She shrugged. Anthony is immoral. She brushed me away with the wisps of her cigarette smoke.

  —I hate the taste of licorice, I told Seb.

  —Then why are you drinking it? Have a beer.

  We were alone. Béa was inside on the phone, Anthony and Koi running late. We sat so close, I could feel the heat from his body layering the heat of the evening. He finished his pastis and moved off, opening a Singha, which I thought he might hand me. He took a drink instead.

  —It’s something different, I said. That’s all we do—look at things and try new drinks.

  Seb rolled his eyes.

  I looked at the reddening sky, rotated the glass in my hands. I felt bored, tired.

  —There’s an Indian legend, I began. It says white elephants bring rain.

  Seb never asked why I was thinking certain things.

  —Today, I went on, trying to interest him, my students told me that the mother of the Buddha dreamed of a white elephant before the Buddha was born. So, white elephants are sacred.

  —Sacred, Seb snorted. They would say that.

  I said nothing, which was the only condition on which he would say more.

  —White elephants are a fucking liability! Believe me, no girl wants a god in the belly. And then there’s the historical side—white elephants have probably paralyzed kingdoms. They aren’t workable because they’re “sacred,” but they eat as much as working elephants, so they’re expensive. Sacredness is bullshit.

  Seb’s tirade was weird and excessive. We were all irritable. It was because of the heat.

  He finished his beer, wiping his mouth.

  —You don’t believe in symbolic meaning? Meaning that you don’t see at first but comes later, that you have to wait for?

  —If it ends up having meaning, it’s because you’ve given it meaning. Jesus, things’ve always got to mean something with you. Just let it be.

  —I don’t know, I said, pretending not to care about the derision in Seb’s tone or the way his body turned away from me. Sometimes you invest without knowing the outcome.

  Seb lapsed back into his customary silence, staring at the patio, concrete covered by woven mats. Words hung between us … like what? Like the wings of dead butterflies. Seb opened a second beer. I felt my own boredom and frustration added to his. The evening was too hot.

  Time staggered. There was too much of it suddenly. Not knowing how to care for it, I listened for the geckos, wanting to be rid of this not knowing what to do with time. Béa would come out soon. Anthony and Koi would arrive. We would get noodles from the market.

  25

  ON THE DAY OF THE BLESSING CEREMONY, we woke to a blue sky out of season. After weeks of chalk haze, the light, reenergized, sparked across the living room as we waited for the monk.

  Muay brought rambutan from the market. Anthony arrived short of breath, explaining that Koi was buying supplies. Supplies?
I asked him. Incense, voodoo dolls, he said. He settled on the couch next to Seb, who was playing with his phone. Soraya seemed haggard, hair loose around her face, a sheen in her eyes as if she had been crying. After wai’ing to everyone, she pulled me aside and said she had good news: A monastery near Chiang Mai accepted foreigners on retreat. (She pronounced this word beautifully, accenting the second syllable.) She had a contact and could reserve me a spot if I liked during the hot-season vacation. I looked over at Seb. We’d made vague, drunken plans to travel together. I told Soraya I’d think about it.

  Glancing through the glass wall, we saw Koi, making a show of having hurried, filling a plastic orange bucket with incense and flowers. Aurelia joined him on the veranda. She lit a cigarette. When she came back in, she was full of energy.

  —Coffee? Who would like coffee? The monk? He’ll want coffee? He’s probably tired.

  She disappeared into the kitchen. I wished she would sit down. Seb ate a rambutan. We couldn’t settle into waiting. Anthony kept checking his watch.

  Muay, having overheard my conversation with Soraya, whispered:

  —Those retreats! You sleep on boards. The food is terrible, and there are insects, big spiders. Don’t do it. If you want to learn Buddhism, I will give you a book.

  Finally, after what seemed like a long time, Seb gestured to the road. A figure in earth-colored robes was making his way slowly behind the mango and papaya trees that lined the road. The monk was carrying what looked like a broom, its straw fanning out from a long handle.

  Koi went out to greet him, making a low wai. I felt a shiver of excitement, a hope that the ceremony would free me of rage, perversity, dreams of Seb. … Aurelia and I would be free of the white obsession driving us—both of us—if it was coming from the house. My critical faculties retired themselves. It felt better to believe.

  Sweat beaded on the monk’s bald head, and he wiped it away with a handkerchief. His eyes were black pools set into a face the color and texture of walnut shells. Declining Aurelia’s offer of coffee, though he did look exhausted, he set his cushion by the eastern wall of the living room and began chanting in a language I’d never heard before.