Tua and the Elephant

by R. P. Harris

  “But Pohntip’s my best friend at school!” Tua explained. “And if one Pohn means happiness, then two Pohns means double happiness.”

  “Be that as it may …” trilled Auntie Orchid.

  “She’s happy, and I’m happy.”

  “Even sooo …”

  “We’re both happy,” Tua said, looking to the elephant for confirmation.

  The elephant withdrew her trunk from the cupboard and waved it over her head.

  “But is Pohn-Pohn really a proper name for an elephant?” Auntie Orchid pleaded. “Look at her. Look at those eyes. Wouldn’t you just love to have eyes like that? They are positively … regal,” she gushed. “They are a queen’s eyes!”

  She might have dropped to her knees and touched her forehead to the elephant’s foot (which is what she imagined one did in the presence of a queen), but she restrained herself.

  “She’s awfully pretty,” Tua agreed. “But I don’t see what that’s got to do with—”

  “She should be named after a queen,” Auntie Orchid decided. “But which one? There are so many queens to choose from. Makeda, queen of Sheba. Cleopatra, queen of the Nile. Suriyothai, queen of Ayutthaya.”

  Tua threw up her hands. “She’s not a queen. She’s like me!”

  “A pea—nut?” Auntie Orchid gasped, before biting down on her glimmering fingernails in mock horror. (Auntie Orchid had never approved of naming Tua after a peanut, although it fit her as snug as a shell.)

  “An or—chid?” Tua snapped back. When she saw Auntie Orchid wince beneath the cold cream and clutch her throat, she recalled her mother’s words: “A sharp tongue cuts both ways.”

  “Orchid is a very nice name,” Tua corrected herself. “We could always call her Orchid.”

  “Taken,” Auntie Orchid cleared her throat. “Already taken, thank you very much. Two Orchids would only confuse the public, darling,” she explained. “It just isn’t done.”

  They had reached an impasse. An impasse in conversation is rather like a roadblock in traffic. It’s the jam in traffic jam.

  Tua hunched her shoulders, grinning impishly.

  “Oh, all right. We’ll call her Pohn, then,” Auntie Orchid sighed.

  “Pohn-Pohn!” Tua called to the elephant.

  “Pohn,” Auntie Orchid corrected her niece. “One Pohn is plenty Pohn enough.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Hungry Elephant

  No sooner had one problem been sorted than two more sprang to life. Pohn, or Pohn-Pohn, had opened the refrigerator door with her trunk and was searching inside for something to eat.

  “What do we feed her, Auntie?” Tua asked.

  Auntie Orchid turned to the elephant for inspiration and, finding none, concluded: “We’re going to need some help.”

  In the excitement of having a hungry elephant in her kitchen, Auntie Orchid had forgotten to ask Tua what she had told her mother. “By the way, Tua, what did you tell your mother?”

  “Ummm …” Tua shrugged.

  “I’m calling her right now,” said Auntie Orchid. “What should I tell her?”

  “Uhhh …” Tua shrugged higher.

  Auntie Orchid stabbed a particularly long fingernail at some numbers on her cell phone and put the instrument to her ear.

  “Su-ay!” she sang out as if into a microphone. “It’s Orchid here. I have Tua. We’re having a girls’ night. She’s sleeping over with me.”

  Tua nodded and smiled broadly by way of encouragement. She was perfectly happy to let her auntie do this job for her.

  “Here,” Auntie Orchid announced, “your mother wants to speak to you.”

  Tua looked to Pohn-Pohn for support, but she was busy rearranging the contents of Auntie Orchid’s refrigerator.

  “Hello?” she managed to say into the phone.

  “Hello, my cherub,” replied Suay Nam. “I can’t talk long. They’re running me off my feet. What have you and your auntie been up to?”

  Tua felt an urge to tell her mother everything, but bit her lip instead. “Nothing much.”

  “I’ve gotta go. I just got another table. Have fun. And give your auntie a kiss for me.”

  Tua put a kiss on the tips of her fingers and blew it across the table. Auntie Orchid snatched it out of the air and blew it back.

  “Good night, my dove,” Suay Nam said. “I love you the most.”

  “Me too. Bye, Mama.” Tua closed the phone and handed it back to her auntie.

  A string of sweat beaded her upper lip, and several other beads began to roll down the middle of her back. She had never kept secrets from her mother before, and didn’t like the feeling.

  “Never mind about your mother,” said Auntie Orchid, interpreting Tua’s expression. “We have an elephant to worry about.”

  I’ll tell her everything tomorrow, Tua thought, hoping that that would ease her conscience. A conscience is like an elephant’s trunk: It never rests. And a guilty conscience is particularly restless. But Tua had a hungry elephant to worry about. Her conscience would have to wait.

  “Pohn-Pohn is hungry, Auntie,” she said.

  “Pohn is too big for my kitchen.”

  And so it was decided that Pohn-Pohn should be moved into the backyard, regardless of what the neighbors might say.

  A temporary shelter was needed in case it should rain. And there wasn’t enough food in the house to feed a hungry elephant. Someone had to go to the market before it closed at midnight.

  “Sometimes the best way to stop wagging tongues is to give them a part in the play,” Auntie Orchid said. “Tua, go wake the neighbors.”

  And go she did.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A Little Help from

  the Neighbors

  “It is easier to get an elephant in a kitchen than it is to get her out again,” Auntie Orchid declared to Tua when she returned from waking the neighbors.

  If anything, Pohn-Pohn seemed bigger than before. How had she fit through the back door? It didn’t seem possible. She couldn’t turn around, in any case—there wasn’t enough room. And she wouldn’t back up: Pohn-Pohn was a forward- moving elephant.

  The moment Tua had finished scratching her head over this pickle (for scratching the head often stimulates brain activity), a man stumbled through the back door in pajamas and slippers.

  He rubbed his eyes with his fists and blinked his eyes.

  “There’s an elephant in your kitchen!” he declared.

  “Buddha wept!” Auntie Orchid exclaimed.

  “Her name’s Pohn-Pohn, Uncle Yai,” Tua said. “We need to move her outside.”

  “Sawatdee khrap, Pohn-Pohn,” said Yai, putting his hands together and bowing a wai. “Better take Miss Pohn-Pohn through the house and out the front door.”

  Even as Auntie Orchid was throwing up her hands in protest, she realized that this was indeed the best strategy. The doors between the kitchen and the living room slid apart; and the front door, being a double door, was much wider than the back door. But she couldn’t bear to watch.

  “I think I’ll wait outside,” she said. “Tua, mind she doesn’t stain the carpet.”

  “Kha, Auntie,” Tua said.

  An audience was gathering on Auntie Orchid’s front lawn, and she stepped out on the porch and bowed.

  “Where did you get the elephant?” a grinning Mr. Cham Choi asked Auntie Orchid. His wife, Mrs. Cham Choi, nodded her head vigorously to indicate that she, too, was anxious to know the answer to this question.

  “A gift from the king,” Auntie Orchid said, “for my community service.”

  “The king is truly a great and noble monarch,” Mr. Cham Choi said in admiration.

  “Noble and great,” echoed his wife. “A most noble gift, indeed.”

  “Cham, darling,” Auntie Orchid cooed helplessly, responding to the plan hatching in her brain, “I don’t know what we’re going to feed her.”

  “Fruit,” Cham replied.

  “Vegetables,” his wife suggested.

 
“Pineapple,” said Cham.

  “Corn,” countered his wife.

  “Watermelon,” said the husband between clenched teeth.

  “Cucumber,” said the wife out of the corner of her mouth, as if to say: “I have more where that came from.”

  “Bananas.”

  “Lettuce.”

  “Sugarcane.”

  “Pumpkin.”

  “Mango.”

  “Tomato.”

  “Aha!” Master Cham exclaimed, thinking he had caught her out at last. “The tomato is a fruit.”

  “No it isn’t,” said his wife. “It’s a vegetable.”

  Auntie Orchid had heard quite enough. “But where does one find such things?” She batted her eyes helplessly.

  “The farmers’ market, of course,” replied Master Cham.

  “Yes,” agreed Mrs. Cham Choi, “the farmers’ market.”

  “So what are you two waiting for?” Auntie Orchid wanted to know. “Hurry up,” she ordered. “Pohn is a hungry elephant. Hop into your little red songthaew pickup and get over there before it closes. Off you go. Reo reo,” she clapped her hands, for the Cham Chois seemed momentarily fixed to the spot where they were standing. The claps seemed to release them from the spell they were under, and they moved as fast as they were capable of moving.

  The Cham Chois’ daughters, Sumalee, Kanya, and Isra, each presented Pohn-Pohn with a banana from their father’s tree once she emerged triumphant through the front door. Pohn-Pohn wrapped her trunk around the bananas, one by one, and plopped them in her mouth. Then the three sisters bowed a wai in unison and ran back across the soi to fetch some more.

  “What’s all this?” boomed a skeptical voice. It belonged to Rungsan, the builder.

  Rungsan had one good eye that worked perfectly fine and another eye that was cloudy and white. It gave him a sinister look, which was entirely undeserved. Looks can be as deceiving as a worm on a hook.

  Rungsan was not a bit sinister. He was skeptical. Skepticism is a healthy muscle to exercise. A sinister nature is as unwanted as a blister. Perhaps having only one good eye with which to view the world had made Rungsan suspicious of half of everything he saw.

  “This is my friend Pohn-Pohn, Uncle,” Tua said, appearing out of nowhere—which is no small feat when accompanied by an elephant.

  “Pohn-Pohn?” Rungsan lifted an eyebrow.

  “Can you build us a shelter, Uncle?” asked Tua.

  “I can build anything for anybody,” said Rung-san. “But for you and your friend Pohn-Pohn, I will build a shelter fit for a queen. It will be a bamboo palace.”

  Tua threw her arms around Rungsan’s legs, and he bowed his head and closed his skeptical eye.

  When the Cham Chois returned from the market, the three sisters formed a line to hand-feed Pohn-Pohn the fruit and vegetables; Yai brought Tua a bowl of pad Thai noodles; Rungsan and his sons, Tam and Lin, erected a bamboo shelter with palm fronds for a roof; and Auntie Orchid, reclining in a swing chair hanging from a tree, serenaded the party with folk songs of longing, loss, and love.

  Tua slept that night in a string hammock under the bamboo shelter with Pohn-Pohn watching over her.

  “Sweet dreams and glad awakenings, Pohn-Pohn,” she yawned, closing her eyes.

  How curious people are, Pohn-Pohn must have been thinking. How creative and ingenious they are, yet capable of both kindness and cruelty. Nothing beats them for industry, that’s for sure—except maybe ants, termites, and bees.

  Then she reached out her trunk and drew the blanket over Tua’s shoulder.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Beside the River Ping

  The sun popped up so suddenly the next morning it left the roosters speechless. And nowhere did it burn brighter than down beside the River Ping.

  Nak swept back the tent flaps and stepped outside in his bare feet. A message was waiting for him there, and he was standing in it up to his ankles.

  He wriggled his toes around in the still-warm elephant dung and tried to recall what this sensation reminded him of. Still half asleep, he yawned and blinked his eyes.

  It wasn’t his feet that supplied the answer; it was his nose. His nose smelled elephant dung.

  “What’s that doing here?” He stared down to the ends of his legs. “Who would have …?”

  He looked over his shoulder and glared at the tent. The tent snored back at him. He shielded his eyes and scanned the beach… It was too empty. Something was missing. Hadn’t he left an elephant attached to that—

  “Gone!” he howled. “It’s gone, Nang! Thieves! Vultures! We’ve been robbed!”

  Nang struggled onto all fours and poked his head through the tent flaps.

  “What happened? What’s gone?” Then, looking down at his comrade’s feet, he added: “Watch where you step, Nak. There’s a big pile of dung out here.”

  “The elephant, you feeble-minded mud turtle!”

  Nang stood up and had a look for himself.

  Sure enough, the chain was empty. He was certain that that was where they had left the elephant last night.

  “Maybe it’s taking a bath?” he suggested.

  “It’s that nosy little street urchin from the square,” Nak muttered. “I knew someone was following us last night. She must have made off with it while we were sleeping.”

  “What street urchin?” Nang asked.

  “Come on,” Nak ordered. “She couldn’t have gotten far. I’ll have my property back, or I’ll have her ears.”

  Nang clutched the medallion he wore around his neck to ward off evil spirits. He had never liked the elephant trade, suspecting it angered the forest. Ever since Nak had won this elephant in a card game, they had been plagued by bad luck. He didn’t care if he never saw it again. But Nang was a follower, and followers don’t question authority. They pull up their socks and do what they’re told.

  He kissed the medallion and tucked it back under his shirt.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Breakfast with

  Pohn-Pohn

  Tua rolled over on her back in the hammock, rubbed her eyes, and stretched out her arms. When she saw Pohn-Pohn standing beside her, she squealed with delight.

  “Pohn-Pohn! You’re not a dream!”

  Jolted awake, Pohn-Pohn reached her trunk into the hammock as if to hit the snooze alarm and catch five more minutes of sleep.

  Tua gathered the trunk in both hands, hugged it to her cheek, and slid to the ground.

  Pohn-Pohn blinked her eyes and flapped her ears.

  “Look at you,” Tua said, petting the rough and wrinkled skin on Pohn-Pohn’s shoulder and ribs. “You’re so beautiful.”

  Pohn-Pohn acknowledged the compliment with a nod.

  “Oh no, Pohn-Pohn,” Tua exclaimed suddenly when she saw, in the morning light, a scar worn around Pohn-Pohn’s foot from the heavy chain she’d been forced to wear. Tua knelt down beside the leg and gently caressed the foot. “Does it hurt?”

  It had been so long since Pohn-Pohn had been shown any tenderness that her first reaction was to recoil from the approaching hand. She had only known work, brutality, and neglect since she’d been ripped from her mother’s side. But Tua’s touch recalled her mother’s loving caresses. She closed her eyes and allowed Tua to stroke her injured foot.

  “I’ll never let anyone hurt you again, Pohn-Pohn,” Tua whispered. “I promise.”

  Pohn-Pohn opened her eyes, reached back her trunk, and gently laid it on Tua’s shoulder.

  “Hey.” Tua’s face brightened. “What do you want for breakfast? It’s the most important meal of the day, although I like lunch and dinner just as much.”

  Pohn-Pohn might have said that mangos make an excellent breakfast, had Tua given her the chance. But it was Tua’s habit to spring out of bed in the morning, race into her mother’s bedroom, dive into the bed, shake her mother awake, and tell her about the dreams she’d had the night before. Mothers are more tolerant of habits like this than elephants are—especially hungry elephants. A
s Tua began recounting her last dream, and the one she best remembered, Pohn-Pohn turned her about with her trunk and steered her to the back of the house.

  “After that,” Tua continued narrating over her shoulder, “a big door opened in the floor, and you’ll never guess what was down there …”

  When Auntie Orchid entered the kitchen several minutes later, she found Tua sitting in the doorway, feeding mangos to an elephant on her back porch. She lifted the sunglasses she was wearing, squeezed her eyes together, and waited for her vision to adjust to the light.

  “Good morning, Auntie,” Tua said. “Pohn-Pohn really loves mangos.”

  At the mention of Pohn-Pohn’s name, Auntie Orchid remembered how she had lobbied for a different name altogether, a queen’s name, but had settled on the one Pohn (instead of two) as a generous compromise. She began to deliver an appeal to Tua to please stop employing the superfluous Pohn when using Pohn’s name … when her memory was miraculously restored to her. Everything from the previous evening came back in an extravaganza of Olympian proportions, with herself cast in the role of the gold medal winner.

  “Good morning, my darlings,” she cooed, as if consoling the runners-up.

  Feeding so many mangos to Pohn-Pohn had put Tua in the mood for mangos herself. But Tua didn’t toss whole mangos into her mouth; chew them up, peelings and all; and spit out the seeds like Pohn-Pohn did. She preferred her mangos served with sticky rice and topped with coconut cream. Tua loved sticky rice and mango as much as she loved banana rotis with chocolate sauce and condensed milk.

  When Pohn-Pohn had had her fill of mangos (which coincided with her eating the last mango in the box), Tua brought up the topic of sticky rice and mango with Auntie Orchid.

  “Auntie,” Tua mewed, “do you like sticky rice and mango?”

  “Do I like it? I love it,” Auntie Orchid confessed, inspecting her figure in the full-length mirror on the wall.

  So it was decided that Tua should fetch two orders of sticky rice and mango from the day market at the end of the soi.