“Tiens, prends ça,” Jeanne says, and rattles on in French, telling me that this letter was sent to Mama years ago and Mama threw it out, but Jeanne found it and kept it because she is funny like that and has feelings about stuff that will be important, and now with the way things are she wants me to have it and who knows, it might be useful.
I swallow and cram my hand inside my pocket, then leave it there because I don’t want to let go yet of that bit of Mama she tried so hard not to keep. I nod and start to turn away, but then Jeanne lunges forward, grabs my shoulder through the bars, and tugs at me. My cheek is up against the rusty metal and I can taste iron flecks on my tongue, but Jeanne holds on hard. I feel her breath on my earlobe. She is whispering fast and urgent.
“Listen careful, ma petite, I have to tell you something important. You know your maman had her ups and downs, yes?”
I wrench my shoulder from her grasp and pull my chin out of the gatework. My breath catches in my throat, but I make my voice steady. “Yes, what about it?” Mama’s moods were legendary, long circuits from a pitch-black despair that slowly got better and better until I always thought this time, surely, everything would be okay. And then something would happen—I never knew what—to send her crashing back down, and the process would begin all over again.
Jeanne turned her head and looked to either side of herself, then lowered her voice further. “It was all because of her computer searches.”
I looked at her blankly.
“Twice a year, they give us computer privileges. You know. I got them, and so did she. And one year, I notice something. I start watching Helena and observing what she does.”
“Why? Why would you watch her?”
“Quelle imbecile, even you did not realize? Her black moods always started after her time on the computer. Then the weeks and months go by, she becomes happier, you think maybe she hopes again, yes? She starts to look out the window, talk about returning with you someday to America, yes? Then she goes on the computer, and her mood is midnight again.”
I swallow. “I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
Jeanne snorts. “I find out for you what it means. I pay off one of the guards, and here is what I learn—a long time ago I learn this, but what good would it ever do to say anything? Except now.” She swallows. “Now you are leaving and who knows, maybe it will help you.”
I can feel sweat pooling on my palms and my heart hammering in my chest. I want to be away, far away from Jeanne and her schemes and manipulations. But nothing would move me from this spot.
“Every six months, your maman goes for her time on the Internet, and she looks up just one website. One place only she goes, the same every time: Payne Industries.”
I wait, but Jeanne is silent now. “That’s it? Payne Industries? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know what it means, you fool. Only that it means something to your mother, and now I have told it to you, and I have done my duty. C’est assez. It is enough.”
I’m still looking into her ice-blue eyes, trying to figure out what she means by all of this, if she really is trying to help me or if she has some other motive I don’t understand, when Isra comes up behind Jeanne and taps her on the shoulder. With a shrug, Jeanne turns and walks back toward the cell block. Another part of my life that is gone forever. In spite of everything, I know I will miss her rough, grudging care.
And I don’t even know what she has left me with. I file away my new knowledge to ponder at a later time and I smile at Isra, who reaches for me through the bars.
“I will miss you, little light,” Isra says. I’ve been teaching her English, and she likes to practice with me. She’s quite good, though she never believes me when I tell her. “We all will miss you. But you will do well in the world outside. Keep your head up and be strong.”
I nod and try to smile because she wants me to, but I know my mouth looks like an old crumpled sock.
She’s holding a black nylon duffel. “You forgot your things. I brought them to you. Your clothes and books and everything.”
She slides open the zipper and there are my belongings, the ones I left under the bunk. I feel my breath catch in my throat. It was a split-second decision to leave it all behind, but from this side of the rusted iron gate I can hardly recognize those things. I can never belong to them again.
She starts to squeeze the bag through the bars and I find my voice.
“Mai ao na kha,” I say, shaking my head and choking on my words because I want so badly for her to understand. “I don’t want any of that stuff. It’s not me anymore. I don’t need it.”
She doesn’t understand, but how can I tell her that I am a worm born in a cave, that I need to grow my own wings in order to fly? How can I say that the girl who lived in cell block 413 and scrawled spelling words on the walls, who could conjugate verbs in three languages but who couldn’t look up to follow a hawk’s path across the sky, how can I make her see that girl is no longer me? These clothes belonged to that other person, but they have no part in my new journey. For this voyage I have other belongings, other clothing: the blanket of fear, the scarf of loneliness, the dark cloak of secrets. I have no room for anything else.
I’m saved from finding words by the roar of the engine behind me. Kiet’s repairs have worked at last. Isra sighs in defeat and shoves a handful of baht at me. “Take this money at least,” she says, and I can see she really means it, so after a second’s pause, I do. My dollars will be of no use for getting around Bangkok, and I am grateful for her kindness.
I look hard into Isra’s eyes, and the world stops. I see her younger, smiling, dancing with a tiny straw-haired girl, crooning luk thung ballads in my little ear. I see her drawing a Tang Te outline on the cement floor in chalk, showing me how to hop skillfully from one square to another, picking up the stone without ever putting my foot down. I see her head bent over my fifth-grade reader as she sounds out the words and tries to keep up with my translation in her halting English.
She has been a part of everything I’ve ever known. But now she is a part of my past.
My eyes smile and my hand that is still holding hers, with the money squashed inside, grasps on tightly. Then I let go, and I turn, and I don’t say anything because since the day my mama left without saying it, good-bye is a word that no longer exists for me.
7
Kiet opens the door for me, and I slide inside the car.
“Pai nai?” he asks with a smile.
The familiar phrase—literally asking where I am going, but more of a welcome than a question—is our own special greeting that I thought he’d have forgotten after all these years. I look at him more closely. Inside that grown-up face, the eyes of my childhood friend twinkle with mischief. He’s not so different after all.
“Phuen,” I whisper. Friend.
And he is.
Loosed from my fear, I’m free to examine everything around me. And what a wonder it is! From the inside, this beast is altogether different than it first seemed.
The seat is soft and crinkly, softer even than the five-centimeter-thick mattress on my cot. Kiet starts talking again, but I just look and look. Everywhere, all around, so much to see! Buttons and knobs and handles—but above all, light. I am surrounded by light. The window in front of me is as big as the world, and there’s more beside and behind me. There is nothing, anywhere around, that I cannot see. It’s like being outside, but safer. I can see the world, but it cannot get to me.
Then Kiet moves the gear shift and the car jumps forward. The movement hums through my body and sends my fear screaming back. Did I just think this metal box was safe? The motor coughs twice and starts to pick up speed.
I desperately want to clamp my eyes shut, to hold this moment in a dark bubble and block my view of the countryside that’s now speeding by outside. But I force them to stay open. This is my world now. I must learn its ways.
Kiet turns to me with a lopsided smile, and I know he thinks he understands how I f
eel. He doesn’t. How can he? But he is trying, and I am grateful.
“We’ll take the old highway,” he says, “the 106. It’s slower going than the 11, but it’s prettier.”
I nod. This world here, now, is flying by—how could anything be faster?
My hands are squeezed into tight balls. I make myself unwrap them slowly, one finger at a time. I reach into my pocket and feel the paper Jeanne gave me. Mama’s letter. I will not pull it out now, not with Kiet’s eyes watching. I will read those words when they can fill the center of my mind for as long as I need them to.
“Luchi,” says Kiet. “It’s been a long time. Do you remember the games we used to play?”
I nod. “You were so tall,” I say, then laugh because I sound like a child all over again.
But he grins. “I was sorry when my aunt thought I was too old to come and play.”
That explains a lot. I’d always wondered why one day Kiet stopped visiting the cells. But in a prison filled with women, a fourteen-year-old boy would have been out of place. And not long after that, Kiet had left for Bangkok.
“One thing I’ve always wondered,” he says now. “What does your name mean—Luchi? I’ve never heard it before.”
I turn to my window. The happy flicker inside me hisses out and I remember where I am going, what I am setting out to do. “Light,” I say. “Though it doesn’t, really. Mama got it wrong. She thought the word meant light.”
Kiet nods, as if accepting the tangle that was my mother’s mind. I suddenly think of my naming as a frame for the rest of my mother’s life. What other things did Mama assume, or come close to understanding, yet end up getting wrong? Is this another clue to the puzzle of my past, to all that she kept from me?
I could drown in these thoughts, so I’m happy when Kiet changes the subject. “You can open the window, you know.”
Following his example I turn my handle in slow circles, enjoying the scritch-scratch sound and watching the window lower itself like an obedient subject. When it is all the way down, I put my elbow through the opening and lean my head out.
The wind grabs at my face and catches hold of my breath. I jerk back in and turn to Kiet, fighting the sudden sharp burst of joy. It doesn’t fit with the turmoil of my thoughts. I don’t want it, but it persists, dragging me into the core of the moment, filling me with a smile that pushes out onto my face.
Kiet is laughing. I return to the open window. My eyes eat up the countryside as it goes by. And suddenly … I feel at home. Tall bars line the road we are driving on, bars that shoot up into the sky as far as I can see. Out beyond are orchards and green rice fields, but all are framed by the comfort of the passing bars.
I lean my head back to look all the way up, and I realize the truth. “Those are trees?” I yell into the wind. “That tall?”
“Yes, the yang na,” says Kiet. “Rubber trees. Aren’t they amazing? There are nine hundred and three of them, planted more than a hundred years ago. There’s a number on each one.”
I can’t see the numbers; we’re moving too fast. And I can’t think of them as trees. It makes me happy to feel there are still some bars—wide enough to slip through, but strong enough to stand guard for me, though I am set loose into the world.
“Lamphun,” Kiet says, waving at a city just coming into view. “We’re at the provincial boundary. This is where the yang na end.”
I can see it now, the gaping hole up ahead where the tall bars stop, where the empty world circles, waiting for me. My eyes fill with tears and I stretch my hand toward the last trees that are flying by my window.
The outside is different, too. Something is changing. A low drumming sound starts in the distance and builds until I can hear it loud over the motor of the car. Then I feel it: a fat drop splatters on my outstretched palm. I rub my fingers together to savor the cool wetness. Another drop licks my fingertips. In five seconds, my hand is damp.
“Stop,” I whisper into the wind, and somehow Kiet hears me because he swerves off to the side, ignoring the screeches and honks behind us. We ride up onto the grass and I fling open my door and fall out.
We have stopped next to the last tree, and I stand by it with my head bowed.
And the rains come at last.
They pour down on me with all the force and fury of a pent-up storm. I know Kiet is sitting inside the car, watching me, not understanding. But I don’t care. I am alone in a world of water, swimming in the tears of the sky.
I let it consume me. I am water inside and out. The rain draws up all my sorrow and brings it bubbling to the surface. And now, finally, I can let loose the thunderstorm inside me. I cry for Mama. I cry for Bibi and Jeanne and Isra. I cry for the last yang, the last bar that I will now have to leave behind.
And I cry for the wide-open space ahead of me, the great unknown that wants to swallow me whole. I cry until I look up and I realize that I cannot see the city ahead, Lamphun, anymore. The sheeting rain is blocking it from view.
Then I know I have cried enough. I don’t want my tears to block my view of what’s ahead. I am terrified, but I am determined.
I must go forward.
8
Kiet looks at me and my open window. We are driving again, and he says the rain will drown the car. There is a river around my feet and the seat under me sloshes like laundry. Kiet flips a switch and little gusts of air start to blow on me. But they will not dry me while I have the outside pouring in through my window. And I can’t bear to close it.
My tears are gone, but I love the feel of the sky on my skin.
I wonder if Kiet will be angry with me, but he just laughs. “The car will not dry out until the end of the rainy season anyway,” he says.
I keep my hand outside the window, watching every drop patter across my palm. Growing up I didn’t like to bathe—the big open room, with so many women coming in and out. But a bath like this I could learn to enjoy.
Now Kiet rolls down his own window and the rain pours in on his short-cropped hair, soaking his orange T-shirt. He flashes me a wide smile. “I should get used to being out in the rain,” he tells me. It is the kind of sentence that starts a story, and I don’t have to wait long to find out more.
“I am driving to Bangkok to buat phra. I will be ordained as a monk at the Wat Suwannaram.”
I try to imagine Kiet in the saffron robes of a monk. It does not fit the picture my mind has built around the prison gossip of the careless, irresponsible youth. Of course, from that same gossip I know he did poi san long when he was younger than I am now. Many boys perform this ceremony before they reach their teen years, taking up the robes as novices for weeks or months at a time. But to go fully into the life of a monk shows a greater commitment to making spiritual merit. From all I have heard, the life of a Bhikkhu is not easy. I look at Kiet curiously. What has pushed him in this direction?
Kiet sees me staring and laughs. “You are surprised.”
“No!” I won’t admit it.
“You should be. It is a big change of path for me.” He grins. “You should have seen my aunt’s face when I told her.”
“Why?” The word slips out almost before I realize it is coming, but suddenly I have to know. How can someone change so completely, become so different than who he was—how did Kiet do it? How did he even know it could be done? I turn to face him, desperate for this knowledge, but his eyes are on the road; his words, when they come, do nothing for me.
“It was time,” is all he says.
But what more can he say? He has found his road. He is moving toward his shelter.
And I am moving away from mine.
9
We leave the highway and drive into Lamphun, because Kiet says we need to stop for food. I reach into my pocket and finger the crumpled baht that Isra gave me. It’s no use pulling the money out; Kiet will not accept it. As my elder he will naturally pay for my food. It would be rude for me even to offer. I know this, but I still feel uncomfortable. All my life on the inside I have been ca
red for, all my needs met by my elders. Is this how it will always be, even now that I am out?
These thoughts fill my mind until the moment we pull in to the city center. Then, all is forgotten. Despite the rain, Lamphun is crawling like an anthill. I can see that it is market day, and my heart speeds up. So many faces, so many moving feet, so many strangers all in one place!
Kiet stops the car on the side of a street opposite the stalls. The cloth awnings all look mud brown through the downpour, but they are thick and allow the townspeople to move easily among the booths without getting too wet. From my spot I can see vegetables and fruits, meat and fish of all types. I can see basket sellers and toy makers and cobblers and craftsmen with fancy carved vases.
Kiet’s fingers curl, and I can see he is eager to go out among them. But I am frozen in place.
“Come,” says Kiet. “There is a stall I know well. They make the best food and will give us a good price.”
The crowds throng past the car, people moving and pushing, full of their own life, owning their space in the world. These people know who they are, I’m sure, every one of them. I don’t know how to walk with these people and pretend I am one of them. I don’t feel real enough.
Inside, I’m still a girl made of paper.
“Come,” Kiet says again.
I shake my head. All words are gone, there is just my heart pumping with a nameless panic. My hands are mashed into my seat.
Kiet nods. “Wait here, then. I will be back.”
He shuts his door and moves off toward the market. The moment he is gone, I lean over and roll his window shut. I do the same with mine. Now I cannot feel the rain, but the noise of the crowd is lower, too. I want to close my eyes, to cover the sight of all this foreign chaos as easily as I muffled its sound. I shove my hands deep into my pockets.
And there I feel the familiar scrap of paper.
I pull out the worn sheet that Jeanne kept in secret for so long. The letter Mama wanted to throw away. It is damp from my pocket, and I open it carefully. The handwriting is choppy and unfamiliar. I read slowly, trying to put extra meaning into every word.
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