Sitting herself down against the trunk of a coconut palm, Siswan continued to run her thoughts through her mind. So far she hadn’t done so well with her life. She was only thirteen but knew she looked older. Maybe she could get away with seventeen. Perhaps even eighteen. Her body was changing rapidly. Forming curves in places that had, up until a few months before, been relatively flat.
She guessed that it would be about this time that Bak would have sold her virginity to the highest bidder. She realised, with some horror, that she had been wondering how much he would have made. She had to shut those thoughts out of her mind. It was no good thinking about the past. She was here now. In this place and time. Nothing lay behind her. Only the future was worth thinking about. She made a silent promise to the memory of Sood that she would fulfil what she was contemplating. All she needed was help with the first step. The first step that would start her off in the direction of her goal.
She watched as the farangs strolled along the beach, lay in the sunshine on the plastic sun beds, roared around the ocean on hired jet skis or, like her, just sat in the shade to watch the day go by.
Wherever she looked they were there. Farangs. Visitors to her country. She wondered why they came. They didn’t look that happy. Their faces seldom smiled as they tried to ignore the local traders plying the beach. The ones that did smile, did speak, were soon inundated with traders, all trying to make money from a farang who was buying.
Siswan watched two of them who were sat on sun beds just in front of her. A man and a woman. The man wore a small pair of shorts, the woman, a very small pink bikini. How could they sit there showing off so much of their bodies to the world? Didn’t they have any sense of shame?
It would be unheard of to have locals dress the same way. A woman was expected to stay respectably covered. Shorts and a tee shirt were okay, but not what amounted to a pair of panties and a bra! Even the local men wore long shorts down to their knees.
There were very few locals on the beach. Other than the beach boys, who worked the jet skis and speedboats, there were a few who took care of the sun beds. A few who fetched and carried for the farangs whenever they called out for a cool drink.
Of course the local traders, carting their wares around in cooler buckets, or shoulder bags, toured up and down the beach calling to each and every farang they came across. But other than people working, there were no locals lying in the sun. None who were there simply to enjoy the beach. All the locals worked. Making money.
Those that worked in the sun covered themselves from head to foot. Only the beach boys worked with their shirts off. It seemed as though the local women were afraid to expose any part of themselves to the glare of the sun. Afraid that their skin would darken.
Siswan sat and watched the world go by on the beach in front of her. She began to realise just how much she didn’t know. Not only about the farang but also about her own people. She decided that it was time to correct that lack of knowledge. If she was going to keep her promise to Sood, she was going to have to learn an awful lot.
She watched everything. Watched the expressions of the farangs. Noted the sound of their voices. The looks on their faces. She watched them when they went swimming. Watched as they drank, ate, smoked. Everything.
No one noticed the local girl sat in the shade of the big palm tree. No one noticed how she looked and learned. No one noticed her, but she noticed them. She watched them, farangs and locals, and she learned.
When early evening came Siswan decided that, for her first day, she had learned a lot. She had overheard enough conversations to discover that the locals hated the strong sun. They certainly didn’t want their skin to go black. It was a bad thing. They envied the white skins of the farangs and couldn’t understand why the visitors wanted their skin to be brown.
She learned that some of the farangs grew impatient with all the traders calling out to them. Some even pretended to be asleep behind their dark sunglasses to try and avoid the constant flow of locals selling food, drinks and goods they thought the farangs might buy.
It seemed, to Siswan, that the farangs didn’t like the pushy traders. The ones that stood in front of them and continued showing their goods long after the farangs had shaken their heads in refusal.
Siswan learned that it was the traders that didn’t push too hard, who didn’t infringe upon the visitors, the ones who were polite and smiled as they passed, who sold the most. She learned a lot that day. A lot about the farang and a lot about her own people. The things she had seen fascinated her. She wanted to know more. A lot more.
As she collected her thoughts and prepared to walk back to the workhouse, she saw an old local woman struggling to collect the big sun beds from the beach in front of her. Most of the farangs were busy packing up their stuff to leave the beach and the old woman collected the beds as they became vacant.
Siswan wandered down to help. The old woman looked at her as she bent to pick up the other end of the bed the old woman was half dragging through the sand but said nothing.
Siswan helped her back up the beach with all the remaining sun beds and then helped her to pile them, one on top of the other. Finally, when all the beds were piled and all the foam mattresses stored against the pile, the old woman spoke to her.
‘All day you’ve been watching,’ she said.
‘Yes. Most of it,’ Siswan replied.
She made to move away. To walk back up through the palms to the road and the workhouse.
‘Want a drink?’ the old woman asked, lifting the lid of the big cooler box beside her.
‘I don’t have any money,’ Siswan apologised. The fifty Sood had given her was safely tucked away under the mattress in her room.
‘Did I ask for any?’
‘No. You didn’t. I’m sorry,’ Siswan apologised, again. ‘Yes. I’d like a drink. Thank you.’
The old woman fished inside the cooler and pulled out a bottle. She held it out to Siswan.
‘Not a lot of choice left. The farangs were thirsty today.’
‘Thank you,’ Siswan said, as she took the bottle.
She unscrewed the top and took a long drink. The contents were cold and made her hiccup when she finished.
‘Did you know her?’ The woman asked.
‘Yes,’ Siswan knew who the old woman referred to. ‘She was my friend.’
‘Bad way to go.’ It was a statement.
Siswan sat down beside the cooler and continued to sip her drink. The sun was sliding into the sea and the cool breeze coming off the water felt good. The old woman sat down with her. She took a long pull from a bottle of cold beer. Siswan watched as the contents bubbled inside the bottle.
‘Would have given you one, but you’re far too young,’ the old woman said, when she had finished swallowing.
‘How old do I look?’ Siswan asked.
‘Oh, look. Looks is different from being. You look old enough, I’ll give you that.’ The old woman looked out to the sea.
‘Then how do you know?’ Siswan asked her.
‘Because you asked,’ the old woman answered.
Siswan was confused. She looked at the old woman a little longer and then she too, turned her attention to the sea. They both sat there for a while. The old woman and the young girl. Sat on the sand, looking at the sea. Neither of them spoke. Siswan’s mind was full of thoughts. Full of questions but she didn’t speak. Just sat and looked. Finally, when she had finished her beer, the old woman turned to her.
‘Well, another day done,’ she said.
‘Yes. Another one over,’ Siswan agreed.
‘You sound too old, girl,’ the woman told her. ‘I’ll be here again tomorrow. If you want to help with the beds.’
‘I’d like that,’ Siswan told her.
She stood, handed the empty bottle back to the old
woman, and headed back up the beach to the road. It had been a long day but she’d learned a lot and maybe, just maybe, she’d found a friend to replace the one she had lost.
When she got back to the workhouse, Ma stopped her before she reached the stairs.
‘Police came here today. About the girl who was killed,’ she told her.
‘They’ll be back tomorrow to talk to you. I told them you and her were friends.’ Siswan didn’t reply. There didn’t seem to be a need. She continued up the stairs to her small room. She couldn’t stay there. Not now. If the police came they might want to talk to her about the old man in the park. They might know all about it already.
She berated herself for using the same name in the workhouse as she had given to the policeman in the hospital. The same one she had given to Song and Tad in the truck. How could she have been so stupid? Now they would come and ask her questions. Where did she come from? What was her real name? They would track her movements backwards and she would be caught.
No. Stop it, she thought. That wasn’t the way to think. She couldn’t just keep running away. There were thousands of girls called Bee. It was a very common name. That’s how it had come to her in the first place. The first name she could think of. There were lots of girls in the workshop as well. Lots of girls who had run away from home. She had to stay. Face them. She had nowhere else to go.
She resolved herself to meet with the police in the morning. Resolved herself to face whatever happened to her. This was another wave she had to overcome. A big wave. She couldn’t run away, she was in too deep. She would have to stand and face it.
She removed her clothes and carried them to the bathroom. She started to wash them. Just as she was about to plunge her shorts into the water she remembered the small roll of paper she had found that morning.
She had forgotten all about it. She felt in her pockets. Found it in the back one. Pulled it out. In the dim light she examined what she had found. Started to unroll it. In seconds she realised that it was money. As the small sheets came away, one by one, she opened her eyes wide in real surprise.
She lay each note out on the floor in front of her. Five notes. Each one a thousand. Five thousand. More money than she had ever seen before. More than she had ever dreamt of!
She couldn’t believe her luck. This was a huge amount of money. To someone who, up until that moment, thought the fifty under her bed was a lot, it was a fortune. She felt the notes. Picked each one up and put them together. Fanned them out in front of her face. Five thousand.
Her excitement soon changed to consternation. The police were coming tomorrow. What if they searched her room? What if they found the money? Would they think she had stolen it? Of course they would. What would a girl in a workhouse be doing with five thousand?
Worse still, it dawned on her, they may think the money had something to do with the death of Sood. They would think she had killed her friend for money. She dropped the notes on the floor. She suddenly didn’t want to touch them. What could she do? Should she go downstairs, tell Ma? No, that wouldn’t be any good. Ma would tell the police. Maybe she would keep the money? Either way, Siswan knew that no good would come of telling Ma.
She had to think. She had to calm down. Take control. This was yet another wave. She had to overcome it. One wave at a time. The money first. One thing at a time. She had to put the money somewhere where no one, not even the police, would be able to find it.
She looked around her small room. The two beds. Easy to search. A clothes rail. Not a good hiding place. Concrete walls, concrete floor. No window. Nowhere to hide anything.
She looked into the bathroom. The toilet. A hole in the ground with a porcelain frame that didn’t move. A big dustbin half full of water. Too heavy for her to move. The small pail floating in the water. The single tap protruding from the bare wall. Nothing. No holes, no hiding places.
She went back into the bedroom. She was about to give up. About to accept the fact that there was no place to hide anything, when she suddenly recalled what she had thought earlier. The water bucket. Too heavy for her to move.
She went back into the bathroom. The big black plastic dustbin looked back at her with a one-eyed look of pure innocence. She collected the money together. Put it on her bed and went back to the bathroom.
It took her almost half an hour, using the small pail, to empty the dustbin. Finally, when only a small amount of water remained, she could tip it up. She placed the money, together with the fifty she pulled out from under her bed, in a small plastic bag beneath the dustbin. Turning on the tap, she allowed the big bin to fill with fresh water.
When she had finished, and the bin was full, there was no way it could be moved. No way at all. Satisfied with all that she had done, Siswan showered, finished cleaning her clothes and went to bed. She slept soundly in the bed nearest the door. Sood would have understood.
Siswan was hanging out freshly washed laundry when the police called the following morning. In fact it was only one policeman. He sauntered into the back yard in his tight brown uniform with Ma at his side.
‘Bee?’ she called out.
Siswan moved out from behind the big white sheets and walked towards them. She didn’t avert her gaze from the policeman’s eyes but instead smiled and offered a wai when she reached him.
‘This was her friend,’ Ma told him. ‘They shared a room.’
The policeman looked her up and down. He didn’t say anything in reply to Ma.
‘You know that Noy is dead?’ he said to Siswan.
‘Yes. I saw her body on the beach,’ she replied.
‘Did she go with the farang a lot?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Yesterday was our first day off.’
‘You went out together the night before last.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes. We went to the beach. Afterwards, I came back here and she went off alone,’ Siswan told him.
‘Where did she go?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did she say she was going to meet anyone?’
‘No.’
The policeman looked her up and down once more. ‘What time was it when you came back here?’
Siswan looked up at him. Did he really think she could afford to wear a watch? Did he think a place like this would be considerate enough to put up a clock?
‘I’m not sure. About nine, I think. Maybe ten.’ She feigned embarrassment.
‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘We know what time she died. You can go back to work now. I may need to speak with you again though.’
She gave a small wai to him and to Ma. Neither of them gave one in return. She turned and walked back to the laundry. She breathed a sigh of relief.
When she returned to her room that evening she found that the police had been there. Someone had, anyway. Sood’s shorts and tee shirts were gone from the rail. She wondered if they had searched the place. The dustbin was still full of water so she knew her money was safe. Despite all her concerns the previous night, the wave had turned out to be very small after all. Hardly a ripple.
*****
Siswan spent a little over a year in the workhouse. Just about every day she worked, along with the other girls who came and went, in the heat of the laundry. Every evening, as soon as she’d washed the smell of soap and detergents out of her hair and skin, she would go down to the beach and help the old woman. She spent her days off there, too.
Karn had taught Siswan many things. The old woman was a mine of information and the two of them would sit and watch the sun go down talking about the ways of the farangs.
Early in their relationship Karn had given her a gift. Siswan had turned up, as normal, one evening and Karn had handed her a brown bag.
‘These will help,’ she said, in her matter of fact voice.
Siswan had opened the bag to find a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves. The thick ones, like the women who cleaned the streets wore.
At first, the other girls had laughed when she turned up for work in the laundry wearing them. They thought she was mad to wear the thick rubber gloves in the heat of the shed. After a short time however, they stopped laughing. When the redness faded from Siswan’s hands, when her nails strengthened and grew healthy and strong, they had stopped laughing.
Those girls that earned money working on the beach, or those that managed to scrape enough small change together in some other way, soon purchased their own gloves.
Ma had raised an eyebrow at the sight of all the bright yellow and pink gloves but didn’t say anything. The only thing she cared about was that the laundry got done. She didn’t care how the girls did it, or what they wore.
A new girl had moved into the small room with Siswan. A small girl who had been too frightened to talk much. Siswan got tired of listening to her cry in her sleep. She tried to comfort her. Tried to tell her that things weren’t too bad, that everything would be alright. The girl wouldn’t listen. Didn’t stop being frightened. Didn’t stop crying.
She was gone within a week. Siswan didn’t know where she went. No one did. One day she was there, crying and being miserable, the next she was gone. Siswan had felt a small pang of guilt that she hadn’t done more to help her.
Another girl had arrived a few days later. She was completely the opposite. So confident. So talkative. She never stopped. Sometimes, especially after a tiring day, Siswan wished she would.
The best times for Siswan were spent sitting with Karn watching the sun go down. The old woman had a philosophical way of looking at life and would come out with some amazing pearls of wisdom.
One evening, after they had piled the sun beds high and were sat drinking their cool beers, she came out with a real gem. She’d just come out with it all of a sudden. A moment before she spoke, the two of them had been sat in silence.
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