Sightseeing (25 page)

Noon told me she'd seen Little Jui around town driving Papa's Mazda.

“It's a crime, Ladda,” Noon said. “It's an abomination what they did to your father. You should report it to the police.”

I shook my head. I reminded Noon that the chief of our esteemed police department was Big Jui's brother-in-law. Given the way things worked in our town, Papa'd get arrested for having his own ear cut off. Papa lost, I reminded Noon. He bet more than he could afford. The police would probably say that an ear was the least Papa could give for a bet he never meant to pay. “Still,” Noon replied, sighing, “that doesn't make it right, Ladda,” and I said she should know by now that we were living in a world where words like that didn't mean a thing: right or wrong, left or right, up or down, inside or outside—our people didn't speak that kind of language.

We took Papa home on the fourth day. Miss Mayuree sent one of her men over with the sedan and for the first time I did not feel any rancor toward her. Miss Mayuree told Mama
that she could keep to her old quota for the time being, eight hundred bras a month. Mama thanked her once again. The nub on Papa's head had stopped bleeding now, though there remained a large square bandage taped over the side of his scalp. When we got home, Mama sat Papa on the front porch, cleaned out the wound, changed the bandage. Papa grimaced as she swabbed the wound with alcohol, but still he didn't say a thing. The doctors had advised vigilance—they said the infection might spread. I couldn't bear to look at Papa's wound, so I carried my bags to my bedroom and left Mama and Papa on the porch.

For the first time in a while, I felt calm. It was as if I'd expended all my anger that first night in the hospital, hitting Mama, screaming at her. Nor did I feel any anguish for what happened to Papa. What happened happened, I decided, and I could see no use in wishing that it didn't. The doctors told us that Papa would still be able to hear out of both ears—only the cartilage had been taken—which really was the most anybody could hope for, they said. They made Little Jui's barbarity seem perversely generous.

At breakfast the next morning, Papa spoke for the first time. Over porridge, he said, “This is delicious,” and Mama and I looked at him astonished, for I think in some ways we'd been preparing for the possibility that he might never speak again.

“What?” Papa said, grinning at us both. “You guys don't think it's delicious?”

We slowly started speaking again. In steady increments, there was talk in the house once more. There was kindness. There was generosity. There was laughing and smiling and even, at times, delight. Mama and Papa decided to plant a garden in the yard—zinnias and azaleas and birds-of-paradise and morning glories. I'd come home from school and see them out there bent over the earth together, the sun casting its long rays, and if it hadn't been for that square bandage over Papa's missing ear, you would've thought we were as normal as anybody else. The strays would emerge at night to inspect the garden, pause to sniff the budding flowers. And if it hadn't been for that chicken house, with its empty coops and bags of premium feed lining the mud walls, you never would've guessed that my father once fought chickens as though nothing else mattered.

I'd occasionally see Little Jui in town with his bodyguards and Ramon. I'd walk the other way. He never bothered me again. It was as though he'd decided to move on to other, more entertaining game. I'd heard that many of the men had stopped going to the cockpit after what Little Jui did to my father. It was the end of cockfighting in our town. Dog racing was the new game: Saksri Bualoi had retired undefeated as the welterweight champion of the world and opened up a world-class dog track in his hometown. It was something else, the rumormongers said, to sit there in the stands and eat marinated porkballs and drink fifths of rye and watch those beautiful dogs run.

XIX

We went back to the hospital for a checkup later that month. Everything's fine, the doctor told us, peering sternly into the bandage. No infection. Good progress all around. He recommended a prosthetic for Papa. “It will be easy,” he said. “All we need to do is make a mold of your other ear.” He pulled out a few dummies from a leather suitcase—an ear, a nose, a shin, a hand, a foot, all made from some complicated sounding substance, all tinted the same pinkish hue. The doctor put the artificial ear in Papa's hand. Papa fingered it and said, “Why, it's just rubber, Doctor,” and the doctor shrugged as if he couldn't be bothered to explain again. “I don't need a rubber ear,” Papa said, laughing, handing the prosthetic back. “Thanks but no thanks. Lots of ugly people in this world, Doctor. And they're no less ugly for having two ears on their heads.” The doctor nodded, looked at his watch. Before we left, he took off Papa's bandage. I looked at Papa's wound for the first time: the bulging, translucent half-moon of scar tissue; the short brown notch which the doctor called the tragus; the small hole that made me think of some flesh-eating creature burrowing itself deep into the side of Papa's head. Papa walked to the mirror. “It's not so bad,” I said, and Papa smiled at me appreciatively.

That night, I went into the chicken house after dinner. I hadn't been in there since the day I told Papa about Little Jui coming to take the Mazda. It still smelled strongly of chicken shit and stale urine. A few sparrows had made their
home in the thatch roof, getting fat off the remaining bags of chicken feed. They fluttered around as I entered the chicken house. I didn't light the lantern. I just sat down in the dark and listened to the sounds around me: the hum of Mama's sewing machine on the front porch; Papa watering the garden, long jets of water beating an irregular rhythm against the soil; the sparrows chirping overhead; the cicadas singing in the trees; the strays lifting their voices in turn to join that insect orchestra. I sat there for a long time, until Mama and Papa went inside. Mama turned on the kitchen light and the chicken-house windows cupped its yellow rays. I watched her shadow moving on the chicken-house floor. Soon, she turned off the light and I was in darkness again. I heard my parents murmuring and then I heard their bedroom door shut. I could sense nothing then of my parents, nothing of the house, just the noises the animals made. After a while, even the animals seemed to go to sleep, as though all the world had decided to turn in with my parents for the night, and I held my breath because it seemed the only sound left in the world and all around me then was an extraordinary silence. It made me feel light, that silence, as if I might float to the ceiling, as if I might be able to open my arms, flap them, and fly with the sparrows. I don't know how long I sat there holding my breath in the dark, but I thought then of how loud the world could be, so much clatter and noise, and of how lovely and rare was a moment like this when one need not listen to anything at all.

A truck motor rumbled down the road, coughing and sputtering sporadically. I got up and walked out, decided to turn in for the night. But when I walked across the yard, I noticed that it was Papa's Mazda coming toward the house. I paused, hoping they wouldn't see me. The truck approached, its headlights throwing wild shadows against the rubber trees. I hoped they'd simply pass me by. They did. But then, just as I stepped onto the front porch, the Mazda stopped. The truck began to back up toward our property. It stopped at the entrance to our driveway.

The driver got out of the car. He started walking toward me, his shadow growing in size, the gravel crunching beneath his feet. At first, I wanted to go inside the house. But then I thought I might say a thing or two to Little Jui. I thought I might give him a piece of my mind. He was alone; there were three of us here. This was our property. If he gave me any trouble, Mama and Papa would come out. I sat down on the porch steps and waited for him.

“What do you want?” I shouted, but he didn't respond, just kept on walking toward me. “Speak up, motherfucker.”

But, again, no response, only his huffing louder with the closing distance. He was some ten meters away when the moon came out from behind a cloud. By its blue light, I saw that he was not Little Jui at all but that Filipino boy Ramon.

I was afraid now. I'd expected Little Jui—I'd been prepared to confront him once and for all—but I hadn't expected
Ramon. He must've sensed my fear and surprise, because he slowed his pace, held his hands before him as though to say he meant me no harm. I stood up. I could smell his sweat now. I could've touched his face. He smiled. I turned to go back inside the house, but Ramon reached out and grabbed my hand.

“What do you want?” I whispered, turning to face him, struggling against his grip. His hand felt cold, clammy against my skin. “Go away,” I whispered, and when he smiled at me again, I noticed for the first time his swollen right brow, a messy trail of dried blood branching across his cheek in every direction. He let go of my hand, and though I wanted to turn back to the house, I kept staring into his battered face, mesmerized by the ganglia of blood on his cheek. He said something, but it was in another language—Tagalog, perhaps—and I shook my head to tell him I didn't understand. He said something again, the same guttural phrase, his voice a dim whisper between us. I shook my head again. “I don't understand,” I said, and for the first time I saw how helpless he actually was—this foreign boy cast into a foreign land to handle other people's chickens—and I wondered what had happened tonight to produce those bruises on his face, where he'd been headed in the Mazda before he saw me. He opened his mouth to say something again, but then he took one of my wrists into his hand, as if the gesture might explain what he'd been trying to say. I didn't resist this time. For a moment, it seemed like Ramon was taking my pulse, his fingers hot against my veins.
He reached into the pocket of his jeans. He put something in my hand. He closed my fingers around the object.

“What is this?” I asked, holding up my fist, my fingers hugging the object's cold, velvety texture. He shrugged. I already knew what it was. I already knew what he'd given me; I didn't have to open my fingers to see. I didn't want it. “What is this?” I asked again, but Ramon turned around and started walking back toward the Mazda. I caught up with him. He stopped.

“I don't want it,” I said. I tried to take one of his hands, return the strange token, but he pulled away and shook his head. He said something to me again in that guttural language. I stared at him. The object felt heavy in my hands, like a warm mushroom, and I realized then that I was squeezing it hard. He reached out, put a hand on my cheek, said something once more. He gestured with his chin toward the Mazda. He pointed toward my house. He put a palm over his heart. I shook my head. “I don't understand,” I said. “I don't understand what you want.” He repeated the gestures once more—the Mazda, the house, his heart—and this time, for some reason, I thought I understood him.

He wanted to go home.

“Help,” he said loudly in Thai, and for a moment I stared at him dumbfounded, Papa's flesh still hot in my fist. “Help,” he said again. “Me.”

He walked to the Mazda. He got in the passenger seat. He sat there for a long time staring at me, waiting. I knew then
what I needed to do. I crouched down and started digging a small hole through the gravel driveway with one hand, my fingers still wrapped around Papa's ear in the other. The ground beneath the gravel was hard, and I felt soil collecting in my fingernails. The hardened topsoil soon gave way to softer mulch, and I clawed at it furiously, grabbing fistfuls of dirt. I thought I might be able to sit there digging in that driveway forever.

I dropped Papa's ear into that hole and covered it up with clumps of cold gravel. I stood up and walked toward the Mazda. I got in the driver's seat. I rolled down the window. “Let's go,” I muttered, popping the truck into gear, and then I was gone.

Thanks are due to many individuals and institutions for their invaluable support and encouragement. This book would not exist without the following believers.

Siriwan Sriboonyapirat. Wannasiri Lapcharoensap. June Glasson. Nancy Lee and Julien Victor Koschmann. Sorachai Buasap. Kawin Punchangthong. Daniel Mrozowski. Jean Henry. Michael Cobb. Hong-an Tran. Cheryl Beredo. Kate Rubin. Charles Baxter, Eileen Pollack, Nancy Reisman, Reginald McKnight, Peter Ho Davies, and Nicholas Delbanco at the University of Michigan creative writing program. My fellow writers in Ann Arbor—Laura Jean Baker, John Bishop, Andrew Cohen, Melodie Edwards, Sara Houghteling, Laura Krughoff, John Lee, Patti Lu, David Morse, Michelle Mounts, and Catherine Zeidler. Lexy Bloom. Fatema Ahmed and Matt Weiland at
Granta.
Tamara Straus and Michael Ray at
Zoetrope: All-Story.
Linda Swanson-Davies at
Glimmer Train.
John Kulka, Natalie Danford, and Francine Prose. The Avery Jules Hopwood Awards Program. The Fred R. Meijer Fellowship in Creative Writing, which provided instrumental funds.
The indomitable Amy Williams and the wonderful people at Collins-McCormick. Elisabeth Schmitz, Morgan Entrekin, Dara Hyde, Lauren Wein, Charles Rue Woods, and the incredible staff at Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Thank you all.

This book is also dedicated to the memory of Sucheng Tang—beloved
ahmah
—who crossed the South China Sea to an uncertain future in Bangkok seventy years ago and who is now, without doubt, enjoying bird's nest soup in a much better world than the one she inherited.

A GROVE PRESS READING GROUP GUIDE

Sightseeing
Rattawut Lapcharoensap

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

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Sightseeing.
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