I can hear them sometimes when the evening is still, quietly knocking against each other in the current. The small bones of memory.
But my point is this: Our childhood was hardly different from anyone else’s in the world we knew, and a good deal happier than most. Our father was Chinese, and, like all the Chinese sons of Piatac, the soldier who long ago had rallied the conquered Siamese army and driven the Burmese out of Muang Tai, he enjoyed without qualm all the privileges to which his birth entitled him. Exempt from having to work in the rice paddies every year, able to buy his way out of military conscription with a small tax, he seized the opportunity offered him and prospered.
His success alone, however—measured by a new net, a bit of cloth for my mother—would hardly have been enough to explain our happiness. Our parents, as far as we could know, seem to have had a genuine regard for each other. My father, though hardly a gentle man by nature, always treated our mother kindly, praising the food she prepared or the way she kept our house, discussing his business affairs with her as though she were a man, taking her side when she had been cheated in the marketplace rather than blaming her, as most men would have, for her inattention. In their years together, he never struck her.
Our mother, for her part, quietly bore him nine children, working from the first muzzy gray of dawn to the deep mahogany light of dusk—sleep to sleep and season to season—without complaint or criticism.When Lun Li and the other women spoke of their husbands’ laziness while sweeping the planks in the mornings, she would nod in sympathy but refuse to join in, and they, noting that she did this without putting on airs or gloating, ascribed her reticence to fear and welcomed their timid sister back to the fold.
A noisy, happy home, all in all. There was always a good deal of talk in the evenings, and more than a little laughter. Quiet in the company of others, our mother would grow almost lively in ours, and though he had never hesitated in letting us know the weight of his hand when it was necessary, my father could joke and smile when he wanted. On good nights, our brother told us, he would imitate Chong Lu getting caught in his own net, or Luang Bhirasi the day he almost stepped on a baby cobra, dancing like a man possessed before falling into the klong .
Father. Where has he gone, I wonder. I imagine him leaning back, perhaps putting his hands behind his head as I do, as Christopher used to, as his son surely would have. I can almost see him, chuckling at the seven of us holding our stomachs from laughing, the little one wriggling on the mat, even my mother, the baby at her breast, smiling quietly into her hand. A man content. It’s dark outside. The still air moves, bringing the sounds of familiar voices, the creak of wood, the smell of fruit and mud and heat. He sighs, reaches for his cup. The moment passes.
The cholera came to Meklong when we were eight. It came like a wave, a darkness. It came out of nothing—a small pain in the side, a sudden dizziness at the nets—and ate us alive. As in a dream, the small familiar figure in the market turned—and sank her teeth in our throats.
Our younger sister Song was the first, followed by the two babies. I remember my father holding her head, trying to get her to sip from a cup. The young ones went quickly, held over buckets, retching. Zuo, our brother, who was two years younger than us, came next. He shat himself raw, cried quietly, and then was still. Our parents, disbelieving, rushed from room to room—washing, holding, emptying the pots of brown liquid, thin as river water, that flowed out of their children, listening as their babies one by one emptied themselves with small barking noises,slumped into whimpering sleep, and died. Li came next. And then our father, a strange look on his face, bent in the middle and started to shake.
I don’t remember him dying. Our mother
But my point is this: Our childhood was hardly different from anyone else’s in the world we knew, and a good deal happier than most. Our father was Chinese, and, like all the Chinese sons of Piatac, the soldier who long ago had rallied the conquered Siamese army and driven the Burmese out of Muang Tai, he enjoyed without qualm all the privileges to which his birth entitled him. Exempt from having to work in the rice paddies every year, able to buy his way out of military conscription with a small tax, he seized the opportunity offered him and prospered.
His success alone, however—measured by a new net, a bit of cloth for my mother—would hardly have been enough to explain our happiness. Our parents, as far as we could know, seem to have had a genuine regard for each other. My father, though hardly a gentle man by nature, always treated our mother kindly, praising the food she prepared or the way she kept our house, discussing his business affairs with her as though she were a man, taking her side when she had been cheated in the marketplace rather than blaming her, as most men would have, for her inattention. In their years together, he never struck her.
Our mother, for her part, quietly bore him nine children, working from the first muzzy gray of dawn to the deep mahogany light of dusk—sleep to sleep and season to season—without complaint or criticism.When Lun Li and the other women spoke of their husbands’ laziness while sweeping the planks in the mornings, she would nod in sympathy but refuse to join in, and they, noting that she did this without putting on airs or gloating, ascribed her reticence to fear and welcomed their timid sister back to the fold.
A noisy, happy home, all in all. There was always a good deal of talk in the evenings, and more than a little laughter. Quiet in the company of others, our mother would grow almost lively in ours, and though he had never hesitated in letting us know the weight of his hand when it was necessary, my father could joke and smile when he wanted. On good nights, our brother told us, he would imitate Chong Lu getting caught in his own net, or Luang Bhirasi the day he almost stepped on a baby cobra, dancing like a man possessed before falling into the klong .
Father. Where has he gone, I wonder. I imagine him leaning back, perhaps putting his hands behind his head as I do, as Christopher used to, as his son surely would have. I can almost see him, chuckling at the seven of us holding our stomachs from laughing, the little one wriggling on the mat, even my mother, the baby at her breast, smiling quietly into her hand. A man content. It’s dark outside. The still air moves, bringing the sounds of familiar voices, the creak of wood, the smell of fruit and mud and heat. He sighs, reaches for his cup. The moment passes.
The cholera came to Meklong when we were eight. It came like a wave, a darkness. It came out of nothing—a small pain in the side, a sudden dizziness at the nets—and ate us alive. As in a dream, the small familiar figure in the market turned—and sank her teeth in our throats.
Our younger sister Song was the first, followed by the two babies. I remember my father holding her head, trying to get her to sip from a cup. The young ones went quickly, held over buckets, retching. Zuo, our brother, who was two years younger than us, came next. He shat himself raw, cried quietly, and then was still. Our parents, disbelieving, rushed from room to room—washing, holding, emptying the pots of brown liquid, thin as river water, that flowed out of their children, listening as their babies one by one emptied themselves with small barking noises,slumped into whimpering sleep, and died. Li came next. And then our father, a strange look on his face, bent in the middle and started to shake.
I don’t remember him dying. Our mother
Similar Books
