Nowhere Girl (3 page)

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 feel. 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 cared 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.

Mrs. Regina Finn

21 Stafford Circle

Brookline, Massachusetts

USA

August 29

Dear Helena,

I write these words as I have written so many before, sending them out to so many different places, hoping against hope that they will find their way to you. Yet with each unanswered letter I feel another beat of that hope flying from me. Where are you, my darling? Where in the world could you be? Are you even still alive to read these words, should one of my letters search you out and find where you have hidden? Only my heart tells me that you are alive, my heart that knows you better than I know myself, my heart that would sense a world where you no longer lived.

We have all heard the horrifying news, and I want you to know that I will stand by you in this. Won't you tell me what really happened? You know that monster of a man will twist any tale to his advantage, will manufacture his own truth, and I know there is more to the story than we are being told.

Please, my darling, come home and let me help you. I am waiting every day for news of your return. Don't stay away any longer!

With love and prayers and hope that this letter will find you,

Mom

By my tenth reading I've chased my thoughts in circles and am no nearer to catching them. I have always accepted Mama's life, her decision to cut herself off from her past. And it was her choice; after all, other foreign prisoners received calls from their embassies, letters and parcels from home, visits from family and friends. None of these for Mama. No, she lived under some nameless fear, some private terror in which the outside world was more to be feared than our own confinement. I think again of the company Jeanne told me about: Payne Industries. Did this place have anything to do with Mama's fear, as Jeanne suspected? Mama never said a word about it to me—or to anyone, apparently. We just remained hidden behind the bars that she saw not as a prison but as a protection. Her ups and downs set the tempo of our lives, winding us around in a rhythm none of us could see.

It is what I have grown up with. It is the known and the safe and the understood. But if Mama was not alone—nor unwanted—then what were her reasons for keeping so far away from her past? What was the cause of her terror? Why did she bury herself in secrets?

My mama had a mother. This much, of course, I always knew at some level. But looking at the page now, holding it in my hand, sends my whole body trembling. Beyond the mysteries and the questions, beyond the unnamed horrifying event, beyond this monster man who maybe caused my mama to retreat from her world—apart from all that, there is something else.

In this world—this big, empty, lonely world—there is a woman whose heart knew Mama's better than her own, a woman who loved her in spite of everything else. My mama's mother.

My grandmother.