Silk Umbrellas (4 page)

Finally, she reached the highway. Instead of going into the market as usual, she turned onto the shoulder of the busy road. Sometimes when the big trucks passed her they honked, and the wind they created blew hard against her.

When Noi arrived at the plain factory building, she parked the bicycle. The building had no windows. Walking up the front steps, she carried the lunch box, the handle square and hard against her palm.

“How can I help you?” A man in a white uniform opened the door and stood above her. He had a badge pinned to his shirt pocket.

“I brought my sister’s lunch.” Noi held up the metal stack.

“It’s past lunchtime,” the man said.

“But she’s probably hungry.”

The man looked at his watch. “Okay. They get a short break soon.” He reached for the lunch box, but Noi held on to it.

“I’d like to take it to her, please.” She wanted to make sure that Ting got the lunch, and besides, now that she’d come this long distance, she wanted to see where Ting worked.

“This way, then,” the man said, holding the door open wider. Noi passed in and followed him down a short hallway. On the wall hung photographs of the king and queen. The hallway led into a large room lit by cold-looking lights. There were four rows of workers, about ten in a row. At first, Noi couldn’t spot Ting, because each young worker had the same black hair pulled into a net and each wore a pair of thick magnifying glasses. A wide moving belt ran in front of each row. Metal boxes sprouting tangles of wires passed along the belt.

She saw Ting bent over the belt like the other workers, accepting each box as it came to her. In front of her rested a cup filled with small bits of something. Noi scarcely breathed as she watched Ting lift the bit with a pair of tweezers and maneuver it onto the box. When the piece was settled, she used a tool that looked like a pen with an electrical cord attached and glued the piece on. All the while, the box had been moving toward her, in front of her, and then away from her.

Except for the rhythmical spinning of the overhead fans and the ringing of the phones down the hall, there was no sound. None of the workers talked. Even the light was unwavering, as though the least flicker might disrupt the delicate work. Noi shut her eyes briefly. How could Ting do this all day long?

She went up behind her and whispered, “I’ve brought your lunch.”

“Thank you, Noi,” Ting said without looking up.

Noi saw that she couldn’t look up. If she did, her unit wouldn’t receive its piece and the next worker couldn’t do her job. The belt would have to stop.

How different this was from the days with the umbrellas — filled with light and shadow, breezes and laughter.

Noi let her gaze shift from Ting to the others bent over their tasks. Most looked to be Ting’s age, out of school for a few years. But then she looked more closely. Some workers were younger than Ting. Some were very young. They looked almost as young as Noi herself.

Suddenly, she understood — she, too, was destined to come here to the factory, to work here with the radios day in and day out. She might come as soon as she finished school. After all, why not? Why should she, and not Ting, be spared? Why would Kun Mere wait? Even with Ting working, Kun Mere and Kun Pa still worried about money.

School would be over soon, and then the metal boxes would begin to move toward her, on and on without stopping.

Her stomach tightened, then loosened quickly, as though she would be sick. She turned to the guard. “I want to leave now.”

The man led her back down the hall and outside again.

Noi stood by the bicycle, gulping in the cool, fresh air. She felt the sky open above her, the land stretch away on all sides. How could Ting bear to be locked up?

As she mounted the bicycle, she thought about the time a boy had brought a toy called a kaleidoscope to school. When Noi looked through it, she’d seen the world broken apart and rearranged in beautiful patterns.

Now that she’d visited the factory, the whole world seemed broken into pieces like that. But unlike the view through the kaleidoscope, the broken pieces didn’t make lovely patterns.

That evening Noi and Ting prepared to iron clothes with the charcoal iron. The iron had a hollow space underneath the handle. Noi held the iron close to the cooking fire, a cloth wrapped around the handle to shield her hand from the heat. Ting used a pair of tongs to lift hot coals into the opening.

Noi held the iron very still, even though she was trembling inside with the question she was about to ask.

When the iron was filled with coals and the lid was latched closed, Ting set it on the thick blanket spread out on the floor.

Noi handed her Kun Pa’s brown shirt from the basket. Now was the time to ask. She had to know for sure. Her words rushed out: “Do you think that Kun Mere means to send me to the factory, too?”

“Don’t worry yourself about that now,” said Ting. She looked quickly at Noi, then back to the shirt collar she was straightening.

But Noi pushed on. “Has she said anything to you?”

“Not directly.” Ting bit her lip. “But probably yes, I think she plans to send you.”

Noi’s hand brushed the hot iron, and she jerked it back. Her skin bubbled right away into a blister.

“Put some oil on that,” said Ting.

Noi dabbed on cooking oil from the nearby jar. Tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as pain rushed at her from all directions.

“Does your hand hurt very badly?” Ting asked, touching the red spot lightly with her fingertip.

“Yes,” said Noi, although the blister itself was only a small part of the hurt. The wound had forced her deeper anguish into the open.

She watched Ting finish the brown shirt, running the iron up and down one sleeve, then turning the shirt to line up the other sleeve. Ting hung the shirt neatly on a hanger, then began on a flower-print dress of Kun Mere’s.

“And what about you, Ting? You act as though you don’t mind the factory,” Noi finally managed to say.

“I don’t mind too much. I’m not like you.”

“But the factory looked so . . .” Noi wanted to go on and, sobbing, tell Ting what she’d observed at the factory and all about the kaleidoscope of broken parts her life had become. But she stopped, not wanting to make Ting feel bad.

Ting moved the iron over Kun Mere’s pale flowers, the point traveling first, then the triangular body. “Really, I’m fine,” she said as she finished the dress. “For now, Kun Mere needs me to work there.”

The rainy season had never seemed longer, nor the rainfall more torrential. Often there was no school because of the rain, so Noi stayed home. When she did go, she had trouble concentrating on what Kun Kru taught her.

Because of the rain, Kun Pa couldn’t lay bricks. He sat in the house weaving bamboo fishing baskets, the long strips of bamboo uncurling on the mat.

Kun Mere’s sewing machine whirred along except when lightning hit the electrical wires. Then Noi would light a lantern. She brought it close so that Kun Mere could continue to sew by hand with tiny, neat stitches.

Kun Ya slept and hardly painted at all. She complained that her fingers hurt.

Only Ting kept to her schedule in spite of the weather, slipping out of the mosquito net before dawn each morning. Every other Friday, she handed Kun Mere her earnings. They sat down together on the mat while Ting, smiling, counted the bills and coins into Kun Mere’s open hand. Kun Mere would count the money again, then neatly enter the amount in a small notebook. Often Ting’s money was the only money coming into the house.

Noi stayed busy with schoolwork and housework, trying to avoid Kun Mere’s eyes.

As the rains crashed down day after day, Noi began to look ahead to the harvest festival of Loy Krathong.

During Loy Krathong, people celebrated the life of all growing things. The harvest brought new prosperity. Noi hoped that the festival celebrations would bring prosperity for her family. Maybe there would be enough money so that neither she nor Ting would have to go to the factory.

During Loy Krathong, the village would be lit up by
phang patit,
the small earthen lamps. Noi added up the number of lamps her family would light. She was eleven years old, Ting fifteen. That made twenty-six. Plus Kun Mere’s thirty-five years and Kun Pa’s thirty-seven made ninety-eight. Plus Kun Ya’s sixty-three years made one hundred and sixty-one. The flickering yellow flames of one hundred and sixty-one lamps would make the fall night seem warmer.

Noi pictured the lights that would burn under the trees around the house. She counted them over and over until the individual flickers came clear. The thought of so many lights, small offerings to the Buddha, comforted her.

Noi approached Kun Mere’s sewing machine. She touched the soft cloud of mosquito netting hesitantly.

Recently a curtain had come between her and Kun Mere like the thin white fabric Kun Mere used to make mosquito nets. The curtain made it impossible for Noi to speak the secrets of her heart.

Kun Mere didn’t lift her foot from the pedal of the sewing machine. She leaned close to the fabric, pulling it tight on both sides of the needle that jabbed up and down, joining the seams.

Kun Mere used to have time to sew blouses with pleats and ruffles for Noi and Ting, but now she only sewed for Mr. Subsin.

Noi began to move away.

“Wait, little daughter.” Kun Mere suddenly took a pink ribbon from her pocket.

Noi leaned down to let Kun Mere tie the ribbon in her hair.

Kun Mere pulled at the collar of Noi’s blouse. “I see wrinkles. You need to iron more carefully in the future.”

Noi smiled. Even if Kun Mere didn’t have time to sew blouses, she always made sure that Noi and Ting looked neat and pretty.

But looks didn’t matter to Noi right now.
Find another way. Please, don’t send me to the factory,
she longed to say to Kun Mere.

Yet she didn’t say anything. Neither did she lean over to kiss Kun Mere as she usually did. She pretended to be late for school and turned quickly to gather up her book bag.

Kun Kru handed out the mathematics books for the older children and drew the younger ones close to her for reading.

As Noi added and subtracted fractions and decimals, she wondered what these complicated numbers had to do with the numbers in her life — the simple, round numbers on the money that Ting brought home, the lack of simple, round numbers that so worried Kun Mere.

Noi looked out the window just in time to see a monk striking the big gong in the courtyard. He raised the mallet.
Bong
. . . The sound resonated throughout the village, marking the hour of eleven o’clock. It was time for the monks to eat.

Kun Kru dismissed the younger children.

Noi slipped her mathematics paper inside her book and closed it, as though in so doing she could put away numbers and the problems they created.

The monks had to eat before noon, but the children would eat later. Outside, Kun Kru lined everybody up for a foot race.

Kriamas liked to run fast. Noi preferred to go slower, feeling the breeze on her face, watching the rush of the green trees against the background of sky.

It was the same way in the afternoons when Kun Kru announced the end of work and the beginning of the performances. Kriamas enjoyed doing her dances or singing in front of the others, while Noi enjoyed studying the way the children moved and the positions of their bodies, thinking how, like the creatures of the jungle, they could be painted.

Everyone shared some lunch with everyone else, making a feast of Jirapat’s yellow curried potatoes with chickpeas, Intha’s crispy raw vegetables, Kriamas’s rice soup. Afterward, Kriamas and Noi played a game of checkers, using bottle caps for pieces. In the background, a Ping-Pong ball clicked back and forth, a pattern threading lightly through the laughter and chatter.

Noi took three of Kriamas’s pieces and Kriamas grew quiet. She began to move, then changed her mind.

Noi rubbed her finger around the fluted edge of the bottle cap. She wished that she could tell Kriamas about the factory. About the way Ting rubbed her eyes at night. About how Noi’s school days seemed to fly by, as time carried her swiftly to a new destiny.
I’m so afraid,
she wanted to say.