The Spirit House (2 page)

“I don't
think
so,” Thamrongsak said, with a half smile.

Under further questioning, he admitted that he had chosen to stay with the monks in the temple a good deal longer than the minimum time required. That was why he had grown so thin and looked so different in the picture. Mom seemed somewhat mollified by this evidence of Thamrongsak's seriousness and piety:
this
was more like the kind of person she had had in mind.

Dad carried the suitcase from the car and Mom unlocked the front door. Thamrongsak slipped off his shoes as we stepped inside the house—and before the door was even shut he was already puffing on a cigarette.

Mom set down her handbag on the hall table and turned back to Thamrongsak. “Welcome to your new—” she started to say. And then her lips tightened. “I guess we didn't make it clear in the car, Tham—Thamrongsak,” she said, making an effort to sound firm while stumbling over his name—it was the first time any of us had dared to say it in front of him. “We have a rule here. There is no smoking in this house.”

“Please. Not say Thamrongsak. That formal name,” he told her. “Good friend call by nickname, Bia.”

That was a relief; “Bia” was a lot easier to pronounce. But Mom didn't relax. “All right then,
Bia
,” she said. “But there is no smoking in this house.”

Bia looked at our feet. “Is American custom, like wearing shoe inside house?”

I watched Mom's face, once again feeling the impulse to giggle. “It's a custom in
this
house,” she said.

“Really sorry,” Bia said, very apologetic now. He quickly slipped on his shoes and disposed of the cigarette outside.

He started to take off his shoes again when he came in, but Mom assured him that it
was
an American custom to wear shoes inside the house, so he left them on. He nodded politely as we trooped around showing him the living room, dining room, kitchen, and family room before taking him upstairs. “Nice house” was all he said. Mom kept flashing looks at Dad. She would have preferred him to be awed by the spacious luxury of our comfortable middle-class home.

Then we took him upstairs to the guest room. The smallest bedroom, it had a single bed, a bookcase, a closet, and a small desk. It was nothing special, but pleasant enough, and Mom and Dad had provided the desk and new curtains especially for Bia. Mom had probably been hoping he would gush about how he had always slept with ten brothers and sisters and had never had his own room before. But he merely nodded pleasantly. “Thank you,” he said. “Nice room.”

“I bet you want to get cleaned up and settled in after your long flight, don't you? You know where the bathroom is. Come on, Julie, Dominic,” Dad said, beginning to herd us away. Bia bent his head and made the praying gesture, and Mom closed the door behind her.

For a long moment we remained in the hallway, silently looking at his door.

“Why are we all just standing here?” I suddenly said, breaking the spell. Dominic hurried up to the third floor to his room and his computer, and Mom and Dad, looking thoughtful, went downstairs.

As soon as they were all out of the way, and I was sure I wouldn't be noticed, I ducked into Mom's second-floor study, where Bia's papers were kept. I still couldn't get over how unexpectedly good-looking he was, how different from the photograph he had sent, and I got out the photo and studied it carefully. It didn't
seem
to look much like him, though it was hard for me to tell for sure, because I didn't know many Asians, and to my Western eyes Asians had similar features. The guy in the picture did have the same high cheekbones and flattish nose. And who else could it be, anyway? But I was still amazed by what a difference no hair and a ten-pound weight loss could make. Mom probably wished he
still
looked like the picture. I smiled at that thought.

Then I glanced up and saw Bia standing in the hallway, watching me. He was wearing a dark blue robe, but the green pendant was still around his neck.

I blushed and put the photo down, as though I had been caught spying.

Bia started to move toward me. We heard footsteps on the stairs. He turned away and walked silently past the doorway.

2

It took Bia a full hour to shower and change. When he finally came downstairs I was in the family room with Dad, watching a baseball game on TV. Bia was wearing black linen pants and a fresh red and black cotton shirt, loosely fitted, which looked great on him.

After making the little praying gesture to Dad, he sat down and lit a cigarette.

Had he already forgotten the scene with Mom? “Come on, you better do that outside,” I said. I opened the sliding glass doors that led from the family room out onto the backyard deck. Bia followed me down onto the lawn. “Cigarette?” he offered, taking the pack from his shirt pocket.

I shook my head. “Bia, do you have a lousy memory or what?” I said.

“Memory? I forget something?” Once again, he seemed to stiffen slightly.

“I mean about smoking. Don't you remember Mom making you do it outside?”

“Oh. Only forget about smoking,” he said, and shrugged, as though it had been just a small oversight.

“Look, Mom's real intense about it. If you want to get along with her, don't smoke in the house.”

“Yes, I remember now. Thank you, Julie, for help with parent, and with American custom,” he said, very gravely and sweetly. “I really
appreciate
.” He could barely pronounce the word.

Though Bia wasn't the humble, self-effacing type we had expected, he was unfailingly polite to Mom and Dad. Often he would
wai
to them—that was the little praying gesture of greeting, which he explained was only done to those of superior status, a sign of respect. And respectful he certainly was. He would not speak to Mom or Dad until spoken to, would not mention anything he needed until specifically asked.

Nor would he volunteer any personal information. It was almost impossible for Mom and Dad to wrest from him any specific details about his family or his school or his friends. At supper, when Dad asked him what he did for recreation, he shifted the subject to sports in Thailand—he had learned quickly what Dad would be interested in. When Mom asked him about his mother, he brought up the independent role of women in Thailand, exactly the topic that would please Mom—and distract her from asking him more personal questions.

When Dominic and I finished the supper dishes we found Bia in the family room, watching a stupid game show with great fascination.

“You want to play this really cool math game I have on my computer?” Dominic asked him.

“Thank you. Not now,” Bia said, his eyes glued to the TV.

“But in your letter you said you liked math,” Dominic said.

“Letter?” Bia asked him, turning from the TV screen with a blank expression.

“Yes, your letter. You said you loved math and foreign languages and didn't like movies and television,” Dominic prodded him. “Don't you remember
that?
”

“I remember,” Bia said. He looked away, as though distracted by his reflection in the glass door, his back very straight. “Only is … sometime, if I …” He turned to Dominic. “How long letter take, Thailand to America?” he asked.

Dominic shrugged. “One to two weeks, I think Mom said.” He shot me a puzzled glance, then looked back at Bia.

I didn't blame Dominic for being puzzled. I was curious too. Why had Bia changed the subject? Didn't he even
know
what was in the letter? How could a person forget something as important as a self-description he had written to his new family? And why had that self-description been so inaccurate? His personality seemed just as different from the character of the letter as his appearance was from the photograph. For a moment, I didn't know what to say.

And then all at once I understood. Like the photo, showing him as a monk, the letter must have been an attempt to make a good impression on Mom and Dad. Maybe someone had even written it for him, which would explain the fluency of the letter, in contrast to his rocky spoken English. In that case, he could easily have forgotten some of the bogus details. And I, for one, was certainly glad that he
was
so different from the fanatically studious nerd he had led us to expect.

It was a good thing that Mom and Dad had missed this conversation. I stood up. “Come on, Bia,” I said, rescuing him from Dominic. “If you want another cigarette, I'll go outside with you.”

But Dominic got up too. “There's something else I've been wanting to ask you,” he began. “Do you believe in spirits? Do you think—”

“Dominic,” I said, giving him a look.

Dominic sighed. But he was basically a good kid, not a serious pest, and he stayed inside.

I was sure Bia would be glad to get away from Dominic's questions. But in the brief flare of his lighter I could see that his face was still guarded.

And then a bat whizzed overhead, and he flinched and spun around, almost dropping the lighter.

“Just a bat,” I told him, surprised that someone as cool as Bia would be so startled by it. “They're attracted by the neighbors' pool.”

“Bat?” he said, tossing the lighter casually in his palm, though his hand seemed to be shaking a little. “Your brother, Dominic. Know about Thai spirit. Really smart boy, huh?” he commented, his tone of voice more suspicious than complimentary.

“A brain. And it gets him into trouble sometimes.”

“Trouble?” he said warily.

I wanted to lighten things up, so I gave him my Dominic spiel in simplified form, a humorous history of his exploits: At the age of two Dominic had effortlessly activated the fire alarm and sprinkler system at the newspaper where Dad worked, causing a tremendous uproar. He was only nine when he figured out how to make free long-distance calls by very precisely jiggling the buttons under the phone receiver a certain way—we had narrowly avoided getting into big trouble with the phone company. At ten, he had unleashed a devilish virus in the computer system at his elementary school. It had devoured the grade point averages of his entire class, and the principal had not been amused.

I was basically just making conversation. But, to my surprise, Bia seemed fascinated and impressed—especially by the story about the school computer system and its effect on grades and records.

“That true? Dominic, he really do
that?
” he asked.

“Why would I lie? I told you, he's a brain, a wizard. He can do anything.”

“Wizard?”

I explained.

“Oh …
wizard
,” he said, his voice changing. “I see. Have wizard in Thailand.”

“I didn't mean it
literally
.”

But he wasn't listening now. “Dominic wizard,” Bia murmured, and took a last thoughtful pull on his current cigarette, staring past me. “Very good to know that. He say letter take one or two week from Thailand?”

“That's what he said. Why does it matter so much?”

“No matter. Just mean …” He didn't finish.

“It means what? What were you going to say?” I asked him.

“You like dancing, Julie?”

“Huh?”

“I really like. In Bangkok, big club, video, music, many light. All night, dancing.” He paused, watching me. “Meet many girl,” he added slyly.

“How can you go dancing all night if you have to study all the time?” I asked him.

“I really like,” he said. “We go dancing, Julie?”

“Sure, I'd like to go dancing,” I said. “But we—”

Another bat streaked by and he jumped again, as startled as the first time. “What's the matter?” I asked him. “Aren't there bats in—”

“Julie!” Mom called, stepping out onto the deck. “I need some help. And Bia, you must be exhausted after flying halfway around the world. Don't you want to get some sleep?”

He turned and walked slowly toward her. On the deck he
wai
ed her and said, “Yes. Really sleepy. Thank you.”

Inside the house, Dominic said, “Bia, I wanted to ask you about the—”

“He's tired, Dominic,” Mom said. “You'll have plenty of time for all your questions later.”

But Bia, who had resisted Dominic's questions only a few minutes before, now seemed ready to answer him. “Yes? Please ask, Dominic.”

“Do you have a spirit house, in Thailand?”

Bia's smile faded. “Spirit house,” he murmured. His eyes flicked toward his reflection in the glass door again. Or was he looking out into the yard?

“Do you have a spirit house?” Dominic patiently repeated.

“Everybody have.”

“Does your spirit house look like this one?” Dominic showed him a picture in his library book about Thailand, and we all looked. The miniature house stood on a pedestal in a garden. It seemed to be made out of stone and was very elaborately carved, with a steeply sloping roof.

“No,” Bia said. “My spirit house more small, made of wood. One in photo for temple.”

“Why are there flowers piled up in front of it? How does it work, anyway?” Dominic asked him.

“In Thailand, many spirit,” Bia said reluctantly. “Everybody have spirit house, make nice, give flower. Bad spirit go there, stay out of big house.”

“So that means that spirit houses
attract
bad spirits, right? What kind of bad spirits?”

Bia reached for the cigarettes in his shirt pocket, then glanced at Mom and instead put his hand to his neck, touching the delicate green pendant. “One spirit … called
Phii-Gaseu
,” he said. His voice dropped slightly.

“What's it like?” Dominic pressed him, oblivious to Bia's hesitancy.

“Maybe he doesn't want to talk about it,” I said.

“Is okay. If Dominic want to know,” Bia said, and went on, rather grimly, his voice even quieter now. “
Phii-Gaseu
… look like lady head with … What the word? Oh, yes, like lady head with, uh,
entrail?
”