The Spirit House (5 page)

We stopped a foot away from it, Bia still silent, Dominic watching him with painful intensity. And my heart went out to Dominic. Though the building was somewhat rough and primitive, he had put a great deal of work into the thing, with all its ornamental carving. He had even thought to place a rose blossom from Mom's garden on the porch, carefully positioned exactly in the center.

And then Bia
wai
ed the spirit house, holding his head bowed and his fingertips almost touching his forehead for longer than he had ever done to Mom and Dad.

When Bia finally lifted his head, Dominic burst out, “Well? Say something, Bia! Is it okay? Do you like it?”

“Thank you, Dominic,” Bia said, not smiling. “I know you work very hard to make this.”

Bia was clearly unhappy. Dominic knew it and was disappointed. “I wanted to make it as much as I could like the one in the book,” he said, trying to cajole more of a response from Bia. “And the shadow of the house will never fall here—I checked and rechecked my measurements, I was extra careful about that.”

“You did a very good job, Dominic,” Mom said.

“Couldn't have done it half as well myself,” said Dad.

“It's really something, Dominic,” I told him.

“Well, Bia, will it work?” Dominic begged him. “Will it attract the evil spirits, and protect you from them?”

Bia stared glumly at the dark little building. “Don't know, in America,” he said, and I was almost angry at him for not at least
faking
an enthusiastic response, after all Dominic's hard work.

The phone rang. It was not loud, from out in the yard, but it startled Bia. His shoulders twitched as though someone had unexpectedly touched him on the back of the neck. Mom ran to get it.

Bia turned to Dominic and said, so softly it was barely audible, “Is true … you start to make spirit house on Saturday?”

“Well, yes,” Dominic admitted. “But that can't really mean it will bring …” His voice faded unhappily.

“It's for you, Bia, from Thailand!” Mom called, hurrying toward us across the lawn.

“For me?” Bia said. The color drained from his face. He put one hand to his throat, as if feeling for his pendant. But of course I was wearing the pendant now, and he slowly moved his head to look at me, his expression unreadable. It was hardly the reaction I would have expected to a call from home.

“For
you
,” Mom said. “Don't just stand there. Go answer it. You
know
how much it costs from over there.”

We watched Bia moving reluctantly toward the house, his hair lifted by the breeze, his black shirt fluttering.

“I'm sure he really likes the spirit house, Dom,” Dad said, putting his hand on Dominic's shoulder. “It's probably a very serious religious object to him. That's why he was so subdued.”

But Mom didn't seem interested in the spirit house now. “Funny,” she said, still staring after Bia. “You'd think someone who cared about him enough to call him all the way from Thailand would know his nickname.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“The man on the phone wanted to speak to Thamrongsak. And I said yes, Bia was outside, I'd get him. And the guy said no, not a person named Bia. Thamrongsak.”

6

When we went back inside Bia was off the phone; he must have gone up to his room. I started upstairs, hoping to have a few minutes alone with him. I was curious about the phone call, and his strange reaction to the spirit house. I wanted to ask him to be a little more enthusiastic about it, for Dominic's sake.

“Where are you going, Julie?” Mom barked at me. “You're supposed to be making supper.”

“I'm starving,” Dad said. “Aren't we ready to eat yet?”

We weren't. I trudged back down the stairs. I was starting to pull the fish out from under the broiler and Mom was unloading the dishwasher when the phone rang again. “Yes, she's here,” Mom said, thrusting the receiver at me as I pushed the fish back into the oven. “And don't talk very long,” she whispered. “Supper's already late.”

“Hi, stranger,” Gloria said.

“Oh, Gloria,” I said. “Sorry I never called you back. We've just been so busy, with the foreign student and everything.”

“Uh-huh,” Gloria said. “Well, Julie, guess who's home? Mark. And guess who he called? Lynette. She just called to tell me. He's on his way to her house right now.”

I didn't know what to say. I had thought I didn't care about Mark anymore, but now I felt a jealous pang. I was the one he'd been going out with before he left for Europe. I was the one he'd been writing to—I knew he hadn't sent Lynette or Gloria a single postcard. It was odd that he had instantly called Lynette, without even trying me first.

“Uh-huh,” Gloria said knowingly. “I thought you'd be interested. Well, I guess you'll just have to cry on what's-his-name's shoulder.”

I was stung by her tone. I'd thought she was my friend. Why was she being so nasty? “I really have to go,” I said. “I'm late with supper.”

I set the receiver down slowly, with a painful feeling of foreboding. I had worried about Mark's return, wondering what it would mean in relation to me and Bia. But Mark didn't know that. So why hadn't he called me? I was hurt and mystified. Did this mean Mark had dropped me? But why? I couldn't think of any reason for it.

Apparently Lynette hadn't hesitated an instant to agree to see him. And why had Gloria been so spiteful, rather than sympathetic about it? There were many times in the past when I hadn't called either of them for a few days; they had never been angry about it before. And being occupied with the foreign student was a logical explanation. But now, suddenly, the girl friends it had taken me so long to make last year seemed to have turned against me. And without Mark to give me status, would I be treated like the out-of-it new girl all over again?

But I had Bia, didn't I? He might not be one of the class leaders, like Mark was. But he cared about me. I was wearing his pendant. No one would see me as pathetic as long as I was with Bia. The girls would be impressed by his looks, and everybody would think he was cool—he knew how to make people like him. My status would hardly be diminished at all. I brightened a little.

When supper was ready I hurried up to get him. I knocked on his door, then stepped inside his room without waiting for an answer.

He was getting hastily to his feet, brushing off his pants, as though he had been kneeling on the floor. “Oh. Did I interrupt you?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, not looking at me.

I was taken aback; it wasn't like him to be so rudely direct. “Well I just wanted to tell you it's time for supper.” I smiled at him. “And also … thank you again for the pendant, Bia. I love wearing it. Nobody ever gave me anything as nice. It means—”

“Hungry now,” he interrupted me, and walked toward the door.

“Bia!” I said. “What …”

He turned back from the doorway. “Supper,” he said coolly. “You boring me.” And he walked out of the room.

It was just as though he had slapped me in the face.

The meal began in silence. I'd been cooking pretty decently all week, but tonight the fish was burned, the mashed potatoes like glue. Dominic was more depressed than I'd ever seen him, moping over Bia's reaction to his spirit house. Dad, who doted on Dominic, seemed a little down on Bia too—and he gave me a nasty look when he tasted the fish, which wasn't like him. That hurt, and so did Gloria's spitefulness, and the fact that Mark had ignored me and rushed immediately to Lynette.

And what was the matter with Bia? Yes, he had always been somewhat distant. But yesterday he had given me the pendant and told me how special I was. And now he was worse than cool to me, he was insulting.

It was very strange how the world had changed so abruptly. There was something unnatural about the suddenness of it, something that gnawed at the corner of my mind but didn't surface.

Mom couldn't control her curiosity about Bia's phone call. “I hope you had good news from home,” she started out, breaking the silence, not saying anything—at first—about the odd fact that the caller had not known Thamrongsak's familiar name.

“Everybody fine,” Bia said.

“Was that your father who called?” Mom wanted to know.

He didn't confirm or deny it. “Family fine,” he said again. “Food good tonight.” He pushed mashed potatoes—which he hated—into his mouth.

It was obvious that he considered the phone call his own private business, which it was, and didn't want to talk about it. But Mom refused to drop the subject. And I wanted some answers too. If he would at least admit that he had had some bad news, that might explain his sudden change in attitude toward me. Maybe it was something he didn't want Mom and Dad to know, and he would tell me about it later, when we were alone.

“But if it was your father, then why didn't he know your familiar name?” Mom persisted.

“What you mean?” Bia asked.

“He didn't know the name Bia. Just Thamrongsak,” Mom said, watching him.

He slowly chewed a mouthful of potato and swallowed it. “Neighbor make call to America, for father. Know English, little bit. Not know my nickname Bia.”

Finally Mom gave up. But she was dissatisfied, irritable.

“How long take letter, Thailand to America?” Bia asked her.

“One or two weeks. Why?”

Bia shrugged and looked down at his plate.

“Well, Julie, you really outdid yourself tonight,” Mom snapped at me. Bia's presence wasn't stopping her now. “This is barely edible. Did you think about how much this fish cost when you so casually let it burn?”

“It wasn't my fault. It was because Gloria called me up.”

“It's never your fault, is it.”

I managed to restrain myself from throwing down my fork and rushing upstairs. I wanted to be down there when supper was over so I could talk with Bia when he went out in the backyard to smoke.

But Bia stayed away from the backyard. He went out to the front of the house to smoke, on the street. I followed him out there anyway. And he still refused to say anything about the phone call, to admit he had heard any bad news. He did ask me if I thought my parents would call Thailand. “Call who?” I asked him. “Your family? Anyway, what reason do they have to call?” But he wouldn't say and did not seem reassured.

After that, he spent most of the weekend with Dominic, upstairs, at Dominic's computer. Not once did he go into the backyard, where we had had so many private talks.

I couldn't pretend that he wasn't avoiding me; I couldn't sleep on Friday or Saturday night, worrying about it. Was he angry because I had walked into his room without knocking on Friday evening, when he might have been praying? It seemed like an extreme reaction from someone who was usually so polite. But I didn't understand Thai customs; maybe interrupting someone at prayer was a terrible offense. His mysterious nature made it very difficult to guess what might be going on in his head. Dealing with an ordinary American boy would have been simple in comparison.

Dominic didn't stay quite as gloomy as he had been on Friday night. Bia had been upset by the spirit house, but he was certainly spending a lot of time with Dominic now, and that must have cheered him a little. Then, on Sunday night, Dominic asked me if Bia had said anything to me about the spirit house.

“He hardly talks to me at all,” I told him. “Didn't you notice?”

But of course Dominic wasn't concerned about Bia's attitude toward me. “I wish he'd say
something
,” Dominic said, sighing. “I keep putting fresh flowers in it, but he never even goes near it. I didn't mean to upset him. I wish I'd never built it.”

“Then take it down, if you're so worried about it,” I said, wishing my problems could be solved as easily.

“Oh, no!” Dominic said, sounding horrified. “That might make it even
worse!
”

“Well just forget about it then,” I told him. “At least Bia's talking to you. What are you two working on upstairs, anyway?”

“I'm just helping him learn to write on the computer,” Dominic said. “And playing math games with him. Funny how little math he knows.…”

Unlike Dominic, Dad hadn't forgiven Bia for his reaction to the spirit house. He was definitely colder to him. And though Mom could never be as obnoxious to anyone as she was to me, she was no longer on her best behavior with Bia.

On Sunday evening at supper she had the gall to criticize his English. He had answered a question of Dominic's by saying that in Thailand they rarely ate with “chopstick,” and Mom said, “Didn't they teach you about plural nouns in your English classes?”

“Plural?” Bia said blankly.

“She means—” I started to say.

“I was just looking over your school records again. They show you got all A's in advanced conversational English,” Mom interrupted me. “You'd think advanced English would have included something as basic as the plural noun.”

It was a logical question, though I still felt like kicking her for putting him on the spot. But now that he understood, Bia had an answer. “Advance English in Thailand, not same as advance English in America,” he said. “You hear other Thai student in advance English, you see.”

“Hmph,” Mom said, unconvinced.

After supper on Sunday, my last chance to talk with Bia before school started, he went right up to his room and stayed there. I lay awake all night. And then it was Monday morning, and I was more nervous than I had been on the first day of school last year, when I was new.

I slouched into the bathroom, feeling exhausted. I stared at my sallow, bleary-eyed reflection in the mirror. The first thing I saw was a pimple in the middle of my chin. Then I couldn't get my hair to fall right; my eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles around them. I had never looked worse in my life.