Moonshine Operation

The trio of ex-pats living near the jungle might never have known the extent of their addiction had it not been for a care package. Winnipat, the local recruiter responsible for zeroing in on gullible trainees, felt he had struck gold when the three fresh-faced lads profusely expressed their desire to work in a rural area and “do some good.”

“Every child in this village dreams to meet foreigner and study English. You make dream real! The pay is quite low because it is poor place, but the accommodation is free. And dream making is priceless!” Little did they know he planned to take one-third of the salary which was a standard sum issued to all foreign teachers working in any government school.

“Of course!! We don’t need much. Just a roof and a cot and a shower and we’re good.”

The wooden house built on stilts had two rooms: one with four beds covered in mosquito netting, a large open room with a table, hotplate, kettle, and two chairs. Finding the squatter toilet behind the house signalled the beginning of the adventure for the young men.

Two weeks passed in chaos, confusion, and doubt about their philanthropic choice of career. There was no chalk to be found after the third day; all the textbooks were from 1979; the internet worked only 10 minutes in the morning and worst of all, no one spoke English, including their bosses, co-workers, or any of the 45 students jammed into the tiny sweatboxes of classrooms.

Winnipat made an appearance on the first day of the next month to give them envelopes of money. They outlined their complaints all of which he seemed to find incredibly hilarious. He promised to bring them supplies “soon, soon” and reminded them to sing songs and teach “A,B,C, 1,2,3!!!  

Mark, the angriest, spoke to the group. “I can’t take this. Honestly? I came here to get laid, not deal with this bullshit.”

“I came here to get away from being a slave to The Man!” said Adam.

Sam remained quiet, feeling suddenly shy about his desire to do good deeds in the village.

Winnipat seemed to be in deep thought for quite a long while before some secret decision burst open a smile.

“Ok. I introduce you to Pat.”

They were shocked when a 60 year old white man opened the door and more shocked when they later learned he was 40. Pat wore a sarong like a diaper and seemed to use it as such. He muttered and sang and believed Stanley Kubrick was the mastermind behind the moon landing hoax. He had married a girl from the village but she stole his money from under the mattress and rumour was left with another man to a bigger city in the north. Though he wasn’t waiting for her return specifically, he said he had nothing better to do.

“So what do you do?”

“It’s a marvellous night for a moondance……No? ”  He looked at them expectantly, jazz hands splayed and head cocked to the side. “I see a bad moon rising.” Silent stare. “Anything?”

“Jesus. You are as thick as they come. I make moonshine. Better than anything south of the Mason-Dixon, more potent than anything in the Amazon Valley, and sweeter than a virgin whore’s pussy.”

“No shit!? Awesome. Can we try some?”

“I’ll give you a sampler. After that, you pay. Same as the locals, plus the foreigner tax. It’s standard practice.”

He went out the back and returned cradling a large red plastic gasoline jug. With surprising deftness, he swung the jug out with one arm and filled four Hello Kitty glasses that seemed to magically appear on a table behind him.

“Is this formaldehyde?”

“It tastes like Spam.”

Twenty minutes later, all four were singing and laughing. Twenty minutes after that there was a Footloose rendition and by the second hour, they were on the floor spooning like biscuits in a pack.

The next day they had neither headache nor memory but a vague sense they had tapped into some bonhomie rooted in the jungle. So naturally, they had a glass for breakfast. In class, the students stood in delighted awe as the young men channelled Mr. Bean. High-fives while jumping in mid-air replaced the wai and the students’ chairs and desks had been piled into a precarious structure in the back of the room. By the end of the week, students were not only singing “The ABC Song” but had mastered the more challenging “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”. Each victory was celebrated with raised glasses.

So popular had the three farang become, that they began to be treated like local celebrities. The best bits of meat now floated in their curries and complementary fried fish cakes and glasses of moonshine were brought to their already laden tables by the prettiest girls in the restaurant. Everyone smiled and waved and mothers gleefully shouted, “Hello ABC!”

Three months had passed when Mark received a package from home which included junk food and board games. The guys gathered round, gorging themselves on Twinkies and macaroni and cheese. They poured their third glass of the day and began to play Operation. What at first was hysterical suddenly became a source of panic as time after time none of them were able to hold the tiny tweezers without a severe bout of shaking. After an hour of all organs remaining firmly in place, they moved on to Yahtzee. They found that when they were able to successfully shake the plastic cup and pour out its contents, they couldn’t work out the dots much less put them together in any meaningful way. Tired and confused, they stumbled to bed.

Though the children were initially sad to learn their three teachers had fled, spirits were restored when Wannipat presented a box full of bite size chocolates and games.

He had kept the card on which was written one message in purple ink, “Stay out of trouble! Love, Mom”

 

The Treasure Prince

At 2:00 p.m. when metal and pavement burned and the sky hung heavy over the shore, the children of the small fishing village divided into two groups: those who took naps and those who explored. Ton was the leader of the latter group and wore a tattered Dracula cape to prove it. Today he led the group to the north part of the beach that had lain submerged in a murky tide all morning. He had a strange twinge lodged like a tiny mosquito behind his right rib cage and this twinge was telling him treasure was afoot. His collection of hats, batteries, light bulbs, and bits of metal and glass had grown since the Americans had built their oil rig a few kilometres off the coast. Though he had never seen an American in person, he imagined them to be tall with muscles that looked like the rolling hills behind his village. He knew the Americans on the rig must be powerful given the degree of scorn and fear in the voices of the adults around him whenever the topic came up in conversation. He also knew that powerful people have treasure but he couldn’t quite work out if the power created the treasure or if it was the other way around.

Standing tall on a piece of driftwood, he assigned his tiny crew to different spots on the beach and gave each one of them a plastic bag he had snagged from his auntie’s restaurant down on the main road.

“Pick up anything that’s interesting. And no keeping stuff for yourself!” he admonished referring to Mot, who last week had tried to sneak home with a set of keys but forgot he had holes in his pockets.

When the younger boys had spread out and were a good distance away, Ton ran for his favourite spot where the ocean met and created the mouth of a stream. All the best treasures were caught in the sharp ridges made in the sand by the constant flow of the water from the waves.

Ton poked through the piles of rubbish that the ocean had no use for this morning: plastic spoons and bottles, lighters, tin cans, socks, flip flops, and rope. There were some lovely pieces of thick green glass worn smooth but Ton left those, knowing that without the water, the glass lost its magic and could never shine again. Again the twinge. Ton went deeper into the stream that ran behind the houses of his family and neighbors and where the rubbish was mostly their own and no treasure at all.

And then with the same ease as knowing just where to scratch his best dog to make him roll over and whine or where to tickle his mom so she stopped looking sad, he found it.

The small metal shoes were greenish with small spots that shown a bright gold. They reminded him of the strange objects housed inside the local museum that seemed both otherworldly and mundane. He needed both hands to cradle the shoes in his palms and in doing so could picture balancing the small creature that stood inside them. What kind of creature would wear metal shoes he wondered. Was it a prince from Europe? He seemed to remember being told a story about rich nobility that unlike his own King, were lazy and used golden toothbrushes. Did rich babies walk in gold? What did gold sound like on the pavement? Not pavement! Princes walked on marble in palaces. He could imagine the echo made in a large white room by the baby prince running and playing. But were princes allowed to play?

So lost was he in the daydream of the European royalty that he hadn’t heard two of his young charges come up behind him.

“It’s not fair. You always save the best places for yourself!” a large and squat boy named Bird pouted.

“Can I see?” said Tip, the other, much smaller boy. Ton carefully passed Tip the shoes using both hands.

“I think they belonged to a prince. In Europe. They must be a 1000 years old and worth a million baht!”

Bird grabbed the shoes from his friend. “A prince? You’re nuts. Why would a human wear metal shoes? These are robot shoes. Probably from Japan.”

“Robot shoes!” Ton and Tip said in unison. The larger boy, pleased to at least have an audience, if not a treasure, continued.

“Yeah. They have baby robots to do everything! Work under cars like mechanics, bring food in restaurants, and even be like fake friends or brothers for rich kids!”  

Tip jumped up and down and ran in circles laughing. “This is amazing!! We have to find the rest of the robot! Come on!”

Ton, both sceptical and unwilling to give up on the prince idea, took back the shoes and looked inside.

“Why would robots wear shoes? Their legs are metal and they don’t need anything to protect them.”

Bird, sighed with the weight of his newfound superiority. “Because robots are supposed to be like humans. They probably have clothes too, but when we find the rest of the robot, it will probably be naked.”

The idea of a naked robot sent Tip into further hysterics and he fell into the sand laughing.

They spent the rest of the afternoon searching for robot parts. But just as Ton had sensed the existence of the treasure, he also knew that there was no more to be found.

When he went home, he wrapped the shoes in a plastic bag and wedged them into a space he found where the makeshift roof met the wall of the bedroom. Though he wished he could have the shoes near his pillow, he didn’t trust his brother or the other boys of the village. That night as he stared at the space where the shoes rested, he vowed that someday he would go to Europe and find the palace where the young prince once lived.

the young kids who inspired the story

the fishing village

 

The Invitation

The envelope bore no sign of its 12,000 mile journey save some squiggly text just over the pagoda stamp. Marcy recognized the uneven lettering and knew it had been written after a particularly long session. How many times had she seen the same scrawl on a Monday morning informing her she needed to pack her own lunch and get the bus to school? She pulled out a piece of pale pink stock card announcing that her presence was requested at the union of her father and a woman with an unpronounceable name. Marcy sat down and traced her finger over the raised rose design of the invitation. She retrieved a bottle of J&B she always kept stashed away for such unpleasant postal occasions and sat back down. The wedding (or whatever it was they did in that country) was six weeks away.

She thought back to the time when she was 8 when on a Sunday drive on a rural highway, a small plane crashed in a nearby field. Her father, with a swiftness and sense of authority she had never before seen, ran to the plane, now on fire. She sat frozen and terrified, squinting, trying to make out his form through the smoke and flames. After the usual parade of brightly coloured vehicles noisily arrived, her father returned, black face and wild blue eyes. He reached for a small bottle in the glove box and after a long drink, he wiped his chin and ruffled her hair. “I told you it was a good day for a drive, eh, kiddo?” It wasn’t until years later, she learned that her father had actually saved the man’s life.

Instead of the usual routine of McDonald’s and a matinee, they headed to his tiny two bedroom apartment in what her mother referred to as the “scuzzball part of town”. Marcy felt relieved to be curled up on the sofa, curtains drawn and A/C turned on full blast. After his shower, he sat in his tattered recliner watching basketball. Marcy was in a half sleep that was punctuated by the crunchy hiss of opened cans of beer. Later that night, after they’d shared a large pepperoni pizza, they walked to the nearby park to shoot hoops.

As Marcy sat at her kitchen table, she could still recall the chorus of the crickets and the plonk, plonk, plonk of the basketball on the pavement. When it was her turn to shoot, her father crouched, sipping from a flask tucked in a side pocket of his shorts, alternating his shouts between encouragement and instruction. When it was his turn, he made her laugh by jumping and twisting in the air, trying for slam dunks, or shooting with his back towards the basket, never making a basket, and getting progressively sillier. Back at home, in PJs and teeth freshly brushed, her father stared at her a long time, head slightly tilted, “You know. You’re the best kid ever. I really love you kiddo.” It would be the only time he said the words.

Marcy calculated how many weekends “every other weekend” added up to and concluded that she had spent approximately 260 weekends with her father. From Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. to the time to go to school on Monday morning, like clockwork for 10 years. Each one had been as awkward as the last, both of them shy as two strangers on a first date. Until he had had a few Old Milwaukees. When Marcy heard the sound of the first can being opened, her stomach shrunk into a tight ball and she went into alert mode. Either he would laugh, play games, and stumble to bed, or the other. Other Dad’s face contorted into deep ridges, its eyes like an animal, its mouth the deep cut of an axe. When the cut opened, it slurred, “You’re just like your mother.” On these occasions, she put her head under two pillows to quiet the sobs, afraid of what would happen if he woke up. As she got older, she willed her face into impassivity as he shuffled past her to bed, reeking and muttering.  She stayed up, watching HBO or porn, occasionally trying to cook. In the morning, looking at charred messes and burnt tea towels, they both felt sheepish, albeit for different reasons.

The year after Marcy graduated high school and fled 1200 miles to university, she nearly stopped talking to her father. Or rather, he stopped taking her calls, later claiming he was working a late shift or had been playing basketball with some guys from work. The rare occasions he did pick up the phone started with the grinding chitchat and ended in rambling, sobbing, or both. Until she was 22. By then Marcy had discovered the full extent of the liberation provided by distance and alcohol.

After the bars had closed and the others in her group were ravenous for tacos or something else they’d regret in the morning, Marcy took a cab home and quickly changed into PJs, grabbed some wine and cigarettes, and sat down next to the phone. At first he was angry at the late time and Marcy’s obvious physical state, but the late hours of Saturday morning soon became a cherished ritual.

Marcy filled her glass for a third time, giving this round an extra splash and thought about those conversations. She had no idea what they talked about but imagined music, God, and her mother played a large role. For nearly a year they kept this vigil until a string of toxic relationships broke the momentum. When Marcy was 25, her father announced he was retiring and moving to Thailand.

“I’m twice your age kiddo and I haven’t had a life. It’s my time now.”

She only needed to recall those last words to know what to do. As she looked at the pile of tiny pieces of pink paper, she whispered the same words as 10 years ago,.

“Well, fuck you then.”

 

The Race to Salvation

Three things separated Jesús from the typical ex-pat English teacher. He ran everywhere, he was American but had smooth brown skin, and he didn’t eat rice.  When he explained the Paleo Diet to the group of his Thai colleagues, the reactions following the collective gasp ranged from the assumption it was a slow suicide to a confirmation that American privilege led to insanity. Nit, who had taken a World History course at university, said with a voice of authority,

“But paleolithic people died at 30. How old are you?”

“29”

Sumontha, who was certain the young man wanted to end his life, gave a little cry and covered her mouth.

“But now we have medicine and less war. If we eat the food our bodies were designed for which is meat, vegetables, nuts, and berries—stuff that grows naturally in the ground—we could live to be a 100!”

“But rice is life!” This was an inarguable point and everyone nodded in agreement. Jesús smiled and finished his fried morning glory and steamed seabass. After he cleaned his dishes, he changed and began running around the track in the center of the campus.

As the teachers finished their laab and sticky rice, they continued to talk about the young man and passed on some gossip from the students, half of whom were in love with him, and half who resented being taught English by someone who looked the same as they did.

“They say he runs around the room jumping and stretching like an Olympic monkey!”

“He’s going to die. It’s too hot for foreigners.”

“We will have to take care of him for his mother’s sake.”

During this conversation, a teacher who had hidden himself behind a copy of Ulysses, put his book down and went outside to watch Jesús. Adisak was the English Department’s most beloved teacher. Part monk, part grandfather, and part Mr. Bean, Adisak was treated with reverence by the students who laughed loudly and often during his lectures and who took to heart all he said. It was a well-established fact that he fasted five days a week. Saturday and Sunday he enjoyed a bit of the fish he caught in a nearby pond, the rest given to the department’s cleaner who had three small children under the age of 5.

Jesús ran over to Adisak who handed him a bottle of water.

“Buddha says, ‘To keep the body in good health is a duty…otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.’ But why do you run in circles?”

“I’m training for the Sea to Sea Marathon from the Andaman to the Gulf of Thailand.”

“That is quite a journey. Why did you decide to do this?”

Jesús always found it difficult to answer this question. It had made him eccentric enough to run marathons in the relative cool of a Midwestern spring, but to quit his job and move to SE Asia to run in an obscure race made him plain “loony”. He had been unable to make them understand the meditative effects running had for him. It was never about the finish line but the process. He said as much to Adisak.

“Yes, of course. You cannot travel the path until you become the path.” And with those parting words of wisdom walked away, his hands clasped behind his back.

Adisak meandered around the campus, thinking about the young farang. Adisak had been at the university for several years and many a pale Western had graced the classrooms. Most of them seemed to be broken and in need of a clear mind. He knew they were prone to drunkenness and sloth from the sweaty smell of beer they left behind in every room. He knew too that the English teachers were driven to his country by desires of the flesh rather than the soul. He often had to remind himself to “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little. “ But Jesús was different. Adisak felt a wave of gratitude that his students were being exposed to a Westerner who lived like the Buddha.

After Jesús had explained the Paleo Diet, the teachers began a campaign to feed him properly. Every evening he heard the sounds of plastic bags being placed on his doorknob full of two or three servings of rice, curries of various colours, and grilled banana leaves full of something sweet and gelatinous. At first he moved the bags to the doorknob of a man who lived alone down the hall, but after the fourth night, he sought counsel from Adisak.

“I will take the food to the orphanage. Those ting tong ladies will be making merit without even knowing it!”

On the day of the race, Jesús was one of the first across the line, but instead of feeling proud, one thought kept repeating itself: If I return to America, no more food. Late that night, he discussed the problem with Adisak.

“A jug fills drop by drop.”

“What does that mean?”

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”

Jesús’ life soon became a pleasant circle of running, teaching, collecting food, and joining Adisak on trips to the orphanage. The women gossiped that Jesús was becoming a skeleton and even began to bring him KFC and McDonald’s much to the delight of the children. When Jesús did at last collapse and never awaken, the women sobbed that they had murdered a helpless foreigner. Adisak addressed the distraught group.

“Never is there any effect like that of Merit. The most valuable service is one rendered to our fellow humans. Especially the young poor ones with no family.”

Sumontha, who had designated herself as “Most Guilty” was desperate to remove the mark on her soul.

“Ladies! I know what we can do. Let’s go to the orphanage. Adisak, do you know where it is?”

The English for Sex Workers Course

It started with an offer.

 “You want cock?” Fon asked the man who had just ordered a glass of Jack Daniels.

“Darlin, that’s my line,” he drawled as he pinched the girl’s buttocks. The small group of men whooped and cheered with the glee that erupts in the space between too much beer and too many spirits.

“Lime? What he talk about Kay?” Kay looked up from her crossword puzzle, smiling.

“You said cock,” she said pantomiming putting something in her mouth, “not Coke,” pointing to the can in the cooler. At this, Fon’s trademark smile with its abundance of teeth emerged and she laughed. “I stupid. Speak again.”

“Cock. Coke. Cock. Coke. Repeat.”

“Cock. Coke. Cock. Coke. You good teacher”

Kay realized she was drunk and in Teacher Mode and that these two worlds she vowed to keep separate had flawlessly merged

“Fon. I can teach you and the girls sex English. Do you want?”

“I poor! I no study.”

“No money. Free. Sanuk mak!”

Kay took a calendar from the wall. Beneath the picture of the benignly smiling King, she pointed to Tuesday and Thursday of the following week. “2:00. Here. Ok?”

Kay put the crossword into her backpack, took out a notebook and made notes as she would for any other new course, choosing topics and the language points for each. Knowing her students would be labelled “Elementary” at best, she kept it simple.

Body Parts, Verbs and Dirty Phrases, Small Talk, Minimal Pairs

She lit a cigarette, sipped on her gin and tonic, and studied the men watching a football match on a tiny black and white TV. The men hadn’t even glanced in Kay’s direction and she wondered what they thought of an aging white woman in a Thai whorehouse.

Kay gravitated towards the tiny bar after a long day of teaching because the darkness and artificially cooled air was armour against the brutal afternoon sunshine. Though there were a number of open-air bars on the beach, Kay cringed at the thought of being seen by her students who wandered in packs throughout the town.

A year earlier, Kay had been anchored in Indiana, waiting for her mother’s death to release her. She had been the only of the four siblings to stay and her sacrifice was rewarded first with rages and dirty diapers, but later as the sole heir, an ample enough sum to escape.

As she smoked and relished her fourth gin, she smiled at the irony of a celibate woman teaching sex language. In Indiana, there had been many lovers who had come and gone. Some needed to be forced to leave and there was one who had left by dying. Kay wasn’t sure if it was death or recently turning 50 that had slammed the door on her appetite. Having no cravings, she subsisted on gin, cigarettes, toasted cheese sandwiches, and crosswords.

The first week three “students” arrived, dutifully armed with notebooks and pencils. Unlike her daytime students, these girls approached the task of learning with a clinician’s detachment. Pussy, ass, mouth, fist, suck, harder, slower, lips, tits, pay were dull and necessary jargon to master. They grasped meanings quickly, but producing the unfamiliar English sounds left their tongues and jaws more tired than a night’s work. Kay hoped the context of the bedroom would elucidate utterances like: “sick cock”; “give hate”; “fear goose?”; “you in church”; “in my mouse”; “bro chop”.

After two weeks, word of Kay’s free English classes was the first positive thing to spread among the bargirl community.  Some only wanted a glimpse of the tall woman with spiky blonde hair and blue eyes and never returned, but a small core group arrived day after day, folders growing bigger with papers and notes. Kay gave them exercises and during the hour in a small back office at the bar, did games and role plays which sent everyone into hysterics. Toey was especially adept at a nasally “Bend over you whore” and Kay felt certain she knew which Aussie the girl was impersonating. They thrived on the feeling of being young schoolgirls again while simultaneously receiving something they had long come to believe was off limits.

During the seventh week, Kay noticed two things. One, she was drinking less, which given the cost of a gin and tonic, was the same as being paid by the girls.  And she was ravenous. Each day after the class, she finished her drink, hopped on a tuk-tuk and headed to a night market. She devoured bags full of pork satay skewers, tiny bananas, fresh spring rolls, hardboiled eggs, and bowls of noodles. The tastes were phenomenal, but it was the grabbing and pulling with her teeth, the slurping, the feeling of the smooth egg or rice paper on her tongue that sent her to bed full and exhausted.

In the third month she began to have dreams. Lurid, banal, plotless encounters with men half her age and twice as dark. In the waking world, teachers at her school began to avoid her eye. It wasn’t long before the head of the department called a meeting, smiling and offering treats, to tell her she would no longer be needed due to a cut in the budget. She knew they knew what she did in the afternoons but wasn’t sure if it was her whoring herself out to other learners or the whores themselves that got her sacked.

She continued to teach the girls and live off the money from her mother’s estate, rather enjoying the thought of how disturbed her mother would be to know the profit of the house and all its lace doilies went towards gin and bags of papaya for prostitutes. When the girls found out she’d lost her job, they held a secret meeting. Fon, the self-declared student leader, handed Kay an envelope stuffed with neatly folded bills. “For you. We pay.”

“You don’t need to!”

“No problem. You and we same same. Everybody a whore for someone.”

 

Lost in Space

 

When Deng sat across from Pam at the canteen that day, he wordlessly handed her a piece of paper. She put on her glasses and a second later, her round cheeks became splotchy and red as they usually did when she was angry, embarrassed, or turned on. Deng couldn’t read which emotion was spelled out on her delicate skin as she said, “Oh. It’s time. So soon.”

“Yes. Father made another deposit.”

“We best go next week. I heard there are only a few left with a view.”

Deng folded the bank statement and put it in his front pocket, and though Pam wanted to talk more about the task ahead of them, the determined stabbing Deng made with his chopsticks warned her otherwise. She eased their conversation to the soft and worn topic of their day in the classroom, which because of the curriculum and teaching philosophy hadn’t changed much in the last hundred years.

After dinner, they walked separately to their dorms. Pam shared a room with a Physics teacher. The room was small and the concrete walls had once been white. One window and a small table with a plant separated the two beds. Wall hangings were forbidden by the college so each teacher expressed herself through the duvet; Pam’s had grey, purple, and dark green stripes and the other, younger teacher’s was full of brown bears on a pale pink background.

Pam greeted her roommate, who briefly looked up from her computer to murmur in response. After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she immersed herself in the tiny bed, propping herself up in the corner so that a shoulder blade touched each wall. She reached up and a touched a spot near the window where the concrete had been chipped and felt her body sigh with the relief that yet another day was over. She pulled the duvet around her shoulders and opened her computer to watch “Lost”. But the familiar absorption with survival on the island would not come. Instead she found herself rubbing the gouge and thinking.

She loved Deng fiercely. He was a good son and would be a good father. They had met at university and had been together for five years, both of them luckily finding a position at the technical college on the outskirts of the growing north eastern city. She was an English teacher and he an electrical engineering lecturer. Their buildings were only a few hundred meters apart and they ate all their meals together in the canteen and at night chatted on-line after Deng finished playing football with the people on his floor. On the weekends, they went to the city centre to shop or go to the cinema. The dorms were free so they had been able to save both their salaries for a new home to move to once they were married.

As Pam continued to rub the chipped wall, she thought of how all the long hours spent hunched over desks in crowded libraries and classrooms had prepared her for the very moment when she walked with her husband through the door of their own home. They, as the foreign teachers would say, “had made it.” They were paying back the debt of their parents’ misery and sacrifice by fulfilling this dream and though she should have felt filial pride, she only felt tired. So she turned off her computer and fell into a deep sleep that lasted much longer than usual.

Within three months of receiving the final deposit, Pam and Deng had married and purchased their two bedroom apartment in a new high-rise near the college. It was located on the fifth floor and overlooked a field, a rare sight in the city of seven million people. Twice a week they had taken the long bus journey to IKEA to wander through the maze of displays, stopping occasionally to post “selfies” on their facebook pages. They matched, selected, and ordered several sets of curtains, linens, frames, candles, and decorative pillows. Other items they bought on-line from the comfort of their dorm rooms. The buzz and hum of the days only quietened when Pam could at last, make her perch in the twin bed.

As the pieces arrived and were stuck in corners or on walls, Pam found herself drifting from room to room or stopping to look out onto the field. She posted photos and enjoyed the envy and compliments of her friends. Yet, while gliding through the apartment, she couldn’t fight the sensation of falling. She put out her arms and legs for balance and marvelled that they touched nothing. Deng watched nervously, only occupying the spaces he needed to complete each task. Only when she was back in the dorm, wrapped in the striped duvet, the concrete wall nearby, did she feel the sensation fully leave her.

Finally, the day chosen to be most auspicious for a housewarming arrived. Pam and Deng had invited friends as well as the foreign teachers from the English Department to make dumplings. Deng and Pam greeted each guest, finding new places for the growing collection of plants and candles. After an hour of strained small talk and weak barley tea, they broke off into small groups to prepare the dumplings. Pam moved easily between teaching the foreigners and then ridiculing their large, awkward hands in Chinese.

As the sun began to set, the weight of coldness settled on the apartment. One of the foreigners exclaimed, “Don’t you use central heating?”

“No, we don’t have it yet.”

“But why? Don’t you freeze at night?”

“Oh, we don’t live here.” All of the foreigners’ eyes turned towards them, wondering if something had been badly lost in translation. Pam laughed and her face turned red. “We prefer the dorm.”

“Why a dorm? This place is amazing,” one of the foreign women said, her voice unable to disguise her shock.

“Here, it’s..,” she paused realizing that she hadn’t understood until this moment, “it’s just too big.”

 

The Mockingbird

It wasn’t a lipstick smudge or any lingering feminine aroma that alerted Marcy to her husband’s infidelity. It wasn’t a folded napkin bearing a phone number, but rather a folded hand towel. When she got home that day, she went through the usual ballet of dropping her keys and bag onto the ancient and unused radiator, shedding and draping the many layers of the day’s fabrics, opening and closing doors, and finally, shuffling into the bathroom to retrieve the worn and dowdy but comfortable post-work ensemble. And there, staring and unblinking like a rodent caught in the beam of a flashlight, sat the familiar lilac coloured towel in an all too unfamiliar and pristine position on the edge of the tub.

Dan had never used, much less folded, a dainty hand towel in the entire ten years Marcy had known him, preferring to dry his freshly shaven face with the bottom section of his ratty green robe. How the towel moved from hanging undignified and crooked on a hook above the rubbish bin to its now more regal and prominent perch on the tub could only have been done by a delicate hand.

Marcy sat on the toilet and pondered the towel and it, in turn, seemed to stare back more brazenly. What bothered Marcy the most wasn’t that a woman, whom she pictured as bird like with tiny bones in her hands, had lain, screeching or cooing under both her linen and husband. No, what made her suddenly grab the towel, rip it half, and hurl the uneven pieces onto the floor was that the guest was clearly making a statement about Marcy’s housekeeping.

Marcy picked up the now inanimate pieces of cloth and put them in the bin. Then in a frenzy she scarcely remembered later, she organized every object on every surface of the flat. The decorative bottles of soap from London were spaced evenly apart with labels facing outward and in order by colour: pink, yellow, green, blue, and violet. She painstakingly folded the stubborn bed sheets, and the spices in the kitchen were arranged alphabetically. Books were stood up on shelves by size and each picture was dusted and straightened. She stood for a moment admiring her work and thinking to herself that the flat shimmered like a photo.

She then went to the fruit bowls in the kitchen. She put an apple in the banana bowl and an orange in the garlic dish. The lone small plate was stuck in the middle of the set of dinner plates. Paprika was moved next to the allspice and the box of tea was switched with flour. The print of Matisse’s Still Life with Geraniums was tilted so that the geraniums seemed to be whispering a secret to their potted cousin on the floor. In the bathroom, the lavender and jasmine soaps were made to look as though they had turned their backs on visitors and the bath towels had new partners.

Dan came home at 6:00 as usual that evening. Not only did he not notice the calculated disarray of the flat, but he didn’t seem to notice any tension resulting from Marcy’s busy afternoon. It was Meatless Monday, so Marcy had prepared a vegetarian chili and cornbread, which was one of the rotations and one she knew wasn’t a favourite. As they sipped lemon water—alcohol was banned alongside meat on this day—and watched the news, they murmured about their days in that distracted way only couples can.

Marcy said casually, “I dropped a bottle of foundation in the sink this morning and it shattered everywhere. I ruined the hand towel cleaning it up. What a disaster for a Monday morning!”

“Bad luck. Good thing it wasn’t the floor, eh?” Dan replied and went back to watching the weekend sports results.

The next day when Marcy came home, she didn’t stop to take off her coat or shoes but went straight to inspect the kitchen. Everything was in the same place in all the rooms. She sat heavily on the sofa, took a brief, but deep breath and considered the possibility that she had finally lost her mind. Dan came home at his usual time and they celebrated the passing of Meatless Monday with tacos and beer. As Marcy wandered the flat while brushing her teeth, as was her habit, she noticed the detritus of Dan’s day sitting cosily next to her own on the radiator: keys, wallet, phone, coins. She paused and debated the ramifications of a quick rummage and decided in the end that Tweety would show herself, if she did in fact exist.

Marcy didn’t have to wait long. On Thursday, her longest day of the week, she didn’t bother with a thorough search of the flat and just dropped her bags and clothes on the bed and went to the bathroom. The first thing she saw were the prim and pretty bottles lined up, touching one another and all the labels facing outward. She ran out of the room into the kitchen. The paprika was back snug next to peppercorns and the rogue orange was reunited with its pithy brothers.

Marcy sat again on the sofa, coat and shoes still on, her bags in a heap beside her. She first considered that Dan had tidied, maybe in a fit of boredom as he waited for his lunchtime cheese toasties to cook. But she knew that if alone, cleaning or tidying would be the last thing that would come to his mind. She then wondered what Dan was doing while his avian mistress flitted about. She also wondered why she felt suddenly elated.

When she finally did confront him, calmly over bowls of steaming curry, he showed relief more than anything. They marvelled together that it was the direction they were going all along. During the rather sterile conversation about what was to be done, he paused to ask, “How did you know?”

She smiled. “Oh, a little birdie told me.”