Crushed

Lora couldn’t quite bring herself to call Nanthap a stalker. Though he brought her mangoes and langoustines each day before class and added a heart as his only comment to her facebook statuses, he never actually spoke to her or seemed to want anything from her. In class, he sat apart from the others, dutifully copying words whose sounds he couldn’t form and whose meaning might as well have been Greek philosophy. Yet he copied and attempted repetitions and smiled blankly when called upon.

“Hello, Nanaphat. How are you?”

“19.”

“Nanaphat, what do you do?”

“How do you do, Teacher.”

“Thank you so much for everything you’re given me. I really like that part of you.”

The other students fell over themselves not because they had mastered these basic greetings themselves, but because Nanaphat replied in the same breathless tone of wonder usually reserved for rendezvous on balconies.

Lora had initially assumed Nanaphat was taking the piss. After all, she was 15 years older, 5 inches taller, and likely 50 pounds heavier than the boy. She sweat profusely in the sauna called a classroom, making her made up eyes rather clownish by 11:00 am. She felt awkward in this room of 35 engineering students, 32 of whom were males, which made her act all the more school-marmish. Yet there he was day after day, a young man earnestly admiring her.

As the semester wore on and the students finally started to grasp a few coherent sentences, Nanaphat’s advances became more verbal. Upon her desk where ripe fruit was once presented as a token of adoration, now were short notes written in a shaky scrawl.

“Teacher you like garden person. I am vegetable. Thank you.”

“Song meets bird then bird fall earth world. You are song.”

“Please give good score.”

After class he carried her books from one building to another and gave her rides to the teacher flats after school, she sitting side-saddle and he beaming at the front. Lora found she began to like the attention and assured herself she was not on the path of Mary Letourneau and wasn’t doing anything to encourage the young boy’s passion. 

One of the teachers, delighted to know the slang phrase, always made jokes about “Teacher’s Pet,” suggesting that she demand more of the student such as lunch for the staff and collecting all the photocopying for the day. Lora just smiled and said that she liked all her students equally and only wanted them to learn to not be afraid of English.

But in reality, Nanaphat was her favourite student. It was a strange existence being the only white female in a town of 50,000 people. 50,000 pairs of eyes watching her every move, laughing at her attempts to buy shoes and trousers that fit, laughing at her freckles that seemed to multiply every day, laughing at her inability to remove chicken from the bone with a spoon. They shouted to her in the street, “You you!!! USA!! Hollywood!! Jack and Rose!! My heart go on!” and there was no point explaining how she was just an ordinary woman from an ordinary Midwestern town.

Though the students were generally respectful to all teachers, Nanaphat seemed to regard her as more than an exotic foreigner. He treated her like a human.

That is, until he saw her with Mark, a retiree from Canada, who spent his days drinking and fishing or drinking and reading, depending on the weather. Lora had met him when a sudden downpour forced her to take shelter in a beachside cafe.

“I love Inspector Moltalbano! A witty man with an appreciation of good food.”

“Not to mention good at solving crimes.”

“That too. I’m Lora. Do you mind if I sit here for a while? It’s raining buckets out there.”

Lora was never this forward with a man and especially not a white man in Thailand, as they were certainly not there to meet tall, pudgy white women pushing 40. But there was something about the graceful way his legs were crossed and the slight furrow of his brow as he read that were instantly endearing. As the rain continued to fall in sheets, they sat and shared big bottles of Leo beer. Like most ex-pats who found themselves in the tired southern town, they glossed over some chapters of their history while spinning wild tales from others. Though he never said it, regret was his catalyst and lack of purpose hers.

As with many stormy afternoon trysts, theirs ended in a small non-descript room, in this case one that also had a kettle and a hot plate. He explained that he was living as cheaply as possible to stretch the retirement money to its fullest but lamented not being able to cook. He smiled sadly as he recounted afternoons spent getting the gnocchi just so.

“Now, it’s instant noodles and coffee.”

“Just like a college student.”

“You make me feel like a college student.”

She didn’t mind nor really notice the age gap and he didn’t seem to mind nor notice that she wasn’t a young, slim Thai girl.

On the way home the next morning, she forgot to tell him to take a route that would avoid the roads used by the students. She saw several familiar faces and hoped her mascara wasn’t too smeared or hair too mussed. She wondered if they knew the expression, “the walk of shame” and how she could ever possibly explain it.

When she arrived in the teachers’ office, she saw the teachers look from her to her desk, expressions giving away nothing. She heard a buzzing noise and saw a basket of rotten fruit.

Under it a note, the last English words ever written or spoken by the young Thai man. Words that made Lora turn crimson; words that led to whispers, laughter, and eventually banishment.

“You were lady of day but now lady of evening. You were bird in sky but now fallen lady. You are true American.”