Sightseeing Read online

  But Little Jui just kept on panting into my father’s anguished face. He spat into my father’s eyes.

  “All right,” he said to Dam and Dang, standing now, wiping his lips with a forearm. “Get off the geezer.”

  They let Papa go. Little Jui walked away from the pit with his bodyguards, back down the dirt road that led to the town’s main avenue. The men gathered around my father, asked if he was all right, but Papa just lay there gazing at the night sky as if struck dumb by the stars.

  “If you were a man,” Papa yelled suddenly, before Little Jui disappeared around the bend, and for a second the men could not tell if my father was chastising the heavens or addressing Big Jui’s son. Little Jui stopped and turned to face my father.

  “If you were a man,” Papa yelled again, getting to his feet, pointing a finger at Little Jui, “you’d at least fight with your own chickens.”

  “Don’t be ungrateful, old man,” Little Jui yelled back. “Don’t make Dam finish what he started.”

  “You should’ve killed me when you could, you ingrate,” Papa said. “It’s shameful what you just did.”

  “Keep talking, old man. Keep talking and we’ll see—”

  “We’ll see what, Little Jui? We’ll see what a man you are? We’ll see if you can beat me up with your overweight goons?” Papa spat in Little Jui’s direction. Some of the men grabbed Papa, urged him to relent. “That’s what you are,” Papa continued, pointing at the patch of ground he’d just spat on. “You’re nothing but a piece of phlegm walking the face of the earth.”

  “Watch it, old man. I’d be very careful—”

  “Who do you think you are, you son-of-a-bitch? Who do you think you are that you can bite my chicken’s head off like that? Everybody knows I won fair and square. You think you’re a man, Little Jui? A man?” Papa stalked slowly down the dirt road toward Little Jui, jabbing his finger in the boy’s direction. “A man? Ha! I’ll tell you what you are, Little Jui. You’re not a man. You’re an animal. A beast. My chickens have more decency and self-respect than you and your kind.”

  “Keep going, old man. Keep it up. See where it gets you.”

  “You’ll die one day, Little Jui,” Papa continued. “And when you die you’ll wonder why you wasted your life the way you did. You’ll die wondering if people love you for who you are or because they fear your father. If anyone, in fact, ever really loved you at all, and—”

  “I’m warning you, old man,” Little Jui said coolly. “Enough with the public-service announcement.”

  But Papa just kept on walking toward Little Jui, yelling at the boy. Though the men were afraid for my father, though they wanted to stop his ranting down that dark dirt road, they also couldn’t bring themselves to call out to him. For something strange seemed to be happening now. Little Jui was cowering angrily before my father. Papa’s words seemed to diminish the boy.

  Then Little Jui grabbed the gun from Dam’s hip. He fired a shot into the night. Like lightning, the firearm’s flash revealed Papa and Little Jui and his bodyguards frozen in their respective poses: Papa with his finger in Little Jui’s face, the handgun in Little Jui’s right fist pointed clumsily to the sky, Dam and Dang looking bewildered beside them both. The scent of gunpowder filled the air. Animals scuttled in the underbrush. The cocks flapped in panicked staccatos. Many of the men yelped. Some instinctively fell for cover. But Papa just stood his ground—finger in the air, mouth opened, body mid-stride. The shot had silenced him. The seconds stretched interminably. The men held their breaths. Little Jui pressed the muzzle of the gun against my father’s forehead. Papa flinched from the iron’s heat. When he came home later that evening, there would be a small, dark ring of swollen flesh protruding like some strange Hindu emblem from the middle of his forehead.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Little Jui hissed. “Don’t push it, old man.”

  Then Little Jui raised the pistol high into the air and brought it down upon the side of my father’s face. Papa fell to the ground. As Papa braced himself, Dam and Dang descended upon him with a flurry of indiscriminate kicks, like two fat children clumsily vying for a football.

  “Know your place,” Little Jui said, when Dam and Dang had exhausted themselves. And then they walked away, their shadows disappearing down the dirt road as Papa lay there heaving.

  Later that night, from my bedroom window, I watched Mama tend to Papa’s wounds outside. She rubbed ointment into his bruised torso. She swabbed his brow with alcohol. She muttered profanities under her breath. Papa stared blankly out into the rubber trees, wincing every so often, the strays’ high-pitched howls echoing in the night.

  “You idiot,” I heard Mama mutter. “You moron. What did I tell you? This cockfighting business—it’s dangerous. Promise me you’ll never go back, Wichian. Promise me you’ll never fight another chicken so long as you live.” But Papa just kept on staring out into the night. Mama began to cry then as she applied a bandage to one of his wounds. Papa reached out with a consoling hand, but Mama recoiled from the gesture. And as I watched my parents bathing in that moonlight, I began to understand for the first time what kind of world we were living in, what men were capable of, and I longed more than anything to take the three of us to someplace safer, far, far away.

  III

  Later that week, as I biked home from school, Little Jui eased up in his Range Rover beside me, arms and head hanging limply out the back window, the engine growling like some awful mechanical beast. Dam was driving the car; Dang prodded a zit in the mirror of the passenger-seat visor. I could smell the sour scent of cologne and nicotine and alcohol wafting from Little Jui’s head. I kept on biking, concentrating on the road ahead.

  “Oooh, girl,” he cooed. “Why don’t you throw your bike in the trunk. Why don’t we go for a ride. You’re making me hard.” I tried to pedal faster. But the faster I went, the closer that Range Rover seemed to draw up beside me.

  “What’s the rush?” He glowered at me, smiled lazily. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “Little Jui won’t hurt you. Little Jui just wants to show you a thing or two.”

  “Go away,” I muttered.

  “Don’t be that way,” he said, laughing. “I’ve seen the way you look at me, girl. I’ve been watching you. We’re not children anymore, you know. Just think about the things we could do. We could touch tongues. We could fondle each other. We could do it doggie-style.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Did I ever tell you how much I love your breasts? I love ‘em, Ladda. I was just telling Dam and Dang about them the other day. Hey, guys”—Little Jui leaned forward in his seat, tapped Dam’s and Dang’s shoulders—“wasn’t I just telling you about her boobies?” The bodyguards looked over briefly. They chuckled. One of them winked at me. “See? I dream about your breasts, girl,” Little Jui continued. “I think about them all the time. I imagine them jiggling when I spank my little monkey at night.”

  I stood up on my bike, pumping furiously now at the pedals. I managed to pull ahead of their car, but the Range Rover caught up with me again, Little Jui’s face leering out the window like the head of some aberrant dog enjoying an afternoon car ride. In the distance, I saw Papa’s figure in the yard, still dressed in his gray factory uniform, feeding the chickens. Mama was working at her lingerie on the front porch.

  “There’s your old man,” Little Jui said, following my gaze. “How’s he doing these days?”

  “Leave my father alone. He never did anything to you.”

  “Say hi for me,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be back at the pit on Sunday. And tell him”—Little Jui leaned far out of the car now, almost whispering into my ear—“tell him I’m going to fuck his daughter one of these days.” He puckered his lips, made sucking noises at me, and then they sped away. They honked when they passed the house, long obnoxious bleats echoing down the road, and through that thick dirt cloud Little Jui yelled something toward my parents. Mama leapt to her feet, ran screaming toward them, but by the time she got to the
road the Range Rover was far out of sight.

  When I arrived at the house, Mama was out in the yard yelling at Papa, gesticulating wildly with her hands.

  “You can’t be serious,” she cried. “You can’t go back, Wichian.”

  “Don’t be hysterical,” Papa said, smiling at me through swollen eyes, his face still bruised, the chickens waddling around his feet. I knew I should tell them about my encounter with Little Jui, but instead I just stared at the welt on Papa’s forehead, wondering how he could stand there grinning when he’d been pistol-whipped just a few days ago.

  “’Hysterical’?” Mama cried. “Don’t you remember what they did to you? You want to die? Is that it, Wichian? You want to make me a widow?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic. You never complained when I was bringing money home from the pit.” Papa bent down to stroke one of the chickens. “You never complained when I was buying your orchids and your electric stove.”

  “But this is different, Wichian,” Mama said. “You know this is different.”

  “If I don’t show up at the pit, then it means they’ve scared us,” Papa said, crouching now. “It means they’ve won. I refuse to give them that satisfaction, Saiya. Besides,” Papa continued, “what else am I supposed to do with these chickens?”

  “Fuck the chickens,” Mama yelled, kicking at the creatures. The cocks lurched into the air before settling nervously back on the ground.

  “Hey. Watch it. Chickens are delicate animals.”

  “You want to be a hero?” Mama yelled, ignoring him. “You want to be the good guy? This isn’t a movie, Wichian. There are no good guys. And even if there were, even if this was a movie, I’ve seen this one before. This is the one where the good guy dies and his family ends up with nothing but a bunch of useless chickens squawking in the yard to remind them of his stupidity.”

  IV

  Word got around town that Little Jui would bring cocks of his own to the pit that Sunday. He’d procured, with his father’s help, four Filipino purebreds and a prodigal eighteen-year-old handler from Manila named Ramon. Rumors had it that Ramon—who was seen accompanying Little Jui in town that week—could hypnotize his chickens. He’d meditate with them every morning to synchronize their auras. During a match, Ramon would murmur to the cocks, urge them on in a language that the chickens understood but that sounded strange and inhuman to everybody else. According to the men, Ramon had once trained a plump, egg-laying hen for the world-famous Manila pits and won.

  “Men are lunatics, Ladda.” Mama sighed. She was behind schedule with the bras again; I was helping her pin ornate lace trims to foam cups. The lingerie company demanded eight hundred finished bras a month. We needed to make three hundred more in seven days. Papa was still at the factory hammering tin. “You’d think God invented stupidity the same day he came up with the penis.”

  “What are you talking about, Mama?”

  “Don’t act dumb, girl. I’m talking about the fuss these men make over their stupid chickens.” Mama bit off a piece of thread, spat the tendrils out between her teeth. “Meditating with their chickens. Ha!”

  “Cockfighting is an ancient tradition, Mama,” I said, throwing a finished piece onto the large heap between us. “It’s the sport of kings. You know, King Naresuan was a champion cockfighter during his reign.”

  “Don’t start, Ladda.”

  “It’s true. I even looked it up at the library to make sure Papa wasn’t lying.”

  “Even if that was true,” Mama said, putting down the bra she was working on, “don’t forget that Mister Cockfighting King got killed riding an elephant into battle.” She tapped her head with a finger.

  I got up to stretch my limbs; I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  “I don’t want your father going back to that cockpit,” Mama said. “Not after what they did to him. He acts like he hasn’t been living here all his life. Talk to your father, will you? Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  I nodded, sat back down.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s getting into,” Mama continued. I nodded again, tried to concentrate on the work at hand.

  “Try this,” Mama said suddenly, throwing a finished bra in my direction, a red and black contraption studded with dozens of fake pearls. “I think it’s your size.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, catching the bra, tossing it back onto the mound between us. “It’s hideous, Mama.”

  “C’mon. It won’t bite,” Mama said. “It’s ugly, I know. But it’s underwear. Nobody’ll see it. You’re fifteen now. Time to stop showing strangers your nipples.”

  “But you didn’t wear a bra until you were thirty, Mama.”

  “I know,” Mama said. “But we didn’t have them then. Those were barbarous times, you know. We lived like monkeys. We didn’t have television. We didn’t have cars. We danced naked around bonfires at night. We wore diapers to catch our menses. You should be thankful for the times, Ladda. Be thankful for this bra. You should be thankful for the modern age.”

  V

  I tried to speak to Papa that Saturday. He was out in the chicken house sharpening his spurs, the whetstone singing a high, insistent note like an asthmatic wheezing in the night. Fireflies winked in the rubber trees. “Hey,” he said when I opened the chicken-house door.

  I settled onto a bale of straw as Papa sprinkled water from a bowl over the whetstone with his fingers. The whetstone shimmered under the light of the oil lantern at his side. The spurs lay at his feet in a neat, military row, arranged from shortest to longest like toy scythes laid out for some miniature farm auction. All the cocks slept peacefully in their coops, crowns tucked into their pillowy breasts. Papa laid the whetstone down and bent toward the lantern to light a cigarette.

  “I know your mother doesn’t want me going to the cockpit tomorrow,” he said, exhaling ribbons of smoke through his teeth, picking up the whetstone again. The scent of burnt cloves filled the chicken-house air. As Papa spoke, I realized I hadn’t seen my father’s bruises up close. They looked like splotchy indigo maps.

  “She just doesn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I know,” he said. “What do you think I should do, Ladda?”

  “Don’t go,” I said curtly. I was surprised by the directness of my response. My face suddenly swelled with emotion, peering at the bruises on my father’s face. “It’s not worth it, Papa.”

  He looked at me. Then he went back to sharpening a spur, the blade glinting as he wiped it back and forth across the whetstone plane. We sat silently for a while. I watched our shadows dance on the mud walls. Outside, the strays started in on their howling.

  “Well,” Papa said, sliding the spurs into their vellum sheaths. “You might be right, Ladda. It might not be worth it.” He put out the cigarette on the soles of his slippers, stowed the spurs into the case Mama had sewed for him years ago. “But,” he continued, “living in fear wouldn’t be worth it either.”

  “Papa—”

  “It’s a scary world, Ladda,” Papa said, smiling at me, clicking the case shut. “This isn’t a matter of honor, Ladda. It isn’t even about standing up to Little Jui and his kind. It’s about choosing whether you’re going to let the world run you ragged and scared or whether you’re going to say to the world: ‘Hey, World. Hey, asshole. Yeah, you. That’s right, I’m talking to you. I know you’re scary but you know what, World? I refuse to run. I refuse to let you push me around. I, Wichian, am staying right where I am.’”

  I couldn’t help but laugh then, imagining Papa confronting a giant cartoon globe with stubby little legs. My father joined in. We sat there laughing in that chicken house for a bit. I got up, brushed the straw from the seat of my pants. “Hey,” he said. “When did you start wearing a bra?”

  “What’s with you people?” I said exasperatedly, walking toward the door. “Leave me alone.”

  VI

  So Papa went back to the pit. That Sunday afternoon, while he was away, Mama and I sat on the porch sewing the la
st of the month’s quota, packing the bras into cardboard shipping boxes. Miss Mayuree, the company’s representative, was coming to pick up the bras the next day. We worked silently, furiously, the sun arcing slowly across the sky. Mama didn’t say much. She was worried about Papa. She jolted a little every time a car engine could be heard rumbling down the road. I tried to make small talk. I told her stories about high school: the drunken math teacher, the schoolyard courtships, the latest rumors and intrigues. I even ventured a few jokes about the leather-tasseled novelty models we’d made, but Mama smiled at me as if to say, Thanks for the effort, little daughter, but let’s just finish these bras. Let’s hope your father makes it home tonight.

  The sun began to set. Mama was worried now. She furrowed her brow. She shook her legs involuntarily. She went into the house and came out with Papa’s flask of Mekong. Mama drank when she was nervous. She poured a generous dram into the tumbler. She took a few sips and settled onto the porch floor beside me, stuffing bras into plastic bags while I sorted the models and put them in their appropriate boxes. She offered me the tumbler and I, too, took a few sips even though I hated the way the fiery liquid burned.

  “I can’t stand this,” Mama said, swirling the whiskey in its tumbler, looking down the road again.

  “Soon, Mama,” I said, the whiskey hot and heavy in my stomach. “Don’t worry. He’s probably having a good day. He’s probably winning.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Mama said. I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept on stacking the bras into their boxes.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” Mama said suddenly, filling the tumbler once more. “Listen up,” she said. “Your father had a sister once.”

  I stopped working, looked at my mother.

  “You didn’t know that, did you?” She raised her eyebrows conspiratorially. “Well, I suppose there’d be no reason for you to know. Nobody likes to talk about it anymore, not even the ninnies in town.

  “This sister,” Mama continued. “She was a little slow, if you know what I mean. She was older than your father, too—about thirty, by the time I met her. Your father would come home from the high school and take her into town every afternoon. He’d buy her a bag of iced tea and they’d sit together on one of the park benches playing imaginary games. They’d laugh and guffaw like children. When I first met your father, I thought it was cute how he took care of his sister, even though the other boys made fun of him, kept calling her a tard to his face. But your father paid them no mind. She was his sister. There was nobody else to care for her, with your grandparents being the lunatics they were.