Sightseeing Read online

  The sea is a sheet of blue. We arrive at the port in Trang, buy our tickets to Koh Lukmak, sit down for a bowl of fish soup.

  We have a long journey ahead of us—eight hours at sea. The stench of fish is in the air and, in the distance, ships bob on the horizon in a line, as if strung together by some invisible thread. Gulls swoop down upon docked junkers, pecking at fish guts left to waste on the plywood decks, squawking in their loud, discordant tones.

  When we board, Ma promptly falls asleep, lying down across the narrow bench, a lifejacket as a pillow beneath her head, the sun a soft blue glow through the tarpaulin. The boat is long and thin, a sixteen-seater manned by a boy my age. He sits at the stern with the rod of the motor in hand, the blades behind him gurgling beneath the sea’s surface, the wind blowing through his reddish, sun-soaked hair. The sun climbs the sky. Waves gently slap against the boat’s wooden hull. A couple of farangs sit at the bow, outside of the tarpaulin shade, two white men in gaudy batik shirts passing a thin flask of Mekong whiskey between them. Koh Trawen—the island where we will drop off the farangs and stop for lunch before going on to Lukmak—is a faint hazy specter in the distance.

  Before she fell asleep, Ma told me that during the 1930s and ’40s, Trawen was a penal colony, a place where the government sent con men, Royalists, dissident writers, and communists. After the war, the prisoners rebelled, murdering all of the authorities on the island. As retribution, the government cut off their rations and left the prisoners there to die, with no means of transport back to the mainland, surrounding the island with a naval patrol so the chaolay—the sea gypsies—could not come to their rescue. The government claimed they all died there after a few years, starved to death on the edge of the maritime border, but there are fishermen who swear that they still see fires in the hills at night, tiny orange flames flickering out across the open sea, the rebels—or perhaps their children; or perhaps their ghosts—waiting to return to the mainland, preparing for their next assault against the military government.

  I watch Trawen’s faint outline on the horizon. One of the farangs lies down against the bow, his feet resting on the first bench, a cap pulled over his eyes. His friend stashes the whiskey flask into a backpack and smiles at me. I nod. Then he joins his friend on the bow, face up to the sky, draping a towel across his face. The tarpaulin beats overhead like a light sail. Soon, I am the only person awake except for the boy at the stern directing our small boat out into the Indian Ocean. I watch Ma sleeping for a while, watch the rise and fall of her chest. Every time she sleeps, I wonder if she will wake up blind, and I wonder what I’ll do then, what we’ll say to each other when the time comes. But soon I, too, start to feel drowsy, the small boat rocking like a cradle on the open sea.

  When I wake up, Ma is hunched over, her head in her hands.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, trying not to panic, though I’m thinking, It’s happened, it’s happened. She’s blind now.

  “I think I’m seasick, luk. I’m not used to being on boats.” I reach under my seat, hand her a bottle of water. “Here,” I say. “Drink up. Breathe deep. Don’t look at the floor. I hear it helps if you keep your eyes on the horizon.”

  Ma sits up straight, takes a couple of deep breaths. She sips from the water bottle. Her face is flushed, beads of sweat clinging to her brow. Trawen is larger now—I can almost make out the shape of trees—and I realize that what I had perceived, from a distance, to be one large island is actually a series of them, four or five smaller islands rising around a larger mound. They seem a thousand shades of green now, the colors multiplying with the closing distance.

  “Do you need to vomit, Ma?”

  Ma shakes her head from side to side, a hand over her mouth. “We’re almost there,” I say. Ma lets out a groan. “How many more hours from Trawen to Lukmak?” she asks.

  “Five, Ma.”

  “Maybe we should stay at Trawen for the night then, luk. I don’t think I can get on this boat again today.”

  Then Ma is on her knees, her head hanging over the side of the boat, retching and heaving and vomiting. Long streams of light liquid splash into the blue-green surf. I sit on the bench beside her, pull her hair from her forehead, stroke her back. I feel her body tense and relax, tense and relax beneath my hand. She vomits until she cannot vomit any longer, as the farangs look over occasionally before quickly looking away.

  “It’s best to get it out, madam,” the boy says from behind us, his voice carrying over the sputtering engine. From the tone of his voice—easy, matter-of-fact—I can tell that he has tended to many a seasick middle-aged lady. “Just hang on, madam. Trawen won’t be long now.”

  Ma’s body relaxes. She reaches down into the surf, scoops up a few mouthfuls of water, spits it back into the ocean. She wipes her mouth with one arm, rests on her elbows against the side of the boat. “You okay, Ma?” She nods quickly, not looking at me, trying to catch her breath. And then Ma widens her eyes, blinks twice. Widens her eyes, blinks twice. Widens her eyes, blinks twice again. She blinks twice, she blinks three times. She reaches out with one hand and grips my thigh tightly, her fingers pinching the skin. I stifle the impulse to yell. I rest a light hand on hers. I urge her on. Widens her eyes, blinks twice. Widens her eyes, blinks twice. Finally, she relaxes her grip and I can feel the blood rushing back to the skin of my thigh. She puts both of her hands in her lap, takes a few deep breaths, and gets up to sit on the seat beside me. “Look at me, luk,” she says, her voice weak and frail. “Oh, just look at the state I’m in.”

  Her hands pat the breast pocket of her blouse, move wildly over her heart. Her eyes dart across the boat’s watery bottom.

  “What is it, Ma?”

  Ma’s lips are quivering. Ma’s teeth are biting down on the trembling, whitening flesh.

  “My—My—Where are—My sunglasses, luk—”

  And I imagine the sunglasses slowly falling, the hornrims and purple rhinestones and the word Armani in tiny gold letters spiraling down the blue-green abyss, searching for a resting place on the soft and sandy seafloor.

  We decide on a bungalow on the west side of Trawen, a small crescent beach far away from the farangs. With the approaching monsoon, only two of the six bungalows on the beach are occupied. One of the smaller islands around Trawen is but a few hundred meters away, directly facing our bungalow, a modest mound no larger than a city block rising out of the ocean. Earlier, when I asked the boy on the boat if the island had a name, he told me it didn’t, it was too small to warrant one. Ma rented one of the bungalows for the boy so he could take us out to Lukmak in the morning and he tied the small boat to one of the pier’s barnacle-crusted posts.

  Ma falls asleep again after we unpack our bags on the wicker floor, her body splayed across the mattress. I change into my trunks and decide to go for a swim, gently closing the screen door behind me.

  The water is as warm as the evening air. I walk out a short distance, my knees slicing through the calm surface. Though we are not at Lukmak yet, it is as Ma hoped it would be: the water like a clear skin stretched over the earth; the sand fine and white and soft as a pillow; the schools of tiny rainbow fishes moving in quick unison. Windcrabs scuttle across the floor, burrowing themselves, leaving fresh divots in the sand.

  When the water is up to my waist, I plunge beneath the surface, doing quick breaststrokes away from the beach. My chest skims across the soft, sandy bottom. I come back up for air, take a deep breath, plunge down again. I do it once more, the bottom deeper this time. I can feel the soft incline dip a little more, sense the surface slowly rising above me with every stroke I make along the bottom of the sea. I push up off the bottom with my hands, come up for air, plunge back down again.

  I open my eyes this time as I rush to the bottom, kicking hard against the surface. I see soft shafts of sunlight slicing through a thick, bleary haze. Clusters of blue, clusters of yellow, clusters of green disperse all around me, moving as if suspended midair, little pellets of color swimming through a depth
less tapestry of light. I hear my feet kicking, my heart beating, the warm water rushing around me. An indistinct seafloor rises up to meet me. I crash into the sand. Perhaps, I think, this is what Ma must feel in the grips of her oncoming blindness. These indistinct visions. These fragmented hues. This weightlessness.

  I come back up for air. When I break the surface, I look back onto shore, eyes stinging, lips parched and dry. The bungalow looks small with the island rising up behind it, the sun a golden crown around its peak, the beach a thin white slit in the distance.

  I see a door opening, a woman sitting down on the bungalow stairs. She’s a red and black dot resting back on her elbows, her feet in the sand. I raise my hand up out of the water to wave to my mother. I’m hoping my mother can see me. I want to believe that she’s waving back, that the red and black flutter is the sign of a mother waving to her son. It’s me, Ma. Me. I’m swimming back to shore.

  The island’s electricity generator cuts off with a loud crash at eight. Ma goes inside to fetch the oil lantern, comes back out to sit with me on the beach. The tide has peaked and is beginning to recede.

  “Feeling better, Ma?”

  “I’m a different person, luk. Sorry about this afternoon.”

  “Don’t be silly, Ma,” I say, stretching my legs out in the warm sand. “I’m sorry about the sunglasses.”

  “Oh,” she says, chuckling, lighting a cigarette, fingering the neck of her Tsingtao beer, “they were just silly little things any way. Probably retribution for taking advantage of that poor girl at Chatuchak.”

  We sit there silently for a while, listening to the breeze rustling the coconut trees, the waves lapping against the beach, watching the fast shadows of windcrabs racing sideways across the sand.

  “Can I ask you a question, luk?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you going up north at the end of the summer?”

  “Well,” I say. “Honestly, Ma?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t know, Ma.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  She takes a drag off her cigarette, the ember casting a soft red glow on her face. She stares out into the darkening ocean. She stubs the cigarette against the beer bottle, sparks flying off the glass.

  “Listen to me, luk. Listen to me very carefully.” She reaches over and cups my cheeks with her hands. Her palms are cool from the beer. Her touch startles me. “You’re going up north at the end of the summer. I don’t care what you think—you’re going to college. It’s what I want for you. You have to go. I don’t want you taking care of me, hanging around. I don’t expect you to, if that’s what you’ve been worried about all this time. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

  “But Ma—”

  “Just listen to me. It’s enough that I’m going blind, luk. I don’t want you to suffer too. Besides.” She takes her hands away, tilts the beer against her lips. “I’m not dying here, luk. I’m just going blind. Just remember that. There’s a big difference—a whole world of difference—even if both of those things happen to good people every day.”

  I wake up to the dark, to the sound of the screen door swinging on its hinges. Ma’s sheets are neatly folded on the mattress beside me. I get up, put on a shirt, walk outside, down the bungalow steps. It’s quiet save for the wind whistling through the trees, dark except for a flickering flame, bright and orange, throbbing in the distance, moving across the surface of the sea.

  I think of the spirit of dead prisoners, of fishermen’s tales, but realize quickly that it’s only Ma with the oil lantern, that the tide has receded considerably since I went to sleep, the edge of the beach where the water meets the sand some distance away.

  The flame of the oil lantern gets smaller and smaller and soon it is merely a pinprick against the dark night. It’s my mother walking on water, I think. It moves sideways now, moves along the bottom of the dark shadow across the bay, comes to a resting place. It’s my mother on an island with no name.

  I walk toward the water, toward the flickering light. The flame is like an orange eye winking at me from across the divide. The sand is damp, soft as a slab of fresh clay, my feet sinking into its warmth as I walk.

  When I come upon the water’s edge, I realize there is still considerable distance between where I am standing and the light of Ma’s lantern on the island across the bay. Perhaps the water is shallow enough to walk across, but I remember from swimming here yesterday that the bottom quickly falls away and that my mother is not a very strong swimmer.

  And then I see it. I see a thin luminous line out of the corner of my eye. I see a thread running faintly across the bay. An opaque sandbar stretched between the islands like an exposed vein.

  I walk toward the sandbar, across the beach, my eyes fixed on the flame. I see that the path is no more than a meter wide, a white trail running across the surface of the water. The black sky turns a deep indigo, night slowly relenting to day, and I can make out Ma’s small shape sitting beside the flickering lantern. I’m walking onto the sandbar, warm waves licking up across my bare feet, out to watch the sun rise with Ma, and then to bring her back before the tide heaves, before the ocean rises, before this sand becomes the seafloor again.

  PRISCILLA THE CAMBODIAN

  The only thing I ever learned about wealth was Priscilla the Cambodian’s beautiful teeth. All her teeth were lovely ingots, each one crowned in a cap of pure gold. When she smiled it sometimes looked like that little girl had swallowed the sun. Dong and I would often ask to look and Priscilla would open her mouth wide. We’d move in close, stare into its recesses until her jaw got sore. “You’re rich,” Dong and I would say, and Priscilla the Cambodian would smile and giggle like we’d just told her she was beautiful.

  Her father was a dentist. When things started looking bad in Cambodia, he hired somebody to smelt the family’s gold. He put all that gold in Priscilla’s mouth. And then they took him away. Priscilla remembered sitting on his dentist’s chair in the empty hospital while bombs fell on Phnom Penh. Over the next three years, as Priscilla and her mother moved from camp to camp, she sometimes went for days without opening her mouth—her mother was afraid the guards might get ideas. She made Priscilla nibble on gruel and salted fish in the relative secrecy of the warehouse they shared with hundreds of other refugees. “Awesome,” we’d say. “They should make a movie about your life, girlie.”

  This was the summer Dong and I wasted in the empty community pool the development company never got around to finishing. Priscilla and her mother had recently arrived in Bangkok with two other Cambodian families. They all squatted in a tin shack compound by the train tracks bordering the development. Before we met Priscilla, Dong and I in our unflappable boredom would sometimes stand on the rails and throw rocks just to hear the satisfying clang on the Cambodians’ corrugated roofs. Priscilla’s short, flat-faced mother would run out and bark at us in a language we didn’t understand, but it wasn’t too hard to understand the rusted shovel she waved threateningly in our direction, so we’d run and laugh like delighted hyenas.

  Mother said the refugees were a bad sign. “God’s trying to tell us something,” she said. “God’s probably saying, ‘Hey, sorry, but there won’t be a health club or a community garden or a playground or a pool or any of those other things you suckers thought you were getting when you first came to the development. I’m gonna give you some Cambodian refugees instead. They’re not as fun, but hey, life isn’t a store, sometimes you don’t get what you pay for.’” Father nodded and said refugees meant one thing and one thing only. It meant we’d be living in the middle of a slum soon. “Those fuckers move in packs,” he said. Their little refugee camp would get so big we’d probably start thinking we were refugees too.

  By that time the prognosis was already bad. The factories had moved to the Philippines and Malaysia. Mother was reduced to sewing panty hose out of a Chinese woman’s house. Father carried concrete beams at a construction site for minimum wage. Some of
the families in the development had already moved on, leaving their pets and potted plants and empty duplexes behind. Early in the summer, Father and Mother tried to sell like the others. But the market had turned; it was already too late. When the development company realtor came to appraise, Father’s face turned so pale I was afraid he’d pass out. “That’s a goddamn crime,” Father said, after the realtor offered little more than half the duplex’s original price. “No crime here,” the realtor replied, fingering the knot of his tie. “Just old-fashioned economics.” So Father said, “Get out of my house. Get out or I’m gonna show you something else that’s old-fashioned.” But the realtor just kept smiling and said, “Fine. Suit yourself. Have fun living like savages.”

  One April afternoon, Dong and I were breaking our asses attempting stupid bike tricks in the unfinished pool. I sat in the shallow end wiping a stain on my pants while Dong prepared to ride off the diving board. It was going to be a good trick, we thought. A girl-seducing trick. We were sure that once all the girls saw us soar off that diving board and land in the deep end they’d swoon, fall on their knees, and trip over each other in the hopes of doing some delightfully nasty dancing with us. Dong and I had decided that our access to dancing of any kind would not easily be granted on our good looks alone. For one, we were both too dark. For another, my dogged asthma had earned me the moniker of Black Wheezy from the Thicknecks at school. And, for yet another, Dong was knock-kneed and kind of fat. The Thicknecks called him the Pregnant Duck. When girls were around, all they’d have to say was “Hey look, guys, there goes Black Wheezy and the Pregnant Duck” or “Quack-Quack! Hack-hack!” and suddenly it was like the word Handsome had just been emblazoned on their foreheads. Needless to say, this was not funny to us at all—not even a little bit—but apparently very funny to Dong’s parents and my own, because they laughed so long and hard when we went crying to them that we believed we’d become the most psychotically depressed eleven-year-old boys in the history of the planet. So we needed a talent. Aerial acrobatics seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, none of our attempts thus far had been very acrobatic or even very aerial.