This story is down for "maintenance" and will be up again once I have taken aboard some comments from my lecturer.
:) Please enjoy the other stories
fon @ 7:20 pm link to post * *
There are dead people in cupboards in the house, and I am too scared to walk past them because they are inside so well preserved and lifelike that they might be disturbed from their slumber even if I tiptoe softly past. They are everywhere – all the dead ancestors of my husband - hidden in closets I didn’t know existed, hidden beneath the floorboards, hidden behind mirrors, grinning behind my reflection.
An echo reverberates in a still room, blue and black in the moonlit background as my eye cracks open. My scream still hangs in the air, but gradually a heated thumping climbs from my heart to my ears, obscuring the hollow sound. My eyes shut and when I open them again, a soft light seeps into the room.
The bedroom door slides open, and my silent child tiptoes into the room, glancing down at the soft carpet pushing through her toes. The silver bell around her ankle tinkles softly as she approaches my bed and dolefully stares at me.
It’s just the two of us here.
My husband took some samples and has gone to the city to see a colleague, another doctor. All day my child’s eyes glisten strangely and move as though she is following flying dust in the air. Her mouth is mute and refuses to curl into the slightest smile as I run my fingers through her fine black hair and pinch her sides playfully.
Even the house, although it stands like a solid fortress, cannot bear his absence. It sighs throughout the day, dreaming of his return, and moans as though taken by a chill. The cracks in the walls run through the house, along the walls, and on the floor, making spidery lines in the cool tiles in the bathroom and kitchen, loosening dark teak floorboards. By the evening, lamps flicker and glow in sullen moods, resenting his absence.
A massive furnace stands alone in the centre of a white-walled temple compound. I walk up the stairs with a white lotus in my hand, to throw into the flames. I wonder whose funeral it is. At the top of the stairs I see that the way to the furnace is lined with sepia portraits of men who look like my husband, but some are older, and some are younger. They are the paintings in the living room. A pile of dolls lies in front of the furnace, and one by one, the men step from the paintings and each of them pick up a doll and throw it in the fire. A stream of blood runs down my legs, and I throw the white flower in the red that spreads at my feet.
It is the second day he is gone. At the break of dawn, my child stands so close I can hear her fast breath. Her hair hangs straight down, unruffled by sleep. Her eyes are wide, accusing and red-rimmed. She pierces my head, looking for an answer to a question she cannot form.
Today the rain falls in loud walls that crash against the roof. I try to leave my child napping in the afternoon, but the lights flicker on and off in the living room where she sleeps and her scared wails come scampering after me. Sepia prints of her forefathers drop off walls, and the sounds echo through the house, accompanied by thunder. I straddle her mass from a white sling around my neck, and she is silent throughout the day, but I can see her eyes are open through every reflection. I’ve never seen them so wide before, and so focused – she follows something with her eyes.
I am stepping into an elevator with my husband, the white crowns of our marriage still joined together with rope, our hands still dripping with holy water.
-We’ll have a son, he says. A smile on his lips, he kisses me.
But the elevator doesn’t go up. It shakes turbulently, and I can see that it’s made of glass and that a giant shakes it from the outside, listening to the sound I make as my white heels click against the walls. Then it stops, and I’m standing outside the elevator next to my husband as the door opens. I look at myself on steely ground. My white gown is streaked in red and a little doll with long black hair – sprawled next to my head - stares at me with sullen eyes.
It’s the morning now and there is my daughter, standing next to my pillow. The pillow is wet with tears, saliva, and drops of blood. I must have bitten my tongue in my sleep.
I drift to sleep, slumber having evaded me through the night. I wake wondering of my daughter’s whereabouts. The house makes sure I stay far from her – cups fly off shelves. Plates fall from the table. Shelves in bookcases collapse when I hear the silver bell tinkling from room to room in the halls of the house.
I can’t find her. I sit in the living room, defeated. The forefathers smirk down at me from their frames.
I look down at my belly. To my left a silver line of smoke, sharp as a knife, curves into the room from a hole behind a portrait. It runs down the wall, advancing to the floor, climbing over a table leg, then ducking behind the sofa I lie on. To my right, a black-haired doll enters the room, suspended in the air by strings. My husband follows, emerging from the darkness of the next room, and I see it is he who holds the strings. They move toward me until the puppet is suspended in front of me. Her wooden eyes spin wildly around my head, and all I see is a grey haze around my eyes. I shut them. When I open them, my husband has let the puppet collapse to the ground.
I hear a silver bell. My little girl stares at my belly, her eyes wet.
-I can’t stay. Daddy says there’s a boy inside.
fon @ 11:35 am link to post * *
<>
He still needs a guide. He still needs me. I stand, holding my breath, more out of habit than necessity. I clutch a camera in my hand. I have taken twenty-three pictures, and one remains.
Nok ceremoniously removes the clothes he wears. I watch him as he, with intense deliberation, first strips his tight, neon shirt. Then he unfastens a dog-collar around his neck. He piles these on the floor. He stumbles while removing baggy red pants.
Nok stares at himself in the full-length mirror of the bedroom, solemnly regarding his well toned body. He is naked, except for his boxers.
He reaches for a suit lying on his bed, immaculately ironed and new, tailor-made. This he dons eagerly, seemingly delighted at the new countenance he finds in the mirror.
A hat lies on the table, its edges crisp and sharp. Nok lifts the hat off the table and places it on his head, admiring it from different angles in the mirror.
'It's time for a new life', he says, winking at himself. 'I'm Mafia, now'. He playfully cocks a finger at himself in the mirror, and says 'bang'.
'Gotcha.'
A whirring of winding film accompanies me as I walk out onto the street. Sukhumvit road is, despite being straight, also a maze. The walls of the labyrinth are the crowds that walk down the footpath. They are lost when they stare at the food and wares that are spread about the road on bamboo mats, stalls, and staircases leading into air-conditioned buildings. The cars are a noisy moat - few venture to wade through the fog of exhaust fumes. Most cross to the other side on strategically placed bridges. Some of the street hawkers see me. They stare long and hard, and then caught by a scent of burning squid or chicken, return to their grilling with a slight shudder. Some beggars look straight past me. Some recoil from asking alms and eye me suspiciously, words hanging midway between their jagged teeth and the street.
I died one year ago. At my cremation Nok looked shattered. The drone of monks chanting coaxed my soul from my body under the whirring of a ceiling fan. 'Namo Tasa Pakawatto Alahatto Sammaa Samputh Thassa.' Nok and my mother sat side by side, and prayed for my spirit to be delivered into a new body with swiftness. Both wept into their palms. Later, my body went up in flames, but I could not leave my heartbroken fiancée to find himself again, so I stayed.
When I found him, Nok was an abused soul. I had seen him take on a new personage with each changing season, the hot, the rainy and the mild season. With each new character he sought to entreat as his own, he changed his friends, deleting old contacts, searching for new. Only I remained permanent to him. My heart was the beacon he followed, and through it, he was led to his own self, and gradually, he stopped searching for an escape.
***
I walk down a small alley, until at length, I pass a temple. Stopping to gaze at the ancient granite and rotten wood of the old edifice, I am still for a moment. I raise my two palms together to my face in respect. A fireback rooster approaches the red gateway of the temple, pausing for a moment, then turns its bright-blue tail feathers to me as though beckoning me to follow. I walk on. At the end of the path stands an unobtrusive warehouse with no windows. On the white door, carved roughly, is 'The Guild'.
The size of the hall amazes me, as it always does. The walls, the chairs, everything is soft white. The tables that stretch from end to end of the hall glow colourless. Multitudes of ghosts, somberly in black, sit in those rows of benches - some talking, some eating. A line of vendors, also in black, stretching as far as the hall, make their business in this strange setting. I adjust the turtleneck of my envious green sweater.
At the very end of the hall, there is one office. Everyone is here to seek assistance from 'The Management', but there is never a line. I walk in without knocking.
To the whitewashed walls of the empty room, I say 'I have a roll'.
***
I sit outside the hall, on the balcony of 'The Guild'. The tables here are rough, grey and deep-grooved from years of weather. On the other bench, closer to the door, sit a man and a woman, heads nodding in animated conversation. The last scorching rays of the late-summer sunset catch the outline of my long hair and stencil it on the coarse wood in front of me. I hold a black leather folder.
I am in Bangkok, but the air from the balcony is not like that of the city. There is no hint of hawkers shouting their wares. Sporadic honks of cars stuck in afternoon traffic do not invade the atmosphere. The air here is like the ocean, and, I realise, that is what I see. 'The Guild' is gone. The hue of the water is made electric by the setting sun. It reminds me of the blue-tailed rooster at the crimson gates of the temple. I will throw the folder into the waves. I will scatter his dreams where he scattered my ashes. A feather like a glint of sapphire blows past me on the sea breeze. I will.
I take a deep breath and apprehensively open the folder. It contains a neat row of pockets on either side. The edges of pictures protrude from each, twelve to a side. After my death, Nok again began morphing at each opportunity. The year had seen a new mask for each calendar month.
I reach my hands slowly to pull out the first, but I am interrupted by a voice at the other table, breaking the unobtrusive rhythm of the conversation between the man and woman who I had forgotten were there. The intruder wears a suit. I stare. It's as though I know him.
The sun is behind me and he squints hard from underneath a tattered hat. Recognising me, he approaches. I am too stunned to close the folder in time.
I sit silent.
'You won't find him there. Come, sit here with these two.'
He takes the folder from me, and I, still reaching for words, follow him to the other table. I look at the man and woman, failing to find the animation of the earlier conversation on their faces. They stare at me, blankly. The old ones lose their way, gradually, when they are on the earth for many years. The white hall is behind them. It is filled with ghostly diners - an unrelenting assembly line of mouths and spoons.
'The pictures. I know. He's there. He needs me. I'll find him in each picture. I can guide him.'
He sighs, a gradual smile on his face. His hands move to loosen his bright orange tie.
'See these two here? He gestures at the two pale spirits. 'They've been dead for over fifty years. They died around the same time. But they haven't yet realised the other is dead. Both of them haunt the same place, thinking they are somehow looking out for the other. In their minds, the other still lives in that house. Each believes the other is overcome with grief at the death of their lover. In truth, that house lies unused, and the family can not sell it. It's haunted, after all. The irony of it is that here, they do not know each other. But they invariably find each other day after day. It's the arrangement ‘The Management’ has made.’
I look at him, still unsure how I know him. And then I see. The hat he was wearing is gone. His head is shaven and he wears an orange robe, that of a monk.
Tears find my eyes, and I take the folder from his hands. The pictures inside are not the ones I have taken. I spread them before me, looking for the 12 escapes that Nok flew through in a year. The pilot, the raver, the rapper, the chef. They are not there. Yet, the face in all the photos, the bodies, they are all unmistakably him.
In the first picture, my mother stands beside him, in the pitch-black of the first month in mourning. She watches Nok's head as his hair is being shorn off by an elder monk.
All the pictures are of him in the ancient temple I passed earlier. It is the same one in which I was freed from my body, but not from the world.
In the second photo, he is alone. The old temple looms behind him, and he leans against a jasmine tree, reading a ragged book. His face is worn, but serene.
The final photo shows him cross-legged, in a line of sitting monks, each with their eyes shut in meditation, chanting. Namo Tasa Pakawatto Alahatto Sammaa Samputh Thassa. Only he is looking straight at me.
Now, his eyes are deeper than the ocean that surrounds us. They are his, yet they are not the eyes I remember. A picture is picked up in a gust of wind, and I watch it fall into the waves. My fingertips trail the surface of the water as I watch the memory sink into the engulfing blue. Nok takes my hand in his. 'Let go.'
fon @ 12:29 am link to post * *
Brett ran a finger down Jo’s naked belly.
“Jo’s so paranoid – I can’t believe what he did a while back.”
“What did he do?” Noi reached for the cut straw in Brett’s hand and handed it to Jo. Light had been seeping through the Venetian blinds, slowly, and now it cast spears on Brett’s cream carpet. “Fucking hell – he turned my place upside down. I don’t think you should smoke base anymore, Jo. He’s been convinced, for the past few weeks that the police are after him – why the hell would they be following you around, man?”
Jo scooped up white powder from a small Ziploc bag and ‘bumped’ it, holding the cocaine to his nose and snorting it from the straw. Quick. Efficient. He passed it to Noi, and she did the same.
“Fucking hell, he taped all the curtains together and stuffed these pillows under the door. Then, he turned the volume on the music down to about two decibels.” He looked at Jo. “We didn’t notice anything until you switched off all the lights and were like ‘Shut the fuck up, assholes, they are listening behind the door – do you want to get me arrested or something?’ We all cracked up like hell. I shoved a few Zanax down your throat to knock you out until the morning.”
Brett bumped a couple, too, and then reached over to have a sip at his regular – Blue label and soda. “Damn, that guy would be so much fun to freak out.” He winked at Noi. Seeing a streak of white powder on the black sheets, she casually picked it up with her fingertip, rubbing it absent-mindedly on her gums. “Good girl – not wasting any.”
Noi smiled, “I learned from the best.”
Jo and Noi were the regulars, and they often brought along other friends. They came, crashed and went to work as they pleased, helping themselves to Brett’s vast array of drugs and bringing their own to add to the collection. Noi had never tried cocaine before meeting Jo, just a few months ago on board a flight from
She’d called her mother, and told her she’d found a new investment in
“Jo lives right across from me, you know, Noi, but this dope-head hasn’t been home for longer than you’ve been here.” Brett got up, moving to the window. Raising the blinds so that the tops of neighboring towers were visible over the hazy layers of
The two of them had taken to inviting Noi around whenever they found each other’s company too ingrown. She was a new body to explore, and was still fresh enough to cocaine and free-base to be blatantly egotistical and irrational, which greatly amused the pair.
Noi tried ‘Special K’ for the first time two nights ago. She’d decided to sit on Brett’s balcony’s rail and dangle her feet off the heights, to watch the buildings turn into stacks of cars. Brett had rushed out, pulling her back onto the balcony. “Bloody hell, if you want to kill yourself, don’t do it from my fucking balcony. No more K for you.” He prepared her a line on a hot plate. “Here, snort this and sober up.”
Jo and Brett had been watching each other in silence for some time, and Noi took this to be her cue to get dressed and leave the apartment. It was a week before she came back to
Brett dipped a straw into a bag and jerked it at Noi’s nose. “Bump.” She obeyed. Brett moved to her, swaying unstably, his breath heavy with alcohol. She didn’t say anything as he bit at her breasts through her uniform. He’d soon torn them off and was kissing her bare body urgently. Taken by the raw emotion of the moment, Noi tugged at his clothes, strewing them on the marble kitchen floor. As Brett climaxed, a wail, not of delight, but of despair, passed through his lips. The sun set, and Noi, unnerved by his raw emotion, held his head to her chest as he sobbed.
Jo had been holed up in his apartment, smoking base alone for two weeks when Brett took the initiative to go and check up on him. He could hear the clang of cutlery from inside as he stood outside the door. Jo opened the door, pointing a huge butcher knife at his face, as though he didn’t recognize Brett. He’d stared at him for about a minute, while Brett stood frozen, unsure how to react. Then, he threw the knife aside, sending it smashing into a fruit bowl, before jumping onto the balcony and hurling himself over the railing. On the wooden kitchen counter were several photos of Jo standing on his balcony. Each one was pinned down by a knife.
fon @ 4:28 am link to post * *
A demographic analogy:
At night the pyramids
Lit by floodlights
Reassure the busy whirlwinds of sand
Mirroring the curve of Orion’s Belt
Themselves as unbuckled by time
Ghosts of children
Never born
Corrode away the top
Corrode away the sides
Until
All that is left is a pyramid again
Grotesquely upside-down
The summit in the sand
Has pierced my grandfather’s heart
My grandfather has firm hands, but they are soft and gentle. These hands taught me to drive a nail through a block of wood. They taught me to shakily wield a paintbrush, dripping in black paint. That paint-brush coloured rain-shelters for my three dogs. His hands painted loving scenes of idyllic
I called my grandfather yesterday. He was happy to hear his grand-daughter tell him of her future. My dad speaks briefly to him, loudly, because grand-father doesn’t like to use his hearing aid.
“He’s coming to your graduation party tomorrow,” says my father.
My father walks briskly up the pine stairs, his eyebrows furrowed with worry. Later on, I speak to his sister. She’s drunk – her small graphic design enterprise ruined by larger companies. She and her husband now take solace in state-funded wine. She sobs – “Your grandfather has cancer”.
I want to look after my grandfather and hold those hands that held me as I cried many years before. My dad is shocked at my proposal. I wonder for a moment if it could be that he doesn’t know yet, but the look on his face isn’t one of question or surprise. His eyes are deep and sad.
My grandfather was born on a farm in rural
The country was as much crafted out of envy as ideal. The Finns are deeply jealous, and jealousy inspires violence. The people of the nation inflict pain on themselves before their neighbours. My aunt once related a story to me about her own mother.
“After your father’s and my mother died of cancer when I was 21, I began to search through her past. One thing that always struck me was the photos – countless black and white photos of her holding three little children and beaming. I didn’t know who those children were. And I hardly ever saw her smile all my life. She was always so cold to me, and so cold to your father, too. She never was much of a mother. She never neglected us, but she was never really there. Finding those photos shocked me. I didn’t recognise her as my mother in those photos. Your father doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know.
“I searched through the old town records to find any other family she might have had – see, she never really spoke of her past, and we didn’t think to ask. But she had a brother.
“When she married your grandfather, her brother had been married for some years and had three small children. One was five, the other three, and the youngest not yet two. His wife had been her classmate in school. Now, the family lived only two kilometres away, and regularly visited each other.
“Bad things happened when she became pregnant with your father. Her brother started seeing a mistress. A dark gypsy woman. Somehow, in his mind, he found it acceptable to live within the family. His wife was not able to accept this, and, grabbing her two older children (the youngest was asleep in the crib), she set off running to your grandfather’s house.
“It was the middle of winter, and she couldn’t run very fast through the deep snow. Her husband had time to find a rifle, drink several shots of vodka, hitch a horse to a sleigh and set off following her. She hadn’t even gone half-way when he caught up with his wife and two screaming children. He shot them all there, loaded them into the sleigh, and rode back home. There, he went upstairs to his youngest son’s room and shot him, asleep peacefully in the crib. After that, he took the whole family out to a barn in the middle of the field, and finally, shot himself, too.”
Now, my grandfather’s hands are spotted with age but still soft. In his old age, nobody looks after him but his old wife. He’s a simple country man, unwilling to lock himself into the confines of the old-age provisions, desperately short of rooms and nurses, set up by the government. Even so, there is no space for a proud old man who will not ask for help, or admit that he is sick. A nurse comes once a fortnight to deliver medication.
“Your grandfather hasn’t told anyone of his condition. He expects none of his relatives to look after him, and he doesn’t want to impose himself on anyone in the family,” my father says. “But everybody knows.”
Only one year ago, he taught me the Finnish tango. He didn’t let go even when my feet collapsed beneath. He comes to my graduation party and mutters an excuse to leave shortly, rushing his goodbyes and hurrying to the car, irate. I worry that he won’t make the long drive home safely.
Time passes. A whirlwind happens before my eyes. Social change happens, unhindered, yet I don’t dare say anything. Nobody says anything, when the change trickles through, one grain at a time. I watch it change, yet still, I wake up surprised at the change.
When I call him, he can not hear my words. He thanks me for calling after he’s managed to identify who I am only after I have repeatedly shouted my name into the phone (he still refuses to use his hearing aid) and clicks the phone down. I wonder if he simply didn’t hear me and wanted an end to the conversation.
Sometimes I speak with my grandmother, who has become quite forgetful, and complains of back and ankle pains. The nurse still comes only once a fortnight. It’s been three years since anyone in the family has seen them, and they don’t want visitors.
My grandfather’s name means “Hope”. I hold his soft hands in mine again. They are cold.
By Fon Krairiksh (a.k.a. Valisa Sipila)
12/04/05
fon @ 11:35 pm link to post * *
Grandmother – you came to me in a dream like a black and white photo. You were young and balanced a frilly parasol on your slim frame. You wore the three white smears of wedlock on your forehead. The wreath that would later join you to my grandfather hung precariously from one finger. You beamed proudly in your long white dress, a smiling bride-to-be. But – then, dropping the holy circle from your hand, you hid your face behind your umbrella as you wiped away an errant tear.
Ever conscious of causing wrinkles in your wedding dress, you smoothed the sides of your gown as you knelt down, hiding your face behind the parasol. It became the short pedestal on which you and my grandfather rested your praying hands. Both of you wore that jasmine wreath around your heads, connected by the rope that would bind you to each other. With a shaky hand, you fixed your short curled hair.
Your mother was a princess of the north. His father was the closest advisor to the king, following a centuries-old succession of the oldest sons in the family. When the king poured the holy water on your hands, from a large shell with platinum ornamentation, everyone bowed their heads to the ground in respect. The first king of Thailand had named the family you now belonged to. The name means “long reaching good fortune”. You were breathing hard, nervous, your face a solemn rock.
Grandmother. I want to know if the last years of life provided you with the solace you lacked in life. I remember looking at your perplexed face, wondering whether you may have been happier not remembering your life. You were a bitter, scowling woman when I was a child. When you no longer remembered any of us, you beamed. You held my brother’s first-born son, instinctively clutching him to your self, and looking at him in wonder. You looked at the baby, looked around the room, and back at your great-grandson, your eyes as wide in awe as his.
Not long before your last child was born, your husband began keeping several mistresses. He squandered his fortune, as well as yours, on buying them houses and cars. The weight of your royal pride, and the responsibility of keeping up appearances for your husband – the younger brother of the of the king’s personal advisor – kept your mouth firmly clasped. It could not be the role of any woman to question her husband’s actions. It was your duty to support, in silence, your husband’s decisions. My mother’s first husband had a similar belief in patriarchy, but nobody said anything when she walked away. All but one of your four daughters left their first husbands. The oldest never got remarried. The sisters are known to their generation as strong-willed women.
You gave the engagement rings of your own design to my mother to keep. They are made of the finest strands of platinum, and she promised me that I could use them when I am ready. The strands weave around each other like the Milky Way, studded with a hundred fine diamonds. As the years of your unhappy marriage passed, you comforted yourself creating hundreds of necklaces, brooches, rings, bracelets, now treasured by your fourteen granddaughters.
The family whispered of your reclusive nature, and the anger of your middle age. My brother lived in your care for several years, and they say that is why he has never been able to become gentle. Two cousins lived with you almost all their lives, and that is why – they say – that they were never married. My half-American cousin dug a hole into your life and called you a sick, twisted woman, torturing yourself by keeping yourself in a cell of your own creation.
Yes, grandmother, you were cruel, even to me, the very youngest of your grandchildren. But you always stayed up nights to make sure the freezer was well stocked with custard-apple coconut ice cream. You scolded me for being disrespectful, but then handed my mother a 500 baht note to spend on me.
During the final five years of silence, when your husband’s body had degenerated, and his children to longer allowed him beer, you had your revenge. Your worries fell away from you, one at a time, with every passing day. First, seeing your children and grandchildren much older than you last remembered them confused you. Then, you became childishly elated at any person you could remember. You smiled when your nursemaid tickled you, and enjoyed the simple joys of a healthy body.
Your husband retained all his senses, and witnessed the plague of his own body. He alone bears the burden of his expensive infidelity. Where he once would have silenced you, he now sees you happily silent. He has been sitting beside your quiet smile for the past five years in the meager house his dwindling funds and the family can afford him. He cries for sweets, for beer, and his nursemaid sternly shakes her head.
Grandmother – you have given to me until your final morning. You passed away suddenly in the shower, smiling at the flow of water around your body. You collapsed into the arms of the nurse, your spirit leaving you in an instant. At that moment, I was swinging my body from the rail of a balcony to a rooftop. Thank-you for catching me then.
I didn’t cry when the monks chanted for your safe journey into the next life. I didn’t cry as I threw the cane lily onto the flames. They eluded me still as your urn sunk into the Chao-Phraya River.
This is why: In that black and white dream, you took my hand tenderly, and told me not to.
fon @ 1:28 am link to post * *
**note** this is my first stream of consciousness writing that I did in class today... never written in this style before... please comment!!**
She walks out of class. First, stopping to inform a student. And another one. Then, a pensive silence. I wonder what my brain can produce. A giggle, “this is ridiculous.” I wrote my first story when I was around 12. It was about Pepper, and my friend’s cat, Cookies. Pepper was a happy-go-lucky pirate, his tongue lolling and a grin always stretching to his floppy ears. Slobber flying along with his high spirits. Cookies. Cookies the sly sidekick with a French accent and advisor to an otherwise reckless pirate at sea. My mother complained that I never let her read it. I heard the dart of jealousy in her voice, because I let the little children of her friend read it. And her friend read it and said her children loved it. It’s gone now, I tell her. It’s a shame, says my mother – I’ve never read anything you’ve written. I’ve also never sung her a song, even though I used to sing in nightclubs. The trouble started when I was thirteen. That year I wrote a twenty page story about cockroaches and insanity. My father asked if I was on drugs. I wasn’t. My mother lay crying on the narrow bathroom floor of our pink seashell house on a hill in Almaty. What happened? Cold tiles answer. I drunk some vodka, she says. She never drinks. She weeps. I’ve never seen her weep before. My father sits, cross with the living room, dismissing me with folded arms. Later, I am to go away from home. I’m fourteen. I’m elated. My parents will be on the other side of the world. In Vietnam. My mother slapped me once. Then she ripped out the phone-line when I locked myself in my room. Then I was alone in Finland, in a two bedroom apartment in Westend. Pepper wasn’t happy with me. He shed hair all over the apartment. He was lonely when I went to school all day and howled until the neighbors complained. So I went to Hanoi to let Pepper be closer to my parents. He’d never been alone all his life. He always had a big garden to run in. My parents in Haiphong. Perhaps I missed them, too. But then I am stalked. I walk into my apartment, alone and everyday the phone rings at just that moment. I hate the screeching monkeys in the big cage just outside my kitchen window. They shriek and they piss and they smell bad and nobody cleans the cage very often. At night I am lonely so I go and sit with the guards of the compound. They teach me to smoke Vietnamese tobacco from a dragon-etched water-bong. A face of a smiling man on the clear packet of tobacco. And a phone number. When I walk into my apartment every day, a smirking voice with a thick accent. I know where you live. I know where you go to school. I will pick you up tomorrow. On the weekend my mother and Pepper come down from Haiphong. Mother cooks in the kitchen. There is a balcony from my room where I hide and smoke. I drop the cigarette but down onto excess roof-sheets that are red and waiting purpose in a pile two stories below me. My mother walks in thirty seconds after I walk in from the balcony. It smells like cigarettes in here she says. It must have gotten stuck in the aircon, I say. So bad – why did they smoke inside before? She frowns. I take care not to breathe in her direction. My dad picks me up from school one day. I see his face and I know that sometimes things shatter to pieces even when it wasn’t me that dropped them. We’d been gone for just one day on the weekend and left Pepper in the backyard in Haiphong. The scenery of the bay with green jutting rocks like rotten teeth from blue gums but beautiful and majestic with sea wind. I stood on the roof of the boat. When we got back, Pepper is sick. By the fourth day he is so so thin. He can’t move, even wagging his tail is an effort, but he drags himself across the floor and tries to fetch the tennis ball I gently roll two meters on the ground, but can not even stimulate his haunches to heave. He’s exhausted from the strain and I embrace him and he is too weak to whimper. My dad is standing outside my school on a Tuesday. Why isn’t he two hours away at work? The neighbors in Haiphong say a ghost called his spirit away so that the bones could be returned home because when we dug his grave we found a skeleton from the war. The soul was impatient, they say. The vet said rat poison. My dad joined me crying as we buried Pepper. I wept when I felt the stiffness of his ears. My mother was away in Thailand. I know you smoke he said, and offered me a cigarette. It’s been our secret ever since. I cried and cried and finally told my parents I need to get away from here, I told them I was stalked, I told them about the motorcyclist that sometimes drove past and knocked me over and how the guards just watched. They let me go. I’m not safe here I’m scared.
fon @ 9:54 pm link to post * *
“What do you all do after tea?” Arthur asked.
I looked up at him, not comprehending why he was so insistent about coming over after tea and why he asked the question as though he thought ma and granny were doing something naughty.
I stared back at him a moment, and thinking of my doll, lying naked, discarded on the floor with the promise of a new one, I ran home.
“The three Lang Women,” he had said, “or are there four?” when he brought the quinces.
I discarded the image of the doll with the lacy collar that in my dreams so resembled ma. When I ran inside, I found my old doll, her remaining arm stiff with grime and age, unmovable, the white lace from ma’s collar and sleeves wound around her body, a python choking the prey.
I tugged at it frantically, willing it to come off, until I felt the tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. Ma came from the field, after what to me seemed too long. Seeing my distress at the lace which I’d managed to pull so that now it shackled the dolls feet, she picked me up and sat me up on the crumb-encrusted table. “Wait here,” she said, and left me there on my pedestal.
I looked around the kitchen, as though seeing it in a whole new light, noticing the dirt, the neglect, that surrounded the old stove and table long ago past the peeling of paint, but still retaining a few white streaks here and there. I felt exhilarated as I encountered these objects and more – all in an equally dilapidated condition, as though for the first time. They were our life.
When ma returned to the kitchen with a pair of scissors, I knew what to do with them. My eyes widened in effort as I slid the dull blade of the scissors under the tightly wound lace bond, and mustered my little strength to clamp the dull blades down on each other.
Granny, worrying what had happened, came in the door just as I finally managed to agitate the lace enough for it to slide off the dolls foot and into my grubby palm.
I slid down from the table, trailing some errant breadcrumbs to the floor, and turning to the stove, threw the lace into the fire.
*** *** *** ***
Lucy Lang is a child who reaches an epiphany at the end of the story, “The Lang Women”. I feel that this epiphany was reached well before the end of the story, but is not elaborated on – when Lucy feels the urge to protect her mother and grandmother from their nakedness against Arthur Mann. We are led from this scene directly into the scene at night, where the women are, for the first time Lucy can remember, not walking around naked, for the first time self-conscious. I think that before this, there is a scene where Lucy realises that she doesn’t want the doll after all, and at the same time, recognises the social stigmas that both keep them in poverty and liberate them. The original story is told by a limited omniscient narrator, who does touch upon the thoughts of each individual character, but only one at the time.
We are told some of Lucy’s thoughts, but not in depth. I am taking the opportunity to show, in more depth, the thought process of a six or seven year old child. The reader of this short story should be familiar with “The Lang Women.” However, the story can stand on its own, as it contains an introduction, a conflict and a resolution to the scene.
It is no accident that in the story, the surname “Mann” is chosen. I have not chosen to refer to him simply as ‘the man’ because at no point in the original story does Lucy receive a formal introduction to Arthur Mann, and engages in very little conversation with him throughout the short story. Arthur represents, in ‘The Lang Women’ the idea of a man, and is, in the end, bound by his mother, who, I would argue, represents the constraints of society that are imposed upon him. Lucy realises, in my narrative, where these boundaries lie, and in the process, chooses to return into her own constraints. In the end, when she tells him she knows why they can’t talk ‘because your mother won’t let you’, she is, in fact, referring to the fact that she knows that they are from different social settings, and by accepting his visits and his gifts, the three Langs may be jeopardising themselves. To show this, I am characterising ‘the man’ as a sleazy type, slinking around for his port of entry.
What I am showing with my passage is the change that occurs in Lucy – the realisation of social boundaries – coincides with the change that occurs within the two women. The two women, who previously were not perturbed by the town’s perceptions of them, realise the isolation that they have been drawn into, and take steps toward re-integrating with society. The original story shows that crossing one boundary only presents one with another, just as Lucy’s narrative shows that Lucy has seen, and chosen to accept the boundary that she is placed into, no longer yearning for the lacy doll, which she never dreamed of until the rich Arthur Mann entered the life of the Langs.
fon @ 7:34 pm link to post * *
An insistent rapping on the door of his 22nd floor apartment on 14th street failed to induce the longhaired Thai boy to roll over in his sleep. “Mmm” - and then silence. The white Venetian blinds heated up as the vigilant sun marched across the sky outside.
At four p.m., the young artist’s alarm clock sounds, a honking like a traffic jam. It doesn’t cause a stir in his languorous sleep. He stretches for a moment and wraps himself around his blanket, a bead of sweat forming on his forehead.
With the late afternoon sun seeping through the blinds, colouring the room in red, and with the alarm honking consistently, the studio apartment resembles an earthquake or war scene from a videogame. Paintings of anime characters and prim paintbrushes are propped haphazardly against the walls and large computer table. Smiling, angry, serious, fierce, scared and other faces of characters he has designed lay on pieces of white paper like bodies strewn across the carpet. They are motionless, waiting to be rescued and used in a new design for a game or cartoon series. The cord of an iron, extra long, runs across scattered official looking papers on the floor. A toppling pile of brochures props up a small Ikea ironing board, two legs missing.
At five p.m., the rapping on his door starts up again. The artist slowly opens his eyes.
“Wake up, man, the World Trade Centre is gone!”
He ignores this intrusion and glances at his alarm and only then realises it has been going off for the past hour. 5:02 p.m., Tuesday, September 11, 2001 – the time and date flash as he silences the honking of the alarm.
“Shit,” he mutters, and quickly springs out of bed and pulls on his wrinkled clothes from yesterday, and ties up his hair with a red rubber band that was around his wrist. He reaches for glasses, next to his mattress on the floor, placing them on his head. He scans the room until he encounters a clear artwork folder, “Character Design Assignment” scribbled on it in bold red. He shakes boxes of cigarettes littering his apartment until he encounters one that yields a cigarette. He lights it with a quick flick of his wrist and pockets the Zippo, rubbing one eye under his eyeglasses with the back of his middle finger as the cigarette dangles loosely from his mouth. A loud sucking sound fills the room as he draws his first breath.
He stands over his mattress to pull the blinds up, allowing a sickly yellow light to fill his studio.
The window transfixes him. “Fuck,” he says, and slowly places the large folder on the ground, and reaches for his mobile, quickly pressing a few keys, then, after repeatedly raising the phone to his ears, and repeating the process of pressing buttons, tosses the phone aside, too.
He stands, staring out at the window, ash falling to the ground from his cigarette. He takes another puff, and finds the overflowing ashtray from underneath a character like a warrior. Meticulously, he puts out his cigarette, then, slumps cross-legged onto his mattress.
**writer's note**
This story is roughly true. It's how I imagine the scene to have occurred when my brother found out the towers collapsed. But this is fiction. What happened is that after he said "Shit", he let his friend in, and he was told the building collapsed before he got a chance to look out his window.
Then, they went to play pool, since there wasn't any uni on that evening and they had nothing better to do.
Around three people from their circle of friends should have been in that building at 9 a.m. Fortunately, they were all artsy types and were, as usual, late for work.
fon @ 8:23 pm link to post * *
You observe the pool of blood on the ground, feeling as though you are intruding on a scene you are not meant to witness.
The girl in white dances in front of you. You are mesmerised by her long black hair and startling green eyes, cold emeralds flashing as she glances at you, the strobe light and her mascara holding you captive. Her hair hangs down in daggers and frames a face punctuated by round ‘why’ lips. Her long sleeved white shirt clings tightly around a slender frame and loosely suggests feminine arms beneath flowing sleeves. Her skirt reaches to the ground and sways along with her body. She gives you the impression of being a cat disguised as an angel.
The hard beat carries her in a way that you can tell she is swept by the rhythm. She doesn’t think, she just moves. You are finding it hard to find the beat, intrigued as you are by the creature before you, pulsating to the beat coursing through the floor.
But you are happy. So happy you don’t mind the waves of nausea sweeping over you as you stagger, eyes half shut where you are on the dance floor. The interior is intimate in shades of clean white and cream, and the lights are soft. The smell is the clean smell of a venue that draws only the ‘right’ kinds of people, and maintains a well-polished pine floor. Your attention wanders for a moment to the wall that is a fish tank. Silver and gold fish move up and down amongst the bubbles, unaffected by the beats, and by the cocktail sippers leaning against the glass. Blues, greens and reds of diffused spotlights shine through and colour the crowd.
You turn back to see her staring straight at you – you wonder why. You smile at her, at a moment where the music swells and those on the floor can’t help but smile – at each other, or to themselves. She smiles back, and turns to face the DJ, who also smiles at her between tracks. They must know each other, judging by the way she makes faces at him and gestures to him.
Her eyes are open wide, and blood drips from her mouth and her nose, onto the cool pine floor. A moment ago, you say her turn around to survey the crowd behind her, and you saw her eyes roll into her head. You saw her legs twist around each other and turn to white flags as she lost consciousness. This all moved in a slow caricature, like a shot of a cat twisting around in mid-air preparing to land on all fours. Except from there, her head slammed into the ground in front of your feet. A halo of black hair floated on the floor, and you knelt down to turn her face away from the floor.
You are watching her, detached, now. The pool of blood grows at a slow pace, and you hardly noticed the music stopped. Silence fills the venue for a few startled minutes, as a crowd around her collectively observes, as you do. A clock passes a few stunned silences with resonating ticks. The trickle of blood becomes a pool, and you wonder if she is breathing.
The sound of sirens fills the venue. The girl is gone. The crimson stain has been erased. The fish-wall is an undisturbed green and red and blue. The beat fills the dance floor again. You turn and smile at the DJ. There is nothing between you and the beat now.
fon @ 2:15 am link to post * *