Jane Vejjajiva (6 page)

The past casts a shadow that can point to the future.

‘You were born after midnight so it was Valentine’s Day. Uncle Dong was so happy. I don’t know where he found the red roses but they filled the room to overflowing. I had a big fight with the nurse over it. But it was really so pretty, wherever I looked I could see only roses.’

Mother sat quietly as though picturing the little hospital room transformed into a bower of love by Uncle Dong’s professional artistry.

‘Grandpa gave you the name “Na-kamon”’ which means “abiding in love”. Grandpa liked the prefix “Na”. My name has a “Na” too. Grandpa wanted us to have names that matched.’

Mother’s name was Na-patra. Grandpa said that meant ‘abiding in virtue’.

‘At that time Grandpa and Grandma hadn’t moved to the house on the water. Grandpa was crazy about you; actually, everyone was crazy about you. Uncle Dong was over the moon. I’d never known him to pay any attention to children before this but he was so besotted with you that he actually left his work to come and sit by your crib, and of course, he and Grandma ended up fighting over you. Look at this! The photo of your first haircut when you were a month old. And here’s the certificate with your name on it, from your naming ceremony. Grandpa’s handwriting was so beautiful, we had it framed.’

It seemed as though the day had been a happy one even though one person was conspicuously absent from all the photographs, one person who was not even mentioned.

Mother’s bedroom looked out over the sea. In the afternoon the sea receded so far you could hardly see it. Grandpa said that if you wanted to swim at this hour, you’d have to call a taxi to get you there. The side walls of the house were big glass windows; through them you could see the big frangipani tree with its yellow-and
white flowers sending forth their sweet scent. Grandma didn’t like the tree at all. She said that in the olden days it was bad luck to have a frangipani near your home. Grandpa muttered that this was a resort, not a home. He would have grafted a branch to take back to plant in the garden of the house on the water, except Grandma would probably explode with indignation.

‘I’d just moved back to Bangkok. We were living in a condominium right in the centre of the city, just the two of us. I was lucky. Everyone wanted to help look after you. Here, this one’s of your first birthday. And here’s Aunt Da as well. Aunt Da was a trainee in our office right from when she was a student. When she graduated she came to work for me. You’ve liked her ever since you first met, so I knew I’d chosen the right person as my assistant.’

Kati thought she looked funny almost completely bald. Mother had obviously been worried about her daughter’s appearance as she’d fastened a little bow on a wisp of hair on top of her head, and after that Kati sported the same little bow in every photo. Kati found it very entertaining.

Mother paused at intervals to draw in a breath from a tube that was connected to her BiPAP machine. ALS made her muscles so weak that in the end they became useless. Not only her leg and arm muscles but, far more dangerously, the muscles in her lungs had stopped working, including the muscles that inflated her chest to take in air. Now the BiPAP machine pumped air into Mother’s lungs so she could get all the oxygen she needed. When she was asleep she wore a mask but in the daytime she could just draw on the tube whenever she had difficulty breathing.

‘This snap was taken when we were all on holiday in Singapore. You were about three years old. I went there to work, so Uncle Dong dragged Kunn along too. Uncle Kunn didn’t study law like me but we were in the same tennis club at college. I was in my third year when Kunn came in his first year. No, Uncle Dong was never a tennis player but he liked to mix with the tennis crowd and watch the young guys play.’ Mother laughed. ‘Some day I’ll find you the photo of Uncle Dong and Uncle Kunn and me when we were all students together. Aunt Da saw it – and nearly died laughing!’

Mother had been so happy with life and her friends, and Kati had clearly been loved by all as the old photos showed.

Kati turned the pages till she came to the middle of the album and was puzzled to find it had only been half filled. What was even stranger was that the last two photos were of Kati alone in a pose that wasn’t funny at all.

‘Grandma and Grandpa had moved to the house by the canal by then. I encouraged them to go because Grandpa had already put off going for long enough – it was nearly a year since their house had been renovated. I knew it was your Grandpa’s dream to return to the simple village life after he retired. I wasn’t able to visit them as often as I wanted. I was busy with my work, which was really more than I could handle. Everyone was into e-commerce – you know, selling goods over the internet. I’d been on to it ever since I was stationed in Hong Kong and there was no one I could really hand it over to. I had to solve all these problems that came up and advise the foreign companies setting up in Thailand on the legal side of things.

‘Then I began to get sick. At first I thought I’d been working too hard, not resting enough. I kept dropping things. I’d miss a step and fall downstairs.

I did that both at work and at home. This picture was taken after I dropped you coming down from a pedestrian bridge – we were both a mess, covered with grazes and cuts.’

There were grazes on Kati’s chubby cheeks, painted red with antiseptic. It didn’t seem to have bothered little Kati much because she was smiling away at the camera, but the photographer must have been mightily shaken by the episode. Even now Mother’s voice sounded wobbly.

‘You were hurt because of me so many times – you got lumps on your head, a split lip. You used to cry so loudly when you were hurt too. But the next minute you would be playing happily as if nothing had ever happened. It was just as I had prayed when I was pregnant with you, that you would always have joy in your heart, whatever happened in your life.

‘But at this stage I became more and more certain that something was wrong with me. When I was finally diagnosed, I just couldn’t think how I was going to manage my life at all. I took leave from work and went to live with Grandpa and Grandma. It was then that it happened.’

Kati wasn’t sure whether she should stay on her own with her mother or go and get the nurse. Mother had said that she wanted to spend as much time as possible with Kati alone and that if she wanted anything she could ask Kati to go and get it, but now her face looked so pale and she was using the BiPAP more and more frequently.

‘At some level I guess I was denying to myself that anything had changed. I took you for a ride in the boat to see the sights. Grandpa and Grandma didn’t see me go. I’m sure they would have forbidden me to go if they had. ’Course maybe I wouldn’t have listened to them anyway. I wanted to take you to see the big East Indian walnut tree that grows on the edge of the paddy fields. We got to the little shelter there safely enough. You loved the water, the boat, the shelter, the morning glories. We were having such fun playing together that I didn’t notice the clouds gathering on the horizon.

‘I made my second bad decision. We could have waited out the rain in the shelter and then headed home. But I could see the roof was in pretty bad shape and I was worried it wouldn’t keep the rain out. When I looked again the rain clouds still seemed a long way off so I thought I had time to row us back out of the fields. And if we didn’t make it home before the rain we could stop and take cover in the first house we came to on the canal.’

Mother lay still for a while. She drew air from the tube again and again.

‘I hastily packed up our basket and put on your hat, took your hand and led you down the steps. The wind was getting stronger and stronger. The boat wouldn’t stay still. It was rocking back and forth, knocking against the step. I put you in the boat and turned to undo the rope that moored us to the pier. But my hands…the more I tried to hurry, the clumsier I became. I climbed back out of the boat to undo the rope more easily. Finally free from its mooring, the rope slipped from my hands too. I grabbed the oar, hoping to catch hold of the boat with it. My timing was totally wrong. Even easy things I could no longer do. And the boat just floated away from the pier, bobbing up and down on the waves, the boat in which you were still sitting, completely alone.’

Kati could picture the vast expanse of the flooded fields, churned to a wild sea by the storm winds. The sky would not have been bright and clear as it was when she and Grandpa went for their picnic. The heavy clouds would have darkened the whole sky. Thunder would have rumbled over the water, mingling with the roar of the wind and Mother’s cries.

‘I tried to control my anguish – I called for you to sit still. I was worried you would take fright and try to come to me and the boat would capsize. I knew that I was no longer capable of doing many things. I could not jump into the water and pick you up. I had tried so hard to catch the boat with the oar, but had only managed to tap the side of the boat. My arms did not have the strength to drag a boat against the wind and the water. And the oar now fell from my grasp into the water as well.

‘I was like a madwoman. The rain was pouring from the heavens as though the sky had sprung a leak. My voice had to compete with the thunder as I shouted at you to sit still. I really did not know what to do. I cried harder than the sky. I was furious with myself and furious at the rain. But more than anything I was so terrified that it seemed as if my heart had stopped. In utter desperation I cried, “Please someone help me. Please help my child.” I screamed at the top of my voice even though I knew no one could hear me amid the noise of the storm.

‘And in my heart I prayed every prayer that Grandma had ever taught me, all the ones I could think of. I recited the mantras and I added prayers of my own. You could say I made a promise to all things sacred that if there were such things as miracles, please keep my daughter safe and I would give up everything I owned, everything. Most people would say they’d give their lives in exchange but I, of course, had very little life left to give. The sky split with lightning as if acknowledging my promise: if my child was safe, then I would never so much as touch her again. I would go far away from my child and never bring her into danger again.’

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Mother sobbed until she collapsed in a heap. Kati took Mother’s hand and kissed it, held it against her cheek. She lifted her mother’s arm so that she was embracing Kati. Kati hugged her mother tight. Mother’s face pressed against Kati. Her flesh felt cold as ice. Kati whispered that she was here, here with Mother, that they would never be separated again.

The frangipani blossom had fallen on the ground below the window as if it could no longer bear the suffering of these two hearts.

At journey’s end.

Kati liked to sit at the edge of the water, making sandcastles with Uncle Kunn. What she didn’t like were the horrible sandflies that bit you when you weren’t aware of them. These tiny creatures had a powerful bite. They would hide in the sand waiting for their prey, and you wouldn’t even know you’d been bitten till you saw the angry red spots at bath time. The more you scratched them the itchier they became. Uncle Dong said the bites of the sandflies were like love, an itch you couldn’t scratch away, couldn’t forget and of which you were constantly aware.

Kati used both hands to dig a hole in the sand. When the waves came in it became a pool, but sand came tumbling in with the water. Soon her deep pool became a shallow pool and she had to dig it out all over again. But this was satisfying too, keeping Kati’s hands busy while her mind kept returning to the story Mother had told her that afternoon.

So the knight in shining armour who had saved little Kati’s life was none other than Tong of the Siamese smile. Mother said that Tong had been quite excited over the arrival of the four-year-old ‘city girl’. He would paddle his boat over to play with her often. That day he had come over to the house in search of his playmate and had followed them to the old walnut tree. His boat appeared just after an enormous lightning strike. Tong was as strong a rower as any of the children whose homes were by the water. So it was no great task for him to steer the boat in which Kati sat back to the pier and safety. He had picked Kati out of the boat and placed her right in Mother’s lap.

‘Like a mother cat with a kitten,’ said Mother, smiling through her tears at the picture they’d made – Tong, skinny and small for his age, bearing Kati who was round and chubby. Mother had hugged Kati close, and Tong too. She had been crying and laughing at the same time, there in the middle of the pouring rain, before they climbed the steps to take cover in the little shelter.

Before long Grandpa and other men from the community had braved the storm in their boats to come looking for them, calling for Mother and Kati. They brought blankets and umbrellas, but Mother, Tong and Kati were already soaked to the bone. That night Kati took ill with a fever. The family had to sit up with her all night, bathing her with damp cloths. It was nearly dawn before her fever abated. As the morning light broke, Mother packed her bags and left the little house on the water without saying goodbye, never to return.

Kati could imagine Grandma’s reaction – how distressed she must have been. Kati could also imagine Grandpa’s face as he said through set lips that Pat must’ve had her reasons to act in this way, and that some day she would tell them why. From that time on Grandpa had taken responsibility for caring for Kati.

Kati felt something now biting away at her heart. She stopped digging her hole in the sand and turned to Uncle Kunn.

‘Can I use your mobile phone?’ she asked.

The morning they had left the house on the water, Tong had handed Kati a scrap of paper and said with a smile that it was the mobile phone number of his uncle, the abbot, in case Kati needed to talk to him about anything. Tong said to ring anytime because he was the one who took the calls.

Tong’s voice, so familiar and so very pleased to hear from her, soothed the ache in Kati’s heart in an instant. Kati saw Uncle Kunn suppress a laugh when he heard Kati’s question. ‘Tong, it’s Kati here. Hey, do you want to hear the sound of the sea?’