Shadowboxer (7 page)

At last he let me rest. ‘Pepsi!’ he called. Pepsi ran over, looking eager to please. Coat handed me his belly protector and pads and I slipped them on. Coat indicated that Pepsi should train with me.

Pepsi backed off, shaking his head and looking at the floor. He said something in Thai, and Coat laughed.

‘What’s going on?’ I said. Coat didn’t answer.

‘Bad luck train with girl,’ Pepsi answered in English. ‘Jade, you train with Pook. Not me.’

I could feel my blood pressure rising. I was ready to snap; but nobody else got upset. No shouting. No swearing. Pepsi smiled and looked at the ground, ducking his head. Not looking at me.

‘I train her,’ Coat said. ‘Am I bad luck?’

Pepsi scuffed the floor with his toe.

‘OK, Pepsi. OK, come on.’

Pepsi flushed. The other boys were giggling. He gave in.

Coat showed us what he wanted us to do. Pepsi started putting his shots into me. He wasn’t messing around, that’s for sure. He might be young, but he was ferocious, and he didn’t get tired. Coat corrected me a couple of times on the way I was using the pad to signal, but overall he seemed pleased.

He nodded to me, said, ‘OK,’ and then told us we could take a break.

‘I gotta go toilet,’ Pepsi said loudly in English, jumping up and down like some kind of pee bunny. Then he shot me a sly look and went across the gym to a door in the wall behind the boxing ring. He opened it like a game show hostess revealing a prize. There was a clean toilet and sink inside.

I felt like crying. And maybe if I’d cried, things would have gone better for me.

But I didn’t cry. I stalked across the gym, grabbed Pepsi by the throat and shoved him against the wall.

‘You wanna fight me, Pepsi?’ I snarled. ‘You think you’re funny? Let’s get in the ring and find out how funny I am.’

He tried to shake me off, but I’m not that easy to shake, not when I’m mad.

‘I not fighting you,’ Pepsi said. ‘You unlucky foreigner, got smelly bottom, I not fighting you.’

If I hadn’t been so mad, ‘got smelly bottom’ would have broken me up laughing. But I don’t back down.

Coat had to pull me off him.

‘You fight in ring, not each other,’ he said. Then he added something more complicated in Thai, to Pepsi, and I wondered what it was, because Pepsi shut up after that.

‘Take a break,’ Coat said to me. The way he said it I knew I’d done wrong, but I’m damned if I know what I was supposed to have done instead.

I peeled off my gloves and followed Pook.

‘You want to stay here?’ she said, softly. ‘Or go back to America?’

I felt about two inches tall. I gulped. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’

Why do I always fuck up? Why? Why?
Why?

‘Cake sent me a text about you,’ Pook said. ‘I see he was not kidding.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘Please let me stay. I’ll be very quiet. I won’t argue.’

‘You must do better. We see how it goes.’ She showed me the corner (literally) I was sleeping in, and the table where everyone ate meals. And where the extra toilet paper was kept.

She showed me the toilet paper twice.

Smart Phone

L
ONELY AND ANXIOUS
weeks followed the incident with the journalist. Mr. Richard was growing increasingly electric and unpredictable. He was working on the thing he called ‘the final medicine’ in his lab as though his life depended on it, and maybe it did. He had been sickly since the incident with the night orchid extract, and now he looked at Mya assessingly, as though judging her strength. He talked to people all over the world in many languages. He worked in the lab. He slept only fitfully, when he could no longer resist the hushing music of the rains on the roof of the forest house.

He never mentioned the young journalist again, and he didn’t even try to get into the phone. It just sat there, unnoticed amid the mess of vials and papers, even though Johnny stopped by and offered to take it to a hacker he knew in Bangkok. ‘What the journalist found out is immaterial,’ Mr. Richard told Johnny. ‘He’s not coming back.’

Mya couldn’t be sure whether Mr. Richard really didn’t care about the information stored on the phone, or whether he just didn’t trust Johnny. He didn’t seem to trust anyone lately. Something was happening to him. This was not quite visible, but almost. Once when Mr Richard was sleeping she saw a ghostly image of him rise from his body and drift towards her, wavering, until it disintegrated like smoke.

She did not want to share her body with him.

One night she woke to the sound of distant music. It seemed to be coming from the meditation porch. Mya rose and slipped her red dress over her head. As she made her way barefoot through the blotchy, leaf-tossed darkness she realized the sound came from beyond, from the little work room adjacent to the open porch. Mya hesitated. The masks on the walls were shrouded by shadow, but the blue computer light emanating from the laboratory made the stuffed monkey’s glass eyes gleam. A bitter smell came with the light. Mr. Richard must be working again.

The music was a tinny little melody, repeating endlessly.

The mysterious password-protected phone was ringing.

Mya’s breath caught as she saw Mr. Richard’s body slumped across the desk. As she approached, she saw with relief that he was breathing. A smear of saliva lay on the formica counter by his open lips. Jars and bottles were open. The sleeping computer screensaver cycled images of gods and animals from old temple artwork.

The phone rang and rang. Mr. Richard had obtained a charger for it and plugged it into the wall socket. Did password-protected mean you needed a password to answer it, or just to make calls?

Mya picked it up and pressed the green button. The ringing stopped. She said nothing, but listened.

The voice was familiar, like the back of her hand, like the edge of sleep, like—

‘Mya? Mya, I know you are there.’

Mya
knew
this voice. And the woman was speaking
Burmese.

Mya’s heart fluttered. ‘Mother?’

There was a silence, in which Mya decided that maybe she was wrong. Maybe the voice was not quite right. But it had been a year since she’d heard her mother’s voice. Maybe...

‘Mother?’

‘Mya, listen. There isn’t much time.’

‘Where are you? Mother, where are you?’

There was a pause. Mya burst into tears.

‘Stop crying. Listen to me. Write this down. Quickly. Write down this password.’

‘Password?’

‘For the phone. Write it down.’

Mya grabbed an envelope and wrote down the Western letters and numbers with a ballpoint pen.

‘Now listen to me. You have to get out of there. Take this phone and go. Now.’

‘But, Mother, where are you?’

‘It’s not where, it’s when... Mya, I can’t explain. Just go!’

The line cut off. Tears streaming down her face, Mya pressed buttons randomly in a desperate attempt to get the voice back. But it was no use.

Mr. Richard stirred.

Mya was sweating but her fingertips felt icy cold. As if he suddenly sensed her there, Mr. Richard jerked awake. He recognized her and relaxed.

‘What time is it?’

Mya had slid the phone behind her back, but it was still plugged in and if he woke up properly, he’d see the wire trailing to Mya’s side. And she still had a pen in her left hand. The slip of paper sat on the table beside the keyboard, the nonsensical selection of letters and numbers that would unlock the reporter’s phone.

Where was she supposed to go? Her mother hadn’t told her anything. Mya couldn’t just run into the woods...

A memory came to Mya. Her mother’s voice, the words she had spoken while they were in the prison camp.

‘
When the soldiers first came I should have sent you to run away into the forest. You might have had a chance, then—the forest is your place, Mya. Here there is no chance. If I could do it again I would send you to the trees.’

Mya took a long breath. Her mother hadn’t warned her to run back then, but the voice on the phone was telling her to go to the forest now. It was a sign. She could run blindly, just take off and leave it all behind.

With a quick, sneaky tug she pulled the connector out of the phone behind her back. The cord drooped noiselessly. Mr. Richard was rubbing his eyes and turning in his chair. Taking the paper with its inscrutable letters, she took a half-step back. A smell of decaying meat roiled around his body.

‘I need to take something,’ he murmured, patting the surfaces around him for medicine. ‘I’m so tired.’

Then his eyes lit on the scrap of paper in her hand. She had taught herself English letters, albeit not very well.

‘What are you writing?’ he said, and in the same moment he spotted the dangling power cord. ‘Did you touch that phone? Where is it?’

Mya backed away, into the prayer room. This was her last chance to make an excuse, hand over the phone, cooperate with Mr. Richard in his magic.

‘Mya, what are you doing? Give me the phone,’ he rasped. The drug he took to make himself so wonderful and big and magnetic—it had worn off. Suddenly he looked and sounded as withered as he truly was.

He came toward her with grasping hands, and for all his age he out-maneuvered her. The door to the room was behind him. The window was open but high above the ground.

She had to get out of here. She suddenly felt sure he intended to devour her in some way. She couldn’t stop herself.

‘Put the phone down, Mya,’ Mr Richard said in a flat, deadly voice. He wasn’t sleepy now. ‘You don’t know what you’re dealing with. Put it down.’

There was only one place she could go. Mya projected her consciousness into the dark-leaved trees outside the window, focusing on their deep roots.

She was not permitted to travel to the forest alone. But she knew how.

‘No, Mya!’ His face tightened until it looked stringy. ‘Do not leave me!’

Mr. Richard made a lunging grasp for the phone. He seized her arm, but she kicked and bit. Her heart was already outside, among the trees, and he had no drug to help him.

Mya slipped between molecules of air and into the wood of the trees. She passed through them and out the other side. The prayer room was gone. Mr Richard was gone. Moonlight tickled the edges of the big star-shaped leaves in the forest, and the stolen phone was still in her hand. Mya’s heart turned over like thunder.

Where's Waldo?

to: [email protected]

from: [email protected]

subject: re: staph infection photo

Stop oozing and taking pictures of yourself. You know I’m delicate. Can you write your mom more often? She calls me, like I’m supposed to know what’s up with you. She says Nana won’t be with us much longer. Your mom’s having a bad time, she needs to know you’re doing OK.

Khari called to ask about you. I said I wasn’t in the loop and btw why don’t you dump Eva and ask Jade out? Just kidding. He’s too old for you.

xx Malu

to: [email protected]

from: [email protected]

subject: re: staph infection photo

I skyped my mom and Nana. I can only get online at an internet cafe, I don’t come here much. My skin is almost better so I’ll be cleared to fight soon. Tell Khari
I want him so bad
I said hi.

My only friend here is a cat. He seems to be a stray. He’s gorgeous. Not a Burmese, not a curly-tailed cat like you see here. He’s big and long-haired and all black. He shows up at camp and watches us train. He’s so cool. Sometimes he appears like out of nowhere. I call him Waldo because you never know where he’ll show up.

I
WAS MADE
of bruises. I was always hungry, always on the toilet, and always homesick. After talking to my mom every day, or at least chatting to her online, it felt terrible to be cut off. I pictured her freaking out missing me, but the truth is I missed her like crazy. I had no friends here yet. Pepsi tried to be nice after our bad start, and he introduced me to his older sister, who often came by with her ladyboy friend Jane to watch pad work. It was kind of weird how Jane was more feminine than I am even though she’s technically a boy. I knew that ladyboys were a normal thing in Bangkok because years ago Cake had showed me a DVD about Nong Toom, a famous boxer who was born male but felt like a girl on the inside. She had fought in makeup and a bra, then saved up her fight money for surgery to become a woman in body. Jane wasn’t talking about surgery, though; I had the impression she wanted to keep her options open. I liked her and she was nice to me, too, which was more than you could say for Pook—the only other woman at camp. Pook wasn’t mean or anything, but she kept away from me. I was sure she didn’t like me.

Luckily Cake’s advice finally was starting to sink in. Don’t confront people, and don’t get angry. Coat told me a phrase for it:
jai yen
. Cool heart.

Why was a cool heart so hard for me? I guess I was afraid that if I stopped being angry and confrontational, there wouldn’t be anything left of me. I wouldn’t be Jade anymore.

I already felt like my identity was getting erased. The language was hard to pronounce and I was struggling to say even simple things, to act the way people were supposed to act here. It was the opposite of everything I knew. I think somehow, when I came here I thought it was going to be like going back to San Cristobal, where everybody knows me. Where things are familiar. In Bangkok, nothing was familiar.

So I threw myself into training. Every morning we ran, then trained for two or three hours, ate, slept through the heat of the day, and trained again in the evening. Then ate again and slept. There was no chit-chat, not with my limited command of the Thai language. No TV, no video games, no Twitter. The insides of my nostrils were black from diesel fumes. And the inside of my head started to go quiet.