That Savage Water (17 page)

It was over soon enough – Mali said.

That doesn't mean anything. What a monster. Did he even say he'd move you in here?

No.

You see? He wants to do you up the ass. That's what he likes but he's too embarrassed to put his hands on a boy. Come here. I'll make you
mohinga
like they sell at Sule Paya in Yangon.

Mali sat behind the counter watching the
farang
laze in their hammocks. Cigarette and ganja smoke spiraled upward from their thick fingers, veiling the images on the gigantic screen that kept them comatose for months on end. During the day, they sprawled in the sun like wilted squid. At night their skins turned dark as the peasants who worked the rice fields.

Why do they come here? – Mali asked her – What do they do?

For the parties. Didn't you know? Ko Yao is famous for them. Phram sells them cheap drugs and they dance on the beach until the morning.

Like a festival?

Yes. Like that. That's what the army boat is for.

Why would a festival need soldiers? she thought. Her world felt too small for so many
farang
. Myeik had been a quiet city of pearl farmers and shrimp fishermen, cut off even from the rest of Burma except for the long, bandit-ridden highway that ran through the jungle up the Malay Peninsula. After her brother left to teach at the University of Yangon, her world had shrunk to the dimensions of her family's hut. Nu would sweep the dirt yard clean each morning while Myaing tidied the space around the stove, her father cross-legged in the shade mending the nets the shrimp fishermen would use for harvesting. She thought of her sister. What had happened to her? Along with the hundreds of others who'd jumped over the sides of boats onto the beaches of Thailand, she feared she might never know.

Forget Burma
. Her father's eyes were sacks of sadness buried in despondent sockets. He had paid for their passage to Thailand by selling three terraces of their family's rice field. He had stood at the door to their hut as she and her sister walked off to the dock to join the others at the boat. Something about leaving him in that yard with a half-bag of rice and a few sticks of noodles that would last him a week at most, about picturing him cooking at the fire alone, the loneliness of his eating, that one night in the future of their new lives when he would go to sleep and not wake up. It felt worse than torture to the sisters. Nu's sobs had soaked warm onto Myaing's shoulder, her tiny rib cage heaving as they walked towards the boat.

Luang and Mali lay beneath the mosquito netting listening to the thump of the music echo over from the party on the next beach. Checkering the net with segments, the full moon shone through the woven palm siding.

Tonight is Christmas – Luang said – They'll be dancing until lunchtime tomorrow at least.

Such horrible sounds to dance to.

Luang said – Here. Put your head on my chest. You can listen to the hole in my heart.

Where? – Luang's breasts felt small as rambutans.

Here – she took Mali's fingers – If you press down, you can feel it.

Mali felt nothing but the small arches of bone beneath Luang's skin.

Does it hurt?

What kind of a question is that? No one can ever feel it as well as I can. They don't even believe me when I tell them.

The thump of the music carried down through the jungle as though the trees didn't exist. She didn't know what a party like that could possibly look like, but she imagined huge circles of farang stomping wildly beneath canopies of Christmas lights, celebrating the fact they'd received their cardboard saviour while the rest of the world wandered in suffering searching for theirs. Mali prayed that somehow Nu had made it to shore and was on that beach, listening to the same hypnotic rhythms, thinking of Burma while trying to sleep.

Tell Phram you want to work in the kitchen – Luang said – He owes you that much at least. And don't worry, the pain goes away. Anyways, it's not like you have a hole in your heart to be worried about. At least your twat will heal.

Against the horizon, the army boat floated like its own island, a gigantic continent of moonlit soldiers brought in to patrol the crowd for drugs and weapons. Boats from the next beach throbbed around the small promontory all night and into the morning, ferrying the partiers back to collapse on their sandy mattresses.

Mali woke after Luang had already left for the kitchen. The hut felt unusually quiet, like a forest of pillows had been pressed against all windows and joints, insulating the small room from the outside. She had just thrown her legs over the side of the bed when she heard Phram's voice outside, the glass rattling in the panes as he pounded on the door. A spiral drilled into Mali's stomach and spat up panic. He was drunk.

Mali, you ugly bitch, let me in! – and then – You know as well as anyone what it takes to work in the kitchen.

I'm busy. I'm getting dressed and then I have to clean…

Phram's head was a swaying charcoal shadow on the window curtain. He pressed in closer.

Cunt! You'll do what I say…Luang says you wanted to work in the kitchen. The ugliest whores always want to stick together.

I have to work, Phram. There is cleaning to do.

Since when can Burmese even clean their own assholes – he banged harder – Open up!

Phram!
Phram
! Get your frog-shaped ass away from there! – a voice shouted from farther away – Something's wrong with the ocean!

…wrong with the ocean… – Phram slurred – I'll be back for you, foreigner…

Mali watched the shadow recede at the window, then heard Phram turn his feet and move to the edge of the porch. She peeled back the curtain. Phram's bare back stumbled away from the hut across the sand, all that venom in him sloshing to either side as he went. Then she peered out at the sea.

Like a skull that's just been scalped of its hair, the beach lay bone-smooth, barren of its water except for shallow divots leaping with fish. Knots of coral that had hidden beneath the water now spotted the distance.

The sky pulled the sea back! – a little Thai girl screamed, her arms and legs a starfish as she ran out onto the expanse. Long-tail boats wilted on their sides where their anchors had kept them. Gatherings of foreigners stood with their cameras, posed on the sand or sprinting around to nowhere, the way people do in freshly opened spaces. Mothers took the hands of their children and walked them out, babies in arms – a curiosity best experienced as a family.

Mali opened the door and caught the tang of mineral earth in the air. Luang was standing at the bottom of the stairs with two plastic buckets.

Come on! – she shouted – We'll collect the shellfish! There's a million of them stuck to the rocks.

Is Phram out there?

Phram can suck my dick – she said – We won't share any of them with him anyway. Roasted with some papaya, they'll be delicious! Come on, Mali! He'll never try anything with so many people around. Bring your knife so you can pry the shells loose.

Mali tied her hair behind her head and followed Luang down onto the beach. The boys from the pool table had thrown off their shirts and were racing towards the horizon. Like hooves, their feet sprayed clumps of sand up in the air behind them. The girl with the red dreadlocks had walked out as far as she could on the new sand.

What do you think happened? – Mali asked.

Who even knows. Let's go over to those rocks. Look at all the Thais with their buckets. How poor we all look scrounging for our dinner. And the
farang
certainly laughing at us. I don't even care though.

It felt strange to be so far from the huts yet still on land. They seemed perched on the edge of a desert cliff, having leapt clear of some catastrophe. Even stranger was the quiet of the beach, the water having pulled out so far they could no longer hear the waves. The broken seashells were coarser out here before they would eventually grind their way into the fine white powder of the shore. The new surface was cold and almost slippery beneath her feet – a muck of algae like damp fur. She wondered if she would find old bul ets lodged in the reef where soldiers had shot down into the water at other Burmese girls jumping from boats or if the coral had lactated its bone around them until they disappeared entirely into distresses of scar. She wondered what it would feel like to be buried by something slow as pearl; the millennia of deposits it would take as the waves continued overhead. What she could protect herself from if only she had the ability to surround herself in bone.

Mali found a clump of mollusks a little ways from where Luang had crouched down and started picking. At the base of the rocks, tiny yellow and sapphire fish darted around in sparkling pools. A few already pulsed on the sand, exhausted.

Are you getting many? – Luang shouted – They're coming off so easily!

I'm getting some – Mali shouted back – Yes, I'm getting lots now.

Mali looked over in Luang's direction and then spotted Phram farther out, throwing hunks of sand at the boys from the pool table and then lighting a cigarette. Her insides scalded as she watched him. The boys chased each other in circles like street dogs with no boundaries or curbs to contain them.

It will never seem fair – her father had said, rubbing his thumb along the lacquer coating the silky inner curve of a clam shell – But life doesn't promise us fair. As soon as we realize that, the happier we will be with what's given to us. We Burmese have learned to be happy with things as they are.

She looked down at the sand and then, like rain on a puddle, the minnows broke the surface of her eyes.
Things as they are
. Things as they are were painful and frantic as choking, it didn't matter how many clams she collected for dinner. She missed Nu. She missed Burma, her father, the smell of their fire in the hut, the way the brutality of the army had pulled everyone closer together despite trying to pry it apart.

When she thought about Than, her tears tumbled over her cheeks and dropped into the pools of blue fish. How proud she had been of her brother. No one else in her family had even been to school, let alone become a professor. She used to rub his feet while he read aloud from his textbooks, so many words she didn't know. Just the shape of them in Than's mouth was enough to make her proud.

I'm going in – she shouted to Luang, who had moved to a new rock – Maybe I ate something funny. I don't feel well…

Fine, I'll stay out here and collect them all. But leave me your pail. I'll fill it too.

Mali dropped her bucket and began across the large stretch of sand towards the restaurant huts.

Once, when walking home from the market, Myaing had grabbed Than's arm and held him close.

Don't do that – Than grinned – Everyone will think we're a couple.

I don't mind – she said – It's to show how proud of you I am.

He nodded his smooth handsome face towards a soldier.

Would you be proud of me if I joined the army?

Don't be silly, brother. The army doesn't want soldiers who speak English.

Who told you I speak English, anyway?

Nu did. She heard you practicing.

That parrot! I'll teach her to squawk like one.

I am proud. And besides, professors in Yangon speak a dozen languages, don't they?

I suppose – Than said – Some of them. But you too, Myaing, will have to learn English when you leave for Thailand.

Then we can speak together in secret and no one will understand what we are saying.

Myaing's favorite part was that he didn't pull his arm away. They walked like a blissful couple until their father's hut.

Nearly to the shore, Mali saw groups of farang begin to stand and gaze out at the horizon behind her.
Phram is probably harassing some little girl
, she thought.
Maybe even Luang
. She didn't care. She wished the water hadn't gone so she could inhale full lungs of air and drop to the bottom where he could never find her.

When the
farang
on the shore began to yell, Mali finally turned. The horizon was a dark band of blue that lacerated the sky and ocean. It seemed perpetually stuck at a distance, yet something kinetic stirred inside it – incremental shifts so subtle her eye couldn't catch them directly, the way stars only sparkled when you looked between them at the black.

What is that? –
the farang
were shouting – What's going on?

Maybe an earthquake affected the water?

Look, all the Thais are coming in.

What is it?

It's heading towards the beach!

Jesus Christ. Maybe we should warn them?

The huge bow of the army boat suddenly leapt vertically. A cry of disbelief crescendoed from the shore as the whole enormous vessel was thrown backwards and then twisted sideways, completely capsizing under the giant roils of water. Phram and the boys stood making odd, frantic gestures at the wave, provoking it closer, their high-pitched laughter fully audible over the growing roar. But then they could see the speed of it – the details of the foam, the ribbon of blue that had turned into a thick band of grey that threw up flares of spray as it churned over itself into the shallower water, galloping towards the beach. Something tight rose inside Mali's chest, something in the shape of fear but that felt more like a lung starved of its pull for oxygen. Against Phram's height, the wave rose five or six times higher, taller than the biggest buildings in Myeik, taller than even the palm trees, it seemed. She saw Luang turn and grab both buckets, running as fast as she could with their awkward weights.
Mali! Mali!
Her toes suddenly caught the rise of a divot and her face scrunched as it impacted the ground, the spilled clams an instant constellation on the sand.

Don't worry, you goose. I'm just going to hold your head under – Nu said, standing up to her breasts in the crystal cold stream that ran through the teak forest behind their family's rice field – It doesn't hurt. You just inhale deeply, close your eyes, then go under.