The Merit Birds (18 page)

Seng

The next morning Vong found the wrinkled piece of paper with Meh's address lying on the bedside table of their guesthouse room.

“What's this?” she asked.

For once he knew something that she didn't. For once he was in control. He had taken life into his own hands. He paused to savour the feeling for a moment. He considered not telling her. She read their mother's stout characters, scratched out in a weak pen that looked like it was almost out of ink.

“Seng?”

“She's alive, Vong.” He met her eyes. “Meh.”

Vong flopped down in the wooden guesthouse chair.

“What are you saying?”

“I found her.”
He
found her. No one else. He started to laugh. He had done the very thing he had dreamed of his entire life. By himself.

“Our mom is alive,
euaigh
!” He reached down and hugged his sister. “She's here, in Bangkok.” He laughed hysterically. He buried his face into his sister's shoulder and his wild laughter gradually changed into wild sobbing. They sat for a long time, Seng laughing and weeping, Vong with a confused look on her face.

“I can't wait anymore. We will go see her today,” Seng said, when they finally calmed down.

“We will see our mother today?” Vong asked, eyes wide. “I don't believe this. You must have it all wrong. Is it the stress? Tell me everything.”

“Let's go! I've been waiting to see her since I was five years old. I can't wait any longer,” he said.

Outside the guesthouse, Seng reluctantly handed the flyer over to a
tuk-tuk
driver. He was afraid to let it go, his only link to his mom. The driver nodded and Seng immediately took the flyer and put it into the pocket over his heart.

The driver let them off in front of a grey, brick tenement. Faded skirts with patterns of elephants and men's white undershirts flapped from laundry lines strung across balconies that were overflowing with stuff — boisterous chickens in cages, bicycles, and tattered wicker baskets. Barefoot children in dirty, worn clothes chased each other outside. The smell of smouldering garbage fires was everywhere.

Vong and Seng stepped over a beggar sitting on the cement steps. It looked like she lived in the stairwell. A cardboard box had been laid out flat underneath the stairs. A child sat on it, absent-mindedly forming grains of rice into a picture. She wore no top and her light brown hair frizzed around her head. Vong pressed a few
baht
into the woman's lined, brown palm.

“Please, miss. Can you tell us where apartment number 8 is?” Vong's voice was shaky.

They followed the young woman's directions to the top of the grimy stairs and made a left into a dim, grey hall. With quivering hands, Seng knocked on the door. No one answered. Outside children called out to each other. A coin fell out of his pocket and tingled loudly on the dirty linoleum floor.

“Are you sure it was her, Seng?” Vong asked.

This time they could hear shuffling behind the thin door. The unlatching of locks. The creaking of hinges. And suddenly there she was. For the first time Seng saw her without her dark sunglasses.

Of course.

His mother.

Eyes exactly like his own stared back at him. The smell of frying spring rolls wafted out from behind her.

“Meh!” Seng fell at her feet. “Meh!” He began to weep. Vong wiped her eyes.

“Mother, it's us. Vong and Seng.”

A ghost of a smile passed over their mother's cracked lips.

A door creaking open across the hallway interrupted the moment.

“Mrs. Emkhan. Everything okay?” asked a toothless, young woman.

“Yes, yes. Just the man looking for rent again,” their mother spoke.

Vong shot Seng a confused look.

“Okay, Missus.” The woman turned to speak to Vong and Seng. “I always check up on her, you know. She doesn't remember stuff. Something wrong with her head.”

Seng didn't believe the woman. After all, Meh had remembered him. The woman looked Seng and Vong up and down and seemed to decide they weren't a threat. She went back into her apartment, shutting the scratched, blue door behind her.

“May we come in, Meh?” Seng finally said.

“Yes, yes, of course, although I already paid my rent.” Their mother stepped to the side so Vong and Seng could enter.

Was this act so the neighbours wouldn't know?

The small apartment was cluttered with papers, bags of rice, and pots and pans. There was stuff everywhere. A rice cooker in the bathroom. Crumpled newspapers on the floor. Weak sunlight snuck in through a small, smudged window. On an overflowing bookcase made from cinder blocks and planks of wood Vong spotted a book with a Lao title.

“Vong!” Seng whispered and pointed at a tattered black-and-white photograph stuck to the wall with masking tape. It was of the three of them as children. Nok was squinting in the sun at the camera. Seng's throat caught.

“Meh.” Seng went into the kitchen where their mom was using tongs to take spring rolls out of a pot of boiling oil. He wanted to hold her hands, hug her, but instead Meh put the food on a plate and placed it on the floor. The three sat around the plate and ate silently. There was too much to say.

“Not too many because I have to sell them today. And I already paid you rent, I said.”

“Meh, you can stop the charade now. It's me,” Seng tried again. Emkhan looked up at him with blank eyes. She began to wring her hands. “Remember — we found each other on Khaosan Road?”

She began to rock back and forth on her knees.

“Seng, what's going on?” Vong asked.

“I don't know. She remembered me. She gave me her address. Now it's as if she doesn't know us.” He swallowed the lump in his throat.

“Meh, do you remember this? How you would wave to me every morning from our driveway? When I was five. I would get on my bike and you would stand there until we couldn't see each other anymore. Every morning you did that. Every single morning.” His voice was beginning to sound frantic and cheery in a forced way.

“And do you remember how Nok, just a baby, would try to massage your feet after dinner? Her hands were so small but she was trying to copy Vong. Do you remember that? Meh?” He chuckled awkwardly. Meh began to tear up a tissue she was holding in her hand.

Vong reached over to lay one hand on top of her mother's. Emkhan brushed it aside.

“What about when we would walk past the grounds of the king's palace and you would make up funny stories about how the dragon statues came to be sitting on the temple steps?” His volume was rising with intensity. “Do you remember, Meh?”

“I don't know why you came here. I paid you the rent. I pay every month on time. You should leave an old woman alone.”

He slapped his palm against the insubstantial apartment wall.

The toothless woman from across the hall creaked Meh's door open.

“Mrs. Emhkan, what's going on?” she asked, a look of concern on her face.

“Is something wrong with her?” Vong asked.

“Yes, I told you. She doesn't remember a lot of the time. I think it's called Alzheimer's. Sometimes she remembers and her mind is clear as anything, but then it goes again. I look out for her. She used to help me when she was well. Watch my kids and stuff.”

Seng hung his head and began to sob noisily. This was everything he had ever dreamed of. It had come to him like an unexpected gift only to be cruelly snatched away before he could open it. Vong stood up and went to place a hand on his shoulder while their mother rocked back and forth.

“I know you're not here for the rent because we have the same landlord,” the woman said. “So who are you?”

“Her children,” Vong said. Seng couldn't speak.

“Oh!” the woman raised a hand to her mouth. “Finally.”

“She told you about us?” Vong asked.

“Yes, yes. One day she kept calling me Nok. She showed me this.” She walked over to the makeshift bookshelf and pulled out a book. Tucked inside was a yellowing envelope.

“Here, take it,” the woman said. It had their address in Vientiane written on it. Meh had known where they lived?

“You're Nok?” the woman asked Vong.

“No, her older sister,” Vong said, and looked to her feet.

Seng opened the envelope.

Cam

“I hear you yell at Sai last week,” Huang said to me one morning. His hot, putrid morning breath met my nose. “Huang tell you he no better.”

“No, you're wrong,” I said. “Sai's not like that.”

“You give me Sai's fish, I give you blanket.”

“Never.”

“You know nothing about world.” Huang shook his head.

I ignored him and turned to get dressed. I didn't have time for Huang. My mind was racing about the interrogation room. There were stories of mock executions that left prisoners so shaken they couldn't walk back to their cells. Beatings that broke prisoners' teeth. My body shivered with cold perspiration.

“I hear you in jail for manslaughter,” Huang said.

I felt my throat go dry. How did he know?

“You kill girlfriend. Lao girl.” Huang looked at me from his one good eye. “You in big, big trouble.” He wagged a finger at me. I could see its freakishly long, yellow nail.

I began to breathe long and slow. I stood taller. I wouldn't answer. I wouldn't react.

Huang leaned in closer.

“You know in Laos they execute for manslaughter?”

“What?”

“No one want to tell you. They not want to worry you. Your punishment will be death penalty. I hear guards talking.”

I felt my breath go shallow. I froze.

“You don't know what you're talking about, Huang. You're just trying to scare me into giving you fish.”

“They execute Nigerian man last year. You don't believe Huang, you ask Sai, you love him so much.” Huang's chuckle was menacing. “You not alive for long, no matter how much fish you eat.”

I couldn't think. My mind was racing every which way. How did Huang know about the manslaughter charges? He must have overheard something. And I had overheard some of the guys talking about the Nigerian man who was executed. I needed to talk to Sai.

I chewed my fingernails. My palms were damp. I hadn't even met my lawyer yet. I couldn't wait for legal stuff. I had to get out on my own. I heard the cell door clanking open and jumped. But it was just Sai being guided back into the cell. I went up to him.

“Can we talk?” I whispered.

“Yeah, you ask him. He tell you!” Huang called out from his shadowy corner.

“Sai,” I pulled him by the arm around the corner into the bathroom so no one could hear us.

“What's going on, friend?” he asked.

“In Laos do they give the death penalty for manslaughter?”

Sai's face froze momentarily. “Yes,” he answered.

I could tell by the way he answered that he knew what the charges were against me. He knew I was here for more than a basketball fight.

“You've known all along, haven't you? About the charges against me.”

Sai nodded.

And still he had befriended me.

“Sai, are they going to execute me? Am I going to die here?” I stood, aghast.

“Cam, you know how hard your mom is working to get you out. Stay focused on what is real right now, not on your fears.”

He didn't say no. He didn't say
Cam, don't be ridiculous
.

“I know what is real. They're going to take me to the interrogation room any minute now.” I told Sai about the Vietnamese prisoner who had collapsed from hunger.

“Cam.” Sai looked at me deeply. “Your heart has grown.”

“Yes, but Sai,” I said, “will you help me escape?”

Seng

The silence in their guesthouse room was charged. Seng had scarcely said two words since their visit with their mom. First he had lost his sister and now he had lost his mother — for the second time. He wondered how much one person could stand. He would give anything to have his simple life in Vientiane back. Pedalling home to find Nok sifting rice for dinner, sitting on the riverbank with Khamdeng with his dreams of a better life in America. Now his dreams consisted of him lying on top of a funeral pyre, thick smoke suffocating him, flames licking at his thighs, the sound of sizzling flesh.

“We should talk about what we're going to do next,” Vong's voice broke his thoughts. “Meh can't live by herself like that.”

Seng nodded, but said nothing.

“We're nearly out of money,” Vong continued. “I don't know what we can do. I think I should call Chit and tell him everything.”

Seng thought about how strange it was that he had only met his brother-in-law once, when he had come to Vientiane and taken Vong away from them.

“I've been putting off explaining things to him. I don't want him to worry, or become mixed up in this mess I've created,” Vong continued.

“
You've
created?”

“It was my plan.”

“Yeah, but it was my crime. And I'm the one who found Meh.”
You can't take that away from me
, he thought.

“I should have never left you and Nok in the first place. I tricked myself into thinking everything was okay here. I'm really sorry, brother. For leaving.”

“I'll come with you to call Chit.”

They walked together to the payphone on the corner. Seng stood just in front of the booth. He watched as she dialled. He could only hear Vong's side of the conversation.

“I'm sorry I haven't called. It's been busy, and you know how expensive it is to call from Laos. You got my e-mails, though.”

She had a guilty look on her face.

“You mean the accident is on the news there? Nok's? But why? It happened months ago.”

There was silence as Chit filled in the blanks. Seng still hadn't mentioned the Canadian boyfriend to Vong.

Vong ran her index finger along the hard edges of the payphone. She eyed her fingernails, nearly chewed to the quick. She wouldn't make eye contact with him. He wondered what she knew now. He kicked a stone on the ground.

“Well, I knew she had a Canadian boyfriend but —”

She hung her head.

“Yes, I'm here,” she finally said in a small voice. “He's in jail?”

Seng froze. He raised his hands to his head. In jail? They had actually jailed a foreigner. For his crime.

Vong opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't. A motorbike revved its engine behind her.

“Chit, I'm not in Laos,” she suddenly blurted out.

She told him everything. Seng's crime. The escape. Hiding out in Thailand. Finding their mother. She talked so quickly Seng wondered how Chit could understand. Seng glanced around to make sure no one was in earshot. They were getting sloppy with their hiding.

Now there was nothing but silence coming from the phone booth. Minutes ticked away. Seng felt panic racing through his veins. Vong twisted the phone cord around and around. She wouldn't look at him.

“I don't know what to do next.” She leaned her forehead on the top of the phone. Then she began to gently bang her forehead on it, over and over.

She switched sides.

“What do you mean — they make deals?”

A truck blared its horn.

She suddenly stood tall and listened for a long time.

“Never,” she finally said. Then she slammed the phone down violently. She turned and ran. Weaving in and out of the packed sidewalks, down onto the street, and nearly into a car. The driver blared the horn angrily at her.

Seng followed. When he caught up to her she was bent over, clutching her middle, and breathing heavily. He laid a hand on her back.

“How come you didn't tell me about the Canadian?” she screamed, looking up at him.

“Shame,” Seng said quietly.

“He's in jail, Seng.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Jail? But I thought they took it easy on foreigners.”

“Seng, how can you be so fucking clueless about the world?” She brushed his hand off her back.

Seng was stunned. Her anger cut him like a knife.

“Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot, Vong. I haven't been outside of Laos like you have. Remember, you left us behind.”

She didn't answer.

“We have to get the Canadian out of jail,” he finally said.

“That means you'll take his place,” she said. “Do you know what they'll do to you in jail? You fled the scene of the crime. You killed your own sister!”

Seng hung his head and buried his face in his hands.

She stood up and took a deep breath. “I'm sorry, Seng. I shouldn't have said that.”

“It's true,” he said.

Vong looked at the ground, hands on hips, panting.

“What did Chit say?” he asked.

“I can't even say it. His idea. It's awful.” She pressed her lips together until they turned white.

“We need all the ideas we can get.”

“No we don't. We don't need this one.”

Seng looked away.

Vong sighed. “Chit said Meh's only going to get worse.” She looked down at the ground. “At least he's right about that. It won't be long before she doesn't even know where she is.”

Seng nodded sadly.

“He thinks as long as someone brings her food and pays for her medicine, she would be okay.”

“But we can't leave her alone in her apartment.”

“That's not what he's talking about.”

Seng looked Vong straight in the eyes. “A Royal Lao government employee who successfully escaped from re-education camp so many years ago. In prison. Chit says it would send a strong message. The communists would like it.”

“What does he mean?”

“Turning Meh in. In exchange for your freedom.”

“He can't be serious.” It was as if Vong had started to speak another language. He couldn't understand her.

“He is. He says if we go back to Laos, your life is on the line. You've heard about Lao prisons. But they'd go easy on an elderly woman. Especially one with Alzheimer's.”

“He really thinks I'd send my mother to jail?” he asked. “What kind of person is he?”

“He's just trying to save your life, Seng. Meh wouldn't even know. She would be fed, have shelter. And you would be free. If Meh could make the choice, she would do it, I know she would. You read her letter. She was desperate to contact us all of these years, but she knew it would put us in danger. She wouldn't want your freedom taken from you like hers was.” Her words were suddenly calm and measured.

“You agree with him?” Seng asked, an unfamiliar rage filling his heart.

“Forget I even said it. I just —”

“What?” he stopped.

“I don't want to fail you again. Neglect you. I'm just trying to figure things out.”

“You don't need to, Vong. I don't need you to. I will find my way.”