The Merit Birds (3 page)

Cam

I stayed inside the rented house for the next two days. I told Julia it was so I could catch up on sleep and get my laptop set up. This excuse seemed to make her feel better about leaving me alone in the strange house while she visited her new office. The truth was I didn't want to go outside. Nothing out there made sense to me, and everyone stared at me. It was creepy. I tried to sleep, but I couldn't. It's a myth that roosters only crow in the morning. There seemed to be more of the annoying birds than people in this village. Plus my mind would race whenever I lay down. Had Julia told my father we were here?

I was anxious to call Jon back home. Maybe he'd be able to tell me something about Marissa. She was the pretty girl with the locker beside mine. We had started to get friendly last semester, sitting beside each other in chemistry class and using the pretext of helping each other with homework so we could flirt. She had these cute blonde curls, although I think the blonde probably came from a bottle, and she wore purple eye shadow that sparkled under our school's fluorescent lights. We made out at her friend's Christmas party. Then Julia spirited me away to this shithole.

After two days of trying to set up an Internet account and cursing the village roosters, I started at Kaysone International School. I was glad when Julia offered to take me on my first day. She asked her department's driver to take us in his yellow Russian Lada. When he pulled up in front of the school, a low and long building with ceiling-less hallways open to the hot sky, I pretended not to be nervous. The school was built in a horseshoe shape that surrounded a playground for the younger kids and a basketball court. Seeing the familiar, gleaming floors of the court made me feel better. Julia and I walked together to the principal's office. He looked only at her as he spoke.

“At Kaysone International School we have some of the finest teachers from around the world.” He eyed my mother's crossed, bare legs as he recited his lines. “Our mission is to challenge, motivate, and grow together.” He didn't even seem to notice what he was saying. Apparently, Julia didn't, either. I watched, disgusted, as she nodded absent-mindedly and slyly looked him up and down. Her shiny, brown hair was tied back in a sleek, low ponytail. She wore a tight-fitting
sin
and red high heels.

“Isn't class starting soon?” I interrupted.

“Of course,” the principal said. “Mrs. Scott, should you have questions or concerns, please feel free to call or visit any time.”

“Please,” she said, extending her right hand for a lingering handshake, “call me Julia. I'm Julia White. I haven't gone by the name Mrs. Scott since Cameron's father and I divorced years ago.”

The principal clearly brightened at this bit of news. “And where did you say you worked?” he asked.

“At the Canadian development office near Khouvieng Road.”

“So you're the new masters of Public Admin they hired. I heard about you. I've got a friend working in that office.”

“Word gets around in this town.”

“Sure does. Perhaps we could meet for lunch someday?”

“I'm going to go now,” I interrupted before I barfed.

Her high heels clicked on the linoleum floor as we walked together toward my homeroom.

“Good luck, Cameron,” she said as we paused outside the door. Through the thick glass of the door's window I could see my new classmates eyeing me.

“Thanks,” I said. I felt like a kindergartener on the first day of school with her standing beside me like that. Still, I was glad when she quickly reached out her hand and squeezed mine for a split second.

I opened the door and a teacher with a British accent greeted me. He introduced me to my homeroom: English lit. I looked around — a big glass window overlooked the school's soccer field. Everyone sat at wooden desks. It didn't look much different from a classroom at home, except that it was the start of second semester and a ceiling fan hummed instead of a furnace. I was pleased to notice that there were some cute girls. After the period ended, one of them told me her name was Olivia. She was from New Zealand. She asked to look at my timetable and said that we were in the same math class.

“I'll show you where it is,” she offered.

“Cool,” I said, starting to feel less like an alien.

We walked into math class and she said I could sit at the desk beside her. Other students stole glances as they entered the class, curious about the new guy. The room was noisy with chatter, people talking about what they'd done on the weekend.

“What do you do around here for fun, anyway?” I asked Olivia.

“Go to parties, sometimes downtown. We're planning an overnight trip to Nam Ngum for graduation at the end of this semester. Think your parents would let you go?”

Just then a hush fell over the class as the math teacher walked in, dropping a thick textbook on his large desk at the front of the room with a thud.

“You're Cameron Scott, right?” he said, meeting my eyes.

“Yeah.”

A couple students sitting at the front of the room turned to look at me.

“Mr. Scott, we wear uniforms at Kaysone International School. Basketball jerseys are not acceptable, even if they are the Boston Celtics.'”

I hated that I blushed. I had noticed that everyone was wearing white shirts with the school's logo. I looked down and pretended to be searching for something in my backpack so Olivia wouldn't see my red face.

Mr. Rose took the attendance and walked up and down the aisles as he collected everyone's homework. Then he began to introduce the topic for the day — algebra. It was something I was good at.

“Today when we talk numbers we're going to say them in Lao, for practice,” he said.

Did the guy think we were in grade one? I looked at Olivia and rolled my eyes.

“Do you have a problem with that, Mr. Scott?”

Damn, he was watching me like a hawk.

“Why would we do that?” I asked, trying not to sound too antagonistic.

“Why not? It's the language of the country we're living in. Don't you think it would be useful to know how to count?”

I hated being talked to like an idiot — I already felt idiotic enough in this country where I understood shit-all.
Who speaks Lao, anyway? No one outside of this puny country.
I felt an acrid taste in my mouth. I knew it well — the flavour of anger. I packed up my books and stood to leave.

“I know all about you, Mr. Scott.”

I looked up at Mr. Rose.

“I'm the school basketball coach,” he explained in some kind of American accent. “I played college ball with Coach Archambault.”

“Oh, that's why.” I felt a sense of relief. They knew about my dunks all the way in Laos. Coach Archambault said he talked about me with some of his friends in the international school basketball scene. Kaysone International School knew it was getting a star player long before my feet hit the dusty tarmac of Wattay International Airport.

“Yeah, I've heard about your temper, and I don't want to see it in my classroom.”

“Bet you'll like it on the basketball court,” I said, picking up my books and walking out, slamming the door shut behind me.

As I stomped down the hallway I thought about what a loser I was. I didn't want to see Olivia again. She probably thought I was a freak. Years of counselling and I still couldn't control myself. But I was so pissed that my old coach back home blabbed about my temper. A few spats on the court, a couple of suspensions, and it follows me halfway around the world? Didn't seem fair. I was lost in thought and didn't notice the little kid sitting just outside the school's gated entrance until I almost tripped over her. The near accident didn't seem to startle her. With big, dark eyes, she looked up at me groggily from underneath a tangle of knotted hair. She held a bag up to me that already had some small
kip
bills in it, and brought a grubby hand to her mouth, as if she was eating something that wasn't there.

I didn't know why she startled me so much. I'd seen beggars in Ottawa before. But they were never little kids, and they didn't look so hungry. I thought of the classrooms I'd just stormed past inside. All of the foreign, ex-pat students and wealthy Lao kids wearing crisp, white school uniforms. She looked so small and sad.

I stepped over her and kept walking.

A million justifications ran through my head. The money would go to some drunken parent for booze, giving would only keep her on the street, what she really needed was food and there was no restaurant around, someone else would give her money and besides, I didn't have any small bills. I tried to explain it away so I wouldn't have to think about her anymore.

I hated Laos.

Back home everything would be so simple. It would be hockey season. I'd be over at Jon's house, texting Marissa while pretending to finish our history homework in the rec room down in his basement. We'd be watching Hockey Night in Canada and mowing down chips and President's Choice cookies. His favourite team was the Canadiens, but I was a faithful Senators fan.

I was making a list in my head of all the food I'd been craving since we got here: frosted flakes with cold milk, steaming poutine, lime popsicles so cold that vapour rose from them when you took them out of the freezer. We didn't even have a freezer here — just a bar fridge that usually only contained take-home containers from the Australian restaurant in town. Julia never cooked.

I was dying to know how the school basketball team was doing this semester. I missed my friends — joking and shoving each other in the change room after ball practice, or messing around on the ski hill with our snowboards. I missed the crisp, clean smell of a frozen winter's day; the tingle on my cheeks when I entered a warm, familiar place after being out in the cold all day long. I even liked Ottawa's wind chills of minus thirty. They re-energized me. Made me feel new. But here in Laos there was no wind chill. There wasn't even wind. The stagnant sauna of outdoors and the lifeless, concrete island that was our house suffocated me. I tore off my Boston Celtics jersey and stood up on my wicker bed, getting as close to the ceiling fan as I could without getting my head chopped off. I was trying to get cool. It seemed to be working until Julia knocked on the door of my room.

“How come you're home so early?” she asked.

“Why didn't you tell me I was supposed to wear a uniform to school?”

“Oh, I didn't know. Gary didn't mention anything about a uniform,” she said, as if it was no big deal.

“Who's Gary?”

“The principal.”

I groaned. “Yeah, he didn't tell you because he was too busy checking out your legs.”

“Hey, our neighbours are having a welcome
baci
for us on Saturday.” This was an old technique she had used since I was a kid — trying to distract me by changing the subject. One of the counsellors had recommended it to her to avoid a confrontation.

“I don't even know what the hell that is, but I'm sure you'll like it if there are men you can pick up.”

“I don't really know what it is, either,” she mumbled and inhaled deeply so she could ignore the part about men. “I think it's some kind of party Meh Mee and Somchai are throwing.”

“Whatever it is, I'm not going.”

She shrugged, as if she couldn't care less whether we went or not, but I knew it was just an act. She loved this kind of cultural crap.

I was thankful when she finally left, closing the door softly behind her. I looked around my bare room and wondered how I got to be in this place. I had just turned eighteen. Couldn't I have a say about where I wanted to live? The truth was I did have a say, but the choice had frightened me. Before we left Jon's mom had offered me the spare bedroom in their basement.

“You could stay with us for the year that your mom is gone,” she had said.

I hadn't even mentioned the option to Julia. Hell, she probably would have encouraged me to do it. Why would she want me in Vientiane, anyway? It's a lot harder to score a boyfriend when your grumpy kid is following you around.