The Merit Birds (4 page)

I felt like an idiot having to walk back into Mr. Rose's math class the next day. I wouldn't have gone if he weren't the basketball coach, but I figured if I skipped his class it would hurt my chances of getting on the team. Olivia, the pretty Kiwi girl, gave me a little wave as I walked in. Mr. Rose came in, gave me a nod, and started the lesson. He walked over to me when the other students began independently working out algebra problems at their desks.

“Not the best start,” Mr. Rose said quietly, although it felt like the whole class turned to look.

“Guess not,” I mumbled, focusing on my work.

“It's not easy getting used to another country and culture.” Man, the guy was tall. He loomed over my desk like the CN Tower.

“I don't want to be here,” I said.

“Things will get better with time. Look, Cam, I want you on the team. I just don't want you walking in here feeling like it's owed to you.”

I nodded.

“We've got a game coming up with a tough Thai team. Based on what your coach back in Canada told me, we need you playing in it. How about you start coming out to practice next week and we'll see what you can do?”

I resisted the urge to smile.

“Okay,” I said. Maybe I'd stay in Laos a bit longer. See what the team could do.

“Good.” He patted me on the shoulder and practically skimmed his head on the ceiling fan as he returned to the front of the class.

On Saturday morning Julia popped her head in my room. I glanced at the red numbers on the alarm clock on my rattan bedside table and was surprised to see that it was past noon. Finally I had slept in. My brain must be adjusting to the roosters.

“The
baci
party starts at two,” Julia said.

“I told you I'm not going,” I said and flopped onto my belly, covering my head with a pillow.

“Oh, come on, Cameron. It's for us. Somchai will be there.”

Okay, so Somchai seemed kind of cool. We played
katoh
every night, after the sun went to bed and gave us a break from its relentless heat. But still, I wasn't in the pleasing mood today. I didn't want to give her the satisfaction. Back home, when she was feeling really guilty, she'd try to drag me to some stupid event like an art gallery or a jazz festival. When I was very young I was happy to spend time with her, but then I figured out that she did it just so she could show her posh friends that she was a mom who spent time with her kid.

I didn't answer her. Non-committal — just like she had been all these years.

From underneath the cheap, foam pillow I heard the click of my bedroom door closing. Then, through the flimsy wall, I could hear the picking up and putting down of her hairbrush, lipstick, and eye shadow. These sounds always put the butterflies in my stomach. As a little kid, they were a warning signal that Julia was going out, and if Julia went out, a lot of times she didn't come back until I had tucked myself into bed and fallen asleep with the covers over my head — hiding from the creaks and bumps of an empty house.

“Meh Mee said you should wear a collared shirt and long pants,” Julia called out through the open space that existed between the mouldy ceiling and the top of the wall that separated our bedrooms. I think the space was meant for air circulation, but it didn't seem to be working. Our house was so stagnant. “I know it'll be hot, but that's the custom.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled, crawling out of bed. I went outside in my boxers to get air in the small, cemented courtyard. It was rimmed with what Julia called rose apple trees. They were virtually the only things that grew in our little, gated yard. Waving palms and banana leaves were all around the outside, but inside our rusty gates there was no life. Even our backyard was just a flat, cement pad baking in the harsh sun. From what I could tell, poor people's houses weren't like this. They were weathered wooden slats nailed together and surrounded by a pulsating jumble of vines, chickens, and emerald leaves as big as elephant ears. But a yard ruled by Mother Nature, wild and untamed, wouldn't do for the wealthy folks. I guess rich people liked to be in charge. We got lifeless cement — and lots of it. I couldn't breathe.

One singular tree had been strong enough to pierce through a crack in the cement behind our house. It flourished despite the dry season
.
As I felt the heat of the cement radiating through my bare feet, I could spot Somchai through one of the tree's branches that dared to stretch from our yard to his, braving the multi-coloured shards of glass on top of our fence. He poked his head out of a window with open shutters but no glass or screen. I waved.

“See you this afternoon for your
baci
,” he called, flashing an unbelievably wide grin. Why did Lao people always look so happy? Especially the guys like Somchai, who seemed to have nothing. No computer, no stereo, no video games, nothing but a front yard filled with goats and chickens. From what I'd seen, there were plenty of cellphones and SUVs in Vientiane, but not for people like Somchai. Still, he always seemed to be smiling about something.

“Okay,” I called back, resigning myself to the inevitable.
I'll suck it up and go because I like this guy. Definitely not for Julia.

We arrived at around two o'clock, just as Meh Mee had instructed. She met us at the door in a drenched sarong, her long, greying hair dripping on the wooden step out front. She didn't speak much English, so she just looked down at the wet fabric clinging to her plump body, belly-laughed, and pulled the sarong up higher over her huge breasts.

“She just finished her bath,” Somchai explained from behind her. I'd be so embarrassed if my mother answered the door this way, but he didn't seem to care.

“I got dressed up for this?” I muttered quietly to Julia as Somchai, who was decked out in long khaki pants and a fancy shirt, seated us on the floor and brought us lukewarm glasses of water. Meh Mee's shabby house consisted of one large room. A mosquito net hung in a corner, hovering over a plastic mat that I guessed was someone's bed. A cabinet filled with plates, dusty, pink plastic flowers, and family photos sat beside a window with rain-beaten shutters and no screen. I could hear chickens clucking and an animal scratching, maybe one of their scruffy dogs digging in the dirt around their house.

Julia had tied her long, brown hair back into a bun at the nape of her pale neck, like the Lao mothers do. She was wearing the
sin
Meh Mee had made for her — a chocolate-milk colour, like the Mekong River that oozed sluggishly through Vientiane. She thought she looked beautiful, I could tell. I thought she looked like she was trying too hard.

We sat by ourselves on Meh Mee's floor for what seemed like an hour. Our hosts had disappeared.

“Great welcome party, Juls,” I leaned over and whispered. “This place sucks.”

“At least we get to spend some time together,” she said.

Her comment surprised me. I didn't know she felt that way. Wasn't I was just an annoyance in her life? I tried not to let her see how good her words made me feel. Suddenly we heard the clattering of dishes from the outbuilding behind the house.

“Well, I've had enough,” Julia said, getting up from her polite Lao lady position with legs tucked off to the side. I got up and followed her to the kitchen. I always seemed to be following her. “Let's make up an excuse to leave.”

We were surprised to find the little outbuilding jam-packed with people. All this time we thought only Somchai and his mother were in the house, but not one inch of empty space could be seen in the simple kitchen. A small, wooden counter was stacked with food — chillies floating in unrecognizable liquid, massive baskets of sticky rice, various animal parts carved up and put onto plates. The sink was filled with water and leaves of floating lettuce. Everywhere people — mainly women, but a few guys, too — laughed and chatted wildly, as if someone amongst them was a stand-up comedian. One toothless granny stood over the counter rolling spring rolls. Another crouched on her haunches and hacked at a huge green papaya; the thin, unripe shreds fell into a red plastic basin. The heat made my collared shirt stick to my armpits with sweat and the stomach-churning smell of fermented fish was everywhere. When I complained about it, Julia explained that the smell was from
padek
, a kind of fish sauce Lao people eat with everything.

“Can we — can we help?” Julia asked Somchai as he entered the kitchen. She was obviously taken aback by the number of people crammed into the small space.

“No, no, you are our guests. Go back to the main house and rest until the ceremony starts. We're just waiting for the
mawphon
to arrive,” Somchai said.

“What's that?” I asked.

“The wish priest who leads the ritual.”

His answer didn't exactly clear things up for me. Ritual? Were we sacrificing a sheep or something? I was starting to feel uncomfortable, and not only because I was wearing long pants in the middle of a steam room that stunk like rotting fish.

“I want to help,” Julia insisted.

A middle-aged woman slicing tomatoes on the floor waved my mother over. It looked like the woman was about to play a practical joke because the room erupted into laughter as Julia sat on the floor beside her.

Feeling conspicuous, I made a beeline for Somchai. As I crossed the floor I hoped the sweat running down my legs wouldn't make it look like I'd pissed my pants. I was painfully aware of every single eye in the room following me. I stepped over people, trying not to step on anyone's fingers, to where Somchai was tearing lettuce leaves in the corner of the dimly lit room. The floor beneath me creaked as I walked on its wooden boards, soft and swollen with the humidity. Just as I reached my friend I heard an ear-splitting crack. I swivelled my neck and apprehensively looked all around. Maybe this neighbourhood wasn't so safe after all. The floor lurched beneath me. My heartbeat started to quicken. But when I felt my feet land on the earth beneath the makeshift kitchen with a dull thud, I realized the crashing sound hadn't come from a weapon. I caught my breath and looked down at my feet; my torso poked up through a hole in the decaying floorboards so I could still see the crowded room.

It seemed as if every mouth and utensil in the room dropped. There was nothing but silence. Looking like I had pissed my pants was nothing compared to this.
What a goddamn loser,
I thought.
Breaking a poor family's floor
. I felt my face flush and a familiar anger rising up from the pit of my belly.
Breathe, Cam
, I told myself. I looked up at Somchai guiltily. I felt like I had betrayed him somehow, but when our eyes met he burst into laughter. Next thing I knew the entire room was laughing, slapping their hands in their laps and wiping tears of hilarity from their eyes. The laugh-fest continued as Somchai came over and helped me out of the hole.

“I feel like an ass,” I told him.

“Then I guess we have an ass-hole in our floor,” he said and started laughing so hard again he couldn't speak. After awhile he said, “Are you okay? I'm so sorry. Our floor is old.”

Shouldn't I be the one apologizing
? After everyone had crowded around me to make sure I was okay, I huddled in a corner of the kitchen washing endless clumps of cilantro and hoped the shame would wear off. But as party guests arrived I could tell each one was told the story by the way I was pointed at. Somchai, my saviour, handed me a shot glass filled with clear liquid.

“What is it?”

“
Lao lao
. Rice whiskey. Every person here drinks from this same glass. For solidarity.”

I didn't see what sharing saliva had to do with solidarity, but I was thankful the liquor was strong enough to kill off germs, and some of my shame.

Soon my mother and I were shepherded back into the main house. A crowd of people had gathered in a circle on the floor around a tall centrepiece made from bright orange-and-yellow flowers.

“Look at all the marigolds!” Julia exclaimed.

“Put your left hand here,” Somchai said, touching his long, slender fingers to the bottom of the centrepiece, his palm facing up. “And hold your right hand like this.” He held it up like he was going to do a karate chop. Countless brown hands clutched long, white strings tied to the centrepiece. The strings stretched all the way to the back of the room. A man who seemed to be leading the whole thing began chanting. I guessed he was the wish priest Somchai mentioned. I had no idea what he was saying. Sweat dripped down my back, fell off my nose, and stung my eyes. The chanting seemed to go on forever. At first I was embarrassed to be sitting in the middle of the circle, closest to the centrepiece, while the rest of the partygoers sat behind me. But now I was glad they couldn't see me as I counted the number of tiles on the ceiling and daydreamed about which university would offer me the biggest ball scholarship. But the
mawphon
caught me and made eye contact. He bobbed his grey head, smiling gently, as he continued to chant. He wore a button-up shirt and khaki pants. Whatever a wish priest was, he didn't look any different from the other men at the party. When the chanting finally stopped, I searched for the closest exit. I needed some air. But a throng of people blocked my way. They crowded around me and tied countless white strings around my wrist. They kept repeating the same phrase.