The Queen of Patpong

Chapter 11

In the end it was simple. Mr. Pattison came at exactly four o'clock the next afternoon and handed Kwan's father eight one-thousand-baht bills and four five-hundreds: ten thousand baht precisely. Her father crumpled them like scrap and shoved them into his back pocket. Kwan read out loud to her mother and father the piece of paper that was meant to lock the door of the schoolhouse behind her, as though the document contained the words of the king, unquestionable and unbreakable. Her father nodded solemnly, but Kwan's mother stayed across the room, as far from the transaction as possible. She seemed as insubstantial as smoke.

Kwan's father signed the paper, some kind of mark that he thought looked like writing. Mr. Pattison folded and pocketed the document, made a wai to Kwan's father, and got one, more or less, in return. He patted Kwan on the shoulder and said, in English, "Glad you're going to stay with us."

Kwan said, "Me, too. I thank you and Teacher Suttikul."

"No problem," Mr. Pattison said, and then added, in his awful Thai, "We'll look forward to seeing Kwan at school tomorrow." He left, and the silence in the house was loud enough to drive Kwan outside.

Her mother never met her eyes.

The next morning Kwan left for school at the usual time, wearing her frayed uniform, the white blouse above the blue skirt with the hem her mother had let down as far as it could go to cover her daughter's endless legs, so far that there was no fold left. Stuffed beneath the papers in Kwan's book bag were two clean T-shirts and her only pair of jeans. She counted the steps down to the street while, behind her, sounding as though he were already a thousand miles away, her father asked what time she'd be home and her mother said same time as always, and her father said what time is that, and her mother said four, and her father grunted. As their voices faded, she marked the moment when she stepped free of her house's shadow and the sun struck her skin. She kept her eyes straight ahead as she walked between the rows of sagging houses, her heart beating like a drum in counterpoint to her footsteps.

When she was safely out of sight of the village, she stopped. She stood there, nowhere in particular, loose-jointed and hollow, for three or four minutes, hearing the cicadas without listening to them and looking at a spot on the road a few meters in front of her, where a small stone lay. Then she reached into the pocket of her blouse and took out the sapphire earrings, which she had removed before going home the previous evening. She put them on by feel, still looking at the spot on the road, and then she went over to the stone and picked it up and put it in her pocket. The earrings were glittering in her ears when, a little less than halfway to school, she took a narrow path between the paddies to the bigger road and climbed into the taxi that was waiting there. The door closing behind her sounded like a cannon.

Nana slid aside on the backseat to make room for her. She was dressed to travel, in the black skirt she'd worn on the day she arrived and a tight red top that looped up over one brown shoulder and left the other bare. The leopard-spotted shoes were back on her feet.

Kwan said, "You look beautiful."

"You're going to be a lot more beautiful than I've ever been."

The driver's eyes flicked to Kwan's in the rearview mirror, and then he shifted with a grinding of gears, and the car bumped down the road.

"Before I get on the train," Kwan said, leaning against the door to increase the distance between them. She had rehearsed the demand in bed the previous night. "I need to know that everything was true. About the house in Bangkok."

"It's worse," Nana said. "You remember what I told you about what would happen to your father's money."

"You mean, the-" But Nana waved her silent before Kwan said the word "police" and lifted her chin toward the back of the driver's head.

"Yes," Nana said. "Them. They would have taken half, and your father would have gone to the bank for more. To get back what he lost. Do you understand what I mean by the bank?"

"Yes," Kwan said. She turned away from Nana to look out the window.

"He drinks, he plays cards. He'd have gone to the bank three or four times. Every time he gets more money, it takes longer to pay-"

Kwan rolled down her window. "I said I understand." SHE'S HEARD the train passing by all her life, but she's never been on one. Nana climbs on board as though the whole thing, all thirty cars of it, has been sent just for her, and she hoists her bright pink bag up onto a shelf above the seats. To Kwan she says, "The bathroom."

"I forgot." The car is dingier than she imagined it would be. The floor has the advanced filthiness of a surface that's been spit on repeatedly. The windows are so dirty that the world outside looks like she's seeing it through a glass of tea, and the seats are worn bare wood, wide enough for three narrow rear ends. Hugging her book bag to her chest, she goes to the end of the car, but there's no bathroom there. She looks back at Nana, who waves briskly for her to keep going. She's in midstride in the third car, threading the narrow corridor between the rows of seats, when the train lurches into motion and sends her sprawling back, onto a hard wooden seat on her right, the book bag squirting up from beneath her arms. She flails at it and grabs it, and a young man, not handsome but wearing immaculate clothing, looks at her in amused surprise as he scoots toward the window.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Kwan says, her face hot as fire.

He smiles at her, a nice smile that contains nothing to be afraid of. "Why? You didn't start the train."

"But I… I fell here, and you… um, you had to move, and-"

"It's fine. Really. Trains do that. If they didn't, we'd never get anyplace, would we?"

Absolutely no words come to her mind. "The… um, the…"

"The bathroom? Down there." He points toward the end of the car. "Put your hands on the backs of the seats as you walk. That way when the train goes around a curve, you won't fall down again."

"This thing," Kwan says, lifting the book bag as though he hasn't seen it and immediately feeling even more stupid.

"One hand, then," he says patiently. "Hold the bag under your left arm and use the right to grab the seat backs."

Kwan nods but still can't think of anything to say. The train is shuddering beneath her feet and making a clacking sound like something chewing rocks. She's starting to haul herself onto her feet again when he says, "Where are you going?"

Where is she going? She hasn't actually asked Nana. "Um," she says. "Bangkok." She manages at the last moment not to turn the word into a question.

"Where in Bangkok? It's a big city."

Kwan nods and says, "Really big." And then, since he seems to expect more, she adds, "My aunt's house."

His eyes travel to the sapphire in her right ear and then come back. "That's good. You've got someone waiting for you, then."

"Oh, yes. My… my aunt." She wants to fan her face, but she won't do it.

"So you said." He lifts his eyebrows and lets them drop. "Well."

"Well," Kwan says, searching desperately for something to say. "Thank you."

He smiles again. "I didn't do anything."

"You taught me… um, how to walk. On the train, I mean."

"You'd have figured it out. So." The eyebrows go up and down again. "The bathroom."

"The bathroom." And then she's up, the bag trapped beneath her left arm, taking it one cautious row at a time, her right hand grasping the backs of the seats.

The bathroom is tiny and dirty, and it smells sweetly awful. She has to lean against the door to get her skirt off, terrified that it'll swing open beneath her weight and she'll be standing there in her frayed underpants. Once the skirt is off, she hurries into the jeans, having some trouble with the left leg because there's nothing to balance herself against except the door, and the train is turning, as the young man said it would. With the jeans finally up and buttoned, she pulls the school blouse over her head and chooses her best T-shirt, the one that nobody else owned before she got it, and slips it on. She looks at herself in the mirror, avoiding her eyes, and smooths the wrinkles in the T-shirt with the palms of her hands. She lifts the blouse by its shoulders to fold it and feel the weight in the pocket. The stone.

She stands there, swaying with the train, holding the stone in her right hand and feeling the distance between her and her village open and stretch. She shoves the stone into the pocket of her jeans.

Then she carefully folds her school uniform and places it in the bottom of the book bag, takes a last glance at herself, and pours water over her hands so she can scrub her face and smooth down her hair. She finds herself thinking of the young man as she dabs her face dry with her spare T-shirt.

When she passes him on her way back to Nana, his eyebrows rise again and stay up as he takes in her jeans and shirt. His smile, when their eyes meet, is more measured than it had been before. "BUT WHAT DO you want?" Nana has been filing her nails for the past twenty kilometers or so, but now she looks over at Kwan, who has her nose pressed to the window, watching Thailand slide by.

"Want?" She realizes that Nana has been talking for a few minutes but has no idea what she's said. "I don't know."

"There must be something."

There is, actually, something she's always wanted. "A wristwatch."

Nana laughs, a laugh as sharp as glass breaking. "In the village? A wristwatch? Why? The whole village is a clock. Sunrise is at sunrise, noon is at noon. When the sun disappears, you pee and go to bed. When it comes up, you pee and wash your face. Everything you have to do, everything everyone has to do, it's got its time, and everybody knows when it is. And if you're wrong, by a few minutes or a few hours, so what? You can do it at the right time the next day. Or the next." She looks critically at her nails, her arms outstretched and her fingers spread. "That was one of the things I hated most. Every day, every day, exactly the same, like the week was Monday, Monday, Monday."

"I still want a watch," Kwan says stubbornly.

"Well, that's easy. If that's all you want, you're going to be happy."

"That's not all I want."

"Then what? What else?"

A better life for my brothers and sisters. Safety for my sister Mai. Someone who will love me. Someone I can love. A place that's mine. Being clean all my life. What she says is, "Never mind."

"Oh, don't sulk. This is an adventure."

"I'm not sulking."

"Don't worry, then. There's nothing to worry about. Don't you want a cell phone? Pretty clothes? A gold bracelet? Two gold bracelets?"

"Yes," Kwan says. "All those things."

"Fine. Don't talk." Nana goes back to work on her nails.

"What time is it?"

"You really do need a watch, don't you?" Nana puts the emery board between her teeth, fumbles with the catch on her own watch, and hands it to Kwan. "Here. Put it on."

"Oh, no, I-"

"Stop that. I just gave it to you. Stop saying no. Life is about getting things. You get nice things, and you give them away. You make money-you never say no to money, never-and you give it to your family. You have food, and you share it with friends. You have spare change, you give it to monks or beggars. But you can't do any of that until you have things."

Kwan says, "Thank you," and tries to put the watch on, but she doesn't know how to work the catch.

"You're absolutely hopeless," Nana says, and she reaches over and snaps the catch closed. "See? You fold it here and then just fit it over the inside piece and press."

"Thank-" Kwan begins, but realizes she's just said that. She looks at the watch. "Almost four," she says. "Mai will be getting home in a few minutes."

"Your mother will be making something for her to eat," Nana says. "Isn't that sweet? And your father will be off in the woods with the three guys who are waiting to tie you up."

Kwan swivels to face her. "That's not-"

"If you're going to remember any of it," Nana says between her teeth, "remember all of it." She looks back down at her nails and frowns. "I don't have the color I want."

"Do you…" Kwan falls silent, and Nana makes a show of folding her hands to hide the unfinished nails and turning her eyes to Kwan's. She waits. "Don't you ever think about it? How you used to be? The people you knew? I mean… I mean-what your life was like?"

"No. My life was covered in shit. I stepped in shit all day long. Buffalo shit, dog shit, sometimes human shit, someplace where some little kid took a squat. I was fat, I was angry, I was lonely, I was hungry. I didn't even know you weren't supposed to be able to be fat and hungry at the same time. Now I'm full and I'm thin. Better, right? I never step in shit. I can have anything I want. Another watch? No problem. Ten pairs of thousand-baht blue jeans? No problem. A man? Anytime I want one. And yeah, sometimes when I don't. But you know what? If that's the worst thing that ever happens to me, I'll die happy." She stops and looks beyond Kwan, at the scenery blurring past the window. When she speaks again, some of the edge is gone from her voice. "You have to wait, baby. You have to see how you feel when you've been there for a while. You're scared. You don't know what your life is going to be like." She puts her hand on her own chest, fingers flat. "You never liked me. Well, I didn't like you either, but that wasn't your fault. I didn't like anybody. So forget what you thought about me then and look at me. Do I look unhappy? Do I look like somebody who's going to jump off a bridge? Do I look like I'm about to burst into tears?"

"No."

"I lived through this. I know hundreds of girls who lived through this. And you know what? You'll live through it."

The train is slowing. Kwan leans against the window and peers ahead. A small station is gliding toward them. People in worn village clothes stand there, clutching plastic bags.

"Nowhere," Nana says, without even looking. "We're nowhere."

The doors open at the end of the car, and the young man Kwan almost fell on walks through them, carrying a cloth traveling bag. As he comes toward them, his eyes find her and then slide past to Nana. The smile on his face loses its energy. He looks straight ahead and passes them without slowing.

"Mr. Nowhere," Nana says when he's gone.

Kwan looks at Nana, seeing her blouse the way the young man had seen it, high on one shoulder and low above the opposite breast. Then she closes her eyes, places a hand over the stone in her pocket, and waits for the train to start again.