In the Shadow of the Banyan (26 page)

“What are you looking for?”

“Don’t let . . . the flat surface . . . fool you,” he said, his voice straining from overreaching. “Underneath all this sameness . . . there’s a thriving
universe of these creatures.” Suddenly he pulled his arm out of the water, and clinging to the underside of his wrist was a leech—black and quivering.

I pulled back, gasping.

Pok grinned and, grabbing a tuft of grass, scraped the leech off in one quick swipe. “If you try picking it off with your fingers, it’ll reattach itself to your hand or another part of your skin. It’s best to not touch these creatures.” He wiped away a trace of blood on his wrist where the leech must have pierced him.

“Does . . . does it hurt?”

“You mustn’t be afraid.” He looked at me, his gaze suddenly penetrating. “You’ll see them everywhere. Sometimes, a whole troop will surround you, blackening your sight. But it’s the ones you can’t see that you must guard yourself against.” He scrutinized the water and, quickly pointing to a dark, wriggling cluster, said, “There! Needle leeches, they’re called. They’ll enter your body by whatever route possible and make you bleed from the inside.”

I shuddered.

Realizing his misstep—that this might have added to my fear rather than lessened it—he tried to make light of it. “But there’s one good use for these guys. Not the needle leeches, but the fat ones. Pickle them in rice wine and you’ll have a drink with so much fire as to make a coward brave!”

I shivered with disgust. “You’d have to be brave in the first place to drink something like that!”

Pok laughed. “Can’t say I’ve ever tried it myself!”

We made our way to one of the farmers, who stopped his plowing when he heard Pok call out to him. They greeted each other, exchanged pleasantries about the morning, and, nodding at me, Pok introduced, “My
koan thor
.”

The man flashed me a smile, seeming to need no further explanation as to how or from where I’d materialized, but that I was with Pok was enough to warrant his welcome and acceptance. “The soil is as black as worm castings,” he said and, scooping up a handful of the sludge, showed
it to us. “See, plenty of
dey labap,
with just the right amount of silt and sand. We’ll have a good crop this harvest.”

There was something familiar about him. Maybe the way he moved in the paddy, barely stirring the water, or maybe the way he wore only a
kroma
around his waist. But, as I looked around, all the other men plowing the paddies were similarly clad, with the bare minimum, their bodies so lissome and brown and streaked with mud, and I understood now why they were called “people of the paddies.” Their whole life seemed to take place in these muddy fields, and, like the rice stalks, they appeared at once youthful and ancient, tenuous and resilient, light-footed and permanently rooted. It wasn’t difficult now to understand why the Revolution favored them, why there was this need to turn people like Mama and me—the entire urban population, as we’d come to learn—into
neak srae.
Who wouldn’t want to be like them?

The man’s water buffalo snorted, swinging its head in annoyance, impatient to get on with the work. I suddenly realized it was the same water buffalo that had grazed the morning glory earlier, and the owner was the same man who had combed the inundated strip of land with his trap! I swallowed my shyness and asked, “What did you catch?”

He seemed surprised by the question, but then realizing I must’ve seen him from Pok’s hut, smiled broadly and tilted his head toward the trap a few feet away at a dike junction—“See for yourself.”

I went to take a look. Inside the cone-shaped fortress wriggled a catfish as big as my forearm, in a puddle too small for its long body and whiskers. It thrashed about, perhaps sensing it was being observed, mouth open wide as if in a silent scream. Then it went still, its gills heaving, exhausted from the brief exertion.

“I think it’s dying,” I told Pok as he came and stood beside me.

He frowned, seeming more troubled by my concern for the catfish than by the fish itself. “Well, you know . . . ,” he started to say but couldn’t find the words to explain.

He didn’t need to. I understood. Fish was food. I wasn’t naïve. I knew what was going to happen. I’d seen live fish killed and gutted countless times, at the market, in our very own kitchen. Yet somehow that was
different from seeing one so close to its natural habitat, trapped like this when freedom was all around it. I couldn’t help thinking I was in a similar predicament—removed from all that I’d known, cordoned off in an unfamiliar place, yet probably not far from home.

One big jump and you’ll be back in the water! Go on! Jump!

The fish made no response to my silent urgings. It focused what breath it had left on staying alive in this tiny puddle.

I stood up and looked around. If only I could see past the fortress of trees, catch a glimmer of the Mekong.
Sometimes we, like little fishes, are swept up in these big and powerful currents
. . . Papa’s words flooded my mind, and I remembered his despair as he stood beside me on the balcony of Mango Corner overlooking the river, the tightness of his voice as he spoke. If only the currents would reverse, I thought, and carry me back to him. Or him to me.

Again, tears stung my eyes and I felt choked, this time with the realization that this was now my home, my life, that I couldn’t keep pining for all I’d lost. What breath or energy I had left I must focus on making it here, becoming not only
koan thor
to Pok and Mae but
koan neak srae,
a child of these paddies.

•  •  •

When we got back to the hut, Mama wasn’t upset or worried as I’d thought she would be. She smiled when she saw me, her arms raised to hang a sarong on the clothesline that stretched between two papaya trees near the thatched enclosure in the back. Her face was glowing, flushed with youth, with the freshness of the morning’s wash, the night’s cleansing. The rain healed everything, I thought. Or at least washed away the residues of a day’s wreckage. She pulled a shirt—mine, the one I’d worn during our journey—from a basket of freshly laundered clothes and hung it next to her flowered sarong. Anxious to give a reason for my early morning grubbiness, I told her I was out exploring with Pok, who, at the moment when I most needed him to back me up, was quickly disappearing up the trunk of the other Sweetheart palm to finish collecting the sweet juice, which he said must be gotten in the morning, as opposed to the sour juice collected in the afternoon. Mama looked at my bare
feet, the clumps of mud between my toes, the pieces of dead grass stuck to my skin. In the chaos of our departure from the temple, we’d lost my shoes and sandals. But I didn’t miss them. I liked the feel of dirt against my skin, and it was easier to walk barefoot on the uneven ground.

Mama made a small frown, but then, smiling, said instead, “It must have been fun.”

I stared at her, surprised not only that she didn’t reproach me but that she seemed, as before, happy and playful.

She lowered herself on one knee and, with a wet
kroma
from the pile in the basket, began to wipe my face. Her touch, supple and damp, made me think of a mother horse I’d once seen grooming her foal, licking the baby until it was clean. She lifted my chin and wiped underneath it. I felt a rush to hug her—to confirm her realness and solidity against my chest, her heartbeats with mine. But I stayed still, afraid I’d unravel what the rain had mended, that my tenderness would break her all over again. So instead I told her, “There are these needle leeches, and Pok said the way to not let them enter your body is to wear black when you go into the rice paddy, so that you appear like them, like this dark mass floating in the water. This afternoon he will take me to catch eels.”

Mama nodded, running her fingers through my hair, smoothing out the tangles. Then, cupping my face with both hands, she looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s wonderful, all this exploring. But don’t get lost. Remember who you are.”

A warning or a plea, I wasn’t sure.

Then, seeing my confusion, she added, “You know, you would’ve also adored my father. Do you remember I told you he passed away a year before you were born? At the monastery where he’d spent the latter part of his life. But . . . but he also loved the countryside—the rice fields, the mud, the leeches, everything about it.”

It was clear what she was trying to say—Pok reminded her of her father, and it was all right for me to venture about with him.

She let go and, putting the used
kroma
aside, stood up to hang the rest of the laundered clothes, which, I noticed with a start, had become blackish blue, all the colors and patterns gone. Mae had said the
Kamaphibal required that we dye our garments in indigo juice. Everything must be silenced. Black was the color of the Revolution. Mama, with her jade-colored sarong and light pink shirt yet to be dyed, resembled a lotus shooting out of the mud. The colors, or maybe her—the brightness of her presence amidst this straw dwelling and dirt—made me want to hold on tight. I flung my arms around her slender frame, the tapered waist Papa had described as

the narrowing of a river,

A strait into the unknown—

That mystery of birth and origin.

Mama was my source, my home.

“Doll!” came a squeal from behind me. I spun around and there was Radana on Mae’s hip, waving a cassava stem with its oversized star-shaped leaf bunched up and tied with a string so it resembled a stick figure with a ponytail. “Doll!” Radana said again, whacking my head with it.

“I tried to convince her to play in the hut, but no, she’ll have none of it.” Mae handed Radana to Mama. “She wants you.”

“Doll hungry.” Radana thrust the cassava stem at Mama’s chest, making a suckling sound. Mama gently pushed it away, looking somewhat embarrassed, but Radana babbled on, “
Mhum mhum mhum
. . .”

Mae tickled her, nodding toward the cow tethered to a pole among the haystacks. “You sound like her!”

I laughed.
Huh, you little bovine!
Radana, clueless, laughed with me.

Mae turned to Mama. “You go and feed the little ones.” She nodded at the pot perched over a fire under the hut. “I’ll finish putting up the clothes.”

•  •  •

The smell of palm sugar renewed my hunger. Mae had stirred a small chunk into the rice porridge, now turning it a thick, golden brown. Mama spooned some into a bowl and handed it to me. I blew and stirred,
blew and stirred, impatient for it to cool down, my stomach urging me on, moaning incessantly.

Mae came to join us. She put aside the empty basket, poured herself a cup of palm juice from the bamboo flask, and drank it down in one gulp. When Mama tried to offer her some of the porridge from the pot, she shook her head. “No, no, that’s just for you and the little ones. All I need is a bit of this sweet nectar to carry me through the morning.”

I didn’t know if this was true or if she was just saying it because she didn’t want us to feel guilty for eating their meager supply of rice. She poured another cup of palm juice and again drank it down in one go.

“Would you like to help me with my morning chores?” she cooed at Radana, who, looking at the ground still wet from the night’s rain, curled her toes in fearful distaste. “I didn’t think so.” She laughed.

While we ate our porridge, Mae began sweeping the ground around the hut, a broom in each hand, looking all arms and legs, like a spider hard at work. She moved with the lightness of the coconut-spine broomstick, her arm no bigger than its handle, no less sinewy, and as I watched her leap briskly from one spot to the next, I wondered where she stored her energy, her ancient agelessness. She picked up the debris brought in by the wind and rain, working her way to the plot of vegetables at the edge of the land. I quickly finished my porridge and followed her. There she showed me how to pinch off the drooping blades of the lemongrass so that there was room for new growth, and while I did this she went about rescuing the half-buried stalks of turmeric and galangal, whose banana-like leaves gave off a faint scent that reminded me of Om Bao’s curries. She lifted the bitter gourd vines back onto the bamboo trellis that stretched over a couple of rows of curly cabbage. It seemed childlessness had made her more maternal to everything that lived, everything that had fought to survive. “Soak up the sun!” she clucked at the green tomatoes, and at the kaffir limes, “Keep those
vors
away from my little ones!” She gave me a betel-stained grin and, shaking her head in incredulity, marveled again how at this juncture in her life, she should be blessed with children—“When it’s almost too late!”

“Why?—Why is it almost too late?” I thought we’d arrived just in time.

She chuckled, blushing. “Pok and I are so old, you see, and soon we’ll return to the spirit world.”

“How old are you?”

“Older than I can count!” She laughed.

A rooster suddenly crowed:
Kakingongur!

“Finally, he rises!” Mae declared, looking around. “Where’s that scoundrel?”

I pointed to the clay vat near the thatched enclosure. The rooster, with its neck stretched out, bellowed again:
Kakingongur!

Mae hollered back at him, “You’re no use to me! I’m up half the day already, done all my chores, and you’re just clearing your throat!”

The rooster flapped his wings as if to say,
I’ll show you, old woman!
and for the third time asserted,
Kakingongur!

We returned to the hut. Mae set aside the twig broom and, hitching up her sarong, squatted down in front of the cooking fire. She removed the porridge pot and placed it on the ground. Then, using a piece of firewood, she pushed the stones farther apart from one another to build a perch for a bigger pot.

“What are you going to cook?” I asked, swallowing, thinking perhaps she was going to steam some rice cakes.

“I’m going to boil some palm juice to make sugar.” She coughed, hands waving away the clouds of smoke mushrooming from the fire when she added the piece of rain-dampened log. “I—I need your lungs, child.” She gestured to the moribund embers, still coughing. “Give it a good puff.”