Good Morning, Thailand

            by Leila Pakawongse

 

The dust had gathered in my throat.    That was what woke me to the thick air encompassing Thailand.   My aunts house had been air conditioned all night to suit the American way of living.   I had been left to sleep as long as I pleased, but the roosters the neighbors kept for various reasons felt it necessary to wake me at dawn.   I didn’t think it was possible to feel this oven-baked when the air conditioner was expelling cool crisp air at my bedside, but apparently it was possible.   I spent the night tucked into the film thin ‘blankets’ that covered my baby pink teddy-bear embroidered pajamas.   Keita, my older brother slept beside me, in his super cool ninja turtle pajamas.   Oh, we were a duo to be reckoned with.   I kicked his lower back.   I needed to make sure he was awake.   If I had to be awake this early, I was taking him with me.   His hand slapped my face in response to the morning shake he got and we were even.
Good Morning, Thailand.
A wall of Hello Kitty and Kermit the Frog stuffed animals were staring at me.   I was never able to decide if a giant green frog was adorable or odd.   The latter overpowered my thoughts and I decided to turn the stuffed animals around, I needed my privacy while changing.   I slipped my leg into the silky feeling of the new pants I just received courtesy of my cousin’s closet.   Now being at the ripe old age of six, I figured that anything pink would suit me, and anything that was a size too big would be comfortable.   Thailand was not ready for this big pink marshmallow to storm its streets.
Typically, being six and one of the youngins in the house I was left helpless to the plans of the adults.   Keita liked to think that he was clued in, but three years don’t mean squat to the aunts and uncles that filled the room.   I sat with my cousin and Keita on the leather couch that melted upon my skin’s touch eating cereal that was too sweet for my tongue with milk that seemed watered down.   Delicious.   The chatter of a different dialect left me without my best resource, eavesdropping, so I resorted to trying to decipher the funny jokes made in Thai coming from the television.   Lost in translation didn’t even begin to sum up how I lost I felt not being able to relate to cartoons.  
I walked past my mom and dad pretending to understand what they were saying in their natural tongue.   Psh, back to cartoons.
Thailand, as my father told me during the fifteen hour plane ride over some pond, is a place of smiles.   There is nothing that family won’t do for family and a stranger won’t do for a stranger.   Both my parents tried to emphasize that in Thailand, respect and love mean the same thing.   I woke up every morning as my aunt gently caressed me to the morning sun.   I received a smile along with my breakfast from my uncle, and never once did I feel like a intruder in my cousin’s room, which my brother and I had successfully taken over.
You begin to feel like a you’re a part of a tour group when you’re in a foreign country.   The guides: your parents.   The passengers: your family.   The driver: one of your six uncles.   The trip: who knows where.
It is interesting the way you have to prepare yourself to exit a house when you’re in Thailand.  A bottle of water, check.  Sunscreen, check.  Sandals, check.  I could never let go of the idea that we were going to the beach.  
Maybe we were going to the beach!
The fam fam packed into the car.  Someone had prepared for this trip  -  having gotten together the 12 seated van ready with the air-conditioning set on high for us as we briskly walked from front porch to transportation.
I’m reminded of those video games at the bowling alley where you drive like a madman to catch a silver Honda that seems to get away each time you come within a close enough distance to clip the bumper.  That is exactly the description I would assign a Thai driver.  We ricocheted from lane to lane not obeying the traffic laws that weren’t enforced.   I don’t know if we were racing to beat the traffic of if the traffic was racing us, but entertaining was the definition of our car chase.   The race lasted longer than the cartoon I was watching earlier that morning, but soon after we got on our way, the air seemed to settle around the van.  
We had traveled into dust.  All the dust made my throat remember the faint taste of that same morning’s awakening.  The dirt road caused the van to sway from side to side.   The music had been turned down, or perhaps someone had decided to turn it off entirely.   The fluctuations, tones and emphasis on different parts of speech had subsided.   I didn’t notice then, but the laughing had stopped.
My dad sat two seats in front of me.  This was the first moment I noticed something in his lap.  I entered stealth mode, came up with the ingenious plan to simply stand up and see what my father was holding in his lap.   The idea of falling out of my seat had entered my mind, but the curiosity of what my dad was holding eliminated the possibility.   I unbuckled the seatbelt my mom had me strapped in and awkwardly raised myself out of my seat.   I was in a half-standing-about-to-sit stance when the object came into focus.   There was a familiar air to the picture, the same profound feeling I felt when my dad looked at me.   The woman in the picture had a pale face from all of the years of stress and worry.   Her hair, combed perfectly to resemble the technique used by her ancestors.   Her wrinkles were precisely where they needed to be and her smile was only a subtle essence of the joy she once carried.   I had met her only once in my memory, but even then I was too young to remember anything more than an image.
How was everyone sleeping with all the jerking?
I wanted to ask my father why he was holding the picture.   I wanted to ask my mother why she wasn’t laughing in her high pitched, nails on the chalkboard, laugh she always exuded from her body.   I wanted to ask Keita how he could be sleeping in the midst of all this abyss when I remembered the slap to the face I got as a lovely present that same morning.
Where the hell are we going?
Why didn’t anyone bother to tell me?
I looked outside the window at the vast brown.   I watched as each object ran away from my sight, and a new one soon followed.   Tree after tree, animal after animal, cement block after cement block.   We stopped at the start of a trail.
Apparently, we had arrived.
The anticipation I felt had built up in my bones.   Goosebumps took over my skin, as the family gathered our belongings strewn across the ground of the van.   My mom came to unfasten my seatbelt.
“Leila, why is your seatbelt so loose?  Tum ali yoo? What did you do?”
“It was Keita”
“Dek bah.   Crazy children”
I looked at my dad who usually had a wink in his eye.   We always knew when the other was being mischievous.   I grabbed his attention but couldn’t find a hint of understanding in his eyes.   I could see that his hands were still clutched upon the picture of my grandmother.   I knew that there was a story behind that picture, there always was.   My dad had stories in his back pocket, in his shirt pocket, in his hat and never missed a moment to unfold one for my brother and me.  
I waited for it. 
“Paw Ka, ma ti ni ta miy?  Dad, why did we come here?”  I asked in a form of Thai only my parents could comprehend.
We were at a sad place and there was no other way of saying it.   Family was here, everyone’s family.   Mothers, Fathers, Husbands, Wives, Daughters, Sons, everyone in someone’s family was at our destination.   We were at the cemetery.  
“Ma ni.   Come here,” my father said to me.   It was all he said.
I reached out aimlessly hoping to find someone’s familiar hand to grab.   I didn’t care who the hand belonged to, I didn’t care whether they wanted to be touched or not, I needed someone, anyone at that moment.   I was walking amongst the dead, I was the living minority in this population.   I was standing on dead people.   I looked around and followed the crowd.   I could’ve started to cry and then someone would’ve come swept me up and rocked me til I stopped.   I could’ve yelled that I was tired and someone would’ve taken me back to the van to sit and rest up.   I could’ve asked for all of us to go to an amusement park and someone would comply.   But not today.   Today wasn’t my day.
So, I cried.
There was nothing else I knew I could do but cry.   The heat, the sweat, the stress, the wonder and confusion, and mystery made me cry.   I look in retrospect now that maybe I was crying because the act seemed appropriate.   I wanted to understand my father, because for six years, it was all I knew for certain.   I knew that my father understood me, in my complicated actions.   I knew that my father loved me, and because of that, I understood him.   I looked up at this man who had taught me tricks of the trade at memorizing the multiples of nine, and saw that a tear followed by another and another lined up from his eyes to his chin.   The line never stopped moving. 
I searched for Keita without ever moving.   My eyes switched focus from object to object in hopes of spying my brother.   I found him kneeled down on the ground at the head of one of those cement blocks.
“Laong hiy ta mi?  Why are you crying?” 
I my own reasons for crying.   I just didn’t know why Keita was crying. 
He pointed to the to what he was kneeling in front of.   The same picture my dad was holding was cemented to the block.   It was my grandmother.  
“Mi dit lu wa ma ni at mi, uh?  You didn’t know why we came here?”  He asked me, as if I was supposed to know.
I couldn’t bare being the only one left out of this big secret.   My tears still hadn’t subsided.   My emotions were still haywire and all I wanted was for someone to explain to me why I was here.
“Ma ka.  Ma ni ta mi?  Ta mi took cong laong hiy?  Mom, why did we come here?  Why is everyone crying?” 
“Looke, Ma ni pa wa paw mi did biy wey ma thon mah con paw sea.   Child, we came here because dad never got to say ‘bye’. ”
I cried harder.
Now the tears made sense.  I knew that my dad was hurting.
Mom pulled me aside.
“Leila, hiy Ma bok wa ali guet… Thon paw dieyin wa ma con paw sea, paw yak ja ma ti Mung Thai….  Leila, let me tell you … When dad found out that his mom was sick, he wanted to come home  -  no, not back to our house  -  but he wanted to come back to Thailand.   Dad and Yie, grandmother, talked on the phone every night until she left him.   I told papa to go to Thailand, but he wanted us all to go with him.   He didn’t want to leave you and Keita at home, he didn’t want to leave us… Dad said that his mom would understand”
Of course she would understand.  She and I shared a commonality between us that no one else shared.  We both understood my father.
She held my hand as we walked back.
Finally, someone was holding my hand.
In Thai tradition, you say your thanks to those who have taught you what you know.   All of my aunts and uncles said his or her anecdotes about my grandmother.   I caught every third and a half word that was said, but the imagine in my head of this woman turned from silhouette to a strong picture.  Each time I heard them speak about Yie I was learning more about each of those wrinkles on her face.  Each time I heard someone speak about Yie, a tear was replaced by a smile on my father’s face.  
“Paw ka…  Dad…”
“A liel, Leila?  Yes, Leila?”
“I’m sorry”
“Cow gi, uh?  You understand?”
“ She taught you to understand.   You taught me to understand ”