The Merit Birds Part 14

Turns out there wasn't anything else to do in the cell but count Sai's ribs. No books or magazines were allowed. I lay on the wooden floorboards and tried to close my eyes, but that would just make the thoughts race faster through my head. I thought about Julia and her bitter screams. What had my temper done to her?

The clanging of the steel bar door as its sliding bolts unlocked interrupted my thoughts. Sai's eyes opened.

"Dinner time," he said.

A toothless prison guard slid one bowl of watery soup along the floor and a basket of sticky rice.

"Who's it for?" I asked, wondering what was floating in the soup.

"It's for us all. One bowl per room," Sai said. He had to be joking.

He rolled a ball of sticky rice in his right hand and pa.s.sed it to me. I wasn't hungry, but I thought food might stop my shakes. I gingerly bit into the ball of rice. Sai ate hungrily, slurping as he spooned the soup into his mouth. Huang raised his head to see what was going on, and then hung it again with disinterest. Suddenly something hard cracked between my molars. I raised a hand to my cheek and tried to pry the small pebble out with my tongue. I watched Sai as he used his fingers to pick his teeth. Then I watched him wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, push the bowl aside. There was nothing else to do but watch him. He stood up, placed his hands on his lower back and leaned back to stretch. He walked to the bathroom. I felt anxiety creep up in my throat. My legs started to get jumpy. I drummed my fingers on the floor.

"They'll take you to work tomorrow," he said when he came out.

As the cell grew darker, a guard wearing a green uniform brought Danh and Tong back. They undressed and lay on the floor in their underwear. They looked exhausted. Before long I knew they were sleeping by the deepening of their breath. I sat and watched as the cell grew black. It was like I was watching a movie. It wasn't real. Finally the cell was completely dark. There was nothing left to watch. I closed my eyes, but my rushing thoughts kept sleep far away.

Mess.

Seng.

Seng was comforted by the crowd they had to jostle through to find a cheap Bangkok guesthouse. The sidewalks were heaving with people: well-dressed teenagers laughing into their cellphones; dirty, poor children with their wild brown hair and palms held up to sunburned tourists; businesspeople in suits and skirts. There was no way he and Vong would be spotted in the middle of them all.

Seng wasn't sure how to work the shower in their small room. At home he always used a bucket to pour water over himself. He didn't want to ask Vong how to use it. He could take care of himself. He eyed the gleaming silver handle and pulled it up. Water flowed out of the tap. Easy enough, but how could he get it to come out of the showerhead? He fiddled around with the handle, making the water hot and cold. Then he noticed the little metal rod on top of the tap. He pulled it up and the water shot through the showerhead, piercing his body. See? he thought, I can figure things out for myself.

After his shower, he fell onto the thin bed of the guestroom, exhausted. A ceiling fan whirred overhead.

"So when do we go to Canada?" he asked.

Vong looked up from the crumpled map she was reading, surprised.

"Seng, you don't have a pa.s.sport. How can we go to Canada?" She looked annoyed by his question.

"I thought that was the plan, euaigh. Bangkok and then Canada."

"I said Bangkok and then we'll see."

That was not how he remembered it. He had to stop relying on her so much. He needed to come up with his own plan. Why was she here, anyway? She should go back to her easy life with Chit. It was what she had left them for, after all.

Vong looked guilty. "Don't worry about it, little brother. What we need right now is sleep. We'll decide tomorrow."

He gave her a weak smile and turned over on his side to sleep. She climbed onto the bed beside him - they could only afford a room with one bed.

"You sleep the same way you did as a kid. With your legs curled and your hand tucked in between your knees," she said. "Do you remember how we used to sleep side by side on the floor of the Luang Prabang house? On full-moon nights we could see the mango tree from the window. Remember making bets about who would be able to reach the highest mango the next day?"

"You always got it, Vong. The mango."

Vong laughed.

"Tell me something about our mother," he said. Maybe it would make him feel better.

She shifted in the bed.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. A good memory of her."

"Well, let's see. When I was young I dreamed of being a dancer in the king's court. Did you know that?"

"No."

He didn't want to know about her, he wanted to know about their mother.

"I was good. One of Meh's friends gave me lessons. The king's dancers used to talk about me, how I would dance for him one day." She rolled over to look at Seng. "One time Meh snuck me in to watch the Laos National Ballet. I remember giggling and hiding with her behind a thick, musty-smelling curtain as we watched the dancers. It was the Ramayana story. I can still see the silky wave of long hair down the back of the dancer who played Sita." She paused, as if she was savouring the memory.

"You know what I remember most of all?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

"I remember the looks on the dancers' faces. The glimmer of someone practising something they truly love. You know that look? Now I'm just a cashier at a grocery store."

That's better than peddling cheap plastic goods, he thought. He was getting tired of her. Did she think of anyone but herself? He rolled over and tried deepening his breath so she'd think he was asleep, even though he hadn't truly slept since Nok had died.

Since Nok was killed.

"Nothing but a cashier, and I can't even have a baby," she said into the night. "That's what the doctors say. Something's wrong with me. I can't get pregnant."

His heart softened.

"So sorry to hear that, sister," he said.

"I really want to be a mother. To know what's it like to love someone like that."

He wondered what it would be like to be loved so unconditionally. His sisters loved him, he knew that. And Khamdeng. But he didn't think anything could compare to the feel of a mother's love.

From the hall outside of their room he heard backpackers, their voices thick with drink and excitement, returning to the guesthouse for the night. He heard the slap of the staff's flip-flops as they showed late-arriving guests to their rooms. Gradually the noise waned and the guesthouse was shrouded in the silent blackness of very late at night.

"We should sleep," she said.

"Yes," he said, rolling over and feeling very alone, even though the bed they were sharing was crowded with their two round bodies.

Every Single Day.

Cam.

I didn't know where the guard was taking me. He called me toward the cell door with a rough hand gesture, handcuffed me, and led me down a corridor slick with some kind of fluid. My heart pounded violently. He led me outside, past murky brown ponds. I could barely open my eyes in the sun's intensity. We pa.s.sed the interrogation room, where I heard the screams of a grown man and the smell of something burning. I tried to swallow, but couldn't. My legs felt like jelly, but I knew things would be worse if I stopped walking. Finally, he pushed me toward the visitor's hut, where Julia and Meh Mee were waiting.

It felt like a month had pa.s.sed since I'd seen Julia, but she said it had been six days. She gasped when she saw me, brought a hand to her mouth. Then she hugged me so tightly I lost my breath. I shook in her arms. She would make it okay. She would carry me away from here. When we pulled away, her shoulder was soaked with my tears.

"I came every day and they wouldn't let me in." Dark blue circles cupped her wet eyes. "Finally, I brought Meh Mee. She talked to the guards in Lao and they agreed to a bribe." Meh Mee smiled sadly at me.

A guard watched us from the corner of the damp room. A pistol hung from his hip. Dust motes floated in the sunlight streaming in through the dark-brown slats of the wooden hut. Julia smelled like the outside - alive and clean. She reached into her stuffed canvas bag and pa.s.sed me crackers, a big bottle of juice, and a jar of peanut b.u.t.ter. She ripped the tinfoil off a small pizza from a French restaurant. The steam streamed up towards the mouldy rafters. My hands were so shaky she had to hold it up to my mouth to eat. It felt warm and substantial in my mouth. I closed my eyes and noticed the tang of the sauce, the thickness of the cheese, and the crispness of the green pepper. I had never tasted pizza so delicious.

"The Canadian government is on our case, Cam." I liked how she said our, as if I wasn't alone. "They're sending a rep from the Australian emba.s.sy until a Canadian official can get here. The Australian should be meeting with you any day now."

"When?"

"We don't know. But soon."

I looked down in my lap.

"I'm trying, honey. I am doing everything I can." She started to cry. I looked at Meh Mee.

"Where's Somchai?"

Julia wiped her nose and reached for my hands. The room was silent.

"Where's Somchai?" I asked again.

"The investigative police interviewed him." Julia looked away.

"What do you mean?"

"They wanted him to say he wasn't in Vang Vieng with you on the night that Nok was killed. He wouldn't do it."

Meh Mee looked down in her lap, fingered her worn sin.

"He was beaten up badly, Cam. But he's going to be okay."

I pushed away the pizza she was holding up to my mouth. I bit my lower lip. Silence was all around. This was too much. Anger welled up inside of me, but this time I didn't need to count it away. Fear was doing it for me. I had heard the shrieks of prisoners being punished for bad behaviour. I was so powerless.

"He's going to be okay, Cam," Julia squeezed my hand tightly. Meh Mee nodded at me. I couldn't speak.

The guard walked towards us, pulled Meh Mee up roughly by her arm.

"We have to go now. They would only give us fifteen minutes. I will come every day, Cam. Every single day." Julia's voice cracked. Tears streamed down her cheeks. What was I doing to them all? Everyone I cared about was suffering and it was all my fault.

She turned around to take one last look. I held up a trembling hand to wave to her.

"Every single day, Cam. I will be at those prison gates."

"Thanks, Mom," I said. It was the first time I had called her "Mom" in eleven years. The word felt good in my mouth, round, soft, and rea.s.suring.

Breathe.

Cam.

Sai and I sat in the cell, staring at each other without even noticing it. Or at least I didn't notice it. Sai seemed to notice everything. I was so bored out of my mind I stared at him all the time. He fascinated me. The way nothing seemed to bother him, not even when the guards spoke to him like he was a dog. The way his breath got deep and loud when there was a commotion in the prison - a man screaming out as his legs were clamped with wooden blocks, or cellmates arguing loudly with each other in the middle of the night. It was like he would almost relax into the disturbing moment, instead of wishing it away. Sometimes he would close his eyes for hours on end with his back as straight as the bars on our cell. When he was like that his belly would move in and out with his breath while the corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. I was sharing a cell with the Buddha himself.

One night I was led back to the cell after a day of weeding the prison vegetable garden in torrential rain. It was August, the wettest month of the Lao year. I was covered in a thick layer of slick red mud. The prison guard hadn't even let me stop to go to the bathroom. I had to p.i.s.s right there in between the wormy tomatoes and cilantro. As I pulled th.o.r.n.y weeds all I could think about was Somchai. What had the police done to him? By the time the grey day began to fade into black I was so mad that I was getting freaked out. I was afraid that I would explode and be taken to the interrogation room, and afraid of the rumours I heard of men being burned or whipped.

After the guard locked our cell door and was out of earshot, I peeled my soaking uniform away from my now-scrawny body and chucked each piece across the cell so they slapped against the prison wall and splattered mud everywhere. I grabbed the bucket for our makeshift shower and chucked it against the wall so hard it cracked. Huang looked up from his snoring. His lifeless eyes told me he had seen outbursts like this so many times he couldn't care less. I began to pound the hard cement wall with my fists.

"Breathe, my friend," Sai said.

"f.u.c.k off, Sai. People have been telling me that my whole life."

"Yeah, but do you know how to breathe?" he asked in a way that didn't make me feel like an idiot.

He walked over and gently took hold of my wrist. He stared at me with brown eyes that were soft and steady at the same time. I felt something inside me shift, although my heart still flailed violently in my ribcage. My shoulders dropped away from my ears. The knots of tension in my back muscles softened. He led me to sit beside him on the hard prison floor.

"Belly relaxes out on the inhale, comes in towards the spine on the exhale. Close your mouth and do it through your nose. It filters the air."

He closed his eyes and placed his hands in prayer at his heart. His breath sounded like waves. I closed my eyes and copied its slow rhythm. It was bizarre, but why not? There was nothing else to do.

"Now try breathing one breath per minute. You'll never feel depressed." He flickered his eyes open briefly to speak.

"One breath a minute? How is that possible?"

"Inhale through your nose for twenty seconds, hold your breath for twenty seconds and exhale out your nose for twenty seconds. I'll count for you."

"I feel like I'm going to pa.s.s out," I said after trying it.

"Okay, start with eight seconds and work your way up day by day."

"This is weird."

"Just do it and then tell me what's weird."

We stayed like that for a long time, sitting beside one another, inhaling and exhaling. When we finished, I collapsed onto my place on the hard floor and slept a deep, dreamless sleep.