The Spirit House

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The Spirit House

William Sleator

For Paul

1

“I bet what's-his-name believes in spirits. Everybody in Thailand believes in spirits,” said Dominic, my eleven-year-old brother.

“Don't exaggerate, Dominic,” Mom told him. “It's a modern country. It must be only the uneducated people in little isolated villages who still believe in things like that.”

“Nope,” Dominic said, balancing his fork on the end of his finger. He was excited about the foreign student from Thailand who was coming to live with us, and in his usual thorough way, he had been doing research. “Educated people, professors, scientists, they all believe in spirits. They even make deals with them. They'll ask a spirit to do something for them and promise to pay the spirit back if it helps them, by giving jewelry or money to the spirit's shrine. And then if they get what they asked for, and
don't
pay the spirit back, they're really in trouble.”

“
Professors
believe in that kind of thing?” Dad said doubtfully.

“Yes,” Dominic insisted, jiggling his finger just enough to rock the fork without upsetting its balance. “And everybody has these little structures called spirit houses, outside their real houses, and even outside office buildings and banks and things. So the spirits will go live in them, instead of bothering people inside. I can show you pictures.”

“I'm sure it's just some sort of vestigial cultural thing,” Mom said. “He'll explain that to you when he gets here.”

“He” referred to the foreign student, whose name, Thamrongsak Tan-ngarmtrong, was so unpronounceable that we all felt a little self-conscious about saying it. Mom and Dad had found him through some university connections of Mom's—a good student, but from a poor family.

“I wonder,” Dominic said thoughtfully, his attention wandering away from the fork. “Do you think he'll be worried about spirits bothering him because
we
don't have a spirit house?” The fork clattered onto his plate.

Dad laughed. “I'm sure he'll have lots of other things on his mind.”

I was fifteen, and, unlike Dominic, I wasn't thrilled, to put it mildly, by the idea of having this foreign student come and live with us. I was sure it would wreck my sophomore year. We had moved to this neighborhood when I was a freshman, I hadn't known any of the kids at school, and it was only at the end of the year that I had become part of a group and had started going out with Mark. He was popular and good-looking enough to help my status, but I wasn't really secure—the kids were very socially competitive. And Mark had been away for a month on a trip to Europe. He'd written me several postcards; I hoped that meant we were still going together.

But it wouldn't help my social life to be saddled with some weird little Asian guy. I knew Mom would expect me to include him in everything, which would probably mean I'd end up being left out. When I mentioned the foreign student to my best friends, Gloria and Lynette, they immediately started making jokes about his name.

Mom kept saying it was petty and selfish of me to make any objection to helping an underprivileged person from a developing country. When she talked about how it was our duty to share what we had with someone less fortunate, I gagged.

She yelled at me, “He's coming, Julie, and you'll go out of your way to be nice to him—period!” and I ran up to my room and slammed the door and tried to tell myself that he
might
not be so bad, after all.

Then we got his neatly handwritten letter. The English was excellent, but the content was pathetically earnest. Mom and Dad enjoyed the parts about how grateful he was to them, his “most kindly benefactors,” and how important this experience would be for his future. He also wrote about his fascination with math and foreign languages and said, “When not at school or working I spend all my time on my studies and have no time for wasting on movies, television, pop music, or dancing.”

Then he went drippily on and on about how the most important thing in his life was fulfilling his duty to his beloved parents and grandparents and ancestors, and to the Lord Buddha.

But he didn't only
sound
like a jerk. There was also a photograph, which confirmed my worst fears. He was literally shaven bald, with a lumpy head and big ears and a deadly solemn expression on his narrow, sallow face. My only hope was that he would somehow manage to find a few other nerds like himself to hang out with. I began making mental lists of social outcasts at school to whom I could introduce him as quickly as possible.

He arrived a week before school started. Mom insisted that I go with them to meet him at the airport. I argued and sulked about it, but I had no excuse not to go. And I
was
vaguely curious.

We stood self-consciously at the international terminal, Dad holding up the long piece of cardboard on which Dominic had managed to squeeze the word “Tan-ngarmtrong.” I felt more and more depressed as we watched the Asian passengers emerge from customs.

There were some in groups who looked like refugees, wearing cheap clothes that did not fit, clustered together as they gazed around. Others, very well-dressed, were blasé, as though they had made the trip many times before; these passengers seemed to keep deliberately well away from the refugees. One handsome Asian jet-set couple strolled quite close to us, smoking cigarettes and chatting amiably. There was not a rumple or a crease between them; you never would have guessed they had just stepped off a twenty-four-hour flight. My eyes were naturally drawn to them, in the wistful way that one gazes covertly at beautiful people from an unattainably glamorous world.

We waited. Fewer people were coming out now. Mom and Dad began to worry—and I began to hope—that Thamrongsak had missed the plane. There was nobody who in any way resembled the photograph.

Then Mom gestured at a shabby boy in thick glasses just coming dazedly through the door. “Look, I bet that's him! Maybe we should …” Her voice died as an elderly Asian man rushed to embrace him.

I sighed and glanced again at the elegant couple. They both wore the kind of clothing and gold jewelry you see in expensive magazine ads. Both were good-looking, especially the tall young man, who had high cheekbones and a strong chin and a thick shock of dark hair that tumbled over his forehead. He wore a loose gray open-necked silk shirt and a beautifully fitted black suit.

And then he shook hands with the woman and turned and strolled toward us, his posture erect yet relaxed. “Mr. and Mrs. Kamen, really happy to meet you,” he said smoothly. He lifted his hands, his palms pressed together in a kind of praying gesture, and slightly lowered his head.

It took me a very long moment to begin to grasp the concept that
this
must be our foreign student. And as the astonishing fact slowly sank in, I also realized that he had seen our sign from the beginning, because of the way he'd walked directly toward us now, without looking around at anyone else. Absorbed in conversation with his wealthy fellow passenger, with whom he seemed to have become very friendly, he had simply taken his time about coming to greet us.

We were all a little nonplussed, and I felt more shy than I had in years. Mom and Dad kept looking at each other on the way to the car as they asked him questions, while Dominic and I took turns carrying his suitcase.

Mom did not seem all that pleased about Thamrongsak's unexpected sophistication and good looks. I knew she had been looking forward to some poverty-stricken, scholarly, awkward guy who would be humbly and excessively grateful for our tremendous life-changing benevolence to him. Instead she had been dealt this self-confident man of the world. The irony was beautiful to behold—given what Mom had
thought
she was going to be inflicting on me. It was all I could do not to chuckle out loud.

Mom had to tell Thamrongsak to wear his seat belt—apparently they didn't have them in Thailand, and though Thamrongsak was willing to oblige her, he had a little trouble fastening it. And then he actually put a cigarette in his mouth and pulled a gleaming gold lighter from his pocket. When Mom told him there was no smoking in the car he murmured an apology and immediately clicked off the lighter. But what was he going to do about the fact that there was also no smoking in the house? This was going to be interesting.

I watched him put the unlit cigarette back in his shirt pocket. And I noticed a jade pendant on a heavy gold chain around his neck. The carving was very delicate; I had never seen anything like it.

I was the one who had the nerve to bring up the question we were all wondering about. “How come you looked so
different
in the picture you sent us?” I asked him.

“Picture?” he said, stiffening slightly.

“Picture. That means photograph,” Dominic explained. “You were bald and wearing a robe like a Buddhist monk.”

“Oh, yes, photo,” Thamrongsak said, relaxed again. “Make photo last day of being monk in
wat
.”

He didn't seem to want to say any more about it, but Mom and Dad and Dominic pelted him with questions. Very gradually the information emerged that it was a normal part of Thai culture for all young men to spend a few weeks or months living in a
wat
, or temple, as Buddhist monks. Their heads were shaved, they wore saffron robes, they spent their time praying, studying, and begging for alms. Their diet consisted mainly of whatever scraps people happened to drop into their alms bowls in the morning, which they
had
to eat, however stale and unappetizing. “Old story of very holy man. Thumb of leper fall into bowl—and he eat it,” was the one piece of information that Thamrongsak volunteered without it having to be pried out of him.

“Did
you
ever eat a leper's thumb?” Dominic asked him, obviously impressed.