The Spirit House (4 page)

“They remember me, like me. Think special boy. They really happy your parent give me opportunity come here and study.”

“Oh. I see.” It was strange that no one had told us he had been out of school, working, for a year.

But so what if he had dropped out? The fact that he was too poor to go to school in Thailand only made him
more
deserving of the chance to come here. And I couldn't help being impressed that he had his own place. That must be why he seemed sophisticated, older, even though he looked the same age as me.

He leaned forward abruptly, his elbows on the table. “Please, Julie. Don't tell parent leave school, work, have room. Okay?”

Telling me he had his own place was the first glimpse he had given me of his real life, and now he seemed to be regretting it, worried that he had said too much. “I won't tell them,” I quickly assured him. “But … why don't you want them to know?”

He looked down at the table, running his hand over the spoon. “Don't want them think I lie. Don't want them think not serious student boy.” He looked up at me again. “Okay, Julie?”

Had he purposely neglected to tell them that information? I didn't really understand why he might have done that. But this was what I had been hoping for. He was beginning to trust me, to let me in on things he seemed to be hiding from the others. “Of course I won't tell them, Bia. You can trust me. I promise.”

“Thank you, Julie. You really good friend,” he said, gazing at me with serious, steady alertness, as though I were a painting in a museum. But there was unexpected warmth in his voice when he said softly, “Really important have good friend in America. Am not forget.”

He sounded so sincere that I almost felt a little guilty. He seemed to think I was doing him this tremendous favor, when I was really just trying to satisfy my curiosity. “So how did you support yourself? What was your job, anyway?” I asked him after a brief silence; the directness of his stare was a little unsettling.

He looked around. “Dominic? Where he go?”

“Oh, he's down in the basement, working on his project. He'll probably be there all day. Don't worry, he won't bother us.”

“Project? What is project? Same he start on unlucky day, Saturday?”

“
I
don't know. Some secret thing. He wouldn't tell me. I'm sure it isn't very interesting.”

“What isn't very interesting?” Dominic said, walking into the kitchen.

Bia smiled. “I am sure Julie is wrong and your project is
very
interesting, Wizard Dominic. I can see?”

“Oh, no,” Dominic said instantly. “It's not ready yet. Don't go down there. Really. It's … a secret, a surprise.”

“Project,” Bia said, not willing to drop the subject. “Is project you start on Saturday?”

“Saturday?” Dominic shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I did. So what?”

“Saturday very,
very
unlucky day, start to make some thing,” Bia said, his voice suddenly serious. “Hope nothing important.”

“Saturday is an unlucky day to start building things?” Dominic said curiously, coming closer.

I was irritated with both of them—with Bia for asking Dominic about his stupid project, and with Dominic for encouraging Bia to talk about these silly superstitions. I was going to have to make it clear to Bia that the kids at school would get the wrong idea about him if he talked to
them
this way. “Hey, listen, Dominic,” I started to say. “Why don't you—”

But Bia interrupted me. “Sunday, Tuesday, unlucky day start to make thing. But Saturday
most
unlucky day of all. Everybody know.”

“Saturday is an unlucky day to start making what
kind
of thing?” Dominic asked him, looking worried.

“House,” Bia said, with conviction. “Never,
never
start to make house on Saturday.”

“But … but what would happen if you did?” Dominic said, swallowing, sounding a little sick. I couldn't believe he was actually taking this stuff seriously.

“Start to make house on Saturday, bring trouble, bring great misfortune to owner of house.” Bia looked at me. “You don't know this? You don't know what day they start to make
this
house?”

I sighed. “Of
course
not! Come on. Nobody pays attention to stuff like that in America. And they'll just think you're nuts if you go around talking about it.”

“But Bia, what if a person didn't
know?
” Dominic said urgently. “Wouldn't it be okay then?”

But finally Bia seemed to be catching on. “Please, don't be so worry, Dominic. Julie right. Different here. Is custom for Thai house, not America house. Here, no problem. In Thai,
mai pen rai
, mean ‘never mind.' And you don't build house, so don't need worry. Okay?”

But Dominic didn't seem particularly relieved. “Yeah, well, I
hope
it's different here,” he said grimly. He paused for a moment, thinking. “And anyway, it
wasn't
Saturday in Thailand when I started it. It's twelve hours later there. So that would count as Sunday. And you said that's not as bad as Saturday. Right?” he pressed Bia, with a kind of tense eagerness.

“Dominic, what's the matter with you? What are you so scared of?” Despite my impatience with this topic, Dominic's reaction made me curious. Though his projects frequently did backfire, he usually never worried about that possibility until it actually happened. “What is this thing you're building, anyway?”

“Nothing. A surprise,” Dominic said, closing up. He turned and wandered back to the basement.

“Now listen, Bia,” I said. “I hope you're not going to talk about things like that, spirits and lucky and unlucky days, to the kids at school. I mean, it's different with Dominic. He's weird—and anyway, it doesn't matter what he thinks. But the other kids, my friends, they might think it's a little, I don't know, peculiar.” I was trying to put it as tactfully as possible. “I mean, I'm not putting down your customs or anything. I know it's different in Thailand. I just want the other kids to like you, that's all.”

He was looking at me in that steady way again. “I think you care about me little bit, Julie. Help me not to make mistake in America. Thank you very much.”

Bia and I spent a lot of time together the week before school started, with Mom and Dad at work all day, and Dominic preoccupied in the basement. I didn't get to know him as well as I would an American boy. But he did begin to relax with me, to smile more than he did when other people were around. We didn't talk every minute we were together. Sometimes, watching me, he would hum, in a sweet, husky voice, snatches of tunes that he told me were popular songs in Thailand. I liked it when he did that, though it made me a little self-conscious. I wondered what the songs were about, and what he was thinking about me.

I never called Gloria back as I'd told her I would on Saturday. She called one more time, concerned about how I was doing, and Lynette called too. I assured them I was okay, just very busy with my family, and I'd tell them all about it at school. They were my friends; they were curious, of course, but not offended. And with Bia around, it was easy to put them out of my mind.

On Wednesday the whole family went out to dinner downtown, and we showed Bia some of the sights. As always, he was very polite but said very little—until we drove past the colored fountain at City Hall Plaza. He was clearly impressed by the changing patterns of illuminated water. He leaned out the window to stare back at it, then said, “Never see thing like that before. Nobody tell me they make water like firework in America!”

“But Bia,” Mom said, turning to look at him from the front seat, “that exact same fountain was on the cover of the guidebook we sent you.”

“Guidebook,” he said, his face suddenly expressionless.

“Even if you didn't bother reading the book, you must have noticed that fountain on the cover,” Mom said, sounding a little hurt. “I was surprised that you never thanked us for it. And we thought it was such a nice gift.”

Bia didn't say anything. And I realized what had probably happened. We had sent the book to his parents' house, of course—I had mailed it myself—and they must have forgotten to give it to him. I was about to explain that it was his parents' fault Bia hadn't mentioned the book—and then remembered that nobody was supposed to know Bia didn't live at home. “Oh, no!” I said, slapping my forehead.

“
Now
what, Julie?” Mom said.

“I … I forgot to mail the guidebook. I was doing a lot of errands that day. I must have just put it down someplace and left it there. I don't remember ever taking it to the post office.”

Mom groaned. “Oh, Julie, when are you going to grow up? How could you be so irresponsible?” But that was all she said. She was still being artificially polite in front of Bia; otherwise she would have berated me about it all the way home.

I didn't mind taking the blame. Bia, sitting next to me in the dark backseat, squeezed my hand, and then held it for a long moment.

The next morning, when Mom and Dad were gone and Dominic was down in the basement, Bia found me in my room, where I was getting some stuff ready for school. “I come in?” he said from the doorway.

I turned around from the desk. “Sure.”

He walked toward me, smiling, holding the jade Buddha pendant in front of him with both hands. “For you, Julie,” he said. “For my special friend.”

“Bia …” I started to protest.

But before I could say any more he had fastened the heavy gold chain around my neck. “For helping me with parent. Not telling secret. Make mother angry with you, to help me.”

“But Bia, your pendant!” I said, looking down at it, feeling strangely close to tears. “How can you give this away? It's so important to you. And you said it brought you good luck.”

“Now don't need good luck. Have special friend who help me. I am never forget. And hope …” He paused, watching me. “And hope you never forget too,” he said slowly, holding me with his eyes. He touched me briefly on the cheek with one hand, then turned and silently left the room.

And now I was blinking back tears. I had never been so moved by a gift before. Nothing anybody else had given me could mean as much as this precious pendant from a poor boy like Bia. It was probably the most valuable thing he had ever had in his life. He wouldn't have given it to me if he didn't really like me.

With two fingers, I lifted the delicately carved jade Buddha up to my face to get a better look at it, stretching out the chain. The clasp that held the heavy chain around my neck came open unexpectedly and the Buddha slipped out of my hand to the floor. I picked it up quickly, glad that Bia hadn't seen me drop it. As I carefully refastened the chain I promised myself that I would get the clasp fixed right away.

I couldn't wait to see what Gloria and Lynette would think when they got their eyes on Bia and then saw the beautiful piece of jewelry he had given me. Now they could meet him. It would be clear to everybody that this handsome and worldly boy was very attached to me.

And then I remembered Mark. I knew he was returning this week; he might phone me at any time. What would I say when he did? I was going to have to deal with him soon. He seemed sort of boring and ordinary to me now, compared to Bia. No American boy had Bia's mystery and intrigue. But was I really ready to break up with Mark because of Bia? I didn't want to think about it.

I pushed Mark from my mind. What mattered was that Bia trusted me now. I still didn't understand him too well, but after today he might share more about himself with me. He had been so unreachable at first that it was especially gratifying to have finally won him over. That made me very happy—and also rather pleased with myself.

But on Friday everything changed.

5

“My project is finished,” Dominic announced when Mom and Dad came home from work on Friday evening. “I want everybody to come and see it.” But he didn't seem proud or enthusiastic, as he usually was at such moments. He seemed nervous, even a little scared. “Come on out in back,” Dominic said, and glanced apprehensively at Bia.

Bia gave one of his rare smiles. “Ah, secret project. Want to see very much.”

We saw it as soon as we stepped out onto the deck—a little dark wooden structure standing on a platform supported by two-by-fours, about four feet off the ground, near the back end of the yard.

The light was fading, and I could not make out the details of the little building from this distance. But the only thing it could be was a spirit house. We all stopped and looked at Bia.

He stared at it for a long moment, as his smile melted away. Then he turned to Dominic, his lips parted, not speaking.

“For you, Bia,” Dominic said solemnly. “A spirit house, to make you feel at home.”

Bia said nothing.

“Is something wrong?” Dominic asked him, more worried now. “Come and look at it. Tell me if it's okay. Be honest. I can change it, fix it. Come on.”

We moved slowly toward it through the darkening yard. “Well, that was very thoughtful of you, Dominic,” Dad said, to break the uneasy silence. But I seemed to remember Bia firmly telling Dominic that he
didn't
want a spirit house here. And the closer we got to the thing, the less I liked it.

There was something ugly, even a little forbidding, about the design and the dimensions of the small building. The roof was steeply slanted, with curved, pointed wooden ornaments along the peak and poking up at the caves. There was a little flight of steps going up from the platform to a porch at the front, which had a railing with diamond-shaped supports. A square doorway was cut in the front wall of the house, through which I could see the empty darkness within. And somehow I wished the roof were not quite so steep, the building a little less narrow, and that it had been brightly colored instead of stained a dull dark brown.