The Worst Years of Your Life (11 page)

He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator—though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.

E
VERY SO OFTEN
I
DREAM OF MY BROTHER'S FACE ON FIRE,
his brown eyes—eyes very much like my own—staring at me through a terrible mask of flames. I wake to the scent of burning flesh, his fiery face looming before me as an afterimage, and in that darkness I am eleven again. I have not yet learned to trespass. I have not yet learned to grieve. Nor have I learned to pity us—my brother, my mother, and me—and Anek and I are in Bangkok sitting on the roof of our mother's house smoking cigarettes, watching people drifting by on their bicycles while the neighbors release their mangy dogs for the night to roam the city's streets.

It was a Saturday. Saturdays meant the city didn't burn the dump behind our house. We could breathe freely again. We wouldn't have to shut all the windows to keep out the stench, sleep in suffocating heat. Downstairs, we could hear Ma cooking in the outdoor kitchen, the clang of pots and pans, the warm smell of rice curling up toward us.

“Hey, kid,” Anek said, stubbing his cigarette on the corrugated tin roof. “What's for dinner?” I sniffed the air. I had a keen sense of smell in those days.
Like a dog,
Anek told his friends once.
My little brother can smell your ma taking a crap on the other side of town.

“Rice.”

“Sure.”

“Green beans. Fried egg.”

“No meat?”

“No. I don't smell any meat.”

“Oi.” Anek threw a leaf over the edge of the roof. It hovered for a second before dropping swiftly to the street. “I'm tired of this. I'm tired of green beans.”

Our father had been dead for four months. The insurance money from the factory was running out. There had been a malfunctioning crane and a crate the size of our house full of little wooden toys waiting to be sent to the children of America. Not a very large crate when I think about the size of the house, but big enough to kill a man when it fell on him from a height of ten meters. At the funeral, I was surprised by how little sadness I'd felt, as if it wasn't our father laid out before the mourners at all—wasn't him lying there in that rubberwood box, wasn't his body popping and crackling in the temple furnace like kindling—but a striking replica of our father in a state of rest. Pa had taken us to the wax museum once, and I remember thinking that he had somehow commissioned the museum to make a beautiful replica of himself and would be appearing any minute now at his own funeral.

After the cremation, we went with Ma to scatter the ashes at Pak Nam. We rode a small six-seater boat out to where the brown river emptied into the green sea. We leaned over the side—all three of us tipping the tiny tin urn together—while Ma tried to mutter a prayer through her tears.

Anek lit another cigarette.

“Are you going out tonight?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can I come with?”

“I don't think so.”

“But you said last time—”

“Stop whining. I know what I said last time. I said I might. I said maybe. I made no promises, kid. I told you no lies. Last I checked, ‘maybe' didn't mean ‘yes.'”

A
MONTH BEFORE
, for my birthday, Anek had taken me to the new American fast-food place at Sogo Mall. I was happy that day. I had dreamed all week of hamburgers and french fries and a nice cold soda and the air-conditioning of the place. During the ride to the mall, my arms wrapped around my brother's waist, the motorcycle sputtering under us, I imagined sitting at one of those shiny plastic tables across from my brother. We'd be pals. After all, it was my birthday—he had to grant me that. We would look like those university students I had seen through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the ones who laughed and sipped at their sodas. Afterward, we would walk into the summer sun with soft-serve sundaes, my brother's arm around my shoulder.

The place was packed, full of students and families clamoring for a taste of American fast food. All around us, people hungrily devoured their meals. I could smell beef cooking on the grill, hear peanut oil bubbling in the deep-fryers. I stared at the illuminated menu above the counter.

“What should I get, Anek?”

“Don't worry, kid. I know just what you'd like.”

We waited in line, ordered at the counter, took our tray to an empty booth. Anek said he wasn't hungry, but I knew he had only enough money to order for me: a small burger and some fries. I decided not to ask him about it. I wasn't going to piss him off, what with it being my birthday and what with people being so touchy about money ever since Pa died. As we walked to the booth, I told Anek we could share the meal, I probably wouldn't be able to finish it all myself anyway.

Even though he had been telling me all month about how delicious and great the place was, my brother looked a little uncomfortable. He kept glancing around nervously. It occurred to me then that it was probably his first time there as well. We had on our best clothes that day—Anek in his blue jeans and white polo shirt, me in my khakis and red button-down—but even then I knew our clothes couldn't compare with the other kids' clothes. Their clothes had been bought in the mall; ours had been bought at the weekend bazaar and were cheap imitations of what they wore.

Anek stared across the table at me. He smiled. He tousled my hair. “Happy birthday, kid. Eat up.”

“Thanks, Anek.”

I unwrapped the burger. I peeked under the bun at the gray meat, the limp green pickles, the swirl of yellow mustard and red ketchup drenching the bun. Anek stared out the window at the road in front of the mall. For some reason, I suddenly felt like I should eat as quickly as possible so we could get the hell out of there. I didn't feel so excited anymore. And I noticed that the place smelled strange—a scent I'd never encountered before—a bit rancid, like palaa fish left too long in the sun. Later, I would find out it was cheese.

I took a few apprehensive bites at the bun. I bit into the brittle meat. I chewed and I chewed and I chewed and I finally swallowed, the thick mass inching slowly down my throat. I took another bite. Then I felt my stomach shoot up to my throat like one of those bottle rockets Anek and I used to set off in front of Apae's convenience store just to piss him off. I remember thinking, Oh fuck, oh fuck, please no, but before I could take a deep breath to settle things, it all came rushing out of me. I threw up all over that shiny American linoleum floor.

A hush fell over the place, followed by a smattering of giggles.

“Oh, you fucking pussy,” Anek hissed.

“I'm sorry, Anek.”

“You goddamn, motherfucking, monkey-cock-sucking piece of low-class pussy.”

I wiped my lips with my forearm. Anek pulled me to my feet, led me out through the glass double doors, his hand on my collar. I tried to say sorry again, but before I could mouth the words my heart felt like it might explode and—just as we cleared the doors—I sent a stream of gray-green vomit splashing against the hot concrete.

“Oh. My. Fucking. Lord. Why?” Anek moaned, lifting his face to the sky. “Oh why, Lord? Why hast thou forsaken me?” Anek and I had been watching a lot of Christian movies on TV lately.

When we came to a traffic stop an hour later, I was leaning against my brother's back, still feeling ill, thick traffic smoke whipping around us. Anek turned to me and said: “That's the first and last time, kid. I can't believe you. All that money for a bunch of puke. No more fucking hamburgers for you.”

W
E FINISHED
watching the sun set over the neighborhood, a panoply of red and orange and purple and blue. Anek told me that Bangkok sunsets were the most beautiful sunsets in the world. “It's the pollution,” he said. “Brings out the colors in the sky.” Then after Anek and I smoked the last of the cigarettes, we climbed down from the roof.

At dinner, as usual, we barely said a word to each other. Ma had been saying less and less ever since that crate of toys killed our father. She was all headshakes and nods, headshakes and nods. We picked at our green beans, slathered fish sauce on our rice.

“Thanks for the meal, Ma.”

Ma nodded.

“Yeah, Ma, this is delicious.”

She nodded again.

Besides the silence, Ma's cooking was also getting worse, but we couldn't bring ourselves to say anything about it. What's more, she had perfected the art of moving silently through the house. She seemed an apparition in those days. She'd retreated into herself. She no longer watched over us. She simply watched. I'd be doodling in my book at the kitchen table and all of a sudden Ma would just be sitting there, peering at me with her chin in one hand. Or Anek and I would be horsing around in the outdoor kitchen after dinner, throwing buckets of dirty dishwater on each other, and we'd look over our shoulders to find Ma standing against the crumbling concrete siding of the house. Anek told me she caught him masturbating in the bathroom once. He didn't even realize she had opened the door until he heard it shut, a loud slam so he could know that she'd seen him. Anek didn't masturbate for weeks after that and neither did I.

One night I caught Ma staring at the bedroom mirror with an astonished look on her face, as if she no longer recognized her own sallow reflection. It seemed Pa's death had made our mother a curious spectator of her own life, though when I think of her now I wonder if she was simply waiting for us to notice her grief. But we were just children, Anek and I, and when children learn to acknowledge the gravity of their loved ones' sorrows they're no longer children.

“That woman needs help,” Anek said after we washed the dishes that evening.

“She's just sad, Anek.”

“Listen, kid, I'm sad too, okay? Do you see me walking around like a mute, though? Do you see me sneaking around the house like I'm some fucking ninja?”

I dropped it. I didn't feel like talking about the state of things that night, not with Anek. I knew he would get angry if we talked about Pa, if we talked about his death, if we talked about what it was doing to Ma. I never knew what to do with my brother's anger in those days. I simply and desperately needed his love.

I
THINK
A
NEK
felt bad about the hamburger incident because he started giving me lessons on the motorcycle, an old 350cc Honda our father had ridden to the factory every morning. After Pa died, Ma wanted to sell the bike, but Anek convinced her not to. He told her the bike wasn't worth much. He claimed it needed too many repairs. But I knew that aside from some superficial damage—chipped paint, an ugly crack in the rear mudguard, rusted-through places in the exhaust pipe—the bike was in fine working condition. Anek wanted the bike for himself. He'd been complaining all year about being the only one among his friends without a bike. We'd spent countless hours at the mall showroom, my brother wandering among the gleaming new bikes while I trailed behind him absentmindedly. And though I thought then that my brother had lied to my mother out of selfishness, I know now that Pa did not leave us much. That Honda was Anek's inheritance.

He'd kick-start it for me—I didn't have the strength to do it myself—and I'd hop on in front and ride slowly through the neighborhood with Anek behind me.

“I'll kill you, you little shit. I'll kill you if you break my bike,” he'd yell when I approached a turn too fast or when I had trouble steadying the handlebars after coming out of one. “I'm gonna nail you to a fucking cross like Jesus-fucking-Christ.”

My feet barely reached the gear pedal, but I'd learned, within a week, to shift into second by sliding off the seat. I'd accelerate out of first, snap the clutch, slide off the seat just so, then pop the gear into place. We'd putter by the city dump at twenty, twenty-five kilos an hour and some of the dek khaya, the garbage children whose families lived in shanties on the dump, would race alongside us, urging me to go faster, asking Anek if they could ride too.

I began to understand the way Anek had eyed those showroom bikes. I began to get a taste for speed.

“That's as fast as I'm letting you go,” Anek once said when we got home. “Second gear's good enough for now.”

“But I can do it, Anek. I can do it.”

“Get taller, kid. Get stronger.”

“C'mon, Anek. Please. Second is so slow. It's stupid.”

“I'll tell you what's stupid, little brother. What's stupid is you're eleven years old. What's stupid is you go into turns like a drunkard. What's stupid is you can't even reach the gear pedal. Grow, kid. Give me twenty more centimeters. Then maybe we'll talk about letting you do third. Maybe.”

“W
HY CAN'T
I come?”

“Because you can't, that's why.”

“But you said last week—”

“I already told you, vomit-boy. I know what I said last week. I said maybe. Which part of that didn't you understand? I didn't say, ‘Oh yes! Of course, buddy! I love you so much! You're my super pal! I'd love to take you out next Saturday!' now did I?”