The Sad Part Was Page 4

  You shouldn’t eat rice with chocolate, you know. It’s not nutritious. Give me the chocolate. I’ll hold on to it until school gets out, and then I’ll give it back. Now eat your rice with the dishes that your families prepared for you. I want to see you eat it all up.

  Tong-Jai burst into tears.

  Pui looked at her with pity. Pui considers her friend the type that’s committed to what she loves. Naturally, she can’t bear it when she’s forced to part with something she holds dear.

  After school that day, Skinny Ms. Bacon didn’t return the chocolate to Tong-Jai and Pui as promised. They never saw the chocolate again.

  Tong-Jai announced to Pui that in future, if anyone at school promised to do something after school, she would first negotiate for it to be done a little before the end of the school day, because once school was out, her student status was temporarily suspended and she had no power to demand anything.

  The following day, Tong-Jai tried to sneak a peek at Skinny Ms. Bacon’s gums, to see if she could detect any dark brown traces.

  Tong-Jai had made up her mind that, if she saw any, she would call the police.

  2. “My House,” a Composition by Little Miss Tong-Jai

  My house has two floors. The upper floor is eleven steps higher than the lower one. Sometimes I walk upstairs. Sometimes my father carries me up. It depends on whether I’ve fallen asleep watching TV that night. If I don’t, I walk myself up. If I do, then my father carries me up. Some nights my father tries to wake me to walk myself up, but I don’t wake up easily, or if I do wake up, I’m too groggy and my father has to carry me up anyway.

  My house is a cement house. My mother said my house used to be made of wood but then my father tore it down and rebuilt it using cement. I can’t confirm that, though, because that was before I was born. My house is white. The roof is made of yellow tiles. Sometimes when it rains hard, rainwater leaks into the house. My mother said our roof had a leak, but I’ve never seen where it is because I’ve never been on the roof. I once asked my father if I could go up and see where the hole was. My father said I had to wait until I got bigger before he would take me up. I’m afraid that before that happens, the hole will have grown so large that the rain floods our house. If I drown, I won’t get to see the hole on the roof. My father said, don’t worry, he’d buy a boat to be prepared – no matter what happens, I won’t die from drowning.

  My house has four human inhabitants and one dog. My dog is named Spot because he has black dots all over his body, as if someone drew spots on him. My mother said he was born that way. But I think my father might have dribbled black ink on him when he was still little, because my father once spilled black ink on the living room rug, and it left a blotch exactly like the dots on Spot’s body, and it also didn’t wash off. I’ve asked my father if he dripped ink on Spot. He repeatedly denied it. He refuses to confess.

  The four people in my house are me, my father, my mother and Pi Nid. Pi Nid is my nanny, but when I’m not home she has plenty of other things to do, like sweeping, mopping, doing laundry, ironing, washing the dishes, and cooking. Sometimes Pi Nid gets scolded by my parents. Sometimes the scolding makes her cry, and then she comes to complain to me that my parents are mean. I myself don’t understand why Pi Nid lives at my house if she thinks that my parents are mean. I asked Pi Nid why she doesn’t run away if she doesn’t like my mother and father. She said she can’t because she has to work and earn money to support her mother back home in the provinces. I don’t know what Pi Nid’s house is like because I’ve never been there, but my house has two floors.

  My house was robbed once. I think the robber slipped in through the hole in the roof. My father said the robber pried the window open to break in, but if there’s already a hole in the roof, why would you waste your time and energy with the window? Mr. or Ms. Robber (I don’t know if the robber was male or female) took four things: a TV, my father’s big stereo, a VCR and a vacuum cleaner – all big, heavy things, which might explain why he or she had to crank the window open; to carry the big items out more conveniently. In that case, it’s possible that the robber slipped in through the hole in the roof and then escaped through the window afterward. See, if the robber had chosen to take only small objects, he or she probably could have slipped back out through the hole in the roof and wouldn’t have had to spend so much effort wrestling with the window.

  After my house got robbed, I didn’t have a TV to watch for days, almost a whole week. So all that week I was able to walk myself up the stairs to go to bed, because I went to sleep earlier than normal. My parents were irritated that they couldn’t listen to music on the stereo, couldn’t catch any series on TV and couldn’t rent any videos. I felt like that week my house had more dust than before because we didn’t have a vacuum, but no one seemed to miss the vacuum much. Pi Nid even seemed happy that the robber stole the vacuum cleaner. Luckily, Spot didn’t get stolen, too. I would miss him the most if he’d been carried off. But as far as I know, robbers tend not to steal living things.

  My house faces northwest. I’ve never measured it myself, but my father once said, “Did you know, Tong-Jai, that our house faces northwest?” I didn’t know. Now that I know, I want to know northwhat I face. My father said people keep changing the direction they face because animals are living things, which don’t stay still. But I think it wouldn’t be too bad if we had devices we could attach to ourselves to tell us northwhat we were facing at any given time. My father said a device like that already exists. It’s called a compass, and it has a magnetic needle. If I held a compass all the time, I would always know which direction I was facing. I asked my father to buy me a compass. He said he would get me one as a present for my birthday, which is still a while away. My father often says he’ll buy me something for my birthday. I’m probably going to get a lot of presents for my birthday this year. But right now, what I want most is a compass. Once I get one, I’ll have to be very careful, because if not I might prick my finger with the magnetic needle, which seems like it would hurt more than getting pricked by a regular needle.

  Now that I think about it, I kind of understand why the robber didn’t steal Spot (even though he’s very cute). It’s probably because Spot is a living thing and doesn’t stay put. He keeps changing directions, and that would cause the robber constant annoyance and confusion over northwhich he was facing. Even I get annoyed that I have to wait until my birthday to find out which way I’m facing.

  My house is down a side street, but it’s not very far down. It’s only about a five-minute walk from the top of the street. If you’re tired, it might take a little more than five minutes, probably about seven and half minutes, which is not the house’s fault because my house can’t move. It just sits there like that. Whether it takes a little or a lot of time to get from the top of the street to the house depends on the walker. If you ride down in a car, it’s even a few minutes faster than walking. But if the car breaks down or bumps into another car first, you might never reach my house. Therefore, if you’re going to come in a car, you should be sure to fasten the seat belt properly. If you ride on the back of a motorbike, don’t forget to put on a helmet.

  I think my house is beautiful. But others might look at it and see an ordinary house with nothing special, which might be because others don’t yet know northwhat my house faces.

  Miss Space

  When, in early elementary school, I had just started learning to write, the teacher taught us to put our index fingers between sentences to ensure neat, even spaces throughout the composition.

  Years later, after I’d mastered writing (or at least scrawling), the index-finger system was ignored and eventually abandoned. The spaces between sentences were liberated from their regulator and put in charge of their own arrangement. An up-to-me anarchy prevailed. Without checks and bounds, the letters became brash – they got loose, lax and liquidy, lumped together or leaning forwards and backwards in a carefree an
d shameless manner.

  Even so, the size of my spaces could still be described as normal. It didn’t strike the eye as odd, unlike those produced by the following person:

  Miss Wondee.

  She was in her early twenties. Her birth fell on a hot, sunny noon. The doctor who performed the delivery was in a bad mood that day. He had diarrhea and a backache, and his recurrent migraine was also acting up. Yet he upheld his duty, seamlessly managing to pull out the head of a bright pink, grumpy-faced baby girl. When the umbilical cord linking mother and child was snipped, one life became two.

  The baby girl screamed as if she regretted being born. Her mother gathered her strength and turned to look, with concerned tenderness, at the infant who had inhabited her body for several months:

  This is the first minute of life in the outside world? How miraculous and how pitiful at the same time. Baby, don’t cry. This is all there is to life: live for a while, eat, sleep, learn from books made up of other people’s ideas, meet all kinds of folks, some you’ll love, some you’ll hate. When you meet the one you hate least, you can be together, help each other along as you eat and sleep and earn baht to exchange for possessions. If you want a lot of possessions, you’ll have to earn a lot of baht. If you’re lucky (or unlucky), you’ll live to be old. Sometimes you’re tired, sometimes bored, sometimes sad, sometimes happy – that’s all life is. You won’t have to wait too long before you die.

  I first met Miss Wondee on the bus. We were sitting next to each other, and she was bent over scribbling something. She had a notebook with yellow paper on her lap and a 2B pencil in her right hand. My nose and the ease with which it tended towards its adjective made me sneak a look at what she was writing, to see whether it was a worthy object of my attention.

  It was then that I noticed the extraordinary size of Miss Wondee’s spaces. Four twenty-five pm, to be exact. The air-conditioned (the condition of the air went from good to bad) bus was turning right at the intersection. The driver had twangy upcountry music playing faintly on the radio. The lyrics recounted the classic story about a farmer coming to the big city to look for his girlfriend, who had left the provinces to sell herself under the neon lights.

  I remember all this in such detail because of the size of Miss Wondee’s spaces. They catalysed my consciousness as though it had been struck by lightning, and I briefly became abnormally perceptive, able to absorb information about my environment instantaneously and effortlessly. Thank god I stopped just short of Nirvana.

  Wondee was writing a diary entry: what she did, whom she saw, who called, when she went to bed. It was your average entry, and my staring didn’t manage to pinpoint minor details. What was more interesting than the letters that lined up to create meaning were the areas between each thought: they were about as long as the sentences themselves. It was as if they were there to provide breathing room, so that each letter could inhale and exhale comfortably.

  “Excuse me,” I said softly, fearing that I’d break her concentration.

  She didn’t hear me, or pretended not to. Or she heard me but was afraid to talk to a male stranger on the bus. Or she heard me and didn’t want to be bothered. Or she half heard me. (She might have been prevented from hearing both words clearly by the noise from the bus engine, which cycled between loud and soft, so perhaps she was unsure whether I was talking to her or whether I was a crazy person talking to myself.)

  “Excuse me. Please forgive my indiscretion, but my meddlesome eyes happened to notice your writing. Please don’t think that I was snooping – not at all! You could’ve been writing the most intimate things about yourself, but I didn’t read any of it, and I wouldn’t dare to. And if I accidentally read some, I’ll gladly erase that bit of my memory in the next few seconds. Trust me, I don’t mean to pry into your personal business, but the reason I’m chatting you up like this is, I noticed how bizarrely you arrange your writing. I can’t hold back my curiosity. Can I ask you a question? I hope you don’t mind.”

  After such a lengthy spiel, she’d have to turn around and look at me, even if she hadn’t been able to catch what I was saying. Her irises, black as tamarind seeds, didn’t flicker. The outer corners of her eyes angled down toward her cheek bones, like the downward-curving eyes of a laughing Buddha, but one that wasn’t laughing or smiling. She stared at my face before dragging out the words: What did you say?

  “It’s like this,” I turned toward her about thirty degrees, started gesturing with my hands, making the same preparations for a serious conversation as I’d witnessed from academics on television.

  “Your spacing has left a big impression on me.” She looked down at the notebook on her lap.

  “I don’t know if you’re conscious of it, but the way you space is extraordinary. When, in early elementary school, I had just started learning to write, the teacher taught us to put our index fingers between sentences to ensure neat, even spaces throughout the composition. Years later, after I’d mastered writing (or at least scrawling), the index-finger system was ignored and eventually abandoned. The spaces between sentences have been liberated from their regulator and put in charge of their own arrangement. An up-to-me anarchy prevails. Without checks and bounds, the letters have become brash – they’ve got loose, lax and liquidy, and now lump together or lean forwards and backwards in a carefree and shameless manner.

  “Even so, the size of my spaces can still be described as normal. It doesn’t strike the eye as odd. But look at yours. Your spacing is abnormally large. One might say that you give as much weight to the spaces as the letters in your sentences. Or maybe even more. When I look at the page you have there, the first thing I see are the spaces, not the letters. So, I wanted to ask: is that intentional, or is it a deranged childhood habit you can’t break? For me, I see a whole range of potential philosophical takes on it. For example, perhaps you’re suggesting that meaning and blankness have equal importance. Or you’re conveying something about intervals in the thought process and how they should contain pauses to leave room for further possibilities to develop. Or your spaces are comparable to shadows of memory, left as a hint that memory is not a substitute for the truth, not a record of history, but rather a shadow, a residual feeling left over from the past.

  “Am I getting warm with my analysis? I’d be grateful if you’d be so kind as to reveal the origins of your idiosyncratic manner of spacing.”

  She sat there frozen for a moment. Her right hand was tightly clutching the 2B pencil. Her other hand was spread over the yellow page of her notebook. Maybe she was trying to conceal the idiosyncrasy between her sentences, out of embarrassment (or fear). The paper beneath her palm started to shrivel as the sweat seeped out through her pores.

  A moment later, her lips began to part.

  “I’m sorry. My name’s Wondee. I’ve got to go – you made me miss my stop several minutes ago. If I don’t get off at the next stop, I’ll have to walk much further than I want to. I’m wearing new shoes – I can’t walk too much in them or I’ll get blisters. So please excuse me, but I have to get off. Although I don’t quite understand what you were saying, I’m happy to talk to you, but it’d have to be another day. I’ll write my number down for you.”

  Wondee looked down. Her pencil began to move. Then, with the hand that was holding the pencil, she tore off a corner from a page of her notebook and handed it to me.

  Seven digits were written on the piece of paper in this manner:

  6 3 4 8 6 5 4

  Even for numbers, she made (no) room for exception.

  The word “space” seems an architectural word. When it was adapted for use in orthography, it must have become abstracted and linked to the art of the optical – leaving blank spaces in a way that’s easy on the eyes and comfortable to read. If you were to call them “blanks,” the connotation would be undesirably negative. These areas may not hold anything, but they’re not empty – they clearly have their own spec
ial function.

  Even though the origin of the word “space” could be considered more or less acceptable, I wasn’t satisfied with it. For me, it’s too strong a word, and lacks a creative meaning. (The word “space” makes me feel like my letters could vanish into thin air at any moment. This feeling presents a major obstacle to writing.)

  When I got home that day, the day I met the spacer named Wondee, I tried while sitting down, while lying down, while showering, while brushing my teeth, to come up with a more suitable word.

  Eventually, I landed on the term “waiting period”.

  Here, “waiting” means waiting for the next thought. Waiting for the mood. Waiting remains a mere act of hope – what you’re waiting for may never come. The word is broad and inconclusive. After I resolved to coin a new term, Miss Wondee’s spaces became even more interesting.

  At the office the next day, as I was staring into space while I waited for my lunch break (I work for an insurance company. I have to volunteer the fact that I do it only to support myself. In actuality, I have thoughts that are deeper and more complicated than most salarymen do. Please don’t judge me by my vocation. I’d suggest using other indicators, for example: I don’t eat meat; I don’t carry a wallet; I don’t smoke; I don’t support spending people’s tax on weapons of mass destruction; I’d definitely protest against a war wherever and whenever.), I pulled a scrap of yellow paper out of my trouser pocket and dialed Miss Wondee’s seven digits on my phone.

  No one answered. Please leave a message.

  I didn’t leave a message. How am I supposed to leave one, just like that?

  Then it occurred to me that the seven digits were probably her home phone number, and she was unlikely to be in during office or school hours. I ought to wait and try her again closer to sundown.