Part 6 (1/2)
”No, Cam. We can't be seen together anymore.”
”What?” I felt like she was speaking a different language.
”We just can't. It's not safe.”
”Nok, that doesn't make sense.”
”He thinks I'm a prost.i.tute and you're my client.”
”Who cares what he thinks? We aren't the only mixed couple around Vientiane.”
She stood up and wiped her eyes. She crossed her arms and turned her back to me to look out the window.
”You're really upset and scared right now,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. ”Take some time before you make sudden decisions.”
She exhaled loudly. ”Look,” she said, whipping her head around abruptly so a silken strand of hair caught in her moist lips. ”There are some things falangs can't understand.” She turned her back to me.
So that was it then. I was nothing more than a falang to her.
A foreigner. Just like him.
My deep breaths abandoned me. I felt desperate. I was going to lose her. I reached out and grabbed her harshly by the shoulders. Her head jerked until she stood looking at me, shock in her mola.s.ses eyes. I wanted to make her understand. Make her see me. See that I was not like him.
”Cam, go. Just go!” she screamed.
I heard Nana coming up the stairs behind me. By then I knew that if there was one thing Lao people didn't like, it was public displays of temper. What the h.e.l.l was I doing? I loosened my grip.
”I'll never understand you people,” I growled as I stomped down the stairs and slammed the flimsy ma.s.sagehouse door shut.
Death Slide.
Cam.
I rode my bike home from the ma.s.sage house as fast as I could and chucked it viciously into the rose apple trees.
”Brother?” Somchai stood at our front gate, his face filled with concern. I ignored him and stomped into the house. I was glad when I heard him follow me.
”What is it?” he asked.
I turned to look at him and was surprised how the worry in his eyes softened everything.
”Nok.”
”I told you to be careful with Lao girls. You had a fight?”
”I don't understand anything in this f.u.c.king country.”
I saw then that I had hurt him. ”Sorry, no offence. I just -”
He was quiet for a while. Then he brightened and said, ”I know. You need Vang Vieng.”
”I don't even know what that is.”
”It's a tourist town north of here. Let's go for the weekend. You and me. You'll like it - lots of English there.” Somchai grinned.
”But Nok told me Lao New Year is coming up. Isn't it the most important holiday in Laos? You should stay here with Meh Mee,” I said.
”We'll just go for a couple days. It'll cheer you up and you'll be ready to party for New Year when we get back.”
Getting out of Vientiane sounded good to me. I needed something I could understand. Besides, I didn't feel like being home alone all weekend again. Julia was with the princ.i.p.al all the time now.
The next day after school we took a tuk-tuk to the crowded bus station across the road from the Morning Market. Blue buses with j.a.pAN OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT a.s.sISTANCE slapped on the side filled up with people jostling for a seat. Those who couldn't find one just stood. Barefoot kids wearing dirty, b.u.t.toned-up s.h.i.+rts and fraying shorts clambered onto the buses carrying plastic bags stuffed with baguettes. ”Bread! Fresh bread for sale!” they hollered. Bottles of water were pa.s.sed through bus windows to pa.s.sengers already surrendering to the dry season heat. Hmong women with wrinkled faces deep brown with the April sun approached pa.s.sengers, trying to convince them to buy their colourful cloths. The smell of fried food floated by as elderly women with mouths red from chewing betel nut flogged snacks for the journey. Dust tickled the tip of my nose and settled onto pa.s.sengers' vintage suitcases that were ripping at the seams. It would be my first time outside of Vientiane. Antic.i.p.ation should have crowded out thoughts of Nok. But instead I felt so tired. Tired of there being so much that I didn't know and couldn't understand in this country. Tired of my angry past dragging me down like the heavy, breezeless heat. Tired of myself.
The road north to Vang Vieng twisted and curved through the jungle like a roller coaster. We could only find one empty seat on the overcrowded bus and Somchai insisted that I take it. I refused, but he wouldn't sit.
”Take it before we lose it,” he said. He hovered over me, his brown hand grabbing on to the bar above as the cheap bus rattled over potholes. He didn't seem to mind the suffocating heat or the other standing pa.s.sengers elbowing him. He just smiled happily and looked out the window at mango trees and hibiscus bushes whizzing by.
The conductor pa.s.sed out plastic bags to pa.s.sengers with their hands held high, like kindergarteners who waited too long to ask to go to the bathroom. I wondered what the bags were for until the little girl in front of me vomited as her older brother held her long hair away from her face. After the next curve in the road, the sound of more puking came from the back of the bus. Disgusted, I looked up at Somchai.
”It's a Lao thing.” He shrugged. ”Weak stomachs, I guess.”
Soon the stench became overpowering. I began to wonder if the trip was a good idea.
I tried not to think about Nok during the ride, but it was impossible. The thought of that French guy forcing himself on her made me so angry I could feel every muscle in my body tighten, like a dog with its hair standing on end. I hoped I would never see him again. I knew it wouldn't be safe for either of us.
My thoughts were interrupted by the bus starting to sputter.
”What's going on?” I asked Somchai. I couldn't stand to be stuck on this barf-mobile for much longer.
”Bus trouble, I guess. Boh penyang.”
The bus staggered to a stop. No one seemed concerned but me and the German tourists at the back of the bus.
”I have to get off of this thing.”
Somchai followed me down the rickety bus steps to wait outside in the blistering sun. No vehicles zoomed past us on the winding road. We seemed to be surrounded by nothing but jungle. The smell of earth and plants was everywhere, reminding me of the way our kitchen back home smelled when Julia repotted one of her houseplants. For a second I thought of my life back in Ottawa and of Jon and Marissa. I realized that we hadn't been in contact for weeks.
The longer we stood on the jungle's edge, the more I noticed the busyness that lay beneath the peaceful surface of the wilderness around us - birds and insects called out noisily and large animal footprints decorated the road's dusty shoulder. Laos used to be called Lan Xang, the land of a million elephants, although I had yet to see one.
In the distance, I could hear faint singing. It was almost haunting, kind of like the way First Nations people sing back home at pow-wows and stuff.
”It's a tribe,” Somchai explained. ”An ethnic minority. They sing to let the spirits know they're looking for food.”
My body relaxed a bit. I could see the bus driver walking up a dirt path to a small village that sat on top of a lush, green hill. He stopped at the wooden gate of each tiny, thatched roof house and called something out.