Thai Twist
Chapter One
Our driver lurched to avoid the tuk-tuk, sending me careening into my sister. The
Thai golf cart scooted over, allowing our taxi to jet forward into the night.
“See?” I asked my sister as I removed my elbow from her ear. “This is a mistake.
If we jump out now, we only have to walk a few miles to get back to Bangkok
International.”
Rachel smiled without making eye contact. As we flew down the six-lane
motorway, she orientated herself by watching road signs. “Gina, back home you
complain that all the drivers are too slow.”
“In Tucson half the drivers are snow birds. They value life,” I said.
“Here the townspeople are Buddhist. They value life too.”
“Not the drivers.” I peered at the ID card taped to the glove compartment, but the
name had so many syllables that I couldn’t read them as we bounced along.
I wiped sweat off the back of my neck. At ten at night, the air was so hot I could
drink the humidity. I could hardly wait to feel the heat of the scorching day that was sure
to follow.
“Stupid contest!” I continued. “I only entered because I was bored.”
Rachel braced herself against the front passenger seat in anticipation of the
driver’s next abrupt lane change. “See how well it worked, Gina? You’re not bored
now!”
No, I was too busy wondering if our speedmobile had any brakes.
I cursed myself for entering the contest in the first place. I’d won the Midwest
Envy Contest by guessing January 13th as the night of Tucson’s final winter frost. I
assumed the prize would be something useful such as an MP3 player, but foreign travel?
For days I went around telling everyone I’d won a trip to Taiwan. “Thailand,” my mom
corrected me. “Whatever,” I snapped. I had free plane tickets and accommodations for
Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Phuket, but none of my friends wanted to go with me. None!
They either had summer jobs or wanted to spend time with their boyfriends. I’d only
invited my sister to accompany me because I thought she would be too busy with her
performances and violin students to accept.
“You go Loyalty Hotel?” shouted the driver, taking his eyes completely off the
road while he turned around to address us. His eyes were slightly cross-eyed.
“Royalty,” Rachel shouted back.
“As what I say, Loyalty!” He gripped the wheel with both hands as he slid
through a yellow light.
“Did you hear that?” Rachel whispered. “He can’t pronounce the R.”
“You likey capital city,” shouted the driver. “Thely thely nice.”
“You see?” Rachel continued sotto voce. “Vs are hard too. It’s so interesting
linguistically.”
I did not want a language lesson. Thai was a nightmare, a tonal language with
reverse word order, particles at the ends of words, and curly-cues instead of Latin script.
Who needed that much trouble? Besides, nobody learned Thai for a three-week trip.
Except for my sister.
Rachel leaned into the wind of the open window as a dog in the back of a pickup.
“Remember Sammy’s aunt? Same thing. I bet Janjira can’t say an R for the life of her.”
Sammy was a ten-year-old of Thai origin who lived down the street. I’d stopped
babysitting for him when I started college, but he still took violin lessons from Rachel.
When his mother heard we were going to Thailand, the woman was more excited than I
was. The week before our flight, Mrs. Tamarin had invited Rachel and me to dinner.
While we munched on appetizers, she and her husband showed us romantic photos they’d
taken when they toured the country years earlier on their honeymoon. They offered tips
on sightseeing: We should be sure to visit the Turtle Temple in Bangkok, the ruins of
Ayutthaya, and the famous wat—temple—on top of the mountain above Chiang Mai.
We’d nearly gotten through the chicken curry when the old auntie entered the
dining area dressed in a white nightgown with blue roses. So far she’d spent the evening
in her bedroom watching TV. We were so surprised to see her heading slowly and
deliberately to the table that we quit talking and stared.
The woman stopped before me and clasped my hand around a small velvet pouch.
“Go Thailand,” she said. “Take lothel!”
“Wow!” Rachel said, dropping one of her chopsticks. With a ping it bounced off
the table and onto the floor.
“I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Tamarin.
“Gina, you’re magic,” said her husband.
“Auntie really likes you!” cried Sammy.
I was astonished myself. “I’m not sure I understand,” I told the others.
“Go Thailand! Take lothel!” the woman repeated. Most of her graying hair had
been gathered into a bun, but she ignored the strand that had escaped and bobbed from
one side of her forehead to the other.
Sammy rushed over and stood behind my shoulder. “Let’s see what it is!”
Carefully I opened the strings of the velvet bag. Inside was a two-inch stone
elephant that was dark purple with black specks. The elephant’s trunk snaked into the air
as a periscope while its left foot stepped forward. The eyes were slender slits. I’d never
seen anything like it, and since I owned over two hundred miniature elephant statues, I
had plenty to compare it to.
“Take good care!” the auntie exclaimed, nodding her head up and down.
“All right,” I said hesitantly, setting the elephant on the table atop the velvet bag.
“Very good!” The old woman bowed her head and turned. The rest of us watched
her slow footsteps until she disappeared down the hall.
“That was amazing,” said Mrs. Tamarin told me. “You must have triggered
something locked deep inside. We’ve been trying to get her to talk for weeks, but she
never responds.”
I held the elephant up to the light that filtered in through the picture window.
“What are we supposed to do with this thing?”
“I’ll go ask Auntie!” Sammy bounded out of the room.
“Is ‘lothel’ a Thai word?” asked Rachel.
Mrs. Tamarin shook her head. “I only know a few words of Thai, and that’s not
one of them.”
“I’ve read that a lot of English sounds are difficult for Thai speakers and viceversa.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said Mrs. Tamarin. “For example, Janjira never asks for
‘water.’ It comes out as ‘wadel’ instead. It took me a week to understand what she was
pointing to at the dinner table, poor thing. I kept handing her everything else.”
“Lothel,” Rachel repeated. “Interesting.”
I shook the crumbs off my napkin. “Does Janjira have lots of family back in
Thailand?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Tamarin said slowly. “Janjira isn’t really my aunt. Let me
see if I can get this straight. She’s my mother’s sister’s … wait. My mother’s sister’s
husband’s brother’s wife.”
“Whoa!” I said. “Now I understand why Sammy never explained it to me.”
Mrs. Tamarin laughed. “Yes. It is fairly complicated, but I think I’ve got it right.
Anyway, she never had any children. After her husband died, she moved in with my
mother because she didn’t have any other relatives in the U.S. After my mother passed
away last year, you might say we inherited her.”
“What brought her to the States?” Rachel asked.
“Her husband was a diplomat. They spent their working years in Washington. I’d
only met them a couple of times.”
I finished my last mouthful of curry. “Does Janjira often talk about relatives back
in the home country?”
“This was the first time.”
“Do you want—” I started to hand over the elephant.
“Keep it,” said Mrs. Tamarin. “She’ll have already forgotten.”
Sammy bounded back into the room and shoved a photo in my hand. A handsome
young man grinned from underneath a wide hat. His dimpled smile was complete except
for a missing tooth on the upper left-hand side. He was dark and thin, and his features
matched Auntie’s. His white shirt had droopy pockets, and his black pants were so baggy
they were almost falling off. He was holding a garden hoe in his right hand as if he’d
been caught mid-flower. I liked him immediately, probably because the crooked hat gave
him a natural, happy-go-lucky look.
“There’s definitely a family resemblance,” Mr. Tamarin said. “He could be a
brother.”
“Lothel, brother,” Rachel said. “Of course. Did she ever talk about siblings?”
“No,” said Mrs. Tamarin, “but Janjira never had much contact with Thailand after
she left. Somehow I sensed it was painful for her to remember her childhood. Or perhaps
she was homesick.”
I took the photo and turned it over. On the back were some squiggles of Thai
script, graceful swirls that meant nothing to me.
“His name is Khun Somchai,” Sammy said. “He’s an engineer. He makes
bridges.”
“A civil engineer?”
Sammy shrugged. I repeated the name, trying to memorize it.
“You can take the picture with you.” Sammy patted Rachel’s arm. “You’ll find
him, won’t you?”
Rachel tried to hide her surprise at the request. “We’ll try, but it might be
difficult.”
“So is the violin, but you always tell me to keep practicing.”
“Do I?” Rachel grinned. “But Thailand is a big place. Where should we look?”
Sammy pointed to the last set of squiggles. “Krum Krep.”
“Krum Krep,” Rachel repeated. “If we have a chance to go there, we’ll look for
him.”
“Please go there,” Sammy said. “For Auntie.”
After Sammy was sent to bed, the rest of us discussed travel destinations. When
Rachel and I stood to leave, my sister started to hand the photo back to Mrs. Tamarin, but
I snatched it up.
“Let’s hang onto the picture. If we happen to go to whatever town that is, we can
keep our eyes open.”
Rachel and the Tamarins stared at me.
I pointed to the elephant. “If Janjira hasn’t spoken for so long, the statue must
mean something special to her.”
“I’m afraid you’d be looking for a monk in a Buddhist temple!” joked Mr.
Tamarin.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said. “But I’ve got to tell Sammy that we tried.”
*
*
*
I was jolted back to the present by a bump that threw me so high that my head
brushed the roof of the vehicle. At this rate, I wouldn’t be able to deliver Janjira’s
package because I wouldn’t live that long.
“Look, look!”
Rachel was waving her arms as a wild woman as we passed a temple, its huge
white needle looming into the night.
“That’s one of the places we’re supposed to visit!” she shouted.
“I can’t wait.”
Rachel was too focused to catch my sarcasm. She’d spent the flight from Tokyo to
Bangkok making lists of things to do, all for the next day.
“My god!” Rachel pointed to another temple. “That one is even more beautiful!”
“Only one temple a day,” I repeated. I’d told her the same thing twice on the
plane, but the idea hadn’t sunk in yet.
I was more interested in the red neon sign boasting The Royalty Hotel. When our
driver screeched to a halt, narrowly missing a shoeshine boy, the doorman didn’t bat an
eye.