Words, Teera loves them. If pressed, she will probably admit that her longest love affair has been with language. Even as a child—a quiet one at that—she was besotted by words, the way they looked and sounded, the way they caressed her ears. Eavesdropping on adult conversations, she’d snatch phrases she didn’t understand, words too big for her, exceeding her emotion and years. She’d store them in her memory and, when opportunities arose, toss them like pebbles to see where they landed. Later, a refugee in America reaching to grasp the nuances and subtleties of another’s tongue, she wanted not just to survive in this borrowed voice but to thrive. She studied hard, read ferociously, made daily lists of vocabulary to conquer, signed up for Speech and Debate even though she was terrified of public speaking and couldn’t begin to formulate her thoughts, least of all in proper English. You’re like a sponge—you soak up everything. Your language is remarkable. And your mind . . . your mind is a steel trap, her drama coach had said. A steel trap, Teera would later note in the spiral journal she kept for English class, her repository of unfamiliar phrases.
In a volunteer internship at the county courthouse, bending over the Xerox machine, leafing through applications, affidavits, and dossiers, Teera was introduced to the specificity of the legal vernacular, its exactitude and restriction. It spoke to her desire for clarity. Later, at Cornell, she entertained the possibility of studying toward a law degree. Poring over casebooks and law manuals, she’d ponder the frailty of “deposition,” its merit and value relative to “interrogatories,” or the providential definitiveness of “judgment.” She’d fall in love too with a phrase like “description of notes,” twirling it around her tongue, around the silhouette of a poem emerging in her mind, as she absentmindedly twirled a lock of hair around her pen, dreaming, composing . . . It was as if, without knowing its shape or direction, she sensed she had a story to tell, and she was keen to equip herself with the elements of exposition. As she studied history, however, submerging herself in that era whose very name was a matter of debate—the Vietnam War, the American War, the “conflict” in Southeast Asia—she learned that the things she wanted most to write about lacked fixed definition, defied simple clarity. They were only hinted at in the books she was reading, if not ignored altogether. These, she felt, are the things that gain brilliance only in darkness, acquire solidity and wholeness only when your world is destroyed, when all you have left are fragments of the life you once knew.
Love . . . hope . . . humanity. Intangible, yes, but also the building blocks of self-preservation, renewal. These are the most durable possessions I have . . .
Teera glances up, confused as to what she’s read aloud, what she’s recalled silently in her mind. Beside her, Yaya nods and, seeing Teera’s hesitation, says, “Taw tiat, chao”—continue, grandchild. Teera’s eyes smart at the last word. Fighting back the tears, she returns her gaze to the pages of her journal. I walk into a family scene, and find the scent of home cradled in a tray of spices. A cut of fresh galangal releases a bouquet of memories. The air is filled with the aromas of my childhood, fragrances that envelop and linger, haunt my senses like ghosts . . .
How strange, she thinks, to give voice to these words and to hear something unlike her own voice, something that has acquired a timbre of its own, as if the sentiment belongs to all who listen, not just she who’s written. I take a deep breath, inhaling the pralung of a lemongrass, and I feel nourished, healed, even if only in this moment.
Teera looks up and sees that Yaya has had her eyes closed. When she opens them again, she cups Teera’s face in her hands, peers deep into her eyes for what feels like an eternity, and then, as when they first greeted, sticks out her tongue, head bobbing from side to side, in the same flow and inflection as Teera’s reading. It suddenly occurs to her that perhaps Yaya isn’t simply showing her the scar, that perhaps this is the elder’s way of taking in all the words she can’t form, the truth she can’t articulate. Teera is reminded of how when learning English she’d stretch and flex her tongue, preparing to sound out a new word, shaping the space for what was to come, even if in that moment she couldn’t voice it.
Perhaps, Teera thinks, silence is its own voice.
Yaya lets out a laugh, a bubbling brook gushing upward from her belly, sending her sunken cheeks puffing with transient youth. From the tray of spices, she plucks out a green sprig similar to lavender, with tiny purple flowers, and gives it to Teera.
“Ma-orm,” Teera says, smelling it. She doesn’t need to write this one down. She remembers it, the earthy fragrance that recalls for her the smell of the first rain when it hits the earth and assumes its dry, sultry breath. There’s a word for it in English. “Petrichor!” she exclaims, and then repeats it more slowly for Yaya.
Yaya smacks her lips, tries to articulate it, twirling her tongue round and round like a child licking ice cream, and finally gives up in a fit of giggles.
Narunn emerges from the tussle, dirt smeared across his forehead and nose, and the words of the victor chiding him—“Hah, who’s eating mud now!” Narunn fires back, “I’ll get you next time, brother!” And to Teera and Yaya, “What’s so funny?”
Again, Yaya bubbles with laughter, leaning as if about to tip over with too much happiness. “You!” Teera tells him.
Narunn sulks off, shoulders slumped in a pretense of hurt, heading for the clay cistern by the back stairway. When he’s finished cleaning himself up, he returns to the wooden platform, mopping up the excess water on his face with his shirtsleeves. The cell phone in his pants pocket begins to ring. He answers, sitting down next to Teera, and after a few seconds silently mouths to her, “Wat Nagara,” before turning to give the caller his full attention.
Teera’s heart lurches. The Old Musician. She hasn’t been back to see him since their first confrontation. She pauses at the thought. Was it a confrontation? She didn’t think of it that way at the time, but in retrospect it was like walking into a minefield, where a single wrong step could detonate some buried secret, destroy the fragile existence they each had built for themselves. The careful choreography of her words around his had exhausted her, and afterward she knew she would have to collect herself, summon her strength anew before another encounter. But the longer she stays away, the more she feels unkind. For all his restraint during that first meeting, she sensed his attachment to her, and for her part, she hasn’t been able since to separate him from her thoughts of her father. Perhaps this is the reason she’s stayed away. Melancholy fills her, pushing out the earlier gaiety.
“Yes, Venerable,” Narunn says, and Teera realizes he’s talking to a monk. “I’m sure it can be arranged. And yes, I’ll speak with Miss Suteera . . .” At the mention of her name, Narunn turns to Teera and smiles. But she’s not convinced, his solemn tone worrying her. “Tvay bangkum, Venerable.” With this formal salutation, Narunn disconnects and slips the phone back into his pocket. “That was the Venerable Kong Oul.”
“Is everything all right?” Teera asks, stopping short of blurting out, Has something happened to the Old Musician?
“There’s a child at the temple, a new orphan, in need of a little escape from her ordeal—she has recently lost her mother—and the abbot is wondering if we could find a day to take her somewhere outside the city, somewhere fun for a three-year-old.”
Three. Teera remembers that she was twelve when her mother died. “Oh, the poor thing must be so scared, so sad.”