Teera leans over the trestle desk by the window and pushes the shutters open, latching them in place against the sudden gusts of wind rising sporadically from the water surrounding the peninsula. The sun has climbed past the window, out of her direct gaze, cresting the row of tall areca palms bordering Yaya’s property, and, through the drooping bracts of fruits and fronds, Teera sees Ravi, the eldest granddaughter, lighting the circle of earthen braziers in the outdoor cooking area. Tendrils of smoke coil upward and vanish with the cool breeze. The air is redolent of charcoal and firewood, the warmth of waking.
Teera takes a deep breath, stilling herself for a moment. It’s a stunning location at the tip of the peninsula, facing the Mekong, with the Tonle Sap River curving behind. At the confluence, the waters of the Himalayan peaks and the Tonle Sap Lake merge, flowing on to the Delta and the South China Sea. Everything is connected, she thinks. All is reachable in some way—the discernible and the indiscernible, the past and the future . . . The plot of land is not big, but because it parallels Yaya’s more spacious grounds, with no fence dividing them, the rectangular strip appears open, borderless, rolling toward the water. Even now, in the middle of the dry season, she can spot a string of floating communities clinging to the far shores, the boats swaying in the wind at low tide amidst the exposed stilts of huts perched on the slopes. During the rainy season, Teera imagines, when the fishing nomads traverse the surging rivers, their sampans and canoes popping up in spontaneous clusters, it must bear an astonishing resemblance to Elephant Tusk Landing. It’s obvious why Narunn has held out for this piece of land all these years, drawn as he is to the water, the rise and fall of the flood pulse, the shifting geography of home. So close to the city, it is a rare find.
Teera surveys the tiny abode they’ve occupied these past several weeks—the single room with its walls and floor of aged koki wood, the vaulted ceiling lined with woven rattan, shuttered windows on three sides, and off to one side the open-air bathroom, with its mini-sink, tiled shower corner, and toilet nook beneath a patch of skyline. The entrance door leads down to a narrow flight of stairs wedged against the tree trunk. Everything is miniature, an existence of half steps and delicate expressions. The previous owner, a Cambodian architect trained in Thailand, had built it as his weekend studio, a retreat from the city where he could work in solitude. Set far back in one corner of the land under a giant gnarled mango tree, atop pillars painted a flat, earthy tone, the whole structure resembles an oversize spirit house where mechas tik mechas dey—those unseen guardians of the water and land—might seek refuge from the rapid development on the peninsula.
Teera opens the other windows. Light streams in, carpeting the floor where at night they spread out their sleeping mats, a big one for her and Narunn, and a small one for Lah, their spaces separated by a folding wooden screen. She hears the two now moving about the terra-cotta-tiled patio beneath the house, their voices mingling with the wind chime as they try to work out where to hang it—on one of the beams, or on one of the smaller trees nearby? “Pa-Om, how about there, beneath Ma-Mieng’s window? So she can hear it when she writes . . .” Father-Uncle, Mother-Auntie. This is what the little one has decided on her own to call them, and every time Teera hears it, something in her breaks into a million pieces, only to coalesce anew, larger and more whole. “Yes,” Narunn says, lowering his voice. “This way Ma-Mieng will never get lost. When she hears it, she’ll come back from her flight.” Lah lets out a muffled delight, as if colluding in some subterfuge. Teera hears them walking to the storage shed attached to one side of the house and rummaging through it, looking for the ladder and tools to hang the wind chime.
She sits down at the desk, her journal opened before her. The trestle desk and chair are the only furniture in the tiny abode, parting gifts left by the architect after he learned that Teera writes. To her left, by the bathroom door, is a closet with just enough space for clothes and other essentials. To her right, small floating shelves of books and knickknacks line the wall by the window. The rest of her belongings are stored at the hotel, where she still takes Lah to swim some afternoons. They need very little, she’s found.
Still, Narunn said during their ritual walk at dawn, he’d like something bigger—“a bit more of a home . . . than this beautiful birdhouse.” He has just enough savings left to be able to begin constructing, and has even enlisted the generosity of the architect, who promised to draft a plan and put together a team of local artisans and builders. He’ll keep the apartment at the White Building solely as his clinic so that he can see more patients. He’s also applied for a trainee position with an international team of forensic scientists preparing for a possible tribunal. It’s a long shot, he admits, but if it were really necessary he could always work for a government hospital. In any case, Teera should not worry, he assured her, as if sensing a fluttering in her heart and concluding that the only remedy was not to ask for or expect any commitment, anything she might take as confining. He could look after Lah on his own, he said. The little girl has become his vocation, and he is grateful to be summoned to protect a life in this time of need. He often wonders about the child in his mother’s womb—whether it was a boy or a girl. He waited until Lah ran ahead, out of hearing range, before saying, “No matter what happens, whether you stay or go back to America, I want you to know that you’ll always have a home and a family to return to.” He made a sweeping gesture of the whole place, their joint grounds, his and Yaya’s. Teera swallowed, unable to express all that was surging through her.
I came raging against the loss, she thinks now, scribbling the words in her journal, against this land, only to be embraced by it as if I’d never left. Five months ago, she arrived with the notion that her sojourn would be temporary, that she’d be in and out quickly, that, as stated on the various arrival forms she’d filled out on the plane, her place of residence, her home, was the United States, and so was her nationality. Yet, she remembers, all that was noted at the airport immigration check, the only detail of import, was her place of birth, and, like for all those returning from the diaspora to this tattered homeland, her American passport was stamped with a visa marked “Permanent.”