joy.
“I
“I don’t-” Da begins.
“We could get along much better,” Kep says, and he brings up a hand and brushes the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “Up to you. You can be nice to me, or maybe we should take the kid and give him to somebody else.”
She knows he sees her eyes widen in alarm, but she tries immediately to wipe it out. The only way to handle a bully, she has learned, is with a quick kick. She spits into her free hand and scrubs the cheek where he touched her. Then she snaps, “Fine,” and holds the baby up. “Take him now. He’s wet and he stinks, and I’m sick of him. Here.”
Kep has backed up as she thrusts Peep at him, and he takes another step back with her pursuing him, holding Peep at about the level of his face. “Take him,” she says. “Do me a favor and take him. I’m sick of him, I’m sick of the whole thing. Take him. You can eat him for all I care.” She keeps pushing Peep at him, hearing the child squeal and seeing the spark of panic in Kep’s blunt, dark face, and she knows that he’s frightened. He can get into trouble over this, she realizes, losing a new beggar, having to take back the child. It’s a problem, and the man in the office won’t appreciate a problem. Kep has put two feet between them now, and she uses it. “Here,” she says, holding Peep out and turning halfway away, as though to walk to the road. “I’m leaving. Is that what you want? You want me to leave?”
There is no response, and she turns to Kep and sees him looking not at her but up at the windows on the second story of the building. There are faces there, looking down, watching everything that’s happened. Some are laughing. Others stare openmouthed, waiting for the resolution.
And Da knows, sure as a fist in the stomach, that she has failed.
Kep can’t lose this kind of face in front of the others. She no sooner realizes this than she feels his fingers dig into the muscles at the sides of her neck. “Don’t be in such a hurry,” he says. He squeezes hard enough for her knees to go weak. “We’ve just begun our talk. And you’re not going anywhere, you little bitch. I’ve got someplace special for you tonight.”
He knots her blouse in his hand and half drags her around the van and toward the front door. Da struggles, but she can only do so much without dropping Peep. Finally she grasps the child with one arm and reaches out and twists her fingers through Kep’s thick hair. She yanks hard enough to pull some of it out.
And he rounds on her, his face flaming, and hits her in the face with his closed fist. The blow snaps her head to the left, and her ankles tangle as she tries to step back to keep her balance, and she goes down, falling sideways to the left. It takes everything she has to land on her back, with Peep on top of her. The child is screaming. There is blood in Da’s mouth, salty and warm.
“You like to pull hair, huh?” Kep says. He is so furious that his eyes have practically disappeared. He knots his fingers into Da’s hair and hauls her to her feet. Then he drags her through the door and into the corridor and pushes her up against the wall on the left while he fishes in his pants pocket for something. When his hand comes out, it holds a jingling ring of keys. He chooses one and slips it into the lock on one of the doors that were closed the night Da first came into the building. He pulls the door wide, puts a hard, heavy hand on the back of Da’s neck, and shoves her through the door into the dim room. Then the door slams closed, and she stands there, swallowing blood and aching, the baby crying with all its being, in total darkness.
She hears the click of the lock.
28
This is silly,” Miaow says. She has been even crankier since Kosit saw her getting her hair dyed. The newly reddish hair, still slightly damp from the post-coloring shampoo, looks to Rafferty like a wig. He has to make a continuous effort not to stare at it.
He fights a surge of irritation. “I don’t care. Just do it. And don’t try to win an Oscar, okay? All you’re doing is talking to your mother.”
Miaow says what she’s supposed to say: “I’ve got a lot of homework.” Her tone is so flat she sounds like she’s reading.
Rafferty gets up from the green stool, which pinches him good-bye. He has to move around for a second or he’ll explode. When he has his breathing under control and all the little black spots have stopped swarming in front of his eyes, he says, “But not winning an Oscar doesn’t mean we’re going to act like we’re dead either. It just means we sound normal. We’re going to do this until I’m happy with it, if it takes until the sun comes up.” He looks at his watch. “It’s twenty past eleven, and even if we get all of it right the first time, it’s going to take us until one or two. It’s up to you, Miaow. Either you can help with this and get it over with, or you can sit here all night long.”
“Poke,” Rose says.
Rafferty holds up both hands. “We’re doing it, Rose. And that means Miaow’s doing it. As far as I’m concerned, we can all sleep on the floor down here, but we’re getting this done.”
“You don’t have to be a jerk about it,” Miaow says.
Miaow is on the wobbly chair in front of the pink blanket, and Rose is on the solid one. The tape recorder is on the battered coffee table. More than an hour ago, they all said good night to one another upstairs, and then Rafferty led them to the elevator and down to the fourth floor. Until the anger picked him up and towed him around the room, Rafferty was balanced on the stool. Now he goes to the table and sits on the threadbare carpet, in the least confrontational stance he can adopt.
“We’re in some trouble,” he says to her. “I don’t want to go into detail, but it’s about that book, okay? Just take my word that what we’re doing is important, that I wouldn’t be asking you to do it unless it was important. Do I often ask you to do things that aren’t important?”
“All the time,” Miaow says. “And I do them.”
“Then put yourself out there one more time and do this one for me, too. And then, someday, you can ask me to do something stupid, and when I don’t want to do it, you can remind me that I owe you one.”
Miaow says, “Promise?” This is her kind of currency.
“Absolutely. Here, in front of Rose and everything.” Without taking his eyes from hers, he pushes the “record” button, counts silently to three, and says, “I like the hair.”
“Really?” She puts both hands against it, palms down, and smooths it. “You’re not just trying to make me feel better? You don’t think it looks dumb? And fake?”
Rose says in Thai, “It’s not supposed to look real, Miaow, not any more than lipstick is. It’s
“Honest? I mean, you really think so? Do you think the kids at school will, um…?”
“If they don’t like it,” Rafferty says, “it’ll just be because they’re envious.”
“Oh, come on,” Miaow says, but she looks happier than she has all night long.
Rose says, “It makes you look older.”
Miaow grabs the thought with both hands. “How much older?”
“Ten,” Rose says, and Miaow’s face falls. “Maybe eleven.”
“Eleven.” Miaow’s expression is deadly serious, and Rafferty suddenly realizes there are several conversations going on at the same time.
“Why is that important, Miaow?” he asks. “What’s so magical about eleven?”
“I, um…” She looks down at her lap. “I didn’t want to tell you this until I was pretty sure, you know? I didn’t