Angels

Come on Papa, faster! We squealed and urged Father to overtake Uncle and our cousins in the row boat next to ours. The boys are splashing water towards us and we splash them back equally. Mother and Aunty are sitting on the picnic blanket. Black sunglasses frame their faces and they are laughing. Kat is wobbling on her feet in an attempt to walk while Mother holds her tiny hands. Gerome is only a couple months older than Kat, but sleeps contentedly in his mother’s lap.

Liza and I are wearing identical purple sundresses. Though we were born almost 2 years apart and looked nothing alike, Mother thought it more convenient to use the same pattern and fabric to dress us. Even Monica sometimes wore a bigger version of our clothes. It’s the start of the summer season. The Chateaux of Versailles is our destination when we want to escape the city for beauty and quiet without having to drive very far. I don’t remember who won the boat race. I’d like to think we won. We’re hungry and run over to our mothers demanding food and drink. They chastise us to wash our hands first.

Liza, like always, sits close to Father and slowly devours her sandwich. I chat with our cousins, at the same time chewing a mouth full of food and chuckling at Julien’s joke. At 5 years of age, Veronica, two years younger than Julien and I, makes cheeky remarks and earns her a dirty look from her younger brother, Oliver.

Monica takes Kat for a walk close to the edge of the palatial waters we had just been on. Mother calls out and reminds Monica to be careful. We clean up our picnic and walk towards the gardens of Versailles. Mother loves it there; the expanse of meticulously planted, cared, healthy flowers makes Mother look happy. She tells Father to take our photos among the beauty. We all pose, despite the fact that we would much rather run around the garden, pebbles and dirt flying behind out pattering feet.

Mother is an admirer of flowers. She wants an entire garden cultivated with flowers and I want to give her that someday. She wants to be able to sit in the backyard, unhindered by the sight of light poles, cars, and buildings. She wants to relax, talk to her angels, and enjoy the simple beauty of flowers.

Mother is special. She has an angel who watches over her. And because we’re her children, he watches over us as well. Though he doesn’t like Father very much, since Father is Mother’s husband, he watches over Father too. I used to think I had an angel too. I even gave him a name. I talked with him. I cried my heart out to him. But I don’t have an angel, at least not like Mother’s angel. I don’t dream of things to come. I don’t have premonitions. I don’t simply know things I didn’t know. But Mother does and at first, it scared me to hear her talk of her angel.

Initially I thought Mother was going crazy - telling us about the voices, the shadows, her dreams, her sickness, her foreknowledge. There were days she lay in bed, pale, sickly, barely able to utter a phrase. No amount of medication, doctor’s visits, could explain why she was sickly. Since modern medicine couldn’t help her, Mother turned towards herbal medicine, but even that didn’t seem to ebb the sickness that seemed to grow daily.

One winter afternoon, Mother accompanied Aunt Kali to see a woman who divined. Aunt Kali wanted to know about the state of her marriage – was she and her roving eyed husband stay together? As they entered the diviner’s home, Mother started to shake, like she does when her condition worsens. She is feeling the chills and forces her body to stay still. She trembles but she doesn’t ask to leave. After all, she came to be Aunt Kali’s moral support. She lasts through the end of the divination for Aunt Kali and decides to ask the diviner about her sickness. The diviner said Mother already knew and it was unnecessary for her to divine. They came here with you, she tells Mother. Beside, they won’t let me see anything anyway. Mother was confused. What do you mean I brought them along? The diviner was getting annoyed with Mother and could not believe Mother didn’t know she had angels. You can speak with them, like I can speak with them, she tells Mother. Mother shakes her head and gently explains she doesn’t know how to speak the tongue of spirits. The diviner slowly began to understand that maybe Mother was speaking the truth and sat Mother down. Do you sometimes feel like there’s something watching you, and when you turn, you see a shadow disappearing quickly? Do you sometimes walk and find yourself looking at plants and saying, oh this would be good to treat this and this? Do you dream of flying and being taken by someone during the night? Do you hear a voice calling your name clearly, but when you look around and ask people around you if they called out your name, no one has? She pauses. All those are signs that they’re with you. If you don’t know that yet, then it would explain why you’re sickly. They’re trying to communicate with you, but you’re not accepting them and because of that, it’s making you sick. It dawns on Mother that the explanation, though it seemed almost unrealistic, made sense. The diviner seems to be listening to something. She looks at Mother and tells Mother that Mother’s angels are unhappy with Mother. Accept them, she says, and you’ll be better. I can’t help you, but you’ll have to find someone who can help you accept them. You’ll see, once you do, everything will be fine.

Mother walked out of the session in a daze, but resolved to pursue the explanation that had been set forth before her. After confirming the diviner’s words with Aunt Say and my cousin who can divine, Mother has accepted the angels into her life. Though the transition has not yet been complete, Mother is no longer as sickly as she once was and as long as her angels are content, Mother is stable and no longer wavers on the road of “crazy” my sisters and I once thought she was on. Her angels have a home now in our home and slowly, but surely, Mother is getting healthier.

Change of Fate

My head hurts, I complain to Mother. See, I demonstrate, barely even turning my head a centimeter to the right. I can’t turn my head at all! It hurts like crazy! Holding onto my neck and massaging the tense muscles, I don’t understand why it hurts, why I’m tense. Mother has me lay down on the bed, and she massages my neck and shoulders. She pulls all the right muscles that would usually relieve the tension, the pain. But to no avail, I can’t feel any relief, and taking 800 mg Ibuprofen doesn’t help either. I don’t see any other way, Mother says. She takes out her medical bag where she keeps her sharp needles. Oh no...Mother no. I shake my head, only to find the pain excruciating. Mother grabs me by my shoulder and tells me to stay still. No, I cringe. I can feel the pain of the needle piercing my skin, my meat, my muscles, before it even touches me. I cringe, my teeth grinding against each other, and the sharp stings of the needle starts. All over my head, my neck, blood starting pouring. Or so Mother tells me. See, she said, as she took a Kleenex to wipe away the trickling blood. If I didn’t release the tension, things could have been worse. I cry a little and she tells me to stop being a baby, as she applies the Tiger Balm ointment on the very spots where she had pricked. Ouch, it hurts, I whine. You’ll feel better now, she gets up from the bed, my head feels heavy, and I feel tired. I hope so Mother. But it wasn’t to be so. Our first night back in Bangkok on our way home proved to be a continuation of the strange events that had followed me from the onset of our trip.

I didn’t consider myself a believer before my trip to Laos. But suddenly, as the gigantic glass in our hotel bathroom in Bangkok fell against the bathroom door while I was taking a shower, I became a believer. Shaken I called to Mother, who rushed as soon as she heard the noise. I thought it was a bomb! Mother would later tell me. She held onto the door knob of the bathroom door and called my name. Open the door. Are you okay? Shaken and still wet, I grabbed my towel and wrapped it around me. I gingerly took a look at the mirror that had fallen and prevented the door from opening. Mother! I shouted. The mirror is pressed against the door! I didn’t want to touch the mirror. It hadn’t broken. It had just fallen in a 90 degree angle. Can you open the door? Mother shouts. Are you okay? Yes, I shouted back. Fingers shaking, my body shivering, I gently pushed the mirror up enough so that Mother could open the door. What happened? Mother looks around and gasps. I don’t wait for her to fully enter, for the mirror to be safe on the floor, I rush out into the other room where I plopped straight in the middle of the bed Mother and I shared. I grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around myself. Mother, who usually prefers that her children do the heavy lifting, lifted the giant mirror and placed it firmly on the floor of the bathroom. Only the right top corner of the mirror had broken – and not even into little pieces. Unbelievable, Mother looks at me and walks towards me. Are you okay? I nod. Frightened. What if I had been brushing my teeth? What if...? I could have died. I’ve evaded death twice now. Mother tells me to get dressed and that we need to report it to the hotel management. I knew something was wrong. Mother mutters. As soon as you went into the shower, I had a bad feeling.

The hotel staff is befuddled as to the accident. These are brand new rooms, they tell us. We’re so sorry this happened. We’ll switch you right away. I tell Mother I don’t want to go out to explore Bangkok anymore. I’m scared, I tell her. But she refuses, and insists we spend our last day in Bangkok doing more shopping. Before leaving, we call my Aunt’s daughter in Laos. She has the ability to communicate with spirits and to see what could have gone wrong. My Aunt tells us she’s still in school, but that she’ll take a look into our situation as soon as possible.

It should have come as no surprise to me why these things had happened. It had begun from the very moment I left home. Usually a good traveler with positive traveling experiences – braving a 28-hour train ride from Hong Kong to Beijing, flying without feeling sick and tired – I found myself at loss as to the weird things that kept happening to me on my trip to Laos with Mother. As soon as we arrived in Thailand, I sprained my ankle, and for a good 2 weeks I couldn’t do much at all. Then I got sick when we reached Laos and couldn’t stomach anything until after my Aunt and Mother went to see a woman shaman and she was able to call my soul to Laos. Later, they’d laugh and tell me my soul had been having so much fun two days before Mother and I were to leave the country, that it had gone gallivanting somewhere with my friends’ souls, and when it returned home, I wasn’t home. The same evening Mother and my Aunt went to see the woman shaman; I could suddenly eat again without the fear of vomiting and the fever that followed.

Then there was that mystical ceremony at a woman healer’s house. The egg lying flat on its side on a bed of rice in a bowl that suddenly, at the drop of a pinch of rice grains on it, the egg slowly rose to a 45 degree angle with but a single grain of rice attached to its very tip. Mother and my Aunt, who a couple of days earlier, after a visit to that same woman’s house, had been very distraught, running around town gathering supplies – fresh orange flowers, rice, chicken – suddenly heaved a sigh of relief and continued to converse with the woman healer. Not knowing the language, I had no idea what had occurred, what transpired. Later, when they felt it was safe enough to tell me, and after they had completed the necessary things they needed to do in order to make things right, they gently explained to me that they had circumvented my death, but that it wasn’t 100 percent guaranteed. I would still need to take it easy and to watch out. I was numb and uncertain how to take the news. I was supposed to die this year? Though at that time, not a true believer, I thanked them graciously for caring enough to delay my death.

Even when Mother and I traveled to Northern Laos, Xieng Khouang, of the famed Plains of Jars, where the roads wind treacherously around the curvaceous mountains and the coach bus sped around the corners, making everyone nauseous, and where I narrowly escaped death on those same curves, I still didn’t believe. My cousin and her husband had relatives in Xieng Khouang. Don’t forget to pack warm clothes, we were warned several times. It’s mighty cold up there. How could it be? I laughed. In Vientiane, it was always hot and sunny. Wet laundry done in the morning would be dried by evening. My Aunt shakes her head and insists Mother and I pack heavy clothes. We do pack heavy, but I’m still skeptical. How cold could it be compared to Minnesota? I wondered.

The bus we take to Xieng Khouang is the deluxe coach bus. The bus driver has a rifle slung over the back of his seat. I ask Mother quietly why and she informs me it’s in case we get held up on the road by bandits. I gulp and pray that we don’t. The bus is full and we leave the bustling noisy city of Vientiane, where the cars and motorbikes don’t yet know how to share a road. There’s a boy around 14 years of age, who comes around each seat and hands out bottles of water, snacks, and little white plastic bags. What’s that for? I ask. My cousin smiles and informs me that it’s for use in the event I want to vomit. Mother tells me not to worry and gives me her bottle of anti-nausea pills. Take one and you’ll be fine. And so we were, except for everyone else around us.

As we make our way out of the city, we pick up more people along the route. For those who come in later, little stools are handed out and placed in the middle of the aisle of the bus. Soon the bus is packed with people, luggage, and rice bags. I fall asleep, but Mother awakens me. Get up, it’s the pee stop. If you need to pee, you’ve got to go now. I groggily awaken and see everyone getting off the bus. The men, backs turned to the bus, going freely. The women rushing to what little bushes they can find to squat. What? I can’t go! I tell Mother. There’s nowhere to....be discreet! Mother hushes me and makes me go. If we don’t go now, they won’t stop later and it’ll be more embarrassing! We go quite a ways and Mother shields me with her large shawl. My cousin awaits us by the bus. We’re the last ones. Gosh! I cringe. Now they all know we’re foreigners!

We finally arrive in Xieng Khouang. As soon as I step off the bus, I can feel the cold air. It’s freezing, chilling to the bone air. I dig in my backpack for my heavier jacket. My cousin’s relatives are there to pick us up. Since we’re the foreigners, they let us sit in the cab, while the natives take seats in the back of the pickup. No problem! They laugh. We’re used to it. But I feel bad for being what I perceived, an inconvenience to them, just as I had been when we traversed quite a ways on the dry, dirt roads in the countryside of Vientiane, where the red dirt blew in the wind as the wheels of an Uncle’s pickup truck traversed across its path. I wanted to give the old grandmother the seat in the cab, but she hushed me and told me that she was used to sitting in the back, used to the dirt flying in her eyes, used to breathing the air filled with red sand and dirt.

My cousin’s husband’s family is celebrating their family reunion. Mother and I don’t want to impose and I had heard so much about the Plain of Jars and the hot springs up in that region, that we convince my cousin to excuse us from their festivities. We hire a local guy who knows my cousin’s husband’s family and he is our driver for the day. I’m so ecstatic about trying the hot springs my cousin told me about. I had visions of beauty – like the hot springs in Japan. It’s so hot, she tells me, just like in Japan. I even had to come out because I almost fainted from the heat. I love hot springs and couldn’t wait to try it out. As our driver’s car sped through the curvy roads to my hot springs, Mother kept conversation with him and indicated to him, several times, that we were in no hurry to arrive at our destination and that he could slow down. He kept speeding though and Mother, who always strives to be polite, could only occasionally remind him that we had all day to explore the region. I became drowsy and just as I was nodding off; I felt a rush of air hit me and the car suddenly came to a stop. That suddenness awakened me wide awake and Mother asked me if I was okay. Our driver narrowly missed crashing with another oncoming vehicle as they made the same curve around the blind bend around the mountain. Thankfully, only the side glass of the driver’s side broke. The other car incurred no injuries. As our driver, furious, walked out to talk with the other driver, Mother prayed to her Angels. Our car was but mere inches from the wall of the mountain. Thank god, Mother says, that we didn’t go over the cliff! Our driver comes back, fuming, but tells us it’s nothing. Mother says we should go back, but our driver insists that everything is okay and he can still drive us. I glanced at the other car, speeding away, and noticed a blue license plate. It dawned on me that our driver was mad because he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t get his mirror fixed, because the car with the blue license plate belonged to a government official.

I’m abysmally disappointed by the hot springs I was sure I was going to experience. The hot spring was there – green and pristine, but to try it out, I would have to go into a small room, equipped with a bathtub and toilet where the hot spring water was connected to. That’s it? I couldn’t believe it. I don’t want to try it out! I stubbornly resisted, but Mother was even more stubborn than me. You wanted to come here, now you have to try it out, especially after the accident! Not able to argue and win with Mother, I conceded and hopped into the dirty bathtub. Shivering, I hoped the water would be hot. It wasn’t much, but Mother drenched me in the water, as in a purifying ceremony and prayed that the spirit of the water would watch over me, to prevent me from meeting what was to have been my destiny, but which had been changed.

We continue to the Plain of Jars and I am infused by such joy of seeing the land of my people. Mother tells me it’s the first time for her. She had only heard of the Plain of Jars from her parents, who had fled the region during war time. We walked along the jars and we fell silent when we noticed a small hill protruding in the middle of the jars. Look, Mother said. We enter the hill and can see a hole at the very top of the hill. Ah! Mother says. This is a good hill. This is where the Green Lady lives and her treasure must be buried here too. What Green Lady? I ask Mother. She falls silent and tells me it’s an old story her parents used to tell her when she was a child. It’s a fable, she says. The sun is falling and I am in awe of the beauty that surrounds me. I can see the small airport in the distance, the rolling mountains all around. There’s not much construction here, I note to Mother. She nods and tells me it’s because there’s too much fear of encountering bombs waiting to go off somewhere in the lands around this region. So many wars, she said, so much destruction. So many bombs that have yet to be uncovered. I wonder if we’ll ever find all the bombs that lay in slumber until they’re suddenly awakened by greedy contractors.

My Aunt berates us for going to Xieng Khouang. See, too soon after the ceremony, she says. She looks at me and tells me to be more careful. You know, the egg didn’t come up entirely, so... Silence hangs, and I understand what it is she’s trying to tell me, her worries, but I still don’t quite believe it. I laugh and tell her, I’ll be good and take care of myself!

Still shaken by the fall of the mirror that could have killed me if I had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, I couldn’t quite enjoy my last day in Bangkok. There was a tense air between Mother and me, and I tried to have fun, but couldn’t shake being scared. Every corner we turned, every step I took, I was conscious that it could be my last. Will I never be able to see home again? What if this is it? What have I done with my life? Why me? That evening, before leaving for the airport, Mother called my Aunt in Laos. Do we know what’s going on? Mother anxiously asks my cousin. I look at mother’s face and can tell she’s relieved. She hangs up and we leave for the airport. So? I ask Mother in the cab. She looks at me and asks me if I have done something to anger the spirits. I pause and think, and tell her no. Mother tells me that what happened in Bangkok, the taut neck, the pain, the mirror falling, was because I had said or done something to anger a spirit. Your cousin says the spirit did these things because you didn’t believe in it, in its powers. She looks at me and I am startled. It dawns on me that all this time, my heart had been whispering my lack of faith. All this time, with all the talk of spirits and their powers, I had been a non-believer. Though I hadn’t vocally and physically proclaimed I doubted their existence, their power, my heart couldn’t lie; my thoughts couldn’t hide from them. I gulp and tell Mother that it’s true. Yes, I whisper, I was thinking it. Mother sighs and tells me to respect the spirits. If you don’t believe in them, at least give them the respect they deserve. I nod.

We returned home safely and without further incident. I was never so relieved to be home, to see my family again, and to be me again. I tell Mother I’m going to wait a while before my next trip. Let’s hope I have better karma next time! I joke.

Lies in the Shower

She sits, sullen, her fingers wrapped curved tightly around the steering wheel. Her stomach feels like it’s going to explode. She indulged, once again, in rich foods she could not resist. She had thought she could resist the temptation, the calling of her name when faced with the menu. She had even grabbed a sandwich on her way to meet her girlfriends for their weekly girl’s time. After much debate over email, Shuri decided that the girls should meet for dinner in Minneapolis. Let’s go to Azia, she wrote. It’s hip and the food’s delicious. Tuna Carpaccio, the Malaysian Skewers, Avocado Crisprolls, Spicy Lettuce Wraps, Grilled Pork with Apple Plum Chutney, Pacific Blue, Cranberry Curry, Crispy Crab Salad, and of course, the desserts, the Sweet Rice with Fresh Mango, the Azia Reserve Zinfandel Chocolate Cake, and her killer, the Flan.

In her rearview mirror, she sees a short Latino man opening the passenger door. His wife, his girlfriend, perhaps, of mixed heritage – she looks Asian, White, and Latina – steps out, laughs at something he says, grabs hold of his outstretched hand, and he closes her door. They’re both dressed for an evening of intimacy, her short flirty skirt sways across her knees, her gold necklace dangles in the crevice of her cleavage, his shiny black shoes matched by the leather jacket that shows off his physique, the jet black hair groomed in place to look effortless. Hand in hand, they stroll and enter the place she had just left. It’s 10 p.m., bedtime calling to her girlfriends with families waiting at home, while she wants to party until she’s too tired to fall asleep.

Driving home, she doesn’t see the beauty of the river as the moon dives down into it. She barely notices the cars that zoom past hers. There’s no rush. She drives at the speed limit. Home is empty and she hates being alone. Her cell phone vibrates in the passenger seat. Her heart flutters. She sees that it’s Jack. She marks the call for voicemail. Jack only calls when he’s lonely and bored. Tonight, she’s not in the mood to be his buddy-call. Tonight, she wants to be with someone, anyone, for company, laughter, and warmth. It’s too cold in her house, it’s too silent. She doesn’t want to go home.

Heels in hand, she treads up the stairs of her deck, and enters her home. There’s a faint odor in the air and she reminds herself to take out the trash. She walks into each room and turns on each light. It consoles her. At least she doesn’t have to be in the dark. She undresses as she makes her way to the shower. She lets down her hair from its coiffure, shaking her curls out. Arm stretched behind her back, her fingers search for the zipper to release her body from the tight-fitting red dress she specifically chose because it accentuated her best assets – her hips, her bosom, her red lips. The dress falls to the ground as she reaches for her bottle of Lancôme make-up remover. Cotton pad in her fingers, she begins to erase the successful, happy, and beautiful woman she portrayed to the world tonight. With each removal, she dares not look at herself in the mirror, but she can’t stop herself from catching a glimpse of the woman she really is.

She turns on the hot water and lets the steam collect in the bathroom. The mirrors fog up and she turns on the cold water tap. Stepping into the shower, her body shudders briefly and relaxes as the warmth seeps into her bones. Her hair dangles across her face and she closes her eyes. She wants to stay like this for a while. Warm, safe, and ... then she remembers the food she had eaten earlier. Her body starts to convulse. Her stomach starts to churn again. The muscles in her throat start to tighten. Her right hand grabs her throat. She can’t help herself. She kneels in the tub and grabs the shower bowl she keeps nearby. She feels like she needs to vomit. She knows she shouldn’t, she knows that too much will harm her voice, the voice that is her most precious asset. You’ve eaten so much, the little voice nags her. You’ll get fat. You won’t be able to fit in your dress again. No one will like you if you keep eating like that. Yes, she reasons, it’s okay. I don’t do this all the time, she reassures herself. No one needs to know. And two fingers in her mouth, gagging, she makes herself detoxify. She recognizes most of the food she had ingested earlier and she can taste again the food that had made her wanton, but this time, the taste of bitterness attached to it.

Over and over, she forces herself to vomit until she can no longer feel any solids in her system. Disgusted, she rinses herself in the water still falling from the shower head. She soaps her hands and rinses them clean. She washes her face, her lips, and gargles water in her mouth to take away the bitter after taste. She can’t bear to look at the waste that lies in the shower bowl. But she knows she has to make it disappear. Quickly, she steps out of the shower, water dripping all over her green rugs, and she dumps the excess food into the toilet bowl. She watches as it goes down the drain. Shower bowl in hand, she rubs soap into the bowl and washes it, once, twice, three times, until she can’t feel the grease and grime on the plastic anymore. Feeling better, she finally takes the shower she’s needed all night to clean her body, her soul.

Wet hair wrapped in a towel around her head, her cotton t-shirt on that barely covers the bottom of her buttocks, slippers on her feet, she sit on her leather couch and watches television. She takes a sip of hot tea, and the liquid sears the inside of her throat. She gulps and feels guilty for succumbing to the nagging voice insider her head. But don’t you feel better now? It asks her. I’m hungry, she quietly says. She gets up and heads towards the refrigerator. She looks around. Hand against her stomach, standing in front of the empty refrigerator, she shakes her head and sighs. Okay, I’m going to bed now. She walks through the house and turns off all the lights. All except for the lamp light in the living room. Just in case I wake up in the middle of the night, she tells herself. Closing her eyes, she whispers, I’m okay.