Charmaine Craig - Miss Burma

“We have some men who’ve robbed some banks upcountry—”

“My God, Saw Lay!”

“We could mix the money in with yours—”

“You’re talking about laundering !”

Now Saw Lay laughed with all the ugliness of the condemned. “Fools rest easy on the ground of easy labels and easy morality, Benny. If you’re going to be a goddamned fool, at least be a fool on our side!”

When, several months later, in September 1946, Louisa woke from a nap on the afternoon of her sixth birthday — that is, when she was woken by her white Scottish terrier, Little Fella, whose nudging paws and licks demanded tea — she had the sensation of having emerged from something frightening. It was a feeling she often had on rousing in the bright, airy room hung with ivory Chinese draperies and strewn with her dollies. Little Fella (who, as Daddy said, “just happened to be female”) pushed the nub of her wet nose into Louisa’s ear so that she laughed, though their pre-teatime ritual mandated that she scowl in complaint. “You remember that Saw Lay is coming?” she scolded the dog. It was possible to believe that Little Fella was enchanted, that she possessed the ability to comprehend Louisa’s every word, and that she bristled with excitement not just because of the forthcoming tea, with its two spoonfuls of sugar, but also out of a love she shared for Saw Lay, who had been visiting them of late.

The dog followed her out to the landing to peer down at the lower floor of the house, already busy with preparations for tonight’s party in honor of Louisa’s birthday. Several employees were moving the living room furniture in order to make way for an orchestra and dancing, while gardeners were bringing in armloads of Mama’s flowers and two men from Daddy’s brand-new bottling company were unloading crates of fizzy drinks. Little Fella nosed Louisa toward the staircase, but a sound made them turn — the sound of Daddy’s voice — and through her parents’ open bedroom door Louisa saw her father sitting at the window. They lived in a southern suburb of Insein — itself a suburb of Rangoon — and Louisa knew that Daddy had designed the window to look out over their hillside estate and the Karen village of Thamaing, past the highway. It was for the village, he frequently reminded her, that he’d chosen this spot on which to develop this compound that was always humming with Karen employees. “They didn’t forget me, the Karens,” he told Louisa, “and we must never forget them.”

It could have been any late afternoon now, with Daddy just bathed, his curly hair just washed and wrapped in a handkerchief tied tightly around his head (“nothing flattens the hair like a handkerchief!”), with him dressed in his white suit and beginning to speak aloud to the window. His afternoon sessions in prayer, his “grand exercises in gratitude,” he liked to say — these were the only times Louisa would see him so still. He was such a big, quick man, with such noisy steps, such strong features, such a booming voice. But something about the way his eyes gazed upward reminded her of the darkness of her dreams, and she had the thought that maybe there was no God, that maybe Daddy was like a little lost boy.

Little Fella prodded her down to the kitchen, and there they found Mama already enjoying her own tea. Mama always preferred to dine with the servants, as if she didn’t like spending time with her family. “Have you practiced?” she asked Louisa, casting her a look of having been disrupted.

Louisa was supposed to give a short piano recital at the party tonight, but she hated practicing. Maybe to save her, one of the cooks handed her a cup of tea, which Louisa poured into the dog’s bowl before spooning in generous helpings of sugar. Only when boiled milk from the stove was floating in the tea did Little Fella lap up the frothing drink. “Your father will be embarrassed if you play poorly,” Mama persisted.

The truth was that Mama would be embarrassed. There was so much about Louisa she seemed not to like. “As far back as when she was the tiniest thing, she’d come home crying because another child didn’t have something,” Mama would complain. Or: “She knows too much”—as though what Louisa knew were Mama’s secrets. (And Louisa did remember things meant to be forgotten: the cuts on Daddy’s scalp after he had returned to their house in Tharrawaddy, the way he’d kicked while being dragged off by the Japanese in Khuli. She seemed always to have understood that it was better to pretend to forget, to not mention remembering. It all left her feeling forgotten sometimes.)

“Here you are, bitch,” the cook said with a grumble, doling rice and curry into the dog bowl. Little Fella licked the gravy, then stared up at the cook, who smiled at her with charmed eyes. A yap and a dismissive wave of the hand followed, and then the cook took her time opening a jar of brined limes, kept next to the pickles on the counter. “Hold your tongue, and show some gratitude for once,” the cook said. “I haven’t forgotten your condiment.” She forked a lime out for the dog, who seized it and immediately began to tear off a pungent piece of rind.

“You remember it’s my birthday ?” Louisa broke in, her voice catching slightly.

For a moment, the adults stared at her. They seemed to be preparing for one of her “moods.” Then they broke out laughing — at her, Louisa realized, feeling the heat of humiliation on her cheeks.

“Silly girl,” Mama said, and reached out and hooked her hand around Louisa’s waist.

Louisa leaned her hot face against Mama’s cool, powdery one, breathing in the earthiness of her scent and sandalwood comb. These moments of Mama’s attention and affection were so rare and bewildering.

“You think I would forget you?” Mama murmured into her ear. “I’ve made you something special to wear tonight.”

The last time Mama had sewn Louisa a dress they had still been in Tharrawaddy. Then, Mama had used her own petticoat, and Louisa had loved the dress’s lace zigzag hem and the blue ribbon at the waist — had loved the dress so much she’d suddenly been willing to take a more generous view toward being a big sister to her second younger sibling, whom Mama was then expecting, and who would turn out to be Grace. That memory — of the dress, of baby Gracie — was a happy one, wasn’t it? But why did it make Louisa want to hide her stinging eyes in Mama’s soft neck now? (Why did it bring to mind certain other memories of the war? A Japanese soldier cutting off the top of an old man’s head. Johnny’s sweaty hand in hers as they ran for the trench. Daddy hiding in the back of the house in Tharrawaddy. Learning how to disappear with Johnny into the trees. You put your fingers deep into the moist earth by the roots so that you could hear the trees drinking, and you were very quiet, so quiet you were erased, and the only sound was the tree sucking, and then the tree began to speak—)

“Boo boo.”

Louisa lifted her eyes from Mama’s stiffening neck and found Saw Lay in the kitchen doorway, a sheepish grin on his face and that familiar, yet comforting look of sadness in his eyes. He was wearing an oversize polka-dot cravat that Louisa had never seen. It made her want to laugh, to leap into his arms.

“Boo boo,” she told him. As far back as she could remember, they had welcomed each other that way.

“I thought I would come early,” he said to Mama. “I did promise to teach Louisa how to swing dance before the party, if it’s all right. ”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Mama said, hiding her eyes in her tea.

But when Louisa went and took Saw Lay’s hand and tried to pull him away, he turned back to Mama as though to apologize.