Rattawant Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing - Stories

“Do you need to vomit, Ma?”

Ma shakes her head from side to side, a hand over her mouth. “We’re almost there,” I say. Ma lets out a groan. “How many more hours from Trawen to Lukmak?” she asks.

“Five, Ma.”

“Maybe we should stay at Trawen for the night then, luk. I don’t think I can get on this boat again today.”

Then Ma is on her knees, her head hanging over the side of the boat, retching and heaving and vomiting. Long streams of light liquid splash into the blue-green surf. I sit on the bench beside her, pull her hair from her forehead, stroke her back. I feel her body tense and relax, tense and relax beneath my hand. She vomits until she cannot vomit any longer, as the farangs look over occasionally before quickly looking away.

“It’s best to get it out, madam,” the boy says from behind us, his voice carrying over the sputtering engine. From the tone of his voice — easy, matter-of-fact — I can tell that he has tended to many a seasick middle-aged lady. “Just hang on, madam. Trawen won’t be long now.”

Ma’s body relaxes. She reaches down into the surf, scoops up a few mouthfuls of water, spits it back into the ocean. She wipes her mouth with one arm, rests on her elbows against the side of the boat. “You okay, Ma?” She nods quickly, not looking at me, trying to catch her breath. And then Ma widens her eyes, blinks twice. Widens her eyes, blinks twice. Widens her eyes, blinks twice again. She blinks twice, she blinks three times. She reaches out with one hand and grips my thigh tightly, her fingers pinching the skin. I stifle the impulse to yell. I rest a light hand on hers. I urge her on. Widens her eyes, blinks twice. Widens her eyes, blinks twice. Finally, she relaxes her grip and I can feel the blood rushing back to the skin of my thigh. She puts both of her hands in her lap, takes a few deep breaths, and gets up to sit on the seat beside me. “Look at me, luk,” she says, her voice weak and frail. “Oh, just look at the state I’m in.”

Her hands pat the breast pocket of her blouse, move wildly over her heart. Her eyes dart across the boat’s watery bottom.

“What is it, Ma?”

Ma’s lips are quivering. Ma’s teeth are biting down on the trembling, whitening flesh.

“My — My — Where are — My sunglasses, luk—”

And I imagine the sunglasses slowly falling, the hornrims and purple rhinestones and the word Armani in tiny gold letters spiraling down the blue-green abyss, searching for a resting place on the soft and sandy seafloor.

We decide on a bungalow on the west side of Trawen, a small crescent beach far away from the farangs. With the approaching monsoon, only two of the six bungalows on the beach are occupied. One of the smaller islands around Trawen is but a few hundred meters away, directly facing our bungalow, a modest mound no larger than a city block rising out of the ocean. Earlier, when I asked the boy on the boat if the island had a name, he told me it didn’t, it was too small to warrant one. Ma rented one of the bungalows for the boy so he could take us out to Lukmak in the morning and he tied the small boat to one of the pier’s barnacle-crusted posts.

Ma falls asleep again after we unpack our bags on the wicker floor, her body splayed across the mattress. I change into my trunks and decide to go for a swim, gently closing the screen door behind me.

The water is as warm as the evening air. I walk out a short distance, my knees slicing through the calm surface. Though we are not at Lukmak yet, it is as Ma hoped it would be: the water like a clear skin stretched over the earth; the sand fine and white and soft as a pillow; the schools of tiny rainbow fishes moving in quick unison. Windcrabs scuttle across the floor, burrowing themselves, leaving fresh divots in the sand.

When the water is up to my waist, I plunge beneath the surface, doing quick breaststrokes away from the beach. My chest skims across the soft, sandy bottom. I come back up for air, take a deep breath, plunge down again. I do it once more, the bottom deeper this time. I can feel the soft incline dip a little more, sense the surface slowly rising above me with every stroke I make along the bottom of the sea. I push up off the bottom with my hands, come up for air, plunge back down again.

I open my eyes this time as I rush to the bottom, kicking hard against the surface. I see soft shafts of sunlight slicing through a thick, bleary haze. Clusters of blue, clusters of yellow, clusters of green disperse all around me, moving as if suspended midair, little pellets of color swimming through a depthless tapestry of light. I hear my feet kicking, my heart beating, the warm water rushing around me. An indistinct seafloor rises up to meet me. I crash into the sand. Perhaps, I think, this is what Ma must feel in the grips of her oncoming blindness. These indistinct visions. These fragmented hues. This weightlessness.

I come back up for air. When I break the surface, I look back onto shore, eyes stinging, lips parched and dry. The bungalow looks small with the island rising up behind it, the sun a golden crown around its peak, the beach a thin white slit in the distance.

I see a door opening, a woman sitting down on the bungalow stairs. She’s a red and black dot resting back on her elbows, her feet in the sand. I raise my hand up out of the water to wave to my mother. I’m hoping my mother can see me. I want to believe that she’s waving back, that the red and black flutter is the sign of a mother waving to her son. It’s me, Ma. Me. I’m swimming back to shore.

The island’s electricity generator cuts off with a loud crash at eight. Ma goes inside to fetch the oil lantern, comes back out to sit with me on the beach. The tide has peaked and is beginning to recede.

“Feeling better, Ma?”

“I’m a different person, luk. Sorry about this afternoon.”

“Don’t be silly, Ma,” I say, stretching my legs out in the warm sand. “I’m sorry about the sunglasses.”

“Oh,” she says, chuckling, lighting a cigarette, fingering the neck of her Tsingtao beer, “they were just silly little things any way. Probably retribution for taking advantage of that poor girl at Chatuchak.”

We sit there silently for a while, listening to the breeze rustling the coconut trees, the waves lapping against the beach, watching the fast shadows of windcrabs racing sideways across the sand.

“Can I ask you a question, luk?”

“Sure.”

“Are you going up north at the end of the summer?”

“Well,” I say. “Honestly, Ma?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know, Ma.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

She takes a drag off her cigarette, the ember casting a soft red glow on her face. She stares out into the darkening ocean. She stubs the cigarette against the beer bottle, sparks flying off the glass.

“Listen to me, luk. Listen to me very carefully.” She reaches over and cups my cheeks with her hands. Her palms are cool from the beer. Her touch startles me. “You’re going up north at the end of the summer. I don’t care what you think — you’re going to college. It’s what I want for you. You have to go. I don’t want you taking care of me, hanging around. I don’t expect you to, if that’s what you’ve been worried about all this time. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”

“But Ma—”

“Just listen to me. It’s enough that I’m going blind, luk. I don’t want you to suffer too. Besides.” She takes her hands away, tilts the beer against her lips. “I’m not dying here, luk. I’m just going blind. Just remember that. There’s a big difference — a whole world of difference — even if both of those things happen to good people every day.”

I wake up to the dark, to the sound of the screen door swinging on its hinges. Ma’s sheets are neatly folded on the mattress beside me. I get up, put on a shirt, walk outside, down the bungalow steps. It’s quiet save for the wind whistling through the trees, dark except for a flickering flame, bright and orange, throbbing in the distance, moving across the surface of the sea.