Rattawant Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing - Stories

“What am I going to do with you?” Papa said grimly. I thought he was speaking to me; I didn’t know what to say. But then I realized that Papa was speaking to the chicken. The cock nudged my father lightly on the nose as if to apologize. Papa held the chicken by its neck to still its frenetic head. “Why won’t you cooperate?”

“Are you okay?” I asked again. My heart was still hopping wildly in its cage from the way Papa had looked at me, crouched on the ground with those gashes on his face, that chicken between his knees, those eyes strange in their sockets. The chicken struggled, wriggled its wings between my thighs. Papa took it back into his arms. “Go back inside, Ladda,” he said. “I won’t be having breakfast this morning.”

“No,” I said. I don’t know why I refused — it seemed somebody else had spoken the word even as it rolled off my tongue — but I’d been filled with anger toward my father at that moment. I would’ve defied him even if he’d tried to embrace me. “No, Papa. Come inside. Give it a rest.”

Papa smiled sheepishly again. Then he just stood there looking at me with his mouth half-opened. I wanted to ask Papa about his sister then. Ever since talking to Noon, I wanted to know my aunt as somebody other than the Slobbering Slut. I wanted to know her by another name. Because, by then, the moniker had become the substance of my nightmares: spittle and blood and sex and men grunting in back alleys and a lunatic’s laughter answering their cries. I thought things might be tolerable if I could know her name. I said, “Papa — your sister—,” but Papa looked at me strangely, eyebrows raised, like I wasn’t making any sense.

“Sister?” he asked. “What are you talking about, Ladda?”

“Mama told me,” I said. “Mama told me the other day.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Papa said.

“But Mama said your sister and Big Jui—”

“Ladda,” Papa interrupted. “You should know better. People make up all sorts of nonsense about each other to pass the time.”

He smiled at me then, but this time Papa’s smile seemed writ with cunning: too many teeth, too much lifting of the lips, too much feigned delight in his eyes. I thought, for a second, of the smile that hung from Little Jui’s face in the Range Rover. Papa was lying. Papa was denying his own sister.

So I left him there with his chicken in the yard.

XIV

Papa lost. And then he lost again. And then, the week after, he lost once more. There were only five chickens left in the chicken house; we were poorer by the thousands now. Mama stopped talking to him altogether, which didn’t really matter because Papa had sunk into himself more and more with each Sunday loss.

I no longer sought my father’s company. After he’d lied about his own sister, I felt as if I were seeing him for the first time in my life, stripped of any daughterly admiration. I wasn’t angry with him; I was frightened. I wondered if Papa would deny me, too, if Little Jui had his way with me. I spent days in my room, burrowed deep in my books. The house became silent; we’d become mimes acting out the play of our lives.

One morning, a Thursday, Mama threatened to leave. She didn’t marry a lowlife gambler, she said. If he went back to the pit, he would be coming home to an empty house. She said Miss Mayuree had offered a room in her house. Though Mama had made many similar threats through the years, she’d never brought somebody outside our family into the fray. I didn’t know whether she’d really called Miss Mayuree or whether Mama thought that her name might convey to Papa the severity of her threat. When I asked her about it over sewing one evening, she simply shrugged and said, “We’ll see.”

Papa’s tactics became more desperate. He’d scrapped the remote-control car and, instead, started sparring with the chickens himself every morning. He’d put on thick construction gloves and charge at them. All he got for his efforts were a few more scars. The chickens became wary of him, though they seemed far from afraid. Whenever he entered the chicken house, their angry clucks would echo through the property and I’d wonder if chickens were smart enough to start a mutiny.

A passel of strays broke into the chicken house that Friday night. I woke to their barking, to my father’s cursing and kicking at them, to the chickens’ frightened chattering. When I looked out the window, I saw a stray with a chicken between its teeth, trotting away with his head held high while the others lingered around him, waiting to share the bounty. Papa stood at the chicken-house door holding a broom. When the strays disappeared, he sat on the ground, dropped the broom, and buried his face in his hands. I thought he was crying, but soon I saw that he was merely massaging his temples. He disappeared into the chicken house again. I wished then that the strays had taken all of Papa’s chickens. I watched the rubber trees, hoping they would return again. But they didn’t. I only heard their yaps and howls out there, fighting over the chicken.

Little Jui called the house the next afternoon.

“Hey, sexy,” he panted. “Haven’t seen you around.”

I hung up. But he called right back. I just stood there staring at the phone, thinking I might smash it to pieces.

“Who’s that?” Mama asked as the phone’s ringing echoed through our house. She must’ve known from the way I looked at her, because she pushed me aside and picked up the receiver.

“Listen to me, you little fuck,” she said into the phone. “Leave us alone. Call again, and I’ll slit your throat from ear to ear.” I thought she would hang up then, but Mama just stood there listening to Little Jui, the anger slowly dissipating from her face. After a few minutes, she gently hung up the receiver.

“What did he say? What did that asshole want?”

Mama looked at me seriously; I thought she would reprimand me for swearing. “His money,” Mama said finally. “Your father owes a lot more than we think.” I asked Mama how much. “Too much,” Mama said, shaking her head. “He’s coming to take the Mazda. He said he’s coming to take it if your father doesn’t give him his money.”

“No.”

“Go tell him,” she said, nodding in the direction of the chicken house.

When I walked into the chicken house, I saw that the strays had made a considerable mess of things the night before. Feathers everywhere. Overturned water pans. Feed spilled from broken bags. Splotches of dried chicken blood on one of the straw beds. Papa was slicking a cock’s feathers — wiping its body down with a wet sponge — his back turned to me.

“He’s coming to take the Mazda,” I said to his back. Papa didn’t turn around. He just nodded at the chicken. “Did you hear me, Papa? He’s coming to take the truck.” Papa paused, then reached into his pockets. He threw me the keys to the Mazda. Then he turned his attention back to the chicken. The chicken cooed at the moisture. I wanted to grab Papa by the shoulders and shake him then.

“How could you let this happen?” I asked him. “How much did you actually lose?”

But Papa wouldn’t answer. I waited, watching him wipe down that chicken. I noticed a strange kinship between them. The chicken suddenly looked like some evolutionary relative of my father’s. Its long, spindly neck seemed to duplicate Papa’s erect carriage; its spiky verdigris crown feathers were not unlike Papa’s gray, unruly hair. What’s more, there seemed something eerie about the way my father’s gaunt, emaciated features seemed mirrored in the creature’s stony profile. Beady eyes. Sunken cheeks. Aquiline beak. Even the chicken’s barklike talons had their counterpart, in Papa’s slender fingers and jagged nails.