Silk Umbrellas Read online

  “Your elephant looks so alive, Kun Ya,” Noi said, leaning close.

  Her grandmother painted an elephant lumbering across a yellow silk umbrella. As she worked, her small body rocked with the thick, bold brush strokes.

  “The eyes even sparkle,” added Noi’s older sister, Ting.

  Noi loved to be with Kun Ya and Ting in the jungle clearing, the three of them sitting on the bamboo mat, surrounded by pots of color.

  Noi dipped her fingertip into the gray, then rubbed the slick paint slowly between her thumb and forefinger.

  Usually Kun Ya asked Noi and Ting to mix the paints. As Noi blended colors to create new ones, she enjoyed the way the smooth texture slipped back and forth with her brush.

  Ting was content to mix paint and wash brushes, but Noi always longed to paint. Sometimes Kun Ya let her paint simple things like leaves. Noi’s whole body came alive with the shades of green. Her hands felt magical when she guided the brush.

  “The elephant is coming right toward us,” Noi remarked. Even though she was eleven years old, she liked to pretend that Kun Ya’s creatures were real.

  Kun Ya laughed softly, and a breeze broke through the canopy of trees to let the sunshine in.

  All morning, Noi and Ting had opened the umbrellas, getting them ready for Kun Ya’s brush. They pushed the fretwork of bamboo slivers up the bamboo pole until the silk bloomed into translucent flowers of pinks, greens, purples.

  Just before handing a new umbrella to Kun Ya, Noi liked to hold it up to the light, enjoying the weightless cascade of color on her face.

  As Kun Ya finished, Noi carried each umbrella to the sunshine and hung it to dry. The forest floor felt soft under her bare feet. When breezes came up, the umbrellas floated back and forth like big soft bells.

  Kun Ya handed Ting the elephant umbrella. Ting stood up and twirled the umbrella overhead as she skipped around the clearing, her movements light and strong. “Look, Noi, the elephant is dancing!”

  Noi laughed.

  Kun Ya took up a small child’s umbrella. She sketched in a pink hibiscus so quickly that it seemed as though her arm became part of the paintbrush.

  Noi crouched close to watch.

  Suddenly, Kun Ya held the umbrella out to Noi. “Paint a butterfly landing on the flower.”

  “Me?” Noi asked, staring at the green silk. A butterfly was much more complicated than simple leaves.

  Kun Ya still challenged her, offering the umbrella.

  “But, Kun Ya, I don’t know how.”

  “You’ve watched me for years, Noi. Now try yourself.”

  Noi dipped the brush into the yellow. Her hand trembled as she brought the brush near the silk stretched across the bamboo frame. She glanced at the butterflies dancing close by, then began to paint yellow wings above Kun Ya’s jungle flower.

  “Your trembling is good, Noi,” said Kun Ya. “That’s the way the butterfly moves. Let the movement spread to your whole body, not just your fingers. Paint with all of you. Become the butterfly.”

  In an instant, Noi understood what Kun Ya meant. She sensed the butterflies hovering in the thick shade of the banana leaves, then flittering out into the sunshine. The flit of the butterflies moved into her, then out into the brush, so the paint seemed to lay itself down.

  Noi held the umbrella away from her. “I did it!”

  “It’s pretty,” said Ting.

  Kun Ya smiled and began to collect the brushes, dropping them one by one into a jar of water.

  Noi and Ting laid their heads down in Kun Ya’s lap to wait while the umbrellas dried. Kun Ya stroked their hair and sang, “The yellow bird flies away,” while Noi gazed at the flowers and creatures that Kun Ya had created. The shadows of the trees crisscrossed Kun Ya’s face as she sang.

  As usual, after the song was over, Noi said, “Tell me about when you were young in the jungle.”

  Kun Ya took a deep breath and began. “As soon as I could walk, my mother brought me to catch frogs and to gather wild mushrooms.”

  “Go on, tell me more.” Noi knew the rest, but wanted to hear it.

  “The mushrooms are still here, but the frogs have disappeared.”

  That part was sad to hear about, and Noi hurried the story forward. “Tell about the elephants.”

  “Whenever we saw elephants dragging huge teak logs through the forest, we fed them sugar cane.”

  “How did their trunks feel, Kun Ya? Did they grab the sugar cane from your hands?” Ting asked.

  “Their trunks felt wrinkly and alive with muscles under my fingers. And yes, they snatched the sugar cane that we held out.”

  When the umbrellas were dry, Ting and Noi closed them up, the way that flowers close themselves up for the night. They put them in the basket of Kun Ya’s samlaw, or three-wheeler.

  “We worked hard today,” said Kun Ya.

  Kun Ya had done the real work, Noi thought. But then she recalled her butterfly umbrella, which lay in the basket with Kun Ya’s umbrellas. She had worked too.

  The large tricycle had two wheels in front with the basket between them. Behind the rider was one wheel. Kun Ya lifted her narrow sarong, climbed onto the seat, and began to pedal down the soft jungle path.

  Noi ran alongside, carrying the paints and brushes. Ting followed, the bamboo mat rolled under her arm.

  When the jungle parted, the house appeared, built high up on stilts to guard against flooding in the rainy season. The house had once been dark green and the big wooden shutters a rusty red, but most of the paint had flaked off in the moist jungle air.

  An enormous tree spread over the front garden. Long seedpods dangled from the branches.

  Noi spotted their mother to one side of the house. Her black hair tied out of the way, she hung laundry on the line, pinning it carefully while smoothing the wrinkles.

  Their father was working in the space underneath the house where the pigs and chickens lived. He stirred a pot over a small fire, boiling young banana-tree shoots for the animals. His blue denim pants were rolled up around his knees as always.

  “Kun Mere,” Noi called out as she ran. “Kun Ya let me paint a butterfly!”

  Kun Mere turned from the shirt she was hanging. “That’s lovely news, Noi. Here, take this up for me.” She pointed at the empty laundry basket.

  Noi moved close to Kun Pa’s cooking fire. The steam rising from the pot smelled like bananas. “I painted a butterfly on an umbrella!”

  Kun Pa lifted the spoon from the pot and looked at Noi. “That’s an honor, little daughter. Maybe you can learn to paint as well as Kun Ya does.”

  “Oh, Kun Pa, that would be hard!” Kun Ya didn’t just decorate umbrellas; she was an artist, and her umbrellas were known throughout northern Thailand.

  Yet as Noi helped Kun Ya park the tricycle under the house and put away the painting supplies, she recalled the way she had captured the butterfly with her painting, how it now lived on the green silk, landing delicately on Kun Ya’s hibiscus. Her heart danced from one bit of the memory to another.

  She climbed the steep wooden ladder that rose from the ground to the front door of the house. The late sunlight splashed through the door and onto the clean expanse of teakwood floor in the living room. Against the wall stood a chest carved with elephants. On it, set in frames, rested a photo of the king and queen of Thailand and another of the revered fifth king of the Chakri Dynasty, Piya Maharaj, who had abolished slavery. All around, tall windows extended from floor to ceiling.

  No walls separated the living room from the cooking area, where Ting was already busy. Noi smelled the salty fish sauce that flavored almost every dish.

  “Kun Ya wants to teach you to paint, Noi,” said Ting, cutting a block of bean curd into cubes.

  “And you, to
o, Ting. I’m sure she wants you to learn, too.”

  Ting shook her head. “No. I don’t have the feeling for it, or she would have taught me when I was your age. Here, help me chop.” She pushed several cloves of garlic and a knife toward Noi.

  It was true, thought Noi, that Ting wasn’t drawn to painting as she was.

  Leaving the outer husks on the cloves, Noi sliced them into thin ovals. Out the window, she watched Kun Pa feeding the pigs far below. They gathered around him, pushing at his legs with their snouts, squealing as the boiled banana stems fell into the carved wooden trough.

  Ting scooped the garlic slices into a pan of hot oil, added eggs, then stirred quickly. She hummed a little song under her breath as she worked.

  Noi took the empty egg basket and put it near the door, then swept the wooden floor, reaching the broom into the corners. When she was finished, she laid out the large mat for eating, making sure that it was straight and even.

  Kun Pa came up the ladder into the house, his empty cooking pot banging against the rungs. “Today those animals were acting like Srithon’s children,” he remarked. Srithon, who lived across the village, had ten children, all boys. They impolitely took large servings of food onto their plates.

  Kun Pa loved to joke. At dinner he liked to be entertained. Maybe he would like to see the green umbrella, Noi thought. She would show him and Kun Mere the butterfly.

  But when Kun Mere and Kun Ya came up the ladder, they were whispering together. Did they have a troubling secret? Kun Ya’s wrinkles looked deeper, and the corners of Kun Mere’s mouth were pinched tight.

  Later, thought Noi, I’ll bring out the umbrella later.

  Everyone sat down cross-legged on the mat and passed the bowl of rice, bean curd and pork cooked with garlic, the flat yellow omelet, and the tiny dish of fish sauce and chili.

  Kun Pa didn’t seem to notice that Kun Mere and Kun Ya looked serious. “Srithon’s poor wife,” he said, serving himself a piece of omelet. “She keeps only female animals to save herself from going crazy with so many boys.” He ate slowly, clacking his big spoon against the dish. His work with Mr. Khayan had started early that morning.

  When Noi was young, Kun Pa had planted the fields he rented from the landlord. Every night he came home with baskets of vegetables. Noi remembered washing the dirt off the crinkly cabbage leaves and snaky green beans as long as her forearm. When it was rice harvest, they’d always had fragrant jasmine rice to eat. Noi had helped Kun Mere pick out the bad grains that floated to the top when the rice was rinsed.

  Kun Pa used to load the back of a little truck with the harvest and take it to market to sell. He returned from the market with coconut treats for Ting and Noi. They’d waited for him to come back and had jumped up and down at the sight of him, their mouths eager for the sweetness.

  They’d had all they could eat, and not much need of money to spend.

  Then suddenly the landlord had sold the farmland to a company that built vacation houses for city people and foreigners. Kun Pa and the other small farmers had had to find jobs. Now Kun Pa worked for the construction foreman, Mr. Khayan, laying bricks for those houses. But work was available only now and then.

  “Work for Mr. Khayan?” Kun Mere had said at first. “How can you work for someone who’s destroying the farmland?” But in the end, Kun Mere, who kept the family budget, agreed that laying bricks was the only thing for Kun Pa to do. Throughout the village, women were in charge of all such household decisions.

  Now whenever Kun Pa touched Noi, she felt how his hands had grown cracked and dry from handling the mortar. And in the evenings, Noi overheard him and Kun Mere talking about not having enough money.

  Tonight Kun Mere said nothing when Kun Pa left after dinner to play chess with his friends. Usually, she would tease him a little about leaving. “Aren’t you going to the cockfights instead?” she might say. But tonight, Noi noticed that Kun Mere let him depart in peace.

  Kun Ya, saying she was tired from the sun, went to her room.

  Noi, Ting, and Kun Mere remained together on the mat, even though they’d finished eating. Usually, the three of them would get up and work quickly to gather and wash the dishes. But tonight something unspoken held them still. What had Kun Mere and Kun Ya been whispering about?

  The room was lit with one bare bulb. It cast a bright light but also harsh shadows.

  “Please clean up tonight, Noi. Ting and I have to talk,” said Kun Mere, uncrossing and crossing her legs with the opposite one on top. She looked down, her face washed with shadow.

  Noi gathered the dishes. She tried to steady them, since their clatter sounded huge in the silence of the room.

  Ting sat with her hands folded. Outside, thousands of crickets sounded together with one voice.

  “Ting, I’ve arranged the job for you,” said Kun Mere as soon as Noi had cleared the eating mat.

  “Is it the factory job?” Ting asked. Kun Mere had been talking about this job for weeks.

  Noi filled the large bowl from a jar of rainwater, pouring smoothly, just as Kun Mere’s words poured out as though she had already practiced saying them.

  “Yes, making radios. Many of my friends in this village have sons and daughters in the factory. It isn’t so bad.”

  Ting said nothing.

  The crickets’ song grew louder.

  Noi glanced to see Ting trace the lines on the palms of her hands with her fingertip, as she did whenever she was distressed.

  The factory. If Ting worked there, she wouldn’t be able to help Noi and Kun Ya with the umbrellas.

  “You’ll make money for the family. Your father and I won’t have to worry so much.”

  That would be good, Noi thought. Her parents could talk about something else in the evenings for once.

  “But, Kun Mere, I’ve heard that the chemicals make the workers sick,” Ting said. “And looking at the tiny parts for so long damages the eyesight.”

  Noi plunged her hands into the cool water. Was the factory job a bad one, then? Surely, hearing that, Kun Mere would change her mind. She might say, “Well, never mind, then, I’ll find you something else,” and ask Ting to help her fold up the eating mat.

  “If that were true, my friends would have told me about it,” Kun Mere continued instead. “Tomorrow the bus will pick you up.”

  Noi turned to look at Kun Mere. Was she joking? Did she have a playful smile on her face? But Kun Mere’s face was down, her expression shadowed.

  When Noi heard the first birds calling to each other across the jungle, she got up. She tied back the mosquito net, shook out the sleeping mat that she shared with Ting, then folded it into a neat pile against the wall. She opened the tall shutters to the trees outside. There was no glass in the windows, and the enormous banana leaves pressed close.

  Ting had already left, headed for the bus stop and her first day at the factory.

  In bed last night, Ting had whispered, “The factory might be fun. I’ll meet new people. I’ll earn money. Maybe I’ll even buy you something special.”

  Noi had said, “Yes, it might be good.” But she couldn’t forget what Ting had said about the factory workers getting sick.

  The sun rose, pulling a curtain of light across the sky.

  In the bathroom stood a tall black jar of rainwater. Noi used the clear surface of the water as a mirror. Each morning before she bathed, she leaned over to look at her light skin, her thin arched eyebrows, and her straight, even teeth stained ever so slightly. Kun Ya said that the stains came from minerals in the drinking water.

  Noi plunged a dipper into the water, then lifted it to splash herself clean. After she’d bathed, she combed out her long black hair, then twisted it into a bun at the back of her head.

  She dressed in her uniform of a blue skirt and crisp white blouse. I won’t be wearing this much longer, she thought, pulling the collar straight. Because she was eleven years old, this would be her last year of school. Most children in the village didn’t study beyond gra
de school.

  Ting had been out of school for four years.

  The house smelled of the morning incense that burned in a smoky plume from the altar high on the wall, where a wooden Buddha sat, his palms facing upward, his eyes downcast.

  “Sawasdee, little daughter.” Kun Mere said good morning as though nothing had happened the night before.

  “Sawasdee, Kun Mere,” Noi answered. Surely, Kun Mere knew the right thing to do with Ting. Hadn’t she tended the altar, placing fresh flowers and food and lighting the incense stick? Surely she was in harmony with the Buddha and would never do anything against his holy principles.

  After breakfast, Kun Mere settled down to her sewing machine. She turned on the lamp and pushed the sewing machine pedal with the tip of her toe, making mosquito nets, the netted fabric billowing around her.

  Once a week, Mr. Subsin collected the nets, carrying them to other villages to sell. He loaded the bundles into his tiny truck and took off, the jungle caressing the fenders, black smoke puffing from the exhaust pipe.

  By sewing mosquito nets, Kun Mere brought a little money into the household.

  Noi descended the wooden ladder. In the dim green light underneath the house rested the umbrellas that she and Kun Ya had worked on the day before, piled in neat stacks, waiting to go to the Saturday tourist market.

  The butterfly umbrella lay somewhere in those stacks. Would Kun Ya include that umbrella when the others went to market? Was it good enough to sell?

  The tricycle was already loaded with fresh umbrellas. Noi laid her hand on the top one, the silk cool against her palm. Today in the jungle, Kun Ya might paint colorful parrots with airy flicks of her wrist.

  Noi walked alone to school, following the narrow forest path until it opened onto the road leading into the village. Ahead of her, a boy rode his bicycle, reaching up with one arm to touch the feathery archway of trees.

  Noi walked slowly, stopping every now and then to look up. Above the canopy, clouds gathered, their misty whiteness forming out of the pale blue sky. She imagined mixing blues and greens and pure white to paint that sky.