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, too, 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.