That evening Noi and Ting prepared to iron clothes with the charcoal iron. The iron had a hollow space underneath the handle. Noi held the iron close to the cooking fire, a cloth wrapped around the handle to shield her hand from the heat. Ting used a pair of tongs to lift hot coals into the opening.

Noi held the iron very still, even though she was trembling inside with the question she was about to ask.

When the iron was filled with coals and the lid was latched closed, Ting set it on the thick blanket spread out on the floor.

Noi handed her Kun Pa’s brown shirt from the basket. Now was the time to ask. She had to know for sure. Her words rushed out: “Do you think that Kun Mere means to send me to the factory, too?”

“Don’t worry yourself about that now,” said Ting. She looked quickly at Noi, then back to the shirt collar she was straightening.

But Noi pushed on. “Has she said anything to you?”

“Not directly.” Ting bit her lip. “But probably yes, I think she plans to send you.”

Noi’s hand brushed the hot iron, and she jerked it back. Her skin bubbled right away into a blister.

“Put some oil on that,” said Ting.

Noi dabbed on cooking oil from the nearby jar. Tears came to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as pain rushed at her from all directions.

“Does your hand hurt very badly?” Ting asked, touching the red spot lightly with her fingertip.

“Yes,” said Noi, although the blister itself was only a small part of the hurt. The wound had forced her deeper anguish into the open.

She watched Ting finish the brown shirt, running the iron up and down one sleeve, then turning the shirt to line up the other sleeve. Ting hung the shirt neatly on a hanger, then began on a flower-print dress of Kun Mere’s.

“And what about you, Ting? You act as though you don’t mind the factory,” Noi finally managed to say.

“I don’t mind too much. I’m not like you.”

“But the factory looked so . . .” Noi wanted to go on and, sobbing, tell Ting what she’d observed at the factory and all about the kaleidoscope of broken parts her life had become. But she stopped, not wanting to make Ting feel bad.

Ting moved the iron over Kun Mere’s pale flowers, the point traveling first, then the triangular body. “Really, I’m fine,” she said as she finished the dress. “For now, Kun Mere needs me to work there.”

The rainy season had never seemed longer, nor the rainfall more torrential. Often there was no school because of the rain, so Noi stayed home. When she did go, she had trouble concentrating on what Kun Kru taught her.

Because of the rain, Kun Pa couldn’t lay bricks. He sat in the house weaving bamboo fishing baskets, the long strips of bamboo uncurling on the mat.

Kun Mere’s sewing machine whirred along except when lightning hit the electrical wires. Then Noi would light a lantern. She brought it close so that Kun Mere could continue to sew by hand with tiny, neat stitches.

Kun Ya slept and hardly painted at all. She complained that her fingers hurt.

Only Ting kept to her schedule in spite of the weather, slipping out of the mosquito net before dawn each morning. Every other Friday, she handed Kun Mere her earnings. They sat down together on the mat while Ting, smiling, counted the bills and coins into Kun Mere’s open hand. Kun Mere would count the money again, then neatly enter the amount in a small notebook. Often Ting’s money was the only money coming into the house.

Noi stayed busy with schoolwork and housework, trying to avoid Kun Mere’s eyes.

As the rains crashed down day after day, Noi began to look ahead to the harvest festival of Loy Krathong.

During Loy Krathong, people celebrated the life of all growing things. The harvest brought new prosperity. Noi hoped that the festival celebrations would bring prosperity for her family. Maybe there would be enough money so that neither she nor Ting would have to go to the factory.

During Loy Krathong, the village would be lit up by phang patit, the small earthen lamps. Noi added up the number of lamps her family would light. She was eleven years old, Ting fifteen. That made twenty-six. Plus Kun Mere’s thirty-five years and Kun Pa’s thirty-seven made ninety-eight. Plus Kun Ya’s sixty-three years made one hundred and sixty-one. The flickering yellow flames of one hundred and sixty-one lamps would make the fall night seem warmer.

Noi pictured the lights that would burn under the trees around the house. She counted them over and over until the individual flickers came clear. The thought of so many lights, small offerings to the Buddha, comforted her.