What you remember from when you're eight, ain't all that useful when you get to be twenty four. Saifon recalled trees and hills and huts, but that don't get you no place. 'Excuse me, I'm looking for this, like, big tree.' She knew her aunt's name, but being as there was under two hundred telephones in the whole country, there weren't no directory to look through. Besides, her aunt didn't have no running water, electricity, or walls, so she sure as hell didn’t have no phone. So this search was gonna take some time.
The only thing she had to go on was something her aunt always said to her, "You carry on like this and I'll send you straight back to Ban". 'Ban' was a Thai word that meant 'town'. On the Thai side, every other village was Ban this or Ban that. But it weren't so common in Savannakheth. There was only three that she could find.
The PL driver had instructions from his boss to visit all of 'em. He'd also give her a letter saying she was representing the PL. If they got stopped by the Royal Lao Army, the RLA, she was supposed to eat it. It was writ on paper as thick as cowhide so she had a bottle of beer with her in the back seat to wash it down.
With this letter, she was sure to have the ear of village headmen. The locals could see that the commies was whipping yank backsides in Nam. It didn't take much sense to see that socialist forces in Laos would be running the show some day. Now was a good time to suck up. Without the letter she wouldn't get zilch. Her Lao was getting better, but she didn’t talk, or move, or act like a Lao woman. They could all spot her as an outsider.
The first village, Ban Khong, was a sorry gathering of shacks that didn't have no feeling of homeliness about 'em. The stilts that was holding 'em up was all different lengths and breadths. You got the feeling they'd all been knocked down and put up again so many times the owners couldn't be of a mind to do a decent job no more.
A few sleepy old men crawled out from under their shacks and was almost on their knees, praying before Saifon got out the car. Now wai-ing like they do in Thailand ain't so popular in Laos so it was obvious these poor old guys was so brow-beaten they'd do anything just to get a bit of peace. A quick look of surprise did rustle through 'em for a second when they saw her, but they just went on praying and greeting and groveling, whoever she was.
They wanted real bad to be able to help, but they didn’t know nothing. Saifon felt kinda sorry for 'em and asked if there was anything she could do to help them. It was obviously a question they never heard before. They looked sideways at one another from behind their praying hands. And even though they didn't have a dollar between 'em, and they hadn't et nothing but rice and stale vegetables for over a year, they couldn't think of nothing they wanted.
Saifon took a couple of twenty-dollar bills out of her purse, handed it to one of the guys and got back in the car. It was the same as if the fairy godmother'd come down in South Bend and handed a million bucks to a bunch of homeless guys. They was too stunned to say thank you.
The second Ban, Ban Se, was on a stream, and even though it could of been wishful thinking, she got vibrations from the place. The headman was a woman cause all the men was off firing bullets over the enemy's heads to earn a few cents a month from the RLA.
The year before, they'd fired over RLA heads when they fought for the PL. Laos was like that in them days. You'd be about to run your bayonet through some enemy soldier and realize he was your uncle.
The woman was tough and suspicious. She read the letter Saifon give her and said, "What do you want here?" The letter was upside down so she figured the woman didn’t read no better than she did. She told her the story. She only had scraps of memories. Her ma's nickname. How her family got caught in crossfire and she was the only one survived. The aunt. She didn't say nothing about getting sold.
The headwoman spat betel nut on the dust at Saifon's feet. When she smiled it was like Muhammad Ali had smashed her in the teeth. Everything in there was rotten and stained red. She looked down at the outsider's clothes. They wasn't nothing fancy but they was clean and neat and western looking.
"I see you done good for yourself."
"I stayed alive, if that's what you mean."
"What I meant was money. You marry a Frenchman?"
"No. I live in America."
"America, eh?" She looked across at the driver and lowered her voice. "You got dollars?"
"I got dollars if you've got information."
"How much is information worth these days?"
"If it's good enough to find my aunt, twenty dollars."
The woman didn't know how to contain her excitement. The average yearly income, if you didn't count the criminals in Vientiane, was around fifty bucks. But she decided to push her luck anyway.
"I couldn't tell you for less than …forty." She unwrapped another betel nut from its leaf and popped it into her bloody mouth. Saifon sized her up.
"You know. If I had the choice between getting twenty bucks for doing nothing, and getting nothing for doing nothing, I know what I would of chose." She turned back to the car. The woman knew the girl was bluffing, but she needed the money too bad to play with her.
"Thirty."
"Twenty-five."
"Deal." Numbers ping pong was a national sport in Laos. The woman held out her claw and Saifon filled it with two tens and a five. You wouldn't credit how quick you can change a woman's mood just by giving her money. "I would of helped you anyway, honey. I don't recall the particular incident of your family getting wiped out. I married into this hellhole. Families get wiped out all the time in these parts.
But your aunt's name ain't that usual. (Souksaijai, Miss 'Happiness in the Heart', ironic weren't it.) I ain't seen her in a couple of years, but I guess the woman you're talking about lived out in the hills, about ten kilometers from here. She's about the right age, and she used to take in kids."
Saifon warned her that they'd be back if they found she was lying, although the woman's life was so miserable she doubted there was much she could threaten her with. That twenty-five dollars would probably make a difference to a lot of people. The woman seemed offended at such a possibility anyway but give the driver directions.
Saifon bounced around in the back seat and watched the jungle rise and fall on each side of the car. The driver had untold skill when it come to finding potholes. It was the longest ten kilometers she could remember. She still didn't feel it, that native instinct. She didn't feel like she was part of the country. She'd gotten too foreign. All her dreams of finding her roots was bounced out of her on the road from Ban Se. She wanted a hot shower and a hamburger and a couple of hours of mindless TV.
When the driver hit ten kilometers on his clock, he pulled over and asked some old guy dressed in a dirty cloth. He pointed to a patch of brown-green on the side of a hill, but something had already pinged in Saifon's memory. It hadn't changed none. This was where she'd toiled and suffered for the bitch for all them years. Her heart plopped down into her stomach like a turd into a toilet.
The driver stopped where one colour green ended and another one started. There wasn't no fences. She got out the car and looked over at a beaten up old bamboo shack on stilts. It had walls now, sort of, even though they was just straw sheets. Her legs weren't in no hurry to go to it.
Finally she got 'em moving and she walked up the little path. First thing she noticed was a beat up old motorcycle. And you'll never guess what thought come into her head when she saw it. She truly wondered if the money to buy the bike had come from her own sale. She wondered if the money had burned a hole in the old witch's pocket, and she'd bought the first lump of old shit fucking motorcycle she could find. Witch. She'd been robbed.
"Hello." There was a rustle from up in the hut, but no one answered. "Aunt Souksaijai, you up there?" Nothing again. She edged up the creaking steps till her head come level with the floor of the hut. And it was the weirdest thing, really. Inside was herself, looking at old magazines.
Of course, it wasn't really herself. That would of been just too weird even for a book like this. But there was a little girl in there, dressed and looking like Saifon must of when she was eight. She was dirty and there was a bad smell up there.
"Hello, little sister. I'm looking for Aunt Souksaijai. Does she still live here?" The girl didn't answer. She just kept thumbing through them old magazines the way her aunt always used to.
That was entertainment at auntie's. It was TV. It was cinema, play, education and the outside world. The pictures in her aunt's second-hand magazines was the only fun she had as a girl. Lord knows where she got 'em from. But if the woman ever caught Saifon looking at 'em, she beat the innards out of her. They was hers. So the only time she could sneak a look was when Souksaijai was off spooning with some guy, drunk.
She really knew how happy this young girl must be, looking at pictures and words she didn’t understand.
"Sorry to disturb you. Do you know where Souksaijai is?"
The girl nodded. "Is she around here? I gotta see her." She nodded again. There was something missing in her eyes. It was like they was just for seeing. Just for looking at the magazine pictures and nothing else.
"Do you think you could take me to her?"
The girl folded the magazines real neat and placed 'em exactly where she knew they ought'a be. She climbed out down the steps and walked barefoot along the rough grass between the rice paddies. Her aunt never had enough rice to sell, just to eat. That and some seasonal vegetables was breakfast, lunch and supper. When the drought come, or the rains was too severe, Saifon had to do without one or the other. There always seemed to be enough for her aunt though.
Saifon looked around her. That world looked a lot smaller than she remembered it. She tended the garden all by herself from when she wasn't yet four, while her nasty old aunt lay out there like an empress on her platform overseeing her empire, looking at her pictures.
She followed the girl off the land that was her aunt's and into the trees. Something stank back there. She could see her aunt laying in the shade of a tree. She still was a lazy bitch.
"Aunt Souksaijai, you asleep?"
She walked around the tree and got a clear view. She wasn't sleeping. There was flies where her face should of been. I think it's better if I don't describe the rest of her, just in case you're having lunch or something. Saifon staggered back. The girl stood there looking at the flies.
"Wh …what happened to her?"
"I killed her."