Sightseeing (9 page)

It is then that the barely noticed details start to fall into place—the clumsiness, the bruises and cuts, the misjudged steps, the misshapen eyebrows, the days off from work. I turn off the shower. I wrap a towel around her small, naked body. I help my mother get up. This is the first time that I have seen my mother naked. I look at the way her breasts sag like upturned bells, nipples bulbous like baby mangosteens. I look at the thick thatch of hair between her legs. I look at that lost look of shame on her face.

My mother is going blind.

The doctors say her eyes have deteriorated beyond repair. Migraine-induced retinal detachment. They tell us that if she had checked in a couple of months earlier, when the migraines started, when the pain behind her eyes began, blindness might have been averted. They tell us it's too late now. We take the three-hour trip to Bangkok Christian—a private hospital that took care of the prime minister when he lost his right eye in a shooting accident—to get one last opinion.

The ophthalmologist at Bangkok Christian mentions experimental surgery. But he informs us that the success rate has been slim thus far. He says Ma would risk going blind altogether from the procedure. It is something called a “vitrectomy”: taking my mother's eyes out of their sockets, soldering the fallen retina back to the vitreous, putting them back in again. The
ophthalmologist says the procedure will be very expensive. A surgeon would have to be flown in from Singapore. He says this with a smile. His stiff, white lab coat shimmers under the bright fixtures.

“Money's not an issue, Doctor.” I say this curtly, though I know it is a lie. My mother and I have never purchased a plane ticket for ourselves, let alone for some stranger from Singapore. Ma tells the ophthalmologist we'll think it over. We leave Bangkok Christian with nothing new. Four doctors now and still the same old story.

Eight to ten weeks before permanent loss of sight. Retinas detached, vitreous shrunken, optic nerves irrevocably damaged. Stay out of the sun. No bright lights. No small print. Do eye exercises. Focus on slowly moving objects. We need to keep the retinas stimulated, on the off chance they might regenerate. On the off chance. In case of a miracle. Get lots of sleep. Don't go to work. You really can't go to work, ma'am. But above all, don't panic. But most important, please relax.

My mother quits her job. Later that week, we look at a map of Thailand together, tracing the hatchet-shaped boundaries, circling places she would like to see. Lop Buri. Chiang Rai. Loie. Samut Songkhram. Mae Hong Son. The doctors tell Ma to get out of the city, take a vacation. We decide to go to the Andaman Islands.

And in my room that week I unpack my belongings once more. I don't repack them this time. I put all of the books back on the shelf, stack the brand-new notebooks
under my desk. I move the course guide, the maps, and the brochures from the head of my bed, stow them away in a drawer. Though I still take them out from time to time, flip through the now-familiar pages, I'm finding it difficult to dream of those mountains again. I cannot look at those maps without imagining my mother blind and alone in the house, and I'm starting to wonder, for the first time in my life, about what kind of son I really am.

The train comes to a stop in Trang. I try to take my mother's arm when we get up.

“I'm not blind yet, luk.”

“Sorry, I just thought—”

“You just thought nothing, luk. I'm fine.”

The sun is gone, the tree-lined horizon red from the last of its rays. Moths dance against the platform's flickering lamplights. When we step off the train, Ma puts on her sunglasses: horn-rimmed, purple-rhinestoned Armanis we bought at the Chatuchak Bazaar. She wears those sunglasses every chance she gets now. Doctor's orders. They suit her well, and if it wasn't for the fact that sunglasses look out of place in the evenings, I'd say my mother might be a Chinese movie star.

We check into our hotel room, have dinner at a noodle vendor in the center of town. We order large bowls of seafood vermicelli, sit at a small table on the sidewalk. We eat by the weak light of the town's streetlamps.

“You okay?” Ma asks, tugging at the noodles with her chopsticks, peering over her sunglasses, thin wreaths of steam unfurling between us.

“I'm fine. Why?”

“You're not being very talkative, that's all. You've been a little morose. A mother notices, you know.”

“Is there something you want to talk about?”

“Oh, I don't know. Something. Anything. Everything. For God's sakes, we're on vacation, luk. Smile a little.”

“Fine, let's talk.”

“Okay, let's talk.”

“Okay.” She chews off the head of a prawn, smiling, twirling the translucent husk between her fingers. “Why don't you tell me about the school up north, luk. What do you think you'll study? I don't think we've ever talked about that before.”

“I haven't given it much thought, actually.”

“No?”

“No, Ma.”

“But you were so excited a few months ago.”

“That was a few months ago, Ma.”

“What did you tell me you were going to study? What was it, luk? Libraries? That was it, wasn't it? Oh, I think you'd make a great librarian. You'd be so handsome with all those books.”

“Let's talk about something else, Ma.”

There's an awkward silence. Ma puts down her chopsticks. She takes off her sunglasses, folds the thick plastic earpieces,
lays them neatly on the table. I can see the faint outline of rings already forming around her eyes. I bend to sip my broth.

“Look at me, luk. No. Look at me.”

I put the bowl down, lean back in my seat.

“I didn't bring you along so you could brood. I would've come myself, luk, if I knew you were going to act this way. What's wrong with a little conversation with your mother? I'm not asking for much here, luk. I'm just asking you to be courteous. I'm just asking you to be kind.”

“Sorry, Ma. I just didn't—”

“Don't ‘sorry' me, luk. I don't need your apologies. I just need you to act like you're my son, that's all—not some cranky client I'm taking out to dinner. Be decent, luk. Be nice. Is that too much to ask?”

“Ma—”

“You think it's easy for me to sit here knowing I'm going blind, that there's nothing I can do about it? I could wake up blind tomorrow morning. I might never see you again. And you'll be sorry then, luk. Real sorry. You'll probably be sorrier than you've ever been in your life, knowing that the last time your mother saw you, you were being dreadful.”

We finish our meals silently. On our way back to the hotel, there's a blind man playing an accordion on the corner across from the hotel. He sings a southern worksong, his contralto lilting across the street. Pedestrians drop change in the tin cup at his feet and he smiles at the sound of each brightly
clinking coin. For a moment, as we walk past, I wonder where his children are. Then Ma and I look away. From our room three stories up, we can hear him singing all through the night. We sleep to the sounds of his beggar's elegies.

Every Saturday morning, Ma battles the vendors at Chatuchak. Even the most stubborn of vendors have submitted to her entreaties. It is not only charm she exerts upon them, for charm will get you only so far; Ma slashes their prices through an inimitable combination of wit, commonsense economics, high theatrics, and old-fashioned psychological manipulation. That Saturday at the bazaar, a few days before our trip, Ma was at the height of her powers.

The vendor was a young, homely-looking girl. Throngs of people filed past her booth. I stood at a distance as Ma scanned the hundreds of frames neatly laid out on the table. “What do you think?” she asked, putting on the Armanis.

“They look good, Ma.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You look like Jackie Kennedy.”

This pleased her. She raised her hand in a fluttering half-gesture, smiling, bending to look at her reflection in the small mirror. “How much?” she finally asked, taking off the glasses with a swift, dramatic gesture. The vendor said twelve hundred. Ma yelped. “They're real, ma'am,” the vendor said. “Real Armanis.”

“Real or not, that's an awful lot of money.”

The girl laughed—a shrill, sheepish sound. A middleaged Chinese couple walked into the booth, the husband with a vacant look in his eyes. Ma asked for a discount. “I can't, ma'am. Profit margin's small as it is.”

“C'mon. Give an old woman a break.”

The girl smiled. She said eleven hundred. Ma yelped again.

“I'm not a farang, na? We're all Thai here. Give me the Thai price.” The vendor asked Ma to name one. Not eleven hundred, Ma said. The vendor counteroffered: ten-fifty. Ma put the glasses back on the table. “That's ridiculous,” she said, shaking her head, though I could hear that hint of mischief in her voice. Only now, I knew, would the bargaining begin in earnest. “Let's go,” Ma said curtly, feigning disappointment. The Chinese couple glanced at us, smiled, and I tried to return the courtesy. The wife went back to browsing and the husband to looking as if he would rather be elsewhere. “Can you believe that?” Ma asked as we made our way toward the aisle, her voice loud enough for the girl to hear. “Twelve hundred for a pair of fake Armanis.”

“Ma—”

“Don't ‘Ma' me. You don't think it's a little expensive?”

“Well—”

“It's outrageous.”

There is faith in the way Ma bargains, in the way we started to walk away from the girl. Her faith was substantiated that day. The girl called us back.

“Ma'am! Ma'am!” Ma let go of my arm, turned to face the vendor.

“How's a thousand, ma'am?” the girl said, getting up from her seat.

“Oh no.” Ma laughed, grabbing my arm again. “Why would I spend that kind of money on a pair of fake Armanis?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Chinese husband snickering softly to himself.

“They're not fake, ma'am.”

“Oh?”

“No, ma'am. My boyfriend got them from the factory.”

“So they're stolen?”

“Ma'am!”

“Pirated, then. They're pirated. You know I could—”

“Ma'am!”

“I'm just teasing. What's a little teasing?” Ma said. “Don't take an old woman like me so seriously. Here. Let me look at them again.”

Ma tried them on once more. The girl told her she looked stunning. “I like them,” Ma said, taking off the glasses. “But a thousand? I don't like them
that
much.” Again, the girl asked Ma to name a price. Ma took out her wallet, handed me the sunglasses, fished out a few bills. “Tell you what. I'll leave six hundred baht on this table. Then I'll walk away with those sunglasses.”

“Oi! I can't do that, ma'am.”

“Of course you can.”

“No, ma'am, that's impossible.” The girl looked at me. I shrugged. “Okay,” Ma said. “Let me ask you this then: How much did you pay for these glasses?”

“I don't know, ma'am. My boyfriend was the one—”

“Oh, just tell me. What's an old woman like me going to do with that kind of information? Your boyfriend's not here now, is he? How else am I supposed to give you a fair offer?”

“I can't do that. I'd lose money if I gave it to you for six hundred, though.”

“So six hundred it is then,” Ma said emphatically, laying the money down. The Chinese husband let out a bellowing laugh this time and the girl shot him a look that suggested, suddenly, that she was much older than I had originally assumed. “I can't let you do that.” The vendor's voice was strong and curt now, a new pallor on her face.

“Now you're talking,” Ma teased, smiling. “No need to ‘ma'am' me all the time. Now we can talk like adults. How much did you pay for these?” The girl shook her head. Six-fifty, Ma offered. The girl shook her head again. Ma took another hundred-baht note from her wallet. Seven-fifty.

“No.”

Ma held the note in her hand, and for a moment they just stood there—the vendor and my mother—locked in a mute battle. I'd seen this type of standoff many times before. I pitied the girl.

“How old are you?” Ma asked suddenly.

“Excuse me?”

“How old are you?”

“I'm twenty-six, ma'am.”

“It's a good age to be, twenty-six,” Ma said. “You might not think it from the way I look, but it wasn't so long ago when I was your age. It wasn't so long ago at all—though you're far more beautiful than I ever was then.”

The girl just blinked at my mother's flattery. The Chinese wife, for the first time, looked our way.

“Here's the situation.” Ma put the hundred-baht note on the table with the other bills, patting the pile of money like a bettor blessing her ante. “I'll tell you my problem and then you can decide whether or not to give me those glasses for seven-fifty today. Thing is, those glasses aren't an accessory for me. They're not an optional luxury. You see, I'm going blind. By this time tomorrow, I might not be able to see a thing. Do you understand what I'm saying? You're looking at a woman who's going
blind.
The doctors say those glasses might mean a few more days of sight for me—ask my son if you don't believe me. Now, you don't strike me as the type of girl who'd let a woman go blind over a few hundred bahts. But maybe you are. Maybe you're that type of girl …”

“Oh come now, child, have a heart.”

It was the Chinese woman, her voice raspy like sandpaper.

Later that day, snaking our way through the aisles of the bazaar, Ma took the bag from my hands, put on the Armanis,
and laughed a wild laugh of triumph, turning heads in the hot market.

I wake to the sounds of birds. The beggar has left his corner. Ma is already up, smoking a cigarette on the patio, warm wind rushing through the screen door, her small silhouette dark against the sky's red and yellow hues. She's wearing her sunglasses. When I approach, she flicks the cigarette over the railing.