Three Flames by Alan Lightman

Author:Alan Lightman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640092297
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2019-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

THIDA

(2008)

Neither Thida nor her mother had slept for two nights when they boarded the bus for Phnom Penh. Thida still held in her hand the small gifts her friends had given her at dawn before she left in the oxcart for Praek Khmau—a wire necklace, a scarf, and a tin can filled with dried fish. Exhausted, she leaned against her mother’s shoulder and closed her eyes. The bus was packed. They sat behind a man who clutched a half dozen live chickens upside down, their legs tied together by twine. The chickens pecked at Thida’s bare legs. Without opening her eyes, she kicked at the birds until they left her alone. Then she squeezed her mother’s hand. At the age of sixteen, she was going off to live far from home for an indefinite period, possibly years, to work in the sweltering Glory Bless Garment Factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Her mother would accompany her to the city, then return to their village. Ryna had pleaded with Pich not to let this thing happen. She had spent the last night pressed against Thida on her sleeping mat, her arms tightened around her daughter, both of them sleepless and without words.

As the bus started up, a cloud of red dust floated in and remained for the entire trip. The bus was hot and filthy. Food littered the floor. In front, the chicken man began coughing uncontrollably. Still squeezing her mother’s hand, Thida looked out the window and watched the rice fields go by, copper-colored and parched in this season, cows wandering by the side of the road, clusters of wood shacks, occasional pagodas, naked children squatting on the ground. A moto carrying three monks passed by with their orange robes flapping in the wind.

Thida looked at her mother and said halfheartedly, “Mae. Nita can help you.”

“No,” Ryna shouted, startling them both with the tone of her voice. “Nita should stay in school.” Ryna’s eyes moistened. “Mi-oun. Mi-oun. My precious daughter.”

Thida opened her purse and looked at the one photograph she was taking to Phnom Penh, a crumpled picture of her and her mother in the village pagoda last ancestors holiday. In the photograph, mother and daughter are holding hands. The mother possesses a stillness far beyond the moment frozen by the camera. The daughter appears supremely happy. Not quite as slender as her mother, she wears a knock-off blue jean jacket Pich bought in the market at Praek Khmau, with good luck beads wound around the buttons. She also wears a hat, unusual for the people of her village, soft and shapeless but angled stylishly and blue to match the color of her jacket.

Thida wanted to feel her mother beside her every time she looked at the photo, just as her mother sat near her now. Since she’d been a little girl, Thida had been the daughter who followed her mother everywhere, did errands for her, helped her with the cooking and cleaning, brushed her mother’s hair at night. She slept with her mother on the nights her father didn’t come home.

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