arm behind the back. The gesture conveyed that they were beyond the
third world now. They had money, Bangkok had everything, and they
would shop as befitting their status. He wanted to be them. He wanted
out of his own skin to be a different person entirely but there was no
exit for him in fast motion. The only consolation was in always
evolving beyond that one seed, that one dividing cell that had started
his life. There was still hope.
He saw a father and two girls with their many bags. He wanted a
father like that instead of the one who had made him afraid to stand
up, sit down, comb his hair, put on his pants, talk, or be silent
without being excoriated. Only arduous work had offered him a respite
from that man's criticism. Only work had offered him that escape from
being the cockroach running from his heels. Family wasn't so ideal. At
least his wasn't. He was always cravenly scurrying away from one or
more of them and vibrations they made. His mind spun around more
wildly. He kept wishing that it would stay stolid and poised as
statues of the Garuda and Kinnara, mythological creatures that
permeated Thai art, literature, and dance.
He tried to focus in on beautiful ideas of family. He tried to
breathe them in like the smell of drying clothes in the breeze or the
smells of life replicating itself eternally in the verdant greenery on
the outskirts of the city. All he could do was summon memories of
Kumpee and their parents incessantly driven toward chasing any scheme
that would put a few extra coins in their hands; Kazem's secondhand
treatment of his destitute brown Burmese woman a couple years earlier;
Suthep whom he shared certain childish sympathies; and Kazem who was
his protector. His head hurt and span: in school, out of school,
struggling for subsistence as a group, the heads of the group dying,
the move to Bangkok, and a thousand phantom faces that plagued his
mind, exacerbating the throbbing. He tried to think of monks in their