Tua and the Elephant (5 page)

Auntie Orchid stabbed a particularly long fingernail at some numbers on her cell phone and put the instrument to her ear.

“Su-ay!” she sang out as if into a microphone. “It’s Orchid here. I have Tua. We’re having a girls’ night. She’s sleeping over with me.”

Tua nodded and smiled broadly by way of encouragement. She was perfectly happy to let her auntie do this job for her.

“Here,” Auntie Orchid announced, “your mother wants to speak to you.”

Tua looked to Pohn-Pohn for support, but she was busy rearranging the contents of Auntie Orchid’s refrigerator.

“Hello?” she managed to say into the phone.

“Hello, my cherub,” replied Suay Nam. “I can’t talk long. They’re running me off my feet. What have you and your auntie been up to?”

Tua felt an urge to tell her mother everything, but bit her lip instead. “Nothing much.”

“I’ve gotta go. I just got another table. Have fun. And give your auntie a kiss for me.”

Tua put a kiss on the tips of her fingers and blew it across the table. Auntie Orchid snatched it out of the air and blew it back.

“Good night, my dove,” Suay Nam said. “I love you the most.”

“Me too. Bye, Mama.” Tua closed the phone and handed it back to her auntie.

A string of sweat beaded her upper lip, and several other beads began to roll down the middle of her back. She had never kept secrets from her mother before, and didn’t like the feeling.

“Never mind about your mother,” said Auntie Orchid, interpreting Tua’s expression. “We have an elephant to worry about.”

I’ll tell her everything tomorrow, Tua thought, hoping that that would ease her conscience. A conscience is like an elephant’s trunk: It never
rests. And a guilty conscience is particularly restless. But Tua had a hungry elephant to worry about. Her conscience would have to wait.

“Pohn-Pohn is hungry, Auntie,” she said.

“Pohn is too big for my kitchen.”

And so it was decided that Pohn-Pohn should be moved into the backyard, regardless of what the neighbors might say.

A temporary shelter was needed in case it should rain. And there wasn’t enough food in the house to feed a hungry elephant. Someone had to go to the market before it closed at midnight.

“Sometimes the best way to stop wagging tongues is to give them a part in the play,” Auntie Orchid said. “Tua, go wake the neighbors.”

And go she did.

“It is easier to get an elephant in a kitchen than it is to get her out again,” Auntie Orchid declared to Tua when she returned from waking the neighbors.

If anything, Pohn-Pohn seemed bigger than before. How had she fit through the back door? It didn’t seem possible. She couldn’t turn around, in any case—there wasn’t enough room. And she wouldn’t back up: Pohn-Pohn was a forward- moving elephant.

The moment Tua had finished scratching her head over this pickle (for scratching the head often stimulates brain activity), a man stumbled through the back door in pajamas and slippers.

He rubbed his eyes with his fists and blinked his eyes.

“There’s an elephant in your kitchen!” he declared.

“Buddha wept!” Auntie Orchid exclaimed.

“Her name’s Pohn-Pohn, Uncle Yai,” Tua said. “We need to move her outside.”

“
Sawatdee khrap,
Pohn-Pohn,” said Yai, putting his hands together and bowing a wai. “Better take Miss Pohn-Pohn through the house and out the front door.”

Even as Auntie Orchid was throwing up her hands in protest, she realized that this was indeed the best strategy. The doors between the kitchen and the living room slid apart; and the front door, being a double door, was much wider than the back door. But she couldn’t bear to watch.

“I think I’ll wait outside,” she said. “Tua, mind she doesn’t stain the carpet.”

“
Kha,
Auntie,” Tua said.

An audience was gathering on Auntie Orchid’s front lawn, and she stepped out on the porch and bowed.

“Where did you get the elephant?” a grinning Mr. Cham Choi asked Auntie Orchid. His wife, Mrs. Cham Choi, nodded her head vigorously to indicate that she, too, was anxious to know the answer to this question.

“A gift from the king,” Auntie Orchid said, “for my community service.”

“The king is truly a great and noble monarch,” Mr. Cham Choi said in admiration.

“Noble and great,” echoed his wife. “A most noble gift, indeed.”

“Cham, darling,” Auntie Orchid cooed helplessly, responding to the plan hatching in her brain, “I don’t know what we’re going to feed her.”

“Fruit,” Cham replied.

“Vegetables,” his wife suggested.

“Pineapple,” said Cham.

“Corn,” countered his wife.

“Watermelon,” said the husband between clenched teeth.

“Cucumber,” said the wife out of the corner of
her mouth, as if to say: “I have more where that came from.”

“Bananas.”

“Lettuce.”

“Sugarcane.”

“Pumpkin.”

“Mango.”

“Tomato.”

“Aha!” Master Cham exclaimed, thinking he had caught her out at last. “The tomato is a fruit.”

“No it isn’t,” said his wife. “It’s a vegetable.”

Auntie Orchid had heard quite enough. “But where does one find such things?” She batted her eyes helplessly.

“The farmers’ market, of course,” replied Master Cham.

“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Cham Choi, “the farmers’ market.”

“So what are you two waiting for?” Auntie Orchid wanted to know. “Hurry up,” she ordered. “Pohn is a hungry elephant. Hop into your little red
songthaew
pickup and get over there before it closes. Off you go.
Reo reo,
” she clapped her hands, for the Cham Chois seemed momentarily fixed to the spot where they were standing. The claps seemed to release them from the spell they were under, and they moved as fast as they were capable of moving.

The Cham Chois’ daughters, Sumalee, Kanya, and Isra, each presented Pohn-Pohn with a banana from their father’s tree once she emerged triumphant through the front door. Pohn-Pohn wrapped her trunk around the bananas, one by one, and plopped them in her mouth. Then the three sisters bowed a wai in unison and ran back across the soi to fetch some more.

“What’s all this?” boomed a skeptical voice. It belonged to Rungsan, the builder.

Rungsan had one good eye that worked perfectly fine and another eye that was cloudy and white. It gave him a sinister look, which was entirely undeserved. Looks can be as deceiving as a worm on a hook.

Rungsan was not a bit sinister. He was skeptical. Skepticism is a healthy muscle to exercise. A sinister nature is as unwanted as a blister. Perhaps having only one good eye with which to view the world had made Rungsan suspicious of half of everything he saw.

“This is my friend Pohn-Pohn, Uncle,” Tua said, appearing out of nowhere—which is no small feat when accompanied by an elephant.

“Pohn-Pohn?” Rungsan lifted an eyebrow.

“Can you build us a shelter, Uncle?” asked Tua.

“I can build anything for anybody,” said Rung-san. “But for you and your friend Pohn-Pohn, I will build a shelter fit for a queen. It will be a bamboo palace.”

Tua threw her arms around Rungsan’s legs, and he bowed his head and closed his skeptical eye.

When the Cham Chois returned from the market, the three sisters formed a line to hand-feed Pohn-Pohn the fruit and vegetables; Yai brought Tua a bowl of
pad Thai
noodles; Rungsan and his
sons, Tam and Lin, erected a bamboo shelter with palm fronds for a roof; and Auntie Orchid, reclining in a swing chair hanging from a tree, serenaded the party with folk songs of longing, loss, and love.

Tua slept that night in a string hammock under the bamboo shelter with Pohn-Pohn watching over her.

“Sweet dreams and glad awakenings, Pohn-Pohn,” she yawned, closing her eyes.

How curious people are, Pohn-Pohn must have been thinking. How creative and ingenious they are, yet capable of both kindness and cruelty. Nothing beats them for industry, that’s for sure—except maybe ants, termites, and bees.

Then she reached out her trunk and drew the blanket over Tua’s shoulder.

The sun popped up so suddenly the next morning it left the roosters speechless. And nowhere did it burn brighter than down beside the River Ping.

Nak swept back the tent flaps and stepped outside in his bare feet. A message was waiting for him there, and he was standing in it up to his ankles.

He wriggled his toes around in the still-warm elephant dung and tried to recall what this sensation reminded him of. Still half asleep, he yawned and blinked his eyes.

It wasn’t his feet that supplied the answer; it was his nose. His nose smelled elephant dung.

“What’s
that
doing here?” He stared down to the ends of his legs. “Who would have …?”

He looked over his shoulder and glared at the tent. The tent snored back at him. He shielded his eyes and scanned the beach… It was too empty. Something was missing. Hadn’t he left an elephant attached to that—

“Gone!” he howled. “It’s gone, Nang! Thieves! Vultures! We’ve been robbed!”

Nang struggled onto all fours and poked his head through the tent flaps.

“What happened? What’s gone?” Then, looking down at his comrade’s feet, he added: “Watch where you step, Nak. There’s a big pile of dung out here.”

“The elephant, you feeble-minded mud turtle!”

Nang stood up and had a look for himself.

Sure enough, the chain was empty. He was certain that that was where they had left the elephant last night.

“Maybe it’s taking a bath?” he suggested.

“It’s that nosy little street urchin from the square,” Nak muttered. “I knew someone was following us last night. She must have made off with it while we were sleeping.”

“What street urchin?” Nang asked.

“Come on,” Nak ordered. “She couldn’t have gotten far. I’ll have my property back, or I’ll have her ears.”

Nang clutched the medallion he wore around his neck to ward off evil spirits. He had never liked the elephant trade, suspecting it angered the forest. Ever since Nak had won this elephant in a card game, they had been plagued by bad luck. He didn’t care if he never saw it again. But Nang was a follower, and followers don’t question authority. They pull up their socks and do what they’re told.