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: Lek’s Find :
by
C. Bay Milin
It was getting to be around dusk, and the heat was settling in for the night over the bright city. Lek stood crooked on the side of the road, waiting for the 83 bus to come. The smog from the city felt as if it was covering her entire body with unclean invisible hands. The humidity was a sweltering 98 degrees, and Lek could feel her head pounding along with the rhythym of her heartbeat.
She looked down at her small tan legs and remembered how she saw a group of girls having a snack after their school was out, how happy they looked in their crisp uniforms, and how their legs were all a glowing creamy white. She scrunched her brow in disappointment at her own acursed legs, and remembered that she didn’t care about them anyway.
A boy to her right was obviously off work, wearing his bright purple uniform and matching visor. Sweat was soaking through the poorly stitched seams of his shirt. At his lower back was the reminder of how long he had been outside waiting for the bus. She thought the pattern of perspiration which crept up his back, resembled the long legs of an octopus or a squid. As if the boy could sense that she was looking at him, he cast her a glance, and she looked down to the dirty curb. As he looked away, she smiled inwardly and to herself.
The bus arrived amid the millions of other vehicles struggling to get through the thick night traffic. It roared and spewed smoke and seemed to be a live beast contained within a metal prison. Lek hopped up into the doorway, mounting the bus which barely slowed down long enough to allow the sixteen other passengers time to board. She helped up an older woman, who reminded her of her grandmother, onto the bus; the woman’s groceries adding another level of difficulty.
Once inside the metal beast, she took a vacant seat next to an open window and propped her arm up on the sill. As the bus chortled and stuggled forward, she welcomed the slight breeze even though the air was noticably more polluted at this height.
The money collector came by and took the fare. She saw his sweaty face and how he repeated his mantra over and over like a summer cicada. She wondered how long he had held this job as a bus money collector. Lek handed to him a five-baht piece and three one-baht pieces. She remembered that this was the change left from her normal lunch of noodle soup with fishballs.
Lek sat up straight in her seat, remembering that her mother always told her to look her best. She looked up to see the multiple-array of fans whirring away above her. She noticed that the fan right above her seat was broken. Spreading her legs out, she felt how her feet slid upon the wooden floors of the bus through her slippers; the sandy grain of a thousand passengers settled among the long worn planks.
After a long day of helping her father sell what little goods they had at their stall, she tried to come up with a plan that could help them out. Her father had been a sucessful businessman, dealing in concrete and construction textiles with many international contacts. After the economic collapse of 1997 all over Southeast Asia, he had to sell his business. He only had connections with some other small local companies, so they all formed a company together, and had been scrapping along ever since. Lek hated selling bags of powdered concrete; the smell of chalky chemicals still burned deep within her dry nostrils.
The bus rides home always seemed to take forever, and Lek looked up at the tall magnificence of the office buildings of large foreign corporations, gleaming in all sorts of neon colors, as nighttime crept up upon the twilight in the city. She took out of her shorts pocket a small winnie-the-pooh handkerchief and covered her nose and mouth, protecting it from the passing exhaust of the hundreds of other automobiles.
As she extended her right foot out futher, she felt something soft brush up against her pinkie-toe. Looking down, she noticed a small fold of something resting on the floorboards in front of her. If one weren’t looking directly at it, it might seem to not be there at all. Looking around, she scanned the bus and its passengers with her dark brown eyes, trying to see if someone had recently dropped it there. But no one seemed to look as if they had just lost something.
Lek glanced back down at the object at her feet. It looked as if it had been in that dank part of the bus for a long time; the dark color of the leather face indicating a long-term usage in the sweaty back pocekt of some faceless person. She thought innocently to herself, since it looked as if it had been there a long while, what then would be the harm of liberating this insignificant something from its mobile humid coffin.
Lek leaned in slowly, pretending to readjust her worn slippers’ tired buckle. The bus lurched forward abruptly and then all-of-a-suddendly came to a jolted halt. Lek hit her head hard upon the metal backing of the seat ahead of hers. Everyone on the bus heaved forward like a school of shiny carp, fleeing an impending fisherman’s net. Each person uttering a collective and silumtaneous wail of momentary terror.
This unforseen movement allowed enough distraction for Lek to snatch up the object unnoticed. She propped herself back up rubbing her crown; a dull singing of painful songbirds encircled the top of her head. She felt an aching lull of a spot atop her skull, expanding with a new bright ill sensation.
In her right hand, she could feel the object, safely in her posession. She leaned into the wall of her seat as close as she could, so that she could take a closer look. It was a billfold wallet, worn and tired-looking. If it had a face, it would be sad and wrinkled; a lifetime of tears shed in the light of being forgotten and lost. She held her breath, opened the main flap, and peered inside.
It held nothing in its many pockets and crevices, except a large swollen clumsy fold of 1000-baht notes. Her eyes gleamed, but she held herself back from an outward reaction and remained collected. Taking her handkerchief, she carefully wrapped up the wallet, and held it tightly between her small brown hands.
The breeze coming in through the window felt suprisingly cool. Lek looked out of her seat, and into the rest of the world. The various sounds of the street: people yelling, motorcycles accelerating and revving, street vendors ringing tiny bells, and various automobiles bleating horns, all seemed to be lovely parts of the tapestry that is the city.
She saw her stop approaching, gathered herself up, and stood ready by the open doorway. The bus slowed down and she hopped off, feeling a new strength in her body. She flagged a motorcycle taxi and told the driver her destination. She climbed up and onto the warm black seat and leaned forward. She thought to herself that it’s much easier to ride a motorcycle in shorts.
She looked at all of the other ladies going home on their motorcycle taxis, sitting side-saddle; their weight ensuring only that they would stay on before the initial movement, but not much else. Life here is very interesting, she thought to herself as the motor revved, and was off.
She clutched the little blessing in her lap, told herself that she deserved this, and that it was okay that she took it from the bus. It didn’t make her a bad person.
Lek closed her eyes softly and lifted her head slightly upward. She felt the wind brushing through her hair and past her face. She thought of her dad and what she’d say to him, of what had happened, the ride home on the night bus, the sullen wallet, about her seemingly insignificant life, and how tomorrow, everything felt as if it would be somehow alright.
The scent of jasmine and fried foods from street stalls wafted past on the night air, as the city blurred poetically by. The wallet all wrapped up, felt warm and loved, as it glowed in her bright safe hands.
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