Thirty Minutes

I assumed Dtao was Burmese the first time I saw her.

For almost a year I had been going to the same spot a few times a day to smoke in between classes at the university I worked at in Bangkok. I had to walk past the boys who bottled and delivered water around campus and a lone security guard, who occasionally directed in cars that parked while their trunks were filled with water jugs.

Gate 3 was the least used by students and the closest to my office so even though it faced a packed, noisy, fume-filled street, it’s where I went to smoke.

One August morning I made my way past the language offices and the water boys, singing and smoking while they crammed bottles into crates, and saw a construction crew around the gate. Three men and two women who were standing under a scaffold stopped and stared at me.
I smiled, knowing this is the key to anyone’s heart here, and all slowly went back to work except one man, who was wearing a beige fisherman’s hat. A long, dark ponytail was dangling on his shoulder. When he lifted his head I saw wisps of hair clinging to his forehead and cheekbones, which were thick and acted like the entrance to his eyes. They were the shade of deep brown that, on Thais whose spirit is awake, looks both full and bottomless.

I lit my cigarette and pretended to check the text messages on my phone. After living in Thailand for 11 months I should have been used to strangers staring, but often, especially with men, I blushed.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye, passing a drill up to a man who was going to crack through the cement fence to make way for a new entrance. Then I saw a child run to him and look up at his face as if it was high as the sky. The man bent down and whispered something with a growing smile, as if he had a surprise. A look of disbelief and excitement formed on the little face before turning my way. The child looked at me like I was the ice cream lady, then back at the man as if to confirm I was real.

I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but I was leaning towards girl because even in a white tank top and long, blue shorts, she also had on pink, heeled shoes – the kind little girls at home get in dress-up kits on their birthday. Her hair had a little wave at the ends, just below her ears. She didn’t have any feminine features, like long lashes or plumper lips. When her eyes met mine she scrunched her nose and her mouth spread open in a goofy, unused smile. I wanted her to be a boy, but I knew she wasn’t. I wanted her to be my friend and I knew she would.
*****


Here, a candy to a child is the smile to an adult. The next morning before my 9 a.m. class I threw a candy with purple wrapping into my bag before leaving for a cigarette.

Two labourers were behind a green sheet metal corridor which covered the wall they were drilling. I didn’t see the girl until I had finished smoking and was on my way back. I had already put the candy in my hand in case I saw her.

She was running and didn’t see me.

“Norng,” (Young one) I whispered. When she didn’t turn around, I thought ‘Oh no, she really isn’t Thai. She must be Burmese.’ Most construction crews are filled with workers from Burma and Laos because they work harder and cheaper. “Norng, ka,” I said again.

This time she stopped so fast her sole-worn sandals kept sliding after her feet halted. I held out my palm, revealing the candy. She was still. I threw it towards her and it landed on the ground. She picked it up and gave me a wai, her hands pressed together at her chest with her head slightly bent so her fingertips nearly touched her nose. She unwrapped it quickly, threw it into her mouth as if it was hot and melting, then lept off. So became our daily routine: I came past the site to smoke and she would follow me around the corner, wait until the last puff left my lips and hold out her hands for the candy drop. She didn’t wai me anymore.

“Cheu a-rai ka?” (What’s your name) I asked her one afternoon. I got the scrunched-nose, sideways smile look. “Chan cheu Natalie. Natalieeeee,” (My name’s Natalie) I said, stressing the last syllable the way all Thais do, so that it sounds like something’s the matter when they say my name. I looked for some sign of comprehension on her face and saw nothing, except that she wanted there to be something – words – on the tip of her tongue.

My cigarette breaks gradually extended from seven to 30 minutes. I had been on the brink of trying to touch her for weeks, not wanting to scare or offend her or her parents, but wanting so much to show my affection for this sweet little girl. I started with a high-five, which evolved to our own version of patty-cake, to holding hands.

From the beginning, I knew my time with her would be short. Construction crews lived like nomads in Bangkok – working and living at a site only until the last brick is laid. Every time I grabbed a cigarette, I grabbed a candy, wondering if she’d get to taste it. I wanted to give her something before she left and when I found a kit filled with crayons, clay, a colouring book and a puzzle at 7-11, I was already thinking of a note to write her inside the book cover. She’d keep it forever and remember me, I hoped anyway. It was 50 baht ($1.43).

I hated that her playground was steel beams and rubber lines; her sand: cement dust; her sticks: nails. She had to sit and watch her mom and dad building all day every day, sometimes for 12 hours. I knew she was smart and might not ever go to school, but maybe she could have art anyway.

I kept the kit in my purse at all times starting on a Monday. By Thursday, with no sign of even her dad, who sometimes worked alone, I feared they’d moved on.

“Noel, I don’t think I’ll see her again,” I told my boyfriend, who always listened intently to my daily updates about the girl.

“Don’t worry, baby. She’ll be back,” he said. I was comforted but not convinced.

I saw her mom first. She always had a cloth on her head to stop sweat from spreading. An over-sized t-shirt covered her ever-growing belly. I guessed she was about seven months pregnant now. She was lifting a bag of sand off her shoulder and into a metal bin. Another woman was filling it with water. They were making cement.

Since I had taken the girl’s silence and the odds to mean they were Burmese, I acted out “Is the little one here?” Her mom looked at me like I was daft, then took the bag from my hands and shouted, “Dtao! Dtao. Bai Nai?” (Where did you go?).

‘So she is Thai. And her name is Dtao,’ I thought, feeling a weight lift and fall on my shoulders. ‘We can start talking. We could have been talking.’

Dtao came running in these little red flip-flops that were too big and nearly slid off her feet with every step. I met her halfway with the bag and bent down to show her. She got impatient as my fingers fumbled with the plastic and dropped into a squat. Her bum hovered above the ground and her forearms rested on her knees. My knees fell on the ground as I tried to balance in heels and a skirt. By this time the entire crew had stopped, waiting and watching to see what the ‘falang’ (foreigner) was giving the girl.

The plastic ripped and I pulled out the colouring book of Winnie the Pooh characters first, then the crayons, and made some strokes on the blank page. She was more confused than excited so I continued pulling more out of the bag. First the puzzle, then the clay. I made the faces I wanted to see on her. “Oh!” I said, and opened my eyes and mouth wide. She caught on and imitated me. She was appeasing me and we both knew it.

“Nee a-rai?” (What’s this) I asked her. I lifted the lid off the clay and began making a snowman, of all the figures in the world. I would have made a dog or a car if I’d known how, but all I knew was round balls and ended up placing them on top of each other.

“Give me a crayon and let’s share a page,” I wish she had said, or “Help me with this puzzle.” Dtao didn’t. She was like a coyote with a warm rabbit in her mouth, anxious to savor alone.
“Mee high hah?” (Have a high five). She lifted her skinny, dirty fingers and waited for mine to meet hers. I knew that was all I was going to get, so I took it and left.

The gate construction progressed slowly, indicating Dtao and her family would be around for at least a few more weeks. This should have made me happy, but my contract was almost up at the university and I wanted her to leave me, not the other way around.

I went into the office one Sunday to clear out my things when no one was around. I was tired of sorting papers after 20 minutes and decided to take a smoke break. Dtao, it appeared, was playing hide-and-go-seek with herself behind a pile of concrete blocks. She stumbled toward me with her right hand high in the air ahead of her, as if she was playing Pin the tail on the donkey. Instead of our hands slapping, our fingertips made a bridge, then she slid her palm down until the underside of her knuckles were just below mine. My hand felt like a hammock for hers.
We lowered ourselves into squats and started playing patty-cake. During her first giggle, when my hand missed hers, I decided I wasn’t going back to the office that afternoon. One of my third-year students, Takkapol, did a double-take but still waied me as he walked past.

“Hello. How are you?” I asked him, rising to my feet.

“I’m fine,” he said. No Thai, especially a student, will ever say anything other than “fine.” I always asked anyway.

“Hey, could you ask her dad for me if I can take her to the zoo? Tell him it’s just around the corner and I’ll have her back in three hours.”

Dtao’s dad, who had been watching us play on an over-turned wheelbarrow, said she was too dirty, she couldn’t go.

“Oh, mai ben rai, mai ben rai,” (Don’t worry) I pleaded. Maybe it was the Thai on my tongue or the look on my face. He changed his mind. “Dai, dai,” (Can) he said.

I’d tell you about how our trip to the zoo was this amazing experience, with looks of wonder at animals, embraces and laughing and fair food she’d never heard of in her mouth, but it wasn’t like that.

Dtao didn’t want to go, and I should have kept our memories to the construction site. Before we even crossed the street to leave the campus, she was tugging on the thigh of my jeans, wanting to go back. “Sam-sip natee. Kun mai chorp, row bai baan,” (Thirty minutes. If you don’t like it, we’ll go home) I said. I thought if I could just get her there, she’d want to be there. In the taxi she looked as if she might bawl any minute so I invented a finger-counting game to keep her distracted. Looking back, I think she’d never been in a taxi. Looking back, I was so selfish.

I wanted her to have a special day, be a bit of a hero. She just wanted to keep playing in the dirt.
It turned out Dtao loves turtles, especially when they’re eating rice. She thought the ferret’s burrow was his “horng nam” (bathroom) and squealed each time he ran in and out of it for 20 minutes. Elephants, in her eyes, are “mai suai” (not beautiful). Dtao has too much power in her breath to blow a good bubble.

On the way home, we hugged.