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  The Spirit House

  William Sleator

  For Paul

  1

  “I bet what’s-his-name believes in spirits. Everybody in Thailand believes in spirits,” said Dominic, my eleven-year-old brother.

  “Don’t exaggerate, Dominic,” Mom told him. “It’s a modern country. It must be only the uneducated people in little isolated villages who still believe in things like that.”

  “Nope,” Dominic said, balancing his fork on the end of his finger. He was excited about the foreign student from Thailand who was coming to live with us, and in his usual thorough way, he had been doing research. “Educated people, professors, scientists, they all believe in spirits. They even make deals with them. They’ll ask a spirit to do something for them and promise to pay the spirit back if it helps them, by giving jewelry or money to the spirit’s shrine. And then if they get what they asked for, and don’t pay the spirit back, they’re really in trouble.”

  “Professors believe in that kind of thing?” Dad said doubtfully.

  “Yes,” Dominic insisted, jiggling his finger just enough to rock the fork without upsetting its balance. “And everybody has these little structures called spirit houses, outside their real houses, and even outside office buildings and banks and things. So the spirits will go live in them, instead of bothering people inside. I can show you pictures.”

  “I’m sure it’s just some sort of vestigial cultural thing,” Mom said. “He’ll explain that to you when he gets here.”

  “He” referred to the foreign student, whose name, Thamrongsak Tan-ngarmtrong, was so unpronounceable that we all felt a little self-conscious about saying it. Mom and Dad had found him through some university connections of Mom’s—a good student, but from a poor family.

  “I wonder,” Dominic said thoughtfully, his attention wandering away from the fork. “Do you think he’ll be worried about spirits bothering him because we don’t have a spirit house?” The fork clattered onto his plate.

  Dad laughed. “I’m sure he’ll have lots of other things on his mind.”

  I was fifteen, and, unlike Dominic, I wasn’t thrilled, to put it mildly, by the idea of having this foreign student come and live with us. I was sure it would wreck my sophomore year. We had moved to this neighborhood when I was a freshman, I hadn’t known any of the kids at school, and it was only at the end of the year that I had become part of a group and had started going out with Mark. He was popular and good-looking enough to help my status, but I wasn’t really secure—the kids were very socially competitive. And Mark had been away for a month on a trip to Europe. He’d written me several postcards; I hoped that meant we were still going together.

  But it wouldn’t help my social life to be saddled with some weird little Asian guy. I knew Mom would expect me to include him in everything, which would probably mean I’d end up being left out. When I mentioned the foreign student to my best friends, Gloria and Lynette, they immediately started making jokes about his name.

  Mom kept saying it was petty and selfish of me to make any objection to helping an underprivileged person from a developing country. When she talked about how it was our duty to share what we had with someone less fortunate, I gagged.

  She yelled at me, “He’s coming, Julie, and you’ll go out of your way to be nice to him—period!” and I ran up to my room and slammed the door and tried to tell myself that he might not be so bad, after all.

  Then we got his neatly handwritten letter. The English was excellent, but the content was pathetically earnest. Mom and Dad enjoyed the parts about how grateful he was to them, his “most kindly benefactors,” and how important this experience would be for his future. He also wrote about his fascination with math and foreign languages and said, “When not at school or working I spend all my time on my studies and have no time for wasting on movies, television, pop music, or dancing.”

  Then he went drippily on and on about how the most important thing in his life was fulfilling his duty to his beloved parents and grandparents and ancestors, and to the Lord Buddha.

  But he didn’t only sound like a jerk. There was also a photograph, which confirmed my worst fears. He was literally shaven bald, with a lumpy head and big ears and a deadly solemn expression on his narrow, sallow face. My only hope was that he would somehow manage to find a few other nerds like himself to hang out with. I began making mental lists of social outcasts at school to whom I could introduce him as quickly as possible.

  He arrived a week before school started. Mom insisted that I go with them to meet him at the airport. I argued and sulked about it, but I had no excuse not to go. And I was vaguely curious.

  We stood self-consciously at the international terminal, Dad holding up the long piece of cardboard on which Dominic had managed to squeeze the word “Tan-ngarmtrong.” I felt more and more depressed as we watched the Asian passengers emerge from customs.

  There were some in groups who looked like refugees, wearing cheap clothes that did not fit, clustered together as they gazed around. Others, very well-dressed, were blasé, as though they had made the trip many times before; these passengers seemed to keep deliberately well away from the refugees. One handsome Asian jet-set couple strolled quite close to us, smoking cigarettes and chatting amiably. There was not a rumple or a crease between them; you never would have guessed they had just stepped off a twenty-four-hour flight. My eyes were naturally drawn to them, in the wistful way that one gazes covertly at beautiful people from an unattainably glamorous world.

  We waited. Fewer people were coming out now. Mom and Dad began to worry—and I began to hope—that Thamrongsak had missed the plane. There was nobody who in any way resembled the photograph.

  Then Mom gestured at a shabby boy in thick glasses just coming dazedly through the door. “Look, I bet that’s him! Maybe we should …” Her voice died as an elderly Asian man rushed to embrace him.

  I sighed and glanced again at the elegant couple. They both wore the kind of clothing and gold jewelry you see in expensive magazine ads. Both were good-looking, especially the tall young man, who had high cheekbones and a strong chin and a thick shock of dark hair that tumbled over his forehead. He wore a loose gray open-necked silk shirt and a beautifully fitted black suit.

  And then he shook hands with the woman and turned and strolled toward us, his posture erect yet relaxed. “Mr. and Mrs. Kamen, really happy to meet you,” he said smoothly. He lifted his hands, his palms pressed together in a kind of praying gesture, and slightly lowered his head.

  It took me a very long moment to begin to grasp the concept that this must be our foreign student. And as the astonishing fact slowly sank in, I also realized that he had seen our sign from the beginning, because of the way he’d walked directly toward us now, without looking around at anyone else. Absorbed in conversation with his wealthy fellow passenger, with whom he seemed to have become very friendly, he had simply taken his time about coming to greet us.

  We were all a little nonplussed, and I felt more shy than I had in years. Mom and Dad kept looking at each other on the way to the car as they asked him questions, while Dominic and I took turns carrying his suitcase.

  Mom did not seem all that pleased about Thamrongsak’s unexpected sophistication and good looks. I knew she had been looking forward to some poverty-stricken, scholarly, awkward guy who would be humbly and excessively grateful for our tremendous life-changing benevolence to him. Instead she had been dealt this self-confident man of the world. The irony was beautiful to behold—given what Mom had thought she was going to be inflicting on me. It was all I coul
d do not to chuckle out loud.

  Mom had to tell Thamrongsak to wear his seat belt—apparently they didn’t have them in Thailand, and though Thamrongsak was willing to oblige her, he had a little trouble fastening it. And then he actually put a cigarette in his mouth and pulled a gleaming gold lighter from his pocket. When Mom told him there was no smoking in the car he murmured an apology and immediately clicked off the lighter. But what was he going to do about the fact that there was also no smoking in the house? This was going to be interesting.

  I watched him put the unlit cigarette back in his shirt pocket. And I noticed a jade pendant on a heavy gold chain around his neck. The carving was very delicate; I had never seen anything like it.

  I was the one who had the nerve to bring up the question we were all wondering about. “How come you looked so different in the picture you sent us?” I asked him.

  “Picture?” he said, stiffening slightly.

  “Picture. That means photograph,” Dominic explained. “You were bald and wearing a robe like a Buddhist monk.”

  “Oh, yes, photo,” Thamrongsak said, relaxed again. “Make photo last day of being monk in wat.”

  He didn’t seem to want to say any more about it, but Mom and Dad and Dominic pelted him with questions. Very gradually the information emerged that it was a normal part of Thai culture for all young men to spend a few weeks or months living in a wat, or temple, as Buddhist monks. Their heads were shaved, they wore saffron robes, they spent their time praying, studying, and begging for alms. Their diet consisted mainly of whatever scraps people happened to drop into their alms bowls in the morning, which they had to eat, however stale and unappetizing. “Old story of very holy man. Thumb of leper fall into bowl—and he eat it,” was the one piece of information that Thamrongsak volunteered without it having to be pried out of him.

  “Did you ever eat a leper’s thumb?” Dominic asked him, obviously impressed.

  “I don’t think so,” Thamrongsak said, with a half smile.

  Under further questioning, he admitted that he had chosen to stay with the monks in the temple a good deal longer than the minimum time required. That was why he had grown so thin and looked so different in the picture. Mom seemed somewhat mollified by this evidence of Thamrongsak’s seriousness and piety: this was more like the kind of person she had had in mind.

  Dad carried the suitcase from the car and Mom unlocked the front door. Thamrongsak slipped off his shoes as we stepped inside the house—and before the door was even shut he was already puffing on a cigarette.

  Mom set down her handbag on the hall table and turned back to Thamrongsak. “Welcome to your new—” she started to say. And then her lips tightened. “I guess we didn’t make it clear in the car, Tham—Thamrongsak,” she said, making an effort to sound firm while stumbling over his name—it was the first time any of us had dared to say it in front of him. “We have a rule here. There is no smoking in this house.”

  “Please. Not say Thamrongsak. That formal name,” he told her. “Good friend call by nickname, Bia.”

  That was a relief; “Bia” was a lot easier to pronounce. But Mom didn’t relax. “All right then, Bia,” she said. “But there is no smoking in this house.”

  Bia looked at our feet. “Is American custom, like wearing shoe inside house?”

  I watched Mom’s face, once again feeling the impulse to giggle. “It’s a custom in this house,” she said.

  “Really sorry,” Bia said, very apologetic now. He quickly slipped on his shoes and disposed of the cigarette outside.

  He started to take off his shoes again when he came in, but Mom assured him that it was an American custom to wear shoes inside the house, so he left them on. He nodded politely as we trooped around showing him the living room, dining room, kitchen, and family room before taking him upstairs. “Nice house” was all he said. Mom kept flashing looks at Dad. She would have preferred him to be awed by the spacious luxury of our comfortable middle-class home.

  Then we took him upstairs to the guest room. The smallest bedroom, it had a single bed, a bookcase, a closet, and a small desk. It was nothing special, but pleasant enough, and Mom and Dad had provided the desk and new curtains especially for Bia. Mom had probably been hoping he would gush about how he had always slept with ten brothers and sisters and had never had his own room before. But he merely nodded pleasantly. “Thank you,” he said. “Nice room.”

  “I bet you want to get cleaned up and settled in after your long flight, don’t you? You know where the bathroom is. Come on, Julie, Dominic,” Dad said, beginning to herd us away. Bia bent his head and made the praying gesture, and Mom closed the door behind her.

  For a long moment we remained in the hallway, silently looking at his door.

  “Why are we all just standing here?” I suddenly said, breaking the spell. Dominic hurried up to the third floor to his room and his computer, and Mom and Dad, looking thoughtful, went downstairs.

  As soon as they were all out of the way, and I was sure I wouldn’t be noticed, I ducked into Mom’s second-floor study, where Bia’s papers were kept. I still couldn’t get over how unexpectedly good-looking he was, how different from the photograph he had sent, and I got out the photo and studied it carefully. It didn’t seem to look much like him, though it was hard for me to tell for sure, because I didn’t know many Asians, and to my Western eyes Asians had similar features. The guy in the picture did have the same high cheekbones and flattish nose. And who else could it be, anyway? But I was still amazed by what a difference no hair and a ten-pound weight loss could make. Mom probably wished he still looked like the picture. I smiled at that thought.

  Then I glanced up and saw Bia standing in the hallway, watching me. He was wearing a dark blue robe, but the green pendant was still around his neck.

  I blushed and put the photo down, as though I had been caught spying.

  Bia started to move toward me. We heard footsteps on the stairs. He turned away and walked silently past the doorway.

  2

  It took Bia a full hour to shower and change. When he finally came downstairs I was in the family room with Dad, watching a baseball game on TV. Bia was wearing black linen pants and a fresh red and black cotton shirt, loosely fitted, which looked great on him.

  After making the little praying gesture to Dad, he sat down and lit a cigarette.

  Had he already forgotten the scene with Mom? “Come on, you better do that outside,” I said. I opened the sliding glass doors that led from the family room out onto the backyard deck. Bia followed me down onto the lawn. “Cigarette?” he offered, taking the pack from his shirt pocket.

  I shook my head. “Bia, do you have a lousy memory or what?” I said.

  “Memory? I forget something?” Once again, he seemed to stiffen slightly.

  “I mean about smoking. Don’t you remember Mom making you do it outside?”

  “Oh. Only forget about smoking,” he said, and shrugged, as though it had been just a small oversight.

  “Look, Mom’s real intense about it. If you want to get along with her, don’t smoke in the house.”

  “Yes, I remember now. Thank you, Julie, for help with parent, and with American custom,” he said, very gravely and sweetly. “I really appreciate.” He could barely pronounce the word.

  Though Bia wasn’t the humble, self-effacing type we had expected, he was unfailingly polite to Mom and Dad. Often he would wai to them—that was the little praying gesture of greeting, which he explained was only done to those of superior status, a sign of respect. And respectful he certainly was. He would not speak to Mom or Dad until spoken to, would not mention anything he needed until specifically asked.

  Nor would he volunteer any personal information. It was almost impossible for Mom and Dad to wrest from him any specific details about his family or his school or his friends. At supper, when Dad asked him what he did for recreation, he shifted the subject to sports in Thailand—he had learned quickly what Dad would be interested in. Wh
en Mom asked him about his mother, he brought up the independent role of women in Thailand, exactly the topic that would please Mom—and distract her from asking him more personal questions.

  When Dominic and I finished the supper dishes we found Bia in the family room, watching a stupid game show with great fascination.

  “You want to play this really cool math game I have on my computer?” Dominic asked him.

  “Thank you. Not now,” Bia said, his eyes glued to the TV.

  “But in your letter you said you liked math,” Dominic said.

  “Letter?” Bia asked him, turning from the TV screen with a blank expression.

  “Yes, your letter. You said you loved math and foreign languages and didn’t like movies and television,” Dominic prodded him. “Don’t you remember that?”

  “I remember,” Bia said. He looked away, as though distracted by his reflection in the glass door, his back very straight. “Only is … sometime, if I …” He turned to Dominic. “How long letter take, Thailand to America?” he asked.

  Dominic shrugged. “One to two weeks, I think Mom said.” He shot me a puzzled glance, then looked back at Bia.

  I didn’t blame Dominic for being puzzled. I was curious too. Why had Bia changed the subject? Didn’t he even know what was in the letter? How could a person forget something as important as a self-description he had written to his new family? And why had that self-description been so inaccurate? His personality seemed just as different from the character of the letter as his appearance was from the photograph. For a moment, I didn’t know what to say.

  And then all at once I understood. Like the photo, showing him as a monk, the letter must have been an attempt to make a good impression on Mom and Dad. Maybe someone had even written it for him, which would explain the fluency of the letter, in contrast to his rocky spoken English. In that case, he could easily have forgotten some of the bogus details. And I, for one, was certainly glad that he was so different from the fanatically studious nerd he had led us to expect.