Country bumpkins seem like easy targets.
Don't get too confident, because once you turn your back. . .
Don't get too confident, because once you turn your back. . .
Twisted Sister by Gregory Rodrigues
Lek and Ay
came from the poor, rural north. They had never been to a cinema, ridden in an
elevator, or bathed their lovely bodies in hot water. The chaos of Bangkok’s
main bus station was a slap across the face. The sisters held hands to comfort
each other.
Lek looked warily
at a man who smiled at her. Her father told her to be careful of men in the big
city.
“Sawade Cup,”
he said, “I think you not know Bangkok. I help you.”
“Meow cup,” she
replied, politely declining the stranger’s offer.
“So what you
do? Stay in bus station?” he asked.
“I wait my
family,” Lek lied.
The man leered
at them, knowing they were poor rice farmers from the drought-blasted north sent
to find jobs in Bangkok’s sweatshops or bars only to send all they earned back
home.
His boss had
told him only fresh, young girls and new faces.
The sisters
sat back to back atop their suitcases. Their mother’s friend, who was meant to
meet them, never showed. Lek counted the meager amount of money her father had
given them. It was enough for just a few days.
“Sister,” she said, “that man still look us. I think he make trouble. We
must look for room for night.”
The man
watched the sisters leave and carefully followed. After seeing them enter a
dilapidated hotel, he made a phone call.
As the girls
climbed the hotel stairs, they saw drunk foreign men holding hands with young
women.
“Sister,
this hotel for whore,” Lek said. “We must lock door good.”
During the
night, goons kicked their door open and raped the sisters until morning.
One of them scribbled on a piece of paper and tossed it on Lek’s naked body. “Call number if
you want work. Boss bar need new ladies. What else you do, anyway?”
Lek looked
at him with hatred in her eyes but said nothing.
The girls
cleaned themselves up, washing away the blood and their innocence.
“Now, we can
never go home, sister,” Lek said, ‘What would we tell Papa?”
They left
the hotel.
“Where you
think you are?” the janitor of the apartment building sneered. “This not Issan.
You want sleep in my broom closet? You not have money for room one month.”
“Can I see
it?” Lek asked.
The janitor couldn’t
believe she was serious but saw the opportunity. It would be extra money for
him and both sisters were attractive. Anything was possible.
Mops and brooms
stood arranged along the walls and used rags littered the cement floor but Lek
saw it was just big enough for both of them to lie down. It would work.
The sisters
cleaned up and went to the local shopping mall. The manager laughed at their
Issan accents, looked speculatively at their breasts, and offered them jobs as
cleaners.
The girls started
their new working lives and after a few weeks moved into a cheap room. Once a
month, they treated themselves to an English movie.
“You very
pretty little lady,’’ a falang man said to Lek in the ticket queue.
“Thank
you,’’ she said shyly.
They chatted
and Lek was astonished he spoke fluent Thai. It was the first time she’d ever
spoken to a foreigner.
***
Two years
later, as Lek was driving her car, she glanced admiringly at her exquisite fingernails,
each nail one hand-painted in meticulous detail with a different flower. She
smiled with satisfaction. It had cost five-thousand baht. That used to be three
months rent for her shabby room.
Of course,
it was all Richard’s money. It was a pity he drank so much and was a different
man from when they married.
“You know
what you are,” he’d said the other night, mockingly. “You’re my Asian Barbie
doll. If you’re not careful, maybe I’ll trade you in for Barbie’s little
sister. She’s still around here somewhere. I’m told dancing in one of the gogo
bars.”
Lek winced
at the thought of Ay, who’d finally succumbed to the temptation of making good
money by selling her body.
“But what I
do wrong to you, Richard? Why you angry with me?” Lek asked.
“You’re
getting too fucking sure of yourself,” he said. “Just remember I found you in the
gutter and I can put you back there any time.”
Lek became
anxious at the thought of going back to her poverty-stricken past. The memories
grasped her heart with icy fingers. No. She couldn’t go back to mopping floors,
squatting on the floor of that miserable room, and the constant demands from
men. Never again.
Richard got
drunk every night. He was a tall American and the safety rail on the balcony of
their Pattaya city penthouse was designed for shorter Asians. Just a quick push
and she’d be rich and free forever. All men were bastards anyway and this would
be her final revenge on the man who used her like a toy, revenge for a rape
that would never be punished.
She stood on
the penthouse balcony later that night and pointed into the distance. “Darling,
what that over there?” she asked Richard.
Richard,
swaying drunkenly, leaned against the railing and looked into the darkness.
Lek got
behind him and pushed with all her strength.
Richard was
so drunk, he didn’t even cry out as he toppled over into oblivion.
***
The young
policeman looked at the mangled body.
“My husband
very drunk and he fell over railing,” the wife had said, tearfully.
Impossible
to prove otherwise. Besides, his superiors weren’t interested, even if they had
the same suspicions he did. It happened so often in “Sin City,” resident expatriates
had a name for it. What was the English term? Yes, The Pattaya Plunge.
