Free Silk Umbrellas by Carolyn Marsden Page B

true, thought Noi, that Ting wasn’t drawn to painting as she was.
    Leaving the outer husks on the cloves, Noi sliced them into thin ovals. Out the window, she watched Kun Pa feeding the pigs far below. They gathered around him, pushing at his legs with their snouts, squealing as the boiled banana stems fell into the carved wooden trough.
    Ting scooped the garlic slices into a pan of hot oil, added eggs, then stirred quickly. She hummed a little song under her breath as she worked.
    Noi took the empty egg basket and put it near the door, then swept the wooden floor, reaching the broom into the corners. When she was finished, she laid out the large mat for eating, making sure that it was straight and even.
    Kun Pa came up the ladder into the house, his empty cooking pot banging against the rungs. “Today those animals were acting like Srithon’s children,” he remarked. Srithon, who lived across the village, had ten children, all boys. They impolitely took large servings of food onto their plates.
    Kun Pa loved to joke. At dinner he liked to be entertained. Maybe he would like to see the green umbrella, Noi thought. She would show him and Kun Mere the butterfly.
    But when Kun Mere and Kun Ya came up the ladder, they were whispering together. Did they have a troubling secret? Kun Ya’s wrinkles looked deeper, and the corners of Kun Mere’s mouth were pinched tight.
    Later,
thought Noi,
I’ll bring out the umbrella later.
    Everyone sat down cross-legged on the mat and passed the bowl of rice, bean curd and pork cooked with garlic, the flat yellow omelet, and the tiny dish of fish sauce and chili.
    Kun Pa didn’t seem to notice that Kun Mere and Kun Ya looked serious. “Srithon’s poor wife,” he said, serving himself a piece of omelet. “She keeps only female animals to save herself from going crazy with so many boys.” He ate slowly, clacking his big spoon against the dish. His work with Mr. Khayan had started early that morning.
    When Noi was young, Kun Pa had planted the fields he rented from the landlord. Every night he came home with baskets of vegetables. Noi remembered washing the dirt off the crinkly cabbage leaves and snaky green beans as long as her forearm. When it was rice harvest, they’d always had fragrant jasmine rice to eat. Noi had helped Kun Mere pick out the bad grains that floated to the top when the rice was rinsed.
    Kun Pa used to load the back of a little truck with the harvest and take it to market to sell. He returned from the market with coconut treats for Ting and Noi. They’d waited for him to come back and had jumped up and down at the sight of him, their mouths eager for the sweetness.
    They’d had all they could eat, and not much need of money to spend.
    Then suddenly the landlord had sold the farmland to a company that built vacation houses for city people and foreigners. Kun Pa and the other small farmers had had to find jobs. Now Kun Pa worked for the construction foreman, Mr. Khayan, laying bricks for those houses. But work was available only now and then.
    “Work for Mr. Khayan?” Kun Mere had said at first. “How can you work for someone who’s destroying the farmland?” But in the end, Kun Mere, who kept the family budget, agreed that laying bricks was the only thing for Kun Pa to do. Throughout the village, women were in charge of all such household decisions.
    Now whenever Kun Pa touched Noi, she felt how his hands had grown cracked and dry from handling the mortar. And in the evenings, Noi overheard him and Kun Mere talking about not having enough money.
    Tonight Kun Mere said nothing when Kun Pa left after dinner to play chess with his friends. Usually, she would tease him a little about leaving. “Aren’t you going to the cockfights instead?” she might say. But tonight, Noi noticed that Kun Mere let him depart in peace.
    Kun Ya, saying she was tired from the sun, went to her room.
    Noi, Ting, and Kun Mere remained together on the mat, even though they’d