14.
The next morning, we’re up early to go pick mangos.
No alarm clocks needed. At home I like to wake with the sun.
Here it’s the rooster, somewhere just outside the wall, that rouses you before dawn with the absolute conviction that this is happening.
My sleep wasn’t great. I had plenty on my mind.
The bed was a thin mat over a wooden slat platform and the slats made themselves known every time I shifted, but I had Thalia to curl up against all night, which evened things out considerably.
Coming into the main room, I’m surprised to find Meena’s grandmother already up, perched on a small plastic stepstool beside the cooking stove.
She smiles at me from across the room like she knew I was coming.
She says something rapid-fire—maybe it’s the accent or maybe her dialect, but I can’t catch a single word.
She waves a bony arm in a gesture that clearly means come, sit with me.
There’s no other chair. I settle on the floor cross-legged.
She’s already started the coffee. This is the traditional northern Thai method—what people around here call sock brewing, though the filter is a piece of cloth rather than an actual sock, tied at the neck of a narrow metal frame and suspended over the pot.
The coffee grounds heaped inside are dark brown, almost black, coarse and fragrant.
They grow coffee on the hillside plots around the village, part of the government’s crop substitution program that replaced opium with arabica in the nineties.
Whatever the history, the raw material is good.
She pours hot water from the kettle over the cloth filter slowly and steadily, tilting the kettle with the particular angle of someone who has done this ten thousand times, the water darkening as it passes through.
The small room fills with the smell of it—rich, a little earthy, something almost chocolatey underneath.
She says something again and this time I catch the Thai words “chai mai” at the end. Right? I nod vigorously.
A few minutes later she’s pouring the brewed coffee into an old mug with a faded Tweety Bird on it.
The coffee is strong and the flavor has an edge to it, slightly acidic, the robusta showing through.
Not that I’m a snob, but I can’t say it’s the best coffee I’ve had in Thailand.
I will say, though, it is the best cup I’ve had strained through a sock.
The old lady is animated now, chattering away with no apparent awareness of how little of it I can follow.
I smile and nod and take sips whenever it seems appropriate.
She seems considerably more lively than she was yesterday when she received us from her bed, and I find that genuinely encouraging.
Whatever brought her low, she isn’t letting it have the whole morning.
Eventually Thalia pads out, still pulling her hair back, eyes not fully open.
She accepts her own cup of Tweety Bird coffee with both hands and drops down next to me on the floor.
We sit together in the early light and drink slowly.
Neither of us is in a hurry to speak and neither of us needs to be.
The front door opens and Meena comes in from outside, already in her gardening clothes, sunhat on, a light long-sleeved shirt with small flowers on it. She gives us a practical once-over.
“Light clothes, yes?” she says. “Long sleeve better for the sun.”
I grab a linen shirt to throw on over my tank top.
Thalia is already prepared, wearing the same elephant-print pants that have served her well the whole trip.
Meena goes to the corner and returns with a small stone slab and a disc of pale wood, which she sets on the floor.
She dips her fingers in a little bowl of water and starts rubbing the disc against the wet stone in slow circles until a yellow paste forms, smooth and faintly fragrant.
“What is that?” Thalia asks.
“Thanaka,” Meena says. She applies some to her own cheeks in two careful swipes, then her forehead, her nose. It goes on pale yellow, almost cream. When she notices me staring, she brings the paste and the stone over.
“Give cool feeling,” she says. She shivers delightedly. “Want to try?”
I smile and nod. Her slender fingers reach into the paste and start applying it to my cheeks and forehead, down the bridge of my nose.
There’s something more intimate about the way she touches my skin after our kiss yesterday.
Neither of us says anything, but since I have to sit still and let her work we can’t help but look at each other.
When our eyes meet, I can see the same excitement and curiosity I feel.
The paste starts working right away. It’s like icy-hot, just without the hot—a clean, faintly woody coolness spreading across my face.
I’ve seen people wearing these yellow masks in Phuket, especially people riding in truck beds to the construction sites around the island.
I thought it was something religious, like a red dot smeared on your forehead at a Hindu temple.
Now I know better. It’s just a smart way to beat the heat, and has been for about two thousand years apparently.
Thalia puts on some sunscreen first and then Meena applies some of the thanaka to her cheeks too. Thalia closes her eyes while it goes on, a small smile on her face.
It’s not hot yet, so I think I’m going to skip another “shower,” although I use the term loosely.
Meena and everyone else in the village bathe in the old Thai way.
Rather than a shower, they fill a big tank of water and then use a smaller pan to ladle the water over themselves.
Since we’re staying here, we had to do the same yesterday just before the sun went down.
It made me glad that I’ve been taking cold showers for a while now, so it wasn’t a shock to my system.
Thalia took longer, and I’m pretty sure she struggled with it, although she didn’t want to say so.
The squat toilets were another novelty and a less welcome one.
The things you take for granted when you leave home are also the comforts you most appreciate when you return.
Once we’re ready, we follow Meena to a neighbor’s house where she asks to borrow a ladder, which I carry for the three of us.
It’s made of bamboo, which is both heavier and more flexible than I was expecting.
I carry it from the middle and both ends wobble.
They end up getting caught on underbrush and smacking against branches, so I have to be careful as we walk.
Meena leads us down the narrow dirt path between the huts, past the little shrine at the edge of the village—a low wooden platform with some fruit offerings and a stick of incense—and out into the tree cover.
Luckily, the trees are just down the path below the rows of little huts but above the rice terraces.
Meena points to three trees clustered together—her family’s trees.
I set the ladder against the trunk of one of them as Meena picks a fruit off the ground and starts showing it to us.
Each of the mangos has these distinct shoulders at the top; she presses the green oblong fruit with the tips of her thumb and pointer finger, testing the give.
“Meena,” Thalia says, raising her hand just like a kid in school. “The fruit don’t need to be completely ripe because they’ll ripen after they’ve been picked, right?”
“Yeah not one-hundred percent is okay,” Meena says. “But cannot be too strong.”
She mimes biting the fruit in her hand and breaking her teeth on it. I laugh as she howls. She drops the fruit, which is bruised on one side.
“Be careful,” Meena says. “If the fruit is ready you cannot break the stick.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about until she points to a stem on the ground.
They have to stay attached to the fruit.
Also, we can’t just pull them loose. We have to cut the stems and then lower the whole fruit carefully into our hands.
Then they go straight into the reusable shopping bags Meena has been keeping in her pocket.
Apparently the sunlight makes them go bad faster.
When we’re ready, Thalia climbs up the bamboo ladder with me holding it steady.
She stands unsteadily as she leans forward and then back with a pair of pruning shears in her hand.
She holds the branch and snips off the end, sending two fruit tumbling down.
I manage to grab one, snag the other before it hits the ground.
“Sorry!” she calls down.
“It’s alright,” I say, handing the pair of green fruit to Meena, who bags them. I stand there holding the ladder steady, watching for falling fruit or a falling girlfriend. Honestly, if she did fall I couldn’t so much catch her as cushion her.
She gets a few more before she has to stop and move the ladder. That’s how it works.
“This is nothing like what we did in Mackay,” she says, wiping the sweat from her brow.
“What was it like up there?” Meena asks.
“Big trucks, cherry pickers, a whole big operation,” Thalia says.
“All the blokes would go up in the baskets and collect them ten at a time. Us kids were mostly just there to carry the bags when they were full, and to eat the ripe ones. The juice stains your clothes, you know that? I had my favorite white blouse ruined because I had the juice running all down my face.” She touches her chin to show the flow of it.
The sun is blazing by late morning and we’re sweating even as we’re standing around.
The thanaka is a real lifesaver, but it starts to wear off after an hour or so and mingles with the sweat, causing it to run.
I start imagining how it’s going to feel to dunk my head in that creek water.
These villagers have the right idea. Cold water in a hot place is refreshing only when you’re good and ready for it. This job is getting me there.
The next tree I take myself. It’s awkward work because I have to stand with the ladder’s top flush with my chest, leaning back and then forward, reaching around branches.
I’ve got four in the bag when I hear a rustling and see something dark drop into the far side of the tree. Moving through the branches.
“We’ve got a monkey here!” I call down.
Meena makes this sound like scolding a crying baby. Aaaagg! Aaaagg! I imitate it, figuring the monkey will know what it means even with my American accent. Aaag! Aaaaag! I also shake a big branch for good measure. The monkey stops but otherwise doesn’t respond.
“Don’t hurt him!” Thalia calls.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” I call back.
“I was talking to the monkey!”
I smile.
“He’s not going to hurt me either,” I say.
After a few minutes the monkey decides to find a tree without a human making noise in it and jumps off.
I see one more fruit I can snag, but I have to hold onto a thick branch to steady myself and lean pretty far out, keeping just one foot on the ladder.
Pretty stupid move just for a piece of fruit, but my girls are watching.
“Be careful, Mike!” Meena calls.
Not Pi Mike or Khun Mike but just my name. Mike. Less formal. We’re progressing. I snatch the fruit, tearing it from the branch without breaking the stem, and swing back to the ladder.