Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

out of the missile hatch just as she was docking. Overnight we changed places and once more we’d become unfamiliar. I missed my exciting mother but I learned to love her as a different person. But then, three years ago, she’d started to put her handbag in the washing machine, to walk into my bedroom thinking it was hers, to give customers four five-hundred- baht notes as change for a five-hundred- baht note. Those cracks were few but through them I saw the light of somebody I recalled. She began to surprise us with stories, blurt them out with no rhyme or reason. And her voice would crackle with joy as she recalled a place or an event. There would be gaps like a dream remembered upon waking but it made the stories even more mysterious.
    When they’d first begun I’d thrilled at those moments and urged her on. But slowly, far too slowly, I came to realize that this was my mother traveling backward on a mechanical walkway, passing through time, past huge placards advertising moments from her life. And I began to fear that one day she’d be so far along that escalator she’d no longer recall where it was she climbed on or who was there to see her off. Now, three years on, the condition was no worse, suspended as if the walkway had broken down and a team of men in blue overalls was underneath trying to get it going. So, sometimes, ever so gently, I dared to nudge her along to another placard. There was one I desperately wanted to see.
    “We had another bat fly into the bulb on my porch two nights ago,” I said. “Smashed it completely. But that bat just shook off the glass shards, walked around in confusion, then flew on out of there. It didn’t panic at all. It was like a pet. It made me think of…Thanom.”
    Mair smiled. I’d pressed the secret code button and was ready to enter that hidden room where she and my father kept a pet bat.
    “How do you know?” she asked.
    “You told me. You said you and – ”
    “No, I mean, how do you know it walked around in confusion? If it smashed the light it would have been dark. It was cloudy two nights ago.”
    “I heard its footsteps in the broken glass.”
    “Bats never were ones for walking, you know?”
    See what I mean? When my mother wasn’t out of it, she was completely in it. Saner than all of us. The pet bat story would have to come in its own sweet time. I stood to leave.
    “On your way out can you remember to put water in John’s bowl?” she said, without looking up. “She’ll be thirsty.”
    ♦
    I phoned Sissi later.
    “Sis?”
    “ Nong .”
    “How’s Leather?” I always liked to ask how Leather was because, in his own weird, probably nonexistent way, he was a benchmark of stability in Sissi’s life.
    “He’s gone.”
    “Gone?”
    “I deleted him.”
    “What did he do?”
    “He announced he was coming here on holiday.”
    “Oh, that’s terrible. Is it terrible?”
    “Of course it is. I don’t want to see what they’re really like.”
    “He might have been nice.”
    “He calls himself Leather and whips women online. He’s either a factory worker or a bus driver.”
    I felt sad. Really. I’d like to see her settle down with a bus driver.
    “So, who’s next?” I asked.
    “I’m giving up on men for a while.”
    This sounded a lot like me in Pak Nam. I told her about Ed and my temporary dip into gaiety.
    “Have you ever considered…?” I began.
    “Women? No, don’t even joke about it,” she said. “Who would stoop so low. No, little sister, I’m going to be an auntie.”
    I had to think about that.
    “Wouldn’t that involve either Arny or me doing the business?”
    “Ha! I should live so long.”
    “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
    “No, I’m going to be an auntie to thousands, perhaps millions. Do the words Cyber Idol mean anything to you?”
    “No, of course they don’t. It’s a very Asian thing. Started in Korea. It’s now even bigger in Japan and it’s slipping south.”
    “Does it involve singing and being humiliated by impresarios with limited talent of their own?”
    “Not even. This is the ultimate self-makeover site. You have young girls who look like, say…you, and you set up your homepage with photos of what you actually look like. And the site has make-up and hair and – get this – Photoshop advice to do whatever it takes to make you look absolutely stunning online. There are no rules. You can pull any trick in the book to make yourself look like a babe. Then you enter online