Floating on Bamboo

by Erika Maren Steiger

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

It's 1985. Exhausted by her complicated family, seventeen year old Tamar Kelly longs for something different. She seizes an opportunity to spend a year as an exchange student in Thailand, which sounds as far away as it's possible to go. There, across the world from her home in California, she finds excitement, confusion, new kinds of complication, and new sources of exhaustion. It's not easy, but it's definitely different, and it might just change everything.

Release date: April 5, 2020

Publisher: E. Steiger & Co.

Print pages: 171

Sample

Chapter 1

    She remembered the first time she had flown into Los Angeles in the dark. Always before, when she had been on a plane alone, it had been in daylight. Maybe that was why she had never noticed how unimaginably big it was.
    All the way across the country, the land had been dark, just black, with occasional clusters of lights. When they crossed those last mountains, though, there it was, from horizon to horizon, an unbounded expanse of brightness. She looked in all directions as the plane continued west, but could not find the edge. Finally, where the city met the ocean, there was darkness again. She was surprised to find herself relieved. It was just too much, too many lights, with no boundary. She didn’t understand why, since it was just a city, just the place she’d always lived, but it frightened her. She had felt calmer as they descended, and she could see buildings, then cars, then people.
    For this trip, the sky was bright, and she was older, but she did feel a breath of fear as they took off. Although she had spent much of her life on planes, she had never gone this direction: west from L.A., over the empty ocean. At first, the water was dark blue. As they went higher, it turned grey, but she could still see the waves. Then they went into the clouds, and all she could see was white.
    She turned her head away from the window and toward Ciara, sitting next to her, flipping through the latest Vogue. Tamar could see the March 1985 date on the cover. They had met just three days before, assigned together as roommates for Orientation, at a small hotel near the airport. 
   Tamar had arrived first, and was sitting on one of the blue and orange beds reading “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” when Ciara bounced in with a big smile and trendy clothes. She was wearing shiny clips in her dark, wavy hair and plenty of mascara and lipstick. She could easily have passed for one of the popular girls at Tamar’s school, but when she started talking, just the usual hellos and where are you froms, Tamar could feel that she was different. Her smile was genuine. She was actually interested in the differences between L.A. and Columbus, Ohio, and what it was like to have so many stepsiblings. Ciara's parents were still married. She said they were even still in love.
    Ciara was beautiful, although she seemed unaware of it. Her skin was even paler than Tamar’s, but somehow, with her very blue eyes and her very dark hair, it looked dramatic rather than pasty. Tamar thought her own brown eyes and red hair gave her skin a jaundiced tinge.
    It was odd, the way they had suddenly been friends. It wasn't because Ciara was so friendly, or because they had anything at all in common. There wasn't any rational thought process at all. Tamar just liked her, immediately, from the moment she walked in the room, and the feeling seemed to be mutual, a sort of friendship at first sight. It had seemed like a good omen for the year ahead.
    “I can’t believe we’re actually on our way,” Tamar said.
    Ciara looked up from her magazine. “I know.  Bangkok!  Unbelievable. I can’t even picture it yet.”
    “I can’t either, and I’ve seen pictures.”
    Ciara laughed. “I’ll bet you did a ton of research.”
    “I did! I read everything I could find, which wasn’t that much. I still feel like I know nothing about the place at all.”
    “We’ll have lots of time to learn.”
    “I don’t know. Is a year really lots of time?”
    Ciara jerked forward as the back of her seat was banged by a knee. It was Joel from New York attempting to get out into the aisle. He was much too tall and bulky for the coach seats.
    “Sorry, Ladies,” he said as he passed by. “Gotta hit the head.”
    Tamar liked Joel. Despite his intimidating size and movie-tough accent (“Lawn Guyland Rawks!”), he exuded warmth and a lack of self-consciousness. She envied him that.
    Joel was sitting with Ben, a polite boy of average height, with medium-brown hair and Gap clothes. He was a minister’s son from a small town in Nebraska, and he hadn’t spoken much.
    There were eight of them altogether, four girls and four boys. There had been fifty-some at Orientation, but most of them were going to Japan. Tamar was glad she wasn’t one of them. Japan didn’t seem different enough to her. It was more different than, say, England or France, but it seemed so westernized, and she thought a lot of people there must speak English. Americans were always going there. She didn’t know anyone who’d been to Thailand. At school, people didn’t even know where it was. They kept asking her when she was going to Taiwan. She was glad to be rid of them and their talk about cars and nail polish. Whatever Thailand might bring, at least it would be different.
    The first stop was Honolulu, just a six-hour flight, like between New York and L.A. It was still daylight when they arrived. Tamar looked out the window as they flew low over the water. It was a color blue she’d seen only on travel brochures. It seemed like another good omen.
    She thought of when she’d gotten that package in the mail, the one with her host family assignment. She had been so nervous, opening it. It meant the difference between going and not, between escape and another year of inane conversations punctuated with derisive remarks (“Ooh, Tamar got an A. Big surprise. Kiss-ass! Geek!”). Besides, her father was about to get married for the fifth time, and although she was happy for him, she didn't want to be subjected to yet another round of hopeful smiles. She wouldn't mind missing the wedding.
    When her parents had learned she was assigned to Thailand, they had both been nervous. The news was full of Cambodian refugees and border skirmishes, and they were afraid for her, but she had pleaded with her mother, daily, using every argument she could think of. She convinced her stepsister Pat to call from college to lobby for her. She even tried to get her little half-brothers to help her beg. Finally her parents had agreed that if she were placed in the city of Bangkok, she could go. She had torn open the envelope thinking Bangkok Bangkok Bangkok, and as she pulled the cover letter free, she scanned it for that word.
    When she saw it, she let out a scream, a completely involuntary one. It was like the time she tried that freefall ride, and heard screaming all the way down, only to realize at the bottom that she was the one making the noise. Her mother came running in from her studio, paint dripping from the brush still in her hand, panic on her face. Sam and Noah woke from their naps.
    Tamar immediately apologized for making so much noise, but really she didn’t care about that, or anything else. She had been placed in Bangkok, which meant she was going to Thailand, which meant she would have the adventure of her life and escape her life, all at the same time. Remembering it now, she felt an echo of that excitement. She stared out the window again so no one could see her smile.
    The stop in Honolulu was brief. Next was the long leg, eleven hours to Taipei. It seemed like a treadmill of movies and meals, meals and movies and occasional bouts of sleep. By the time they landed, they were all a bit disoriented. It felt good to get off the plane briefly and just walk around the chairs at the arrival gate. Then there was a short flight to Singapore.
    They had to switch planes there, to Singapore Air. An airline employee led them briskly from their arrival gate to their departure gate. On the way they saw the cleanest, brightest airport Tamar had ever seen. Everything shone. They passed a multi-story rock formation, a sort of sculpture with plants and flowing water, and shops for candy, jewelry, clothes, all of which looked expensive. It was like a luxury hotel lobby with Rodeo Drive right through the middle.
    The Singapore-Bangkok flight was barely a flight at all. They took off and then they landed. As they taxied down the tarmac, too excited to feel their exhaustion from the 27 hours of travel, Ciara said what they were all thinking: “This is Bangkok. We’re in Bangkok. We are actually in Bangkok. This can’t be real.”

Chapter 2

    As she walked through the airplane door into the jetway, Tamar was suddenly hit by the intense, wet heat. There were only a few seconds between the plane and the air-conditioned terminal, but it was enough to feel the weight of the air.
    There was a woman from FSA (the Foreign Study Agency, founded in 1920) at the gate to meet them. She was about five feet tall and petite, with straight, black hair in a bun. She wore a light blue blouse and a dark blue skirt.  Her shoes were navy pumps. She had black plastic-framed glasses, and her expression was stern. She was fidgety, and kept looking back and forth from the gate to the wider airport, as if they were all about to miss a train.
    She kept asking FSA? FSA? as the deplaning passengers filed past, even though she was holding a big sign that said the same thing. With her accent, it sounded like “Eff Et Eh?” Tamar was excited to hear her first Thai accent. She was anxious to learn the language. She wondered what an American accent sounded like in Thai.
    When she was satisfied that she had found all eight of them, the woman said, “Welcome to Thailand! I am PiLahng, director of FSA Bangkok. Please come this way. Stay together.”
    That was their entire introduction. PiLahng took all their passports and had them ushered quickly through customs. They followed her to the baggage claim area, where two FSA volunteers, PiLao and PiJung, helped them get their bags and then put them on a full-sized yellow school bus, just like the ones at home. On the side of the bus it said King Mongkut Teachers’ College, in English.
    When Tamar stepped outside, the heat hit her right in the face, then spread its wet weight all the way down her body. This was worse than Manhattan in August, exponentially worse. She only had to walk about ten yards, but it was like trying to walk across the bottom of an overheated swimming pool. Every movement took concentration, and the air felt too thick to breathe. By the time she reached the bus, sweat was dripping down her temples and the back of her neck. She found a seat by an open window, and wiped the sweat off her face with her hands. She tried fanning herself, but the exertion just made her sweat more. She watched the others drag themselves up the steps and collapse into seats. No one said a word.
    According to Tamar’s encyclopedia at home, Thailand had three seasons: the monsoon season, from June to November, the cold season, from December to February, and the hot season, from March to May. They had arrived just at the beginning of the hot season. She thought it had better not get any hotter, because if it did none of them would make it to June.
    The bus pulled out of the airport. Its motion created a breeze that lured all the students close to the windows. The breeze lasted as long as the bus was on the nearly empty airport access road, which was, perhaps, three minutes, but then they entered Bangkok traffic, and the breeze was gone.