Silk Umbrellas Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t lay bricks. He sat in the house weaving bamboo fishing baskets, the long strips of bamboo uncurling on the mat.
    Kun Mere’s sewing machine whirred along except when lightning hit the electrical wires. Then Noi would light a lantern. She brought it close so that Kun Mere could continue to sew by hand with tiny, neat stitches.
    Kun Ya slept and hardly painted at all. She complained that her fingers hurt.
    Only Ting kept to her schedule in spite of the weather, slipping out of the mosquito net before dawn each morning. Every other Friday, she handed Kun Mere her earnings. They sat down together on the mat while Ting, smiling, counted the bills and coins into Kun Mere’s open hand. Kun Mere would count the money again, then neatly enter the amount in a small notebook. Often Ting’s money was the only money coming into the house.
    Noi stayed busy with schoolwork and housework, trying to avoid Kun Mere’s eyes.
    As the rains crashed down day after day, Noi began to look ahead to the harvest festival of Loy Krathong.
    During Loy Krathong, people celebrated the life of all growing things. The harvest brought new prosperity. Noi hoped that the festival celebrations would bring prosperity for her family. Maybe there would be enough money so that neither she nor Ting would have to go to the factory.
    During Loy Krathong, the village would be lit up by
phang patit,
the small earthen lamps. Noi added up the number of lamps her family would light. She was eleven years old, Ting fifteen. That made twenty-six. Plus Kun Mere’s thirty-five years and Kun Pa’s thirty-seven made ninety-eight. Plus Kun Ya’s sixty-three years made one hundred and sixty-one. The flickering yellow flames of one hundred and sixty-one lamps would make the fall night seem warmer.
    Noi pictured the lights that would burn under the trees around the house. She counted them over and over until the individual flickers came clear. The thought of so many lights, small offerings to the Buddha, comforted her.

Noi approached Kun Mere’s sewing machine. She touched the soft cloud of mosquito netting hesitantly.
    Recently a curtain had come between her and Kun Mere like the thin white fabric Kun Mere used to make mosquito nets. The curtain made it impossible for Noi to speak the secrets of her heart.
    Kun Mere didn’t lift her foot from the pedal of the sewing machine. She leaned close to the fabric, pulling it tight on both sides of the needle that jabbed up and down, joining the seams.
    Kun Mere used to have time to sew blouses with pleats and ruffles for Noi and Ting, but now she only sewed for Mr. Subsin.
    Noi began to move away.
    “Wait, little daughter.” Kun Mere suddenly took a pink ribbon from her pocket.
    Noi leaned down to let Kun Mere tie the ribbon in her hair.
    Kun Mere pulled at the collar of Noi’s blouse. “I see wrinkles. You need to iron more carefully in the future.”
    Noi smiled. Even if Kun Mere didn’t have time to sew blouses, she always made sure that Noi and Ting looked neat and pretty.
    But looks didn’t matter to Noi right now.
Find another way. Please, don’t send me to the factory,
she longed to say to Kun Mere.
    Yet she didn’t say anything. Neither did she lean over to kiss Kun Mere as she usually did. She pretended to be late for school and turned quickly to gather up her book bag.
    Kun Kru handed out the mathematics books for the older children and drew the younger ones close to her for reading.
    As Noi added and subtracted fractions and decimals, she wondered what these complicated numbers had to do with the numbers in her life — the simple, round numbers on the money that Ting brought home, the lack of simple, round numbers that so worried Kun Mere.
    Noi looked out the window just in time to see a monk striking the big gong in the courtyard. He raised the mallet.
Bong
. . . The sound resonated throughout the village, marking the hour of eleven o’clock. It was time for the monks to eat.
    Kun Kru dismissed the