Silk Umbrellas Read Online Free PDF

younger children.
    Noi slipped her mathematics paper inside her book and closed it, as though in so doing she could put away numbers and the problems they created.
    The monks had to eat before noon, but the children would eat later. Outside, Kun Kru lined everybody up for a foot race.
    Kriamas liked to run fast. Noi preferred to go slower, feeling the breeze on her face, watching the rush of the green trees against the background of sky.
    It was the same way in the afternoons when Kun Kru announced the end of work and the beginning of the performances. Kriamas enjoyed doing her dances or singing in front of the others, while Noi enjoyed studying the way the children moved and the positions of their bodies, thinking how, like the creatures of the jungle, they could be painted.
    Everyone shared some lunch with everyone else, making a feast of Jirapat’s yellow curried potatoes with chickpeas, Intha’s crispy raw vegetables, Kriamas’s rice soup. Afterward, Kriamas and Noi played a game of checkers, using bottle caps for pieces. In the background, a Ping-Pong ball clicked back and forth, a pattern threading lightly through the laughter and chatter.
    Noi took three of Kriamas’s pieces and Kriamas grew quiet. She began to move, then changed her mind.
    Noi rubbed her finger around the fluted edge of the bottle cap. She wished that she could tell Kriamas about the factory. About the way Ting rubbed her eyes at night. About how Noi’s school days seemed to fly by, as time carried her swiftly to a new destiny.
I’m so afraid,
she wanted to say.
    But Kriamas’s father had his own land and still farmed. The family had money to send Kriamas to teacher school. Because Kriamas didn’t have to think about the factory, she might not understand.
    Kriamas moved and it was Noi’s turn.
    Noi lifted her own piece just when Kun Kru rang her brass bell, announcing the beginning of afternoon studies.

“Let’s go to market,” Kun Pa announced one morning when the rain had broken. He had loaded the
samlaw
with a tall stack of fishing baskets. The fishing baskets would bring more money at the tourist market than if he sold them to the men of the village. The baskets would never catch fish, but would hold tourist trinkets instead.
    There were no umbrellas to load, because Kun Ya hadn’t been painting. Noi thought of the umbrellas she’d decorated with lily pads. But Mr. Poonsub wouldn’t buy
those.
    She climbed onto the back step of the tricycle.
    Before Ting had gone to the factory, Noi would have held on to Kun Pa’s shoulders as he pedaled. She’d have leaned over, the side of her head against his, laughing as he took the turns too fast.
    When Noi was little, Kun Pa had carried her high on his shoulders through the jungle. They’d made a game of spotting the bright-colored birds that were now calling their morning greeting. “There’s one!” she’d cry at seeing a flash of feathers against the green. When Kun Pa grew tired of carrying her, they walked with her small hand in his big one.
    Sometimes she’d asked him to tell the story of the poisonous king cobras. When Kun Pa was her age, he’d spotted two shiny black snakes slithering through the grass outside his house. Fascinated, little Kun Pa had laughed brightly and chased after them.
    Just as the snakes turned and opened the hoods around their heads, Kun Pa’s mother had scooped him up in her arms and hoisted him above the snakes. “Those might have killed you, Chang-noi!” She always called him “Little Elephant.”
    At that point in his story, Kun Pa had always lifted Noi high, provoking a shower of giggles.
    But Kun Pa had played with Ting as well. He’d called Ting his precious little daughter, had stroked her hair as she fell asleep with her head against his shoulder, had told her, too, about the snakes. And he’d still let Kun Mere send her to the factory.
    Now, instead of leaning close to Kun Pa as she rode on the back step of the
samlaw
, Noi held him at the