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Authors: Autumn Cornwell

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BOOK: Carpe Diem
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Frangipani
W
e'd been exploring the ruins of Angkor about a week when Grandma Gerd said:
“I want a Girls' Night Out. Just the two of us. Hanks can fend for himself, he's a big boy.”
So Hanks grabbed a bowl of noodles and spent the evening packing up Grandma Gerd's found art to send back to MCT—the amount of trash she'd already accumulated for the collage was astronomical. (Of course to her it wasn't trash, it was Art with a capital A … a capitalized, italicized, boldface
A
!) And he was getting her sepia-film photos developed. That way, if some didn't turn out, she'd have a week to take more before we flew to Phnom Penh. I wondered how much Grandma Gerd was paying Hanks for his services. Or was Renjiro the one footing the bill?
I wasn't too excited about the proposed one-on-one time with my grandma. Although we now shared a room, we were typically so exhausted by the end of the day, we barely managed “good nights” before passing out. Which eliminated the need for small talk or pretending to enjoy each other's company.
However, perhaps tonight's familial bonding would shed some light on The Big Secret … .
Grandma Gerd and I navigated our way down the dirt road into town using my trusty Maglite flashlight. We ate dinner in one of the Siem Reap cafés that catered to the Angkor tourists. Or rather, Grandma Gerd devoured
lak
(meat) and rice while I tentatively sipped clear broth, the only thing that didn't seem to send my stomach into a tailspin. We sat outside under a large leafy tree with white flowers strung with twinkling lights.
“Nice watch,” said Grandma Gerd. “Souvenir?”
Figures she just noticed it, Ms. Absorbed in Her Own World. “Hanks gave it to me.” I added pointedly: “It'll come in handy now that I don't have my PTP anymore.”
Grandma Gerd grinned and drank her Merlot.
I decided to use this time with Grandma Gerd to pick her brain about The Big Secret. I figured that if I kept bringing it up, bringing it up, bringing it up—she'd finally give in and tell me. My version of Chinese water torture.
Just as I was about to start the “dripping,” a sturdy woman traveler with a long brown braid caught my attention. After the waiter presented her with a plate of rice and stir-fried meat, she promptly pulled out a bottle and sprayed it completely. Then, ignoring the dumbfounded waiter, she shoved a big helping of meat into her mouth and chewed away—mouth open.
“She reminds me of a sow I once came across in Chang Mai,” said Grandma Gerd, swatting at a mosquito.
“I think she's onto something.” I got up and walked over.
“Excuse me, but what did you just do to your food?”
She grinned, puffing her bulging cheeks out even more, allowing me the privilege of witnessing the rice and meat in mid-mastication. Then she bellowed, spraying bits of meat at me: “Foreign Food Sanitation Spray! I swear by the stuff. It works something wonderful. You just saturate your meal with it—and bingo! It's safe to eat!”
“Really?”
“No diarrhea, no gas, no stomach pains. Nothing! The spray kills anything alive—any critters that could pose any sorta problem! Zap! Gone!”
I gazed in wonderment at the metal spray bottle with bronze lettering next to her plate. The woman noticed and clasped her meaty fingers around it protectively. “Sorry, missy. Only got the one. But I can give you the Web site. They retail for thirty dollars a bottle, but it's well worth it. Everything's been coming out in firm little packages, if you know what I mean … .”
 
“She wouldn't part with her Foreign Food Sanitation Spray. Not even for fifty dollars,” I said as I slumped in my chair.
“Hey, that's my money you're throwing around. Go easy. Besides, if it kills everything alive, what's it gonna do to your insides?” asked Grandma Gerd.
As I watched the woman joyfully shovel spoonful after spoonful into her mouth, my eyes narrowed and my thoughts darkened. What about mugging her for the spray? Jostling
up against her in the dark, muddy street, causing her to drop her bag—“Oops, so sorry.” Anything to have a normal eating life again.
Grandma Gerd paused, her wineglass halfway to her mouth. “Don't even think about it, kiddo.”
How did she read my mind?
And, another thing:
“How come you always call me ‘kiddo'? Why don't you ever call me by my real name? Do you not like it or something?”
She put down her glass and leaned back in her chair. “Okay. You caught me.”
“Really?”
“I've never liked your first name. It's elitist, exclusionary, not to mention it sounds like ‘
vasectomy.
' So, now that you bring it up, mind if I call you by your middle name instead?”
Stung by her assault, I said, “Well, I happen to like my name. Like that it symbolizes excellence. Like that it connotes achievement. And maybe if you'd shown a little more interest in your only grandchild, you'd know that I don't have a middle name.”
“Sure, you do. Picked it out myself.”
I just stared at her, stunned by her capacity for fiction.
“Check your birth certificate if you don't believe me. I convinced Leonardo—okay,
bribed
him—to let me choose it.”
“But my passport doesn't have a middle name, and don't they use the birth certificate to …?” I pulled my passport out of my money belt and handed it to her.
As she read it, a spasm of pain flickered across her face. Then she snapped it shut and slapped it on the table. “Vassar Spore. So they legally erased your middle name. Balls.” She took a big gulp of wine. “I would expect Althea capable of such deception—but not my Leonardo.”
“What was—”
“Let me tell you—legal or not, you
really
did have a middle name. A name is incomplete without the three parts. It's like a story with a beginning and ending but no middle. No meat. No heart. Come on, which sounds better: Gertrude Spore—or Gertrude
Valhalla
Spore?”
I couldn't believe she was taking it so hard. So personally.
“I'd still like to call you by it, anyway,” she said, straightening her mollusk hat.
I mentally cringed at what sort of name Grandma Gerd would have chosen.
“Don't worry,” said Grandma Gerd, reading my face. “It's lyrical and musical and a fairy tale rolled all in one. You'll love it.”
I very much doubted it.
She exhaled dramatically: “Frangipani.”
It was worse than I expected.
“It's a flower—this flower, to be exact.” She picked up something off the ground and handed it to me. A cream-colored, five-petal flower with a yellow edging and center—and a flamboyant tropical odor. “You'll find them growing on trees like this one all over Southeast Asia.”
“Frangi …?”
“Pani. Frangipani—got a nice ring, don't you think?”
“I prefer Vassar.”
“You have been brainwashed, haven't you? Okay, how about Frangi? Shorter, but still with a lilt.”
I shuddered and opened another bottle of water.
“How about this: If you let me call you Frangipani, then I'll let you know when you've guessed The Big Secret. Even though I promised your parents I wouldn't tell you. But, hey, they weren't exactly aboveboard with me, now were they? And now that I've met you in person, I think you can handle the truth. Personally, I think you're entitled to know since you've turned sixteen. But only if you figure it out. Deal?”
Why was I surprised at her unorthodox and unethical behavior?
“But how do I figure it out?”
“Use your intuition. Your deductive reasoning skills. Put that 5.3 GPA brain of yours to work.”
“You'll honestly let me know if I've uncovered The Big Secret? You're not just trying to—”
“Promise. I'll even throw in some clues. A clue every day or so. To make it sporting. How does that sound? Fair?”
“I guess so,” I said. What other choice did I have?
“Then it's a deal,
Frangipani
!” she said, and cheerfully pumped my hand. She tore off a piece of toilet paper from the roll in a plastic dispenser—all over Southeast Asia they used toilet paper for napkins. She wrote something on it with a green felt-tip pen.
She handed me the scrap. “There. Your first clue.”
“What's this supposed to be?” I said as I examined it. “A hill?”
“No, it's a D.”
“D? As in the letter D?”
“Is there any other kind?”
“Like a grade?”
“You have school on the brain, don't you?”
“Is it an initial? Or a monogram? Or—”
“That's what you're going to figure out, isn't it,
Frangi
?”
I winced. “Am I allowed to ask questions?”
“As long as they're just yes or no—shoot.”
“Does it have to do with prison?”
She poured more wine. “Prison? Nope.”
“Does it have to do with money?”
“Nope.”
“Does it have to do with Grandpa?”
Picking a bug out of her glass: “Nope.”
I narrowed my eyes. Her attitude was a touch too nonchalant.
She better be telling the truth.
The next ones were long shots, but Hanks had planted the seed: “Are Mom and Dad wanted? Do they have disreputable pasts?”
“Althea disreputable?” Grandma Gerd laughed.
I took it as another “nope.”
Was the “D” just a red herring?
The Apsara
Keeping in mind that Cambodia only recently finished a savage civil war, savvy sojourners steer clear of land mines by staying on designated paths and refraining from removing intriguing, half-buried metal objects from the dirt … .
—The Savvy Sojourner's Cambodian Guidebook
 
T
hat night, Grandma Gerd and I silently got ready for bed, each of us absorbed in our own thoughts—which were punctuated by Hanks's footsteps above. His boots
did
make a lot of noise. (We'd moved into the room that the German tourists vacated—“Too much
Schlangen
chasing,” they told the clerk.) But the sound was somehow reassuring and added to the music of the night: the clicking sounds of the chinchas on the ceiling, the croaks of the toads in the pond, and the buzzing of a flying beetle repeatedly hitting the screen.
I wanted to question Grandma Gerd further on the “D,” but simply didn't have the energy.
The next morning I awoke to find I'd gotten six more bites on my face. That made a total of eleven red welts—not to mention the purple protuberance that still hadn't faded in intensity. I couldn't understand it. I had completely saturated myself with extra-strength bug repellent.
And my attempt at disguising them with makeup was useless. Within thirty seconds of stepping into the heat, anything on my face melted completely off.
 
Fsssht!
“Did you know that your bites form the Big Dipper? And that there big bump of yours is the sun,” said Hanks as he analyzed the Polaroid photo he'd just taken. He pulled out a Sharpie and carefully labeled it
Vassar #5: Solar System.
“Grandma Gerd won't be happy when she finds out you're wasting all her film.”
“I don't know. This would look mighty fine on Renjiro's wall … .”
By now I'd grown resigned to the fact he'd continue taking my picture whether I liked it or not. My plan was that at the end of my trip, I'd somehow confiscate his entire stack of “Vassar Photos”—and burn them. But for now, I'd simply bide my time and ignore him. I refused to give him the satisfaction of annoying me. Otherwise every minute of every day would be one of perpetual irritation.
“Do you mind tryin' to cover up your affliction? After
all, I do have to be seen in public with you … .” He handed me my white face mask.
“Very funny.”
We were walking down an overgrown path toward Ta Prohm, a Buddhist temple built in 1186 but since then overrun by the jungle. Grandma Gerd was already way ahead of us, snapping photos with her Brownie and picking up various leaves and rocks.
A red sign up ahead caught my attention: a white skull and crossbones.
“What does that mean?”
“Watch out for land mines.”
“Land mines!?”
“Yeah. The Khmer Rouge left their callin' cards everywhere. Don't worry. Most of them have been dug up.”
That put a wee damper on my mood. I scanned the well-trod dirt in front of me. What did a land mine look like, anyway? Solution: I'd just follow right behind Hanks—let him go first.
“Watch your footin'—
Frangipani
,” said Hanks.
Uch. I would
never
get used to that name.
 
While Angkor Wat had been practically pristine, Ta Prohm was one big
mess
. A hodgepodge of foliage and stone that had remained untouched for centuries. No attempt had been made to restore it. Banyan and fig trees had spread their giant trunks and roots through the stone blocks, splitting apart walls and foundations, and toppling towers.
“This is my absolute favorite ruin, Frangipani,” said Grandma Gerd.
To my surprise, Ta Prohm turned out to be my favorite, as well.
 
Grandma Gerd stepped over a dozing guard in uniform and paused in a doorway. She pointed to a row of dancing women carved above the door frame.
“Look:
apsaras
. Celestial nymph dancers, courtesans of the sky. They seduce men with their perfect beauty—”
“Something you won't have to worry about, Miss Mass of Bites,” murmured Hanks in my ear. I jabbed him in the stomach with my elbow. “Ooof.”
The
apsaras
mesmerized me with their mysterious yet whimsical expressions and their graceful in-flight positions. These were the most glorious creatures I'd seen in any of the bas-reliefs. There was something beckoning about them. When I blinked, I could have sworn I saw one kick up her heels. I wanted to sit and just drink them in.
“Watch out!” Hanks grabbed my arm before I sat down on a flat bit of rock.
“Land mine!” I shouted as I scrambled away, arms flailing.
“No. Somethin' a tad less explosive … ,” said Hanks, pointing.
There, exactly where I would have sat, was a centipede—a
foot-long
centipede! I staggered back at the thought of that segmented, thick, reddish-amber-colored body with its multiple legs under my derriere.
“Supposedly its bite is worse than a scorpion's. Highly painful,” said Grandma Gerd cheerfully.
“Thanks for the warning,” I said. I eventually counted eleven of these despicable creatures on the ground, on walls, and in the crevices of Ta Prohm. My
Savvy Sojourner's Cambodian Guidebook
identified them as the Vietnamese giant centipede (
Scolopendra subspinipes
), common in Southeast Asian countries. Their bite was not only excruciatingly painful—it could even be lethal. (
“Savvy sojourners steer clear of these creatures and refrain from attempting to pick them up or take them home as pets.”
)
 
We split up: I to jot down notes for my novel, Hanks to take Polaroids, and Grandma Gerd to get rubbings.
“When are you going to pull your weight around here?” Grandma Gerd asked me. “Found art doesn't find itself.”
“I'll look,” I promised. “After I write up my chapter.”
I found the perfect writing spot: a square chunk of stone covered with light green-and-orange lichen—but centipede (and land mine) free. Before getting to work, I applied more sunblock and pulled my hat down over my nose. No need to court melanoma, as Mom would say.
I opened my notebook and gazed around me. Now to encapsulate Ta Prohm vividly:
 
Sarah sat contemplating the tentacles of trees raping the ruins of rock.
Not bad. I was about to continue when something half-buried in the dirt by the stone wall caught my eye: a partial remnant of a stone
apsara
's face. About the size of my palm and about as thick. It must have come from the row of dancing
apsaras
above.
She smiled up at me. Even though most of her right eye and cheek were gone, she managed an enigmatic expression. The lips sweetly curved, the eyes twinkling.
On the lintel over the doorway, relatively new chisel marks pocked the stone around the now faceless
apsara's
body.
What were the guards paid to do around here?
Obviously someone had recently attempted to chip off the entire
apsara
when no one was looking. Maybe they'd been scared off and just left the damaged relic in the dirt.
Grandma Gerd wandered by, carrying a parchment paper with a rubbing of what looked like a sea serpent.
“How do you like this
naga
? Check out his nostrils—”
“Look,” I said, pointing to the
apsara
. “Anyone could just pick that up and stick it in their backpack!”
Grandma Gerd looked at the
apsara
and slowly rolled up her parchment. “You're absolutely right, Frangi.”
I glanced around us: a group of backpackers videotaping each other, a middle-aged Scandinavian couple holding hands, and an elderly Cambodian nun with a shaved head and a face like a shrunken apple. Bent over at the waist, she swept, swept, and swept the same space of ground over and over and over with her broom made of twigs.
Any of them could potentially pocket the treasure.
I turned back to the
apsara
. It was gone. “What!?!”
And there was Grandma Gerd cinching her oversize woven bag.
“Grandma Gerd!”
“Good work, Frangipani! Now that's what I call found art.”
“But I wasn't … that's not what I meant … .”
I couldn't believe it. My very own grandma blatantly stealing a priceless relic from one of the Wonders of the World. I couldn't fathom stealing. I'd never stolen anything before in my life—not even a lip gloss from the drugstore back in junior high when Wendy Stupacker tried to peer-pressure me.
“Put it back!” I'd hissed. But she'd just walked away.
I snatched up my daypack. A guard in a wrinkled uniform strolled by—wrinkled because he'd probably just woken up. He paused. Gave me a piercing look.
Don't look at me,
I wanted to say,
the culprit is the silver-haired delinquent in the mollusk hat!
 
Before bed that night, Grandma Gerd and I washed our shirts and underwear in the bathroom sink. After she finished, she removed the
apsara
from her bag.
“There you go, you enchanting creature you,” she said, positioning the stone fragment on her bedside table.
I clipped my bra to the portable clothesline we'd strung
across the bedroom, in hopes the ceiling fan would facilitate drying. “I still can't believe you stole it.”
“She'd have just been taken by someone else, who'd sell her on the black market or turn her into an ashtray. Think about it: Those snoozing guards have allowed thousands of antiquities to be pilfered over the years.”
“But that doesn't make it right.”
Grandma Gerd snapped photos of the
apsara
first with a digital camera, then her Brownie. “At least with me she'll be prominently displayed in a Southeast Asian collage, as a tribute to Southeast Asia—
in
Southeast Asia.”
She could rationalize anything.
I headed back into the bathroom to get ready for bed. When I returned, Grandma Gerd was already asleep—early for her—and there was an “A” on my pillow made out of matchsticks.
Nice try, Grandma Gerd. Trying to distract me from your crime with clues.
For hours I lay awake staring at the
apsara
through the filmy gauze of mosquito netting, hypnotized by the languorously swirling ceiling fan.
Thief … thief … thief … thief …
The
apsara's
one eye stared solemnly at me. The apsara's one eye stared solemnly at me.
We both knew what I had to do.
BOOK: Carpe Diem
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