Playing Lady Gaga, Being Nan Pau. Steve Tolbert

She curled into a ball, itching and bleeding from continual scratching.

      Huge rats, one by one, came up through a broken grate. They squealed, fought and mated, then raised their noses in the air, faces twitching, and watched her.

      She heard clicking sounds. Giant beetles appeared on the ceiling, antennae waving. They slid down the walls, climbed over each other in their rush to get to her.

      She tried to stand, but it was like she was nailed to the floor, she couldn’t move. She screamed, ‘Mother! Help me!’

      No one came and the squealing and clicking got louder as the rats – teeth bared – and dung beetles – emerging from piles of crap – mounted her legs and arms, intent on penetrating her, sucking on her brain. A rat scrambled to her chin, went for her mouth. She screamed.

      Mister MI and the whiskey drinker – the only ones to take any notice – grinned approvingly through the bars.

      Mya screamed again and snapped awake, fighting for air, heart thumping against her chest. Light still on, the roof fan circling, three useless bad-dream catchers splayed against the opposite wall. The longer she stared at them, the more the room seemed to compress, the image of those long-toothed rats and crap-covered beetles swarming over her, gnawing away at her chin, lips and tongue.

      She leapt up, threw on her under-dress and dashed out to the road.

      No one about. Dogs – homeless like her – still curled up asleep, one of them growling in its dreams. Over her a half moon and bright stars. She stopped, thankful for the memory they brought: her father’s voice, clear; the feel of his arms around her. Like she’d been lifted up and transported back.

       Sitting together on river bank rocks. The smell of mud. Thant, closest to the water, skimming stones across its dark surface. She on her father’s lap, leaning into his embrace, feeling all snug and safe. ‘Six thousand stars up there visible to the naked eye,’ he said, looking up. ‘And a hundred thousand million more that are not. Count in English the ones you see, Mya.’

       ‘Too many,’ she squealed, burrowing into him.

       ‘Okay, twenty then. Point to them as you count.’

      The older Mya finished counting, then spotted a stool and sat down on it, recalling when she was a pre-schooler thinking darkness was like paint. Go outside for too long at night and she’d come back black.

      Across the road light flared between the second-floor shutters of a house. Inside a family chattered away, before the voice of a young girl rang out. And such a voice it was. Like she was seated right next to Mya as she protested about having to go to bed. Typically, the mother bribed her with a story, which was obviously what the girl wanted, as her ‘Okay’ was instant and expectant.

      Mya recalled when she was that little girl, not getting a story read to her the greatest disappointment of her day. Recalled also her mother squatting down in front of her, gripping her hands and instructing, ‘Gentle hands, walking feet, kind words and a quiet voice – yes?’ She’d given up doing that with Thant.

      Mya listened, and when the story finished and ‘Good nights’ were said and upstairs went dark, she walked back to her room, glimpsing a figure standing under the moon shadow of a nearby building, the smoke from his cheroot rising in the air.

      ***

      The first hint of dawn appeared in the sky as passengers started boarding the bus. Mya was last on and sat at the front, a woman and her toddler next to her, the driver across from them bent over the wheel yawning. The bus coughed to life, roared, steadied. Jerked into gear it took off, bouncing and swerving out of the depot.

      Along the traffic-less road they went, past plaster-walled buildings splotched with mildew, people wrapped in shawls and monks carrying their begging bowls the right way up. Scrawled in red paint on the side of one building was: Worship life. It’s a joy to bring into existence and too precious to destroy. A plea, Mya thought, to any pig generals being chauffeured past.

      Third day as Nan Pau, of avoidance and solitude, of the stupefying ache of losing family members she never valued enough until they were gone.

      Mya wished she’d hugged her mother before she left for school, hugged her father before he protested the previous year. Told them both how much she loved them. That Thant had died more slowly so she could have told him that too. At least with her mother, and hopefully one day with her father, she’d have a second chance to do that.

      Outside Moulmein the bus moved eastwards toward the rose-pink dawn that turned orange and paled yellow as the sun lifted over the rim of the world. Hpa-an was out there under all that new colour. Mya imagined it: a small town bordering a brown river, stilt houses and small fishing boats scattered along its banks; background of hills rising into grey limestone mountains; morning market starting to fill with school children and mothers, including hers. She had to be there – had to be. Further east was a war zone.

      Though it was hardly a war zone where she was looking.

      Her monk English teacher: ‘Writing short poetry is about stilling the moment, probing it with words.’ The English word for where the edge of the earth and sky met? Started with ‘h’. She got out her diction­ary and found ‘horizon’, and checked on ‘stubble’. She wrote:

      Rice field plain,

      Stubble now

      All the way to the horizon –

      Sharp –

      Like the edge of a plate.

      Walk too far,

      Drop off

      And never be seen again.

      Hard to believe the world was round, she thought, as all that uninterrupted space held her gaze, the smell of harvested rice blowing in through the open windows, the road straight as the lines on her writing pad, the bus only veering to pick up passengers, avoid potholes and villagers on bicycles.

      She relaxed a little and watched the driver reach for a cellophane bag filled with betel leaf. He took out a clump, inserted it between his gums and cheek and chewed; his periodic spitting of red phlegm out the window sounded like a pop-gun.

      ‘Do you have extra?’ the woman next to Mya asked the driver, pointing to the bag above the steering wheel.

      He took out another clump and handed it to her.

      The woman thanked him and dropped the betel in her mouth and chewed, her mouth soon turning as red as the driver’s. She gave an impatient sigh. ‘Very slow bus today,’ she said to no one in particular, bouncing her toddler up and down. When the toddler started to cry, she turned towards the open window and asked, ‘Could we switch seats?’ Mya agreed and the woman leaned her head out and spat. She took the remnants of the betel from her mouth and rubbed it over the toddler’s lips, hoping to stop its crying.

      The bus slowed and creaked over a rusty bridge and the toddler shrieked.

      Mya offered the woman a banana and sticky rice wrapped in fresh green leaves, telling her she’d already eaten. As a novice nun, her first act of charity for the day. The woman took the food and thanked her. With the first taste of banana on his tongue, the toddler went quiet, his eyes growing large with interest, his tongue pushing out for more.

       ‘Try each day to smile. It is good medicine.’

      And Mya did – her eyes on the toddler. The worst part was over, wasn’t it? Someone would be in Hpa-an to meet her and she’d be taken to her mother’s room. There they would grieve, yes, but over time find work and, as best they could, recover their lives together.

      The mother and toddler finished off the banana and sticky rice and were soon asleep, the toddler sprawled across his mother’s lap, the mother’s arms over him. Betel was supposed to prevent sleep. That was why people like their driver chewed it. The woman must have been