Eat

The world became larger that year, 1979. No longer did it stop at the end of the driveway. No longer did I find myself in my neighbor’s apple tree, gazing from the top, wondering what was over the fence and across the six-lane street. No longer did we speak one language in the house and another in public places. That summer, my family boarded a plane to Thailand—my mother’s first return in over a decade—and the world expanded across an ocean, to another continent, to another country where heat sizzled roads and torrential rain chased cockroaches into corners.

My family traveled to Bangkok for more than a visit. We came to pay our respects to my grandfather, my mother’s father, the man who dreamt of Buddha and raised a family of nine single-handedly. Grandfather Chua was in the hospital, lungs failing from too many years smoking a pipe, and now his withered body could not sustain itself.

None of this was explained to me. For the first few days, I sat outside on the cool marble deck and waited for my cousins Oil and Ant to come back from school. My mother was away with her sisters and brothers at the hospital, so I stayed with my father, who took childcare less seriously. He spent much of his time on the phone, talking to old friends, scheduling lunches and golf outings.

I was accustomed to entertaining myself. I was an only child with two working parents. Give me a piece of paper and pencil and I would draw anything. Even at three, I had the power to mimic. I wasn’t the strongest artist, and I couldn’t imagine something and draw it, but if my subject was stationary, I could get it somewhat right.

So I drew the dogs. Because I was instructed to never touch them—Thai dogs, according to my mother, were mean—this was the next best thing. I felt like I was learning something essential in my sloppy drawings that touching would never allow. I was doing what Buddha instructed: seeing beyond the physical.

The house dogs had their own routines. I watched them. I drew them. Bobo was a tricolored male, youth unbound, pouncing on random things at random times—a butterfly, a stick, one of the other dogs. Bobo adored my aunt Jeeb, forcing his broad head under her hand, and when she swept the driveway, he playfully bit at the whisks of the broom. Anut was the female of the three, the matriarch. She strutted with an elegance the other two did not possess, and if she could speak, I imagined her with a proper English accent. Her bark was operatic, with a repeated lilt at the end. And then there was Pokey, the runt, a skinny, light-colored mutt, who was unsteady on his legs with a noticeable tremble. His nose was discolored, brown and pink, and his ears stood straight up. He had long whiskers like a cat, and patches of his fur were missing; underneath that fur was rashy skin. Pokey sounded like a dog who smoked—raspy, un-intimidating. He found the coolest and shadiest places to lie down and had a way of watching you, his stare unflinching, as if he were studying your heart.

I fell for Pokey. We were alike, even though we were different species, even though he was thin and I was round. I was a boy drawn to odd things, discarded toys instead of brand-new ones. Things lost and found held larger value to me because I created narratives for them; they allowed me to imagine their other lives before becoming mine. Later, I desired not the most beautiful girls, but the strangest. This attraction made me say Pokey’s name often, made me sing it to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” the only song I knew. He’d stare, tilt his head, wag his tail, and sometimes bark as if he were adding his own vocals.

The dogs went about their day, like me, without the need of anything but a shaded, cool place to lie...