Orchid Narrative

Everyone thought the orchid was artificial. My friends questioned its authenticity after I climbed in the back of the red truck with the bright orange flower in tow. They rubbed the thick waxy petals between their fingers as they asked what type of orchid it was. I doubted myself more when the Thai blue taxi driver at the station raised her eyebrows as she asked if it was a real flower. More than once, I checked the dirt in the green plastic container at its base, fearful I had misunderstood the high price and the way the merchant had turned her back on me in what seemed to be irritation at a question I hadn’t asked at hearing the price.
Pang mag, deh suoy mag, she said. “Very expensive, but very beautiful.” I wondered if the beauty would only last until the color faded off the plastic petals.
I chose the only orchid in the greenhouse, taking its two buds as a sign. It would go to my second host family I’d stayed with in Thailand, a farming family in the small village of Mae Ta outside of Chiang Mai. A family who’d lost their only son in a car accident in the city where he had been studying. I stayed at their house for one week with a Thai student and they told us all they wanted was to have children in the house again. The two buds would represent their loogk saew sohng con, they’re two daughters who we had—in that short time--become.
I left as early the next morning after I’d bought the orchid as I could manage, carrying it by a hooked wire attached to it’s base. I wasn’t sure where I was going and I was going alone, so I took my vague directions from one of my professors and waited it out as red truck after red truck refused to take me to the blue truck station. The red trucks would tote people around within Chiang Mai and the blue trucks went outside of the city.
The first time I dropped the orchid was in the waiting area at the blue truck station to Lampang. Embarrassed by my clumsiness, I steadily propped it in a corner as I stood waiting to depart. The driver and I had just finished a confusing and inconclusive conversation in Thai and I nervously watched the truck, grabbing at my bags if he stepped near the driver’s side door, ready to jump in the back at any moment.
I dropped the orchid again inside the blue truck after I’d fumbled around trying to get comfortable on the wooden bench attached to the inside wall. The truck was full of boxes and buckets of dough to be taken to a Lampang market so I sat with my legs turned toward the end of the truck watching the traffic and passing scenery from the back door.
The orchid fell over a few more times after the blue truck had emptied and I searched nervously outside the small windows for anything that looked familiar. I didn’t pick them up right away as the driver opened the window connecting the front cab to the back seating area. He asked me where I was going and I tried to explain to him the directions I had gotten from my professor. He knew little English and I knew even less Thai, so in an act of desperation I called a Thai instructor and asked for help. I described where I was and then he wanted to speak to the driver and then to me again.
“You are in Lampang, Mahnee,” he told me. “You want to be in Lamphun!” He laughed. “You went to the wrong city!”
While holding in tears and trying to chuckle, I tried to tell him I had gotten bad directions from another professor. He laughed and wished me luck, asking him to call me when I got to the correct station.
I laid the orchid down for a while as the blue truck, empty except for me and the drivers, parked on the side of a busy road. My vision went in and out of blurs from tears as I realized I had no idea how to get back to Chiang Mai or to Mae Ta. I was in the hands of the drivers and although they tried to explain to me their intentions for sitting on the side of the road, I was using most of my concentration to keep myself from sobbing.
A large bus drove by and the driver flagged it down and waved me over to it simultaneously. He shouted in Thai to the bus driver and motioned that I get on the bus. The orchid was banged against passengers’ legs as I climbed into and empty seat near the front. I wish I had tipped the driver extra for taking care of me.
At the next station, I wandered around with my Thai professor on my big blue clunky cell phone transitioning between describing where I was and handing the phone off to locals who could help me along. I climbed on the back of a motorbike clutching my orchid as we zipped through allies and to another station. On the last truck that my instructor promised would take me to Mae Ta, I had time to look at my once-beautiful flower more closely.
It was significantly bruised, broken in a few places, but it still remained mostly bright orange and I tried polishing it to improve it’s color before the truck finally lurched to a stop in front of a cooperative I’d worked at in Mae Ta.
I climbed out of the truck and waited outside as they phoned my host mom. They had heard I went to Lampang instead of Lamphun and they all laughed at me and then gave me banana chips.
My host mom drove up on her motor bike, laughing because I’d gotten lost but also because she was relieved. Embarrassed, I gave her the bruised flower and tried to explain how beautiful it had been. When we finally understood each other and I explained the buds were for her two daughters, she looked at it and contemplated. Suoy mag, she said and she hung it up in her kitchen. Very beautiful.