Banana Pancakes

Camera Ready (Part 4)

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Part 4

Camera Ready

Kongpob and I were eleven when we discovered we had something bittersweet in common.

Two days after Mother's day, Kongpob's mother had died in a car accident. She could've been saved, but she had refused to. Any sane person would've wanted to be saved and live on, but Kongpob's mother didn't. Instead, she chose to stay in the car while it burned and became an inferno – burning her alive – burning her alive with her lover inside.

When Kongpob's father found out that she had planned to run away with a man that she had cheated on him with, he was so angry. But, it was what made the fire departments and police reports make sense. They had all reported that even though the car she was in crashed pretty severely, on the curve of the freeway entrance ramp at 75 miles per hour with another sports car nearly doubling that speed because he was a drunk driver, her side of the door wasn't jammed. Her lover's door, the driver's door, was jammed and he couldn't get out. His legs were stuck because the entire dashboard had collapsed on him. Witnesses reported hearing him screaming at her to get out and save herself, but Kongpob's mother was hysterically crying and refused to do so. She stayed with him until the car's combustion engine couldn't hold back any longer and the inferno released itself upon both of them.

From then on, Kongpob's father became indifferent. He turned into a different man. He was once a happy man, warm and bubbly, but after her death, he became cold and a true introvert. Kongpob and his siblings took their mother's death hard, but their father never once shed a tear. For her funeral service, Kongpob's father didn't even attend. All of their relatives and close family friends were there, but the most important person didn't even show up to say goodbye to her.

"My daddy doesn't have a heart." I remember Kongpob telling me when we were perched on the roof his house one hot summer night, licking cold popsicles and playing a game of cards. I don't remember exactly how we got into the subject, but I did remember saying, "Don't be silly. Everyone has a heart." Kongpob had shook his head when he replied, "My daddy doesn't. He's heartless."

From that incident and on, Kongpob's father turned into a robot – emotionless and military-like. He always demanded that his children behave, speak properly, and became successful. While Kongpob's brother and sister managed to please him, Kongpob did his best to fail miserably. He rebelled against his father; Kongpob was the only one out of his siblings who hated his father for turning into a different man after his mother died. You can't really blame Kongpob for that, but you can blame him for not trying to understand a part of his father's heart.

I share the same misery as Kongpob, but I think twice as much.

Both of my parents died on the same day. On Alex's birthday. This is why Alex hates to celebrate his birthday because he says it's not a happy day for him at all. So he goes to great lengths to avoid it and ever since my parents' death, no one has ever given him a birthday present. And Alex was content with it. What had happened was, my father was on a business trip in America that year and my mother was with him for company. They weren't going to make it back in time for his birthday, but Alex had insisted they do. So, they booked a last minute flight from USA to Thailand. Even though the weather was extremely stormy and deemed dangerous that day, my parents decided the plane would weather the storm and everything would be fine.

They turned out to be wrong – deathly wrong. The plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean when the thundering sky rocketed that night. It was a one in a million chance, but lightning had shot straight at the nose of the plane. Within seconds, it took a straight dive right into the dark blue ocean. 

No one survived.

Their bodies were never found and their alters are empty except for their pictures outlined with incense sticks. When Alex found out, he cried so much. Because he was older than I was at the time – he understood it better and faster than I did. I couldn't quite realize that my parents were truly dead, so I kept asking him, "What does that mean, Alex? When are they coming back? Why can't they just pick the plane out of the ocean and bring them back?"