Anchorage Daily News

One afternoon in February, Andrew Sekasin, 11, kicked through the snow in a parking lot outside the Lao Buddhist temple in Mountain View.

A "novice" in religious training with monks, Andrew wore marigold robes, an adult-sized orange parka and a pair of large white tennis shoes. A boy his age breezed by him on a BMX.

"We can't really play too much," Andrew said, scrambling up the tallest berm. "We're not supposed to have fun that much because we are suffering."

It had been three months since Andrew, a sixth grader, played freely after school, wore regular clothes or felt his mother's embrace. At his parents' urging, he'd come to live and study at the temple in November, shortly after his only brother, Sakhone "Loy" Sekasin, 18, was killed at a Midtown birthday party.

In the Lao community, men commonly don robes after the death of a loved one, taking on the rituals of a monk for several days. In summer, Wat Lao, the temple, hosts elementary-school boys for several months of religious education. Andrew is the first to return to the temple as a novice after the summer, perhaps to remain indefinitely.

Being a novice means he must give up family ties, calling his parents "may-oh" and "po-oh," lay woman and lay man. The monks care for him -- feeding him breakfast, driving him to school and seeing him to sleep under a thin blanket on the floor at the foot of the altar. He must not eat after noon. He cannot touch women, including his mother, grandmother and seven sisters. He must wear his robes to school.

Everyone involved says living at the temple is Andrew's decision, but he is only 12. In truth, many things keep him there. Before, he was the youngest boy in a crowded house ruled by sisters. At the temple, he is like an only child. The monks tell him his devotion pays his lost brother's spiritual debts, improving his fate in the next life. His mother and father, who have been sleepless and teary since the death of their oldest son, find comfort seeing him in robes. They tell him he must grow into a leader among his siblings to take his brother's place as the oldest son.

Most of all, Andrew believes his prayers, spoken before dawn, act as an insurance policy, keeping death and misfortune at bay.

"I just come here for good luck for the next time I go out," he said.

But, Andrew has what the monks call a "changing brain," constantly torn between the expectations of his elders and the life of an American boy.

Some days, like Saturdays, when the temple smells of beeswax candles and green papaya salad, he wants to live there forever. The monks grin and rub his head. Friends visit. There is bubble gum and sweet rice steamed in banana leaves.

Other days, like the day in February when he stood in the snow and watched the neighborhood children play, he feels weighed down with responsibility, lonely and bored. On that day, he let himself fall backward into the snow and lay there, squinting into the clouds. Children in snowsuits shrieked in a neighboring yard.

"I had a lot of friends and people used to come and knock and ask if I was home," he said. "Today they have to come see me, because I can't go nowhere."

In two weeks, he decided, on his 12th birthday, he would leave the temple for home, and go back to playing kick-the-can in the street.

THE SEKASIN FAMILY

Home for Andrew is a blue and yellow trailer in the Malaspina Trailer Court off DeBarr Road where there's always the sound of his younger sisters, nieces and nephews crying, giggling and padding across the laminate floor in front of the big-screen TV.

His parents, Seng and One Sekasin, met in Idaho in 1984, having both come from refugee camps in Thailand.

From Idaho, the family moved to California, then Washington, following the promise of better jobs. They came to Alaska in 2000, lured by higher wages in the fishing industry and the Permanent Fund dividend. Though they speak some English, they rely on their children to translate.

Seng Sekasin cleans office buildings at night, and sleeps in the mornings. Her husband, One, lays cable on the North Slope. He's sometimes gone for six weeks at a time.

Andrew has eight siblings, including Loy. Usually a sister watches over things. Maybe it's Phonteip, 22, the oldest who juggles three jobs and two children, or Vone, 21, with her three children, or Judy, 16, staying home from high school.

On a recent afternoon, Seng rested on a pallet on the living room floor. From the time he was small, Andrew was a handful, she said. He didn't listen and couldn't sit still. He got in fights at school and didn't finish homework. Teachers called but spoke English. She couldn't remember the details. She hadn't visited Andrew's school in a year.

Since he's lived at the temple, there are no more calls about fighting, she said. She hoped he would stay there.

"It's his own decision. He wanted to do it for his brother," his mother said, with Phonteip translating. "It changes people to become a monk."

A LOST BROTHER

In the narrow streets of the trailer court, where tired chain-link fences sag in the snow, Loy, Andrew's tough and charming older brother, went by the nickname "Lil' Locc."

"He been in trouble ever since he was small, do this and that, hanging out with the wrong friends," said his aunt May Voravong.

In 2002, when he was 14, Loy was arrested for weapons misconduct and vehicle theft, according to the Department of Juvenile Justice. A year later, he violated his probation with another vehicle theft and went to McLaughlin Youth Center until January 2006.

The night Loy died, many Lao people had gathered at a 21st birthday party in the Arctic Fox Townhomes, a tidy new development off Arctic Boulevard. Loy left for the party before midnight. Seng told him to come home soon. Using English, she repeated the last words he said to her: "Okay I be there mom."

A half an hour later, Seng's sister called from the party. Loy was arguing over a girl, she said. Seng tried his cell phone. It was off.

After that, details are scarce and conflicting. A fight broke out. A man named Jin Lee, 29, was shot. Loy was stabbed to death.

APART

Several days passed before Andrew understood that his brother was dead. Phonteip gave him the news.

"I go, 'You're the only boy we have left.' But he doesn't know the meaning," she said. "When we went to the funeral, he saw my brother in the casket. He broke down and cried."

Seng keeps pictures of Loy on Andrew's iPod. Sitting in the living room, her face wet, she clicked through them. The lacerations on his chest, neck and forearms seem unreal. In a few shots, Seng has placed a rib of celery in her son's mouth to bring him sustenance in his next life.

The police investigation has stalled because few witnesses have come forward. Rumors swirl through the Lao community. Some people from the party have moved out of state. It would help if the police had a detective who spoke Lao, Vone said.

After the murder, "My mom and dad brought up the question," Andrew said. "To see if I wanted to become a Buddha for my brother and I did."

When he appeared next in the doorway of his classroom, he wore orange robes. The monk who accompanied him explained that he must eat before noon, and no woman could touch him. At first some other kids teased him, but as weeks passed, his friends stopped asking questions. Inside, he still felt set apart.

"Ever since I wear this, it's mostly about, I just can't explain it, I can't barely talk to my friends," he said. "Some of them I just can't get near."

HEAVEN

A few days before Andrew's birthday, just after 6 a.m. the only light along Richmond Avenue comes from the windows of the Wat Lao temple. Inside, incandescent light bathes the golden Buddha with its glittering sash.

On the altar, five monks sit in their places. Andrew positions himself below them, his white socks peeking from under his robes. The monks chant in a dreamy rhythm and then sit, silent, in meditation. A refrigerator hums. A clock ticks.

Andrew likes this time of day, when he can make his mind still and cold like water. He sometimes imagines his brother in the room, just outside his vision.

As a novice, Andrew learns to detach, to control his feelings, explained Sidthisak Kaybounthome, the temple's vice abbot. He learns that no one can escape death and no one can predict it. He channels grief into good behavior.

"Now that he's a novice, he'll use that not to be like his brother," Kaybounthome said, through a translator. "For him to come in here will help him not to have so much pain."

BIRTHDAY

By mid-morning of Andrew's 12th birthday, women filled the mats on the temple floor, kneeling in their sashes with grass baskets of sticky rice to offer the Buddha.

Eric Sritiraj, 10, Andrew's best friend, sat with him at a small table near the monks. Chatter filled the room. In the kitchen, women unwrapped great bowls of food. The monks passed a microphone, murmuring prayers.

Eric and Andrew were novices together at the temple last summer. Eric is the only friend who visits regularly. Sometimes the boys play computer games, squashed together in the vice abbot's office chair. More often, they imagine they are on a remote island, invisible to the world across the parking lot, where families live in new, suburban-style houses and children play chase in the street. That game never really ends, Eric said.

Older men delivered bowls of salad, sheet cake and boiled fish to the little table. Andrew had decided: He would stay on at the temple.

"If you suffer, you should suffer in a good way not a bad way," he said. "Do it for something or someone that you love."

Maybe he'd leave after the summer, he said, letting he eyes pass over the faces of his mother and grandmother in the crowd, before settling into his special place at the edge of the altar.

Daily News reporter Julia O'Malley can be reached at jo'malley@adn.com or 257-4325.

AT A GLANCE

Anchorage's small Lao community numbers several thousand, primarily refugees from the post Vietnam War era and their children. The children of Hmong and Lao refugees are among the fastest growing and most disadvantaged minority groups in the Anchorage School District.

In the 2000 census, the median household income in the Lao community was $25,000 less than the median household income of the population at large. Ninety percent of people spoke a language other than English at home. Only 1 in 4 adults had a high school education and only 26 out of 548 had a bachelor's degree.