Because We Are Bad

by Lily Bailey

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  · 17 ·

  Thailand

  I turn eighteen. School ends, and I defer my place at Trinity College, Dublin, for a year so that I can go traveling. To pay for it, I have worked in a nursery for a term, cleaning mouths, wiping hands, and finger painting. I have spent a lot of time taking pictures of children, because we have to photograph them for their progress files so that inspectors from the fascist Ofsted children’s services can check them any time:

  This is Timmy washing his hands by himself for the first time!

  Below—Timmy engages in group play with his friends Ben and Jack. They are pretending to be bankers!

  Above—Timmy puts his thumb in clay to make a Divali candle. We are learning about other cultures!

  Last week, I put the nursery’s digital camera in the pocket of my smock so I could help kids wash paint off their hands without getting it wet. I accidentally forgot about the camera, and only remembered it when I got home and took my smock off. For child protection reasons, removing a camera from the nursery is an absolute no-no. Yet there I was, standing in my kitchen with the incriminating object.

  I didn’t sleep that night. At about 5:30 a.m. I threw up, in anticipation of the impending legal action by the nursery.

  I considered throwing the camera in a Dumpster and catching a taxi to the airport, but running always looks suspicious, so I turned up to work as normal, and everything was as it should be. The other teachers and assistants were milling around, setting up easels for the day and covering tables in newspaper. I carefully put the camera back in its drawer. By midday, when no one had said anything and everyone was still acting normal, I dared to believe that they hadn’t noticed.

  “Did the camera situation become a major problem in real life or just in your head?” Dr. Finch would say if she were here. “Do you think perhaps you should consider upping your meds again?”

  No, I do not.

  I have been coming off them sensibly and gradually for the last few months. I am one dose away from being off them for good. Yes, my lists are getting worse, but maybe traveling will solve everything; maybe I can fight this on my own. Mum and Dad traveled, when they were my age. They both talk about it like those were the best days of their lives.

  “I know it hasn’t been easy for you lately,” Dad said, when I told him where I planned to go. “But I think it will do you the world of good—to get out there and do something like this.”

  I am volunteering at an orphanage in Thailand. I will take two weeks of pills with me. When I have finished them, my withdrawal from medication will be complete.

  Ella is thirteen now, and she’s just finished her first term at boarding school. She categorically refused to go to Hambledon. “Uh,” she said. “I don’t want all the teachers there comparing me to ‘perfect Lily.’ Plus, I want to go somewhere with boys!”

  The change in her was rapid. She went away with puppy fat and frizzy hair—she came home for the holidays taller, slimmer, with glossed lips and an iPod full of indie music.

  I’m focusing on packing my bag while she flits around my room, but then she starts to say something that demands my full and complete attention:

  “Lils,” she starts. “I keep doing this really weird thing.”

  “What?” I ask her. “What do you do?”

  “I . . . I . . .” She stops, sighs. “No, I can’t say. It’s going to sound too weird.”

  “Tell me.” I beg myself to keep my voice level. “Whatever it is, I promise I won’t say you’re weird.”

  “Okay.” She delivers her confession over my head, to the ceiling. “I feel like I have to hold my breath for a certain amount of time, otherwise Mum will die. It started off as ten seconds, but it keeps getting longer, and now I’m doing it all the time. It’s horrible. I do it until my lungs hurt and my chest feels like it’s going to burst.”

  Oh, no! It’s bad enough that I live the way I do, but the idea of poor little Ella being stalked by horrible thoughts is almost too much for me to bear. I must be calm. I must not make her worried. What would Dr. Finch say? Think, think.

  “That’s a magical thought,” I say slowly. “It’s where you mistakenly believe that something you do can cause or change an unrelated event. They’re quite common.”

  “So I’m not just really odd?!”

  “No, you’re not odd at all. The thing to do is not respond—treat it as random background brain noise. You don’t really have any control at all over Mum’s life. But the more you obey the magical thought and hold your breath, the more the thought will come back and make you miserable. I know it seems hard, but next time you have the thought, don’t hold your breath. Ignoring it the first time will make you really stressed. After a while, though, the worry you feel about ignoring it will go down, and if you don’t engage with it, the thought will stop coming. Do you think you could do that?”

  “Okay,” says Ella, nodding. “I’ll try. How do you know so much about this?”

  I could tell her, couldn’t I? I know I could trust her. Then I see her face, more teenage by the day, sure, but still so young.

  So damageable.

  “It’s just something I find interesting,” I say.

  “I’ll miss you when you’re gone,” she says.

  “I’ll miss you more.”

  Pim, one of the carers at the orphanage, collects me from Phuket Airport in a pickup truck. Pim is gigantic and round, with kind eyes and a flat, sweaty nose. He wears a hot pink T-shirt that looks like it could double up as a tent. We leave the center of Phuket and speed along a dirt road, Pim singing all the way—because apparently he will soon be a famous Thai rock star.

  When we arrive, we are in a sandy courtyard with huts coming off it. Pim deposits my bag in my hut and flicks a lizard off the wrought-iron bed and out of the door. I see a ginger paw coming out from underneath the bed. I peek down to have a look, and a three-legged cat peeks back. “Please refresh and take a look around,” Pim tells me.

  The children are not back from school yet, and won’t be for a few hours. The other huts are the same size but have no beds, just lots of dirty mattresses strewn across the floor. Have they given me their only bed? Am I the only one with my own room? ONLY BED AND OWN ROOM is added to my list.

  I’m supposed to be resisting making lists so that traveling can heal me, but I want to have a clear head when the children arrive. So I decide to go through what’s happened so far and disregard the whole no-lists thing. Just one more routine: this is the last one, truly.

  I hear a car pull in, and the courtyard echoes with voices. Children rush into my hut. The three-legged cat jumps out from under the bed and out of the window.

  “Pee Antan!” they are squealing. “Pee Antan!”

  I vaguely remember Pim saying something about me getting a new name that means “Sister Flower.”

  They gather round me, pulling at my clothes, my arms, anything they can get hold of. One of them has jumped on the bed so she can be taller than me and is braiding my hair.

  They are all talking to me so fast I can’t make out individual sounds. I’d learned some key phrases from a Learn to Speak Thai book, but they disappear just as I need them.

  So instead I parrot the noises they make. They find this so hilarious that they don’t mind me not understanding them. They line up, pointing to themselves and trying to say their names louder than everyone else: Mook, Um, Cindy, Sea, Ka, Fah, Pupe, Ocean, Sun, Ali, Bim, Boom . . .

  Dinner is served from an open-air counter by a friendly but tired-looking woman called Kamon. Flies land on the rice and curry, rubbing their front legs together.

  I looked around the kitchen earlier. The surfaces were clean to the eye, but I’ve yet to see any cleaning products. Kamon probably washed her hands before cooking, but the soap is one of those suspicious white bars with brown in the cracks.

  I take the portion ladl
ed onto my metal tray and sit down in the courtyard with identical twins Bim and Boom. Pushing my food round, I decide that I can fall short-term sick. I’ll have to cope with all the normal implications like vomiting and worrying I’ve been disgusting, but that’s manageable. The problem is more if I get long-term sick:

  Humans catch tapeworms by swallowing food or water containing traces of contaminated feces.

  “You no like?” says eleven-year-old Pupe, who speaks the best English of the group and has already asked me to teach her new words. “Eat up!”

  I juggle whether I am going to feel worse if I cause cultural offense by saying I don’t want to, or if I go along with it and worry later that I’ve caught an awful tropical disease.

  I manage a few mouthfuls. Pupe smiles.

  When Pupe, Bim, and Boom are finished, they pick up their trays and take them around to the back of the kitchen, where there’s a large bowl of water that was probably once warm and soapy but is now lukewarm and brown from food. Rice, tomato, and chicken float in it. The curry sauce clumps at the surface, leaving an oily slick.

  They dunk their cutlery and bowls, lift them out, shake them, and place them on the side. That’s it. Washing done. They indicate that I should do the same.

  She cackles: Are you going to get sick? Or are you just a horrified little Western girl? What’s worse?

  Oh! Her voice catches me unawares; it makes me think I might drop my tray. I grip the tray so hard my thumbnails turn a strong pinky color from the blood pumping beneath them.

  It’s been months since I heard from her.

  Funny, the weeks I spent longing to hear that voice, and now that I have, I am filled with fear.

  Go away, I say.

  Nothing.

  I shiver in the hundred-degree heat.

  After dinner, I’m playing football with about twenty boys and girls when Pim pulls me to one side.

  “It’s nine. Shower time. Older ones do themselves. You wash younger children. Don’t forget wash privates.” Pim laughs, groping his crotch to indicate the area of interest and making a lathering action. “‘Shower’ in Thai is abnam.” Then he wanders off.

  I stand on the sidelines, panic mounting. How would you define young? What if I end up washing one of them who is actually capable of washing themselves? Then it will look like I was just washing them unnecessarily for my own pleasure. Am I really supposed to scrub their privates—isn’t the clue in the name?

  “Abnam!” I call, hoping they don’t notice that my voice is shaking. The older-looking children run off to their huts, so I’ll assume they are the “capable washers.”

  The remaining children form a queue outside the shower room. They look at me expectantly.

  The first one in the line, Cindy, flings off her T-shirt and trousers, skips into the shower room, takes a yellow sponge from the side, and dips it in a large bucket of water before handing it to me. She looks up at me expectantly.

  I say to myself:

  In the end it is all done.

  In the end it is all done.

  In the end it is all done.

  I am sitting cross-legged on my bed, worrying I have hepatitis because I just scratched a mosquito bite and it’s started to bleed.

  Six-year-old Sea, the youngest in the orphanage, bursts into my room. She is in her pajamas and clutching a blanket.

  “Tonight sleep here,” she says, pointing to my bed.

  I laugh nervously. Michael Jackson crashes into my thoughts; I cannot have children sleeping in my bed.

  I can hear Pim talking to Fah in the courtyard.

  “Pim!” I call. “Pim!”

  He pokes his head round my door.

  “Pee Antan?”

  “Yeah, Pim, could you tell Sea that she isn’t allowed to sleep in my bed?”

  “Why she no allowed sleep your bed?”

  “Well, don’t you think that would be a bit, er, unprofessional?”

  “Why you say this word ‘unprofessional’?”

  “Could you just tell her she’s not allowed?”

  “Why she no allowed?”

  Oh Jesus.

  “I just, um . . . In England . . . um . . .”

  Pim looks at me expectantly. Is he really that innocent?

  “I no see problem.” He shrugs and wanders off.

  And that’s how I end up trying to go to sleep with a six-year-old curled up round me, playing with my hair and whispering “Pee Antan?” in my ear every two seconds. I am trying to stay calm, but I worry this is all some sort of sick test.

  What if OCD doesn’t exist? What if after I told Dr. Finch that I obsessively fear that people might think I’m a pervert, she actually reported me to the police? Imagine if all this—the showers, kids holding my hands, Sea getting into my bed—is a test and I am being filmed and the evidence will be used in court when I get home.

  But how could it be a setup, when I decided to come here of my own accord?

  Unless I was brainwashed?

  I lie awake for hours, and before I know it, Sea is tickling my feet, calling for “brek brek.”

  When the children go to school, the orphanage takes on a bizarre still quality. I stay behind and wash the school uniforms in one of those open-topped 1920s bucket washing machines.

  Ali, who was dumped at the orphanage last week by someone who sped off into the distance on a motorbike, helps me. Ali has never been to school. The local school won’t take him until he meets certain standards. My job for the next few weeks while the kids are at school is to start teaching him. At the moment, he’s twelve but can’t even count to ten.

  I’m checking the clothes carefully before I hang them on the washing line in the courtyard. I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for, but I have a feeling I may have let some of the sterile needles from my first-aid kit fall into the washing machine.

  Dr. Finch has explained “cognitive dissonance”: where a person holds two contrary beliefs, such as “I know I have not taken out my needles” and “My needles might be in with the clothes.”

  Giving it a nice little label doesn’t make it any less terrifying. I run my hands carefully over a tiny faded orange T-shirt, and Ali tips his head at me. He is probably wondering what the hell I am doing. I don’t want to freak him out, so I try hard to stop feeling everyone’s clothes.

  When we’re done, we make our way to the little table in the middle of the courtyard, and I lay out counters, dice, and some numbered cards. Pim wanders over and tells me I may “be harsh, but not brutal.” When Ali refuses to sit down, Pim spins him upside down, pinches him on the bottom, and shoves his head into his armpit while counting to ten in Thai. I can’t imagine that Pim’s armpit is a particularly nice place to be. I assume what Pim is trying to tell me is that I can basically discipline him however I like as long as he doesn’t die.

  Personally, I stick to my three-word Thai encouragement “Yo yaan pe,” which means “Don’t give up.” It is quite effective until distraction kicks in, and he starts trying to eat the counters. Then he puts my stationery down his pants, and all I can think is that I am going to have DNA from Ali’s genitals over my pencils. If that doesn’t get me arrested, I don’t know what will.

  The children return from school, and we start weeding a plot of land that is going to become a vegetable patch. The orphanage wants to grow some of its own food and be more financially independent. Alas, these are no garden weeds; these weeds rise above your waist and have roots attached to clumps of wet mud the size of human heads. Huge spiders and fat slugs tumble down and land on your feet.

  We do this for two hours. I’m in a bikini; the children have stripped down to their underwear. The mud has dried all over our bodies so we all look the same color.

  Not that I am looking at their bodies. I am not looking at their bodies.

  Afterward I join the children in the river that runs by the orphanage, washing and cooling down.

  A mosquito bite on my leg has turned black and septic. If I push it gentl
y with a finger, a green liquid oozes out. A redness is traveling up my leg, and I have hours to live. I should never have gone in the river.

  “If you ever have a cut that looks infected, and you start seeing red lines going in the direction of your heart,” said Mrs. Nelson in biology, “you need to get medical assistance immediately. You probably have serious blood poisoning, which can be FATAL.”

  I show Pim, who nods solemnly and confirms my worst fears: “Must go doctor.”

  Pim disappears, and a few minutes later I hear an engine revving and horn beeping from the road. Pim is sitting on a motorbike, patting the back of a torn leather seat and indicating I should get on.

  It’s difficult to put into words quite how much I do not want to get on a motorbike with Pim.

  Equally, I do not want to die of septicemia.

  Pim grabs my arms and places them round his belly. His damp shirt clings to my arms. We set off down the dirt track in the direction I came from all those weeks ago. The wind whips my body—I’d forgotten what it is to feel cool. Goose bumps break out on my bare arms. What if Pim thinks I am sexually aroused because I have my arms around him?

  Will he add this to the list of my sexual misdemeanors he will be reporting back to whoever organized this sick game?

  We travel for around thirty minutes before we skid to a halt outside a little house.

  Inside, Pim translates for the doctor, a small man in a stained white coat. Apparently, the whole of the infected bite must be removed, which will involve taking a small chunk of my leg out using a scalpel. It is important we do this soon, as the infection is spreading up my leg. The doctor will inject me with anesthesia so I don’t feel a thing.

  This is the choice before me: die from the bite itself or die from catching a disease in the dirty operation. Do you remember the girl who went to Thailand and contracted HIV from the needle giving her a tattoo?