The Bigness of the World

by Lori Ostlund

  “Yes?” Sarah said sharply, turning toward the door. There was no answer, but they heard a dog growl, and she called out again. “Yes? Are you open?”

  Finally, a child’s voice—they could not tell whether it was a boy or a girl—announced: “My mother went to the store. Please wait.” Then, the door slammed shut, and they heard several locks fall into place.

  Neither woman had an immediate reaction—to go or to stay—and so they stayed, but Sarah, who was the more impatient one, soon stood, walked to the window, and studied her watch. When she returned to the table, she said quietly, “We’ve been here nearly half an hour now,” and Sara understood that this was her way of suggesting that they leave. It occurred to them, however, that the room had become cooler, that, in fact, they were both shivering slightly, which meant that someone, presumably the child, had turned on the air conditioner. It was settled yet again: they could not leave. Instead, they spent the next fifteen minutes looking forward to the rest of their trip, to the moment when they would leave Belize City behind, and eventually they heard the locks being undone and the door to the house opening again.

  A small woman carrying a tray approached the table, and as she got closer, they saw that she was Chinese. “High tea?” she asked softly, and because they could see that she had already prepared something, they did not have the heart to say that they just wanted sodas.

  “Yes,” they both said and then nodded overly vigorously. The woman set a small plate in front of each of them, placed a pot of tea in the middle of the table, and set about arranging cups and saucers, cloth napkins, and various pieces of cutlery. When she was done, she gestured gracefully toward the table, an invitation to begin eating, and hurried away. Each plate contained a slice of white bread spread thickly with rancid butter and topped with chocolate sprinkles. To the side were cucumber slices, spilled out like coins.

  They ate everything, of course, because they couldn’t bear the thought of the woman staring sadly at their scraps, and Sara, who always carried the money, wedged a dollar bill under her saucer after settling the bill. They both nodded politely at the woman, who was hovering near the dartboard, and left, their eyelids fluttering rapidly against the sudden brightness outside. They had thought they would find a taxi, but there were none, and so they walked quickly back in the direction of the hotel, their fanny packs slung low across their buttocks like shields.

  They returned to the hotel to find that their bags had indeed been taken up to their room as promised, though they realized, as the proprietor led them up a rickety, winding set of stairs and down a narrow hallway, that the hotel was, in fact, nothing more than three rooms wedged between the first-floor bar and the third floor, where the proprietor and his family lived. They stopped in front of a particleboard door, and the proprietor handed them a key attached to a plastic coffee mug. “Your room, ladies,” he mumbled and hurried off without showing them the interior.

  There were no windows in the room or fans; the only suggestion of circulation came from an open transom above the door, which did nothing to alleviate the heat or the smell of raw sewage that hung in the air, an odor that wafted up from the toilet in the middle of the room. They tried flushing it again and again, but the toilet had no lid that could be closed to block the smell, which rose up from the pipes and filled the room. The final insult, for that’s how it seemed to the women at this point, was that the toilet stood shamelessly out in the open, within touching distance of the bed and without even a curtain that could be drawn around it when it was in use; in fact, it was almost as though the person who had designed the room was trying to showcase the toilet, for it sat atop a platform, which one had to ascend like royalty. Still, and this was always a consolation, the room had been quite cheap.

  Sara and Sarah knew how to pass time, an expression that they used often and without self-consciousness, considering it an important skill whether one liked to travel or not. At home, where portability was not a concern, Sarah was teaching herself the art of papermaking, and both women enjoyed gardening; also, while they understood that recycling was technically not a hobby, they liked to devote time to that as well. When they traveled, the two passed time by reading, though they also carried a deck of cards with which to play cribbage. Thus, they spent the early evening hours in Belize City in their hotel room playing round after round of cribbage, keeping score on a pad of paper because they both agreed that a cribbage board was unnecessary. Then, turning their books alternately toward the light from the transom and the weak glow offered by the bedside lamp, they read, Sara from a Belizean novel entitled Beka Lamb and Sarah from the guidebook. At one point, the Japanese couple knocked furtively at their door and asked whether they could possibly change some American currency into Belizean dollars. They didn’t have enough for a bus, the young man explained, and they couldn’t bear the thought of waiting around in the morning until the banks opened. As he said this, the young woman began to sob, and so they had given the couple half of their money, changing it at the bank rate even though they had just purchased it at the higher airport rate that afternoon. After the couple left, bowing slightly and thanking them repeatedly, they returned to their books.

  At ten o’clock, they turned off the lamp, though there was nothing they could do about the light coming through the transom or the throbbing music from the bar downstairs. Sarah engaged in a relaxation method which involved focusing on each part of her body and encouraging it to ignore the noise while Sara simply covered her head with the pillow. Eventually, they fell asleep. At some point during the night, however, the music stopped abruptly, and they both awakened to a soft lapping sound inside their room, though neither could be sure afterwards which had woken them—the sudden cessation of one sound or the quiet proximity of another. They turned the light on quickly, without even speaking, to discover a mangy, sore-infested street cat crouched on the toilet seat drinking from the bowl. It fixed them with a slow, dazed look, and then it leapt from the toilet seat, clawed its way frantically up the wooden door of their room, and hoisted itself out through the open transom.

  So, of course, after Belize City, they slept inordinately well that first night in the bungalow. The second night, however, as they lay in bed reading, they heard a group of people, Americans also, coming down the path that led to their bungalow. The group paused for a moment, looking for a key, and the women realized that these people were going to be inhabiting the other half of the bungalow, sleeping on the other side of the flimsy dividing wall. It became difficult to read then, for the newcomers—a family they suspected—were celebrating, their voices loud and merry with everyone talking at once, interrupting one other without giving offense and laughing in unison like people who had shared years of finding the same things funny. There were the sounds of bottles being opened, and periodically someone said, “I’m ready for another, Shel,” an announcement that was followed by the clink of glass hitting glass as another drink was poured. They were discussing something that they all seemed to find extremely amusing, something that had happened on the Cayes just a day or two earlier, so the incident was still fresh in their minds. In the middle of the story came the very loud, unmistakable sound of someone passing gas, and two or three voices said at once, with practiced indignation, “Dad!” which confirmed what they had initially suspected, that it was a family on the other side. Neither woman could understand this, a family still taking vacations together as adults, actually finding it restful to be in one another’s company.

  The sounds of drinking continued as the story from the Cayes was related again and again so that eventually they were able to piece together the gist of it, which involved this man—Dad—and his inability to climb back into the boat after a morning of snorkeling along the coral reef off of the Cayes. The boat had been ladderless, and he had been unable to summon the strength to pull himself up and over the side, so finally the captain and several of their fellow snorkelers had lowered themselves back into the water and hoisted him over the rail and o
nto the deck. Each time they retold the story, Dad chuckled along good naturedly, as though it did not bother him to be the butt of the new family joke.

  The night went on like this, moving farther and farther back in time to include past family vacations, stories accompanied by more drinking and gas passing and groaning. The women stopped trying to read and instead just lay there in their twin beds listening, and when they occasionally communicated, they did so in whispers because it would have seemed odd to make their presence known then, so long after the family had arrived. Finally they shut off their light, but the flimsy wall stopped short of the thatched roof, so the light from the family’s room shined into theirs. Both women found this strangely comforting.

  Still, they did not sleep, and Sarah, who was in the bed on the right, was reminded suddenly of a moment from her childhood. During her last week of sixth grade, she had come down with the measles, and her parents had confined her to her bedroom for nearly two weeks, where she had lain with the door shut and the lights off in order to protect her eyes from permanent damage. At one point—she did not know how many days it was into her quarantine—she had woken from a deep afternoon sleep to find that her siblings were home from school. She could hear them at the kitchen table discussing their days, and she had mentally taken roll, listening for each sibling’s voice to offer up some anecdote or casual insight regarding a teacher, only to realize that they were all present save for her and her father, who was at work. The light from the kitchen had crept in under her door, and it had soothed her at first because she had spent so much time in the dark. But then she had started to think about how rare it was—her family gathering together like this—and she could not help but conclude that it was her absence, her guaranteed absence, that made it possible. She had lain there for quite a while, listening to them laugh, until at some point she had slept again. She had slowly become well, the spots had disappeared, but she was never quite able to shake that feeling that they were happier, more complete, without her. Later, before she became an adult, when she was still a sporadically pensive teenager, she had arrived at a theory that somehow made her feel better, useful even. She had decided that each family has a member whose absence rounds out the family far more than his or her presence ever could. The theory had continued to be a source of pride for her over the years, though, oddly, she had forgotten, until now, the incident that had sparked its formation.

  She rolled toward Sara in the dark and whispered, “Sara?” and when Sara turned toward her, she said, “Remember my theory?”

  “What theory?” Sara asked, but Sarah didn’t answer.

  The family talked far into the night until finally someone said, “My God, it’s nearly three,” and within moments they had cleared the glasses, and a chorus of voices called out, “Good night, Dad. Sleep well.” A male voice, one which had been heard infrequently during the night, said, somewhat awkwardly, “Remember, Dad, we’re just one bungalow over … if you need anything.” Then, the door opened and closed.

  “Which way?” asked Shel, the evening’s bartender, from outside their window. “I can’t see a thing.”

  Another woman said, “Well, he seems fine,” but she lowered her voice to do so. Nobody responded, and finally one of the men said, “Let’s get some sleep.” And then they were gone.

  In the other half of the bungalow, there was silence at first, and then they heard the man go into the bathroom. The water ran for a minute or two, followed by the sound of urine streaming ferociously into the toilet bowl. He flushed, left the bathroom, undressed, and fell heavily into bed. When he shut off his lamp, at last, the darkness seemed abrupt to them, final. The three of them lay in the dark bungalow like that for a while, the two women feeling oddly like intruders. Then a low wailing rose up, and the women briefly imagined that an animal had become trapped in the thatch of the roof. After a few seconds, the wailing evened out into a deep, bitter sobbing, and then, of course, they realized that it was not a trapped animal at all, that it was the man, Dad, and they both turned instinctively in their separate beds onto their sides and away from each other.

  The next morning they ate rice for breakfast at a Chinese restaurant that was not yet open for the day. When they went in and asked the old woman washing glasses behind the bar whether there was rice to be had, she nodded for them to sit down. Then, she continued washing glasses for several more minutes while they sat at a table discussing whether she had misunderstood their request. Just when they were about to leave, the door opened and a young mestiza came in quietly, though she had about her the look of someone who had previously been hurrying. She nodded to the old Chinese woman, and the old Chinese woman nodded back at her and then toward them, placed the glass that she had been drying carefully back on a shelf beneath the bar, and walked, with a slight limp, toward the kitchen.

  The young mestiza turned toward them and said in Spanish, without first stopping to inquire whether they spoke Spanish, “I am always late.” She said it with an air of resignation, as though it were some unalterable quality like thinning hair that she was commenting on. “And la chinita, she rises earlier and earlier each morning.” She sighed sadly and then, switching to wobbly English, asked what they wished to drink. They paused for a moment, for they had not given thought to anything more than food.

  “Beer?” she suggested, and they both looked shocked.

  “But it is far too early for beer,” said Sarah in Spanish.

  The woman seemed puzzled. “For tourists, it is not too early I think.”

  They were annoyed to be called tourists but did not say so. Instead, they both ordered coffees, black and without sugar, though when the young woman returned with the coffees, both contained sugar. They said nothing, sipping from their cups as she hovered nearby. Finally, Sara asked her in Spanish for chopsticks, and she again appeared puzzled but went off behind the bar and returned with toothpicks, which were also called palillos. She set the toothpicks down in the middle of their table and then stood back to watch what they would do with them. They could have laughed and explained the misunderstanding, pretending to eat with chopsticks to demonstrate what they had really wanted, but neither of them had the energy for it, so instead they reached for the toothpicks and sat with them in their mouths until the rice arrived.

  The old woman had prepared fried rice for them with plenty of tidbits, which they suspected were scraps left from the night before, chicken and beef that had been ordered and picked at by other diners, and though in theory they were impressed by this degree of resourcefulness, in fact they found their stomachs turning. Both women took up the forks that they had been given and worked through the rice carefully, as though they had lost something of great importance amid the grains. In this way, everything that was not rice was removed and added to a pile on the side of each woman’s plate, perhaps, they hoped, to be recycled one more time.

  As they finished eating, the door opened again, and a dapper black man in a pressed linen suit came in and proceeded at a trot to a table not far from them. Before he sat, he removed his Panama hat and tipped it in their direction, and they could see then that he was much older than his quick step had suggested. “Top of the morning, ladies,” he said, setting the hat on a chair and seating himself beside it. The old woman hobbled out from the kitchen and over to his table, and he repeated the greeting to her, using her name, which was Mrs. Chu. Mrs. Chu returned the greeting, speaking with a strong Chinese accent.

  “How’s the honey?” he asked, and she nodded vigorously.

  “Ah yes, honey still have. Thank you,” she told him. Then, uncharacteristically they thought (though they had only just met her), Mrs. Chu giggled and a blush of sorts spread across her cheeks.

  The dapper man leaned back in his chair so that he could see both Sara and Sarah before he spoke. “Perhaps you ladies would be interested to know that I am a beekeeper,” he said.

  They both nodded politely. “Beekeeping. Now that must be a fascinating profession,” observed Sara.<
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  He nodded solemnly. “Yes. Indeed it is. You may not be at all surprised to learn that my father before me also kept bees. In fact, everything I know, I learned from that man. Say,” he said after a moment, “how many times do you suppose I’ve been stung over the years? Go ahead—wager a guess.”

  After a moment, Sarah suggested a hundred and five times and Sara agreed that that sounded like a reasonable number. The old man chuckled and brought his hands together in front of his face, forming a large circle through which he peered at them. “Ladies, would you believe it,” he said dramatically. “The answer is zero. Those bees just don’t fancy me. But I’ll tell you this, and nobody would deny it. I raise the best honey around.” He paused thoughtfully before reconfirming Sara’s earlier observation: “Yes,” he said, “a fascinating profession.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence then, though uncomfortable only for the two women, who felt that the conversation ball had been bounced back to them and that they were simply sitting with it. Finally, to fill the silence, Sarah said, to nobody in particular, “The bee.” She stretched the word out thoughtfully, as though she planned to offer insight, but the old Chinese woman misunderstood her, thinking that she was requesting the bill. In turn, she called out sharply to the mestiza, who rushed in with a large, colorful bird perched on one shoulder and presented them with a slip of paper bearing the price of their breakfast, two Belizean dollars and fifty cents.

  “Excuse me, but do you know how far it is to the Mennonites?” Sarah asked politely in Spanish as she handed her the money for the bill.

  “The Mennonites,” the mestiza answered in English. “They are very far. Maybe you go thirty kilometers, maybe you go more. The Mennonites are far from us.”

  “The Mennonites?” the dapper black man said, breaking in on their conversation. “The Mennonites are not far. I would say precisely twelve kilometers, give or take a few. Which route do you plan to take?”