When we spoke they still told me about their days and repeated that they loved me and missed me. But their enthusiasm for our conversations was gone. I didn’t know how to get it back. Some days I was able to tell myself they’d hardly remember these months without their mother. On my worst days I felt my betrayal like a knife through my heart.
I’d hoped the time and space would lead to long phone conversations with Karl, the kind of connection I’d been craving from our early days. With each call I buzzed with anticipation to hear his voice. I desperately wanted to talk to him for hours, to tell him everything about my days, my writing, how bit by bit I was figuring out how I wanted to live again. But he grew short on the phone and the last time we’d spoken he’d broken down in tears.
“I don’t understand any of this, Kate. I wanted you to have your time, but this is too much.” He choked on the words.
“I’ll be home soon,” I promised, even though I knew it sounded empty.
“I don’t think I can talk to you anymore,” he croaked. “You can talk to the girls. You should talk to the girls. But it’s too painful to talk to you.”
I was shocked. Was he saying and doing this to punish me, or was I just being that cruel to my husband that he had to cut off communication with me? I didn’t know. The impulses to be sympathetic versus infuriated competed within me. I also tried to put myself in Karl’s shoes. Would I understand if he needed this, this space and time? I liked to think so, but the truth is I didn’t know. The fact remained, though, that I’d been gone for so long at this point, I needed something to show for it. I couldn’t go home with my tail between my legs. I needed to prove to myself, to Karl, to the girls that this time away had been worth something. And I didn’t feel like I was done yet.
Other times I’d whisper to myself. Go home now. That’s how you can fix this. It might be the only way you can fix this.
But a strange combination of both inertia and purpose kept me rooted.
The documentary guy from Hollywood pushed his deadline.
“I can’t look at anything for another month,” he’d written in an e-mail. “Don’t bother to send it before then.”
I wanted to use every second of extra time.
For eight hours a day I listened to the refugee stories. We sat on overturned milk crates in a small room off the camp kitchen. Smells of festering shit wafted through the air. The camp’s septic system often failed. I swallowed hard and pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth and forced myself not to gag.
I wrote with a blue Bic pen as I listened, my fingers flying across the page. I’d never been a journalist, or even that interested in nonfiction. It felt different from fiction. These stories already existed. They were waiting for me to tell them.
There was one story in particular that got me: Aung’s. She was a tall, thin woman with deep slash marks on her forearms, neck, and left cheek that had faded to dark pink welts. The left side of her face, shoulder, and arms were wrinkled with scar tissue. In halting English Aung told me her story, her tone filled with a mixture of suffering and something else . . . pride. As she recounted her tale I understood why. It all happened so quickly, she said—the soldiers arrived, suddenly, descending on the village like a swarm of angry bees. They had quickly separated the men from the women, rounding up some forty women in the local temple, including Aung and her daughters. That night, scared out of their minds and unsure of what awaited them in the morning—they hatched a desperate plan. Aung snuck out and set a small fire as a distraction. It was both reckless and brave, but it worked. When the guard ran to put out the fire Aung helped each of the women shimmy through a tiny window at the back of the temple and run into the woods. Over the next two weeks she led this group of women hundreds of miles to safety. She smiled as she said this: “We made it.” None of the women knew what happened to their husbands, brothers, and sons, but they suspected the worst, even as they held out hope.
I reached for her hand, marveling at her bravery and wondering if in the same position I would be able to call for the same courage. I suppose we don’t really know what we’re made of until we’re tested, and here this woman was tested in the most awful of ways.
Over the next few days, I heard so many horrible stories of violence and terror, but what stuck out to me was the hope and resolve. These women were . . . fierce. They were survivors.
I gripped the woman’s hand in mine. There was a moment of heavy silence. I wanted to care for Aung in some small way, to give her comfort, but all I could think to do was offer her food. I asked if she was hungry. Her arms were thin, the bones of her shoulder blades protruded through the back of a yellow smock dress. She nodded, grateful to take a break. I heated up a can of refried beans and served us both in plastic bowls we placed on our laps. The thick lard coated my throat and warmed my insides.
Before she left me, Aung gave me a shy smile. “Telling what happened is all I can do right now. I can tell you my story and I can wait.”
Later that afternoon I looked for Htet and offered to spend time with her girls to give her a much-needed break from mothering, the same gift Marley had given to me. I thought it might help me clear my mind from the horrors of the stories.
That first time Htet dropped her girls off with me a couple weeks earlier she had clutched them and hugged them like she was terrified she’d never see them again. I had planned to tread carefully with her daughters, allowing them to watch cartoons or play by themselves with plastic dolls with too big eyes and porn-star makeup that came over in a recent donation from some toy maker in Dallas. But as soon as their mom was out of the room the girls wanted to braid my hair and play on the computers. Htet returned just as I had pulled the two of them into my lap to read a tattered copy of the Berenstain Bears I’d found on a shelf outside Mia’s office. I expected her to shoo her daughters off my lap and chastise me for being so intimate with them. But the woman who walked into the room after a few hours away from her children had the beginnings of a smile on her face. She was clear-eyed. She’d obviously washed herself and brushed her hair and maybe taken a nap. If she wasn’t on the verge of feeling happy, at least she was content. She fussed over Cho’s new braids and kissed Chit on her pink ear. Since then, spending time with her girls was often the highlight of my week.
But today Htet didn’t want me to take the girls. Instead, she asked if I could help her with something on the computer.
“Of course,” I said, trying not to let my disappointment show.
“Let me leave the girls with a friend. I meet you there.”
It was late in the afternoon and the sky was turning a hazy rose. At one point, I would have taken a picture and posted it to my twenty-three Instagram followers. I know that @AllAboutThatBush would have liked it. Now I paused in the middle of the street to simply enjoy it. I made my way to the building with the computers. It was empty. I sat down and checked my own e-mail before Htet arrived.
For months I’d been careful with my e-mails. I avoided opening anything from the other mothers from school who kept sending nosy messages with subject lines like “JUST CHECKING IN” and “LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANT TO TALK.” I knew that whoever got my side of the story would use it as social capital at drop-off and cocktail parties for months.
So I don’t know why I actually clicked on Lois Delancey’s e-mail. That woman never minced words. Her e-mail was short and sweet.
Look who Karl took to the Public Library benefit . . .
My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t want to open the photograph attached to the e-mail. I could delete it now and pretend it never came. I knew the subtext of Lois’s single line: Karl took a date to the benefit. Karl was moving on.
I couldn’t help myself. I clicked.
Of course it took forever to load with the slow connection. I buried my head in my hands as I waited for the picture to download.
“Hello, Kate.” I heard a quiet voice behind me and twisted my head to see Htet.
I turned away from Lois’s e-m
ail and stood up, glad for the distraction. She took a seat next to me. “I want to know if you can help me with something.”
“Of course, what is it?”
“You have been helping people put messages on the Internet, yes? To find their people?”
As other women here told me their stories I had helped some of them set up e-mail addresses and Facebook accounts to try to contact their lost husbands.
“Maybe I could do that? Try to find my husband?” She asked this shyly, but with a quiet desperation.
As Htet and I had gotten to know one another, I’d learned some of her story in her own words. I never pushed her for details she wasn’t ready to share.
“I have Naing’s brother’s address and his name. I have never met him. He is a half brother. He was not at our wedding. They were not close, but Naing thought he might help us with a loan. That is why he left us to go find him.”
“There are a couple things we can try,” I said.
I opened a browser on a new computer, abandoning my own e-mail, forcing myself to forget the photo loading on the screen. I turned my attention fully to helping Htet.
“We can google his name and address and see what comes up in public records and social media.” Myanmar’s public records were sparse, but I’d had some luck with other refugees looking for relatives. Sometimes we got lucky if the name wasn’t common. More and more people were adding addresses to their Facebook profiles.
Htet handed me a wrinkled piece of paper with rough block-lettered writing.
“Have you used Facebook before?”
Htet shook her head. Mia had told me twenty-two million cell phones had been purchased in Myanmar in the past two years and that social media was booming. But Htet was from a poor family in a poor village, so her answer didn’t surprise me.
“We can use Mia’s account,” I said. I’d assiduously avoided logging into my own Facebook for the same reason I avoided reading most of my e-mails.
“Let me do a search for your brother-in-law’s name and address.” Htet cracked her knuckles and knotted her hands into nervous cat’s cradles. I typed the information into the search bar. As the results loaded on the page I heard Htet gasp behind me. She pointed a bony finger at one of the photos on the screen. I clicked to enlarge it. She squinted and brought her face just a few inches from the screen.
“I thought it was my husband,” she said.
“You did?”
“Must be his brother. They look the same. Eyes and the mouth are the same. This man has different hair. Fatter nose. Fatter chin. It must be him.”
I friended the stranger with the striking similarity to Htet’s husband. I made a cursory examination of his account without making a big deal about it to Htet. He hadn’t been active in a few weeks and all of the writing was in Burmese, but a month earlier he had posted a few photographs. In one he was flanked by two large-breasted cocktail waitresses at what appeared to be the Thai equivalent of a Hooters. In another he flipped the camera the bird with both hands in front of a large golden Buddha.
I don’t think this is the man who is going to save your husband. I kept the thought to myself.
“We can send him a message,” I said to Htet. “Like an e-mail.” The keyboards on the laptops were multilingual, but typing anything longer than a name and an address was beyond my capabilities. “Do you want to write something?”
“What should I write?” she asked in an awed whisper, as if I had just performed a magic trick.
“It can be very simple. We can just ask if your husband is still with him. That’s all. We don’t need to ask anything else.” Htet nodded and began to type with two fingers on the keyboard. I turned away to give her some privacy. When she was done she asked me how to send it. I moved the cursor to the required button and sent the message into the ether.
“When will he get it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “It all depends how often he checks his account, but it’s a start. I’ll tell Mia you sent the message and she will keep checking on it for you.”
Htet’s lips wavered as she broke into a slow smile.
“We might hear from him soon,” she said.
“We might.” I didn’t want to get her hopes up.
I only remembered Lois’s e-mail once Htet had left. The photograph had probably loaded by now. What would I see when I opened it? Karl, dashing in his best Armani tuxedo, standing next to a beautiful Young Lion, one of the 40 Under 40 recipients, a brilliant young poetess with the legs of a giraffe.
I pulled a breath into my belly as I moved the mouse to wake the computer screen.
My cheeks flushed hot. I stared hard at the picture. Karl was still the handsomest man I’d ever seen.
Standing next to him in front of a loud step and repeat on the library steps was Isabel, an enormous smile revealing a newly missing tooth. She wore a shiny purple dress and pretty pink shoes. She looked so proud to be all dressed up and out to a fancy party with her daddy. Karl grasped Izzy’s tiny hand in his giant right one. His left hung at his side. He never knew what to do with his hands in pictures. I could just catch a glimpse of the camera’s flash off the gold of his wedding band.
I placed my palm on the warm screen and closed my eyes.
• • •
Seeing that picture of Karl and Izzy at the library became fuel to work even harder and faster to finish the interviews so that I could get home.
But it also pushed me to focus on my own writing. I indulged in a fantasy about next year’s public library benefit where I would walk in on my husband’s arm and he’d proudly tell people: “This is my wife. She’s an author.”
I hadn’t heard back from the editor of Zoetrope, but I hadn’t really expected a response. It was enough for me to send the finished stories out into the universe. I’d finally begun to tackle the start of a novel. I’d spent most of my life dreaming about writing a book. It was daunting and sometimes humiliating. I’d started it at least twenty times, getting through five or ten pages and then ripping them to shreds.
Over the past few months I had become fast friends with Mia and Derek. I confided in them. I shared copies of the stories I’d sent to the literary magazine with them. They were honest. Some of it is great, they insisted. “But some of this is real crap, Kate. Don’t show this one to anyone.” At least Derek said it with a droopy smile.
I continued to be surprised that I’d formed more real connections with more people here in a few months than I had after years on the Upper East Side.
When Derek grew sick of sleeping on Mia’s couch he took over one of the rooms in the retreat center, the one just thirty feet from mine. We had coffee together, sometimes breakfast, and took the occasional hike through the jungle where our hands would occasionally brush against the other’s arm or hip.
I could hear him at night as he inhaled and exhaled, as he stripped off his shirt and unbuckled his pants, as he let them fall to the floor.
My body tensed when I heard him roll onto his own mattress. I tried not to listen.
One night we lay on the deck as he pointed out obscure constellations. He rattled off his knowledge of the orbits of asteroids and comets the way most men in their twenties rattled off baseball or soccer statistics. I enjoyed his description of a four-dimensional cosmic play being acted out by forces much larger than anything we could comprehend.
We felt like locals, wiser than the mere tourists who checked out of their lives for a couple of weeks, the ones who would soon return to their desks, their SUVs, their Starbucks, their alimony payments, and their flushable toilets.
“When are you going back?” I asked him. His stay so far seemed as open-ended as my own. He’d finished the solar panels on the computer lab. I don’t think anyone was as surprised as he was when they worked. Next he installed some on top of the medical center and the kitchen. The aid work was addictive because it was never finished. There was always more you could do, more that needed to be done.
&nb
sp; He tipped his head back, stretching his neck, his Adam’s apple pointing to the sky. “I hate that question. What if I said never? I’m just never going back.”
“You’d be lying. Tell me more about the girl back home . . . your girl.” Derek talked a lot, often too much, about a lot of things, but he’d been tight-lipped about the lady he’d mentioned to me the first time we met.
“I don’t know if she’s my girl anymore,” he said quietly.
I didn’t say anything else. I hoped my silence would encourage him to keep going. I loved hearing stories about other people’s relationships. Who didn’t? But as an aspiring writer, I’d always been a collector of tidbits from other people’s lives, a thief of other people’s joy and pain.
“OK. Here goes.” He sighed. “It sounds like a bad movie when I say it out loud.”
“Welcome to my life.” I allowed a wry laugh.
Derek released a long exhale before he launched into his story. “I feel like Zoe has always been my girlfriend, even before she was my girlfriend. She grew up in the next town over. That was still sixty kilometers away. When you talk about living in the middle of nowhere, you’re really talking about where I’m from. I first saw her in church. She was in the front row because her pops was the pastor. There were nine of them in all, the pastor’s kids. Eight boys and Zoe. She was the youngest. My dad saw me looking at her one day. I was staring. My mouth was probably open or some shit. She had these red braids that ran all the way down her back, right to the top of her butt. I wondered if she could sit on them. I wanted to pull one. Not in a mean way. It was just how I thought about touching her when I was a stupid ten-year-old boy. So my dad caught me looking and he told me to go on over and talk to her and I told him to shut right up. Then I apologized because that just wasn’t how I talked to my dad, but I was embarrassed that he caught me looking at a girl when I was supposed to be busy thanking God. When the sermon was over my dad went up to talk to the pastor and he dragged me next to him. That’s when I stood close to her for the first time. Her hair was even brighter up close. It took all of my willpower not to grab one of those braids right then and there. The pastor was a real nice guy. He knew my dad and he asked if he could teach his girl how to ride horses. Mia was out of the house and in college by then and my mom missed having a little girl around, I think. My dad said yes and that’s how Zoe started coming to our house twice a week. As we got older she started coming all the time. We played together at first. We were pals. And then when we were fifteen or so I kissed her on a class trip down to Ayers Rock. We were sitting in the back of the bus. Nothing good ever happens in the backseat of a school bus.”
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