I remembered how I looked at her ring finger when we first met, how I’d tried to make a snap judgment about her life based on whether she had a husband and children like me. “I don’t think you’re a tragedy,” I said, propping myself up on an elbow.
“I don’t think you’re a tragedy either.” Mia smiled at me. “I think you’re going to be OK no matter what, but I know you can’t see that now. Want a little bit of unsolicited advice, now that you’ve listened to my sad sob of a story?”
“I do.”
“Come to the camp tomorrow morning. Keep doing your work. It helps puts things in perspective.”
I nodded slowly. “I’ll think about it.”
“There’s one other thing I know about divorce that could be helpful.”
I cringed again at the word.
“It’s a legal gray area when someone files for divorce and serves you over e-mail. Technically you need to know you are being served. I was the one who ended our marriage, but it was ultimately Tim who filed for the divorce. I was traveling when he did it and didn’t know for three weeks. Until I responded there was nothing he could do to move the proceedings forward. My advice for you right now is to take a deep breath and take your time figuring out how to respond. You don’t need to make all of the decisions right away.”
It wasn’t much, but it was a small relief. I’d been crafting responses to Karl in my head for the past forty-eight hours. I imagined e-mailing, calling, getting on the next flight. I imagined being angry and screaming and blaming him. I imagined hurling myself at his feet and begging for forgiveness.
I’d hit pause on my life for so long. Now I felt paralyzed.
• • •
I didn’t make it to the camp the next day, or the day after. I stayed in bed until I finally had to eat and drink.
Then I walked. I hiked for hours up and down the rolling hills.
I strayed from the path and walked until I knew I had to return or I’d be lost in the dark. I imagined getting lost and Karl getting news that I’d disappeared in the jungle, my body discovered weeks later by trekkers from Bhutan, Glasgow, or Indiana. It would become the top story on cable news networks that couldn’t get enough of stories about missing white women. I’d be a martyr. Then Karl would have no choice but to love me forever. His new wife would speak of me only in hushed and reverential tones. They’d keep all my photos in the house. I’d haunt them.
However delicious the fantasy, I couldn’t stay out there. For one, I was a little afraid of the dark. Also: the tigers. Rangers had spotted one just half a mile from the center the week before. He’d been much larger than they expected. For years the government had thought the tigers were nearing extinction in these forests, now they believed they were merely in hiding. They’d been chased farther and farther into the jungle by the massive development in the country and now they moved in the shadows. The rangers existed to protect the tigers, not me. No one would come to my aid if I screamed. I flinched as the monkeys leaped from branch to branch a few feet above my head. Even the rodents frightened me as they skittered behind my heels. I kept my small narrow Maglite dark in my pocket, afraid of what it would illuminate. I made my way back up the mountain to the center by the time the moon crested the horizon.
I lay awake most of the night. My defenses were shattered. I had to call Karl. I’d promise him anything. I’d beg him not to make any more decisions until we spoke in person. Don’t talk to the lawyers again. Let me explain myself. I love you. I need you. I need us. I can fix us.
I decided to wait until the two hours between the time the girls went to bed and when Karl usually went to sleep. I got out of bed at seven in the morning and stared into the jungle for an hour. At eight I went up the stairs, where I knew I’d get the best reception.
I tried Karl’s cell first. It went straight to voice mail. We kept a landline in our kitchen and his office. I tapped in the house number from memory.
In all the scenarios I’d run through, this was not what I expected—a woman answering my phone. She was out of breath, as if she’d run to catch it. Her hello contained a confident smile. Her voice was sweet and curious.
I didn’t say anything.
“Hello?” she repeated, just as energetically.
I knew she could hear me breathing. Finally, I spoke. “Who’s this?”
“I’m Lena.”
Chapter Ten
* * *
I was speechless. Who was this woman?
“I’m the babysitter.”
She sounded older than our usual sitters, who were in their late teens or twenties.
“Actually, I’m not the babysitter. I work at Paradigm. In marketing. But I’m the babysitter tonight. The regular sitter fell through. Karl should be home soon. Do you want to leave a message?”
“No message,” I said in a near whisper, and hung up the phone.
I felt silly for jumping to conclusions, for imagining the woman behind the sweet and curious voice as a stand-in for me, an easy replacement. Did I really believe Karl would already have a new girlfriend living in our home, answering our landline?
Still, there was a stranger in my home, a babysitter I’d never met. I’d become completely disconnected from my children’s lives in such a way that I no longer even knew who was taking care of them.
I needed to leave here. It was time to go home.
I began to make the arrangements. I looked up flights. I could fly from Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Hong Kong to New York or I could drive to Bangkok and fly from there. Which ticket I bought depended on transportation. I’d have to ask Kevin if he could drive me. Or I could hire a taxi. Of course, Kasem! I could call and see if he would be available to drive me to the airport. His words, the first advice I’d gotten from my very first friend here, had rattled around in my brain often since he left me here. It would be nice to tell him that I took them to heart.
I went in search of Kevin to find out if he could drive me, but neither he nor Buppha was anywhere to be found. I remembered Kevin was leading a laughter meditation session in the jungle for another few hours. For such a free spirit, he followed an incredibly predictable schedule.
I’d need to say good-bye to Mia. I grabbed the keys to Kevin’s truck off the hook in the kitchen and drove down to New Beginnings.
At the camp gate I nodded a polite hello to the guards in their khaki uniforms and black berets. They knew me now. I was just a regular. I parked and walked to Mia’s office, surprised to find her desk was empty and more cluttered than usual, as if she had left in a hurry.
I set about trying to find her, making my way down the dirt road, taking in the camp for what could be the last time. A group of women in their twenties played cards on an overturned cardboard box. One of them plucked the feathers from a recently killed rooster as she contemplated her next move. A breeze blew the smell of blood and death toward my nostrils. Flies buzzed hungrily around the carcass. An old woman dunked her family’s laundry in a dirty plastic bucket. Her shriveled hands furiously wrung water from clothes. Behind her a younger woman, not more than fifteen years old, cradled a fragile newborn who wiggled and squeaked. The new mother looked up and met my eyes. Her expression was filled with a fiery intensity. Her taut muscles clenched as she held on to that baby with everything in her body. Life continued in the camps. Despite the hardship and suffering, it was miraculous and powerful. I remembered something my mom said to me once when my dad lost his job and she took on so many extra hours working as a nurse at the hospital that she hardly had time to eat or sleep. “Courage is grace under pressure, Katie,” she said. “We discover who we truly are when things are the toughest.”
I needed to be that pillar of strength for my own daughters. I didn’t need to enroll them in the “right” junior yoga classes or make sure they had enough playdates with the children of the masters of the universe. It probably didn’t matter if their eggs were GMO-free and organic and came from a chicken named Fred who lived an idyllic life in a cage-free coop
on a roof in Brooklyn. What mattered was that I could show them what it meant to be a strong woman.
I stopped in front of Htet’s hut. Faded rainbow prayer flags fluttered off the doorway. Her home was just a dusty platform raised a few feet off the ground and covered in a delicate straw roof. A narrow ladder led the way to the front door. I called out to her and got no response. Cho appeared the second time I called her mother’s name.
“Kat,” she shouted down at me with a wide gap-toothed smile. She’d never called me Kate, had always liked the sound of Kat better. Sometimes she meowed when she said it. “Ma in bed.”
I began to turn away. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to wake her up.”
“Not asleep. Just in bed.”
Something in the child’s tone told me that I shouldn’t walk away. I placed my hands on the sides of the ladder and looked up at Cho. “Can I come in?” She turned her head to glance behind her and whispered something in Burmese then waited for a response.
“Come.”
I’d never been inside Htet’s house, or in any of the houses in the refugee camp. It felt like an unspoken line that volunteers shouldn’t cross. The three of them lived in a single room, not entirely unlike the one I stayed in at the retreat center. There was no clutter; the floor was swept clean. Small shelves held everything the family needed. Their few items of clothing were neatly folded and stacked alongside three plates, three forks and spoons, three bowls, and a single pan. A bucket in the corner held water for washing. A second was covered by a board, which I knew was used as a toilet. There were two mattresses, one for Htet and one for the girls. They each held a pillow and a quilt. Htet lay on one now, her face turned to the wall where I could see she had taped an old picture of a family of four. Chit’s lanky body stretched long next to her. The little girl stroked her mother’s fine hair with her delicate hands.
Cho wrapped her arms around my calves. “Mommy doesn’t feel good.” Tilly still did this to me when I walked in the front door after being out of the house for a couple of hours. She would open her mouth wide and make like she was devouring my leg, whether it was bare or in a pair of jeans, her sticky saliva dripping down me. Cho’s grip was looser than my daughter’s, less insistent. It was similar, but not the same. I think a dozen children could grip my leg in what they thought was a similar way and I would be able to pick out my own daughter’s grip every time.
“Htet?” I said tentatively, feeling like an unwanted stranger, unsure whether I should stay.
The woman made a small groan as she rolled over.
I sat cross-legged on the floor next to the mattress.
“Are you OK? Can I get you something? Do you need a doctor? I can try to find Mia.”
Htet shook her head. When she sat up I noticed dark circles beneath her eyes and a gash along the side of her head, still caked with dried blood.
I immediately went into mom mode. I couldn’t help myself. “Chit, can you take your sister right outside the front door to play for a few minutes?”
Htet’s eyes widened with terror at the idea of letting the girls out of her sight. “It’s OK,” I whispered. “I will be able to see them right outside the door. I won’t let anything happen to them.”
Once the girls were out of earshot I asked what had happened. Htet was hesitant, but I kept pushing. It was another woman in the camp who struck her. She thought Htet had stolen her food. She clubbed her on the side of her head with a hot pan. The rusty edge sliced through Htet’s skin. The girls saw the whole thing.
I reached out and touched her skin right above the scar and leaned in to get a closer look, hoping it wasn’t already infected. “Did you tell anyone?”
Htet shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m causing trouble. We can’t get kicked out. We have no money.”
“But that woman attacked you.”
Htet turned her frightened eyes on me. The whites had begun to turn a murky yellow. “It doesn’t matter. I would still be seen as a troublemaker.” She paused then and I let the reality of her statements sink in. This wasn’t a world with a clear system of crime and punishment.
Her slight shoulders shook. “We need to leave here. It’s not safe. I want us to have a home again. I need to find my husband.”
I didn’t need to tell her that leaving here now was a bad idea, that taking the girls back to Myanmar was a risk, that leaving them here alone made them even more vulnerable. I’d come to say good-bye, but that would only emphasize that I had a freedom she didn’t, that I could get on a plane tomorrow and go back to my life while hers remained in limbo.
We sat in silence for five minutes. I listened to her rasping breath and rubbed circles on the small of her back. Finally, she looked right into my eyes.
“Can you help me find my husband, Kate?”
“We’re trying. I can keep sending messages to your brother-in-law. I’ll go now and send another one.”
She shook her head, slowly at first and then faster.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Can you help me find my husband? Can you go across the border?” Her face was now set with a steely resolve, her jaw tight.
It was clear that this wasn’t the first time she’d had this idea. “You can go. I cannot go. It isn’t safe for me to leave my girls. But you can go. It would be easy for you to go.” Her determination made her more beautiful. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes shining.
“Please,” she begged.
I didn’t know what to say. Then she said out loud what we both knew was true.
“You are a rich white woman. You would be safe. You would just be another American tourist.”
I looked out the door at Chit drawing a tic-tac-toe board for her little sister in the dirt. I blinked away thoughts of what would happen to those little girls if they grew up here. The situation in the camp got worse every day, and Mia told me weeks ago that funds from the UN and donations from nonprofits were being diverted to the kinds of refugees making headlines—Syria, North Africa. Most people didn’t even know there was a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border. When the funds ran low the food got sparse, the services slowed. When the septic tank overflowed and there weren’t resources to fix it, people acted out, Mia explained once as she lamented the situation as a pile of tinder that could light up with the tiniest spark.
Htet would do anything for her girls. If she had to she would cross the border tomorrow and sell her own body for enough money to keep them safe and fed and out of harm’s way. She’d allow the soldiers to slit open her throat if she thought it meant, for one second, that her daughters would have a better life without her.
I could say no. It would be so easy to apologize and tell Htet it would be too much for me. That it would be a dangerous journey for me too, even with all of my privilege. I could say that, and she might hate me for it, but I could leave and we would never see one another again. I would be just another person who had disappointed her. But that’s not what I was going to say. I didn’t want to say yes to be a hero. I wanted to say yes because it was the right thing to do. When you see someone who needs help, you help them. It could be the one good thing that came out of blowing up my life. I would do this for Htet and then go home to face the music.
The crisp confident voice that came out of my mouth didn’t belong to the woman who had left New York with a single rolling suitcase for a fancy wedding in California. It didn’t belong to the mother who slumped down on her kitchen floor, depressed and distraught at a family calendar that left her out. It didn’t belong to the wife who lay awake staring at the ceiling, silently begging her husband to hear the words she was afraid to say.
“I’ll do it.”
• • •
I had to keep moving. Once I committed myself, I had to keep moving. If I stopped it would all be over. I’d find one of a million reasons why I couldn’t cross the border to Myanmar to search for a total stranger.
I forced my mind to remain blank as I drove back up
to the retreat center and walked down the stairs to my room. I threw my few belongings into my black suitcase. I didn’t have much. For months I’d worn a rotation of three outfits and Buppha’s sarongs. I’d gotten a little attached to forgetting about underwear. I wheeled the suitcase onto the boardwalk.
I’d need help. I didn’t want to do this alone.
I knocked on Derek’s door.
“We’re going to Myanmar,” I said by way of greeting. I quickly filled him in on what I’d promised Htet. Saying the words out loud made the entire situation seem more insane. To his credit, he didn’t even blink.
“Let me get my passport.”
Derek tried to help me with my suitcase as we made our way back up the stairs.
I batted him away and lifted the thing over my head the way I’d seen Buppha do when I first arrived. “I’ve got this,” I said.
I was stronger than when I got here and the bag was easy for me to lift, but I didn’t take into account that I was still something of a klutz. My toe caught on one of the last wooden planks and I wobbled. It was me or the suitcase. It fell from my hands and tumbled down the rickety stairs. The suitcase landed at the bottom on its side like a tipped-over turtle, fully intact save for one of the wheels, which had flown into the jungle.
“Well, that’s a goner.” Derek leaned over me as I attempted to salvage the bag. “I’ve got an extra duffel you can have.”
He ran to his room to get the new bag. I repacked, and we carried on.
I should have been amazed that no one told me what I was doing was ridiculous, but I was among the kinds of people who didn’t just talk about doing things. They actually did things.
We called Mia to get her take. She agreed that it was Htet’s best chance to either find her husband or gain some kind of closure. “Sometimes it’s a relief to be allowed to let go of hope,” Mia said with wisdom gained from years on the front lines of the refugee crisis. “Sometimes the hope is just a noose that keeps you from living the rest of your life.”
Marriage Vacation Page 17