Brave Girl

Reuben and I were at the Siam Mall in Bangkok and I had repeated “silk robes” into a red phone six times.
Reuben’s arms were crossed and he was shaking his head, smirking.
“I am looking for silk robes,” I said again.
“Single rope?” the operator said with her soothing, patient Thai purr.
“Silk robes!” I barked.
“Singha?” she suggested.
I hung up the phone and spun around.
“Mary, we’ve been looking for these damn robes for hours—this is ridiculous.”
“I’m over it,” I said defeated and hungry.
“I mean we can keep looking if you want.”
“No, I’ll look for them next time I’m in Bangkok. Isn’t Thailand like, known for silk?”
“I mean you’re clearly doing something stupid.”

I found out my cousin Joyce was engaged by e-mail. I was at the sleazy internet shop down the street from my house in the village I was living in the south of Thailand. Bam, the owner, was asleep to Bob Marley and a sea of machine guns popping off on every computer screen. I was the only girl in the shop. I didn’t care. The shop was close to my house and it was cheap. At that point—after having lived there for over a year I was over it, worrying about what might be seen as proper and improper. I was over a lot of things.
Bam’s ashtray was filled and a single tendril of smoke was climbing out. When I said, “Ka torkah?” he jolted awake and instinctively looked towards the ashtray. Then he blinked twice. Looked up. Nodded. And he was back in his wits.
“Ten baht,” he said and held out his hand. I was smiling as I fingered through my change purse. Joyce had asked me to be her bridesmaid. Joyce and I were both only children. She was three years older than me and when I was younger I said I liked everything she liked. For years I did this. I have a small extended family and there are only four cousins all together. Joyce was my closest family member. She was my ally.
Anyway, I wanted to get her and Doug Thai silk robes for one of their wedding presents. I was going to get their initials embroidered. I thought it would be funny. Doug was so big and tall and hairy. He was a man man. He freaked me out.
“It’s like, owning a big pit bull or something,” I once said to my mother over the phone. “What if he turns on you? You don’t have a chance.” I laughed, “I like boys my size. I like to be in the same weight category.”

I would cry under my mosquito net with my face pressed into the mildewy pillow. The fan would click slowly in the corner. The fan’s face would rotate from side to side like a slow moving disapproving head, over and over again whispering “No.” The cover of my two-month old Harper’s Magazine that my parents had sent me in a care package would rise up in a wave, settle down and then rise up again.
What was I crying about? I missed everything. What was I crying about? I felt so alone.

Joyce’s wedding was taking shape and my mother would tell me about the details over the phone. I would pace in my front yard barefoot, even though there were snakes and the grandmother next door would walk to my gate and point with exaggerated motions towards her shooed feet with her stick.
“We saw Doug at Uncle Matt’s 60th birthday. He was talking to everyone. But his pants were baggy.”
“Like a homeboy,” my father shouted from the background.
“They don’t say that anymore!” My mom laughed.
I paced back and forth. I listened to it all. I imagined everything.

“You look too thin.” I said that second.
Joyce smiled and I could see her tan foundation cracking on the sides.
“There’s so much planning for the wedding,” she said, “I never have time to eat lunch.”
Joyce’s wedding was in a month. I had come home from Thailand. Abruptly. One day I said I wanted to go home out loud and 36 hours later I was on a plane. I had no idea what I had done. Why I had done it. I was delayed for hours in Tokyo and I thought about running away. But then a waitress came over with sandwiches and sodas and I forgot about it.
My mother had thrown Doug and Joyce a surprise wedding shower. It was the first time I had seen my cousin for years. It was the first time I had seen anyone in my family.
“World traveler,” someone would say and pat me on the back.
“One day you’ll have to tell me all about it,” another would toss out.
Doug gave me a bear hug and then he wouldn’t stop talking.
“It’s just so great to see you, Mary Lorraine. I’m just so glad you’re here. This wedding shit’s killing me. Jesus Christ. You have no idea. I’m so glad you came home. Boy, you went far away. Where was it again? Way over there, right? This wedding. Why aren’t we eloping again?” Doug let out a loud laugh and cracked open a beer. He settled down on the couch next to me in the back of the room. He took a big sip and then kept rattling on.
Joyce was opening the presents on the other side of the room and all the aunts owed and awed.
Doug kept on talking to me but I had stopped listening. I watched Joyce. She was neatly unwrapping each big box. Her mother sat with her legs folded underneath her on the beige carpet below Joyce. She kept a list of who gave what on a yellow legal pad.
I was watching Joyce and I was trying to think back to our last honest conversation. One that was real and not rushed. Then I remembered it. It was a second cousin’s graduation party my senior year of college. Three years ago. We were drunk off of margaritas. Joyce was opening up, I was opening up. So this is the sort of person you’re becoming, I remember thinking that curiously. Pushing her for more. Like pulling back a flower’s petals and seeing the carpel. Here you are, I thought. And then I realized, to my relief, that we were still very much alike.

And then it happened again. Suddenly and for a moment. Joyce broke out of herself and came back to me.

“Come on, come on, show me outside!” Her bony hand squeezed around my wrist and she pulled me out the back French doors. The presents had all been opened. Doug had left to get more cigarettes. The women were eating cake and chatting in circles in the living room.
“You can do it on the grass,” she laughed. I had bragged about a yoga move I had mastered in Thailand.
“Joyce, I can’t! I’m wearing a dress,” I protested, laughing.
“No one is out here! No one will see,” she pointed and flung off her sandals. I followed her. We ran to the azalea bushes. She egged me on.
I threw myself on the ground and did it quickly. Pulled my legs over my head. Brought my feet to the floor above my forehead. My orange dressed spilled over my head, all over the cool grass. She made fun of my old underwear. She got on her back and copied the pose.
“See! I knew I’d be able to do it, too!”
We were lying on our backs when our old aunt came to the back porch and hollered out our names. I turned toward Joyce and put a finger to my lips. We went silent, holding our bellies and rocking side to side on the lawn. Quietly laughing and rolling around like children.
This is why I came home, I thought. Squeezing in my laughter as if it were about to rip through my dress. There were grass stains on my thighs.

Nine days before Joyce’s wedding I was in the woods in Oregon. I hadn’t checked my voicemail for three days and I thought it was about time. There were fourteen new messages.
My mother was crying. “Mary Lorraine,” she wept some more and then said it quickly, “Doug is dead. He’s dead.” Click.
“Mary Lorraine, it’s your father, look call us back as soon as you get this.” Click.
“Joyce found Doug’s body in their basement. He ODed.” Crying. Click.
“Mary Lorraine, the funeral is in three days I’m not sure what you want to do about this. If you want me to get you a flight—”
I was on my knees now. I started crawling on the ground. I dropped the open phone and my hands began to frantically grope at the soil.
The phone kept crying, kept telling me Doug was dead from the dirt. I continued to dig at it like an animal.

The airport in Eugene is small and doesn’t sell coffee. I was sitting on a chair in my gate with my feet pulled up. It was four am.
When I was very young I had a reoccurring nightmare. I was in a station wagon with a family who was not my own. We were driving to the bank. We parked and everyone would get out of the car except for me. I was sitting in the backseat, in the middle, with a tight waist buckle.
“Mary Lorraine,” the mother would ask from her opened door, “would you like us to bring you back a lollipop?”
“Yes,” I told her.
The family would go into the bank but the key would be left in the ignition. I would hear a sound and look up. An invisible force would turn the key slowly and I would be horrified. The engine would start and the car would begin to drive out of the parking lot, then it would accelerate and speed down the streets. I was horrified.
My sobbing would wake me up. Cold, long sobs interupting the night. I was afraid of the car crashing into bits. I was afraid of being alone when it did. I was afraid of not knowing where I was going. It would take a while for the fear to go away, so I could go back to sleep.

When I saw Joyce she was standing by Doug’s open casket. When it was my turn to hug her I don’t know if she realized it was me.
“Thank you for coming,” she managed to get out between sobs. She didn’t hug me for long and she let go of me first. I was surprised. I realized there was a long line behind me and that I had to move. Shortly later she collasped. People rushed over. Her bony, white hands were gripping the side of his coffin, she was pulling herself up with it. Leaning over the side as if it were a ship. “Come back,” she wailed to Doug. “Come back, Come back.” Then she started to scream. No one knew what to do with her. Someone took her away for a while. When she came back she stayed quiet.
I walked to the corner of the funeral parlor. I stood by some purple flowers. I was alone and it was very hard to breath.

The Butterfly

When it happened last time I sensed old, stonewalls climbing up on either side of me and I heard two or four heels clicking on cobblestone. And it was late at night. A castle, I thought.

I have these moments, alone mostly. When an old moment, fragments of one, jostles me back. It takes me to a time and it only reminds me of one or two of my senses and I have to stop and focus. I try to pull back, like a movie camera pulling out of the scene to take in the scope.

Once I remembered a window made of green bottles, I only saw the circles of the bottoms and there was a flickering candle behind the glass.

I remembered a slick black table and ordering something that I knew was too expensive. There was red, too. That was easy, it only takes a second to pull back. I am with Carly. I am in Prague, on our first night and we were hungry and tired and still have our backpacks. I ordered a cheese burger.

I have remembered my foot piercing a sharp shell and I can’t see through the water. It is cold. I am wearing a black, full bathing suit. There is a child with me. And a rowboat. I am in water off the coast of Maine. I am in the Atlantic Ocean. My sailboat is off a ways. Lights turn on around the deck.

There is a woman and she is crying everything out and she is slim and nice looking. A silver bus pole. Her knuckles and she brings her head into the metal pole and I haven’t paid for my ticket. She cries and cries and cries. She isn’t hiding anything. Rome.

These memories hit me like lightening. A flash, and then there is my investigation and slow pull back. But I do not invite them. And they are not always physical moments.

A rocking chair by a window. A third floor. An old spirit but there is no body to her. I am not afraid. A long rifle in the corner. I pull the memory back but the edges blur and fire up into smoke. This is not a room. Where did it come from? A fat man, a barstool and Jim Bean. It’s unlocked. “I’ve had this bottle in my hand since,” he concludes. A father’s suicide. His story. A closing bar and me and the chief. Fisher’s Island.

Broken guitar strings and some attractive man is yelling at me about America. Dubrovnik. Early morning. A couch outside and a coffee and I say, “Well, I didn’t elect him.” And splash open The International Herald Tribune.

A table is above me and chair legs are staked around me, and the edges of the tablecloth. And I am so safe. Feet in socks and shoes pad around. Plates clink onto the table. “Mary Lorraine!” Other feet come in. Voices. “Watch it, hot!” A thud over me. Suit pant legs. Wool socks. Chairs are pulled out, legs come in. Socks.

I have to focus. I have to remember what I’m sitting on. The red carpet. That climbs into the thick, paisley curtains. That crawls over me. White tablecloth. White butter cake. My mother’s parents’ house. When everyone was still hopeful. Before the things that pulled us apart did. Before we were left like we are now.

Morning. Five am. It’s cold. I’m waiting for an outdoor shower. The horse’s breath comes out like a cloud and there is snot. The blue-eyed one. “Indians thought it magic.” She half bucks. Sticks her nose out to me. There is a barn cat. And those diving birds that protected their nest so, like lunatics. Dive bombing anything that came near. Oregon.

I’ll stand on the subway tight between strangers and it will happen. Holding onto the rail. Where am I? And what has happened to me? Do you feel this way? A continual bewilderment? As if life suddenly spit you out? As if you are being reborn over and over and over again? It’s as if fragmented moments of beauty have been dropped into my brain and shaken.

I don’t feel any wiser than I did under that table when I was eight. Or in Rome when I was seventeen. Years later I feel just as confused. And I never know where I am. If I woke up in Thailand I wouldn’t be surprised. If I woke up on a bus going towards Vermont. Or in the open trunk of a station wagon. Snow is falling and it is late. Talk radio purs. Or a living room. We can’t afford to turn the heat up passed fifty-five. I am surrounded by my best friends and I am very, very happy. Ithaca.

Three Sisters

Outside of Three Sisters, Oregon

Cam came from a family of missionaries in Saudi Arabia and last month he gave up his faith. I could barely stand Cam so it seemed particularly cruel that I had to go into the woods alone with him for nine days.

We were working support for an outdoor adventure camp. We had to make sure mountain bike trails weren’t snowy, that campsites were secure. We had to find wells to fill up bladders of clean water, that sort of thing.

Cam thought everything was very serious. I think that was because he thought God was very serious and now that God wasn’t there he was looking hard to find something concrete and serious to take His place. Like love, for example.

Cam told me he wanted to fall in love a lot. He would say this while we were driving, or while we were setting up our tents. He said he believes in love at first site. That when he meets the woman he will marry he will know and then he will be happy. I told him he sounded like a thirteen year-old girl. I rolled my eyes.

It was Cam’s 25th birthday on the second day we were together and I felt awkward about the whole thing. We had set up in the shadow of Mt. Bachelor. The area where we were camping was by a stream beyond which were fields of purple and white wild flowers, a far ways away were pine trees crawling up the base of the mountain which sat majestically, proudly puffing out her breast.

Cam had brought red wine. We had messed up the rice but we ate it anyway because there was nowhere to throw it out. Cam made a fire and opened the wine and then he read me that famous Seagal story. I listened to it. I was sitting against a tree. The sun had set; the bugs came out and then relaxed. It became dark. The fire replaced the mountain as our focal point and anchor. I watched it while Cam read. I drank the wine from my Naligene bottle.

I didn’t like Cam but I was very happy then. The last time I saw Cam I was sitting between him and Ryan in Ryan’s flatbed truck. We were dropping Daniel off at a used motorcycle shop in Eugene, Oregon. He was going to buy a motorcycle and ride it down to San Francisco and then he didn’t know what he was going to do.

While we were in the woods, for those nine days, he finished “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” When he closed the book, we had stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. Two pumps on dust. A rack of warm bottled cokes. A gas attendant who could have been 111 years old. Cam said, “This book just changed my life.”

I thought he was being dramatic. I thought he was being too serious again. I told him I had read it several years ago, read it while I was in France I added. I agreed it was good. In a partially conscious way I think I was trying to dumb down the experience he was having, I was trying to make it less novel for him. I don’t know why I wanted to do that. It seems cruel now.

Cam ran back to the truck, Ryan and I had been sitting there waiting for him for fifteen minutes, we were getting restless. We had made bets whether Cam would actually go through with buying the motorcycle. I didn’t bet on it.

He told us he got it. He was ecstatic. He high-fived Ryan. He took his bag from the truck. We both got out, I adjusted my tank top. We hugged him. He said he had to do some paperwork. That we could go. He thanked us for the ride.

Ryan and I got back in the truck and looked at each other. “So we should go?” Ryan confirmed. I shrugged my shoulders. Then nodded.
“Can’t believe he got it,” Ryan mused.
“Yeah,” I said.

Ryan asked me where I wanted to go next. At that point we could go anywhere. All the things we owned were in his truck. Everything I did with Ryan felt new and novel. Ryan taught me how to hitchhike that summer. He taught me how to properly pack a backpack and to air out my sleeping bag every morning. He taught me how to sleep outside, that the trick was to sleep on a tarp so the moisture doesn’t come through. I don’t remember where Ryan and I went that afternoon. Later that night we slept in a valley that was covered in hay.

My Dog Days

(Rosa)

Jose, the doorman on the Upper West Side apartment on 67^th street tells me that nobody’s home at Rosa’s apartment so I’ve got to go up the maintenance elevator. I don’t know what that means. But Gerardo tells me to follow him so I do.

I have a big purse swung over my shoulder stuffed with plastic bags, weighty Human Rights books and highlighters. I have been wearing the same sundress for two days.

“Mary,” Gerardo says, closing the metal door. He punches in the floor number and pulls a lever. “How was your birthday?”

I tell him it was nice.

“Rosa, she’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” I go, “Rosa’s sweet.”

Rosa’s a black poodle. And I’m a professional dog walker. People on the street keep asking me if she’s a Portuguese Water Terrier… Maybe it’s not terrier, I forgot the last word in the name. Sometimes I admit I don’t know, other times I just say yes.

Gerardo lets me into the apartment through a side door. He turns around and heads back to the elevator, shutting the door behind him. Normally I go up the main elevator and go through the front door of the apartment. I’ve only seen the foyer. Now I’m standing in someone’s bedroom. A big one. I have no idea where I am.

 

Before I became a dog walker I’d assume people who had these sorts of jobs, working quietly for the rich, would take this sort of opportunity to snoop around. I assumed I would do that sort of thing; see what was in their refrigerator, in their closets. Turns out I was wrong. I’m paranoid most of the time. I don’t know what I’m paranoid about but for some reason whenever I’m alone in these big apartments I get the feeling that I am guilty until proven innocent and all I want to do is get out.

 

“Rosa,” I start yelling, awkwardly. If someone walks in I want it to be clear that I’m here for only one reason. A big black poodle. I trip through bedrooms, one leads to the next and finally I find a staircase that takes me down three flights of stairs. One wall of the living room is comprised of windows, and the room is three stories high. My mouth is wide open. I find Rosa, put her on the leash and get out of there.

 

(Corey)

Nobody knows what kind of dog Corey is because Mrs. Olsen got him from the pound. Mrs. Olsen is between 60 and 70 years old and is a painter. She lives a couple blocks away from Rosa near Riverside Park.

 

Mrs. Olsen is pretty much always smoking cigarettes in bed when I come.

 

“Mary!” She hollers, “I think I have mice.”

 

I’m never sure what to say to Mrs. Olsen when she ushers me into her bedroom, I stand at the doorway and usually nod along.

 

“No idea why these mice were interested in my bedroom—my bedroom!—until it hit me, I keep a bag of Corey’s treats by the bed.”

 

“Ohh,” I smile, “that must be it.”

 

She continues on. When I go into the kitchen I notice that the mousetraps have actual cheese in them. I find this very cute.

 

(Samantha)

I’ve walked in on Samantha’s owner, who is an orthodox Jew, naked once. And it was really, really awkward.

 

Samantha is a cocker spaniel and I don’t really like her that much. She’s moody. I’ve started to notice things like that, a dog’s mood. I hate that I’ve started to notice stuff like that—I’m not a dog person—but I have been spending every day for the last three weeks with them and it’s something I’ve picked up along the way. Dog temperaments.

 

I was bringing Samantha home from a walk. I still had my hand on her lease when I unlocked the front door of her apartment. She booked it inside and I let the lease go. She ran down the hall and disappeared. This was the second day on the job. I called for Samantha and followed her—I wanted to unhook her lease before I left. And that’s when I walked in on the man. Lying naked in his bed.

He stammered. I stammered. I decided he could probably get the lease.

 

“Bye!” I tried to say cheerfully as I booked it to the door.

 

“Did she poop?” He hollered from the bedroom.

 

“Three times!” I yelled back swinging open the door.

 

“Oh great!” I heard him call as I shut the door and took off to the elevator.

 

(NYU)

I’m hungry but don’t have time to eat dinner. I’m sitting on bench in Washington Square Park. My class is in a half an hour and I’m feverously reading. I love graduate school. I love school. It feels like dessert now, some very rich indulgence. When my classmates start arguing about a post modern theory presented in a gothic novel I want to laugh out loud at it all. I want to roll my head back and cry, “You can’t be serious!” Such investments my classmates stock in terminology, in words and books and pictures. It seems so frivolous to me now. These discussions. These books. Being allowed to rattle on about this sort of stuff. Being allowed to pretend it matters.

 

But I love graduate school.

 

(Brooklyn)

I take the “L” to meet Gavin at a bar in Brooklyn where he and a friend are about to perform stand up comedy. I’ve seen this show before. I know their act well. The bar is full and we have at least an hour before they’ll perform. I wish there was some way I could have taken a shower in between all of this but I don’t have a shower, or an apartment for that matter. I’m still wearing the same sundress. 

 

We both want a second drink. I look at him.

 

“No,” he says, shaking his head, “no way.”

 

“C’mon,” I protest. “I’ll buy your next one.”

 

“No you won’t. If I buy you this drink it will ruin my whole plan. I have ten dollars set away for tonight.”

 

“Please, I swear just this one.”

 

I don’t remember what ends up happening. He probably buys me the drink. Or two or three. We’re young and we’re completely broke. It’s New York City and it’s 2007. We’re waiting to be discovered or we’re waiting to move.

 

I have a love/hate relationship with New York City. On bad days I am completely alone and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. But on the good days I forget about all that. It’s late and I’m walking home with Gavin. We’re laughing and talking about the future. There is so much future right now. It’s an endless carpet rolling out in front of us. We’re young and we’re broke and we’re in New York City. And it’s fine. It’s great. It’s exactly how it should be. It’s exactly how we’ve read about it happening—about our lives happening—in the books we read when were younger. When we still believed in books.

Spaces Between Some Things

Newark Penn Station, NJ
May 3, 2007

I am waiting for my coffee and so is a skinny white man. He’s my age or younger and he has big tattoos on his arms. He’s wearing a sleeveless, white shirt. There is an older, unkempt black man with an open bandanna coming out from under his baseball cap. He’s wearing clothes that are oversized and raggedy. He has a beard. A boy toddler grabs at my thighs and I ignore him. I don’t know who he belongs to. I’m waiting for a train that will arrive in thirty minutes. I’m between places. It’s late morning.

“You’ve Taylor ham and cheese?” The white guy asks.
“Yeah,” The middle-eastern guy behind the cash register says.
“Great. One of those.”
The cashier writes something down and walks to the back.
“No eggs?” The older, unkempt man interjects. I look up.
“Nah,” the white guy laughs.
“Need the protein boy, what ‘bout the protein?”
“Had eggs this morning, still hungry.”
“Ah, k.” The man seems settled with his answer.

The three of us are still standing there and the toddler has walked off. I keep an eye on him. The silence is a little heavier now that we realize we can fill it.

“Why you so hungry?” The unkempt man asks the white guy.
“Don’t know,” the white guy laughs again.
“Gargoyles are bad luck, son, shouldn’t have that shit on your arm.”
I look at the white guy’s arm. I see a black gargoyle tattooed between his elbow and shoulder.
“I’m not superstitious.”
“Oh yeah?” The unkempt man laughs. “You a religious guy?” he asks.
“Nah, religion’s a scam,” the white guy says and laughs.
“Yeah?”
“Yup.”
There’s another pause. The baby is touching the wall under the counter. I still don’t know who the baby belongs to. The men don’t seem to notice the baby.

“What you do?” The unkempt man asks the white guy.
“You said a regular coffee, medium?” The middle-eastern man reaffirms with me.
“Yeah,” I say and both men look at me. I smile towards my feet.
“A Marine,” the white guy goes.
“Well, no shit! For real?”
I look over and eye the white guy with more interest. He’s skinny.
“Yup,” he laughs again.
“Been to Iraq?”
“Just back.”
“No shit! What’s that shit like?”
“It smells,” the white guy goes.
“Iraq smells!” The unkempt man hoots and claps his hands.
“Yeah, smells bad. I’m supposed to go back in two weeks but I don’t wanna.”
“Yeah, but with that shit got no choice, right?”
“Right,” the white man goes. Crosses his skinny, tattooed arms over his chest.
“I want to be a fireman,” the white guy says.
“A fireman!” The unkempt man claps his hands again. “Well, what you doing in Iraq, son?”
“Beats me,” the white guy laughs.
“They messed that shit up, right?”
I look over at them again.
“Sure did,” the white guy goes. His arms are still crossed.
The middle-eastern man says, “Miss,” and hands me the coffee.
“Thanks,” I say. Go to the table with sugar and milk.

“He touches everything!” A big woman, her breasts balloon out, cries to no one in a heavy Jamaican accent. She goes for the boy. Shovels him up.
“I work in the hospital all night and know kids shouldn’t touch this shit. He touches everything!”
I sort of smile at her.

“A fireman,” the unkempt man says again shaking his head. “You need some help with that. Got to know some people, right?”
“Nah,” the white man goes. “I’m pretty set. I’m a corporal.”
“Shit. Well, don’t go back to Iraq.”
“I wish, man,” the white guy laughs.
I cap my coffee.

The Jamaican woman is holding the toddler on her hip. I look up at the train times.
“Yeah sister, take this,” the unkempt man goes to the Jamaican mother. I turn around. He gives her a dollar. She takes it. I look back up at the train times.

A little later I see the unkempt man again. I am looking at The New York Times headlines at the newsstand.
“You motherfucker lets take this outside!” A skinny, old black man in a small, Christmas sweater and tight jeans is yelling to the Indian cashier.
“You wanna take this outside, I’ll take it outside!” The Indian man yells back in a tart accent.
I’m watching the scene transpire. So is the unkempt man.
“Hey, look how ‘bout I pay for this paper first,” a white businessman interjects indifferently, unfazed.
“Yeah man, take his goddamn money then we’ll go outside, you motherfucker,” the skinny, old man says waving his hands wildly. His extremidities are skinny and electric looking like short-circuiting wires.
The unkempt man and I are just watching this now. We aren’t pretending to read the headlines anymore. I cross my arms.
“Pussy fucking cunt motherfucker,” the skinny, old man hollers, his arms are waving every which way.
“Shut your fucking mouth, nigger motherfucker,” the Indian man goes. Shoves the change at the businessman, he takes the money and tucks the paper under his arm, walks away.
The unkempt man shakes his head. He buries his hands in the pockets of his oversized coat. The two men are still going at it. The Indian man won’t leave the counter. A pale, doughy policeman is walking over slowly, taking his time.
The unkempt man goes, he’s shaking his head and looking down, he’s muttering to himself. He goes, “No good, no good,” to no one in particular. He walks away and so do I.

Echo Lake Country Club, Westfield, NJ
May 2, 2007

I’m having a fancy dinner with my parents and their friends who are ten years older. The dinning room has big windows that face the golf court. The sun has set. There are big, red curtains that bunch and remind me of prom dress sleeves in the eighties.
“He’s dead?” My father reaffirms with Mrs. Booth.
“Yes, make a point to read the obits every week in the paper, he was listed last Thursday.”
“Hm,” my father picks up his knife and fork to cut his steak. “So, he’s dead?”
“Mm-hm,” Mrs. Booth hums as she spears a french fry with her fork.
“I remember him,” my dad goes. “He was sort of,” he paused, “eccentric.”
He eats a piece of steak. Continues, “I remember, we were all standing there one morning, on the platform, before the commute. You know, no one talks. Just stands around. There’re rules to it.”
Mrs. Booth is nodding, I’m not sure if she’s listening.
“And he must have just retired because he was there, but he wasn’t wearing a suit, he was in the parking lot and he just laughs, I mean really loudly. He just laughs out,” my father goes. “He just hollers out, ‘You unlucky bastards!’” My father is laughing now. “And we’re all just standing there, you know, no one says anything but we’re all just sort of looking around.” He pauses, shakes his head smiling. “I’ll always remember that.” He picks up his knife again.
“So, he’s dead,” my father says again, mostly to himself, and cuts another piece of steak.

New York City Library, Manhattan, NY
April 27, 2007

“It’s better here because when you look down the streets you can see the end to it, it’s not just buildings everywhere. You can see out. I felt more trapped in Boston. But you’re so alone here, that’s the thing” she says.
Two friends and I are splitting sushi on the library stairs.
“Excuse me beautiful ladies may I ask to have one moment of your time,” a man with tight braids and thick glasses says. He’s wearing a beige checkered, scratchy looking suit.
“I’m here to help the homeless…” he begins. We stop talking and look down at our sushi. Will him to leave us alone.
“… As you know there is an epidemic in this city…”
I pull the salmon off the rice ball and dip the fish in the plastic lid that’s holding a puddle of soy sauce.
“… With your help you can feed…”

In Bangkok, near Soi 55, there is a place where a legless beggar lays on his face in the middle of sidewalk every evening and I have, on more than one occasion, stepped over him to get to where I was going. He pushes his red plastic money bowl with his head.
“I want to give him money,” Rusty once said as we walked by him. “But I’m not supposed to, right?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I say. “That’s what I read.”
“Yeah, me, too. But why is it again?”
“I forget, so they don’t get used to it, or expect it, or something. I don’t know. So they don’t get in a welfare state maybe?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Yeah.”

“I mean I only see college friends who live in the city,” my friend says quietly. “You don’t meet new people.”
“… Only a dollar could make a difference…”
I’m trying to scrape off the sticky rice from my fingers with my nails.
“You don’t look at anyone on the streets. I mean no one.”
In the village where I used to live in the south of Thailand I ran by an open sewers most days. Two boys once built a fort in the sewer. I stopped running. I looked down into it. They had made a room with cardboard. They had toys in there with them. They were covered in that sloth. They weren’t wearing shirts. “Khun Mary!” One hollered up and waved. I waved back.
“… Now I know you ladies have a dollar, just one between the three of you…”

A few days later I’ll be in midtown, walking briskly to Pace University to meet Zach after work. I come out of the park. Swing a right. I’m striding. My hair is long and brushed and is waving behind me.
“Ma’am!” A woman yells behind me. I ignore her. “Miss!” She yells again. I keep walking.
“Miss!” She yells for a third time, this time with agitation, and as I continue walking I entertain the idea that maybe she had something to tell me specifically. But I doubt it.

I’m putting the empty plastic sushi containers in a brown bag.
“… So can you manage it? A dollar?”
My friend looks up. Shakes her head. No, we can’t. Sorry.
“Well I thank you for your time,” he says. Smiles. Walks to the people next to us.
“… Do you have a minute?…”
“And I mean,” my friend gets right back into it, “you just turn off. Devoid yourself of even the possibility of human contact with the people you pass on the streets.”
My cell phone rings. I flip it open. It’s the boy I like. I’m delighted.
“Hi,” I say warmly into the phone. “How are you?”
My friends keep conversing next to me but I don’t hear them. I’m just listening to him now. He’s in the same city as I am, that day. That’s rare. Normally we’re in different countries.

I’m Just Afraid I Don’t Fit In Here

I came home from Thailand ten days ago and I am with Brian. Brian is three years old. We’re keeping a pink balloon in the air.  

“Mary Lorraine, what grade are you in?” Brian asks out of nowhere. He bops the balloon with his head.

“Bri,” I say mid-lounge, I punch the balloon back to his side. We’re both taking the game pretty seriously. “I’m not in any grade. I’m out of school. I’m finished.”

“Then,” his face twists and contorts and I can tell he’s working something out in his head. I kick the balloon because he doesn’t go for it. “Then why do you still live with your mommy?”  

I go into a ten-minute rant about our generation and the job market and what college did to us. Brian is in the corner, bouncing the balloon against the wall. He isn’t even facing me. Suddenly the balloon floats over to my side. I don’t notice. I’m still talking. It hits the floor.

Brian yells.

I cry, “That one doesn’t count! I wasn’t paying attention. It didn’t count.”

I’m looking at him now. He’s cradling the balloon in his arms. “Bri,” I plead, “Can’t we just start over?”

He shakes his head no.  

~ 

I don’t mention how when I left Thailand I was given two and a half hours to leave. Two and a half hours to pack up my life, which was a year and half deep, to say good-bye to my village and to get on a plane. Two and a half hours. I only told that story in full once, to Erin, in a coffee shop in Manhattan.

“So,” I concluded, our coffee cups drained, “I feel pretty… out of it.”

“Yeah,” she gasped, “I mean obviously.”

“I’m just confused right now,” I said and went to finish off the piece of cake we were sharing. “So,” I said looking back at her. I suddenly needed to stop talking about this, it was making me feel funny. “So, how are you?” 

~ 

The day after I came back from Thailand heavy rains plagued New Jersey. There was flooding. Basements filled up with water. I thought it was funny people were making such a big deal out of it. It reminded me of a typical day during monsoon season. So, when my mother asked if I’d pick up potatoes for dinner I put on my rain gear and got on my bicycle. I biked through town and to the south side, up South Avenue. I turned into the grocery store, wove around idling SUVS and parked my bike under and awning. I bought the potatoes. Hung the plastic bag on my handlebars and biked home. When I walked into the kitchen I was soaked through. 

 “What on earth are you doing?” my mother asked alarmed. “Why didn’t you drive?”

Why didn’t I drive?”

I didn’t think of it.  

~ 

You have to understand I’m not trying to be eccentric here. I’m just trying to Be. In as honest a fashion as I can. Only recently has this been translating into more and more of an erratic sort of behavior. I swear though, I am not trying to be eccentric.  

~ 

Two days after I came home that boy shot up all of Virginia Tech and I sat on the carpet cross-legged watching the 24-hour news reel. I would make snacks in the kitchen, bring them into the den and keep watching the story line unfold like the movie CNN made it into. I was entranced. I liked talking about it.

“I can’t believe it either. It’s awful,” I’d hash over with mothers while waiting in the coffee line.  It’s an easy feeling. This horror. 

~ 

I help my mom in her classroom because I have nothing else to do.

“Thank god Mary Lorraine,” a teacher says in passing. I’m in the hall making bracelets with students for Mother’s Day, “You came home safely.”

I was pretty safe there, I think. I smile and nod. 

 “Must be so nice to be back,” everyone I have seen says to me like a tree full of hungry sparrows.

Must be so nice to be back.

Must be so nice to be back.

Must be so nice to be back. 

“Bet you won’t take this country for granted again,” someone laughs. Smiles. Pats me hard on my back. It makes me cough once as if I had been choking. “Yeah,” I say regaining myself. Laugh a little. Smile. Retreat behind my mother. “Oh, we’re so happy to have her,” mom starts up. I look at my shoes. I’m five years old.

~

There are some major changes that have happened while I’ve been gone that’s for sure. The one I notice the most is this; it’s the basic, primal, size-up question that I have known so well for the last four to six years.

It’s the, “Where do you go to school?” question which has now been replaced by the, “What do you do?/Where do you live?” question.

“When did that happen?” I ask my friend, Zach, after in horror I had to answer, “Nothing. With my parents,” to a girl I haven’t seen since high school. She was dressed neatly in a skirt and boots with long, blow-dried hair.

“You’ve missed a lot,” Zach says dryly.  

The second question is posed mostly by my parents to the most random people. “Does he have a friend for Mary Lorraine?”

I wasn’t up for grabs a year and a half ago. So that’s another change.  

~ 

I was at an underground bar on the Lower East Side last Wednesday night. The bar was mostly empty. It felt like a smoking lounge. Dark oriental carpets and mahogany bookshelves and tea cups instead of cocktail glasses.  There was a transvestite standing alone by the bar and I noticed him looking at me. He was older, probably in his forties. He wasn’t flamboyant. He wasn’t trying to stand out. He was wearing a white blouse and a black, long skirt. Plum lipstick. A brunette wig with thick bangs. He kept fiddling with his drink.  

I stood up from the table to get another Jameson and Ginger, he approached me shyly as I leaned against the bar.

“Hi,” he said in a deep voice.

“Hello.”

He smiled and asked, “Do you know the name of this bar?”

“The Toy Factory, I think,” I said, “something with the word ‘toy’ in it at least.”

“Right, that’s what I thought. I just,” he started to spin his straw nervously, “I thought this would be different.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I just feel silly.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I’m dressed like a woman,” he said flatly. I imagined him climbing onto the elephant in the room and I smiled fully and warmly and I loved him for it.

“I’m not trying to stand out,” he said.

“You aren’t,” I said and tried to reassure him. But I was lying. He did stand out here.

“I’m just afraid,” he said looking into his drink, “that I don’t fit in here.”  

If I was a braver sort I would have hugged him then. I would have grabbed his hand and we would have run out of this unmarked bar, we would have run out the back alley and into the rainy night. We would have run through the dark traffic and exhaust and lights. We would have run until we found the place where the city ends and the forest begins.  

But I didn’t do that, of course. I don’t even know if that place exists.

Instead I said, “I wouldn’t worry.” I paid for my drink. And I walked back to my table.  

He stayed at the bar. Standing alone, mostly peering into his drink. And soon after he left.  

A Very Long Friday the 13th

This article appeared in Speak English! Magazine May 2007.

Tokyo

I am trapped in the airport in Tokyo and I don’t know what time it is. There is a mechanical problem on my flight and the passengers had to disembark. People are angry and tense. They have connections they are going to miss. Meetings they won’t make. A life of timetables that are broken down into fifteen minute units. They can’t stand this. “It’s not acceptable,” a woman jeers.  

I could careless. Stewardess pass out finger sandwiches and soda. I have free wireless. I’m sitting on a comfortable chair. I really don’t understand the problem. It’s something I observe but can’t completely wrap my brain around. So we spend the night in Tokyo? Really, what difference does it make? One day or the next?  

Suppose it’s pretty easy for the girl who has nowhere to go to think. Suppose I’m sort of in a unique position here.   

San Francisco  

There isn’t free wireless and I am sitting on the floor drinking a one-dollar coffee. I had to break another dollar to make a call home to New Jersey, to tell an answering machine I’d be on time, I think.

The diversity in this country staggers me and I don’t think anyone can see me. No one looks me in the eye.  

When the plane was descending I pressed my face against the window to see the red Golden Gate bridge stripe across the blue water, the green humps of mountains. Nice clean primary colors, like a simple crayon box shaken out onto the floor. 

I’ve been here before, once. We all have. Fifteen months ago I was, with some hesitation, walking to the plane. I was walking with Maeve, I remember that. Today I am here again but now I’m alone. My time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in southern Thailand is the experience that is surreally resting between these two moments in time. It’s all so bizarre.  

(before) Uthai Thani 

I am biking to my host parents’ house quickly because the sun is setting. I had a second beer with Caitlyn and whoever else was at the S&W that day and I shouldn’t have because I knew it would make me late but I didn’t care. Sweat is pouring out of me and I think how this feeling, racing home on my bike, makes me feel like I’m eight years old. I’m looking at the ground in front of me, pedaling hard, quickly, suddenly it’s right in front of me, an elephant. I weave around her. I smile to the man probing her with a spear. I am not in New Jersey and I am not eight years old, I reaffirm.  

The sun is setting, big and yellow orange like an egg yolk. I’m turning onto the dirt path in front of the house. My host mother is hollering my name, bringing me a coconut and a straw. Smiling. The chickens part for my bike. 

I have so many moments like these. Details. Random and strange and lovely. They are filling up my pockets. I don’t know what to do with them.  

(yesterday) Bangkok 

“The day after I was finished with my service,” Dr. John is recalling at my exit interview, “I thought to myself, what a strange dream.”

(right now) San Francisco

The plane is boarding. This is my last flight. I don’t mind these connections. Moving from one place to the next. Following the herd of rolling luggage and passengers. Hopping about airports like rocks across a stream. Being in transit can be such a comfort.

I called my mother in a cab in Bangkok to tell her the time my flight would arrive. I couldn’t get it out. I began to cry. Shortly thereafter I hung up. I do have to go home now, I told myself in the cab, I have to be closer at this time.

But the new realization that is blooming inside of me now, what I didn’t fully account for is that, here, I am just as far away from my home in Thailand.

We’re boarding now. Two kids are hiding from their father behind a row of chairs. He finds them. The kids giggle, the dad says, “Okay, enough messing around, we’re boarding.”

I’m boarding.

What I Have Learned Here

A shorter version of this article appeared in The Westfield Leader in April 2007.

Two Januarys ago I was in San Francisco slowly walking down a tarmac headed towards a Delta jumbo jet, which would take me first to Tokyo and then to Bangkok. All in all I would be traveling for the next twenty-four hours. At the time this seemed difficult, hard to imagine, romantic even. Now traveling for twenty-four hours seems, I don’t know, basic, obvious. Sometimes I get on a twelve-hour bus and realize I forgot to bring something to entertain me, like a book, and it’s fine. I just sit there. It’s fine.

Things have changed.

When I left for the Peace Corps I had one quote I held dear. It was a quote I repeated heavily during the six-months between graduating college and Peace Corps. It was my justification for everything, for what I was doing. It was the only thing I understood. It was all I had. This was the quote. It’s told through the perspective of a homeless man speaking to a volunteer in a soup kitchen. It reads:

“If you are here to help me you are wasting your time, if you are here because your liberation is bound with mine than welcome.”

I still like that quote. But the word “liberation” doesn’t seem right anymore. Liberation from what? Liberation to where? I recognize that I am bound to you, that me being here depends on you being there. I recognize there is a balance. But liberation? That seems far-fetched.

I remember the autumn of 2005 well. I had graduated college. I was swinging between my college town and my hometown. I visited friends in Seattle, spent time in Warwick, NY, spent time with my grandmother in Pittsburgh, took ferries to Fisher Island to visit Gavin, went to Florida, to Maryland, to Providence, to Vermont. I lived out my backpack. I left my sleeping bag in Kate’s apartment in Ithaca. Left some of my paintings on the walls there. I left a trail of books behind me, up and down the eastern seaboard, like crumbs.

I was anxious. Moving made me feel more comfortable. So I moved, a lot. I was anxious I’m sure about the great unknown that was to come. I would read anything I could about volunteers in Thailand. About the stray dog problem (I was bitten by a stray dog last July, the rabies shot hurt more than the fangs), about the bad water, about the stomach sicknesses, malaria, bird flu, the heat, the lack of toilet paper (Yesterday I read the NY Times article online about the Manhattan yuppie family who stopped using toilet paper to decrease their environmental impact for one year. This article created a lot of stir in the blog community. A friend of mine, a volunteer in the northeast, likes to say, “get rid of the middle man.” The middle man being toilet paper. He means just using your left hand and water, which is what we have to do, some more than others, it depends on what part of the country you’re in… This doesn’t bother me anymore. I don’t think twice… I’ve been at trapped at a bus station at four in the morning with mild food poisoning using my own underwear as toilet paper while squatting over a hole in the ground… Too much information?)

That’s the thing. You just adapt. People can adapt to anything. I’m getting off topic. I get off topic all the time. Every article I’ve written here starts out as one thing and ends as another. I probably shouldn’t admit that, but it is what happens. And I reread it and think, look at this little idea that was just born. Just seemed to have fallen out of the sky.

As I was saying, before I came to Thailand I was anxious. And I spent quite a lot of time imagining what this experience would be like. Which is silly, of course. How can you imagine it? How can you even begin?

(I’ve seen a full tour bus turn too quickly, tumble down the embankment again and again and again, crunching, snapping down trees. I’ve seen a student’s split open head pouring blood on the pavement in front of a 7-11 his motorbike flung to the other side of the highway. I’ve bowed to Thailand’s crowned Princess. I’ve had informal lunches of noodles and chicken with the Governor of Phang nga. I woke up to a gecko stuck between my toes. I’ve bicycled by the same dog’s body for days flattened by a truck his mouth in an open snarl with teeth but flat. I’ve run at dawn while monks in orange robes collect rice and the Muslim prayers are being broadcasted and the sun begins to rise over the limestone cliffs that circle my town completely. I’ve gone running while a toad was trapped in the toe of my sneaker. I’ve had ice cream cones with Thailand’s Minister of the Interior and his wife. I have woken up at three in the morning to my father calling from Manhattan to tell me Thailand’s military has just overthrown the government, I’ve said back to him with this strange confidence of mine, “Don’t worry about it,” when I, of course, as always, have no idea what I’m talking about. I have witnessed the sunrise and set here more times than I think I have in my entire life before this, combined. I’ve written the speeches that the Governor will read to tsunami victims’ families and I’ll stand behind him under an umbrella in a skirt, sweating because of the heat. I’ve written letters to the families of tourists who are killed in freak accidents here vacation. I have once jogged by a very old man curled into the fetal position on the side of the road and saw a woman squatting on the other side looking at him dying, I ran on. I’ve climbed over the rail of a ferry in the middle of the Adman Sea, dropped down several feet and landed on my ass in a rowboat with an old, withered sea gypsy, he smiled, the ferry left and the man rowed me to an island… I am absolutely alone here… I can do these things absolutely alone. This morning I was running and got lost in a rubber tree plantation, didn’t know which road led me out. “Hello,” a Burmese woman said bravely baring her white, horse teeth under a big straw hat. I smiled back. I could not have imagined these things, expected them, or prepared for them. How could I have?)

Before I came to Thailand I was fixated on what would happen to me and what I would learn while I was here. I wanted to know what new knowledge I would have when I came home at the end of this experience. Would I have some worldly secrets? Is there something I could get from the field that I couldn’t find in books? What else could there be?

I was so eager for this knowledge, some could say I was greedy for it. The secret. The quest for this knowledge, ultimately, is what drove me to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in the first place. Now I do view this as greedy, I wouldn’t have then, two Januarys ago.

But things do change.

What have I learned here? Who the hell knows. I actually started out this article to write a whole list of things I learned, idealistic, hippy stuff. I was going to write a lot of stuff inspired by Buddhism. I wanted to write something about how I learned to treat everyone as if they are my mother, true compassion, stuff like that. But that’s not true. That’s only true for me on good days. And they aren’t all good days. I have shown shades of myself here that are more selfish, more cruel and greedy than I would ever want to admit. True, I have shown positive sides also, of course, but it has never been all positive.

I have become numb to things. Now I barely flinch when students are whipped with bamboo sticks for not being able to regurgitate the answers they were never taught in the first place. It is my classroom, they are my students, and some other teacher has walked in and beat my child in front of me for no good reason and I don’t do a thing.

My best friend here, a woman who adopted me into her family early on, left her husband several months ago, a man I taught with. Then he beat her up. She came my house late at night for money, showed me her bruises, she was asking for help, for something, and I turned her away. I have no idea where she is now. I still work with her husband.

I am, of course, leaving parts out. I always have been. But things have happened here that I’m not proud of. I have walked home at nights, walked up the hill towards the mountain by my house and I have thought, was I even a good person to start out with?

And I wonder, I always wonder, what on earth am I doing here?

My hair will fall out in clumps. I will see other Volunteers in Bangkok, we’ll get away, it will be relief, and we’ll drink heavily. I’ll go on three day binges with everyone else. We won’t speak a word about our villages, the people in our communities, our lives there. We will never bring that up. Just jokes, just alcohol. I will leave
Bangkok in a hung over haze. What are we doing? And more, what is happening to us here?

What have I learned here? This is what I know. There are moments in life that happen and that you hold. Like smooth stones you pick up and put in your pocket. I had a moment here recently. It was a Saturday and I was taking a very long bicycle ride out because I wanted to get far away and I wanted to ride through the plantations and weave around the jutting limestone cliffs because after all, it is beautiful here. And I was far out, maybe ten miles, maybe more, and for a place as small as my village that is far. There is nothing in sight aside from a few grazing water buffalo. There are two elephants I pass, men poking their sides with spears, the elephants are moving logs with their trunks. I am happy to be so distant. I am happy that no one knows where I am. I feel good. I feel distanced. I have one of those moments where I look around, at the beauty and vastness of it all and wonder where on earth am I? And how have I traveled here all alone? I think that no one here knows me. I am completely anonymous. I am in the middle of nowhere.

And then I hear my name. “Khun Mary! Khun Mary!” A boy and a girl in oversized, old t-shirts come running out of the trees. Random shirts, I think one has a distorted Nike swoosh in the center. Dirty knees and legs that are scarred and pitted with years of bug bites. “Khun Mary!” Their flipflops are slapping the dirt road.

I slow down. I stop. They are my students. I’ve taught them before. “What are you doing?” They ask in Thai, eager, wide eyed, excited. “I’m riding my bike.” I tell them, we smile, I mount, start to pedal off. They say “Goodbye” in English and giggle. They are very proud of themselves for remembering that.

“Goodbye!” They call out again. “Goodbye! Khun Mary! Goodbye!” They keep yelling until I am too far away and I can’t hear them anymore.

It was a moment. A realization that I am part of a community here. Here. A small village in Phang nga,
Thailand. I had no idea where this place was before Peace Corps tossed me here. But now, somewhere deep in southeast Asia there is a small corner, a town comprised of tin roofs and banana trees, limestone cliffs and vast rubber plantations, a small town where children will come running out of the edge of a rainforest, yelling my name. They will call out, “Mary, Mary.”

And I mean who would have ever imagined that? I do have a home here. “Home,” is a heavy word. Home is important. And maybe that is just a little crumb of that great big secret I imagined waiting for me deep in these underdeveloped jungles. I left my Home to travel and explore and roam and at the end of this great trip I will return to that same place, my Home.

I have learned here how rare that is, to have that, a home waiting for you with love and support. That is liberation. That is what I know.

I am fortunate.

The Dentist

 This entry appeared in The Westfield Leader in March 2007 

The man said to me, “Only raise your hand if you can’t stand the pain.” Then he put a heavy mask over my face and the room became dark.I was at the dentist and I had no idea what he was about to do to my mouth. He would take off the mask occasionally and hand me a mirror it was all I could not to gag when he’d explain in broken English what and why my mouth was bloodied, why there was now a hole in my molar. I wanted to tell him to put the mask back on, that I had no desire to see any of this. I was in Bangkok for the dentist appointment because part of my tooth had just fallen out and I didn’t know why. There were bomb threats in Bangkok that weekend and the embassy told us to avoid public transportation, which was difficult.

Earlier in the week I was in my house in the south of Thailand when part of my molar fell out. Suddenly there was something hard and loose in my mouth. I spit out my tooth into my hand. Later on the 12-hour bus ride up to Bangkok I thought how odd it was because teeth falling out is a common dream.

When you dream that your teeth are falling out it’s supposed to suggest that you are about to lose something or someone who is important to you. It symbolizes losing something you originally thought was a permanent fixture.

I was also in Bangkok because a friend, a Volunteer who lived close to me and I had spent a great deal of time with, had finished his service and was flying back to America. He was nervous to go back home. He didn’t know what he was going to do there. He hadn’t even told his family he was coming home yet. “I guess I’ll call them from the airport,” he said.

“So much time has passed there,” he went on, “but it doesn’t feel like any time has passed here. I feel like I have been in a holding cell, in a void here.”

Friends have gotten married, had children. They talk about 401Ks and business trips and buying cars. All the while we’ve just been here. In the south of Thailand. Teaching children and eating food that’s too spicy and not understanding what the people around us are saying and trying to be polite, be considerate, in a culture that isn’t our own. We’ve been sitting by fans because it’s so hot and hitch hiking in the back of pick up trucks and reading used paperbacks waiting for buses that never arrive on time.

Whereas in America I had always felt like I was moving forward, in a linear fashion, here it feels like I have spent the last 14 months in a hammock, swaying casually back and forth.

I couldn’t feel certain parts of my mouth when I left the hospital. It felt like a marble was being pushed down into my gums. It hurt. And I was, in afternoon traffic, two hours from the cheap guesthouse where I was staying.

I got on a crowded bus. It was hot and I sat by the window as we went stop-and-go down the streets. Smog pumping out of cars and motorbikes and tuk-tuks. Old withered men pedaling by on bicycles.

Only raise your hand if you can’t stand the pain. I thought about that line and how I was going to tell my friend when I got back to the guesthouse. It’d make for a good story, I thought. I probed around my molar with my tongue. I remembered I was white and realized I was the only Westerner on the bus.

I felt alone and sort of lost and very dirty but it was fine. It was nothing new. I kept both my hands down, crossed on my lap. I sat and I waited to arrive back.

Culture Shock

 

As you may know, if I’ve been honest with you (though I haven’t been honest with too many people) I’m getting pretty sick of my role here. The white, young girl role. It’s difficult. It’s straining. The constant coddling, having to play along with it. I used to think it was funny. Now I think it’s too much.  

“Mary, aren’t you afraid? I wouldn’t let my daughter live alone like you. Why did your parents let you do this?” Only the most upfront of my friends ask me that. But the rest think it. Thais just aren’t direct.   

My role is the young girl American. The other three volunteers in my province, who my coworkers know, fit the mold better. Two men and one woman who is thirty. The twenty-four year old girl is confusing to the villagers. As it should be. If you think you about it, where the West is in terms of women’s rights, (and I’m not suggesting the West’s struggle for equal rights is finished by any means) how we have only been there for the last three decades or so, it’s such a sliver of time. It’s nothing. What I take for granted as being a girl born in America in the eighties—rights I assumed were normal, were a given—it’s all so very, very rare. Compared to all the other women in the world, past and present, my life has been extraordinary. I understand that now.  

In four days I will travel to Bangkok and then to Chantiburi to train the next group of Peace Corps Volunteers who are currently going through their three months of Training, which I remember well. When you get off that plane, when you get here, you are so idealistic and excited. It’s happening and you’re doing it. Only you’re not completely certain what “It” is but you have faith that the “It” will surface and define itself soon enough. During those long hours of training sessions days in and days out you strain your ears trying to get it. The one thing someone will say that will better define what you’re doing here. You’re optimistic you’ll hear it. So you wait and you listen and you wait.  

I remember when I was a Trainee and Volunteers who, like me now, had been in the field for over a year, would come in and do a presentation. I was in such awe. I was so curious how they had done it for that long. At that point a year seemed like a long time to me. How had they lived in the middle of nowhere? I kept waiting for the secret. Only it began to feel like they were holding something back. You’d get it in pieces. Like when you are younger and you begin to collect the bits you overhear that suggests that maybe Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist. Maybe that was all some comfortable lie our parents and our society had been telling us—for our own good. It was like that. 

I remember one Volunteer, who only had three months of service left, telling me, almost in a whisper, and it was his tone that horrified me, “Peace Corps tells you nothing about culture shock.”  

I remember another, a woman Volunteer, saying again in this sort of hushed tone, “You have no idea what being a second class citizen will do to you.”  

I sort of dismissed all this. Filed it away in my brain and forgot about it. Until of course, months and months went by of me living here, in this place in the south of Thailand, being the white, young girl. Months of being the Other. Months of taking it. Smiling and nodding and taking it and taking it. Months of forgetting my own culture, months of absorbing Thai culture, and finally coming out of it all and realizing all of culture is actually this pretty arbitrary thing. Realizing that what I believed was a given—was actually culture—realizing how much culture has to do with things like the environment—that it has nothing to do with fate, it wasn’t predetermined. Culture is an accident. Who I am is an accident, is random. Then I got it. What the other volunteers had been holding back. The thing they couldn’t explain. The thing you have to experience to really understand. The thing that bothers me so, that today I can barely, if at all, explain.  

Anyway, so I’m going to Chantiburi to do a training session on gender differences. What you experience here compared to America. In the end I’m going to gloss over it. I mean you can’t explain it. We’ll break apart case scenarios. Do that sort of thing. But I won’t even begin to suggest what happens to you when you are constantly reminded that you are NOT a man. When you are constantly told that you need help. That you can’t do things by yourself. When you realize how women over the course of time just submitted to it, because for some strange reason, you tend to believe what you are told. If you are told enough times.  

I remember during my Peace Corps interview at Cornell, the woman asked me, “What would you do if you were in a culture that suppressed women and there was nothing you could do about it?” The question got me. I hadn’t seriously thought about it before—I hadn’t seriously thought about a lot of the elements I’d face if I became a Peace Corps Volunteer—I was more applying because I didn’t have a clue what else I was supposed to do after college. I paused and then said, “Well, it would be interesting for me to observe.” She smiled, it seemed to be as right of an answer as their could be. 

It’s difficult. It’s difficult for me to accept that I just happened to be born in America. There is a guilt that plagues me with that, now. That I didn’t have before. It’s difficult to accept that I just happened to be born into the family I was born into. The comfort. The security. I guess it would all be easier if I had some strong religion to guide me here, but I don’t. It’s difficult to sit on the beach here, with all these tourists. It’s difficult to watch the Burmese four year olds sell you beer on the beach. It’s difficult to watch yourself become numb to it. Numb to the anger that used to rage through you, children born into poverty, children completely exploited. It’s difficult to remember how much you used to care. How much you used to think maybe, somehow, maybe a little bit, you could help. It’s difficult how you have to remember it, remember it the same way which you recall a dream, or a nice memory from the distant past. Something that is no longer present, that only remains in photographs or journal entries.  

And maybe that was the secret I was straining so hard to hear when I was a Trainee. The “It” that no one would just come out and say. The thing I wouldn’t dare explain during my training session next week; that something will happen to you here, through this experience. In your loss there will ultimately be a gain, and that gain will be wisdom—a deep understanding. John Updike said, “Growth is loss.” Ignorance is bliss. And I have grown more than I ever, ever wanted to here.