Between Semesters

The day I book my flight, the dean says I need to rethink the timing of my casual leave. I tell her I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible.

Seeing him on the bench just beyond the gate feels like refreshing the location in GoogleMaps when the screen whizzes across the globe, finally zooming in on one spot. He has sunglasses on and flowers in his hand. Mine is shaking as I take them from him and the plastic wrapped around them gives it away. I’m glad to break contact when we enter the temple and with my forehead to that floor, I remember how to take refuge. There are many things I want to tell him about but we have plenty of time for a change. For the first day, we talk mostly about mangosteens and monks and I’m pleasantly surprised to discover how effortlessly I am allied with myself.

I ask how he wants to be touched. “Tenderly.” I want to be touched tenderly, too, but I’ve always been embarrassed to ask for it. I’m not sure when I learned I shouldn’t want to be touched that way. We take our time and there is no destination. “You look good,” he says. Maybe he can tell that I’m feeling self-conscious about the weight I’ve gained. “You look the way a woman ought to look.”

The week is easy and comforting and I don’t have to think about how or who to be. For the first time in a long time, my sense of worth isn’t bound to how he feels about me. We eat Tom Kha Gai in the cafe car of the train on the way back to Bangkok — the same train I rode in January but it feels different now. “What’s your favorite soup?” he asks and my first thought is “This one.”

When we get back to our seats they’ve transformed like Cinderella’s pumpkin and we crawl through the curtains onto fresh white sheets. As the curtains fall back into place, the sounds and movements of the train come into sharper focus. I feel outside of time, as though our past and future together are both contained entirely in this single evening, freeing me from any sense of regret or expectation. I feel at once every age — a playful girl in her magical fort and a contented woman in her final resting place. A lustful teenager in her first boyfriend’s bed and a generous goddess in the space of awareness itself.

He’s leaning back in my lap, his body perpendicular to mine so I can see the profile of his face and chest against the dark glass. We pull into a sleepy station and light streams in, silhouetting the bottle of rice wine in the cup holder below the windowsill. His breast shines with ointment he has just applied to his new and first tattoo. The black cord I tied around his neck this morning casts a thin shadow where the Inca cross he wore for so long used to hang. My hand is resting on this soft olive stomach I know so well and we talk about masculine and feminine wisdom. We talk about closure and research and culture and anger. We talk about my little step-brother and we talk about his ex-girlfriend.

I stop listening to his words for a while because I want to take in how it feels to be here right now: southbound on a nighttrain in Thailand with him ten years later. It’s a feeling I want to hold onto — to stretch out as long as possible. I don’t want to go to sleep because I know things will be different in the morning and we’ll go our separate ways. As I begin to cling to the feeling, it starts to change into something else — something lifeless — so I release my grasp and give it space to breathe. I let go and appreciate its beauty without interfering while it blooms and sways and eventually fades as I fall asleep. My last thought is about whether he knows I would still love him if he revealed just how wonderfully ordinary he really is. Whether he knows that I would be able to forgive him for anything.

There isn’t much to say as we turn to go up different escalators at the metro station. I have the surprising thought that if last night is our last night together, it will be okay. And just like that, I’m alone again far away from home. Tears stream down my face as I gravitate toward the Starbucks across the street, seeking familiar ground to help me transition slowly back into the strange solitude of this year. But as I let the sadness dance through, I find I don’t really need any ground beyond my own body so I pop into a local roastery and order a cappuccino with no sugar.

By the afternoon I’m glad to be alone, deciding where to go and how to get there and when to leave. I find a nice hostel at the end of an alleyway and take a cold shower and a warm nap. I practice speaking Thai with the woman changing the sheets on the bed next to mine. She lies down with me for a while. I go to the grocery store to buy a few things I can’t get in Bhutan like fresh coffee and chia seeds and gummy bears. I take too long deciding between Raspberry and Black Cherry jam and when I turn back, my clutch is gone. It’s my fault, really — leaving it in the cart like that. It has my phone, ATM card, and all my cash inside. I look around the big store full of strangers and shrug my shoulders instead of freaking out. It feels more like a nuisance than a crisis. In broken Thai and gesture, I relate what’s happened to a store clerk. We watch the security tapes but they’re so blurry that even if we found what we were looking for, I don’t see what good it would do.

She walks with me to the police station and points out her apartment building on the way. She walks very quickly and asks if I’m okay a few times. I file a report, which goes on top of a tall stack and I look at the officer expectantly until I realize he has no intention of providing further assistance. I ask if I can walk to the US Embassy from here and he just laughs. I ask how much a metro ticket would cost and he says 40 baht (about a buck), which is 40 baht more than I have. It’s Friday night and the office is closed until Monday anyway. The store clerk buys me a bottle of water at 7–11 and gives me 100 baht, wishing me luck.

I’ve already paid for tonight’s room and my passport is in a locker at the hostel. I don’t spend the 100 baht on dinner because I’m still not sure how I’m getting home tomorrow. Twenty-one hours later, I manage to pick up the money that my best friend in New York wires through Western Union. The first time I try, the bank teller refuses to release the funds because my middle name doesn’t appear on the transaction; perhaps they are meant for the other Caroline Leach in Bangkok receiving a wire transfer this morning from Queens. On the long walk back to the hostel to try to reach my friend at his 2am from the desktop computer to ask him to add Hope to the situation, my composure starts to fray. The smell of street food reminds me how hungry I am and I begin to hate every person who passes for no reason.

I keep refreshing my email but he must be asleep. She must see it on my face because the woman from naptime yesterday comes over and puts her hand on my shoulder. At this gentle touch of support, I finally relax enough to cry a little bit with frustration. “Kin kow lee-ow?” No, I haven’t eaten yet. I laugh with relief and wonder as she shows me the menu and tells me to choose anything I want. A kind traveller from Dubai lends me his international phone and within the hour, the whole thing is solved. I have more than enough money to get home and 6 hours to spare before my flight to Kolkata.

I buy a dress that I can wear to work when I don’t want to wear a kira and I buy jeans that are too big for me because it feels good to wear something that isn’t too tight for a change. I go back to the grocery store and buy just the coffee and the gummy bears. I check out of the hostel, paying for the meal this morning and bowing goodbye to my friend. I find my way to the store clerk’s apartment building and describe her to the shopkeeper downstairs who tells me her apartment number. She opens the door with a bed sheet wrapped under her arms, squinting against the light. I give her 200 baht to repay her kindness yesterday and apologize for waking her up. She asks what I’m doing now and I invite her to come to the night market with me. She tells me to wait downstairs while she takes a shower so I buy 1/2 kg of mangosteens and share them with some ladies on the stoop while I wait. The night market is overwhelming in a good way and even though she doesn’t speak any English, I feel connected to her the whole time. We eat noodles and ice cream. She buys me nail polish and I buy her boxers.

My first night back in Bhutan I dream a flood. I have a puppy with me and we get separated. I’m being carried downstream but I’m not scared because somehow I know I can get to the bank and climb out anytime. I’m just worried about the puppy. I feel guilty because I took him away from safety for my own entertainment and now look what has happened. As I’m searching for him the puppy changes, as things do in dreams, into a little girl and I never find her.

I have a hard time writing while I’m here because I’m not encouraged to feel my heart. Sometimes I really hate it here.

It does feel different after taking a break. I’m reminded that this isn’t my world and not too long from now, I’ll be gone and things will carry on without me. But I’m not gone yet and there is still work to be done.

The second night back I dream some unfamiliar sounds and I turn to ask him what they are. “You’re growing up,” is his only reply. At these words, my eyes open and my heart breaks in my twin bed. In the morning I can still recall the feeling — that one that comes along with knowing I will have to leave all sorts of things behind.

Sometimes I really love it here. I go downstairs to make breakfast and find a lively group who is staying at the guesthouse while attending a workshop. I make them some proper coffee from the beans I bought in Bangkok with the french press I bought in Thimphu and I join them in eating buttery, gingerey, cardomomy rice at their insistence instead of my usual oatmeal. After they have all left, I drink a second cup slowly. I spend the morning reading Rumi and writing a proposal to my boss that will make my job even more interesting and challenging. In the afternoon I take things to the tailor that need mending and buy my first apples of the season. On the way home I sit in the Shiva temple to pray for serenity and circumambulate the chorten to call on courage and spin the prayer wheels to ask for wisdom. I stop in the Angel Saloon and get my first facial and hair treatment for ten bucks.

I’ve gotten close with one family here and spend most evenings at their place. I’ve started walking in without knocking and helping myself to things in the kitchen. They say this is good. They just bought an oven and I teach the kids how to bake brownies. The boys are enthusiastic with the whisk and impatient with the timer. After dinner, Karma melts oil and spins cotton to make butter lamps for the altar and I practice on his homemade meditation cushion while he takes a shower. My mind is slow to settle and I repeatedly bring it back from thoughts about what will happen when I get home. I bring it back from judgments about how my stomach bulges over the waistband of my pants. I bring it back to the texture of the cement floor and the grief behind my eyes and the pins and needles in my left foot. The littlest one comes in and sits down on the other cushion. In my periphery I see him look up at me and then adjust his posture accordingly several times. The grief changes to joy, which still contains tremendous sadness somehow. He becomes restless after a few minutes and leaves the room and I miss him when he goes. Soon he comes in again, lying down on the mat a few feet away and I hear his breathing change as he falls asleep. Grief and joy and grief and joy and grief and joy and…