This Is How It Always Is(106)

“Poppy.”

“Poppy,” K echoed. “Pretty name.”

“And yours?” Rosie prompted.

“We adopt them. We did not mean to. Choochai and I marry but not official marry, you know? We think we will be childless, and this is okay. There is fighting. There is war we are not part of and not apart of. We are very poor, country very broken. So we okay just to be two. Then in first month here, man bring in wife in labor three days, lost so much blood. The mama die. The father leave. The baby live and come home with me and Choochai. Every of our babies was a baby here who need home. But we cannot home all the babies here who need.”

Rosie put down her spoon to breathe, to count the ways this was barely imaginable, never mind sitting right across from her. “You are a wonder.”

“I am?”

“You are.”

“Why you say?”

“You left your home, your family. You work here, in these conditions, year in and out, without sufficient training or equipment or supplies. You’ve taken in these children who needed a family and made them your own. All while suffering the stigma of being…” She trailed off.

“Kathoey.” K supplied the word. It sounded like cat toy. “One of the thing K stand for. Translate as ladyboy. What you say?”

“Transgender.” Rosie sounded defeated to her own ears and wondered why.

“But not really suffer stigma,” K added.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean—” Rosie began, but K went right on.

“Not like for Poppyclaude I think. In Thailand, lots kathoey. Not so big deal. We all Buddhist. Is karma. Is life. Is just another way to be.”

“Really?” It was the most astonishing thing Rosie had encountered in her travels thus far, including the woman who had arrived in labor and literally gotten down off an elephant.

“Buddhist way.” K shrugged. “Last life one thing, this one another, next another. Whatever happen last life to make me like this not my fault. Everyone know that. Me, my soul, will be lot of bodies before done, some male, some female, some both. So okay. No one care what is under my pants.”

“What is…” Rosie-the-clinician battled Rosie-the-courteous and won because so much was on its head here. “What is under your pants, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Like Sorry Ralph, I have all original parts.” K smiled. Rosie was impressed with a language facility that extended to puns. “Lot of clinics in Bangkok do surgery but mostly for foreigner. Many kathoey here let be. Which parts not what matter. Is soul, how move, how dress, how love, how be. Just like Poppy, I am female soul so do not matter to me or Choochai or sons or daughters or anyone what is under pants. Makes sense?”

Rosie nodded, speechless. It was hard to talk about these things in one’s own language, never mind someone else’s. “So you just…” Just what? She wasn’t sure herself what she was asking.

But K nodded. “I grow up north Chiang Mai. Not really even town. Rural. Farm. But my cousin kathoey so I know it is okay. Then at school, older students kathoey. Show me how. Hair. Clothes. Hormone easy to get if you want but lots do not. Just me is enough. Is not same for Poppy I do not think?”

“No.” Rosie shook her head and told herself sternly that it would be inappropriate to cry in front of this woman with whom she had spent the afternoon removing shrapnel from the side of a six-year-old. “It’s not the same. Everyone cares what’s under Claude’s pants. Poppy’s pants. And many of them mind. First everyone knew, and it wasn’t safe. Then no one knew, and then they found out, and that was worse.”

“Why you keep secret?”

“Because I didn’t learn. I saw. I saw what horrors come from keeping it a secret. I saw what storms unleash when it’s uncovered. But somehow, somehow, I made the same mistake.”

“Mistake good because you learn, you fix.”

“I don’t know how,” said Rosie.

“Middle way.”

“At home, there is no middle way. You’re male or you’re female. There’s no in between. You conform or you hide. You conform or you’re wrong. If you dress like a girl, then you have to be a girl, all girl, and if any part of you’s not, that’s not okay.”

“Not just middle way between male and female. Middle way of being. Middle way of living with what is hard and who do not accept you.”

“How do you do that?”

“You keep remember: all is change.”

“All what?”

“All life. You are never finish, never done. Never become, always becoming. You know? Life is change so is always okay you are not there yet. Is like this for you and Poppy and everyone. The people who do not understand are change. The people who afraid are change. There is no before and no after because change is what is life. You live in change, in in between.”

“And how do you do that?”

“You learn over lifetimes. You keep try. You will find middle way to be. This life. Next. You find your way.”

Rosie did not know if she could wait that long.

K smiled. “You know story of the Buddha?”

Rosie shook her head.

“Just like you and Claude. Poppy. Just like everyone. Story of change, of not-knowing to knowing, ignorance to enlightenment. But enlightenment is long, take a long, hard time. If it does not, it does not result enlightenment. Buddha was many lives before last one. In last life, Buddha was prince. You know?”