This Is How It Always Is(97)

But as she took her first steps toward the tree where she’d left her bicycle, what she found she lacked more than the machines and a lab and a pharmacy and sterile bedding was Penn. There was no waiting room as such, but had there been, he would not have been in it, waiting to tell her stories and listen to hers, waiting to take her home at the end of a long day of patients and prose so they could talk together and be together and make love and family together. Instead, there was a wall of humidity and an infinity of screaming insects and a daughter—son—nowhere in evidence. And this was a poor trade indeed.





Novice

Claude’s first day at the clinic began with breakfast, which was actually, literally called “joke” and probably was one since it looked like watered-down kindergarten paste sprinkled with grass clippings and had a raw egg cracked right into the middle of it. The sight of it made Claude woozy. Or maybe it was the smell of it. Or maybe it was just the fact of it. He had not been hungry since what had happened, happened. He thought it was possible he might never be hungry again. But he managed to eat at least a little bit of it. He didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. And now that he knew they ate still-jumping shrimp in Thailand, he thought it prudent to force eggs when they were on offer, even raw and in jest.

There were infinity people who wanted to meet and thank and say nice things to and about his mother and then take her away. “Do not worry,” a woman with white smears painted on her cheeks and nose called after his mother. “We take good care your child,” but his mother evidently was already not worried because she didn’t even turn around. “So”—the woman squinted at Claude from under a ratty straw hat—“what we do with you all day?”

Claude couldn’t even guess.

“Your mama is big helping us. Maybe you big help us too.”

It took Claude a little while to understand that the building he’d been brought to was a school. Schools had classrooms, desks, whiteboards, computers, art projects, homework trays, and playground equipment. This place had a dirt yard out front with a bunch of old tires sinking into dust and one big, open room with a falling-apart bookcase piled with papers spilling out of folders and small heaps of ancient-looking books and a stack of dog-eared, water-stained flash cards in English. The students were mostly younger than he was, and there were a lot of them, spread over the thin, tatty linoleum, its bluebells and buttercups faded to rumor, chatting in small groups or napping curled up against the wall or just sitting and staring into nothing. If Claude sat on the floor at school staring into nothing, he’d get in trouble for being off task, but he could see that there were not many more productive alternatives available here.

“You teach?” the painted woman asked.

What did this mean? She could not possibly think he was a teacher. Even people who imagined this worn, wounded room a school would not imagine a ten-year-old a teacher. Would they? “No?” Claude guessed. “I don’t teach?”

But apparently that was the wrong answer because the woman grinned and shook her head. “You sit here. I bring student over. You teach English.” She left and came back moments later with three smiling pigtailed girls and a stack of picture books. She said something to the girls about Claude in some language that didn’t sound like Thai but was just as incomprehensible, and the girls looked at him and giggled. Even in Thailand, everyone laughed at him. He understood why they did though because he knew he looked completely absurd. His lumpy head was ugly. His lumpy clothes were even uglier. And every time he walked or sat down or crossed his legs or stood back up, he had to think about how to do it because whatever natural movements he used to just have seemed to have gotten lost in transit. He would laugh at him too. At least they had that in common.

“Okay?” The painted-cheeks woman smiled at him. It was a question that seemed to encompass many things. Did he have everything he needed? Did he understand what he was supposed to do? Did he need water? Supplies of some kind? A snack? A lesson plan? An anything plan?

“Okay” did not seem like the truthful response to any of these questions—like hungry, okay was something Claude didn’t think he’d ever be again—but it was what he answered anyway.

“You fine.” The woman winked. “Begin read. You know what do next.”

But Claude did not know what to do next.

“Where your robe?” one of the little pigtailed girls demanded before Claude could even sort out the books on his lap. Her name was Mya, and Claude was relieved because apparently she spoke English already. Not that he knew what she was talking about.

“My robe?”

“You monk, right?”

“A monk?”

“Nen? You call, I think, ‘novice’?”

“I’m not a monk. I’m a gi … kid.” He felt himself flush. If Marnie Alison and Jake Irving ruining his life weren’t reminder enough of who he was now, what had to happen to make Claude remember? The little girls seemed not to notice though.

“But your head is”—Dao, whose pigtails were tied with red ribbons, searched for the right word—“naked,” and Claude wondered who had come before him, who had taught these girls some English and how and why “naked” was part of their vocabulary. He didn’t think it was probably from the picture books.

“I used to have long, dark hair just like you.” He spoke slowly so they would understand him. “But I shaved it before I came here.”