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List of Awards🗻 First Place, 2022 International Firebird Book Awards: Literary
🗻 First Place, The 2022 International Firebird Book Awards: Coming of Age 🗻 Second Place, The 2022 International Firebird Book Awards: Women’s Issues 🗻 First Place, The 2022 National League of American Pen Women’s Mary Kennedy 🗻 Eastham Flash Fiction Prize 🗻 First Finalist; The 2022 Lascaux Prize |
This story picks up a third of the way through the novel, As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back: Carlie—a seventeen-year-old survivor of child sexual trauma—steals $10,000 and runs away to Asia. Over six months of travel, The Lonely Planet path of hook-ups, heat, alcohol and drugs takes on a terrifying reality to the young survivor. She trades sex with men for protection and learns to drink to get through it.
(Trigger warnings for smoking cigarettes and references to drugs, salcoholism,s and surviving incest.)
The Great Ultimate
The angle of the sun said early afternoon but I’d been on this island less than 24 hours and half of them drunk so I couldn’t be sure what the sun was saying. This room. It was nicer than the places I’d been sharing with all those guys. Those had a sense of smallness. This room might not have been much bigger, but the woods were polished and a sarong draped around the window, a flower, there, gave it grace. A candle waited for night. This wiggly familiarity was undercut by the sensation of wearing another girl’s clothes. My thoughts skipped as they often did to those smooth, green hills of Japan that I’d made up, beckoned if I wasn’t drunk enough when whichever guy finally stopped yammering about taking the longest bus ride across the bumpiest road to find the most remote whatever and we left the bar for our room.
As an offset to that thought, my hands automatically sought the comforting bulk of the fanny pack always at my waist. Where’d it—there, on the wobbly nightstand. Money, passport, ticket; just like when I bought the whiskey last night before the Full Moon party. Man, I needed a drink.
A rustle from the porch. A lady came through the door, the Asian one of the two we met on the boat to the island, yesterday. Cho. Cho ducked to miss the low frame, saying, “You’re up,” saying it with the same steady expression she wore when she found me on the beach I guess after dawn this morning, when she said she believed me. She believed me. After a moment, Cho said, “Sorry, I can’t seem to remember your name.”
“Carlie.” Cho had asked my name when she found me, too. Why did I pour out all that stuff to her—doing mushrooms with Laurence at the party, doing Laurence on the beach, doing all those guys from the last six months. Did I tell Cho that I stole money, that I ran away? I’m sure I told her about Dad. Smooth, green hills. Cho believed me. She said she, she said so.
Cho did not sit. I dug into the bed, almost into the wall the bed pressed against. “God, everything hurts. Where’s that other lady? The skinny one.”
“Ava.” The slight displeasure in Cho’s tone made me understand that I intended to piss her off. At the same time, I intuited that I was wearing her T-shirt.
Cho said, “Ava wanted to be here when you woke up.” To my dragon’s exhale, Cho continued, “I know Ava can be intense. Boy, does she get that. She can’t always control—anyway, she’s at tai chi practice. You and I need to speak alone.”
I squeezed against the wall. Cho perched on the opposite edge of the bed. “Is there anyone we can contact for you?”
Green hills. A kimono lady or two. I’d get there, I promised myself for the thousandth time. Teach English, never have to see him again. I’d get there.
Cho was asking, “A relative who’s not involved, like an aunt? Or a teacher?”
I didn’t want anyone family anymore. That’s why the six months of travel.
“How ’bout a friend?”
There were no friends.
Cho smoothed her loose, onyx-colored hair into a short-lived ponytail. “That guy, the Israeli—”
“Laurence?”
“He came looking for you this morn—”
“We were together when I freaked out. I mean, first it was great”—I was actually blushing—“Man, I’ve never . . . Never. It makes you see why guys . . . ” There was no end to that thought. The next was, “—then I was above . . . ” and the room spun just like it did last night, on the beach, when I came. I came. For the first time ever, I came, too. Then, we were pulling our clothes up, and down a tunnel, a trainload of shame. Smash. I would never let anyone make me come again. I ran. Laurence, he tried to calm me, told me it was the mushrooms, he was so much bigger than me one of his arms almost my leg but I was electric with the need to stop men. Down the beach, a dip in the sand was a good reason to throw myself onto my stomach, for how long? Eventually, crouched on the sand next to me, black hair, determined cheekbones, “Hey, are you okay?” “What’s your name, again?” arms draped over her bent knees when she sat, her back curved like a spoon, “I believe you.”
Across the bed, Cho offered me her handkerchief. She carried a handkerchief. “Carlie, I really think you should get some help.”
“Why can’t you help me?”
Cho moved her gaze to the wall as if it were a window.
I said, “So you’re just gonna let me—”
“I didn’t come on vacation to pick up a social work career I left years ago.”
Me, “Just—just—”
Out of frustration, Cho found, “Just come to tai chi practice.”
Cho was out the door. I skulked after her, furious enough that I hissed my desire to get a drink first—but didn’t know if I hissed, it seemed like I only thought hiss. Cho had no response, but between us was air that felt like a cigarette lighter about to spark. Then who should appear at the top of the dirt path Cho and I were climbing but long-legged form that could only be Ava?
“Hey, ya,” she sang out, and I knew from yesterday’s boat trip to Koh Phangan that her every Scottish r would stick to me like wet seaweed. “You lot didn’t put in an appearance. Can’t have you missing your first Tai chi lesson, Carlie. A pratice will change your life.”
Ava swooped into link arms our arms. I shook her off. In the fifteen-minute walk over the hill and along a cliff, Ava took it upon herself to avail me of the entire history of tai chi.
“ . . . started in the wee town of Shao Lin, which is in China.”
I knew that, China. I glared at Cho.
“ . . . temple monks were a fat, lazy lot . . . developed a series of exercises based on yoga . . .”
Then something about nine years in a cave. Stick Ava in a cave. I searched through my pockets for my cigs as Ava blathered on. “ . . . five basic styles . . . most widely known in the West are Chen and Yang.”
“Got a smoke?” I asked Cho, who shocked the shit out of me by handing one over. The sensible girl smoked Camels. Ava was still at it. “ . . . babble babble within Yang you find Chen strength, just as there is lyric beauty in Chen. The natural polarities pull in opposite directions, leaving space for you in between.”
Sounded like Star Wars to me. We turned off the path and continued down a set of steps cut into the hillside to a large clearing, packed dirt fringed by palm trees. Three rickety bungalows sat at its southern edge. A few feet from a beach licked by kitten waves, about twenty white backpacker types in small groups practiced Kung fu-looking moves, only super slow. The guys had nice muscles and more earrings than the girls, who were either skin-and-smoke or just plump enough to look best in baggy batik shorts. Cho hugged and then introduced me to a woman whose hair was a cape of brown curls. Gemma, the American who ran the school, shook my hand with both of her sturdy ones. Her New Jersey accent was harsh but welcome. I could not bear one more ounce of Ava’s happy crappy woo woo. Gemma was old, forty or something, and lived in the chicken shack buildings, leading morning and afternoon practices. She indicated for me to follow her between the palm trees at the back of the clearing, where she showed me how to tuck my pelvis and depress my chest, forming a soft half-circle with my upper body. It went against years of ballet training.
Gemma tied her curls into a knot. “No biggie. Most of us have to learn to chill.”
Next, Gemma told me to pretend to hold a beach ball. She called it the tai chi ball. “Palms face each other, a foot apart. Right hand above, left below. Breathe. Rotate the ball so the left hand is above and the right below. Palms face each other,” she reminded me. “Rotate again.”
I rotated, I reversed. When I remembered to breathe, a pleasant rhythm took over. When I messed up, Gemma got me back on track. About the time I registered the all-over headache as gone, Gemma interrupted with two claps.
“The form, please.”
I had no clue what Gemma was talking about. The hippies lined up facing the ocean, so I crept to a palm tree. The class stood silently, backs rounded, chests depressed, knees slightly bent, arms dangling at their sides like an upside-down horseshoe without that rigidity. An impossible position. They were all doing it. Gemma stood between the group and the sea. She faced everyone, her right hand forming a fist about sternum level. She moved her left hand to rest with the palm softly over her fist. The class gestured identically.
I thought, May the Force be with you. I couldn’t help it.
Gemma turned so that she, too, faced those teeny, tiny waves. A sterling stillness passed, then everyone began moving with the unity of a school of fish. They rotated the tai chi ball as they turned. They dipped to the ground and punched, spun on one leg, wonderfully able to maintain their balance, then slow-mo kicked with the other leg. After what must have been fifteen minutes, they stood as they had to start, facing the water, come full circle. So that was the form. I was holding my breath.
“What d’ya think?”
Ava popped up out of nowhere. For the first time, she came across as sweet, those skies of eyes filled with all that hope. I said, “Kinda cool.”
Her arm came through mine. “Tai chi gives you strength. To do anything. You know that, don’cha? You can tell me anything?”
Her father.
I ran, not fully aware that I was running until I heard “Carlie,” from behind. I charged the steep steps leading from the practice area to the path along the cliff. My smoker’s lungs caught up with me about half-way up. Three blond guys from the class; they were pretty cute, they had a water. “K’I have a sip?” I barged in with practiced, graceless panache, interrupting the easy patter of either Swedish or Norwegian. Asking in that flirty way soothed me. The guys: one of them would pass the water and the other would have the smokes. Everything would get back with the program.
The guys exchanged a nod, both of their mouths down at the corner in a way I’d seen a lot from Northern Europeans. The smiley one handed me the bottle. I peered into his eyes with the right amount of chin tilt.
He said, “Would you like a cigarette?
Ava dashed up. “Carlie, I need to speak with you. Privately.”
Immediately, the guys took to the steps. With a cig that was supposed to be mine. I called after them, “No, I mean—” but they were gone, leaving me with this crazy person who needed me to be her. “Get away from me!”
Cho arrived. I swung a damning finger at her. “And you!” She started to speak. “Shut up! You told her!”
Cho all but whispered, “That was really unprofessional—”
“Well, you’re not much of a professional, are you?” To Ava, “Man, what is your problem?”
“My problem has always been that I was only fourteen.”
“I was twelve. How could anyone do that to a twelve-year-old?”
Ava reached. I push her away. “No! Answer me!”
Cho said, “There are no answers, Carlie. That’s why I left social work.”
“There are,” Ava said. “Carlie knew about me the way I knew about her. That’s God, Carlie. That’s God. Do today, then do tomorrow. Do tai chi. You build joy.”
“Joy?” I hoped my harsh tone hurt her as much as it hurt coming out. “I’d settle for a stiff drink.”
“I know ya would. You don’t have to.”
A train as powerful last night’s, only this one drove us into a crash of silence. In the quiet, Ava said, “Do you know? Tai chi means The Great Ultimate.”
I sniffed. “More like the great ultimatum.”
With a rather grumpy look toward Ava, Cho assured me that tai chi demanded no ultimatums. “It is the opposite of ultimatums.” When I refused to loosen my spine, she said, “Carlie, would you like to have dinner with us?”
I gave her my cruelest dragon snort. Cho climbed one stair. With an impish, not-very-Cho grin, she climbed another.
During dinner, they ordered Cokes, not beer, Ava a Diet, Cho a regular. I sensed I should do the same. My Diet went in a flash and—Man! Where were my smokes—leaving me with nothing to do but eat my damn food.
Cho devoured hers. Ava sorted the vegetables and squid from their rich sauce and ignored her rice altogether. I tried the same, but couldn't resist the comforting soft mounds, the coconut curry like sweet velvet. Impossibly full, I leaned back. Every other table in the place held some chirpy group swilling beer. A blond guy, maybe the guy from the tai chi steps who offered me his water, I let him catch my eye. God, I knew how that would go; great for the first few—you’re drinking and screwing, okay so now that I knew what coming was like maybe not coming but he was there against the empty night, until the squabbles started and his stories got boring, where he went and how much it cost, and all my time got spent on the lookout for the next guy; Laurence, and Simon before him—where was Laurence, anyway? Why hadn’t he tried to find me—and before Simon, that guy with the red hat.
I heard reverberate what I’d just thought. Then I heard Ava. “Why ya cryin’, lass?”
I touched the water on my cheek. “I’ll never make anything work out. K’I bum a smoke?”
Cho replied, “How old are you, Carlie?”
I reached for my empty glass. “Twenty-two.”
“How old are you, Carlie?”
“Just turned eighteen.”
“Eighteen-year-olds buy their own cigarettes. Anyway, Ava’s allergic.”
I look to Ava. “Jesus Christ, you two are the weirdest couple.”
“Speaking of which,” Ava’s voice sailed over a touch of a scowl Cho shot my way. “Our room has two doubles, if you’d like one tonight.”
“Oh. Yeah, I forgot about a room.” I led the way out of the restaurant before another lecture could come my way. They crashed as soon as their heads hit the pillows. I didn’t. The longer I didn’t, the clearer it became that I was about to sneak out of my double bed and find me a drink. I could feel the whiskey, I’d buy Mekong, could feel it glide across my tongue and burn a trail to my stomach. What I couldn't conjure was what I really wanted, the shady, golden hum, the blurring of painful edges.
There were no ultimatums. I could drink if I wanted to. Just slide outta bed and along the cliff, down to that little town.
Go.
A reddish gleam. Ava’s hair. Plenty of passed out guys in my former bedding situations. Not a one expressed in sleep the restful joy I sensed in the bed next to mine. I wanted what they slept with more than I wanted Mekong. My legs twitched. I breathed them quiet. If I didn’t move, it couldn’t find me.
Voices engulfed me like the hum of bees. Slowly, one came clear. You'd better not tell. Dad came at me, circling. No one will believe you. You are lying. The voice lightened, became feminine. You are lying. I know what I saw. A hickey on your neck. She was shrieking now, her nails digging into my upper arms. Why do you make him do this? I'll kill you! And his voice again, I'll kill you if you tell.
I jolted from sleep. No smooth green, no hills. The cliff, go to the cliff. Oh, my God, and I couldn’t drink. On the porch, soft dawn. Cho on the wooden deck, back curved like a spoon. Ava in the hammock, a hand in Cho's hair. I lunged, collided with Ava in a way that almost hurt. As thin as she was, she felt solid and for once, real. I maybe pushed her away, maybe told them. That turned stupid. “ …babble your feelings babble babble … ” I didn’t want feelings. I wanted a goddamn cigarette. We appeared to be having this as an actual conversation because Ava said the best thing for me was to go to tai chi, and when did she get to decide what the best thing--
“And I am not going near those cliffs.”
That was definitely said out loud.
In the end, a Camel from Cho—“We do what we can”—and she held my hand as we braved those jeering rock faces and took the steps to the tai chi beach.
A hand on one hip, Gemma evaluated my ability to rotate the tai chi ball. “Right on. Now, Wave Hands Like Clouds.”
“The—what? Everyone else gets to do the form.”
Hair into knot. “Everyone else has covered the basics.”
“What about that?” I point to two girls facing each other, circling back and forth with their right wrists crossed and touching. “Why can’t I do that?”
“Push Hands? Push Hands takes listening.”
“Fuck it, just— show me this thing . . . what, again?”
Wave Hands Like Clouds started in the same position I’d practiced ALL DAY yesterday. Hold the tai chi ball. Right hand floats to eye level, crosses the face without touching, then floats down as left hand moves to eye level, crosses the face, and floats down. Unending circles, up, across, down.
“Hands are clouds sailing across the sky,” Gemma said as I practiced. “Blown by the wind. Nope, too tense. Flow with it.”
I coasted on a warm pulse that started in my palms and circulated dawn-calm through my body. When Gemma clapped twice and called out, “The form, please,” I took up residence near the palm tree. As the form finished, a spot of army-green descending the steep steps ended up being Nadav’s tank top. Mother of God, he had gorgeous arms. He met me between the palm trees, his dark curls lolling like happy puppy ears. Right away, I tucked in my chin. “I ditched you.”
In his guitar-like accent, he said, “I am here to find you,” said it as if I were a normal girl, just traveling. When we got together, he made me come. I wanted to make him come. That was normal. I wanted to be normal. Nadav was pulling a shroom-sized fold of paper from his pocket, “We try more carefully,” when Ava showed up to save me and Cho arrived to say, “Stop it, Ava. She needs to work out for herself if her life means anything to her.”
I slapped my hands against my things. “She?”
Cho pulled her hair into a momentary ponytail. “I am done with your moods, Carlie.”
“Are you now, you holier-than-thou dyke?”
“Why don’t you leave?”
“Maybe I don’t want to!”
“Maybe I don’t want you around anymore.”
“Cho, stop,” said Ava.
I said, “I bet you were a shitty social worker.”
Nadav took my hand, and the two of us were up those stairs. On the downside of the cliff toward the little town, Haad Rin, it hit me that Nadav had a pocket full of drugs and expectations—confirmed at the turn-off to the beach, when he told me he got my backpack from Simon as if he deserved a big smooch. He led me to the rocks that had secluded us, where he pulled me to him for that kiss. Still kissing, we found the sand. The last time I sat on this beach was when Cho took me into her and Ava’s lives.
Nadav’s mouth felt dry. He must have sensed it too because he pulled out the mushrooms like a question. He used my name. “Is Carlie ready?” I’d had men inside me who called me, “Carrie,” when they came, but I could not answer Nadav’s simple question. He ran his hands down my sides and asked again, then again. When he cried out, “What do I do wrong?” I couldn’t even say, “Nothing.” And Nadav was gone. I watched his footprints blow away, bit by bit, as the sun coasted into its two then three o’clock position. Couldn’t reach for green. This same sun would soon slip like a deserter below the horizon, and I didn’t have anywhere to sleep. I knew only one way to solve that dilemma. I didn’t even have my own clothes.
The breeze was giving off the initial hint of sunset before I allowed the decision. I went into Haad Rin for two packs of Camels. Then I passed the steep tai chi stairs and—breath held, success—skirted along the cliffs with those rocks below, approached Cho and Ava’s bungalow. On their porch, two forms. A conference. The compact one waited while the tall and fair skipped to me.
“Hey, ya,” crooned a Scottish brogue.
“You’re missing afternoon practice.”
“They'll be plenty of practices, Carlie. There's only one you.”
Hard to believe Ava actually said that. As if sensing my uncertainty, Ava suggested we return to Cho.
“Like she’s ever talking to me again.
“Don’t fret yourself. Cho’s a right hothead, but—do ya know, cho is an old-fashioned Japanese word for ‘butterfly?’ Not a girly one. A hunting insect that enjoys snatching at you, sharp!”
Ava linked our arms. It didn’t feel as sticky. We found Cho poised like an empress in the hammock. She and I regard each other as Ava disappeared inside their room. My eyes locked on the lip of the cliff, about fifteen feet off. Finally, my voice creaked out, “You're not a shitty social worker.” I could not force myself to say I'm sorry. Got out a look at her. “I bet you were great.”
“Not really. I’m not particularly nice.”
I almost didn’t laugh.”
“I'm not sorry for what I said, Carlie, but I could have said it more gently. For that, I am sorry.”
“Would you like a cigarette?”
Scottish brogue. “Can I come out now?”
With Ava on the porch, conversation was energetic, even fun, all that Scottish slang that I couldn’t track—minging?—made me laugh, until she got to, they lived in Tokyo, she taught English at a community college.
That was my plan. After six months of traveling, after I was sure no one was following me. I’d go to Tokyo, teach English. These two were spies.
Babble, babble, “ … I’m considering a position at the English Conversation school, recently opened by Cho’s department store. Where our determined butterfly is an important body.”
Cho blew smoke. “Not that important.”
“The store’s bloody called Yamashita’s. You’re the heir apparent.”
I said, “We have a Yamashita’s in Seattle. Japanese import store. That’s you? Why are you staring at me?”
Ava flopped next to Cho in the hammock. “My bonny lass, we have a self-disclosed fact about Carlie.”
Cho said, “She’s from—”
“Don’t say it,” I said. “People could hear.”
Cho said, “It’s one of the first things travelers tell each other.”
Ava kissed her. “It’s right there in the book.”
“Rules for a Lonely Planet life.”
“Stop making fun of me, you guys. I ran away. I stole their money—”
“You stole money? From your parents?” Ava asked at the same time that Cho wanted to know, “How old were you?”
“I did it over three years, snitching it, and I had Christmas and birthday money and a job. Chose Asia ‘cause The Lonely Planet said there were places you could get by on a dollar a day.”
Cho dropped fully back into the hammock. “Fuckin’ A, girlfriend.”
“How else was I supposed to deal with—?” I made a disgusting sound.
The sound Ava made was worse.
Cho dropped an arm around her.
Guilt flooded me. I asked Ava, “You seem happy, now. How do you deal?”
Ava looked utterly lost until she came to, “Wave Hands Like Clouds.”
The days took on the rhythm of Wave Hands Like Clouds: up, across, down. Up at seven, cross the cliffs to tai chi, down for a nap. Up in the afternoon, evening practice, down for bed. Cho established ground rules: no yelling, swearing, or stomping off. There were times that I showed up to tai chi not speaking to her, but I always showed up, and half-way through the class, I never failed to notice that whatever mood had followed me down the steep stairs ceded to the feeling of something I could only woowoo call energy being freed. It came from releasing tension when I reached from a place on my body, like between my clavicle and shoulder joint. It amazed me that I could feel so specifically, could feel anything, in my body. However, my commitment to the twice-daily practice stemmed from my fear of what would happen if I didn’t. No one needed to know the number of times each hour, that stretching my arms to the sky while I pushed my legs into the earth was the only thing that kept me from a bender. The time I came closest was the afternoon I found my backpack on our porch with a slip of paper tucked into my Lonely Planet. It was Nadav’s address in Israel.
My brain pulled from the rest of my head. That part was already down in Haad Rin, drinking. Somehow, I stretched my arms to grab myself back, didn’t even tell them. I didn’t want to “process”—I was just getting a grip on not running to them when I woke in terror, I’ll kill you if you tell, then Mom, her nails gouging my arms. You make them do it. She knew. Of course, she knew. I’ll kill you if you tell.
Up, across, down. Gemma started me on learning the form. Ward Off Right: an imaginary opponent comes at you from your right side. Block the blow with your right arm. Rollback Into Press: use both hands to grasp your opponent by the shoulders and pull towards yourself, then push into his chest. I asked Gemma how long it would take to learn the whole form; I had just over two weeks left on the tourist visa I got when I entered Thailand.
“To know the form takes a lifetime.”
I decided to grin. “Then how long does it take to get a straight answer outta you Buddha guys?”
That night, I marched myself to the cliff, took a seat far enough from its sheer edge, and focused on the sound of the waves hundreds of feet below. The stars drew me in. I never did this, never sat before going to bed and let the stars absorb me. I never even noticed they were there. On our way to tai chi in the morning, I told Cho and Ava, “I’m gonna get my own room, sleep by myself.” To cover my pleasure at their proud astonishment, I finished, “You two sleep with anyone you want.”
The time left on my visa crossed the one-week mark, then six days. At dinner, Ava poked around her carefully sorted plate. “We leave in two days' time.” It killed me, how she could not eat stuff.
Cho asked, “Any idea where you're going next?”
To divulge my plan to teach English in Japan would come across as desperate, so I lied, “Maybe India. Flights to Delhi are cheap from Bangkok.”
Cho’s eyes glistened like warm oil. “It is my opinion that you should come to Tokyo. With us.”
There was a pause, during which nothing bubbly came from the Scottish corner. I skewed my chin toward Ava. “Got a vote?”
“Maybe India, maybe Tokyo. With money you stole, Carlie.”
“That is hardly your b—”
“Having it makes you a victim, not a survivor.”
“Maybe I’m just not as good a person as you, Ava.”
Cho broke in. “Wherever you go, you’ll need a visa. You can get either India or Japan in Bangkok.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep in, “I know that.”
Cho pulled from her fanny pack some business cards and a bunch of those scraps of paper covered with hastily scribbled travel tips that always ended up in there. She passed over a business card. “Stay at Tan House. They’re Thai Chinese, and boy, does Mr. Tan know the form.”
“You carry around his business card?” I asked.
“Someone from tai chi’s always asking for a good place.”
“And you aren’t particularly nice.”
I had to laugh when Cho waved her hand near her ear, dismissing my irrefutable logic. Ava did her own breaking in. “I understand why you stole it, Carlie. Of course I do.”
“Do you think she knew? My mom?”
“I know she knew. They all do.” Ava reached across the table. “Come to Tokyo with us.”
This time, I had no reason to bite my cheek.
In Bangkok, Cho and Ava’s flight departed four hours after we reached the city, giving us just time for tea before they left for the airport. I was so weighed down with the words in my heart, all banging against each other, that I couldn’t find my cigs. Cho slid her pack across the table. Extracting one, I said, “What if I meet some stoner before I get my visa, get snockered, and blow off you guys and Tokyo?”
From Ava, “I wager you keep the cigarettes, then.”
Only with a Camel lit, them in a taxi, and the last wave waved was I able to mouth, “I’ll miss you.”
Tan House was a rattly old building painted a cooling mint green located down a quiet street in Bangkok’s Chinatown. I tugged a long red rope to the left of the scarlet and gold door, sending a bell echoing with an Addams Family quality. The door opened. A plump rooster shot out. A small gentleman with delicate wrists and the kind of belly old men get took my backpack with a bow and a grandfatherly cluck. “Tan,” he said.
That settled, Tan turned me over to his middle-aged daughter, Eleanor, who had his apple-like face with none of the wrinkles. She led me to a hot nook of a room on the third floor. She apologized for the room’s smallness all the way upstairs then all the way down, to the dining room for tea.
“Especially you are friends with Misses Cho and Ayva. You practice tai ke?” Packaged slice of cake in one hand, empty teacup in the other, Eleanor mimicked a tai chi Ward Off. “Please ask Old Tan practice with. You will make him pleasure.
I finished my tea with a cigarette instead of cake. Then, Mr. Tan took me to the shaded, red-bricked courtyard outside the sliding glass doors to the dining room. Amidst the clucking of chickens, we went over the first third of the form that I had learned on Phangan. I was accustomed to white guys fitting their height into the movements. Tan’s body made way more sense. He started me on the first posture of the second half of the form, Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain. Turn to the rear, reaching to the back-left corner while bringing the left hand overhead and the right up from the earth, like tiger’s jaws. The arms got a gorgeous stretch.
An hour later, the dining room began to fill, couple by couple, group by group, with what looked to be the usual assortment of Europeans, Aussies, and Americans. When Tan finally allowed me to go to dinner, not one guy tried to buy me a beer. A girl offered the what-did-you-do-today. I couldn’t answer because my day consisted of not drinking and missing the only people on this lonely planet who cared.
The girl turned to the traveler on her other side. I overheard the making of evening plans. I was not invited. I did my sagging-flirty best, asking a British guy for a cigarette even though I smelled menthol. I sipped more tea and tolerated bummed Menthol while the room emptied, traveler by traveler. Man, I could sit there forever, would solidify and compact, becoming a statue. Maybe then I’d figure out what Ava mean by, “victim, not a survivor.”
Eleanor entered. She dusted a row of photos on the corner altar. Then she knelt on a flat pillow and lit a bundle of incense which she placed, burning end up, in a rectangular vase filled with sand. The scent wafted toward me: sweet as candy yet a touch burnt.
Next, Eleanor clapped her hands into prayer position and pressed them to her forehead, remaining there for some moments. In that pause, I expected—what? Relief. Purpose. Something Ava-like. But there was only Eleanor, now fussing with a frame.
“Eleanor, who’s that?”
“Is mother. I miss. But ancestors take care for us.”
“What if they don’t?”
I didn’t mean to sound so victim-y. Eleanor turned, still on her knees, folding hands I’d never seen idle into her lap. Her voice came as if from the bottom of a well.
“Miss Carlie, we don’t need understand ancestors. We trust for our best good.”
“Why?”
“To have hope, of course.”
She hadn’t had to pause or think. I asked, “How do you pray?”
Eleanor patted the flat square pillow next to hers. I edged over as
she said, “Direction to east. Light come first there.” She inhaled. “Hold Quanyin in mind. Think what you want her to hear.”
“What’s Quanyin?”
“Goddess of Mercy.” Eleanor gestured to a grey-flecked marble statue of a seated female Buddha with droopy cheeks. “See skinny bottle she holds? I read is humanity’s tears.”
“Ha. I thought that was a bottle of sake.”
I inched toward the figure, moved so close that I could clearly see this Quanyin’s beautifully wrought face. This was no tourist-shop souvenir. She was almost alive. “I am really trying.” Then I breathed myself into her kindheartedness and said, “This new me is starting out weird. Man, I’m scared. I’m scared I won’t ever get to the me that’s in here somewhere, but I keep fuc—I mean, messing up.” I barely said aloud, “I’m scared I’ll drink.” Closing my eyes, I went to an untaught place inside. What came out was: “I am afraid no one will ever love me.”
“Miss Carlie is already loved,” said the voice from the well, and I saw myself turning a corner away from an urban avenue with cars and people getting on and off busses and neon signs with Chinese letters reaching over me. My rotation faced me toward rugged hills interspersed with brown and green. A blurry-faced Asian woman in white called, You dropped your wallet. I said, Not mine, but it was mine, I just forgot—creased leather and brown and soft with age, folding open in my hands to disintegrate, leaving me holding a ruby-red object the size of a piece of fruit. Sweet-smelling, pulpy. Precious. I covered my eyes with my hands, grieving.
(Trigger warnings for smoking cigarettes and references to drugs, salcoholism,s and surviving incest.)
The Great Ultimate
The angle of the sun said early afternoon but I’d been on this island less than 24 hours and half of them drunk so I couldn’t be sure what the sun was saying. This room. It was nicer than the places I’d been sharing with all those guys. Those had a sense of smallness. This room might not have been much bigger, but the woods were polished and a sarong draped around the window, a flower, there, gave it grace. A candle waited for night. This wiggly familiarity was undercut by the sensation of wearing another girl’s clothes. My thoughts skipped as they often did to those smooth, green hills of Japan that I’d made up, beckoned if I wasn’t drunk enough when whichever guy finally stopped yammering about taking the longest bus ride across the bumpiest road to find the most remote whatever and we left the bar for our room.
As an offset to that thought, my hands automatically sought the comforting bulk of the fanny pack always at my waist. Where’d it—there, on the wobbly nightstand. Money, passport, ticket; just like when I bought the whiskey last night before the Full Moon party. Man, I needed a drink.
A rustle from the porch. A lady came through the door, the Asian one of the two we met on the boat to the island, yesterday. Cho. Cho ducked to miss the low frame, saying, “You’re up,” saying it with the same steady expression she wore when she found me on the beach I guess after dawn this morning, when she said she believed me. She believed me. After a moment, Cho said, “Sorry, I can’t seem to remember your name.”
“Carlie.” Cho had asked my name when she found me, too. Why did I pour out all that stuff to her—doing mushrooms with Laurence at the party, doing Laurence on the beach, doing all those guys from the last six months. Did I tell Cho that I stole money, that I ran away? I’m sure I told her about Dad. Smooth, green hills. Cho believed me. She said she, she said so.
Cho did not sit. I dug into the bed, almost into the wall the bed pressed against. “God, everything hurts. Where’s that other lady? The skinny one.”
“Ava.” The slight displeasure in Cho’s tone made me understand that I intended to piss her off. At the same time, I intuited that I was wearing her T-shirt.
Cho said, “Ava wanted to be here when you woke up.” To my dragon’s exhale, Cho continued, “I know Ava can be intense. Boy, does she get that. She can’t always control—anyway, she’s at tai chi practice. You and I need to speak alone.”
I squeezed against the wall. Cho perched on the opposite edge of the bed. “Is there anyone we can contact for you?”
Green hills. A kimono lady or two. I’d get there, I promised myself for the thousandth time. Teach English, never have to see him again. I’d get there.
Cho was asking, “A relative who’s not involved, like an aunt? Or a teacher?”
I didn’t want anyone family anymore. That’s why the six months of travel.
“How ’bout a friend?”
There were no friends.
Cho smoothed her loose, onyx-colored hair into a short-lived ponytail. “That guy, the Israeli—”
“Laurence?”
“He came looking for you this morn—”
“We were together when I freaked out. I mean, first it was great”—I was actually blushing—“Man, I’ve never . . . Never. It makes you see why guys . . . ” There was no end to that thought. The next was, “—then I was above . . . ” and the room spun just like it did last night, on the beach, when I came. I came. For the first time ever, I came, too. Then, we were pulling our clothes up, and down a tunnel, a trainload of shame. Smash. I would never let anyone make me come again. I ran. Laurence, he tried to calm me, told me it was the mushrooms, he was so much bigger than me one of his arms almost my leg but I was electric with the need to stop men. Down the beach, a dip in the sand was a good reason to throw myself onto my stomach, for how long? Eventually, crouched on the sand next to me, black hair, determined cheekbones, “Hey, are you okay?” “What’s your name, again?” arms draped over her bent knees when she sat, her back curved like a spoon, “I believe you.”
Across the bed, Cho offered me her handkerchief. She carried a handkerchief. “Carlie, I really think you should get some help.”
“Why can’t you help me?”
Cho moved her gaze to the wall as if it were a window.
I said, “So you’re just gonna let me—”
“I didn’t come on vacation to pick up a social work career I left years ago.”
Me, “Just—just—”
Out of frustration, Cho found, “Just come to tai chi practice.”
Cho was out the door. I skulked after her, furious enough that I hissed my desire to get a drink first—but didn’t know if I hissed, it seemed like I only thought hiss. Cho had no response, but between us was air that felt like a cigarette lighter about to spark. Then who should appear at the top of the dirt path Cho and I were climbing but long-legged form that could only be Ava?
“Hey, ya,” she sang out, and I knew from yesterday’s boat trip to Koh Phangan that her every Scottish r would stick to me like wet seaweed. “You lot didn’t put in an appearance. Can’t have you missing your first Tai chi lesson, Carlie. A pratice will change your life.”
Ava swooped into link arms our arms. I shook her off. In the fifteen-minute walk over the hill and along a cliff, Ava took it upon herself to avail me of the entire history of tai chi.
“ . . . started in the wee town of Shao Lin, which is in China.”
I knew that, China. I glared at Cho.
“ . . . temple monks were a fat, lazy lot . . . developed a series of exercises based on yoga . . .”
Then something about nine years in a cave. Stick Ava in a cave. I searched through my pockets for my cigs as Ava blathered on. “ . . . five basic styles . . . most widely known in the West are Chen and Yang.”
“Got a smoke?” I asked Cho, who shocked the shit out of me by handing one over. The sensible girl smoked Camels. Ava was still at it. “ . . . babble babble within Yang you find Chen strength, just as there is lyric beauty in Chen. The natural polarities pull in opposite directions, leaving space for you in between.”
Sounded like Star Wars to me. We turned off the path and continued down a set of steps cut into the hillside to a large clearing, packed dirt fringed by palm trees. Three rickety bungalows sat at its southern edge. A few feet from a beach licked by kitten waves, about twenty white backpacker types in small groups practiced Kung fu-looking moves, only super slow. The guys had nice muscles and more earrings than the girls, who were either skin-and-smoke or just plump enough to look best in baggy batik shorts. Cho hugged and then introduced me to a woman whose hair was a cape of brown curls. Gemma, the American who ran the school, shook my hand with both of her sturdy ones. Her New Jersey accent was harsh but welcome. I could not bear one more ounce of Ava’s happy crappy woo woo. Gemma was old, forty or something, and lived in the chicken shack buildings, leading morning and afternoon practices. She indicated for me to follow her between the palm trees at the back of the clearing, where she showed me how to tuck my pelvis and depress my chest, forming a soft half-circle with my upper body. It went against years of ballet training.
Gemma tied her curls into a knot. “No biggie. Most of us have to learn to chill.”
Next, Gemma told me to pretend to hold a beach ball. She called it the tai chi ball. “Palms face each other, a foot apart. Right hand above, left below. Breathe. Rotate the ball so the left hand is above and the right below. Palms face each other,” she reminded me. “Rotate again.”
I rotated, I reversed. When I remembered to breathe, a pleasant rhythm took over. When I messed up, Gemma got me back on track. About the time I registered the all-over headache as gone, Gemma interrupted with two claps.
“The form, please.”
I had no clue what Gemma was talking about. The hippies lined up facing the ocean, so I crept to a palm tree. The class stood silently, backs rounded, chests depressed, knees slightly bent, arms dangling at their sides like an upside-down horseshoe without that rigidity. An impossible position. They were all doing it. Gemma stood between the group and the sea. She faced everyone, her right hand forming a fist about sternum level. She moved her left hand to rest with the palm softly over her fist. The class gestured identically.
I thought, May the Force be with you. I couldn’t help it.
Gemma turned so that she, too, faced those teeny, tiny waves. A sterling stillness passed, then everyone began moving with the unity of a school of fish. They rotated the tai chi ball as they turned. They dipped to the ground and punched, spun on one leg, wonderfully able to maintain their balance, then slow-mo kicked with the other leg. After what must have been fifteen minutes, they stood as they had to start, facing the water, come full circle. So that was the form. I was holding my breath.
“What d’ya think?”
Ava popped up out of nowhere. For the first time, she came across as sweet, those skies of eyes filled with all that hope. I said, “Kinda cool.”
Her arm came through mine. “Tai chi gives you strength. To do anything. You know that, don’cha? You can tell me anything?”
Her father.
I ran, not fully aware that I was running until I heard “Carlie,” from behind. I charged the steep steps leading from the practice area to the path along the cliff. My smoker’s lungs caught up with me about half-way up. Three blond guys from the class; they were pretty cute, they had a water. “K’I have a sip?” I barged in with practiced, graceless panache, interrupting the easy patter of either Swedish or Norwegian. Asking in that flirty way soothed me. The guys: one of them would pass the water and the other would have the smokes. Everything would get back with the program.
The guys exchanged a nod, both of their mouths down at the corner in a way I’d seen a lot from Northern Europeans. The smiley one handed me the bottle. I peered into his eyes with the right amount of chin tilt.
He said, “Would you like a cigarette?
Ava dashed up. “Carlie, I need to speak with you. Privately.”
Immediately, the guys took to the steps. With a cig that was supposed to be mine. I called after them, “No, I mean—” but they were gone, leaving me with this crazy person who needed me to be her. “Get away from me!”
Cho arrived. I swung a damning finger at her. “And you!” She started to speak. “Shut up! You told her!”
Cho all but whispered, “That was really unprofessional—”
“Well, you’re not much of a professional, are you?” To Ava, “Man, what is your problem?”
“My problem has always been that I was only fourteen.”
“I was twelve. How could anyone do that to a twelve-year-old?”
Ava reached. I push her away. “No! Answer me!”
Cho said, “There are no answers, Carlie. That’s why I left social work.”
“There are,” Ava said. “Carlie knew about me the way I knew about her. That’s God, Carlie. That’s God. Do today, then do tomorrow. Do tai chi. You build joy.”
“Joy?” I hoped my harsh tone hurt her as much as it hurt coming out. “I’d settle for a stiff drink.”
“I know ya would. You don’t have to.”
A train as powerful last night’s, only this one drove us into a crash of silence. In the quiet, Ava said, “Do you know? Tai chi means The Great Ultimate.”
I sniffed. “More like the great ultimatum.”
With a rather grumpy look toward Ava, Cho assured me that tai chi demanded no ultimatums. “It is the opposite of ultimatums.” When I refused to loosen my spine, she said, “Carlie, would you like to have dinner with us?”
I gave her my cruelest dragon snort. Cho climbed one stair. With an impish, not-very-Cho grin, she climbed another.
During dinner, they ordered Cokes, not beer, Ava a Diet, Cho a regular. I sensed I should do the same. My Diet went in a flash and—Man! Where were my smokes—leaving me with nothing to do but eat my damn food.
Cho devoured hers. Ava sorted the vegetables and squid from their rich sauce and ignored her rice altogether. I tried the same, but couldn't resist the comforting soft mounds, the coconut curry like sweet velvet. Impossibly full, I leaned back. Every other table in the place held some chirpy group swilling beer. A blond guy, maybe the guy from the tai chi steps who offered me his water, I let him catch my eye. God, I knew how that would go; great for the first few—you’re drinking and screwing, okay so now that I knew what coming was like maybe not coming but he was there against the empty night, until the squabbles started and his stories got boring, where he went and how much it cost, and all my time got spent on the lookout for the next guy; Laurence, and Simon before him—where was Laurence, anyway? Why hadn’t he tried to find me—and before Simon, that guy with the red hat.
I heard reverberate what I’d just thought. Then I heard Ava. “Why ya cryin’, lass?”
I touched the water on my cheek. “I’ll never make anything work out. K’I bum a smoke?”
Cho replied, “How old are you, Carlie?”
I reached for my empty glass. “Twenty-two.”
“How old are you, Carlie?”
“Just turned eighteen.”
“Eighteen-year-olds buy their own cigarettes. Anyway, Ava’s allergic.”
I look to Ava. “Jesus Christ, you two are the weirdest couple.”
“Speaking of which,” Ava’s voice sailed over a touch of a scowl Cho shot my way. “Our room has two doubles, if you’d like one tonight.”
“Oh. Yeah, I forgot about a room.” I led the way out of the restaurant before another lecture could come my way. They crashed as soon as their heads hit the pillows. I didn’t. The longer I didn’t, the clearer it became that I was about to sneak out of my double bed and find me a drink. I could feel the whiskey, I’d buy Mekong, could feel it glide across my tongue and burn a trail to my stomach. What I couldn't conjure was what I really wanted, the shady, golden hum, the blurring of painful edges.
There were no ultimatums. I could drink if I wanted to. Just slide outta bed and along the cliff, down to that little town.
Go.
A reddish gleam. Ava’s hair. Plenty of passed out guys in my former bedding situations. Not a one expressed in sleep the restful joy I sensed in the bed next to mine. I wanted what they slept with more than I wanted Mekong. My legs twitched. I breathed them quiet. If I didn’t move, it couldn’t find me.
Voices engulfed me like the hum of bees. Slowly, one came clear. You'd better not tell. Dad came at me, circling. No one will believe you. You are lying. The voice lightened, became feminine. You are lying. I know what I saw. A hickey on your neck. She was shrieking now, her nails digging into my upper arms. Why do you make him do this? I'll kill you! And his voice again, I'll kill you if you tell.
I jolted from sleep. No smooth green, no hills. The cliff, go to the cliff. Oh, my God, and I couldn’t drink. On the porch, soft dawn. Cho on the wooden deck, back curved like a spoon. Ava in the hammock, a hand in Cho's hair. I lunged, collided with Ava in a way that almost hurt. As thin as she was, she felt solid and for once, real. I maybe pushed her away, maybe told them. That turned stupid. “ …babble your feelings babble babble … ” I didn’t want feelings. I wanted a goddamn cigarette. We appeared to be having this as an actual conversation because Ava said the best thing for me was to go to tai chi, and when did she get to decide what the best thing--
“And I am not going near those cliffs.”
That was definitely said out loud.
In the end, a Camel from Cho—“We do what we can”—and she held my hand as we braved those jeering rock faces and took the steps to the tai chi beach.
A hand on one hip, Gemma evaluated my ability to rotate the tai chi ball. “Right on. Now, Wave Hands Like Clouds.”
“The—what? Everyone else gets to do the form.”
Hair into knot. “Everyone else has covered the basics.”
“What about that?” I point to two girls facing each other, circling back and forth with their right wrists crossed and touching. “Why can’t I do that?”
“Push Hands? Push Hands takes listening.”
“Fuck it, just— show me this thing . . . what, again?”
Wave Hands Like Clouds started in the same position I’d practiced ALL DAY yesterday. Hold the tai chi ball. Right hand floats to eye level, crosses the face without touching, then floats down as left hand moves to eye level, crosses the face, and floats down. Unending circles, up, across, down.
“Hands are clouds sailing across the sky,” Gemma said as I practiced. “Blown by the wind. Nope, too tense. Flow with it.”
I coasted on a warm pulse that started in my palms and circulated dawn-calm through my body. When Gemma clapped twice and called out, “The form, please,” I took up residence near the palm tree. As the form finished, a spot of army-green descending the steep steps ended up being Nadav’s tank top. Mother of God, he had gorgeous arms. He met me between the palm trees, his dark curls lolling like happy puppy ears. Right away, I tucked in my chin. “I ditched you.”
In his guitar-like accent, he said, “I am here to find you,” said it as if I were a normal girl, just traveling. When we got together, he made me come. I wanted to make him come. That was normal. I wanted to be normal. Nadav was pulling a shroom-sized fold of paper from his pocket, “We try more carefully,” when Ava showed up to save me and Cho arrived to say, “Stop it, Ava. She needs to work out for herself if her life means anything to her.”
I slapped my hands against my things. “She?”
Cho pulled her hair into a momentary ponytail. “I am done with your moods, Carlie.”
“Are you now, you holier-than-thou dyke?”
“Why don’t you leave?”
“Maybe I don’t want to!”
“Maybe I don’t want you around anymore.”
“Cho, stop,” said Ava.
I said, “I bet you were a shitty social worker.”
Nadav took my hand, and the two of us were up those stairs. On the downside of the cliff toward the little town, Haad Rin, it hit me that Nadav had a pocket full of drugs and expectations—confirmed at the turn-off to the beach, when he told me he got my backpack from Simon as if he deserved a big smooch. He led me to the rocks that had secluded us, where he pulled me to him for that kiss. Still kissing, we found the sand. The last time I sat on this beach was when Cho took me into her and Ava’s lives.
Nadav’s mouth felt dry. He must have sensed it too because he pulled out the mushrooms like a question. He used my name. “Is Carlie ready?” I’d had men inside me who called me, “Carrie,” when they came, but I could not answer Nadav’s simple question. He ran his hands down my sides and asked again, then again. When he cried out, “What do I do wrong?” I couldn’t even say, “Nothing.” And Nadav was gone. I watched his footprints blow away, bit by bit, as the sun coasted into its two then three o’clock position. Couldn’t reach for green. This same sun would soon slip like a deserter below the horizon, and I didn’t have anywhere to sleep. I knew only one way to solve that dilemma. I didn’t even have my own clothes.
The breeze was giving off the initial hint of sunset before I allowed the decision. I went into Haad Rin for two packs of Camels. Then I passed the steep tai chi stairs and—breath held, success—skirted along the cliffs with those rocks below, approached Cho and Ava’s bungalow. On their porch, two forms. A conference. The compact one waited while the tall and fair skipped to me.
“Hey, ya,” crooned a Scottish brogue.
“You’re missing afternoon practice.”
“They'll be plenty of practices, Carlie. There's only one you.”
Hard to believe Ava actually said that. As if sensing my uncertainty, Ava suggested we return to Cho.
“Like she’s ever talking to me again.
“Don’t fret yourself. Cho’s a right hothead, but—do ya know, cho is an old-fashioned Japanese word for ‘butterfly?’ Not a girly one. A hunting insect that enjoys snatching at you, sharp!”
Ava linked our arms. It didn’t feel as sticky. We found Cho poised like an empress in the hammock. She and I regard each other as Ava disappeared inside their room. My eyes locked on the lip of the cliff, about fifteen feet off. Finally, my voice creaked out, “You're not a shitty social worker.” I could not force myself to say I'm sorry. Got out a look at her. “I bet you were great.”
“Not really. I’m not particularly nice.”
I almost didn’t laugh.”
“I'm not sorry for what I said, Carlie, but I could have said it more gently. For that, I am sorry.”
“Would you like a cigarette?”
Scottish brogue. “Can I come out now?”
With Ava on the porch, conversation was energetic, even fun, all that Scottish slang that I couldn’t track—minging?—made me laugh, until she got to, they lived in Tokyo, she taught English at a community college.
That was my plan. After six months of traveling, after I was sure no one was following me. I’d go to Tokyo, teach English. These two were spies.
Babble, babble, “ … I’m considering a position at the English Conversation school, recently opened by Cho’s department store. Where our determined butterfly is an important body.”
Cho blew smoke. “Not that important.”
“The store’s bloody called Yamashita’s. You’re the heir apparent.”
I said, “We have a Yamashita’s in Seattle. Japanese import store. That’s you? Why are you staring at me?”
Ava flopped next to Cho in the hammock. “My bonny lass, we have a self-disclosed fact about Carlie.”
Cho said, “She’s from—”
“Don’t say it,” I said. “People could hear.”
Cho said, “It’s one of the first things travelers tell each other.”
Ava kissed her. “It’s right there in the book.”
“Rules for a Lonely Planet life.”
“Stop making fun of me, you guys. I ran away. I stole their money—”
“You stole money? From your parents?” Ava asked at the same time that Cho wanted to know, “How old were you?”
“I did it over three years, snitching it, and I had Christmas and birthday money and a job. Chose Asia ‘cause The Lonely Planet said there were places you could get by on a dollar a day.”
Cho dropped fully back into the hammock. “Fuckin’ A, girlfriend.”
“How else was I supposed to deal with—?” I made a disgusting sound.
The sound Ava made was worse.
Cho dropped an arm around her.
Guilt flooded me. I asked Ava, “You seem happy, now. How do you deal?”
Ava looked utterly lost until she came to, “Wave Hands Like Clouds.”
The days took on the rhythm of Wave Hands Like Clouds: up, across, down. Up at seven, cross the cliffs to tai chi, down for a nap. Up in the afternoon, evening practice, down for bed. Cho established ground rules: no yelling, swearing, or stomping off. There were times that I showed up to tai chi not speaking to her, but I always showed up, and half-way through the class, I never failed to notice that whatever mood had followed me down the steep stairs ceded to the feeling of something I could only woowoo call energy being freed. It came from releasing tension when I reached from a place on my body, like between my clavicle and shoulder joint. It amazed me that I could feel so specifically, could feel anything, in my body. However, my commitment to the twice-daily practice stemmed from my fear of what would happen if I didn’t. No one needed to know the number of times each hour, that stretching my arms to the sky while I pushed my legs into the earth was the only thing that kept me from a bender. The time I came closest was the afternoon I found my backpack on our porch with a slip of paper tucked into my Lonely Planet. It was Nadav’s address in Israel.
My brain pulled from the rest of my head. That part was already down in Haad Rin, drinking. Somehow, I stretched my arms to grab myself back, didn’t even tell them. I didn’t want to “process”—I was just getting a grip on not running to them when I woke in terror, I’ll kill you if you tell, then Mom, her nails gouging my arms. You make them do it. She knew. Of course, she knew. I’ll kill you if you tell.
Up, across, down. Gemma started me on learning the form. Ward Off Right: an imaginary opponent comes at you from your right side. Block the blow with your right arm. Rollback Into Press: use both hands to grasp your opponent by the shoulders and pull towards yourself, then push into his chest. I asked Gemma how long it would take to learn the whole form; I had just over two weeks left on the tourist visa I got when I entered Thailand.
“To know the form takes a lifetime.”
I decided to grin. “Then how long does it take to get a straight answer outta you Buddha guys?”
That night, I marched myself to the cliff, took a seat far enough from its sheer edge, and focused on the sound of the waves hundreds of feet below. The stars drew me in. I never did this, never sat before going to bed and let the stars absorb me. I never even noticed they were there. On our way to tai chi in the morning, I told Cho and Ava, “I’m gonna get my own room, sleep by myself.” To cover my pleasure at their proud astonishment, I finished, “You two sleep with anyone you want.”
The time left on my visa crossed the one-week mark, then six days. At dinner, Ava poked around her carefully sorted plate. “We leave in two days' time.” It killed me, how she could not eat stuff.
Cho asked, “Any idea where you're going next?”
To divulge my plan to teach English in Japan would come across as desperate, so I lied, “Maybe India. Flights to Delhi are cheap from Bangkok.”
Cho’s eyes glistened like warm oil. “It is my opinion that you should come to Tokyo. With us.”
There was a pause, during which nothing bubbly came from the Scottish corner. I skewed my chin toward Ava. “Got a vote?”
“Maybe India, maybe Tokyo. With money you stole, Carlie.”
“That is hardly your b—”
“Having it makes you a victim, not a survivor.”
“Maybe I’m just not as good a person as you, Ava.”
Cho broke in. “Wherever you go, you’ll need a visa. You can get either India or Japan in Bangkok.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep in, “I know that.”
Cho pulled from her fanny pack some business cards and a bunch of those scraps of paper covered with hastily scribbled travel tips that always ended up in there. She passed over a business card. “Stay at Tan House. They’re Thai Chinese, and boy, does Mr. Tan know the form.”
“You carry around his business card?” I asked.
“Someone from tai chi’s always asking for a good place.”
“And you aren’t particularly nice.”
I had to laugh when Cho waved her hand near her ear, dismissing my irrefutable logic. Ava did her own breaking in. “I understand why you stole it, Carlie. Of course I do.”
“Do you think she knew? My mom?”
“I know she knew. They all do.” Ava reached across the table. “Come to Tokyo with us.”
This time, I had no reason to bite my cheek.
In Bangkok, Cho and Ava’s flight departed four hours after we reached the city, giving us just time for tea before they left for the airport. I was so weighed down with the words in my heart, all banging against each other, that I couldn’t find my cigs. Cho slid her pack across the table. Extracting one, I said, “What if I meet some stoner before I get my visa, get snockered, and blow off you guys and Tokyo?”
From Ava, “I wager you keep the cigarettes, then.”
Only with a Camel lit, them in a taxi, and the last wave waved was I able to mouth, “I’ll miss you.”
Tan House was a rattly old building painted a cooling mint green located down a quiet street in Bangkok’s Chinatown. I tugged a long red rope to the left of the scarlet and gold door, sending a bell echoing with an Addams Family quality. The door opened. A plump rooster shot out. A small gentleman with delicate wrists and the kind of belly old men get took my backpack with a bow and a grandfatherly cluck. “Tan,” he said.
That settled, Tan turned me over to his middle-aged daughter, Eleanor, who had his apple-like face with none of the wrinkles. She led me to a hot nook of a room on the third floor. She apologized for the room’s smallness all the way upstairs then all the way down, to the dining room for tea.
“Especially you are friends with Misses Cho and Ayva. You practice tai ke?” Packaged slice of cake in one hand, empty teacup in the other, Eleanor mimicked a tai chi Ward Off. “Please ask Old Tan practice with. You will make him pleasure.
I finished my tea with a cigarette instead of cake. Then, Mr. Tan took me to the shaded, red-bricked courtyard outside the sliding glass doors to the dining room. Amidst the clucking of chickens, we went over the first third of the form that I had learned on Phangan. I was accustomed to white guys fitting their height into the movements. Tan’s body made way more sense. He started me on the first posture of the second half of the form, Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain. Turn to the rear, reaching to the back-left corner while bringing the left hand overhead and the right up from the earth, like tiger’s jaws. The arms got a gorgeous stretch.
An hour later, the dining room began to fill, couple by couple, group by group, with what looked to be the usual assortment of Europeans, Aussies, and Americans. When Tan finally allowed me to go to dinner, not one guy tried to buy me a beer. A girl offered the what-did-you-do-today. I couldn’t answer because my day consisted of not drinking and missing the only people on this lonely planet who cared.
The girl turned to the traveler on her other side. I overheard the making of evening plans. I was not invited. I did my sagging-flirty best, asking a British guy for a cigarette even though I smelled menthol. I sipped more tea and tolerated bummed Menthol while the room emptied, traveler by traveler. Man, I could sit there forever, would solidify and compact, becoming a statue. Maybe then I’d figure out what Ava mean by, “victim, not a survivor.”
Eleanor entered. She dusted a row of photos on the corner altar. Then she knelt on a flat pillow and lit a bundle of incense which she placed, burning end up, in a rectangular vase filled with sand. The scent wafted toward me: sweet as candy yet a touch burnt.
Next, Eleanor clapped her hands into prayer position and pressed them to her forehead, remaining there for some moments. In that pause, I expected—what? Relief. Purpose. Something Ava-like. But there was only Eleanor, now fussing with a frame.
“Eleanor, who’s that?”
“Is mother. I miss. But ancestors take care for us.”
“What if they don’t?”
I didn’t mean to sound so victim-y. Eleanor turned, still on her knees, folding hands I’d never seen idle into her lap. Her voice came as if from the bottom of a well.
“Miss Carlie, we don’t need understand ancestors. We trust for our best good.”
“Why?”
“To have hope, of course.”
She hadn’t had to pause or think. I asked, “How do you pray?”
Eleanor patted the flat square pillow next to hers. I edged over as
she said, “Direction to east. Light come first there.” She inhaled. “Hold Quanyin in mind. Think what you want her to hear.”
“What’s Quanyin?”
“Goddess of Mercy.” Eleanor gestured to a grey-flecked marble statue of a seated female Buddha with droopy cheeks. “See skinny bottle she holds? I read is humanity’s tears.”
“Ha. I thought that was a bottle of sake.”
I inched toward the figure, moved so close that I could clearly see this Quanyin’s beautifully wrought face. This was no tourist-shop souvenir. She was almost alive. “I am really trying.” Then I breathed myself into her kindheartedness and said, “This new me is starting out weird. Man, I’m scared. I’m scared I won’t ever get to the me that’s in here somewhere, but I keep fuc—I mean, messing up.” I barely said aloud, “I’m scared I’ll drink.” Closing my eyes, I went to an untaught place inside. What came out was: “I am afraid no one will ever love me.”
“Miss Carlie is already loved,” said the voice from the well, and I saw myself turning a corner away from an urban avenue with cars and people getting on and off busses and neon signs with Chinese letters reaching over me. My rotation faced me toward rugged hills interspersed with brown and green. A blurry-faced Asian woman in white called, You dropped your wallet. I said, Not mine, but it was mine, I just forgot—creased leather and brown and soft with age, folding open in my hands to disintegrate, leaving me holding a ruby-red object the size of a piece of fruit. Sweet-smelling, pulpy. Precious. I covered my eyes with my hands, grieving.