Hysterosalpingogram. I kept thinking about the word while on the x-ray table as some kind of exercise in practicing calm, trying to forget the origins of the word itself. Hystera, hysteria, hysterical, traced back not just to the Greek word for uterus but to a long history of gaslighting women. A doctor came in and repeated what I’d read in the paperwork: a catheter would be inserted between my legs, then a balloon would be inflated inside my uterus to hold the catheter in place, then the catheter would inject dye into my fallopian tubes, then the x-ray machine would begin its photo shoot, capturing any blockages in the tubes that would prevent the dye from passing through.
Any allergies to iodine? the doctor asked, and I said this was my first time dyeing my tubes so it was hard to be sure. This might feel uncomfortable, he said, and then a shot of air filled the balloon like a bullet. When I cried out his face reappeared over my legs, more out of curiosity it seemed than concern. Can I keep going? he asked, and I wondered if he was thinking I’d be no match for childbirth. Keep going, I said, and clenched my fists while the dye went in and the nurses stared up at the screen. Slowly my tubes lit while the machine hummed, like a neon light flickering open or closed for business.
Later in the doctor’s office your brother-in-law and I stared at the tubes on the big screen.
Should they point that way? I was asking.
Depends on the woman, a nurse said, her smile friendly. There’s nothing wrong with the way yours point.
Sitting there, I was relieved that the report had come back positive, but I still didn’t trust the look of them, healthy or not. They look like a Demogorgon, I said.
No, no, the nurse said, shaking her head.
I looked at your brother-in-law for allegiance. They look like those dancing balloons in front of car dealerships, he offered, and I exhaled and reached for his hand.
* * *
TURNS OUT, most people have their own ideas about what makes a body primed for conception. Our aunt proffers cod-liver oil, nettle leaf, dandelion, and red clover; my neighbor overhears me on the phone with our aunt and gives me a book of fertility meditations, incense, and an unlabeled topical cream. A coworker comes over and suggests removing all the gluten from my apartment, which deeply saddens your brother-in-law. A friend, slightly more with the times, recommends sex with my legs straight up and downloads an app that supposedly chimes when I ovulate, signaling that your brother-in-law and I must rush to the bed.
In the beginning I actually found a kind of relief in the fertility clinic, in the solidity of procedure. Somebody professional has a plan. I couldn’t pronounce most of my drugs but following their instructions provided a path forward. The doctor prescribed medroxyprogesterone, clomiphene citrate, and choriogonadotropin injections and in time the science project of my body became less and less strange. Medroxyprogesterone for ten days to induce the periods I’d stopped getting since I went off the pill. Five days of clomiphene citrate to stimulate ovulation. Then, if a follicle grew large enough, the timed choriogonadotropin injection at home on the couch. At 10:00 p.m. I’d lift my shirt and your brother-in-law would rub disinfectant below my waistband. The first time I told him I’d do the injection myself because I’d seen the way he tried to kill spiders, how many lives had been spared in our apartment over the years. But when I pulled the needle out from the package it was much larger than I’d expected and, after seeing my face, he took it from my hands, instructing me to close my eyes. I heard his finger tapping the air out of the needle and then the soft voice he reserved for moments when I was scared. Then the puncture and his free hand on my back. Almost there. It was such an odd moment between us that I find myself thinking of it often, some new form of sex. I didn’t know then that these requests for help would soon become like cutting a tag or unsticking a zipper, that in time I would just do them on my own. After six months passed, I asked the doctor if there was anything else that might help my chances. Any special vitamins, unlabeled topical creams? He said I was doing the thing that was helping my chances. He told me to spend a few afternoons a week at the gym on top of the other activity.
* * *
SO I STARTED going to the gym on my lunch break. I did this, I told myself, to fend off the expectation, because I’d begun to wonder if I couldn’t tell what was beautiful anymore, that I was losing track of which thoughts were mine and which were the world’s crowding into my head. Sometimes I swam laps in the pool, but most of the time I just ran. It was a lousy gym if you looked closely; there was an ant problem in the showers and lockers, the machines were often broken, and if you forgot a rubber band for your hair you had to pay a dollar for some old one from the drawer. There were stains on the white towels. But again I felt comforted by a routine. Motivational commands were graffitied all around me on the walls, saying things like PERSPIRE TO SUCCESS and ENERGY IS CONTAGIOUS and GOALS ARE MADE TO BE CRUSHED.
There was the man at the front desk folding towels who told everyone who walked in, Welcome back! as if they’d been missed the last six months.
There was the woman who always forgot where the towels were and walked around fretfully, approaching people at their machines, yelling over their headphones, Where are the towels? Please, where can I find the towels? And someone would stop, catch their breath, and show her the way.
But the locker room often surprised me. How many different bodies I saw, how many types of people. Here was this space just feet from the ordinary world and suddenly women were baring breasts and baring feelings and walking around with no makeup or apologies; those few feet at the entrance were where all the rules changed. There were the showboats who stood in front of the mirror naked, bending over to blow dry the backside of their head; there were the corner-dwellers who turned away while they changed, as if punished, choreographing an impressive routine with their towel. There were tattoos and birthmarks and burn marks; there were long purple scars and small bedpost notches; there were barbelled nipples and hair, hair, hair. There were those who came in and out without a word, and those who talked loudly with their girlfriends while they dressed, passing stories of illness, of men, of money, of bodies. I heard a lot of talk of the body. I felt like telling them, your energy is contagious. I felt like telling them they looked great. Sometimes while I was in there, corner-dwelling, I wondered if I would have been a showboat if I’d had a sister, if I’d grown up in a house with another small body reminiscent of my own.
There was one woman I hoped to see each week, and did, usually on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her back was curved into an uppercase C. She did weights with a trainer, and sometimes she swam, and she was eighty-nine years old, I heard her tell her trainer once. She took the highest locker on the wall to avoid bending, and pulled the bench over to stand on when retrieving her clothing. She was a showboat, too, standing on that bench as naked as one can get, like she was about to make a motivational speech. Sometimes I wanted to ask if I could help her, but I feared saying anything to take away the shamelessness of her body. So instead I just offered a smile, the one woman in the locker room I allowed myself to make eye contact with.
These were the types of things I told only our mother. Sometimes I’d wonder: Could I tell you stories like this when she was gone?
* * *
IT WAS AROUND THIS TIME that you came to see me again in San Francisco, and I’d decided to come clean to you about the fertility treatments. The secrecy was starting to feel strange. You’d driven in to see me on my lunch break, feigned surprise when I paid for your pricey sandwich. You looked like college had just ejected you into the restaurant via Nerf gun: sandals, surfer tee, sunglasses sunken into your thick head of hair like two frog eyes peeking out from a dark, black pond. You’d graduated and received your first job in Web design in Reno. You were in the mood to boast.
I let you boast for a bit. I was happy to see you; the frequency of your calls had decreased dramatically over the past year but I think it was because you were happy—you’d just started dating your future bride. I’d stop
ped asking about your arguments with our parents, scripts I usually knew well before I heard from you, though you were always selective in which fights you brought up.
By the end of the meal I was surprised to find myself nervous; I’d never been nervous with you in my life, except for at the very beginning and, even then, I was probably too young to stay nervous for long. Now, staring at a grown version of you, I noticed my voice speeding up; I looked away from your eyes for a moment. So, I said, readying what felt like a confession. The restaurant by my office was too noisy, filled with the restlessness of a nine-to-five lunch crowd, and I paused for a moment as a large party settled into the table next to us.
Then you said: Did Mom tell you about my trip?
Trip?
I applied to a mission trip, you said.
Where?
Twelve months, twelve countries. Thailand is month two.
What about your job? Your girlfriend?
She’s okay with it. The job will help me save.
What will you do?
Charity stuff. I’ll send you the website.
You never told me you were thinking of going to Thailand.
I’d be going to lots of places.
Do you think you’ll be accepted?
I don’t know. I hope so.
The waitress came and refilled our water and then suddenly it was you who couldn’t look me in the eye.
* * *
ONCE, ON AN AFTERNOON spent in internet wormholes, your brother-in-law and I googled the name of the town where you were born. We discovered that numbered villages divided it, and that your village was number 14, just south of the inlet of water that came in from the Chao Phraya River. We went down the wormhole some more and found that the numerical system for home addresses was based on the order in which they were registered with the county office, so plot 81 could sit next to plot 43, and we quickly became lost again; it felt impossible to find answers in the map’s gray area. We wondered if the area had been swept over by some natural disaster or remained completely rural or had been taken over by the military complex that was now marked on the right side of the province. There didn’t appear to be many roads, either; we did find a Tumblr account that seemed to prove this theory, which offered images of small boats that carried people along what looked like a lengthy bank of mangroves.
Your brother-in-law was the one who had figured out that the transliterations were inconsistent on some of your paperwork. This hadn’t occurred to me; I’d taken all of your documents as gospel, likely because when there were so few facts to go on, the ones presented inevitably felt more solid. But your brother-in-law was accustomed to handling unfamiliar words on a page; he found a thrill in searching, rearranging, until clearer answers came into focus.
Ah, he’d said. That’s better. Here. And we’d leaned in to examine the town called Laem Fa Pha, translated by Google as Cape Lightning. There was a phone number listed for the district office and I dialed across the world before hanging up after the first ring. Why should I expect they’d speak English? And what would I say?
It felt like I’d walked into a private conversation of yours, and I didn’t tell you or do it again. But I wondered how different this was from the way I’d once memorized your paperwork, or the frequency with which I’d lately revisited it. Where was the line if you were my brother? It hadn’t seemed to bother you in the past but maybe at some point this had changed. I hadn’t asked.
Everyone always thinks I don’t want to talk about Thailand, you always said. But I just don’t remember anything so I don’t have anything to say. How can I talk about it when there’s nothing to say?
* * *
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY, I said. This was the first time in your life that you’d expressed an interest in returning to the place you were born, to the orphanage where we met. I didn’t realize that I’d always pictured us going back together, that I’d believed the return should be done just like the beginning. I didn’t realize that the return seemed to promise some change in the distance, a passage from one era to the next, toward some brighter beacon of enlightenment, where we all might feel a hint of its warmth on our faces.
I’ll take lots of pictures, you said, maybe sensing that I was upset, and my whole body filled with shame. I was ashamed of the secret I’d kept from you, a secret whose weight I hadn’t even admitted to myself. I was ashamed of my assumption that you’d need me in order to go back, to be guided toward some redemptive meaning. Or that you would guide me.
We hugged each other goodbye on the street and it wasn’t until after you walked away that I finally faced a desire that, until that point, had been unknown to me: I had wanted to inscribe myself in the memory of those early years, where your other siblings would have been.
WE WOULD ALL COME to remember the day a little differently. What can be agreed upon is that we woke early on the morning of July 4, 1994, none of us having slept, and dressed quickly and silently. The drive to Rangsit was one hour from our hotel, and the man at the front desk translated our directions to the orphanage into Thai on a piece of InterContinental stationery. We walked out to the front, where another hotel employee hailed us a cab, and our father handed over the directions to the driver.
Nothing was said in the cab, not even when we finally saw the sign for the Rangsit Babies’ Home an hour later, turning into the long dirt driveway. I stepped out in front of a gray concrete building and watched the driver ride away.
We were directed to an air-conditioned waiting room to meet Khun Preeda, the social worker. She told us that if you didn’t scream when we met you, then it would be no problem to take you today. Our parents looked at each other blankly before following her to the wing where the babies slept. You were napping and they needed to wake you to inform you that your family was here, so we waited outside on a small blue bench. Our father remembers he was too nervous to sit, so he stood while I held our mother’s hand. Finally, a child wandered to the door. Years later I can still see his face, bent into a scowl, as if threatening to beat me up in the parking lot. And I was suddenly deathly afraid, staring out at the features that I would be called to love.
This is not him, Khun Preeda said, to my relief, and it wasn’t until a few minutes later that another boy wandered into the doorframe, accompanied by a caregiver. This is him, Khun Preeda said, and in your hand you clutched the little white bear. Though I would have known you from anywhere.
Then the narrative splits, as I recall sizing you up before kneeling to hug you. You frowned at me, but I was grateful to find no malice in it. I can’t say I know what’s happening, the frown seemed to say. I woke up from my nap and now this. And I knew, kneeling there, that I would be able to love you, and feeling your little body in my arms, I was already getting the process started.
Our parents, meanwhile, knelt down to hug you and saw a large head battered with white powder, then cocked their own to examine it. Immediately they spotted the malnutrition: your head wobbled on your shoulders, your stomach was pregnant with illness, and two thin clubs held you up—your excuse for legs—with black knobs for knees. You looked at them in a stupor, and they looked at each other and thought the same thing: Is there something they haven’t told us? Khun Preeda saw their faces and said, He is just tired, still sleepy from his nap. Our parents were unconvinced.
Then she said, I have something I must tell you. Our parents braced themselves. She’d been concerned about your weight loss in the last few months and wanted to take you to the hospital. She said they had two choices: they could leave you at the orphanage today and pick you up at the hospital tomorrow, or they could take you now and meet a social worker tomorrow at the hospital.
The offer to leave you was tempting. The three of us looked at one another and considered delaying the responsibility—a beautiful night of postponement took shape in our minds. We would return to the hotel and go straight to sleep, forget all of this. We would sleep to escape the dreamlike state of the afternoon. Our mother looked dow
n at me and thought, This, after five years of waiting, and now the offer to wait some more appeals. Despite my best efforts to love you immediately, even I imagined an evening free of you and looked back at our parents, grateful that I would not be making the decision.
Don’t be hurt by this. I hope now, years away from that day, you see the humor above all else. Here you were, this frail little thing, and the three of us were scared to death of you.
Our mother spoke first, looking at our father. No, she said. I think we should take him today, let’s get started.
All right, he said.
Before signing the last of the paperwork, our parents asked to see where you slept. Khun Preeda led us to the door, where we slipped off our shoes and climbed two flights of stairs. The interior was gray, bare, and smelled of urine. We stepped into a room that slept fifty, bed touching bed, children sprawled out in all stages of rest. Those still awake looked up at me, while one older child shut his eyes and turned his head. You didn’t cry or make a sound as we inspected your room.
I kept my eye on the older child. This would be the detail that stuck, as the rest of the room would pass away into the state of forgotten things. To see so many babies and toddlers here had less of an effect; it wouldn’t be until much later that I would process what I’d seen, what a different picture of the world this day had provided, thousands of miles from the white suburb where I lived with our parents, modestly but comfortably, attended Catholic school. But at the sight of this older boy peeking out at us—he must have been seven or eight years old. He looked so overgrown in that bed, turned away from us, a giant bookmarked in the row of all those babies, a puzzle from the magazines in the dentist’s office that asked, What’s wrong with this picture? A mismatch I could usually spot before my name was called, running my finger over some three-eyed fish or nightstand without any legs, just floating there in the middle of the frame. And a new kind of loneliness filled me, as our mother reached for your hand and we turned to walk away, to leave the grown boy and the room full of children behind. Five minutes earlier I might have asked our parents, What will become of him? because I was a child who had grown up in the company of adults and thought I preferred honest answers. But in the middle of your room, I wondered about honest answers; here the truth seemed only complicated. I’d had no idea that your life looked like this; our parents hadn’t prepared me, maybe because they were unprepared themselves. I turned away and followed Khun Preeda down the stairs, collected my shoes, took your hand from our mother’s, and led you to the office to finish the last of the papers.
Immediate Family Page 5
