Of Stillness and Storm

by Michele Phoenix

  “God didn’t call us to work with other expats.” He paused. “Lauren, I know this isn’t easy. I know it’s a huge sacrifice.”

  “Do you?”

  He took my hands in his. “He’ll give you what it takes. Both of us. He’ll give us both what it takes to do this work.”

  “Or maybe he gave us a house this close to Ryan’s school as a sign …”

  “Think about it.” I knew from his smile that his vision would trump my desires. “You get to have influence over the Nepali students in your classes. You get to shape their thinking. Do you realize what a powerful position that is?”

  He didn’t understand my hesitance. Though he felt called to the Nepali people, I felt called to protecting our son. I wanted to be home for him. I wanted to stay sane for him. I wanted to connect with him. He’d already withdrawn in so many ways. The time, stress, and dissatisfaction of the position in Bhaktapur felt like another impediment to dragging him back to us. But there was no convincing Sam of that. His ministry compass was unwavering.

  So I’d given in to the Bhaktapur obligation. Not willingly. Not graciously. Though my students were hardworking and committed to learning—motivated by the broader world that would open to them if they could hone their English skills—exhaustion, frustration, and a reluctance to be there impeded the “connection” Sam envisioned. We interacted between classes, our conversations polite and our topics unimportant. My failure dismayed me. I wanted to be more than this. More noble in my motivation. More selfless in my efforts.

  “Hang in there,” Sam would say when I showed my unhappiness. “God’ll get you through this—he hasn’t failed us yet!” He couldn’t possibly sympathize with my onerous reality when his was rich with dreams fulfilled and bright with purposes achieved.

  I dawdled on Facebook while I waited for the all clear to head to Bhaktapur. Suman worked in the kitchen, washing the dishes we’d left in the sink and swatting at the flies that made it into the house when she went out to bring the slop bucket to our chickens. Sam had insisted that hiring her was an important contribution to the economy and that it would mend some of the fences other expats had damaged by failing to invest in the lives of locals. Though I welcomed the help with cooking and cleaning and tried to schedule her hours around my teaching schedule, on days like this, when we were both home at the same time, it felt a bit like an intrusion. I felt useless and “unwifely,” because those chores other women resented were not mine to choose four days a week.

  It was a petty and ridiculous complaint. I knew that. But in a country where there was so little and life was so narrow, I missed the luxury of choice.

  I picked up the laptop and escaped to the Sumanless sanctuary of our bedroom. Not exactly a sanctuary, by any Western definition. It was … sufficient. Barred windows allowed sunlight in. Colorful shawls hung on one wall, their patterns a welcome relief from the grey-green paint that covered rough plaster. A few pictures, some of them framed, and a painting of Mount Everest Sam had picked up on a trip to Dharan.

  Sufficient. That’s what life felt like in Nepal. And though the “lacks” of my new life had proven to be a challenge to my attitude and outlook, Sam had thrived in them, as if the deprivations were a badge of honor. He saw them as life-enhancing opportunities. Maybe faith-proving too.

  I propped myself up against the braided straw mat that served as a headboard and opened Aidan’s message. My fingers hovered over the keys as I pondered the approach to take in my response. Lighthearted? Excited? Nonchalant? Nostalgic?

  I took a deep breath, aware of the tingle in the far recesses of my consciousness. I couldn’t quite identify its source. Intrigue? Yes. Excitement? Perhaps. And also something that felt like a warning bell.

  I hadn’t thought of Aidan in so long. Hearing from him—and preparing to communicate with him—was like revisiting an old, familiar, me-shaped place I’d long forgotten about. It was compelling and daunting.

  Aidan, hi. I’m not sure what to write … I joined Facebook three days ago, just so a friend would get off my case about connecting with a group of people she and I used to know. Then I found the note from you. I don’t know how you found me, but …

  I hesitated. Just a few lines would be enough. Right? Acknowledge his message. Chalk it up to a surprising cyber encounter. Move on.

  … but it’s good to know you’re out there.

  I pushed return to start a new paragraph and was dismayed to see the message move out of the box I was typing in and into the thread below his initial line of text.

  “What?” I tried to undo the action and erase the message by the usual means, but there it was, sent before I’d taken the time to really consider it. I reread my own words, relieved that I sounded less nervous “on paper” than I felt. It’s good to know you’re out there. Sullivan would call it a nonstatement. She despised those. Unsure of the proper etiquette for cyber messages, I hesitated again, then quickly typed,

  All the best, Lauren.

  I hit send, logged out of Facebook, and closed the browser window.

  It was late afternoon when I got back to Kathmandu. As I made the hour-long journey home from Bhaktapur, there were still traces of the morning’s bandh in the street outside the parliament building, a stack of burned-out tires near the gate and a couple bicycles shoved off to the side, probably abandoned when military trucks arrived on the scene to clear the protesters.

  In my first few months in Nepal, I’d used my commutes as bonus time to observe my new world and its people. I found the Nepali striking. Their blend of exotic features and serene expressions had captivated me despite the hardships of learning life in a new country. But somewhere along the way, the hardships had snuffed out my desire to see and sense. I’d lost the tranquility appreciation required. Now I could share buses with these people—these beautiful, surprising people—and never really pause to look into their faces. I missed feeling curious, and I berated myself for letting the burden of foreignness steal my fascination.

  Because of the disruption to public transit, I’d opted for a taxi instead of the usual bus home. The car was small—a scrappy, four-cylindered Maruti as dirty inside as outside. But it was neither the size of the cars nor the horsepower of their engines that made Nepali taxis fierce. It was the driving. It had taken me just a few days in the country to understand that drivers here navigated like bats, guided by the constant bleating of horns that replaced the rearview mirrors and blinkers of more Western civilizations. They ducked and weaved through potholed, crowded streets, sometimes coming within an inch of collision, with the dexterity of tightrope walkers, each move predicated on the sound of the cars around them.

  By the time I got home, I could feel a layer of dust on my face and plastered to my eyelashes, the tightness in my lower back from shock absorbers that had absorbed nothing. I dropped my book bag on the bench just inside the door and followed the smell of food into the kitchen. Suman had left warm samosas and a salad on the table, ready to be eaten when Ryan’s soccer game was over. I popped one of the boiled, vegetable-filled pastries into my mouth and covered the rest of the tray with tinfoil.

  A few moments later, I wandered into the dining room with feigned casualness, lifted the laptop’s lid, and opened Facebook to Aidan’s page. It felt unseemly to scroll through someone else’s communication with people I didn’t know. There were bad cell phone pictures of some sort of event, a George Carlin quote, and two links to political articles. Not for the first time, I wondered about the value of a site designed for public exposure.

  There was a red 1 next to the message icon at the top of my screen. Something vaguely unsettling scratched at my consciousness, much like Muffin, our Nepali mutt, had scratched at the front door when he was a puppy. It was a nearly imperceptible thing, barely audible above the growing hum of anticipation.

  Letting out a long breath, I moved my fingers over the trackpad and clicked on the message icon. I leaned forward to read, my eyes skipping ahead in their hurry, then going back
to savor each of Aidan’s words.

  ren. it’s you. this is … surreal. what is it? twenty years? twenty-one? you’re here (and by ‘here’ i mean on a computer screen) and we’re … talking? kinda.

  i’ll be honest. i took a look at your facebook page and laughed out loud. you’ve got to work on the ‘internet presence’ thing. no pictures? no ‘about you’ answers? no memes or rants or ‘which dwarf are you’ surveys?

  you know i’m kidding. i should be proud you’re on here at all. you’re the girl who resented having to use electric typewriters, and here you are using modern technology. whodda thunk? you’re officially the new spokesperson for virginia slims commercials.

  would love to know more. how. who. where. you know the drill.

  this is … surreal. guess i already said that. it’s a little weird too. much to say. too much for the few minutes i’ve got right now. i’m glad to have found you. ‘glad’ doesn’t cut it. thrilled. sobered. a little nervous too. talk soon, ren. it’s been too long.

  It had been twenty-two years. Twenty-two years and what felt like a couple of lifetimes. But the words on the screen still sounded like his voice. A little sarcastic. A lot irreverent. And in my mind, a little raspy—deep and lazy. I felt a surge of adrenaline and caught myself smiling dumbly.

  I clicked reply, eager to respond, then realized I had no idea where to begin. He’d asked about the how, who, and where, but those categories felt restrictive. So did the clock ticking away the seconds in the kitchen. I had a parent-teacher meeting to get to and needed to drop Ryan’s soccer cleats off on the way. If we’d had a car, the entire trip would have taken fifteen minutes. But we didn’t.

  What we did have were three bicycles. Sam’s was about ten years old and mine was closer to twenty, with threadbare tires and unpredictable brakes. Its headlight only occasionally worked and its chain had a tendency to come out of its sprocket. It was to three-speeds what go-karts were to Ferraris, but I rode it because it got me where I needed to go. And in the warm season, I took an extra T-shirt along so I could shed the sweaty one when I reached my destination.

  With only minutes to spare before I headed out, I read Aidan’s words again and tried to formulate an answer, frustrated by the bottleneck between my mind and my fingers. I finally began, trying to keep the tone casual.

  Surreal? Yes. Honestly, a bit intimidating too. There are so many questions I want to ask … Where do you live now? What do you do? I try to picture you at forty-one, but can’t get past the huge mess of hair, the here-comes-trouble grin, and defiant strut in my memory. I suspect all three have changed in our two decades of silence.

  You asked about me, and I’ve only got a few minutes before I need to run, so here are the basics: I’m living in Kathmandu (long story) with my husband and my son. I’m teaching some English classes (a visa requirement) so Sam can be a trailblazer—quite literally. He works with tribal villages in a remote district of the Karnali Zone (far up in the western Himalayas). It can take them six or seven days just to get there. Talk about the ends of the earth. He and his partner, a Nepali man named Prakash, trek out there to visit them, one village per trip, with all the practical help they can carry strapped to their backs.

  And then they just do life together. A guy from Wyoming, a guy from Kalikot, and these beautiful tribal people who live in unbelievable poverty. I think Sam’s done more emergency medicine than your average med student back home. And survived more near misses than your average thrill-seeker. He’s transforming lives. Loving people to faith in very practical ways. (You knew I’d marry a good Christian boy, didn’t you?)

  And me? I’m doing well, though life here is a little different. It makes this reconnecting feel all the more jarring—planet “then” and planet “now” colliding in a place that is still foreign to me. I crave a familiar context.

  Heading out the door. Am I supposed to sign off like a real letter or is this kind of communication different? Educate this novice.

  The fan woke me out of restless, muddled sleep again. The light in the hall came on and the answering machine downstairs beeped to life. It was just past three in the morning, and though I wanted nothing more than to turn off the lights and try to sleep again, Ryan needed his soccer uniform washed. Several days of rain had left the vacant lot his team used as a soccer field a muddy swamp. I’d tried to handwash his mud-caked warm-up pants and jersey in the sink since the washing machine was useless during a blackout, but they still looked more brown than black.

  I wasn’t going to earn any mother-of-the-year awards from Ryan, he’d made that much clear, but if I could send him to the informal game they were playing against the British school tomorrow morning looking less like a vagrant and more like an athlete, there was a chance I could score a few points.

  There were various tasks I tended to in the wee hours after the whirring fan woke me—like pumping water to the roof, running the vacuum, and using the stand mixer. It all depended on what I’d gotten accomplished before the fan had last gone quiet. There were days when Sam would shake his head at the dark circles under my eyes and ask if there was something he could do to help me get more done before the next power outage. I knew he meant well, but the message his offer sent felt far from supportive.

  “It’s stupid,” Ryan had blurted during one of Sam’s weeks at home. The dullness of his voice had an impatient edge to it. It was nearly nine at night, and he’d been halfway through a homework assignment when the battery power on his laptop ran out.

  “Son, it’s been this way since we got to Nepal. You should be used to it by now.”

  “But Miss Moore’s going to give me an incomplete if I don’t get it done.”

  “I can talk to her,” I offered.

  “Or we could get an inverter …” my son muttered under his breath.

  It wasn’t an extraordinary demand. Most Western families in Kathmandu owned at least one of the devices that accumulated electricity when the power was on, allowing them to use lamps and small appliances when it went out again. But as common and practical as the systems were, Sam’s commitment to living frugally ruled out such extravagance.

  We would not be one of “those” families who brought to a developing country the luxuries of the Western world. “We’re here to live among them, not above them,” he’d said on more than one occasion.

  He didn’t look up from the book he was reading by a lantern’s light. “We don’t need an inverter.”

  Ryan’s eyebrows came together in a frown. “It’s due tomorrow, Dad. And now I can’t finish it!”

  Sam put down the book and gave Ryan a look. “If you’d worked ahead …”

  “If we had an inverter!”

  “If our Nepali friends can live without them, so can we.”

  “A bunch of our Nepali friends have them!” Ryan exclaimed, glaring at his father.

  I jumped in before things escalated. “You can use my laptop, Ryan. It’s still got a couple hours on it.”

  He rolled his eyes before casting a dismissive glare in my direction. “My report is on this laptop, Mom,” he said, slamming down the lid.

  Sam spoke in the teacher-voice he preferred for this kind of skirmish. “How long have you known about this assignment, Ryan?”

  “It wouldn’t matter if we—”

  “Would it help if I sent a note in with you?” I asked. He gave me the usual disappointed look. The one that left me feeling incompetent and dismissed.

  “Can I go to Steven’s?”

  “Son,” Sam said, “it’s too late.”

  “But they have power.”

  “You can’t go biking across town and disturbing the Harringtons at this time of night.”

  “They won’t mind.”

  They probably wouldn’t. Eveline, the British woman Prakash had sent to greet us when we’d first arrived in Kathmandu, loved that our sons had struck up a friendship. And with Nyall keeping crazy hours as an ER doctor at the Patan Hospital, I was confident a late-evening arrival wo
uldn’t bother them at all.

  “It shouldn’t be this complicated,” Ryan said, shoving his laptop away. I could see his shoulders stiffening and his jaw clenching.

  “The power will come back on by morning …” Sam began.

  “The report is due in the morning!”

  “Son—”

  “Ryan, I’ll wake you as soon as it’s on again. Okay? You can get up early and finish it before school.”

  “But I don’t want to get up early!” he growled at me.

  I felt myself flinch even as Sam got out of his chair. “Ryan, you will not speak to your—”

  Ryan pushed away from the table so abruptly that his chair fell over. He grabbed his laptop and stalked out of the room. “I hate this place!”

  Sam stood there for a moment while I stifled the impulse to run after our son.

  “Let him go to Steven’s,” I said.

  “Lauren, he needs to learn discipline.”

  Anger surged. I tamped it down. “He needs to pass this class.”

  He frowned. I recognized the disapproval.

  “You’re right,” I said, striving for persuasion. “He needs to factor the blackouts into his planning. But he’s on academic probation, and if he fails again …”

  “We’ll take him out of soccer before we let him repeat the year.”

  That he would even consider depriving Ryan of his only joy in life was horrifying to me. “Sam, just this once. I’ll call Eveline and make sure it’s okay.”

  His nod was nearly imperceptible. I went to the kitchen and reached for the phone.

  From the few conversations I’d had with Eveline, I suspected that Ryan’s countenance was different when he was away from us. “He’s a delight,” she’d said as we stood on the sidelines watching our sons play just weeks after our arrival. Steven was the only schoolmate Ryan seemed to connect with, though I had no idea what they talked about other than soccer and video games. “He’s well mannered and polite.”

  The words didn’t describe the boy I saw at home. I’d have given a lot to catch a glimpse of the Ryan we used to know—the more civil and content son we’d lost in those last months before our world-upheaval. “I’m glad to hear that,” I said to Eveline. “We don’t get to see ‘well mannered and polite’ very much.”