gertie

It's funny when you get to the point of language comprehension where you can understand things you're not supposed to. Like yesterday, when Gertie was talking to Betty in Thai about one of the volunteers.

It's important to note here that Gertie is terrible with names. It took quite a while for my name to register with her - the double whammy of foreign consonants is enough to thoroughly intimidate most people here - and even then she called me by a simplified nickname for a long time, mostly because I thought it was adorable and didn't bother correcting her. In a similar case, we had a volunteer named Ruth back in January, who Gertie routinely called Fruit. (ADORABLE.)

Yesterday, the volunteer in question was a British girl with natural hair who had been working with Gertie for several weeks. Betty asked where something was, and Gertie told her to go ask that girl. "You know," she said, gesturing wildly around her head. "Hair."

I burst out laughing, and they both looked at me. "You understand?" Betty asked, a tad guiltily.

Gertie just grinned. "Gertie is a bad person," she said in Thai.

She is. She's also one of my favorite people. My computer is set up in the workshop where Gertie works, and I teach her English every afternoon, so we spend a lot of time together. She's been through all kinds of hell - trafficked, raped, blackmailed - but she is goo-goo in love with her daughter Opal, and she adores babies in a way that'll make your ovaries tingle. She's got spunk, too, and she's probably one of the funniest people I know. During our class yesterday, she told me about how she accidentally wore a belly shirt to a friend's funeral. (Maybe it doesn't sound funny to you, but you didn't see the way she pantomimed "dead," or the way she kept saying, "Seck-SEE! Seck-SEE!")

Gertie is going back to Burma next week, for two months. She wants to see her family for the first time in years, to finally introduce Opal to her grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. I'm worried that she won't make it back, that she'll get caught sneaking in or out. She's worried too. She told me that she's afraid Opal will speak Thai in front of the wrong person and give away their secret.

I wish I had a witty insight or humorous anecdote to wrap up this post, but I don't. Gertie is risking everything by going home. I love her, and I'm scared for her. I hope that she comes back to us safe and sound and on schedule, because this joint won't be the same without her.