Sunday, June 20, 2010

beggars would ride

I don't know why it never crossed my mind that Alma and Josiah might be put back in jail with the others. Perhaps because life has barrelled forward at an alarming rate recently, not unlike the out-of-control eighteen-wheeler in your more cliche action movies: you can't stop it, much less hope to make it go backward. We couldn't put everything back the way it was before, couldn't un-arrest the Vietnamese or reverse their conviction or untangle the distrust and dislike between them and Albert and Khruu Aajaan. The last few months have really hammered home the point that once something is done, it can't be undone.

Most of the time.

&

Josiah is a good kid. Quiet, except around friends his own age. Plays a mean game of Snakes & Ladders. He automatically reaches for my hand when we cross the street, and occasionally keeps holding it for the next kilometer or so. He has been known to eat donuts and ice cream for dinner. (I've been known to let him. Just the once.)

But Alma - Alma is my kid, in a way that Josiah will never be. She needs me more than he does. She whoops my ass at Go Fish. She explains soap operas to me. She claims to tell me secrets she doesn't tell anyone else. She trusts and relies on me in a way that makes me want to live up to her expectations. I am her friend and confidante, and she is my favorite kid in the world.

&

We don't tell them the truth.

I go with Matthew to pick up the kids at school. Matthew is a German volunteer who got swept into this mess shortly after he started working at the shelter. Pippi needed someone who spoke Thai to accompany her to the jail, and Matthew was able and willing. Two months later, he's as irrevocably tangled in all this as any of us. Josiah in particular is very attached to him.

The students stare at us as we walk across the courtyard, fascinated by the sudden intrusion of two very white farang into their daily routine. Matthew waves at them, and most of them grin and wave back.

We don't tell them the truth - not the faculty, not Alma and Josiah. For the director we spin a vague story about taking the kids to visit their mother, and we explain to Alma in English that Winnie is being sent to Bangkok and we're taking them to see her. Matthew is doing the lion's share of the talking, but I note his evasiveness and follow his lead, never dropping a hint that the kids are in real trouble.

Our justification, our toothless and spindly-legged defense, is that we are trying to protect them. We're still hoping that the kids won't have to go after all, that there's a way out of this, and we don't want to ruin everything for them if that's the case.

It's not right. It's not fair, not to the kids or to their friends, and I'll see that all too clearly later, when there's nothing to be done about it. In the moment, though, there's no more than a twinge of guilt as both kids emerge from the sea of their classmates and follow us out to the car.

&

Alma is angry. She argues with her mother over the phone, sharp indecipherable protests in her first and native language, the one she's admitted that she's starting to forget. Whatever she's saying, it's not pretty. Five minutes ago she was happy enough playing Neopets on my laptop, but that was before we both found out that it's not just the police who want the kids to go to Bangkok - it's their mother.

Pippi will tell me later that Winnie was baffled and upset by Alma's reaction. Apparently Alma had been complaining, the way kids do, that the food was bad and she missed her mom and she hated it at the shelter. Locked up away from her children, Winnie spun these complaints into an imagined nightmare existence. She assumed that the kids would want to come back to jail, to be with her and Rosalind and Saul.

Alma ends the call and sits there in the chair for a long, silent minute. She stares at the computer screen, ignoring everything and everyone: me, the meowing cat, the tears dripping off the line of her jaw.

I squeeze her knee. "You want me to help you get your stuff together?"

She shakes her head, eyes still fixed on the colorfully deranged Neopets. She named one after me, at one point. They'll probably all starve to death while she's in jail.

I'm at a loss. I've seen her cry before, but there's usually something I can do about it. I can negotiate peace agreements between squabbling friends and offer remedies for a toothache, but I don't know what to do here. I have to get her moving, somehow, get her to pack up her things and Josiah's. Instead, I get up and retrieve some toilet paper and cold water.

She doesn't acknowledge me wiping down her face, or reflexively smoothing back the hair that invariably escapes from her long braids.

"Come on," I say gently. "Let's go get your bags together."

"I want to go to school," she says, in that clenched voice so universal to stubborn, unhappy kids. She still has tendrils of sticky wet hair plastered to the side of her face, resisting my efforts to tidy her up.

"I know," I say - the old standby, the words I offer when there is nothing else to say. This time they mean, "I'm sorry," but I can't say that to her. It's useless, empty sentiment. She deserves more. She deserves so much.

&

Halfway through packing the bags, she's calmed down a little. I can't even believe this kid is real sometimes. If I were in her place, they'd have to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart to stop my raging and carrying-on.

She moves steadily back and forth between the bedroom and the bench outside, where I'm cramming things into bookbags and duffels. Her face is sullen, mouth pinched, but she's not crying anymore.

"Can you bring these back to my school?" She hands me a small stack of workbooks, and I'm suddenly struck by the incredible injustice to which I have contributed. She will never see her school again. She will never turn in her half-finished homework or explain her departure to her teachers or say goodbye to her friends. Matthew and I took that away from her, from both kids, and I can only hope that they never forgive us for it.

She left a few things over at Harriet's house, so we head that way next, avoiding the stares of the women and the curiosity of the kids.

"Where will I stay?" Alma asks suddenly. Her voice is still gritty with recent tears. I frown, and she clarifies. "It's full, they said. But if it's full, where will we stay? Who will I live with?"

Shit. She's obviously overheard the adults worrying about the conditions in the Immigration Detention Centre.

"I think you'll stay with your mom," I say carefully. I can't bring myself to explain that full doesn't really mean full, not at the IDC. There's always room for five more, even when there isn't.

She thinks it over for a minute. "What if there's not enough food?"

The question makes my throat close up. She's eleven fucking years old. She likes princesses and Sonny with a Chance. She shouldn't be thinking about this. She's a child, and I'm an adult who loves her. I should be able to tell her, "You don't have to worry about that." But I can't, because she does.

"I don't want to go," Alma says. "I want to go to school and visit them on the weekends."

It's not that she doesn't love her mother, or miss her. She's just a whip-smart kid who wants friends, books, some pale imitation of a real childhood. She will miss her friends at school, Elsa and Dotty, Sheila and Priscilla, Pippi, Betty, Matthew, me. She's tired of having her entire life taken away from her, over and over again. And she's afraid: of the prison, of the years they will most likely spend there, of what might come after.

"I don't want to go," she repeats, looking up at me.

"I know," I say. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

&

We reach Harriet's house, and Alma goes about pulling her wet clothes out of the washing machine and down off the line. "Do you want me to go get a bag, so the rest of your stuff doesn't get wet?" She jerks out a nod, mouth pressed into a thin unhappy line, and I trudge off toward my house.

She's still standing at the open washing machine when I come back. Her back is to me, but I can see that her arms are loaded up with clothes - pleated navy skirts, Josiah's khaki shorts and knee socks, brightly colored jerseys and track pants for phys ed days. As I approach, she frees one thin arm and drags it across her face, scrubbing roughly at tears I can't see.

Of all the memories I have of Alma, the disjointed images tucked away in various pockets and files, this is one I know will never leave me: standing there in her uniform, hair frizzing wildly out of her braids, cradling the clothes she'll never wear again to the school I plucked her out of without a single word of warning. Clinging to that life with all her strength - as if it's not already gone, as if it's something she can keep.

&

Matthew drives, with Josiah next to him in the front seat. Alma asked me to sit in the back with her, and now she lies with her head pillowed on my leg, her shoulder hard and small under my hand. The positioning is familiar: she does the same thing in songthaews, dozing the miles away until I nudge her upright at our destination. She must enjoy the nap, or maybe she gets carsick like I do. I should have asked, at some point.

She scoots forward a little bit, toward the edge of the seat, and I reach down to rub her back without further encouragement. It'll be an awkward position to hold for the next twenty minutes. I'd keep it up for a year, if I could.

I glance toward the front. Josiah seems to be holding up okay, sprawled across the passenger seat in a way that takes up a remarkable amount of space, as small as he is. Matthew's eyes look sharp and focused in the rear-view, paying close attention to the traffic around us, but I think I spot a wet streak down the side of his nose. I look away, embarrassed at having invaded his privacy.

Alma rubs her cheek against my jeans; I can't tell whether she's scratching an itch or wiping away more tears. I wish I could tell Matthew to turn around, drive us somewhere else. I wish Winnie and the police would all decide the kids don't need to come after all. I wish, as Alma once suggested, that there was some kind of machine that would stop time, and we could just walk into the jail and open the door, and everything would be okay.

If wishes were horses, we'd have one hell of a get-away plan.

The car jerks as Matthew brakes suddenly. Alma's eyes open. "Are we there?"

I smooth back the fly-away hair. "Almost."

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